Too Hot for the US Press

Postcard from America: affirmative action gone mad | Janet Albrechtsen Blog | The Australian

I'm sure that 99% of the very few folks that read my Blog are quite certain that I'm completely crackers on any concerns about this "fairness doctrine", which they likely don't even believe ever existed. They really can't be blamed if they read only the MSM, it isn't like the MSM likes to talk about it AT ALL! Why would they? The advent of Talk Radio and Fox news is horrible competition for them. If the Democrats can get rid of any conservative voices, then the MSM market share goes up!

Apparently the Australian Press likes to see a little more "flavor", so are willing to go out on a limb and cover it a bit.

What good is "freedom of the press" if things are arranged so that most folks never even realize even a tiny bit of the diversity of opinion that is out there?

What Is BO Like at a Country Club?

Political Punch

The article is short, the "meat" is:

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per
Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful
date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall
and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

What is interesting is the venom in the ABC reporter writing this and then the SCADS of responses to it (of which I read very few, but "sampled" by scrolling down). What do THEY care what "Karl Rove says?" I don't believe he is working for McCain or the Republicans in any capacity whatsoever this election cycle. In 2006, he lost big and his guys numbers are completely in the toilet. It makes one wonder about folks that are still seething when the game is effectively over for at least this guy.

I suspect that most of these folks are like the help at the country club that is jealous and wants to figure out how to contaminate the food to make the customers sick. NOTE ... I wouldn't even imagine such a thing if not for Barbara Ehrenreich writing in her famous liberal tome "Nickel and Dimed" where she discusses such a sentiment from just WORKING as a housekeeper when she discovers that some folks with a big house have "conservative books". Barbara is of course at lest WAY upper middle class, and I would assume "basic rich" based on her book sales alone.

It takes a special kind of person to have the kind of outrage these people have over what is "less than nothing". This is an idle Rove comment at an event that was supposed to be WAY more "closed" than the BO "Bitterly clinging" event. Are we so low on injustice in the world that idle comments from Karl are worth this much concern from MSM folks and acolyte sheep? Guess so.

Who Needs Democrats?

I'd REALLY like to figure out some way to hold my nose and vote for this guy, but how stupid can one be? There **IS** a "prize" ... it is called PROFITS, and if a company can come out with a battery like that, no doubt if would be worth billions in profits, not some paltry $300 million. To have a suppsed REPUBLICAN that doesn't understand that makes one wonder just how far toward socialism we have really slipped.


McCain plan: $300 million prize for better car battery - CNN.com

Sombody Else Had Better Do it

Op-Ed Columnist - Someone Else’s Alex - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

It is always hard to tell if lefties believe in some perfect world that doesn't exist, or just believe that "somebody else ought to take care of it"--in the end it is pretty much a distinction without a difference. The bottom line is that they can't be counted on to do what needs to be done, only to complain about whatever the current conditions are, and about the people that are producing energy, food, transportation, wealth, health care, and anything else of merit. What the lefties produce best is usually a lot of chattering that when possible to parse can often be made out to be some complaint on one thing or another-and a usually not so thinly veiled threat that SOMEBODY really ought to fix it NOW.

Did I Mention He Is A God?

John J. Pitney Jr. on Barack Obama & Race Card on National Review Online

This is a cute little article, if it wasn't so sad. A few weeks ago BO politely stated "If they bring a knife, we'll bring a gun", and a few weeks before that, some guy gave him a big stick, and he said that would be what we would "beat the congress with" if they didn't do his bidding. Of course, all of this is completely in "good fun", as it may well be for all I know. The fact that BO has been getting mostly "Are there any questions you would like us to ask Mr Obama?" kind of kid-gloves treatment from BOTH the media and certainly McCain, but he never the less has a "rapid response team" set up to deal with "untruthful attacks", and is constantly on the guard for any "racial subtext". "Subtext" can usually be found pretty well without looking very hard for it ... "bringing a gun" and "beating congress up with a stick", are of course very subtle and no overt messages need to be taken from THOSE!

You Can Take Salem Out of the Country

... but you can't take the country out of Salem! This article reminds me of that old cigarette ad. As some of us who moved to cities of say "50K" 30 years ago and watched the growth of "cultural diversity" and the effects, this isn't exactly "newsworthy", but it IS pretty darned amazing to see someone print the obvious statistics in black and white, and last I checked, The Atalantic wasn't even some wacko far right journal.

Locally, the paper often gets letters to the editor when they print the pictures of the perpetrators of some local stabbing, shooting, murder or drug bust, but I'm thinking that all except the most brilliant on the left can pretty much figure out the name "Mohammad Mustaffa Mohammad" or "James Jefferson Washington" without the photo. Is that racist? My thinking would be that reporting the people that did the crime is just factual. What is racist is someone thinking it can or should be hidden.

So, news at 11, as the improvement in the economy since '80 plus at least some Government programs has allowed inner city folks to move out to smaller cities, a lot of crime has migrated with them. Drum roll -- doing crime has more to do with who you are and what your values are rather than the circumstances of where you are living, income, etc. There may or may not be ways to improve humans, but "U-Haul" doesn't cover it. Seems like one might need a PHD from some pretty dense lefties to think that it would.

My guess is that we are just seeing the VERY early beginnings of this phenomenon. Welcome to the '70s.

American Murder Mystery

S&W .22S

I picked up my first used gun over the weekend, a S&W 5" barrel stainless (matte finish) .22 with a NcSTAR tactical "red dot" that allows me to have 4 projected sight options. Very large composite target wood grip that I REALLY liked the feel of was a major selling point, along with the full length weaver sight mounts.

Took it out to the range today and shot some of the nicest groups I've ever shot at 10 and 20 yards. The above was from 10 yards on sandbags ... just trying to see how well the GUN could do. I just forgot to put 3 in the middle and upper right I put 2 through essentially the same hole.

I'm enjoying a lot of this whole handgun experience, but I can only stand so many loud bangs with recoil. The old .22 is hard to beat for fun. I would have definitely went with the Ruger MK III hunter in SS with the fluted bull barrel if I didn't have two buddies that have that exact gun. Ruger makes one of those with a bigger grip I think that I might like just as well or better, but part of the fun of shooting is to have some different things to shoot, and it doesn't seem likely that I can really have ALL of the potentials in my own stable. Therefore, I felt a bit of a "group responsibility", coupled with the desire to add a Smith and Wesson to my stable. I already have the SP 100 Ruger .357.

I suspect there will be a lot of fun rounds put through this little gem.

Great Seal of BO

For the latin challenged "Vero Possumus" means "Verified Possum".

Well, not actually, it means "Truely we are able" or basically, "Yes We Can". This is of course a really good idea because all the brilliant democrats are up on their latin and instantly see the meaning in all this, while the idiot red-state Republicans are just going to be mystified by the power of this symbol and think "gee, what does this remind me of"?

Oh, wait, the Presidential seal. Upon further review though, you realize that the BO seal has 57 stars (+2). The nice thing about BO is his HUMILITY! Did you know that Bush has a "smirk"? BO is just a humble guy, that is hugely in his favor.

I Can't Exonerate Hillary in Foster Case

Here is a remarkable CNN headline. Current book salesman, ex-fired White House spokesman Scott McClellen "can't exonerate Cheney". Uh, Duh? What is the difference between "I don't have any information" and "I can't exonerate" rather than the implication of guilt? This is a HEADLINE? Absence of proof of INNOCENCE is now news? I would ASSUME it is true that not even THE OBAMA could "exonerate Saddam from having had WMDs" -- even though the media would have us believe that "fact' is a metaphysical certainty. What kind of evidence would it take to "exonerate" someone from something like a leak? It isn't one of those things like a murder that HAS to happen at a single point in time, so therefore if you have proof that a suspect was someplace else, you may be able to "exonerate them".

What level of bias does one need to print that as a headline? It is hard to even fathom, given that it is both ridiculous and biased beyond belief.

BTW, for those that exist in some alternate universe, the "Plame Affair" is WAY over ... the grand jury packed up, the "perpetrator" that let us know that a lady that drove from her suburban Washington home to CIA headquarters during the work week actually ... drum role! ... WORKED AT THE CIA!!! His name is Richard Armitage and there is a lot of coverage of his admissions on this point, including in this blog .

At the end of the Clinton years, we were treated to constant articles of "Move On!" relative to the scandals, and MoveOn.org was even founded on the horror of Republicans and "the conservative echo chamber" keeping useless stories about the Clintons alive. Here we see a headline on CNN with the Democrats locked in hearings on an affair that has been over for YEARS, and was concluded with no prosecuti0ns at all other than a trumped up perjury charge that we KNOW has nothing to do with the actual subject of the investigation, since we KNOW who the "leaker" was.

So what was all that stuff about "focus on important issues rather than scandal"? Is something different now?

Branding BO

Power Line: A messiah flush with cash

The utterly ignored fact is that BO is now the first presidential candidate since '76 to not take federal campaign financing, and he is thus completely unregulated. While I've personally always thought that campaign finance laws were unconstitutional and a restriction of the very speech that our constitution was most designed to protect and encourage, the MSM has always had the opposite view-at least as long as they saw Republicans generally raising more money than Democrats.

I often note the "looking glass" effect where the MSM and Democrats see what THEY either have been doing or dearly want to do, and get HORRIBLY concerned if Republicans are able to impletement even a tiny bit of a Democrat approach. The outcry of the "Republican media / fundraising / strategy machine" ... both during the '80s with Reagan, and then with horrible howling from 2K through the Bush years has been an example.

Well, post Katrina, the "empire has struck back". By demonization of Bush/Cheney as well as the Republican congress with "lies, incompetence, arrogance, unpopular, out of touch, ..." becoming synonymous with "Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove" and finally "Republicans" has broken the brand. Unwittingly, even the right wing of the Republican party helped out as from their POV, Bush was WAY too far to the middle of the road. The Republican Brand has been damaged WAY more than the term "liberal" EVER has been (and remember the crocodile tears from the left when ANYONE was "forced to run away from the term liberal".

So why does BO think he needs 100s of millions of cash for the election? He can already blanket the airwaves between now and the conventions at something like a 3x+ advantage over poor McCain with his 527s like MoveOn helping him every step of the way, the standard and even accelerated MSM Democrat assistance, and of course NO PROBLEMS with any charges from the MSM of him "buying an election" or "the corrupting power of money in elections". He was already in the cat birds seat, and at least one level this seems like a little more risk than he really had to take. (all be it low as we can see -- campaign finance reform is really only about "limiting what the Republicans can spend").

In BOs first election, he managed to get both of the other Democrats that would have run against him in the primary out on technicalities so he could run unopposed in the only election that mattered in his completely out to lunch Democrat district. Like most liberals, BO is no fan of Democracy--only power for himself. I mean when you are the Messiah, why should you submit to a vote? You are already convinced that you have all the answers and that were you to be defeated it would just be worse for "the deserving".

I think the election of Reagan, and then to an even greater extent GW Bush has convinced the Democrats / MSM that it is time for "drastic measures". In their view they can NEVER go back to that short period when the Republicans held the WH, House, and a slim lead in the Senate, even though they were able to pretty much stop what they wanted with a Filibuster. The 100's of millions is to get the Democrats a Fillibuster proof Senate, and make a whole set of changes so that they never lose their power again. My best guess at things on their agenda:

- Bring back "fairness legislation" so that the political content of all media outlets is under control of the federal government as it was prior to '87.
- Control Christian religious expression through "hate speech laws", controls on public display of Christian symbols (even on private property if "visible" to those that they may "offend"), removal of tax exemptions for Christian organizations, etc.
- Taxation of "wealth" as opposed to income for "certain types of people". Financial discrimination is of course at the core of left wing fascist control over the population. They may SAY "equality" every other word, but when it comes to the bottom line, it suddenly gets transmuted to "fairness", and they decide what "fair" means. There is a lot of 401K money out there that could both help fund a lot of vote buying that they want to do and penalize a lot of folks that saved money for decades. Thrift and personal responsibility are high on the list of things that Democrats can't stomach, and the 401K, created under Reagan is the kind of thing that if allowed to stand reduces dependency on the Government. Need to have only dependent sheep ... NO SHEEPDOGS!
- Naturally, an armed populace is just not nearly as docile as a fascist like BO needs. They have a lot of "turn in your neighbor" kinds of proposals. Massive taxation and removal from sale of ammunition -- the list goes on. At least in the short term, there is some potential that the Supreme Court could hold the line on this one, but don't expect it to last for long.

BO has a tremendous shot at moving this country completely into a government controlled media message only, 100% government dependent (healthcare, retirement, what job you can get unless you follow the proscribed speech), effectively state controlled religious message, unarmed populace.

Is this alarmist? Oh, certainly, but WAY less alarmist than 40 front page stories on Abu Girab in the NYT, thousands of articles on "loss of rights" because someone MIGHT be listening to your cell call if you happen to have any known foreign terrorists on speed dial and I won't even go into all the braying about "the Christian right peering into your bedroom". We have an MSM tradition of alarmism in this country, but it only goes one way. If our politics gets close to the centerline, as it did in Bush and Reagan, the MSM believes that we have fallen into some imaginary Nazi right ditch. From their POV, this is a highway with no such thing as a left ditch. We are about to hang a hard left at 80 with no intersection in sight, and from the MSM POV, it is unimaginable that there could even be the hint of a concern with that.

Ignore What I Write, READ THIS!

PJ is one of my favorite writers. Being funny AND making a ton of sense while doing it is very hard to beat. This guy is one of my standards, and from reading this one it is obvious that I have a LONG way to go!

BO Makes Campaign Finance History

Obama bypasses public money — 1st since Watergate - Yahoo! News

Things have REALLY changed since 2000! In 2K, the "Bush Money Machine", and "Big Campaign Money" were a "threat to America", and the media was all over that horrible Bush for "buying the election". What made Bush specially bad (other than raising more funds than their cherished Democrats)? Well, the cad opted out of Federal financing for PRIMAIRIES. Wow, that was horrible! That meant that he used his money advantage against (among others), John McCain! Remember when the media LOVED that "maverick" McCain? My how times have changed!

Of course in those distant times the MSM LOVED "McCain/Feingold", that bold step forward, great thing that everyone ought to be in favor of. Have any guesses about how big a story this is going to be?

Last year, Obama filled out a questionnaire where he vowed to "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." But since clinching the Democratic nomination earlier this month, Obama has not broached the subject with McCain. The only discussion occurred about two weeks ago between Obama's and McCain's lawyers,

How many times have we heard media say "Bush lied" in the last 5 years? I wonder how many times we will see this Obama move referred to as a "lie"? We need to get whole new definitions. When Bush said that "British Intelligence said that Saddam was seeking yellowcake", British intelligence confirmed it, and a British investigation approved the intelligence, but the American media decided "No, Saddam didn't do that", THAT was declared as a "Bush LIE". When Bush said that Saddam had WMDs, the CIA said he had WMDs, the Clinton administration historically and every world power including the UN said that he had WMDs, but WMDs were not found in sufficient quantities (only components buried under school yards, older shells with sarin, etc), that meant that "Bush lied".

One can only assume that for a Republican, the definition of "a lie" is "a statement that you make that disagrees with the media view". I await what the definition might be for Obama? I'm thinking that it is metaphysically impossible for him to state something that is less than truthful from the media perspective. I'll await their verdict. "Truth" was such a HUGE issue just a short time ago, but my sense is that the standards may have suddenly gotten murkier? I argue that the MSM capabilty to convince many Americans that are in the middle that actually DO believe that "character is an issue" that "Bush lied" is a MAJOR coup on their part and has a giant effect in creating his low popularity and the Democrat takeover in Congress.

Note the words of the other "saint of campaign finance".

Russ Feingold,a Wisconsin Democrat who has worked with McCain on campaign finance laws in the past, praised Obama for his support of current campaign finance legislation, but added: "This decision was a mistake."

Now there is your courageous non-partisan guy. I'm sure Russ will be trumpeting this scathing "This decision was a mistake" rhetoric from shore to shore. Here we have an example of "principled courage in politics". Mind you, since his name is on the "historic legislation", I guess one should be unsurprised how he REALLY gets out there on this one! No room for cynicism in US politics these days!

Then we have this sterling example of the BO "new kind of politics":

Obama said McCain and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and political action committees.

"And we've already seen that he's not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations," Obama said. 

Despite that claim, few Republican-leaning groups have weighed into the presidential contest so far. In fact, Obama allies such as MoveOn.org are the ones that have been spending money on advertising against McCain.

Wow, even the AP can't quite fully stomach the "audacity" of that one. It is McCain and the Republican's fault that BO has to break his word? BUT, even the MSM (all be it WAY at the end of the article) is forced to recognize that the BO claim is a complete lie, and it is HIM that is benefiting from the "so-called 527 groups".

Yes, this is really a "new kind of politics".

No Favor to be "VIP"

Friends in high places - Opinion - USATODAY.com

Hmm, couple SITTING Senators, one of them on the list of potential VP nominees ... OOPs, my mistake, BOTH DEMOCRATS! They "gave the money back", and didn't see "being treated as a VIP" as "special". BO doesn't see picking up something over $500K in benefits from a now convicted felon as a "favor" -- and of course, he didn't even bother to "give it back".

No reason to make these into news stories ... or to talk about "corruption in the Democrat party". Those were the tactics used successfully during the 2006 election by the MSM to do a solid job of damaging the Republican brand. The difficulty though is that most REPUBLICANS respond badly to their candidates being crooks. Democrats on the other hand are picking their guys explicitly because they are crooks!! They EXPECT that their guys are going to rip off all sorts of funds from a whole bunch of folks, they are just going to get a lot of lawyers involved and call it "progressive taxation"!

Addition Update

The sheetrock is up in the new bedroom. Here are some updated pictures.

Master Bedroom Addition

Ships At Duluth Canal

On our trip north we got a chance to watch a few ships go through the canal into the Duluth/Superior Harbor under the lift bridge.

Ships Through Duluth Canal

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