December 31, 2008
In other bailout-related news ...
Stephen Green asks a question.
The Definition of Insanity: Now that GMAC has five billion of your tax dollars, GM is making easy credit available to buyers.
Uh… isn’t that how we got into this mess?
Well, it's not as if GM's giving away it's own money, is it?
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chrysler: Thanks for the billions, suckers!
The formerly cash-strapped Chrysler ran ads recently -- expensive, full-page ads -- in a number of U.S. newspapers to say, "Thanks for the billions of bailout cash, you rubes!"
Well, that's not what the ad itself says, but I think the hidden contempt for the taxpayer is apparent.
Thank you for investing in Chrysler-America's car company.
Chrysler is committed to:
Providing cars and trucks you want to buy, enjoy driving, and will want to buy again.
Delivering products with the best quality and value in our Company's history.
Improving fuel economy to support America's energy security and environmental sustainability.The United States is home to 74% of our employees and over 3,300 dealers in communities across the country. Of every dollar we spend, 78% is spent here at home. On behalf of the 1 million people who depend on Chrysler for their livelihoods, thank you for investing in Chrysler, and America.
Bob Nardelli
Chairman and CEO, Chrysler, LLC
The Truth About Car's Robert Farrago notes that the ads, which appeared in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, and other assorted media, deadtree and online, have begun to catch the eye -- and the ire -- of bailout critics.
Autoblog reports today on Fox News’ Monday report slamming the automaker for the campaign. Their boy Newt’s minion does the dirty.
“‘It’s quite ridiculous to be spending that kind of money,’ said Princella Smith, national spokeswoman for American Solutions, an organization headed by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. ‘Those ads are just a precise example of the fact that they do not get it … and it’s just in our faces ... A full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal runs between $206,000 and $264,000, and a full-page ad in USA Today runs between $112,000 and $217,000. ' ”
Wow. Still, $4b buys you a lot of ad space, if not a single class-leading automobile. Oh, and why haven’t MSM picked-up on the fact that the ad’s picture is a fake?
Your tax dollars at work.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:09 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
December 30, 2008
Congressional outrage!
Times are tough in the U.S. of A., what with the dismal state of the economy, the housing market, the automakers, and municipal and state governments confronting spiraling pensions and cratering revenues.
So, when I mention there's Congressional outrage, you're probably thinking, "What are our representatives in Washington, D.C., outraged about? What have the greedy capitalist businessmen done now to screw over the little guy?"
You would be mistaken.
When I say, "Congressional outrage!" I'm not talking about what Congress is saying; I'm talking about what Congress is doing.
Like giving itself another pay raise.
Despite the country's economic meltdown, Congress is about to receive an automatic $4,700 pay raise on Thursday — a 2.8 percent increase over the current $169,300 salary for most members.
What the hell? These guys think they've earned a raise? Well, is anyone in Congress upset about this?
Yeah, but the anger is pretty limited, with a Utah congressman taking a lead role in pointing the finger at his colleagues.
Rep. Jim Matheson says that is unconscionable, and he's vowing to renew his annual fight to stop such automatic raises. He says the bad economy might just help him win this year, and a government watchdog group is joining his battle to say the raise is a bad idea in such times.
"In a situation where there aren't many people in this country who are seeing their salaries go up, and in fact a lot of people are losing their jobs, the notion that Congress should be having an automatic pay raise without even a vote just doesn't pass the smell test," Matheson said earlier this month.
Since Matheson entered Congress, he has attempted every year to force Congress to vote on whether to accept a raise rather than receive it automatically. He has always failed on procedural votes that would lead to such a straight up-or-down vote (although one year Congress separately chose to not take a raise while the minimum wage was not raised).
"You realize the raise is going through on Jan. 1, and we didn't even get the opportunity to have a procedural vote in 2008" on it, Matheson said. "So it was even more opaque, or less transparent, than in the past."
You know, I've been using the phrase "Congressional crapweasels" for several years; stories like this make me think I need to find something a bit stronger to describe the greed and cowardice that makes them fight to prevent a recorded floor vote on an issue like this.
Heaven forbid the voters actually find out who is against turning off the money spigot dumping automatic pay raises into the feckless Congressional crapweasels' feeding trough.
Demand an open vote on this -- and all other issues; up or down, Yea or Nay.
P.J. O'Rourke wrote a book about Washington: Parliament of Whores.
What an insult to whores.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:21 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 29, 2008
Cheater, cheater
The real-life husband and wife duo of Joey and Rory Feek sing this catchy tune about -- what else? -- a cheatin' heart. Ironically, given the lyrics, it was written by the husband, who also wrote the Blake Shelton hit, "Some Beach."
Don't miss the cameo by Naomi Judd at the end.
Posted by Mike Lief at 05:18 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Man-made Global Warming: "A pseudo-science like astrology"
William Katz, an associate of the good folks over at Power Line, received an e-mail from mathematician Frank Tipler, who happens to rather skeptical of the world's newest cult/religion.
As regards global warming, my view is essentially the same as yours: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a scam, with no basis in science.
It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all, because a scientific theory makes non-obvious predictions which are then compared with observations that the average person can check for himself. As we both know from our own observations, AGW theory has spectacularly failed to do this. The theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience. NOW the global warmers claim that the Earth will enter a cooling period. In other words, whether the ice caps melt, or expand --- whatever happens --- the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.
In contrast, the alternative theory, that the increase and decrease of the Earth's average temperature in the near term follows the sunspot number, agrees (roughly) with observation. And the observations were predicted before they occurred. This is good science.
I no longer trust "scientists" to report observations correctly. I think the data is adjusted to confirm, as far as possible, AGW. We've seen many recent cases where the data was cooked in climate studies. In one case, Hanson and company claimed that October 2008 was the warmest October on record. Watts looked at the data, and discovered that Hanson and company had used September's temperatures for Russia rather than October's. I'm not surprised to learn that September is hotter than October in the Northern hemisphere.
Another shocking thing about the AGW theory is that it is generating a loss of true scientific knowledge. The great astronomer William Herschel, the discoverer of the planet Uranus, observed in the early 1800's that warm weather was correlated with sunspot number. Herschel noticed that warmer weather meant better crops, and thus fewer sunspots meant higher grain prices. The AGW people are trying to do a disappearing act on these observations.
But his most intense criticism is reserved for those who ought to know better, especially so-called wise men from the GOP's ranks of "deep thinkers."
I agree with Dick Lindzen that the AGW nonsense is generated by government funding of science. If a guy agrees with AGW, then he can get a government contract. If he is a skeptic, then no contract.
This is why I am astounded that people who should know better, like Newt Gingrich, advocate increased government funding for scientific research. We had better science, and a more rapid advance of science, in the early part of the 20th century when there was no centralized government funding for science. Einstein discovered relativity on his own time, while he was employed as a patent clerk. Where are the Einsteins of today? They would never be able to get a university job...
Science is an economic good like everything else, and it is very bad for production of high quality goods for the government to control the means of production. Why can't Newt Gingrich understand this? Milton Friedman understood it, and advocated cutting off government funding for science.
Perhaps the most distressing thing about the anthropogenic global warming hoax is the number of people who are willing dupes, throwing overboard their critical thinking abilities -- as well as their free-market principles.
Shame on Gingrich and his fellow AGW voodoo devotees.
Posted by Mike Lief at 05:07 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 28, 2008
2008: The year of the global warming hoax
Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the "hottest in history" and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.
Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to "natural factors" such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely "masking the underlying warming trend", and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.
Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for "emissions trading", "carbon capture", building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to "biofuels", are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:12 AM
December 26, 2008
Pinter's dead
Back when I was dabbling in the theater -- ah, college days! -- Harold Pinter was the playwright that appealed to the oh-so-serious types. "Pinteresque" was high praise to the ears of would-be masters of the script and stage.
Pinter died this week at the age of 78, cancer having ravaged his body, and aficionados of the arts are singing his praises as both a Nobel Prize-winning playwright and a political "activist."
As I never much cared for Pinter's plays, I'll say only that they were well written, but left me unmoved and decidedly un-entertained, and, ultimately, uninterested in sitting through another one.
But, as Pinter fancied himself a man of political action, and his fans are paying tribute to that aspect of his life, allow me to chime in.
Harold Pinter was a repellent man, an ungrateful grandson of refugees who chose to focus on the niggling faults of the West and indulge in the worst sort of reflexive (leftist) America-hating and conservative bashing.
The Independent (U.K.) notes in Pinter's obit:
Pinter was born into a Jewish family in the London borough of Hackney. His grandparents had fled persecution in Poland and Odessa. He was attracted to acting from an early age and his political activism was evident when in 1948 he refused, as a conscientious objector, to do National Service.
I can't abide pacifists, cowards one and all who survive only thanks to the courage and mettle of men willing to carry the cudgel and gun in defense of those unwilling to do the same for themselves. Pinter's family fled anti-semitism and found refuge and acceptance in England, the same England that shed the blood of its young men in the battle against Hitler's Third Reich. That Pinter would claim conscientious objector status a mere three years after the world learned of the Holocaust, a slaughter of Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists, cripples and anyone else deemed unworthy of life by the Nazis, is simply astonishing -- and deeply revealing.
Pacifism -- and pacifists like Pinter -- would have guaranteed the millennial fever dreams of Hitler's Thousand Year Reich and the extinction of Jews wherever Germany ruled, an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1943, thanks to the separate peace negotiated with the pacifist-dominated government of a war-weary Britain.
World War II is the single best refutation of the pacifist creed, featuring an implacable and ruthless enemy, willing to design, build, staff and run factories of death, industrializing the wholesale slaughter of "enemies of the state," to the last man, woman and child. Such an enemy cannot be reasoned with, cannot be convinced to stop killing via the endless line of lambs willingly laying their necks on the chopping blocks.
Blood, steel, guts and guns stopped Hitler -- and will always be needed to stop men like him, and the evil regimes they lead.
The Independent moves on, and so do we.
Aside from being showered by establishment accolades, he was also a radical figure. He refused a knighthood from John Major in 1996, saying he was "unable to accept such an honour from a Conservative government".
His later plays, such as One for the Road, Ashes to Ashes and Party Time, evolved from the personal into the political, their subjects state-sponsored violence, torture and the abuse of power. In recent years, he became a vociferous campaigner, speaking out against human rights abuses, including the occupation of Iraq by Western armies. He joined other artists in sending a letter to Downing Street opposing the 2003 invasion.
So, a knighthood from a conservative government is something repellent, but such a recognition from a lefty-dominated Labour regime is less so? It's not as if Pinter swore off the idea of knighthoods entirely as a deeply undemocratic holdover from the monarchical Middle Ages; no, it's just that he didn't like the blokes trying to honor him.
And then there's his passion for criticizing "state-sponsored violence, torture and the abuse of power." I can't help but wonder if, before he started lambasting the West for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Pinter found time to speak out against the "state-sponsored violence, torture and the abuse of power" inflicted upon the Iraqi people by Saddam Hussein.
The Independent finishes up with a series of quotes from the playwright, intending to leave the reader with a feeling quite different from the one I experienced, especially when I read this:
"The crimes of the US throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them."
Really? Ignoring the lunacy of the charges against the United States, focus for a moment on the "nobody talks about them" bit.
"Nobody talks about them"? The left hasn't talked about anything other than American culpability for all the evil in the world for the last forty years! The eight years of the Bush Administration -- along with the eight years of the Reagan regime -- subjected us to a non-stop litany of leftist propaganda, unmitigated America-bashing swill. When was the last time Pinter or one of his fellow travelers suffered a human rights violation as a result of voicing deeply offensive and titanically stupid opinions about the so-called tyrannical Anglo-American alliance?
Whatever (hidden) talents Pinter may have possessed were lost amidst the eye-rolling, spittle-flecked diatribes he reserved for those Western regimes against whom he fulminated in complete safety. As with so many of his type, he was at heart a voluptuary of tyrants and an enemy of freedom.
Pinter is gone; may he soon be forgotten.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:07 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 25, 2008
Merry Christmas!
Posted by Mike Lief at 02:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
The meaning of Christmas
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:51 AM
December 24, 2008
Carcinogenic cellphones?
Scientists are crunching the numbers, and the results of their research may be bad news for cellphone users: Use a phone, get a brain tumor. According to Popular Science:
Nearly five decades ago, Americans learned that one of their most treasured habits—smoking—was lethal. This year, we could get more scary news, when scientists announce the results from Interphone, the largest-ever study to investigate whether cellphones cause cancer.
Interphone researchers are pooling and analyzing the results gathered from studies on 6,400 tumors sampled from patients in 13 countries. If the final results mirror the preliminary ones, the world’s three billion cellphone users might want to dial back their talk time.
Israeli researchers participating in Interphone found that people who use cellphones regularly are 50 percent more likely than non-users to develop brain tumors. And a joint Interphone analysis from the U.K., Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland reported a 40 percent increase in tumor risk in people who use cellphones for more than a decade; the study found no discernable risk for people who have used cellphones for fewer than 10 years.
No one yet knows specifically how cellphones could cause cancer. The radiation they emit has too little energy to cause genetic damage, but some scientists believe that it may have indirect effects that cause cells to proliferate uncontrollably. But there’s no consensus on these theories.
Scientists like David Carpenter, the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University of Albany, who spoke about cellphone risks at a Congressional subcommittee hearing in September, are looking to Interphone for a definitive ruling on cellphone safety but have expressed frustration over the two-years-delayed results.
An answer from Interphone is crucial for public health, Carpenter says. Although a handful of studies have been published on cellphones over the past few years, most have been statistically useless. For one thing, they surveyed too few people. Additionally, the majority of studies focused on the effects of cellphone use after several years, but in most cases brain cancer takes a decade to develop. Interphone looks at the influence of both short- and long-term use. That’s not to say that the study is perfect.
Interphone defines “regular” use as one call, once a week. It’s possible that this definition underestimates the risk to people who use cellphones more frequently.
It's hard to imagine voluntarily returning to the days of communications inaccessibility, when we left our homes or desks and somehow endured cutting the Ma Bell umbilical cord. But, if the statistical link between brain tumors and cellphones is real, I'll toss that gadget in the bin, where it can join my smokes and my asbestos-lined underpants.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:16 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
What to get for that certain special monkey ...
When doing your last minute Christmas shopping for the special chimpanzee in your life, keep in mind that chimps don't like popcorn.
Really, who doesn't know that?
I wonder if it's true only of Japanese-speaking monkeys, like this fellow ....
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 23, 2008
How bad is the global economy?
Things have gotten so bad that even Toyota is showing a full-year loss for the first time in the corporation's history. But according to The Truth About Cars, Toyota is moving quickly to respond.
Toyota doesn’t just sit there. They do something: Toyota is facing its first full-year loss ever, $1.68b for the whole fiscal 2008. Never mind that this is approximately the cash GM burns through in a bad month. For Toyota, it is a huge embarrassment. Toyota will do immediately what GM ignored: Embark on drastic production changes.
“The speed, breadth and depth of the global economic downturn is beyond what we had imagined,” says Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. Their measures will be likewise drastic. Toyota aims to revamp its operations so that it can turn a profit even if parent-only sales fall by 17% from 2007 results.
All new production upgrades, including the opening of a plant in the U.S. state of Mississippi scheduled for 2010, will be postponed or scaled down. Capital spending planned for fiscal 2009 will be cut 30 percent to less than 1 trillion yen. For starters.
By the way, directors will forgo their bonuses this fiscal year.
Stop and consider this: Toyota didn't suffer this badly when Japan was in the process of losing World War II.
It'll be interesting to see how quickly the Japanese automakers manage to turn on a dime and start making money again.
More information on the Asian automakers' plans here.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:49 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 22, 2008
Office Christmas Party 1925
http://www.shorpy.com/node/5120?size=_original
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:25 AM
Miss Rochester 1915
Dog show, Miss Rochester, 1915
http://www.shorpy.com/node/4898?size=_original
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:25 AM
Hero of Gettysburg, Heroes of the Revolution
John L. Burns, the 70-year-old man who showed up at the Battle of Gettysburg and volunteered his sharpshooting skills to the Union, recovers at home from the wounds he suffered during the fight. (Click on image for larger version.)
According to the National Park Service's Gettysburg National Military Park website:
The 70 year-old veteran of the War of 1812 took up his flintlock musket and walked out to the scene of the fighting that morning. Approaching an officer of a Pennsylvania Bucktail regiment, Burns requested that he be allowed to fall in with the officer's command. Not quite believing his eyes nor ears, the officer sent the aged Burns into the woods next to the McPherson Farm, where he fought beside members of the Iron Brigade throughout the afternoon until he was wounded. Injured and exhausted, the old man made his way through groups of victorious Confederates who remarkably allowed him to go home unmolested.
After the battle, he was elevated to the role of national hero. Hearing about the aged veteran, Mathew Brady photographed Burns while recuperating at his home on Chambersburg Street and took the story of Burns and his participation in the battle back home to Washington. Others soon became interested in the story and when President Lincoln came to Gettysburg to dedicate the Soldiers National Cemetery that fall, it was John Burns who the president wished to meet.
Burns' fame quickly spread and a poem about his exploits was published in 1864. His notoriety faded after the war, but Burns was proud of his service to his country and his hometown. John Burns died in 1872 and is buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Gettysburg.
I found a large version of this shot on Shorpy's Photo Archive, where it's impossible to look at just one picture. The comments featured a debate over who was the first person photographed, which led to this site, as well as
Take a look at these men, who fought in the American Revolution.
Captain George Fishley, left, and Conrad Heyer, right, fought in the War of Independence against King George III and his redcoats.
Captain George Fishley, born in 1760, enlisted in 1777. He braved the bitter cold at Valley Forge, fought at the Battle of Monmouth in 1778, and watched as British spy Major John Andre was hanged. Fishley later served aboard a privateer, before the British captured and imprisoned him in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He died in 1850.
According to the Maine Historical Society, Conrad Heyer was born in 1749, joined the Continental Army and crossed the Delaware River with George Washington in 1776, before fighting in other battles of the Revolution. Heyer died in 1856, nearly 107 years old.
Among the other men featured on this page is a fellow who had discharge papers signed by George Washington.
It's astonishing that we can look into the same eyes that gazed upon the Founding Fathers.
BBC journalist and longtime host of PBS' Masterpiece Theater Alistair Cook was fond of telling people he met that, "You've just shaken the hand of the hand that shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln." Cook had met Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes when he was a young reporter stationed in Washington, D.C. Holmes had served during the Civil War and had met President Lincoln. So, from Lincoln to Holmes, Holmes to Cook, Cook to his new acquaintance.
It's entirely possible that one of these long-lived veterans of the Revolutionary War might have provided a direct link to George Washington, a handshake spanning three or four centuries.
The past is much closer than we think -- often just a handshake away.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 21, 2008
Look sharp
A quick perusal of photographs from websites like Shorpy highlight how much better dressed we were in the years between the end of World War I and the Sloppy 60s, when hygiene and style became uncool.
American men have largely forgotten how to dress with flair, but videos like the one above provide step-by-step instruction on the little things that help a guy get in touch with his inner Cary Grant.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:00 AM
December 20, 2008
Michael Jackson: Pervert or just misunderstood creepy dude?
I'm pretty sure the fellow in this video is voting for "Pervert," although I may have missed a nuanced portion of his dissertation.
Warning: When I say "dissertation," what I mean is, "Tirade guaranteed to give the sensitive and politically correct a case of the vapors." View with caution if you've got a fainting couch in your parlor.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:52 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
He can't dance
I've never been a big Phil Collins fan, but I do enjoy the video he shot with Genesis for the song, "I Can't Dance," wherein Collins pokes fun at himself and his rather undeserved status as an egotistical rock star.
The best part comes at the very end, when Collins takes aim at the ridiculous dance done by Michael Jackson at the end of his "Black or White" music video. That's the one with Macaulay Culkin, where Jackson morphs from a sleek, snarling black panther into a freaky, ambiguously-gendered albino dance machine, smashing windows, tugging on his crotch and trying to look dangerous.
Collins apparently wasn't impressed, and his Michael Jackson "tribute" -- it starts at the 4:15 mark -- is pretty funny.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:28 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 18, 2008
Kennedy's qualifications: Nada. Zip. Zilch.
Donald Sensing, a retired Army colonel, writes on the difference between "credentials" and "qualifications," starting off with an interesting discussion about the military.
In the 1970s the US Army assessed the damage done to the officer corps by the Vietnam War. It wasn't pretty. Careerism had largely displaced professionalism. Col. Dandrige Malone, one of the principal assessors, wrote that the Army's historic code, "Duty, honor, country," had been pretty much replaced by "Me, my [rear] and my career."
Sensing shows how the obsession with credentials trumped the actual qualifications of men better suited to lead, severely damaging the Army for years -- decades, actually.
This leads him into a discussion of Obama's cabinet appointments, one of whom Sensing deems worthwhile, the other ... not so much.
But let's take Lisa Jackson as EPA director. Does she have the qualifications? She has experience in New Jersey where she drew flak from all sides, which IMO means she was doing a good job in what is, unavoidably, a politicized office. She holds a BS and a master in chemical engineering, so she can handle technical matters. No problem.
It's what she said in her acceptance talk that made me think of this post. She offered what is now the standard political tripe that being a mother will make her a more capable administrator because she understands the effects of the EPA work on the children of the country. That's not a quote, but it true to the thrust.
When did being a mother become a qualification? Heck, it's not even a credential. I have three children, and if someone asks me child-raising advice, I have some sort of qualification to answer. But fatherhood neither qualifies nor credentials me to address technical issues, nor even to do sound theology.
That "I'm a parent" really jumped out at me; it's a pet peeve, one that makes my gorge rise whenever I hear it, the idea that the ability to reproduce should serve as some proof of fitness for service other than working on a stud farm.
But then -- at last -- Sensing turns to the topic of the day.
Speaking of no credentials, we have the curious case of Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg being seriously discussed as a Senator appointee to take Hillary's place. This is a person who has nothing whatsoever to recommend her to serve in high public office. No service experience of any kind. Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. Her only credential, such as it is, is her maiden name. And exactly how that deserves even to be a credential escapes me.
Welcome to hope and change folks. Same old identity and entitlement politics, amplified.
While Sensing's comments regarding the woebegone state of the Army in years past are well taken, I'm afraid we part ways when it comes to JFK's kid.
Is she grossly unqualified to be appointed to high office?
Unquestionably.
Is her joining the U.S. Senate an embarrassment?
Well, that depends. I suppose the answer demands a follow up: embarrassing as compared to whom? Certainly not the members of the Senate.
The English House of Lords has long been derided as a collection of long-winded, bilious blowhards, the children, grandchildren and fifth cousins, once removed, of noblemen who once did something to curry favor with a long-dead King.
The House of Lords looks like greatest assemblage of deep thinkers and philosophers the world has ever seen, when compared to the collection of feckless crapweasels who bloviate on the floor of our Senate.
Kennedy will certainly be no worse than any one of a number of current or former Senators who serve with little (read: no) distinction, adding nothing to the debate over our nation's future.
If anything, Kennedy being miracled into the Senate is good for the GOP -- if it wasn't the Stupid Party, incapable of ever capitalizing on an opportunity to do something smart -- an opportunity to point out how deeply offensive it is for the party ostensibly on the side of the working man to give a Senate seat to a child of wealth and privilege, based on nothing more than noble lineage.
The only move that is consistent with the so-called status of the Senate is a special election, allowing the people of New York to decide if they want JFK's little girl as their gal in D.C. But that's a little too ... Democratic for the Dems.
Ironic, ain't it?
But the U.S. Senate has not deserved it's self-proclaimed title as "The World's Greatest Debating Society" in about a hundred years. I can't see how the presence of yet another wealthy, do-nothing, know-nothing nincompoop -- of either party -- does any particular harm to that collection of venal dolts and poltroons.
Good for Princess Caroline.
God save the King!
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 16, 2008
Moral equivalence alert: New York Times edition
When journalists plaintively wail, "Why do the unwashed masses despise us?" it's probably because of articles like the one penned by New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, wherein he tries to explain why it's so darn hard for journalists to figure out when to call a terrorist a terrorist.
WHEN 10 young men in an inflatable lifeboat came ashore in Mumbai last month and went on a rampage with machine guns and grenades, taking hostages, setting fires and murdering men, women and children, they were initially described in The Times by many labels.
They were “militants,” “gunmen,” “attackers” and “assailants.” Their actions, which left bodies strewn in the city’s largest train station, five-star hotels, a Jewish center, a cafe and a hospital — were described as “coordinated terrorist attacks.” But the men themselves were not called terrorists.
Many readers could not understand it. “I am so offended as to why the NY Times and a number of other news organizations are calling the perpetrators ‘militants,’ ” wrote “Bill” in a comment posted on The Times’s Web site. “Murderers, or terrorists perhaps but militants? Is your PC going to get so absurd that you will refer to them as ‘freedom fighters?’ ”
The Mumbai terror attacks posed a familiar semantic issue for Times editors: what to call people who pursue political, religious, territorial, or unidentifiable goals through violence on civilians
Gee, if only there were a word to describe "people who pursue political, religious, territorial, or unidentifiable goals through violence on civilians." Hmm, it's on the tip of my tongue.... Oh well, I'm sure it'll come to me later. Let's get back to Hoyt's thumbsucker.
In the newsroom and at overseas bureaus, especially Jerusalem, there has been a lot of soul-searching about the terminology of terrorism. Editors and reporters have asked whether, to avoid the appearance of taking sides, the paper bends itself into a pretzel or risks appearing callous to abhorrent acts. They have wrestled with questions like why those responsible for the 9/11 attacks are called terrorists but the murderers of a little girl in her bed in a Jewish settlement are not. And whether, if the use of the word terrorist can be interpreted as a political act, not using it is one too.
[...]
Ilsa and Lisa Klinghoffer, whose father, Leon, was shot and thrown from a cruise ship by Palestinian terrorists in 1985, wrote a letter to the editor asking why The Times was referring to Lashkar-e-Taiba, the shadowy group that apparently orchestrated the Mumbai attacks, as a “militant group.” “When people kill innocent civilians for political gain, they should be called ‘terrorists,’ ” the sisters said.
Susan Chira, the foreign editor, said The Times may eventually put that label on Lashkar, but reporters are still trying to learn more about it. “Our instinct is to proceed with caution, not rushing to label any group with the word terrorist before we have a deeper understanding of its full dimensions,” she said.
[...]
James Bennet, now the editor of The Atlantic, was The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief from 2001 through 2004. After his return, he wrote a two-page memo to Chira on the use of “terrorism” and “terrorist” that is still cited by editors, though the paper has no formal policy on the terms. His memo said it was easy to call certain egregious acts terrorism “and have the whole world agree with you.” The problem, he said, was where to stop before every stone-throwing Palestinian was called a terrorist and the paper was making a political statement.
Bennet wrote that he initially avoided the word terrorism altogether and thought it more useful to describe an attack in as vivid detail as possible so readers could decide their own labels. But he came to believe that never using the word “felt so morally neutral as to be a little sickening. The calculated bombing of students in a university cafeteria, or of families gathered in an ice-cream parlor, cries out to be called what it is,” he wrote.
The memo said he settled on a rough rule: He would use the words, when they fit, to describe attacks within Israel’s 1948 borders but not in the occupied West Bank or Gaza, which Israel and the Palestinians have been contending over since Israel took them in 1967. When a gunman infiltrated a settlement and killed a 5-year-old girl in her bed, Bennet did not call it terrorism. “All I could do was default to my first approach and describe the attack and the victims as vividly as I could.”
I do not think it is possible to write a set of hard and fast rules for the T-words, and I think The Times is both thoughtful about them and maybe a bit more conservative in their use than I would be.
My own broad guideline: If it looks as if it was intended to sow terror and it shocks the conscience, whether it is planes flying into the World Trade Center, gunmen shooting up Mumbai, or a political killer in a little girl’s bedroom, I’d call it terrorism — by terrorists.
Get that? Whether or not a killer is a terrorist depends on his motivations, or where he kills his victims -- not who he kills and how.
Murder a little girl in her Haifa bedroom and the killer is a terrorist.
Murder a little girl in her Gush Etzion bedroom and her killer is a militant.
I know, it sounds crazy, but it all makes sense -- if you went to the Columbia School of Journalism. To the rest of us, it sounds morally and ethically retarded, a textbook example of fuzzy-headed moral relativism.
Here's an easy-to-use definition of the distinction between a terrorist and a "militant":
A militant -- or "freedom fighter," if you will -- primarily targets the military and government of the enemy, while trying to minimize the number of civilian casualties. He seeks to undermine public confidence in the power structure of his opponents, seeking out and destroying the institutions of governance, chipping away at the morale of the police and military.
A terrorist seeks to instill fear throughout the entire population by killing as many civilians as possible, in locations of no strategic importance. Civilian casualties are not an unintended consequence of the terrorist's actions; they're the entire point of his existence.
A militant attacks a police station or an army outpost. A terrorist detonates a bomb in a pizza parlor.
So easy even a caveman can understand it.
But not a journalist.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:06 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Alfa
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/14/alfa-romeo-8c-competiziones-popping-up-stateside/
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:52 AM
Politically Correct Follies: U.K. edition
It seems that the Brits are falling all over themselves in the ceaseless desire to avoid offending Muslims. The latest example: sanitizing a prison chapel of all signs of that loathsome and annoying infidel cult known as "Christianity."
The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports:
A prison’s new chapel will not contain a crucifix to avoid offending Muslim inmates, it emerged today.
Bosses at HMP Lewes have been told the traditional Christian symbol, featuring Jesus nailed to a cross, must not be used in the Grade-II listed Victorian jail’s ‘multi-faith space’.
The room - part of a £1million new block - has been split in two, with one half featuring heated foot baths so Muslim worshippers can wash their feet before prayer.
But the other side, dedicated to Christian prayer, contains just a simple wooden cross and portable alter - both of which can be removed if necessary.
According the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB), the traditional Christian crucifix was erased from the chapel’s blueprints after discussion with a Muslim imam.
A source at Lewes Prison, which houses 668 convicts, said he was not surprised by the decision to ‘drop Jesus’ from show.
He added: ‘This is typical. On one side of the room there are heated foot baths for the Muslim inmates, but on the other side there is this silly little movable alter that can be hidden away at a moment’s notice. And there is just a wooden cross, not a crucifix showing the suffering Jesus went through, because those in power thought it might offend the Muslims.’
What amazes me is how religious tolerance has morphed into avoiding offending Muslims. I can't remember the last time I heard of anything being done to avoid offending Christians or Jews. If anything, so-called "artists" go out of their way to excrete pieces designed from the get-go to poke fun at the religious beliefs and ideals of Christians.
Ask a typical Christian if he's offended by a symbol of Islam and he'll likely look at you with a mixture of consternation and incomprehension, because the question just doesn't make sense to a modern believer. "Why would someone else's faith offend me?"
So too with most Jews. A crucifix in a multi-faith chapel? "Mazel tov, use it in good health."
But the Muslims are somehow different and must be indulged, even if that means severely constraining other faiths.
The lessons for other religions are clear: threatening violence and promising widespread social unrest is a great way to cow civil authorities.
The slow-motion suicide of the West continues apace, to the great amusement of the mullahs and imams.
Lunacy.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2008
Now that's a racing sim!
Well, guess what every guy who dreams of racing high-performance vehicles hopes Santa is going to stuff under a very, very big tree?
It's the SimCraft Apex-SC830 racing simulator. Plug it into a PC running Windows XP or Windows 2000 and you've got a driving experience close enough to the real thing that some racing teams are signed up to use it.
With three-axis motion (roll 40° / pitch 25° / yaw 40°), the designers say this rig can fool the user's senses into feeling like he's actually on the road.
For those with a less capacious (read: bottomless) bank account, there's the two-axis Apex SC320 (roll 20° / pitch 20°), with just one panel displaying the road ahead.
If only they made one for flight sims.
Oh, wait -- they will.
The cost? Don't know; you have to ask for a quote, which means it's too rich for my tastes. But the bottom line on these things is that they're cheaper to use than the real thing, which is why pro-racing teams are going to emulate the airlines and the military and use sim time to train for the track.
The Apex SC830 is debuting at the International Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Obama tries selling Israel the Brooklyn Bridge
How stupid do Israelis have to be to buy into Obama's proposal to include them under America's nuclear deterrent? How 'bout dumb enough to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.
According to Haaretz, the left-wing Israeli newspaper:
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.
The article notes that the predicate for this plan is accepting a nuclear-armed Iran as an inevitable development, rather than one that might be prevented through the use of arms. More troubling still, it makes a couple of assumptions that I'd suggest aren't supported by -- hmm, what's the word? -- reality.
The first is the idea that Iran is a rational player, likely to buy in to the promise of MAD Doctrine. Mutually Assured Destruction, derided by pie-in-the-sky pacifists as an immoral policy of death, actually provided for the longest period of peace in Europe in modern history. The Soviet Union, for all its willingness to fund proxy wars in third-world locales, and its dreams of world dominance notwithstanding, suffered so badly at the hands of the Nazis that the Kremlin leadership was unwilling to pull the trigger on a global nuclear holocaust.
To win the world-wide struggle of communism against capitalism required that the Soviet Union -- and its future Western provinces -- remain intact, filled with resources and capital (Das Kapital?) to exploit. Smoking piles of radioactive rubble and incinerated flesh didn't fit into their master plan, and thus the gimlet-eyed, vodka-swilling Party leaders made sure that, while ready to answer the U.S. in kind if ever the Americans tried a sneak attack, the Commies also, rationally, had no interest in initiating a first strike of their own, one that would ensure their own destruction.
MAD worked, because both sides had a vested interest in not dying.
Not so the Iranians. There's a strong cult of Messianism in the current Mullah-ocracy running Iran, one that talks of end times, and ascent into heaven for those who die killing non-Muslims -- and especially Jews.
The Iranians might very well be willing to accept large numbers of casualties in exchange for being known forever as the Muslim Land that excised the Jewish cancer from the home of Islam.
But I haven't even mentioned the far more risible assumption underlying the nuclear umbrella proposal: That the U.S. would ever go Nuke on behalf of Israel.
Apparently I'm not alone. Also from the Haaretz article:
A senior Bush administration source said that the proposal for an American nuclear umbrella for Israel was ridiculous and lacked credibility. "Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel's cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?"
I don't for a minute believe the case could be made by the Obama administration for a retaliatory nuclear strike on a nation that had hit an Israeli city -- nor do I believe that the Obama administration would even try to make the case. Nor do I think a retaliatory strike on Iran after Israel is nuked from Haifa to the Negev Desert is a price too high for the Mullahs.
I suspect that the Mullahs don't even worry about paying that butcher's bill; they too know with nearly metaphysical certainty that there's not even the slightest possibility that America will unleash nuclear weapons -- for the first time in more than 60 years -- against a nation that has not directly harmed an American city.
So, how stupid do the Israelis have to be to buy into this proposal? How suicidal do they have to be to hand over their nation's safety to a feckless and untrustworthy group of American politicians, hostile to Isreal's right to exist as a Jewish state?
Dumb enough to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. Trust me, the Israelis may be many things -- argumentative, pushy, obnoxious -- but they aren't stupid. Or suicidal.
This will go nowhere.
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 14, 2008
John McCain sides with Obama -- against the GOP
Well, that didn't take long, did it? Less than six weeks after McCain ended the single most ineffectual campaign since the French handed over the keyes to Paris in 1940, the RINO-in-Chief is throwing his supposed party under the bus.
According to The Politico:
In a surprising rebuke to the warriors who fought for him through tough times, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Sunday sided with President-elect Barack Obama and scolded the Republican National Committee for fanning the Illinois corruption scandal.
Now, I suppose in the furthest reaches of my soul there was some small glimmer of hope that months spent trying to convince GOP voters that he really was a Republican -- and then somehow getting the nomination -- would have convinced McCain that he actually wasn't above party politics. That there are two parties in the U.S., that a politician has to pick a side, and that a presidential campaign ought to have firmly cemented in his mind to which party he belongs.
What was I smoking?
Obama's entire political career -- short though it may be -- is intimately connected with Tony Rezko and the cesspool that is Chicago politics. With the interesting silence from Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel about contacts with the disgraced Illinois governor over the price of Obama's seat in the U.S. Senate, it becomes a legitimate line of attack for Republicans to ask what Obama knew about the pay for play, and when did he know it.
The last thing -- the last thing -- McCain ought to be doing is hitting the Sunday news shows and playing offense for the man who crushed his hopes of ever sitting in the Oval Office -- other than as a guest.
More than anything else, I want McCain to just shut the hell up and go away. Or just get it over with and switch parties. At a bare minimum, I hope the Arizona GOP has the balls to support a challenger in the GOP primary and consign McCain to the great politico trash heap of history.
Posted by Mike Lief at 10:17 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
Health food recipe
Any recipe that begins with "Weave bacon" is destined for artery-clogging greatness. When that recipe involves cheese, well, we're taking things to a whole new level.
This thing is a cardiologist's -- and jihadi's -- worst nightmare. The pictures are here.
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Top camera picks
If you're looking for advice on a new camera for you (or for someone special), I can't think of a better resource than professional photographer Ken Rockwell. I've been relying on his expertise for years -- and he's never given me a bum steer.
Ken pointed out a smokin' hot deal on the Nikon D40 last month and I snagged one from Amazon for a pretty amazing price. Rockwell covers everything from SLRs to pocket digicams, high end to nearly disposable.
And when you're done mulling over his buying guide, check out the rest of his site; the in-depth reviews and photo technique-related articles are valuable resources for beginners and advanced amateurs alike.
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Cheap HDTV shootout
Interested in a (relatively) inexpensive HDTV to ring in the New Year? Gizmodo does a quick-and-dirty test to tell you who they think makes the best flat-panel HDTV for less than $900.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 11, 2008
GM, Chrysler & Ford have a message for taxpayers: Suckers!
They won't take our money just yet; Republicans in the Senate blocked the bailout tonight, meaning the automakers -- and the unions -- just might have to change the way they do business.
There's nothing wrong with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization. In fact, it's just what's needed for the sclerotic car makers to regain a measure of competitiveness, clean out the deadweight, shed unprofitable divisions, and get labor contracts that eliminate the $2,000-per-car penalty the Big 3 have to fork over to the UAW members -- $2,000 that the foreign automakers get either as profit or use to lower the sticker prices of their cars.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:54 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Idolizing a killer
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:39 PM
Smile! You're on KopBusters!
KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.
The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster’s attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster’s secret mobile office nearby.
Radley Balko notes that Cooper is a pretty sketchy fellow, but his Gotcha! tactics appear to have exposed some pretty shady shenanigans by the local cops.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:26 PM
Ban Tasers?
Eugene Volokh notes that civilians are banned from owning Tasers in seven states and four cities in the U.S., and questions why that's so.
Volokh offers three rationales for carrying a Taser:
1. When it's illegal to carry a gun, whether because carry licenses are generally unavailable, or because the person is 18 to 20, and licenses are only available to those 21 and older.
2. When there's a legal obstacle to the person's possessing a gun, for instance, when the person is an ex-convict (perhaps even someone convicted of a nonviolent felony), is underage for gun purchases, or lives with someone who is an ex-convict and who might be said to "constructively possess" any guns that his housemates possess.
3. When the defender isn't willing to use a deadly weapon, even against an attacker.
Given that criminals are willing to ignore weapons-related prohibitions, what is to be gained by prohibiting law-abiding members of society from using less-than-lethal self-defense devices?
The comments following Volokh's post provide a number of interesting tidbits:
A quick google search indicates [Taser cartridges] cost something like $50 per 'shot'. I would think that would discourage inappropriate use to some degree.
If, however, a private citizen uses their TASER in legitimate self-defense situation, and provides TASER International with a copy of the police report for such incident, the company will replace the dart cartridge for free.
One other factor mitigating against misuse, and in favor of the bans being silly: When a TASER is fired, it disperses about 30 colored pieces of paper (they look like the detritus from a 3-hole punch, only smaller) imprinted with the serial number of the dart cartridge ... these "anti-felon ID tags", as TASER International calls them, can generally be recovered from the scene of a TASER discharge and the purchaser of the weapon that fired them identified.
This is not foolproof (TASER weapons or cartridges could conceivably be lost, borrowed or stolen), but it serves to further reduce the risk of misuse.
Fifty dollars per shot? That'll discourage casual (mis)use of the stun gun.
But the reasons for opposing sale to non-government actors still mystifies me. Why allow gun ownership, but not something less dangerous than a gun?
I suspect that another commenter was close to the truth when he said that it's all about discouraging self-defense, the mindset that each person has some stake in his own safety, the goal being complete dependence on the State from cradle to grave.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:51 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
30 Rock watch
NBC's 30 Rock is airing its annual Christmas episode, and it's a corker.
This exchange had me doing a double take.
Tina Fey: Do you know the Postmaster General?
Alec Baldwin: We had a falling out over the Jerry Garcia stamp. If I want to lick a hippie, I'll return Joan Baez's phone calls.
That's pretty good stuff.
Although I don't much care for Joan Baez.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:46 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Terminator 4
The next installment in the Terminator series will be hitting theaters in the Spring of 2009, and the studio has released the first trailer that gives you some idea of what we'll be seeing. The director, a fellow known as "McG", cast Brit Christian Bale, hot off the second Batman flick, as John Connor.
The trailer features lots of explosions and killer robots, as well as Bale's Dark Knight-esque gravelly delivery. Interestingly, there's a hint that the constant time-traveling battling between the Resistance and the Skynet warriors in the present has changed the apocalyptic future -- perhaps not for the better.
Presupposing the trailer doesn't feature the best two minutes of a two-and-a-half-hour turkey, it looks like it might be a worthy addition to the series ... although I'm always suspicious of a Hollywood type who goes by a douchetastic, first-name-only moniker -- and the only thing worse than dropping your last name in the pursuit of showbiz cool is dropping everything but the first few letters.
McG?
Puh-lease.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 10, 2008
Popular Mechanics -- all of it -- a click away
How would you like to browse more than 100 years of Popular Mechanics? I started with 1940; the ads are almost as interesting as the articles, and the technology is often surprisingly undated -- less so than the syntax and locutions of the prose.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 09, 2008
Joe the Plumber: McCain made him want to get off the bus
This was a dispiriting campaign season, the public forced to choose between a liberal candidate who hated conservatives ... or the Democrat's Barack Obama.
As it turns out, I wasn't the only one who held his nose in the voting booth and voted against one candidate.
Glenn Beck interviewed Joe the Plumber recently, and the blue-collar star of the election turns out to have been underwhelmed with McCain the Candidate.
GLENN: Well, okay. Let's take them one by one. Tell me about John McCain, something that I don't know.
JOE THE PLUMBER: Well, something you don't know, actually it's probably stuff that you've already guessed and has already been painted in the different media spotlights. Just, well, you know, the bailouts. When I was on the bus with him, I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen, yet he voted for it. At the same time he's talking about how he's going to make somebody famous if they even think about putting pork in the bill? We all know how much pork was in the $700 billion bailout package. And why did he vote for it? And I asked him pretty direct questions and some of the answers you guys are going to receive, you know, they appalled me, absolutely. You know, I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.
GLENN: Really?
JOE THE PLUMBER: Oh, yeah.
GLENN: Why didn't you get off the bus?
JOE THE PLUMBER: Honestly because the thought of Barack Obama becoming President scares me even more ... the Republicans didn't put out a candidate for us to really vote for. It's the lesser of two evils.
John McCain -- a man who delighted in tormenting members of his own party and making common cause with Democrats and the liberal media for much of the last decade -- was never conservatives' top choice to head the GOP ticket.
That McCain voted for the bailout -- despite the pork-filled crap sandwich it became -- proved once and for all that the self-proclaimed straight talker spoke with a forked tongue. I'm thankful that we're rid of McCain as a national candidate.
He'll not be missed.
Posted by Mike Lief at 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hey, fellow bubbleheads!
How would you like to own your very own submarine? Not a toy, or one of those rich guy two-man submersibles, but an honest to goodness, diesel-electric man of war?
Well, have I got an eBay deal for you.
Strategy Page has the details.
The [Australian] city of Hastings ... got this Oberon (the former HMAS Otama) six years ago for use as a museum ship. But not enough money could be raised to carry out this plan. So the charitable group that owns the Otama is auctioning the boat off, in the hope that it will find a good home, and the money obtained will pay off some of the debts incurred in trying to build a museum facility to house the Otama.The 27 Oberons were built in Britain during the 1960s, The first one of these 2,000 ton diesel-electric boats entered service with Royal Navy, while fourteen were exported (to Australia, Canada, Chile and Brazil). The last of them (the Otama) was retired in 2000.
All weapons and military equipment are removed, but otherwise the boat is afloat and could be restored to a seagoing state. It requires a military crew of 62, but a smaller crew (about 30 qualified submariners) would suffice for civilian use. The boat is 295 feet long and 26.5 feet wide. With the torpedoes and military electronics removed, there would be quite a bit more room available for the owners pleasure. The asking price in the auction is $2.1 million, and the boat is not expected to sell at this price.
Why do I suspect there's a drug cartel with money to burn mulling over the possibilities.
Crikey!
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Camille Paglia: Anti-Prop. 8 gays hurting the movement
Salon's Camille Pagila -- an idiosyncratic out-of-the-closet lesbian, college professor and journalist -- thinks gay activists working to overturn California's Prop. 8 are doing themselves a disservice.
After California voters adopted Proposition 8, which amended the state Constitution to prohibit gay marriage, gay activists have launched a program of open confrontation with and intimidation of religious believers, mainly Mormons. I thought we'd gotten over the adolescent tantrum phase of gay activism, typified by ACT UP's 1989 invasion of St. Patrick's Cathedral, where the communion host was thrown on the floor. Want to cause a nice long backlash to gay rights? That's the way to do it.
I may be an atheist, but I respect religion and certainly find it far more philosophically expansive and culturally sustaining than the me-me-me sense of foot-stamping entitlement projected by too many gay activists in the unlamented past.
[...]
In their displeasure at the California vote, gay activists have fomented animosity among African-Americans who voted for Proposition 8 and who reject any equivalence between racism and homophobia.
Do gays really want to split the Democratic coalition?
[...]
Marriage may be desirable for some gay men and women, but at what cost? Activists should have focused instead on removing all impediments to equality in civil unions -- such as the unjust denial of Social Security benefits to the surviving partner in gay relationships.
Paglia's got some interesting things to say about the Muslim terror attacks in Bombay, the Clintons' odd power over Obama, Sarah Palin's post-election status, and "colorfully suffering divas," who Paglia much prefers instead of what she refers to as "bland celebutards."
Posted by Mike Lief at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 07, 2008
Casualties of War
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-monterrey7-2008dec07,0,5447755.story?track=rss
Posted by Mike Lief at 04:08 PM
Day of Infamy
WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAMMING!
On December 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a sneak attack on the U.S. sailors, airmen and Marines stationed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing Americans into a war most opposed fighting.
That opposition changed in the aftermath of the attack, and the Japanese guaranteed not victory, but their own eventual destruction. In another blunder, Hitler declared war on the U.S., ensuring that Germany would be forced to fight a war on two fronts.
As the few remaining survivors of the attack gather today to remember their fallen comrades, here is a visual record of the attack, made possible in part by the large number of Japanese pilots and crew who brought cameras with them and managed to take pictures during the attack.
The Japanese fleet steams toward the unsuspecting Americans, hiding behind stormy seas. Luck was on their side; they avoided American patrols and escaped detection.
Japanese planes on deck, waiting for the right time to begin the attack. Months of intensive training was about to pay off.
The pilots throttle up, waiting for the order to launch, their planes straining at the brakes, Mitsubishi radial engines screaming.
As one of the first torpedo bombers races down the deck, Japanese crewmen cry, "Banzai!" and lift their arms in tribute.
The planes lift off slowly, weighed down by the bombs and torpedoes destined for the American fleet, and the fuel needed to carry them to Pearl Harbor. They struggle into the air and move into formation for the journey to Hawaii.
The Japanese arrive and begin their attack. It had been a quiet Sunday morning, the Americans expecting a lazy day aboard ship, or liberty on the beach.
They target the battleships, lined up neatly, unsuspecting giants awaiting their fates. The harbor appeared remarkably similar to the model the Japanese used for practice.
Flak bursts fill the air as the American sailors begin to fight back, targetting the Japanese planes. While some were downed by the U.S. guns, far too often the planes clawed their way back into the sky for another run at the burning ships below.
Japanese bombs pierce the forward magazine of the USS Arizona, triggering an enormous explosion. Witnesses said the entire ship appeared to momentarily rise out of the water. These color images are frames taken from a 16mm motion picture of the attack.
The aftermath is devastating to behold; the Pacific Fleet in ruins, the American West Coast undefended. Fires rage and thousands of sailors remain trapped below decks in the blazing, capsized hulks.
But the Japanese have made two mistakes that will prove fatal to their dream of Empire. The admiral in charge of the attack has cancelled the third wave of planes, leaving intact the oil tanks holding the fuel the Americans will need for their fleet in its defense of the Mainland.
And they've left the American carriers -- out at sea -- untouched.
In a few short months, these carriers will launch dive bombers and torpedo bombers at the Battle of Midway, handing the Imperial Japanese Navy a devastating defeat, dooming their plans for an empire spanning the Pacific.
Dauntless dive bombers, like these pictured above, will make full use of the American torpedo bombers' sacrifice; wiped out by the Japanese as they flew low and slow, they lured the fighters down to sea level, leaving an opening for the high-flying U.S. dive bombers to hurtle down at the enemy fleet, delivering their weapons with incredible accuracy, sending the Jap carriers to the bottom.
And American aces depleted the ranks of experienced Japanese aircrews; by the end of the war, inexperienced cadets were flying their planes on one-way Kamikaze suicide missions, never having had to learn how to land their aircraft.
December 7th, 1941, a day that will live in infamy, marked the beginning. The beginning of a titanic struggle for the American people, and the beginning of the end for the Japanese.
Posted by Mike Lief at 11:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 05, 2008
On this date in 1933 ...
On December 5, 1933, Utah voted to repeal the 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, eighty-sixing the nationwide ban on alcohol -- and effectively putting the Mob out of the booze business.
The illegal production, distribution and sale of alcohol during Prohibition -- spurred by the demand from Americans who wanted their drinks, blue-nose laws be damned -- provided the economic incentive for the Mafia and local Irish gangs to make the leap from neighborhood thugs shaking down local merchants, to bigtime mobsters, fighting for their share of the multi-million dollar booze business.
Turf wars between rival gangs led to incidents like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The corruption was endemic in cities like Chicago and New York, cops paid to ignore speakeasies operating on their beat, politicians taking payoffs from mobsters to turn a blind eye, judges, senators and bankers enjoying the gin, whiskey and rum smuggled over the Canadian border.
Thousands of people -- perhaps tens of thousands -- were murdered in the scramble for profits, until that day in 1933 when the nation said, "Enough!" Ironically, it was Utah, a state founded by members of a religion who don't drink alcohol, who provided the votes to end Prohibition.
And suddenly, the Mob was out of the booze business.
In the 75 years since the end of Prohibition, alcohol sales have been taxed and regulated, the explosion of alcoholism predicted by the naysayers remains elusive, the huge numbers of families devastated by the legalization of Demon Rum illusory.
A question: When was the last time you can recall hearing about a cop, an innocent -- anyone -- murdered in a dispute over the manufacture, distribution or sale of alcohol?
Have a drink tonight and toast the citizens of Utah for their common sense.
Cheers!
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:26 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
December 04, 2008
The Catholics are going to do what?
I thought if there was one group able to withstand the politically-correct madness that is England, it'd be the Catholic bishops.
Apparently not.
According to The Mail (U.K.), the bishops want to install Muslim prayer and footwashing facilities in Catholic schools.
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.
The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.
But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.
[...]
The Islamic cleansing ritual, called 'Wudhu', is carried out by Muslims before they pray.
Islam teaches that Muslims are unfit for prayer if they have not performed Wudhu after breaking wind or using the toilet.
Wudhu involves washing the face, hands, arms and feet three times each, gargling the mouth three times and washing the neck and inside the nose and ears. Some Muslims also wash their private parts.
Catholic schools would need to install bidets, foot spas and hoses to facilitate such extensive cleansing rituals, Muslims say.
Look, I'm Jewish and I'm outraged. Weak-kneed Westerners seem to believe that these kind of concessions calm the roiling waters of religious-based conflict, soothe the battered and bruised psyches of oppressed members of minority groups.
As the Brits say, bollocks!
The Mullahs must be howling, certain this is a joke played on them by the infidel crusaders.
They're right, you know, but the joke is on us.
Posted by Mike Lief at 07:23 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
December 03, 2008
What are they going to do -- cancel Christmas?
Well, yes they are, at least at Greenwood Junior School in Nottingham, England, because the annual Christmas Pageant is inconvenient for Muslim families.
Greenwood Junior School sent out a letter to parents saying the three-day festival of Eid al-Adha, which takes place between December 8 and 11, meant that Muslim children would be off school.
That meant planning for the traditional nativity play were shelved because the school felt it would be too difficult to run both celebrations side by side.The move has left parents furious.
[...]
[A] letter, sent from "The staff at Greenwood Junior School', said: "It is with much regret that we have had to cancel this year's Christmas performances. This is due to the Eid celebrations that take place next week and its effect on our performers."
The school is to hold a number of children's Eid activities for those pupils who do not take two days off to celebrate with their families.
Following outrage from parents, the school was forced to send out a second letter saying that the Christmas play would be done in January.
Sent by the head teacher, Amber Latif, and Yvonne Wright, chair of governors, it apologised for "any misunderstanding" but said it had to respect "the cultures and religions of all the children".
It added: "The Christmas performance has not been cancelled outright but has been postponed until the New Year."
[...]
Yesterday, a statement issued by Greenwood Junior, said: "We would like to apologise for any confusion caused as a result of [the original] letter we sent out and would like to reassure parents and the community that Christmas has not been cancelled at Greenwood Junior School.
"For very practical reasons we have taken the difficult decision to re-arrange some significant events on the school calendar to ensure maximum pupil and staff attendance."
And the slow-motion suicide of Western civilization continues, one idiotic, multi-culti, politically correct act at a time.
No, Christmas hasn't been cancelled; it's just been rescheduled into January.
Interestingly, the only Muslim parent quoted in the story doesn't seem to want the Christmas pageant put off.
Sajad Hussain, 35, of who has two children at Greenwood Junior, said: "My children will be off for the two days next week to see their family.
"It's not that complicated; they could have one event on one day and another on another day, they should have both celebrations at the school.
"If you do not have both it becomes a racist thing and that's why you have to be careful If an issue is made out of it, it could become nasty."
Hussain's statement would seem to indicate that this idiocy is the product of non-Muslims seeking to prove their multi-culti sensitivity bona fides.
That it means gross disrespect for the customs and practices of Christians is of no moment.
Lunacy.
Posted by Mike Lief at 09:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack