WorldNetDaily:

Based on strikingly irrational beliefs and emotions, modern liberals relentlessly undermine the most important principles on which our freedoms were founded,” says Dr. Lyle Rossiter, author of the new book, “The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” “Like spoiled, angry children, they rebel against the normal responsibilities of adulthood and demand that a parental government meet their needs from cradle to grave.”

While political activists on the other side of the spectrum have made similar observations, Rossiter boasts professional credentials and a life virtually free of activism and links to “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

For more than 35 years he has diagnosed and treated more than 1,500 patients as a board-certified clinical psychiatrist and examined more than 2,700 civil and criminal cases as a board-certified forensic psychiatrist. He received his medical and psychiatric training at the University of Chicago.

Rossiter says the kind of liberalism being displayed by the two major candidates for the Democratic Party presidential nomination can only be understood as a psychological disorder.

“A social scientist who understands human nature will not dismiss the vital roles of free choice, voluntary cooperation and moral integrity – as liberals do,” he says. “A political leader who understands human nature will not ignore individual differences in talent, drive, personal appeal and work ethic, and then try to impose economic and social equality on the population – as liberals do. And a legislator who understands human nature will not create an environment of rules which over-regulates and over-taxes the nation’s citizens, corrupts their character and reduces them to wards of the state – as liberals do.”

Dr. Rossiter says the liberal agenda preys on weakness and feelings of inferiority in the population by:

creating and reinforcing perceptions of victimization;

satisfying infantile claims to entitlement, indulgence and compensation;

augmenting primitive feelings of envy;

rejecting the sovereignty of the individual, subordinating him to the will of the government.

“The roots of liberalism – and its associated madness – can be clearly identified by understanding how children develop from infancy to adulthood and how distorted development produces the irrational beliefs of the liberal mind,” he says. “When the modern liberal mind whines about imaginary victims, rages against imaginary villains and seeks above all else to run the lives of persons competent to run their own lives, the neurosis of the liberal mind becomes painfully obvious.”

Jonah Goldberg puts the pious party’s torture meme into perspective.

Less than five minutes.

That’s the total amount of time the United States has waterboarded terrorist detainees. How many detainees? Three. Who were these detainees?

A group of activists demonstrates “waterboarding,” a technique that has been used on prisoners by government agencies, in New York’s Times Square January 11, 2008. The interrogation practice has been at the center of a bitter dispute about what constitutes torture.

One was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “the principle architect of the 9/11 attacks” according to the 9/11 Report, and the head of al-Qaeda’s “military committee.” Linked to numerous terror plots, he is believed to have financed the first World Trade Center bombing, helped set up the courier system that resulted in the infamous Bali bombing, and cut off Danny Pearl’s head.

A second was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the head of al-Qaeda operations in the Persian Gulf. He allegedly played a role in the 2000 millennium terror plots and was the mastermind behind the USS Cole attack that killed 17 Americans.

The third was Abu Zubaydah, said to be Osama bin Laden’s top man after Ayman al Zawahri and al-Qaeda’s chief logistics operative. It is believed that Zubaydah essentially ran al-Qaeda’s terror camps and recruitment operations. After he was waterboarded, Zubaydah reportedly offered intelligence officers a treasure trove of critical information. He was waterboarded just six months after the 9/11 attacks and while the anthrax scare was still ongoing.

John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who witnessed the interrogation, told ABC’s Brian Ross: “The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

He divulged, according to Kiriakou, “al-Qaeda’s leadership structure” and identified high-level terrorists the CIA didn’t know much, if anything, about. It’s been suggested that Zubaydah and al-Nashiri’s confessions in turn led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

And that’s it. Less than five minutes, three awful men, five years ago.

Read the whole thing.

In an impressive case of official pettyfogging and regulatory excess, the Purbeck Council (Dorset) has banned a local veteran from flying his former regiment’s flag above his restaurant on the grounds that it should be regarded as a form of “advertising.”

The Telegraph:

A former Gurkha has been banned from flying the regiment’s flag from his Nepalese restaurant, but he has been told he can hoist the colours of the European Union.

Asbahadur Gurung, whose family served in the Army for 70 years, wanted to display his former regiment’s colours above his restaurant, called The Gurkha.

Council officials said the green and white flag was a form of advertising and refused him permission. But they advised him that he did not need permission to run up the flag of any country, the UN or the EU.

The decision has angered Mr Gurung, whose father Mambahadur fought in the Battle of Kohima in Burma in the Second World War. “I was proud to serve the British Army for 28 years as was my father before me,” he said. “We know the British people have a great respect for the Gurkhas and we thought a lot of people would appreciate the regiment flag.”

Mr Gurung, 70, spent 28 years in the Queen’s Gurkha Signals, eventually reaching the rank of captain.

He added: “Our restaurant is called The Gurkha so we thought it would be quite appropriate to fly our flag. I don’t understand what the problem is. It is not very good. I don’t want to fly another flag or the EU flag – I didn’t fight for the EU.”

Gurkhas are recruited from Nepal and have fought alongside British soldiers for almost 200 years and are renowned for their bravery.

Mr Gurung fought in the Malaya Emergency against a communist uprising in the 1950s and the Indonesian Confrontation in Brunei in the 1960s.

He went on to become a commanding officer, serving in Hong Kong, and left the Army with an exemplary record.

On becoming a civilian, he managed a Nepalese restaurant in Hong Kong before migrating to Britain in 1993.

He opened The Gurkha in Wareham, Dorset, last year and sought permission from Purbeck District Council to fly his regimental flag.

He had hoped to erect two 15ft flag poles and unfurl the Union Flag on one and, on the other, the Gurkha flag with its green background and two white crossed kukris – the curved weapon and general all-purpose tool of Nepal.

The local parish council had no problem with the flags and there were no complaints from local residents. But Purbeck council viewed the Gurkha flag as a form of advertising and refused permission for it to be displayed. They also thought it could distract passing motorists.

Alan Davies, the council’s principal planning officer, said: “The government regulations state you can fly the flag of any country without permission but the Gurkha flag is not the flag of a country and therefore it needs permission.

“There is already a plethora of advertising signs on the site of the restaurant. We are not opposed to the restaurant, indeed a lot of staff have been there before and it is excellent.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel contemplates the messianic Obama, but the feminist in her is rooting for Hillary.

I’ve been told that I no longer need to do yoga, take up Pilates, or study Kaballah, and I can even stop listening to Bruce Springsteen. Apparently 45 minutes at a Barack Obama rally—preceded by two hours and 45 minutes of waiting in the snow outside to get in—will be all it takes to change my life. Forever. An open mind, a free spirit, a loving heart, a renewed appreciation for democracy—and possibly even thin thighs—will be mine for keeps, if I just take in the junior senator from Illinois at a high-school gymnasium in Waukesha or a Nascar track in Pocono or an arena in Dallas. In less time than it takes to get through a single session of psychotherapy, Mr. Obama can cure me. ...

We see Hillary, we see Barack, and we see our own version of hell: Here is this amazing woman, top of her class, implausible marriage to impossible man, works as hard as the day is long, masters all the forms and spreadsheets of governing, even manages to raise a pretty darn good kid—and then along comes this guy, this groovy Obamarama, with his pleasing mien, his high style, his absolute fabulousness, and he wants the top floor, corner office that she earned.

And women—women have seen this movie, women have heard this story, women know the drill, have had their manicured fingers ready to ring that particular fire alarm for years now. Women, finally, will say no to that. Real women don’t care what Caroline Kennedy and Maria Shriver with their easy words and easy lives have to say about any of this. No one with a job takes advice from someone with a chef.

Right now, it looks like Barack Obama will be the nominee. Hillary Clinton is unlikely to win any more primaries for a few more weeks, and at that point, it may be too late for this championship season. But pundits count her out at their own peril. That woman is a force of nature. One of these years, Hillary is going to the White House. If she has to win every single vote one by one, she’ll do it. If she has to take hostages, hold a gun to the head of every voter as he enters the booth, she’ll do that too. She may even cry.

Never underestimate Hillary Clinton.

Read the whole thing.

Voytek, a Eurasian Brown Bear picked up as a cub in Iran in 1943 by the Second Polish Transport Company, accompanied the unit through the rest of the war. In order to transport the bear to the European theatre, he had to be listed on the unit’s rolls, and was even given a rank and serial number. The bear served through the Italian campaign, including the Battle of Monte Cassino, and was trained to carry mortar rounds.

Rather than be mustered out in Communist Poland, many Poles remained in Britain, including Voytek, who spent his retirement in the Edinburgh Zoo. Voytek died in 1963.

Daily Mail story.

Internet access was completely down for most of a day because freezing rain had buried the satellite receiver dish in a thick coating of ice. The editorial staff foolishly went hunting on Sunday in very cold weather and high winds and is consequently experiencing fever, cold, and sore throat.

St. Valentine

The popular customs associated with Saint Valentine’s Day undoubtedly had their origin in a conventional belief generally received in England and France during the Middle Ages, that on 14 February, i.e., half way through the second month of the year, the birds began to pair. Thus in Chaucer’s Parliament of Foules we read:

For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day
Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.

For this reason the day was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens. Both the French and English literatures of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries contain allusions to the practice. Perhaps the earliest to be found is in the 34th and 35th Ballades of the bilingual poet, John Gower, written in French; but Lydgate and Clauvowe supply other examples. Those who chose each other under these circumstances seem to have been called by each other their Valentines. In the Paston Letters, Dame Elizabeth Brews writes thus about a match she hopes to make for her daughter (we modernize the spelling), addressing the favoured suitor:

And, cousin mine, upon Monday is Saint Valentine’s Day and every bird chooses himself a mate, and if it like you to come on Thursday night, and make provision that you may abide till then, I trust to God that ye shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion.

Shortly after the young lady herself wrote a letter to the same man addressing it “Unto my rightwell beloved Valentine, John Paston Esquire”. The custom of choosing and sending valentines has of late years fallen into comparative desuetude.

From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:Feast Day: St. Valentine, priest and martyr, circ. 270.

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY

Valentine’s Day is now almost everywhere a much degenerated festival, the only observance of any note consisting merely of the sending of jocular anonymous letters to parties whom one wishes to quiz, and this confined very much to the humbler classes. The approach of the day is now heralded by the appearance in the print-sellers’ shop windows of vast numbers of missives calculated for use on this occasion, each generally consisting of a single sheet of post paper, on the first page of which is seen some ridiculous coloured caricature of the male or female figure, with a few burlesque verses below. More rarely, the print is of a sentimental kind, such as a view of Hymen’s altar, with a pair undergoing initiation into wedded happiness before it, while Cupid flutters above, and hearts transfixed with his darts decorate the corners. Maid-servants and young fellows interchange such epistles with each other on the 14th of February, no doubt conceiving that the joke is amazingly good: and, generally, the newspapers do not fail to record that the London postmen delivered so many hundred thousand more letters on that day than they do in general. Such is nearly the whole extent of the observances now peculiar to St. Valentine’s Day.

At no remote period it was very different. Ridiculous letters were unknown: and, if letters of any kind were sent, they contained only a courteous profession of attachment from some young man to some young maiden, honeyed with a few compliments to her various perfections, and expressive of a hope that his love might meet with return. But the true proper ceremony of St. Valentine’s Day was the drawing of a kind of lottery, followed by ceremonies not much unlike what is generally called the game of forfeits. Misson, a learned traveller, of the early part of the last century, gives apparently a correct account of the principal ceremonial of the day.

‘On the eve of St. Valentine’s Day,’ he says, ‘the young folks in England and Scotland, by a very ancient custom, celebrate a little festival. An equal number of maids and bachelors get together: each writes their true or some feigned name upon separate billets, which they roll up, and draw by way of lots, the maids taking the men’s billets, and the men the maids’: so that each of the young men lights upon a girl that he calls his valentine, and each of the girls upon a young man whom she calls hers. By this means each has two valentines: but the man sticks faster to the valentine that has fallen to him than to the valentine to whom he is fallen. Fortune having thus divided the company into so many couples, the valentines give balls and treats to their mistresses, wear their billets several days upon their bosoms or sleeves, and this little sport often ends in love.’

In that curious record of domestic life in England in the reign of Charles II, Pepys’s Diary, we find some notable illustrations of this old custom. It appears that married and single were then alike liable to be chosen as a valentine, and that a present was invariably and necessarily given to the choosing party. Mr. Pepys enters in his diary, on Valentine’s Day, 1667: ‘This morning came up to my wife’s bedside (I being up dressing myself) little Will Mercer to be her valentine, and brought her name written upon blue paper in gold letters, done by himself, very pretty; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife’s valentine, and it will cost me £5: but that I must have laid out if we had not been valentines.’ Two days after, he adds:

‘I find that Mrs. Pierce’s little girl is my valentine, she having drawn me: which I was not sorry for, it easing me of something more that I must have given to others. But here I do first observe the fashion of drawing mottoes as well as names, so that Pierce, who drew my wife, did draw also a motto, and this girl drew another for me. What mine was, I forget: but my wife’s was “Most courteous and most fair,” which, as it maybe used, or an anagram upon each name, might be very pretty.’

Noticing, soon afterwards, the jewels of the celebrated Miss Stuart, who became Duchess of Richmond, he says: ‘The Duke of York, being once her valentine, did give her a jewel of about £800: and my Lord Mandeville, her valentine this year, a ring of about £300.’ These presents were undoubtedly given in order to relieve the obligation under which the being drawn as valentines had placed the donors. In February 1668, Pepys notes as follows:

‘This evening my wife did with great pleasure shew me her stock of jewels, increased by the ring she hath made lately, as my valentine’s gift this year, a Turkey-stone set with diamonds. With this, and what she had, she reckons that she hath above one hundred and fifty pounds’ worth of jewels of one kind or other: and I am glad of it, for it is fit the wretch should have something to content herself with.’

The reader will understand wretch to be used as a term of endearment. Notwithstanding the practice of relieving, there seems to have been a disposition to believe that the person drawn as a valentine had some considerable likelihood of becoming the associate of the party in wedlock. At least, we may suppose that this idea would be gladly and easily arrived at, where the party so drawn was at all eligible from other considerations. There was, it appears, a prevalent notion amongst the common people, that this was the day on which the birds selected their mates. They seem to have imagined that an influence was inherent in the day, which rendered in some degree binding the lot or chance by which any youth or maid was now led to fix his attention on a person of the opposite sex. It was supposed, for instance, that the first unmarried person of the other sex whom one met on St. Valentine’s morning in walking abroad, was a destined wife or a destined husband. Thus Gay makes a rural dame remark:

‘Last Valentine, the day when binds of kind
Their paramours with mutual chirping’, find,
I early rose just at the break of day,
Before the sun had chased the stars away:
A-field I went, amid the morning clew,
To milk my kine (for so should housewives do).
Thee first I spied—and the first swain we see,
In spite of Fortune shall our true love be.’

A forward Miss in the Connoisseur, a series of essays published in 1751-6, thus adverts to other notions with respect to the day:

‘Last Friday was Valentine’s Day, and the night before, I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle: and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out. But to make it more sure, I boiled an egg hard, and took out the yolk, and filled it with salt: and when I went to bed, ate it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it. We also wrote our lovers’ names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up in clay, and put them into water; and the first that rose up was to be our valentine. Would you think it?—Mr. Blossom was my man. I lay a-bed and shut my eyes all the morning, till he came to our house: for I would not have seen another man before him for all the world.’

St. Valentine’s Day is alluded to by Shakspeare and by Chaucer, and also by the poet Lydgate (who died in 1440). One of the earliest known writers of valentines, or poetical amorous addresses for this day, was Charles Duke of Orleans, who was taken at the battle of Agincourt. Drayton, a poet of Shakspeare’s time, full of great but almost unknown beauties, wrote thus charmingly:

TO HIS VALENTINE

‘Muse, bid the morn awake,
Sad winter now declines,
Each bird cloth choose a mate,
This day’s St. Valentine’s :
For that good bishop’s sake
Get up, and let us see,
What beauty it shall be
That fortune us assigns.

But lo! in happy hour,
The place wherein she lies,
In yonder climbing tower
Gilt by the glittering rise;
Oh, Jove! that in a shower,
As once that thunder did,
When he in drops lay hid,
That I could her surprise!

Her canopy I’ll draw,
With spangled plumes bedight,
No mortal ever saw
So ravishing a sight:
That it the gods might awe,
And powerfully transpierce
The globy universe,
Out-shooting every light.

My lips I’ll softly lay
Upon her heavenly cheek,
Dyed like the dawning day,
As polish’d ivory sleek:
And in her ear I’ll say,
“Oh thou bright morning-star
‘Tis I that come so far,
My valentine to seek.”

Each little bird, this title,
Doth choose her loved peer,
Which constantly abide
In wedlock all the year,
As nature is their guide:
So may we two be true
This year, nor change for new,
As turtles coupled were.

Let’s laugh at them that choose
Their valentines by lot:
To wear their names that use,
Whom icily they have got.
Such poor choice we refuse,
Saint Valentine befriend;
We thus this morn may spend,
Else, Muse, awake her not’

Donne, another poet of the same age, remarkable for rich though scattered beauties, writes an epithalamium on the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth to Frederick Count Palatine of the Rhine—the marriage which gave the present royal family to the throne—and which took place on St. Valentine’s Day, 1614. The opening is fine

‘Hail, Bishop Valentine! whose day this is:
All the air is thy diocese,
And all the chirping choristers
And other birds are thy parishioners:
Thou marryest every year
The lyric lark and the grave whispering dove:
The sparrow that neglects his life for love,
The household bird with the red stomacher:
Thou mak’st the blackbird speed as soon
As cloth the goldfinch or the halcyon—This day more cheerfully than ever shine,
This day which might inflame thyself, old Valentine!’

The origin of these peculiar observances of St. Valentine’s Day is a subject of some obscurity. The saint himself, who was a priest of Rome, martyred in the third century, seems to have had nothing to do with the matter, beyond the accident of his day being used for the purpose. Mr. Douce, in his Illustrations of Shakspeare, says:

‘It was the practice in ancient Rome, during a great part of the month of February, to celebrate the Lupercalia, which were feasts in honour of Pan and Juno. whence the latter deity was named Februata, Februalis, and Februlla. On this occasion, amidst a variety of ceremonies, the names of young women were put into a box, from which they were drawn by the men as chance directed. The pastors of the early Christian church, who, by every possible means, endeavoured to eradicate the vestiges of pagan superstitions, and chiefly by some commutations of their forms, substituted, in the present instance, the names of particular saints instead of those of the women: and as the festival of the Lupercalia had commenced about the middle of February, they appear to have chosen St. Valentine’s Day for celebrating the new feast, because it occurred nearly at the same time.

This is, in part, the opinion of a learned and rational compiler of the Lives of the Saints, the Rev. Alban Butler.

It should seem, however, that it was utterly impossible to extirpate altogether any ceremony to which the common people had been much accustomed—a fact which it were easy to prove in tracing the origin of various other popular superstitions. And, accordingly, the outline of the ancient ceremonies was preserved, but modified by some adaptation to the Christian system. It is reasonable to suppose, that the above practice of choosing mates would gradually become reciprocal in the sexes, and that all persons so chosen would be called Valentines, from the day on which the ceremony took place.’
—————————————————-

February 14th, prior to 1969, was the feast day of two, or possibly three, saints and martyrs named Valentine, all reputedly of the Third Century. The first Valentine, legend holds, was a physician and priest in Rome, arrested for giving aid to martyrs in prison, who while there converted his jailer by restoring sight to the jailer’s daughter. He was executed by being beaten with clubs, and afterwards beheaded, February 14, 270. He is traditionally the patron of affianced couples, bee keepers, lovers, travellers, young people, and greeting card manufacturers, and his special assistance may be sought in conection with epilepsy, fainting, and plague.

A second St. Valentine, reportedly bishop of Interamna (modern Terni) was also allegedly martyred under Claudius II, and also allegedly buried along the Flaminian Way. A third St. Valentine is said to have also been martyred in Roman times, along with companions, in Africa. Because of a lack of historical evidence, the Roman Catholic Church dropped the February 14th feast of St. Valentine from its calendar in 1969.

Tony Blankley explains that Hillary still has a few tricks up her sleeve which may yet sink the Zombie-master Obama.

Starting about a week ago, we started seeing references in the national media (ABC, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times) to Obama spawning a “cult of personality” — a theme that had existed back in Illinois for some time but mysteriously didn’t substantially appear in the national media until about Super Tuesday. The maxim in political strategy is always to go at your opponent’s strength.

If you turn him on that, the battle is over. So, the cult of personality perfectly targets his strength: that Obama has a wonderful personality. The Clintons (presumably) are suggesting, in effect, that he may be delectable, but he’s not electable; that it is unhealthy to adore a leader — undemocratic, in fact.

But beyond that are dark hints of yet to be revealed facts about Obama. I was chatting with a senior Clinton surrogate in a cable TV green room late last week — a former Clinton White House senior appointee. He mentioned to me that, while they couldn’t bring it up, Obama said (unspecified) things back when he was in the Illinois Senate that may be on news videotape. He said it was way beyond what a general election electorate could swallow (implicitly: too leftish for the public). Obama is just not electable, he suggested.

Oakland Tribune:

The Berkeley City Council attempted to make nice with U.S. Marines recruiters Wednesday morning by taking back a letter it planned to send calling the Corps “uninvited and unwelcome intruders” in the city.
But a motion to formally apologize failed.

Instead the City Council with a 7-2 vote at 1 a.m. sought to clarify one of its Jan. 29 Marines motions with new language that recognizes “the recruiters’ right to locate in our city and the right of others to protest or support their presence.”

The new statement also said the council opposes “the recruitment of our young people into this war.”

The council heard testimony from about 100 people who came from as far away as Colorado to weigh in on the issue.

At the same time, the council let stand four other items it passed at its previous meeting, including one encouraging “all people to avoid cooperation with the Marine Corps recruiting station,” another asking the city attorney to investigate whether the recruiting station is breaking the city’s law against discrimination based on sexual orientation and two items giving the peace group Code Pink a free weekly parking space and sound permit to protest at the Shattuck Avenue recruiting station once a week.

Read the whole thing.

Earlier postings.

from Iowahawk:

Excerpt:

15 All sondry folke urbayne and progressyve

16 Vexed by Musselmans aggressyve.

17 Hie and thither to the Arche-Bishop’s manse

18 The pilgryms ryde and fynde perchance

19 The hooly Bishop takynge tea

20 Whilste watching himselfe on BBC.

21 Heere was a hooly manne of peace

22 Withe bearyd of snow and wyld brows of fleece

23 Whilhom stoode athwart the Bush crusades

24 Withe peace march papier-mache paraydes.

25 Sayeth the pilgryms to Bishop Rowan,

26 “Father, we do not like howe thynges are goin’.

27 You know we are as Lefte as thee,

28 But of layte have beyn chaunced to see

29 From Edinburgh to London-towne

30 The Musslemans in burnoose gowne

31 Who beat theyr ownselfs with theyr knyves

32 Than goon home and beat theyr wyves

33 And slaye theyr daughtyrs in honour killlynge

34 Howe do we stoppe the bloode fromme spillynge?”

35 The Bishop sipped upon hys tea

36 And sayed, “an open mind must we

37 Keep, for know thee well the Mussel-man

38 Has hys own laws for hys own clan

39 So question not hys Muslim reason

40 And presaerve ye well social cohesion.”

Read the whole thing.

Here, in Virginia, Barack Obama was recently obliged to speak without the assistance of his teleprompter.

Dean Barnett examines the unenhanced candidate’s performance and finds an unenhanced message.

It was.. interesting to see Obama climb to the stage at Virginia’s Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on Saturday night. As he strode to the podium, Obama clutched in his hands a pile of 3 by 5 index cards. The index cards meant only one thing—no Teleprompter.

Shorn of his Teleprompter, we saw a different Obama. His delivery was halting and unsure. He looked down at his obviously copious notes every few seconds throughout the speech. Unlike the typical Obama oration where the words flow with unparalleled fluidity, he stumbled over his phrasing repeatedly.

The prepared text for his remarks, as released on his website, sounded a lot like a typical Obama speech. All the Obama dramatis personae that we’ve come to know so well were there—the hapless family that had to put a “for sale” sign on its front lawn, the factory forced to shutter its doors and, of course, the mother who declares bankruptcy because “she cannot pay her child’s medical bills.”

The tone was also vintage Obama. The prepared text reached out to all Americans, including (gasp!) Republicans. It also evidenced Obama’s signature lack of anger. While his colleagues have happily demagogued complex issues and demonized the Bush administration, Obama always has taken pains to strike a loftier tone.

But Saturday night’s stem-winder turned out quite differently from the typical Obama speech. With no Teleprompter signaling the prepared text, Obama failed to deliver the speech in his characteristically flawless fashion. He had to rely on notes. And his memory. And he improvised.

The results weren’t just interesting because they revealed Obama as a markedly inferior speaker without the Teleprompter. Obama’s supporters have had ample notice that the scripted Obama is far more effective than the spontaneous one. The extremely articulate and passionate Obama that makes all the speeches has yet to show up at any of the debates. For such a gifted and energetic speaker, he is an oddly tongue-tied and indifferent debater.

What was especially noteworthy about his Virginia speech were the diversions Obama took from the prepared text. Because of Obama’s improvised moments, this speech was different than the usual fare he offers. We didn’t get the normal dosages of post-partisanship or even “elevation.” Virtually every time Obama deviated from the text, he expressed the partisan anger that has so poisoned the Democratic party. His spontaneous comments eschewed the conciliatory and optimistic tone that has made the Obama campaign such a phenomenon. It looked like the spirit of John Edwards or Howard Dean had possessed Obama every time he vamped. While Paul Krugman probably loved it, this different Obama was a far less attractive one.

At one point, Obama launched an improvised jeremiad against the current administration that took special note of the recent revelation that he and Dick Cheney are distant relations:

“Now I understand some of the excitement doesn’t have to do with me. I know that whatever else happens whatever twists and turns this campaign may take, when you go into that polling place next November, the name George Bush won’t be
on the ballot and that makes everybody pretty cheerful. Everyone’s happy about that. The name of my cousin Dick Cheney won’t be on the ballot. That was embarrassing when that news came out. When they do these genealogical surveys, you want to be related to somebody cool. So, but, his name went be on the ballot.

“Each of us running for the Democratic nomination agrees on one thing that the other party does not—that the next president must end the disastrous policies of George W. Bush. No more Scooter Libby Justice! No more Brownie incompetence! No more Karl Rove politics.”...

Looking past the missed opportunity regarding the vice president, how many times has Obama deliberately pushed angry-left hot buttons like Scooter Libby and Karl Rove? Obama has run looking to the future, and thus hasn’t felt it necessary to dwell on the purported horrors that the Bush administration has visited upon the nation. This tack has made him look above the fray.

Other improvised moments also contradicted the generally lofty tone of the Obama campaign. At one, point when addressing what we have to do for the economy, Obama ad-libbed, “The insurance and the drug companies aren’t going to give up their profits easily . . . Exxon Mobil made $11 billion this past quarter.” This is the kind of empty class warfare shtick that earned John Edwards an early exit from the race. What’s more, it displayed the kind of simplistic sloganeering that Obama had previously eschewed. ...

What makes Obama’s Jefferson-Jackson speech especially relevant is where he went when he went off script. The unifying Obama who has impressed so many people during this campaign season vanished, replaced by just another angry liberal railing against George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Exxon Mobil, and other long standing Democratic piñatas.

UPI:

The virtue police in Saudi Arabia have ordered shops to remove roses and other items that are red to prevent the celebration of Valentine’s Day Feb.14.

Shop workers in Riyadh say agents of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice visited flower and gift shops during the weekend to issue warnings, the Saudi Gazette reported Monday.

Each year on the eve of Valentine’s Day, commission agents conduct raids and confiscate any red items they find.

Islamic scholars preach celebrating Valentine’s Day and other non-Islamic holidays is a sin, especially Valentine’s Day.

“As Muslims we shouldn’t celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women,” Sheikh Khaled Al-Dossari said.

Yale students are intended to talk about sex a lot during a biannual week-long crotch-gazing series of lectures and seminars scheduled to coincide with Valentine’s Day, but few are likely to find a week-long promotion of sex toys, condoms, and the personal careers of a bunch of porn stars and geriatric sex gurus very interesting. Yale undergraduates are likely to think that the idea of people the age of those professional sex counselors actually having sex is really gross.

The Yale Daily News took only a flaccid interest:

Porn stars, sex-toy connoisseurs and condom manufacturers are among the characters descending on the Elm City for an unorthodox Valentine’s Day celebration.

Following Sex Week at Yale’s kick-off comedy show on Sunday, students delved deeper into the eight-day series of events Monday afternoon when Pepper Schwartz GRD ’74 mixed comedy and counseling to address common mistakes in beliefs about sex and love.

Over 100 students attended the event “Myths & Misconceptions about Sex and Relationships,” during which sociologist, professor, author and former Glamour magazine columnist Schwartz informed and entertained the crowd by discussing 13 common misunderstandings about sex. The topics ranged from female anatomy to sexual orientation to marital sex and were addressed from both biological and cultural perspectives.

Schwartz, a professor of sociology at the University of Washington in Seattle, is the author of 14 books and over 40 articles on sex, love and relationships and creator of the Personality Profiler test used by Perfectmatch.com.

She began her lecture by declaring that sex “is not a natural act” but rather one based on complex cultural pressures and individual beliefs and preferences. Her goal, she said, is to address those parts of human sexuality and interaction that are commonly misunderstood.

Ironically, the conservative Yale Free Press found itself obliged to advise Michelle Malkin’s commenters to chill out. The event is just one of countless fringe activities occurring during the academic year which the typical Yalie dismisses with a raised eyebrow.

The magazine, distributed free on campus.

Sex Week home page
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Speaking as stuffy old alumn, I do wonder exactly why the Yale Administration allows the university to be exploited by this unsavory species of commercial enterprise. I suppose Richard Levin is too busy running around saving the planet to provide any direction on good taste.

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Hat tip to Jake McGuire.

Just look at what’s hanging on the wall in Obama Campaign headquarters in Houston, Texas. Gives you a pretty clear idea of who it is that’s working to make Barack Obama President of the United States, doesn’t it?

The image of a Cuban flag with Che Guevara’s face superposed on it appeared last week in a Houston television news video, and the story has just been broken on the Internet by Newsbusters today.

Andrew C. McCarthy identifies the key flaw in the most popular Pro-McCain argument.

I have not supported Sen. McCain. I admire his perseverance and love of country. Still, I don’t think he is a committed conservative, and his penchant for demonizing all opposition is, to me, extremely off-putting. Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, there’s nothing delusional about that.

In fact, as between the two of us, it’s McCain’s supporters who are deluding themselves. I take them at their word, for example, that a hallmark of the senator’s politics is his tenacity on matters of principle. Consequently, I am skeptical of his assurances that he would appoint conservative judges who will apply rather than create law. Why? Because he has a recent, determined history of beseeching federal courts to disregard the First Amendment in furtherance of a dubious campaign-finance scheme in which he believes passionately. Conservative judges would (and have) rejected this scheme, just as they would (and have) rejected another signature McCain position: the extension of Geneva Convention protections for jihadists.

Now, the appointment of conservative judges is a crucial issue — one McCain posits as central to why we should prefer him to Obama and Clinton. Thus supporters breezily wave off such concerns, maintaining that McCain both promises there will be no issue-based litmus tests for judicial nominees and has conservatives of impeccable legal credentials advising him.

But for me to conclude McCain would surely appoint conservative judges, I also have to believe campaign-finance and the Geneva Convention weren’t all that big a deal to him after all — a possibility that runs counter to everything McCain’s fans tell us about his fidelity to principle.

Read the whole thing.

McCarthy is perfectly right.

Throughout his Senate career, John McCain has demonstrated an eagerness for the good opinion of the media representatives of the establishment elect. He has been steadfastly acritical of simple-minded policies nostrums and violently hostile to theory. Why would anyone suppose that John McCain would suddenly break with the New York Times’ editorial page and start appointing controversial judges likely to roll back what the Times considers progress, including some of his own landmark legislation?

Australian correspondent Geoff Norman tells his readers back home about how, on a distant continent, a holy man politician-cum-prophet has turned massive crowds of primitive indigenes into worshipers expecting miracles.

It was early 1994 when Nelson Mandela gave a speech in a slum outside Cape Town and spoke in grand terms of a new beginning and how when he was elected president every household would have a washing machine.

People took him literally. A few months later he became South Africa’s first black president. That’s when clerks in department stores in Cape Town had to turn people away demanding their free washer and dryer.

Having spent some time as a reporter in South Africa watching the Mandela presidency I was reminded of that story this week when I travelled with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on the campaign trail. ...

How does a cult figure, in the eyes of some something akin to a messiah, make the transition to a political frontrunner – president even – where disappointment will soon crush what seemed to be a journey to a promised land?

Looking into the faces of a more than 16,000-strong crowd in a basketball stadium in Hartford, Connecticut this week, the Mandela magic I’d seen before was there too. Black and white, and the youth; they appeared in a state close to rapture watching Obama speak. Here and there one could see women crying and the some men wiping away tears too.

It was not the promise of a washing machine, of course. Mandela was heading a Rainbow Revolution – a new governing coalition. The sense of renewal in those heady days in South Africa in the mid-’90s was palpable. A political and cultural boil was being lanced. There was relief and joy. Cape Town in those days was humming.

In the US today there are echoes of that Rainbow Revolution. Through the media and on the streets people are getting a bit giddy over Obama. In this man they are projecting a new course – one that he says he will lead – where the US buries the culture wars, charts a new course in bipartisan politics and heralds a new dawn for America. ...

Obama is part politician, part cult. Supporters wearing T-shirts with an Andy Warhol like pop-art image of his face testify to that. But then they – him – were once easy to dismiss until people realised Obama’s charisma was being matched by one of the most sophisticated ground operations ever seen. It is one that is outsmarting the Clinton machine. He’s marrying inspiration and cult with old-fashioned political grunt.

One would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by Obama on the stump. It’s not so much by what he says but it’s the way the crowds respond to his words. When 16,000 people, without prompting, start shouting some of his keynote phrases as he delivers them, you know something special is going on.

The atmosphere at his events is such that one wonders if Obama is about to walk out with a basket with some loaves and fishes to feed the thousands.

Sky News:

British athletes competing in this year’s Beijing Olympic Games must sign contracts banning them from talking about politics, it is reported.

Athletes must not mention politics -The clause – inserted in contracts for the first time – mean competitors must not comment on “politically sensitive” issues.

It then refers to the International Olympic Committee charter, which “provides for no kind of demonstration, or political, religious or racial propaganda in the Olympic sites, venues or other areas”.

The ban means athletes cannot discuss issues such as China’s human rights record or Tibet.

Those who refuse to sign-up face not be allowed to compete and anyone breaking the order could be sent home.

Conservatives are not going to support John McCain.

Unless he selects a spectacular conservative Vice Presidential candidate, that is, and promises to deliver a very long inauguration speech wearing no overcoat.

MacRanger responds to Bill Kristol’s demand that conservatives shape up and get with the program.

Kristol hasn’t got a clue what Reagan meant to the conservative movement. He’s so enamored by the opportunity to get “his boy” sold to the unwashed masses of us who dare to keep the principals of conservatism intact, that he desecrates the legacy of Reagan.

Again, Reagan didn’t appeal to moderates and independents by becoming “like them” or by compromising with their middle of the road ideas. He simply communicated core conservative principals and brought them in. He could bring the three legs of the stool together because he found the common thread among them all, and that’s why we consider him the master.

McCain is a leg and a half conservative and anyone that sits on it is bound for a fall. Since Kristol misses the point on Reagan, he no doubt wouldn’t notice his ass hitting the ground.

And Mona Charen jogs our memories.

The problem with McCain is not just that he strays. George Bush has strayed from conservatism, too. So has Fred Thompson. Certainly Mitt Romney has as well. But Sen. McCain has a knack for saying things in just the tones and accents that liberals prefer. In 2000, he condemned the late Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance.” In 2004, when Sen. John Kerry was getting his comeuppance from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, vets who had known him during the war and couldn’t remain silent as the Democratic nominee distorted his war record, McCain weighed in by calling the Swift Boaters “dishonorable and dishonest.” When the Bush Administration was being vilified as a nest of Torquemadas for using waterboarding on three occasions, McCain came forward to condemn waterboarding as torture. ...

There is a strutting self-righteousness about McCain that goes hand in hand with a nitroglycerin temper. He flatters himself that his colleagues in the Senate dislike him because he stands up for principle whereas they sell their souls for pork. Not exactly. He is disliked because on many, many occasions, he has been disrespectful, belligerent and vulgar to those who differ with him.

Bradley Smith, former commissioner of the Federal Election Commission and the leading legal scholar on campaign finance issues, experienced the McCain treatment firsthand. Because Smith opposed limits on political speech, he was denounced as “corrupt” by the senator (as was Commissioner Ellen Weintraub). Smith, who lives modestly, jokes that his wife has complained about the absence of jewels and furs.

Though he served on the commission for five years and made several attempts to meet with McCain to discuss the issues, Smith was rebuffed. The two did accidentally meet outside a hearing room in 2004 when they were both scheduled to testify before the Senate rules committee. At first, McCain grasped Smith’s outstretched hand (Smith was in a wheelchair, recovering from surgery), but when he recognized his campaign finance opponent, he snatched his hand back, snarling, “I’m not going to shake your hand. You’re a bully. You have no regard for the Constitution. You’re corrupt.”

Smith, a soft-spoken scholar, ardent patriot and lifelong conservative Republican, cannot, as a matter of honor, pull the lever for McCain. He is far from alone, and that is the Republican Party’s heartbreak in 2008.

According to Russian President Putin, the installation of defensive missiles in Europe is an aggressive measure somehow threatening Russia’s natural resources.

Russian diplomacy and her relations with neighboring states evidently naturally exist in a state of affairs in which Russia has the strategic arms equivalent of a loaded gun, cocked, and aimed at those neighboring states’ cities and civilian populations. Russia possesses a natural right in her relations with other states to all the advantages possessed by the armed mugger pointing a pistol at his unarmed interlocutor’s head.

If the United States was proposing to install a new system of offensive weapons in Poland, whose location could facilitate a rationally imaginable new Western invasion of the Russian motherland, clearly he would have cause to protest and declare a new arms race underway, but these violent protestations about defensive missiles, missiles clearly specifically intended as a defense against impending Middle Eastern threats resemble nothing so much as the burglar complaining bitterly about the householder buying a gun.

President Vladimir Putin declared the onset of a “new arms race” yesterday and vowed to expand Russia’s military strength to ward off predatory foreign powers.

In a televised address to the State Council in Moscow, Mr Putin delivered the belligerent rhetoric which has become his hallmark.

Appraising global events, the president said: “It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world.”

He added that “no steps towards compromise” had yet been made on America’s plan to station a missile defence shield in Europe.

“There has been no constructive response to our well-founded concerns,” said Mr Putin. Consequently, he has vowed to modernise Russia’s armed forces.

“We are being forced to take retaliatory steps. Russia has and always will have a response to these new challenges. In the near future, Russia will start production of new weapons systems that will not be inferior and in some cases excel those held by other countries.”

This was necessary to defend Russia from unnamed foreign powers who, he claimed, were bent on controlling the world’s natural resources.

“Foreign policy actions and diplomatic moves smell of oil and gas,” said Mr Putin.

Toledo, Ohio has joined Berkeley, California in ordering the Marine Corps out of town.

Toledo Blade:

A company of Marine Corps Reservists received a cold send-off from downtown Toledo yesterday by order of Mayor Carty Finkbeiner.

The 200 members of Company A, 1st Battalion, 24th Marines, based in Grand Rapids, Mich., planned to spend their weekend engaged in urban patrol exercises on the streets of downtown as well as inside the mostly vacant Madison Building, 607 Madison Ave.

Toledo police knew days in advance about their plans for a three-day exercise. Yet somehow the memo never made it to Mayor Finkbeiner, who ordered the Marines out yesterday afternoon just minutes before their buses were to arrive.

“The mayor asked them to leave because they frighten people,” said Brian Schwartz, the mayor’s spokesman.

“He did not want them practicing and drilling in a highly visible area.”

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9/11 is over six years in the past, far longer than the American public’s attention span typically lasts. People in Berkeley and Toledo again feel terribly safe.

This sort of civilian hostility and disdain toward the fighting men whose service allows the same civilians at home to sleep safe in their beds in an old story. Rudyard Kipling responded in 1892 to the same kind of attitudes and behavior in Victorian Britain with the poem Tommy. The title refers to “Tommy Atkins,” a generic nickname of the period for a British soldier.
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I went into a public-’ouse to get a pint o’beer, The publican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no red-coats here.” The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die, I outs into the street again an’ to myself sez I:

O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s ``Thank you, Mister Atkins,’’ when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s ``Thank you, Mr. Atkins,’’ when the band begins to play.

I went into a theatre as sober as could be, They gave a drunk civilian room, but ‘adn’t none for me; They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls, But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap; An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy how’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints: Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints;

While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires an’ all: We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational. Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.

For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!

Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water reinterpreted in Japanese style:

4:32 video

Our candidate:

Our platform:

TMLutas contemplates a recent news development, and concludes that proliferation of WMD among non-state actors is inevitable, and that the current aversion of members of the modern Western intelligentsia to violence is only likely to lead, in the end, to far worse violence.

When the generals start getting restless, they do things like this preemptive nuclear strike proposal. But why are the generals getting restless all over NATO? Amerca’s Gen. Shalikashvili, Germany’s Gen. Naumann, the UK’s Field Marshall Inge, the Netherland’s Gen van den Breemen, and France’s Admiral Jacques Lanxade are all serious military players of varying politics. These are not brash, unthinking chest beaters. What possessed them to intervene in this manner and damage their societies’ moral standing in the world (and thus their vaunted ‘soft power’) by proposing an updated, in your face, first strike policy, coupled with a much more active NATO and explicitly decoupling military action from the UN?

I can see no other explanation than a profound, international vote of no-confidence in the political class of the West by heavily experienced military minds that live, breathe, eat, and sleep the problem of defending us all from violent threats to our liberties and very existence. I am not even sure that the presentation of the plan in Bucharest in April is coincidence. After all, Romania is a very good example of how even dead broke powers with unstable, highly repressive regimes can extract uranium and enrich it while nobody takes the threat seriously. Had Ceausescu managed his internal repression better, Romania would be a balkans “hedgehog” today similar to the Swiss except with nuclear armed Scuds and a sociopath’s hand on the button. Romania’s Ceausescu era relations with North Korea were always very good. They also had friends across the muslim world.

The ‘peace faction’ that does not look beyond its own nose will be shocked, outraged, and redouble its efforts to neuter the military so it cannot be used. It’s as if they have never heard of feedback loops or their own part in this very pernicious one. Spelling it out explicitly, the peace factions have neutered the political process so even vigorous peaceful competition is impossible. After all, to draw a caricature of Mohammad, write an insensitive book, or film a blaspheming movie draw death sentences from which we have little practical defense. The best we can do is a sort of life-long semi-imprisonment, insecure in our lives and our possessions, never knowing when the knife will fall.

The “peace faction” ensures that persistent, responding, violent escalations cannot happen so we end up implicitly enslaved because, in the real world, others are willing to persistently bring to bear more violence than we are. We shrink from exercising our freedoms because of justifiable fear. And thus we lose them in a practical matter because the muslims (and in their success they will draw imitators) are willing to tolerate periodic violent episodes that spasmodically, ineffectively lash out at them more as a sop to western domestic factions that demand “a response” because a durable majority in so many Western countries has shrunk back from the military buildup necessary to generate “a solution”.

The only thing that is left in modern Western political discourse is to make the spasmodic response so terrible, so violent, that in that short political window when the West permits itself to respond at all will annihilate our enemies and form a sort of “solution” after all. And thus the general staff rebellion in the making.

What the general staffs across the West see is the death of Western supremacy of violence…

Read the whole thing.

Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds.

David Shearman, co-author of The Climate Change Challenge and the Failure of Democracy, thinks democracy and individual liberty can get in way of the quick implementation of the kinds of measures experts like himself have decided are necessary. Calling people like himself “communists” is so unfair!

Liberal democracy is sweet and addictive and indeed in the most extreme case, the USA, unbridled individual liberty overwhelms many of the collective needs of the citizens. The subject is almost sacrosanct and those who indulge in criticism are labeled as Marxists, socialists, fundamentalists and worse. These labels are used because alternatives to democracy cannot be perceived! Support for Western democracy is messianic as proselytised by a President leading a flawed democracy.

There must be open minds to look critically at liberal democracy. Reform must involve the adoption of structures to act quickly regardless of some perceived liberties. It is not that liberal democracy cannot react once it sees a threat, for example, the speedy response to a recent international financial emergency. If governments can recognise a financial emergency and in an instant move heaven and earth (and billions of dollars, pounds sterling and euros) to contain it, why are they unable to do the same in response to a global environmental emergency? Quite simply our system is seen to live and breathe by the present economic system; the problem is that living and breathing within the confines of the world ecological systems is contrary to the activity of progress and development as defined within liberal democracy. ...

We are going to have to look how authoritarian decisions based on consensus science can be implemented to contain greenhouse emissions. It is not that we do not tolerate such decisions in the very heart of our society, in wide range of enterprises from corporate empires to emergency and intensive care units. If we do not act urgently we may find we have chosen total liberty rather than life.

If there was ever any doubt that inside the environmentalist movement’s green, there lurked a bright pink core, Shearman is there to prove it.

Barack Obama and Tony Rezko superposed on the Obama mansion

better house photo here

In this 10:06 video of the second part of a speech made January 31, 2008 in Wilmington, Delaware, Michelle Obama is complaining about how “they move the bar.”

This is the reality, we’re told, for “regular folks on the ground,” people like Michelle Obama herself with what she calls “my simple, little life,” all this is not fair. It’s just not right.

Rather than being blocked by some moving and shifting bar, Michelle Obama has obviously experienced considerable upward mobility. She graduated from Princeton and Harvard, presumably receiving both racially-based admissions preference and scholarship assistance. If so, the latter did not prevent her from claiming that her father, a democrat party precinct captain coincidentally employed at the municipal filtration plant, had been able, in the good old days of the early 1980s (before “they” started moving the bar), to send two children to Princeton.

Neither has any bar kept Michelle Obama from occupying a $316,962-a-year position as vice president at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Her simple, little life occurs domestically in a 96-year-old Georgian revival home that has “four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar,” purchased in 2005 for $1.65 million.

Mrs. Obama’s lifestyle is additionally enhanced by an adjoining parcel of real estate, previously associated with her house but offered for sale separately in 2005, which was purchased for $625,000 by the wife of Obama campaign donor and long-time supporter Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who has been subsequently indicted for extortion.

The Reskos sold the Obamas a portion of the second property, all of which is only accessible via the Obama’s property, and also paid for the erection of a fence. “The bars keep moving.”

Sources:

Chicago Tribune 1-Nov-06

ABC News 10-Jan-08

Isn’t it wonderful that the consequences of changes in the world, all the inconveniences and dislocations produced by economic progress, can be repealed if we just give power to “regular folks” like Barack & Michelle Obama?

The (very faint) possibility of the loss of federal funds has the more-practical class of Berkeley politicians eager to retreat, but the real communists are not so easily intimidated.

NBC11 reports:

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

At their Tuesday council meeting, leaders will discuss scrapping a letter that might be perceived as targeting the center or the Marines.

The letter said that the recruiting center was not welcome on Shattuck Avenue and that the Marines were uninvited and unwelcome intruders.

“That letter will probably be pulled back and maybe more moderate language will be put in place which is appropriate I think,” said Berkeley mayor Tom Bates.

“Subtly stated in the resolution is perhaps an impugning of the soldiers fighting for us in Iraq and other places,” Berkeley City Councilman Laurie Capitelli. “And that was never the intention but that really needs to be cleared up. As I walked to my car that night I realized I regretted it and I had made a mistake.”

Bates said the city didn’t mean to offend anyone in the armed forces and the focus should have been on the war not the troops.

“There’s really no correlation between federal funds for schools, water ferries and police communications systems and the council’s actions, for God’s sake,” said Bates, a retired U.S. Army captain. “We apologize for any offense to any families of anyone who may serve in Iraq. We want them to come home and be safe at home.”

The letter was originally approved in January and has not been sent.

City officials said they got a flood of e-mails, many asking them to reconsider their position.

Councilmembers have said they would replace the “intruder item” with words expressing their support for the troops but not the war in Iraq.

The Republican plan would give the funds, intended for a school lunch program, UC Berkeley and ferry service, to the Marines instead.

“Patriotic American taxpayers won’t sit quietly while Berkeley insults our brave Marines,” said one of the senators.

The recruiting center opened about a year ago and quickly became a target of anti-war protesters including the group Code Pink.

Last week the council passed resolutions giving Code Pink a place to park out front. Some have said that meant the city giving was giving the group a place to continuously protest the Marines.

“What we’re doing is we’re announcing a bill that we intend to get on the floor to strip transportation from the city of Berkeley,” said East Bay Republican Assemblyman Guy Houston. “What they have done in Berkeley is they have set aside a parking spot and in my opinion a public right of way, a public transportation corridor, specifically for a private organization—in this case Code Pink—to harass and annoy the United States Marine Corps and their recruiting efforts. We think that playing around and having an agenda with the public right of way is subject to ramifications. There is $2.3 million in proposition 1B transportation dollars. We think that should be in jeopardy.”

Others on the Berkeley City Council seemed quite firm on their stance, NBC11’s Christie Smith reported.

Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Barbara Lee said they plan to fight the Republican bill.

Earlier postings.

Provoked by snarky responses to a six-word-motto-for-America contest at the NYT’s Freakonomics blog, James Lileks gets a little testy about the characteristic reflex attitudes of the American elect.

Someone somewhere is a practicing Baptist and someone somewhere else is eating a hamburger larger than you’d prefer, and other people are watching cars go around a track at high speed. As your skinny unhappy friend said the other night: people are just too fat and happy. He bites his nails and plays WoW six hours a night, but he has a point. It doesn’t matter that these fascists-in-fetal-form never quite seem to accomplish anything; it’s not like they drove the gay Teletubbies off the air or had Tony Kushner drawn and quartered in the public square. But they’re preventing something. Something wonderful. And they’re driving large cars to Wal-Mart and putting 18-roll packs of Charmin in the back and they have three kids. Earth has withstood a lot in its four billion years, but it cannot withstand them. And even if it does, who wants to live in a world where these people don’t care that they’re being mocked by small, underfunded theaters in honest, gritty neighborhoods? (Which are being gentrified by upwardly-mobile poseurs who have decided it’s a great place to live because the theater is good and the restaurants are cheap. F*#*$ing interlopers. But we’ll deal with them later.)

ANYWAY. Bottom line: we will never be a great nation until we all realize how much we suck, and then we will also realize it is wrong to be a great nation. For that matter, nationhood are overrated. (The only nation that gets to be a nation is France.)

Nations are bad enough, but we’re something else:the only nation that has ever fought a war, acted in self-interest, had a good opinion of itself, permitted slavery, elected leaders who lacked a certain Olympian quality, had a popular culture that included simple catchy melodies and bright pictures, harbored racist attitudes, had a strong religious element, and contained a sizable amount of stupid people.

(Side note: the existence of stupid people in America is a touchy subject, and not easily explained away. It would seem to suggest that some people are smarter than other people, which could conceivably have an impact on their ability to succeed – but there are so many stupid people living in comfort that this almost implies that the bounty and opportunity of the country are sufficient to lift the leakiest dinghies if the occupants bail and plug, and that can’t be true. It is also unacceptable to suggest that some people do not succeed because they aren’t smart, since that suggests that merit is rewarded, and that can’t be true. Merit has nothing to do with America; it’s all about white male privilege. Do not be fooled by the rise of Hillary and Obama; put them together, and what do you have? White. Male.)

Anyway, America sucks except for a few parts of some cities if you ignore the Starbucks, and people in other countries are basically okay but no one in America knows it because they don’t have passports, and Dubya wants you to hate Islam which is ridiculous because I was backpacking in Tunisia for a few days and people seemed pretty cool. Hey, look at this, someone posted a video on YouTube that makes it seem like Huckabee is supported by the Flying Spaghetti Monster. What’s for supper? Thai? Again?

Rick Moran has written John McCain’s Conservative Political Action Conference speech for him.

Excerpt:

There are varying degrees of conservatism. I’m from the “Maverick Conservative” wing of the party. This is the wing of conservatism that believes anything the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the news nets will praise me for is probably conservative enough. If it’s not, tough. If you think I’m going to change my position on an issue and get the media upset with me, you’re dreaming.

The Maverick Conservative wing of the party – both of us – want to be clear that we support many of the same issues that you “movement” conservatives support. All we ask is that you ignore us when we thumb our noses at you. You can’t expect us to maintain our status as “Mavericks” with the media without deliberately undercutting your agenda while hinting what barbarians you truly are. Therefore, I ask that you simply accept us for who we are.

And calling us “self aggrandizing media whores who care more for pleasing our liberal friends than in working to enact conservative legislation” may be accurate but please – keep it to yourselves.

We can do great things together – as long as you just shut up and vote for me. After all, if it’s between me and Hillary, are you really going to let the Democrats win in November by staying at home? (Try not to look too smug.)

Read the whole thing.

Maksim Maksimovitch has devised a vitally needed voter aid for members of the Republican base trying to win this one at any cost.

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Admiral William Adama

Annalee Newitz proposes a better model for leadership than mere business executives.

I am finally getting around to linking a witty and highly perceptive article by Michael S. Malone, author of ABC News’ Silicon Insider column, writing in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, which I’ve been wanting to recommend to friends.

If you look at Microsoft with an objective eye, it becomes apparent that it is a giant company past its prime. It is big and rich, but increasingly toothless. It is able to use its money to put on a great show at the Consumer Electronics Show, underwrite an interesting market initiative—or buy another big company—but it no longer has the fire of ambition or the addiction to risk to ruthlessly execute on those desires any more. As has been noted before, once you look past all of the high profile moves (such as MSN, MSNBC, Zune and XBox), Microsoft has only really been as successful as it reputation would suggest in just two businesses: Windows and Office. Most everything else is flash.

Even Microsoft’s full-out assault on Netscape (which, ironically, will officially die on March 1) for control of the Internet browser industry—justly earning it the sobriquet “Evil Empire”—in retrospect was less a brilliant maneuver by Gates & Co. to capture a hot new industry and more a desperate (and questionable) scramble by a market leader caught napping.

That corporate somnolence, rather than its more-remembered ruthlessness, has far better characterized Microsoft over the past decade. Even the Vista operating system, the most recent upgrade of Microsoft’s core product line, managed to be so late that it almost crippled the personal computer industry. It finally arrived to a chorus of boos, most of them undeserved (it’s a pretty good operating system), but some dead-on (it’s a technological hop when it should have been a leap). Microsoft lost its killer instinct a long time ago. On the rare occasions when the mood resurfaces, the company doesn’t have the chops anymore to execute on its desires.

And that brings us to the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. For all of the excitement, this is just big, rich, but slow-moving giant looking to buy another slow-moving giant, the latter having stuck to an obsolete business plan too long and lost its way. The scheme is less predation than it is desperation: In the world of search, Google owns these two lumbering monsters.

Microsoft understandably covets the sheer size of Yahoo’s subscriber rolls, believing it can accomplish what Yahoo has failed to do: convert more of those 130 million monthly visitors into real, paying customers. But Microsoft has hardly shown it can do that at MSN. So, can it really find a solution to Yahoo’s structural problems?

That remains to be seen—and Microsoft’s one genius is as a late adopter. The real problem Yahoo—and perhaps soon Microsoft—faces is that those legions of Yahoo users don’t want to be stuck inside a small corner of the Web, not getting all of the experiences and services (like live TV and first-run movies) they were promised. Especially not when they can run around and find all of those things, in abundance, elsewhere on the Web. Microsoft is even less prepared to solve that problem than Yahoo.

That leaves search, which is probably the real reason Microsoft wants Yahoo. Combining the two search engines would, in terms of sheer numbers, represent the biggest challenge to Google to date. But the sum of two also-rans is almost never a winner—unless the newly merged is very, very lucky in its competitors. That’s what happened with HP and Compaq: Who’d have guessed that Dell would suddenly fall on its face?

Incredibly, the same may happen with a Microsoft-Yahoo deal if it happens. If you look at the stock market, peruse the industry gossip blogs, follow the departure of key employees, or read about the various new initiatives (energy?) the company is pursuing, it becomes increasingly apparent that Google is a company about to have an early midlife crisis. Microsoft-Yahoo may turn out to be a pedestrian idea with absolutely brilliant timing.

If that is the case, and the merger proves successful, it will have more to do with Google than Microsoft and Yahoo. Which is why the feds should stay out of it.

So, Yahoo: Take the deal (unless a better one comes along). Microsoft: Let this be the first of many high-risk moves. Treat Yahoo as a heart transplant, not a skin graft. And Google: This new competition should be a warning to stop fooling around and get back to business.

Rodger Kamenetz (a liberal resident of New Orleans) writes on our class list:

Since I’m in sabbatical, I may—may—get up at 7 so I can wait in line
at 7:45 (when doors open) to hear Barack Obama on the Tulane Campus
(a few blocks away from me.)
I may…
I am skeptical about Obama—hugely.
But I understand he will be dropping a lot of g’s and I thought I’d collect some…
Hillary is more like a very familiar annoying relative you have to include because she’s family.
McCain.. he’s grandpa by the fireplace telling war stories…
Ron Paul is a nutty uncle… Huckabee is like a door to door salesman
who ends up not only selling you a vacuum cleaner but sponging a meal.
Romney is clearly not of the human species, & I wonder if there’s a way to replace his batteries.

O America I love you but how did we get here…

Barack Obama and all his rivals have done an excellent job of getting Americans on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum to get beyond their differences and share nearly identical low opinions of the available candidates this year.

Military Motivator is a blog devoted to motivation poster designs with military themes.

Tony Blankley explains how we got into such a fine mess.

Assuming John McCain gets the GOP nomination, it will show how whimsical history can be. It would be the first time in living memory that a Republican presidential nomination went to a candidate who was not merely opposed by a majority of the party but was actively despised by about half its rank-and-file voters across the country—and by many, if not most, of its congressional officeholders. After all, the McCain electoral surge was barely able to deliver a plurality of one-third of the Republican vote in a three-, four- or five-way split field. He has won fair and square, but he has driven the nomination process askew.

This result reminds me of a nursery rhyme: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.”

In the current instance, the lost nail was a viable conservative candidate. And despite the crabby, orthodoxy-sniffing, slightly over-the-hill condition of the conservative Republican majority, it still could easily nominate its candidate. In fact, we had two strong conservative candidates, either of whom almost surely would have unified the party early, as George W. did in 2000. But through accidents of history, neither ran.

Consider the recently very popular, tall, attractive, smart, eloquent, conservative, successful two-term Republican governor of one of our most populous swing states—married to a beautiful Hispanic woman, no less. In fact, he is the son of a former president. Unfortunately for him and the party, he is also the brother of the current president. If Jeb Bush’s name were Jeb Smith, the former Florida governor easily could have kept the conservative two-thirds of the Republican vote united and won the nomination. But fate made him a Bush in the only election in the past 20 years when no Bush need apply.

Or consider the cheerful, handsome, solidly conservative Virginia senator expected to run as the son of Reagan. Unfortunately, he uttered three little syllables: Ma-ca-ca. He lost his re-election, and so adieu, Sen. George Allen.

These two quirks of history have nothing to do with the fundamentals of the conservative hold on the GOP. But what was left after the two strongest candidates couldn’t run was one venerable candidate (McCain), one suspiciously newly minted conservative (Romney), one not-quite-plausible factional figure (Huckabee), one social liberal (Giuliani), a quixotic anti-war candidate (Paul) and an older Southern gent with a smashing younger wife for whom he seemed to be saving most of the energy he should have used in what was risibly called his “run” for president (Thompson).

So, the mischievous gremlins and elves inside the wheel of history have served up John McCain to lead Ronald Reagan’s party into November battle.

Read the whole thing.

If John McCain wins today’s primaries, he will probably be unstoppably headed for the GOP nomination, but that will not matter very much, because he isn’t going to win. Senator McCain has no chance of winning, because real conservatives, movement conservatives, people like Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and me are not going to support him.

There has been a spate of realist editorials recently (Bill Kristol, Steve Calabresi and John McGinnis, Roger Kimball), arguing that McCain is more conservative than Hillary, Supreme Court seats will be at stake, and this is the most important election in history, and that we’ve got to win at any price.

Wrong.

We have a two-party system, and a two party system actually presupposes that the other side wins some of the time. They win when our side has done a bad job, and when our leaders, policies, and party have become unpopular. They win when we lack enthusiasm, unity, and a decent candidate.

Unfortunately, that’s the way things are this year. How did we get here? We got here by too much success. As Republicans became winners, we attracted, and elected to Congress, a bunch of opportunists and time-servers, who might just as well have been in the other party. They accomplished nothing but losing control of the legislature and ruining the Republican reputation for honesty and principle. We are losing also, because we elected a semi-, demi-, trying-to-have-it-both-ways nice guy, who in the final analysis didn’t pack the gear to lead successfully.

We owe George W. Bush a debt of gratitude for keeping a buffoon like Al Gore and a scoundrel like John Kerry out of the White House, but as a leader he resembles George Armstrong Custer. The opposition has good opportunity and strong momentum, and he gave it to them.

This, of course, is how things are supposed to work. When the people are persuaded that representatives of one party have screwed up, they get to give the other team a chance.

And that is precisely why you don’t want to go around desperately trying to throw Hail Mary electoral passes. Supporting the less-than-intellectually-gifted candidate, supporting the unprincipled candidate, supporting the really-a-liberal candidate is a recipe for disaster.

We do not want to elect Richard Nixon and destroy the Republican Party’s record, image, and reputation, assuring a major democrat party landslide down the road. It is actually better to take our medicine, and let them elect another Jimmy Carter.

And electing Jimmy Carter may well be exactly what they are preparing to do. Both leading democrats really have their roots in the leftwing base of the other party, and both are committed to policies leading inevitably to problems at home and abroad. Besides, can there really be another four years of a Clinton Administration without a conviction?

Let us accept four years of exile in the wilderness with as good a grace as possible. Let the Republican base become re-energized in opposition. And let the democrats preside over their usual mess. When it’s our turn again, it will be for another generation of the ascendancy of Conservatism and the Republican Party.

Time to drop back ten yards, and punt.

AP:

A measure allowing law-abiding people to carry guns on the campuses of South Dakota’s public universities was approved Monday by the state House of Representatives.

The House voted 63-3 to send the measure to the Senate after supporters said allowing students, faculty members and others to carry guns would help deter mass shootings.

“The only remedy for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” said Rep. Thomas Brunner, R-Nisland, the main sponsor of the bill.

HB1261 would prevent colleges and technical schools from restricting the right to carry or possess a firearm. Schools could require that guns kept in dormitories be stored in a locked gun safe. ...

Only one other state, Utah, authorizes weapons on college campuses, university officials told lawmakers last week.

If it passes, there won’t be any Virginia Tech-style massacres in South Dakota.

MoveAmericaForward.Org has a petition to sign, and contact information for the Berkeley City Council, excuse me! the Berkeley People’s Soviet.

To: The City Council, Mayor and City Manager of Berkeley, California

We, the undersigned, do register our complete outrage with the City of Berkeley for the recent resolutions that criticized our Marines, as part of an effort to harass the Marine Recruiting Center and chase all vestiges of the United States military outside of the city of Berkeley, California.

We take particular umbrage with the instructions given to the City Manager of Berkeley to tell the United States Marines that they are, “uninvited and unwelcome intruders.”

It is shameful for you to attack our military men and women who nobly and bravely serve this nation to protect our security and defend our freedoms and liberties. Those liberties include the right to Freedom of Speech, which you seem to believe should not be afforded to the members of the United States Marine Corps and service personnel in other branches of the Armed Forces.

I call upon you to immediately revoke the resolutions passed that defamed and insulted our U.S. Marines and issue a public apology to this nation, and in particular, the honorable and heroic men and women of the United States military.

—————————————————————————
South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is proposing fiscal consequences for Berkeley’s unpatriotic gesture.

DeMint said he would draft legislation to strip the city of federal money, including funds destined for UC Berkeley, for school lunches in the Berkeley Unified School District, and public safety.

“The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money,” DeMint said in a statement.

Which, as the San Francisco Chronicle reports, is prompting contemplation of a retreat to the safety of the left’s traditional “We-support-the-troops-just-not-the-war” self-protective manuever.

Council members Betty Olds and Laurie Capitelli on Monday proposed that Berkeley rescind its letter to the U.S. Marine Corps that stated that the downtown Berkeley recruiting center “is not welcome in our city,” and publicly declare that Berkeley is against the war but supports the troops.

The City Council will vote on Olds’ and Capitelli’s two proposals at its meeting next Tuesday.

“I think we shouldn’t be seen across the country as hating the Marines,” said Olds, who voted against last week’s proposals. “If you make a mistake, like we did, you should admit it and correct it and move on.” ...

Olds said she heard from hundreds of people angered by the city’s action, including many in her Berkeley hills district.

“People are so mad about this. They have relatives in the service, and now they think they’re not welcome in Berkeley,” she said. “My twin brother was a Marine in World War II. He’d be turning in his grave if he saw this.”

The council appears split on the idea of backing down. Some council members said the original proposals inadvertently insulted veterans and those currently serving in the military. Others said Berkeley should stand by its convictions.

“People are used to Berkeley taking a stand for peace, but you have to do it intelligently,” said Councilman Kriss Worthington, who voted against sending the letter calling the Marine Corps unwelcome. “You don’t want to slap one group in the face and then, the next minute, slap the other group. I think we have an obligation to be thoughtful and sensitive and not be counterproductive to the cause of peace.”

Councilwoman Dona Spring said the council should not be cowed by the volume of hate mail and threats.

“I still oppose the Marines recruiting in Berkeley because it’s one way of protesting this wasteful war,” she said. “Our military policy is a shambles. But we’re not in opposition to the Marines; we oppose the policy that directs the Marines.”

Meanwhile, the Code Pink protesters said they were disappointed that Berkeley might rescind its letter to the Marines.

“I hope they’re not acting out of intimidation,” said Code Pink spokeswoman Medea Benjamin. “Berkeley is a city of peace, and a recruiting station does not fit Berkeley’s values.”

Mayor Tom Bates, a former Army captain, said it probably wouldn’t hurt if the council clarified its position.

“It’s a symbol, but there are consequences to symbols,” he said. “A lot of people think we’re anti-Marine, but there’s a difference between the warriors and the war. This is an attempt to clarify that.”

Earlier posts.

Supporters at Obama Rally singing: “Yes we can”

Barack Obama has gained astonishing traction among voters simply by looking good and repeating in his mellifluous announcer’s voice a carefully-chosen litany of utterly and completely vacuous political mantras: Change, Hope, Move Beyond, which (everyone seems to fail to notice) commit Obama to absolutely nothing concrete and specific, and which (best of all) leave his opponents no policy position to attack.

In this downright scary, Obama 4:30 campaign music video, a collection of celebrity performers (including Jesse Dylan, Will.i.am, Common, Scarlett Johansson, Tatyana Ali, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, Kate Walsh, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Adam Rodriquez, Kelly Hu, Adam Rodriquez, Amber Valetta, Eric Balfour, Aisha Tyler, Nicole Scherzinger and Nick Cannon) have been turned into pod people who echo all the phrases of one of Obama’s speeches in song with the glazed eyes and reverential expressions of members of a religious cult.

Or worse.

As in Night of the Living Dead, you wonder if you might not have to shoot the zombies in the head before one of them bites you.
———————————————-

Hat tips to Andrew Sullivan and Walter Olson.

link

Hat tip to Scott Drum.

The Washington Post reports that John McCain’s outbursts of temper and abusive language have alienated a lot of Republican colleagues. Some Republicans who’ve experienced these incidents think McCain is unfit to be president.

John McCain once testified under oath that a Senate colleague inappropriately used tobacco corporation donations to sway votes on legislation. He cursed out another colleague in front of 20 senators and staff members, questioning the senator’s grip on immigration legislation. And, on the Senate floor, McCain (R-Ariz.) accused another colleague of “egregious behavior” for helping a defense contractor in a move he said resembled “corporate scandals.”

And those were just the Republicans.

In a chamber once known for cordiality if not outright gentility, McCain has battled his fellow senators for more than two decades in a fashion that has been forceful and sometimes personal. Now, with the conservative maverick on the brink of securing his party’s presidential nomination, McCain’s Republican colleagues are grappling with the idea of him at the top of their ticket. ...

(Some) have outright rejected the idea of a McCain nomination and presidency, warning that his tirades suggest a temperament unfit for the Oval Office.

“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), also a senior member of the Appropriations panel, told the Boston Globe recently. “He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”

A former colleague says McCain’s abrasive nature would, at minimum, make his relations with Republicans on Capitol Hill uneasy if he were to become president. McCain could find himself the victim of Republicans who will not go the extra mile for him on legislative issues because of past grievances.

“John was very rough in the sandbox,” said former senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), who is outspoken in his opposition to McCain’s candidacy. “Everybody has a McCain story. If you work in the Senate for a while, you have a McCain story. . . . He hasn’t built up a lot of goodwill.”

————————————————
The Romney Campaign has compiled a list of ten McCain temper incidents.

Examples:

Defending His Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And “Screamed, ‘F*ck You!’ At Texas Sen. John Cornyn” (R-TX).

Sen. McCain Repeatedly Called Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) An “A**hole”, Causing A Fellow GOP Senator To Say, “I Didn’t Want This Guy Anywhere Near A Trigger.”

Sen. McCain Had A Heated Exchange With Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) And Called Him A “F*cking Jerk.”

In 1995, Sen. McCain Had A “Scuffle” With 92-Year-Old Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) On The Senate Floor.
————————————————
Ronald Kessler warns:

People who disagree with him get the f*** you,” said former Rep. John LeBoutillier, a New York Republican who had an encounter with McCain when he was on a POW task force in the House. “I think he is mentally unstable and not fit to be president.”

Andrew H. “Andy” Card Jr., President Bush’s former chief of staff, told me he has observed McCain’s outbursts.

“Sometimes he was pretty angry, but I felt as if he was putting on a show,” Card said. “I don’t know if it was an emotional eruption or it was for effect,” Card said.

Democrat Paul Johnson, the former mayor of Phoenix, saw McCain’s temper up close. “His volatility borders in the area of being unstable,” Johnson has said. “Before I let this guy put his finger on the button, I would have to give considerable pause.”

When I appeared on Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC show to discuss Newsmax’s disclosures about McCain’s temper, Carlson said on the air, “We got a call earlier tonight from McCain’s Senate office suggesting that we not do this story. [They were] annoyed about it.”

That hint at intimidation is another reason why major media outlets may think twice about revealing what they know of McCain’s temper, which is widely whispered about in Washington. Yet along with track record, such clues to character are a compass to how a president will conduct his presidency.

Over and over, voters have ignored warning signs of poor character and have overlooked track records, only to regret it once a president enters the White House and becomes corrupted by the power of the office.

————————————————
Arizona News: McCain’s Unstable Temper Raises More Doubt.

His temper has been an issue for years.

In the 2000 presidential bid, McCain was dubbed “Senator Hothead” by Newsweek. That year, he won endorsement from only a few Senate colleagues. His frequent attacks and volatile personality were most likely to blame. “McCain notes,” which offer apologies after heated words, are held by many members of Congress. ...

AFP reports a survey demonstrating that the beneficiaries of Labour’s education system are having increasing difficulty recognizing which famous names are historical personages and which are only characters in books.

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

Indian political leader Mahatma Gandhi and Battle of Waterloo victor the Duke of Wellington also appeared in the top 10 of people thought to be myths.

Meanwhile, 58 percent thought Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective Holmes actually existed; 33 percent thought the same of W. E. Johns’ fictional pilot and adventurer Biggles.

UKTV Gold television surveyed 3,000 people.

John Swift reveals that some of the rich-with-links top leftwing bloggers like Atrios do not practice, blogospherically at least, what they preach.

The idea that links are the capital of the blogosphere seems so obvious that you would think an economist like Atrios of Eschaton would have realized it long ago. And as he is a progressive who has accumulated quite a bit of link wealth, you might also think he would be in favor of redistributing some of that wealth instead of just letting it trickle down. So when he announced last year that he was declaring February 3 Blogroll Amnesty Day, and other bloggers followed suit, I assumed he meant that he was opening his blogroll up to the masses. I sent him a polite email pointing out that his blog was on my blogroll and I would really appreciate it if he would add my blog to his. I never heard back from him.

When February 3 rolled around, many bloggers discovered to their horror that instead of adding new blogs to his blogroll he was throwing many off, including some bloggers who were his longtime friends. Blogroll Amnesty Day, it turned out, was a very Orwellian concept. Instead of granting amnesty to others he was granting amnesty to himself not to feel bad for hurting others feelings.

In my case, my blog roll is my own link collection. Before I was blogging myself, I had blog links bookmarked in my browser by categories. When I took up blogging, I laboriously put in my entire collection of links, and have continually updated it. I’m simply sharing my own working link collection with the world at large. If I think I might wish to return to a blog someday, I add the link.

ZombieTime has make-your-blood-boil photos of the Berkeley moonbats harassing the Marine Corps Recruiting Station on Shattuck Square.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) has introduced legislation cutting off federal funding to the leftwing California city. Personally, I’d like to see the Hayward Fault spring into action and drop the city of Berkeley right into the Bay.

Earlier posting.

Friday Book Review by Geoffrey Norman:

Blackway, the villain in “Go With Me,” Castle Freeman Jr.’s short novel, is a creature of the cut-over, used-up back-country of Vermont, where people once logged timber and now clip coupons. He is the product of a culture of easy violence, a man to be feared.

When he stalks a young woman and kills her cat, she logically asks for help from the local sheriff. And the sheriff logically sends her to see the boys down at the mill. It used to make furniture, but now “they made a better Windsor chair in North Carolina, in Taiwan, than they did in Vermont.” The boys at the mill don’t run lathes anymore; they drink beer and talk. When Lillian shows up asking for help, they team her up with Lester and Nate. The three set off on a quest to find Blackway and deal with him.

There is a clear moral arc to this storyline, and suspense too. But “Go With Me” is also a literary novel, with echoes of “Deliverance” and Cormac McCarthy. The primitive at the heart of the book is a staple of American fiction. He can be noble like Natty Bumppo or downright evil, like Faulkner’s Popeye. His symbolic function was summed up by D.H. Lawrence:” The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.“

Who knew that Yale University Press has produced a Broadway Masters series of biographies of musical theater composers, featuring already published volumes on Richard Rogers, Jerome Kern, Sigmund Romberg, and (shudder!) Andrew Lloyd Webber? Not me certainly, Broadway musicals were never my favorite art form.

Mark Steyn reviews, this week in the Wall Street Journal, the latest composer to join Sir Andrew in Yale’s pantheon of demigods, and explains that Frank Loesser, composer of How To Succeed in Business and Guys and Dolls, was really responsible for 9/11.

A few decades back, a young middle-class Egyptian spending some time in the U.S. had the misfortune to be invited to a dance one weekend and was horrified at what he witnessed:

“The room convulsed with the feverish music from the gramophone. Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips . . .”

Where was this den of debauchery? Studio 54 in the 1970s? Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love? No, the throbbing pulsating sewer of sin was Greeley, Colo., in 1949. As it happens, Greeley, Colo., in 1949 was a dry town. The dance was a church social. And the feverish music was “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” written by Frank Loesser and sung by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban in the film “Neptune’s Daughter.” Revolted by the experience, Sayyid Qutb decided that America (and modernity in general) was an abomination, returned to Egypt, became the leading intellectual muscle in the Muslim Brotherhood, and set off a chain that led from Qutb to Zawahiri to bin Laden to the Hindu Kush to the Balkans to 9/11.

3:15 video of Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams performing the song which shocked Qtub.

John Murrell at Good Morning Silicon Valley reports on Microsoft’s $31 a share offer for Yahoo.

You could watch it playing out like one of those “nature, red in tooth and claw” documentaries. There was the wildebeest (played by Yahoo), slowed by a nagging groin injury, gradually starting to fall behind the herd. The vultures and hyenas (played by analysts and pundits) were starting to circle and salivate, respectively. Then, off in the tall grass there’s a stirring, then an explosion of dust as the lion (played with scenery-chewing enthusiasm by Microsoft) springs at its quarry and sinks its teeth into the back of its neck. Sensitive viewers may want to turn away.

Paul Mingeroff quotes Dave Keene putting into perspective the increasing volume of calls for Republican unity urging conservatives to get behind John McCain.

There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House,” Mr. Keene said. “This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”

CNN:

An undersea cable carrying Internet traffic was cut off the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai, officials said Friday, the third loss of a line carrying Internet and telephone traffic in three days.

Dubai has been hit hard by an Internet outage apparently caused by a cut undersea cable.

Ships have been dispatched to repair two undersea cables damaged on Wednesday off Egypt.

FLAG Telecom, which owns one of the cables, said repairs were expected to be completed by February 12. France Telecom, part owner of the other cable, said it was uncertain when repairs on it would be repaired.

Stephan Beckert, an analyst with TeleGeography, a research company that consults on global Internet issues, said the cables off Egypt were likely damaged by ships’ anchors.

The loss of the two Mediterranean cables—FLAG Telecom’s FLAG Europe-Asia cable and SeaMeWe-4, a cable owned by a consortium of more than a dozen telecommunications companies—has snarled Internet and phone traffic from Egypt to India.

Officials said Friday it was unclear what caused the damage to FLAG’s FALCON cable about 50 kilometers off Dubai. A repair ship was en route, FLAG said.

Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst with TeleGeography, said the FALCON cable is designed on a “ring system,” taking it on a circuit around the Persian Gulf and enabling traffic to be more easily routed around damage.

Schoonover said the two cables damaged Wednesday collectively account for as much as three-quarters of the international communications between Europe and the Middle East, so their loss had a much bigger effect.

Al Jazeera on outage impact on India

The outages extend from Egypt to Ceylon, and inevitably provoke suspicion of this being the result of deliberate attack on communications by some rogue state or terrorist group.

WND summarizes:

A study published in Science Magazine today presents new evidence supporting the abiotic theory for the origin of oil, which asserts oil is a natural product the Earth generates constantly rather than a “fossil fuel” derived from decaying ancient forests and dead dinosaurs.

The lead scientist on the study – Giora Proskurowski of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington in Seattle – says the hydrogen-rich fluids venting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in the Lost City Hydrothermal Field were produced by the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in the mantle of the earth.

The abiotic theory of the origin of oil directly challenges the conventional scientific theory that hydrocarbons are organic in nature, created by the deterioration of biological material deposited millions of years ago in sedimentary rock and converted to hydrocarbons under intense heat and pressure. ...

The abiotic theory argues, in contrast, that hydrocarbons are naturally produced on a continual basis throughout the solar system, including within the mantle of the earth. The advocates believe the oil seeps up through bedrock cracks to deposit in sedimentary rock. Traditional petro-geologists, they say, have confused the rock as the originator rather than the depository of the hydrocarbons. ...

Lost City is a hypothermal field some 2,100 feet below sea level that sits along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at the center of the Atlantic Ocean, noted for strange 90 to 200 foot white towers on the sea bottom.

In 2003 and again in 2005, Proskurowski and his team descended in a scientific submarine to collect liquid bubbling up from Lost City sea vents.

Proskurowski found hydrocarbons containing carbon-13 isotopes that appeared to be formed from the mantle of the Earth, rather than from biological material settled on the ocean floor.

Carbon 13 is the carbon isotope scientists associate with abiotic origin, compared to Carbon 12 that scientists typically associate with biological origin.

Proskurowski argued that the hydrocarbons found in the natural hydrothermal fluids coming out of the Lost City sea vents is attributable to abiotic production by Fischer-Tropsch, or FTT, reactions.

The Fischer-Tropsch equations were first developed by Nazi scientists who created methodologies for producing synthetic oil from coal.

“Our findings illustrate that the abiotic synthesis of hydrocarbons in nature may occur in the presence of ultramafic rocks, water and moderate amounts of heat,” Proskurowski wrote.

The study also confirmed a major argument of Cornell University physicist Thomas Gold, who argued in his book “The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels” that micro-organisms found in oil might have come from the mantle of the earth where, absent photosynthesis, the micro-organisms feed on hydrocarbons arising from the earth’s mantle in the dark depths of the ocean floors.

Affirming this point, Proskurowski concluded the article by noting, “Hydrocarbon production by FTT could be a common means for producing precursors of life-essential building blocks in ocean-floor environments or wherever warm ultramafic rocks are in contact with water.”

abstract

Earlier post on Abiotic Natural Gas containing useful link.

Chuck Asay comments in this cartoon on the intrinsic logic of democrat party approaches to several policy issues.

From Dr. Sanity via Bird Dog.