Sarah Palin Unveils the Alaska State Quarter

Newt Gingrich sent Bill Kristol the following email, which he authorized him to share.

Authenticity is the one word threat to the Obama-Biden ticket.

There is something going on this weekend which traditional pundits, traditional consultants and traditional politicians are simply missing. All of the normal biography-oriented and issue-oriented analysis misses an emotional gestalt event comparable to when Ronald Reagan in 1980 crystalized his leadership in New Hampshire when he seized control of the GOP debate.

In one sudden moment Friday, John McCain fundamentally changed American politics in a manner that transcends issues and details.

The great threat to the Obama-Biden ticket can be captured in one word: authenticity.

There is something unaffected and “unsophisticated” (in the Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and University of Chicago meanings of the word) about Governor Palin. She really was point guard of a state championship basketball team. She really is a competent hunter. She is a hockey mom. She has one son about to go to Iraq.

She has 13 years in elected office

By any practical standard she has done far more in the real world with much more spontaneity and practicality than Barack Obama. And there is something deeply real and courageous about John McCain ignoring most of his advisers and all of the “insider wisdom” to reach out to a younger woman whose greatest characteristic is undaunted courage and a willingness to clean out the corruption in her own party.

This is a moment of stunning authenticity versus a sad collapse on the part of the Obama campaign from ” change you can count on” to politics as usual, as marked by Obama’s choice of a senator first elected when Palin was 9 years old. ...

Finally 2008 really has given us “change we can count on.” Ironically, it is the McCain-Palin ticket.

Neil, a commenter on Classical Values, offers this analysis:

Mitt Romney would’ve been the safe choice—he would’ve delivered Michigan, along with a 51% victory.

With this choice, McCain has stated his intention to “shoot the moon”. He’s solidified his existing alliances and has now reached out to many disenchanted Democrats, but without alienating his base of support.

He’s going to try for a blowout…

Simon himself says:

The smell of fear is in the air. There is blood in the water and the sharks are circling. Despite the fact that this year should be a lock for Democrats from top to bottom, I think there is a strong likelihood that the Democrats could lose control of the House and Senate. I think the Presidency is already a lost cause for them.

Hat tip to Bird Dog.

Even avowedly-liberal Bill Maher found Chris Matthews’ and Keith Olbermann’s commentary on Barack Obama’s acceptance speech unusual.

The coverage after, that I was watching, from MSNBC, I mean these guys were ready to have sex with him.

video

If you believe Larry Sinclair, those guys have got a chance, too.

The Frösö Runestone

British newspapers are quoting Swedish reports that Sweden’s version of the Loch Ness monster was recently filmed in Storsjön, Sweden’s fifth largest lake.

Telegraph:

SWEDEN’S own version of the Loch Ness monster, the Storsjoe or Great Lake monster, has been caught on film by surveillance videos, an association that installed the cameras says.

The legend of the Swedish beast has swirled for nearly four centuries, with about 200 sightings reported in the lake in central Sweden.

“On Thursday at 12.21pm, we filmed the movements of a live being. And it was not a pike, nor a perch, we’re sure of that,” said Gunnar Nilsson, the head of a shopkeepers’ association in Svenstavik.

The association, together with the Jaemtland province and local municipality of Berg, installed six surveillance cameras in the lake in June, including two underwater devices.

The project, which has so far cost about 400,000 kronor ($73,400), is aimed at resolving the mystery of the Swedish Nessie.

The first sighting dates back to 1635 and the most recent to July 2007, with most speaking of a long, serpent-like beast with humps, a small cat or dog-like head, and ears or fins pressed against the neck.

The association employs one person full-time to review the recorded video footage each day.
In the images filmed yesterday and posted on a website dedicated to the Storsjoe monster, a long serpent-like being is seen swimming in the murky waters.

“A highly-advanced system on one of the cameras detected heat produced by the cells,” indicating that it was a live being, Mr Nilsson said.

The Sun has a slideshow and a video.

The creature is actually known in Swedish as Storsjöodjuret.
Cryptomundo

Israeli Intelligence mouthpiece Depkafile, on Saturday, posted a rumor of the withdrawal of Dutch Intelligence assets from Iran in the face of an impending US attack.

A Dutch AIVD Secret Service ultra-secret operation underway in Iran in recent years has been halted and an agent recalled in view of “impending US plans to attack Iran,” within weeks, writes Joost de Haas, known for his good intelligence contacts, in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The AIVD operation aimed to infiltrate and sabotage the weapons [and nuclear] industry in the Islamic Republic.

According to intelligence sources in the Netherlands, the US [or Israel] was expected to make a decision within weeks to attack nuclear plants with unmanned aircraft, used to avoid risking the lives of air crews and warplanes.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report this would be the first time drones operated by remote control were used against major strategic targets, necessary in Israel’s case to hold its air fleet and flight crews ready to defend the country against reprisal from Iran’s allies. Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah have stockpiled thousands of rockets for this purpose.

The Iranian targets to be bombed would include also military installations brought to light partly by the Dutch espionage operation, described by De Telegraaf as extremely successful. “One of the agents was able to infiltrate the Iranian industry” and for years shared information with the American CIA. “Various supplies could also be sabotaged and stopped. These were parts for missiles and launching equipment.”

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The deputy chief of Iran’s Armed Force HQ is warning that any attack on Iran will lead to world war and the elimination of Israel.
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And Pakistan’s Daily Times is editorializing against such an attack.

A British newspaper has reported that the US may be about to launch a blitz against Iran “as the last resort” to block Tehran’s efforts to nuclearise. It says the preparations in the Pentagon are not just war-games but the plan is to actually make the strike. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B-2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000 pounds of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices.

the original story is attributed elsewhere to the Friday edition of Sunday Telegraph, a sister paper of the Telegraph, but I couldn’t find it on-line.

Not all members of the punditocracy are always wrong.

Here are some opinion-makers who thought Sarah Palin would make a terrific vice presidential selection for McCain more than two months ago.

Jack Kelly, of the Toledo Blade, is narrowly the earliest I’ve found, writing on June 7th:

There is one potential running mate who has virtually no down side. Those conservatives who have heard of her were delighted to learn that McCain advance man Arthur Culvahouse was in Alaska recently, because they surmised he could only be there to discuss the vice presidential nomination with Gov. Sarah Palin.

At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska’s relatively brief history as a state. She’s also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.

This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla High School basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her fierce competitiveness.

Two years later, when she won the “Miss Wasilla” beauty pageant, she was also voted “Miss Congeniality” by the other contestants.

Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is smart and drop-dead gorgeous.

But it’s mostly because she’s been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative, and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.

Ms. Palin touches other conservative bases, some of which Mr. McCain has been accused of rounding. Track, her eldest son, enlisted in the Army last Sept. 11. She’s a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association who hunts, fishes, and runs marathons. A regular churchgoer, she’s staunchly pro-life.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal said Mr. McCain should run against a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, a la Harry Truman. If he should choose to do so, Ms. Palin would make an excellent partner.

“The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah,” pollster Dave Dittman told The Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes.

Mr. Obama’s support has plunged recently among white women. Many Hillary Clinton supporters accuse him – I think unfairly – of being sexist. Having Sarah Palin on the ticket could help Mr. McCain appeal to these disgruntled Democrats.

Running mates usually aren’t named until the convention. But if Mr. McCain should name Ms. Palin earlier, it would give America more time to get to know this extraordinary woman. And because she’s at least a dozen feature stories waiting to be written, she could help him dominate the news between now and the conventions.

Another reason for selecting Sarah Palin early would be to force Barack Obama to make a mistake. He’d have to rule out choosing someone like Virginia Sen. Jim Webb as his running mate, for fear of exacerbating charges of sexism. And if he chose a woman other than Hillary Clinton, the impression Democrats are wimpy would be intensified.

But only a day later, on June 8th, Beldar published what would become the first of a series of posts strongly arguing for Palin.

I’ve spent several hours now reading about, and watching video clips of, 44-year-old Alaska governor Sarah Heath Palin. There are indications that she’s on McCain’s radar, along with many other candidates. I, for one, am very, very impressed with her. Indeed, I’m convinced already that it’s no fluke that she’s more popular with her constituents than any other current American governor (roughly a 90% approval rating). And I’m finding myself increasingly receptive to, and even persuaded by, the idea that she would be not merely a bold pick, but a smart pick, as McCain’s running mate.

If you’re not acquainted with Gov. Palin already, you owe it to yourself to get up to speed. ...

Sarah Palin actually risked her entire political career to take on her own party’s entrenched leadership, and then thoroughly and effectively cleaned house in the largest state in the Union. Between her and Obama, who’s already proven him- or herself more likely to provide the “change you can believe in”?

This spring she used her line-item veto to cut $268 million from state spending bills — in a state that, comparatively, is flush with money, which makes pork projects almost irresistible. She resisted, and it appears that she’s going to make her vetoes stick. That’s the antidote to Bridges to Nowhere! (Which she opposed, by the way; the federal money originally committed to it, she’s now re-directed into more appropriate infrastructure programs.)

As governor, she’s also pushed hard against other entrenched interests, including the energy companies (BP, ConocoPhilips, and ExxonMobil) who hold the lease rights to much of Alaska’s oil and gas wealth. She is a fierce, knowledgeable, and articulate advocate of responsible development of Alaskan resources to benefit not only its own residents — who actually pay among the nation’s highest gasoline prices and have the least access to affordable and clean natural gas — but also the other 49 states, and she recognizes that this is not just a matter of economic necessity, but ultimately of national security.

Palin has spoken out and brought suit to prevent radical environmentalists from exploiting the ridiculous naming of the polar bear as an endangered species, showing no hesitation to stand up against them or their well-wishers in the federal bureaucracy. Yet she and her family are enthusiastic outdoorsmen — engaging in ice fishing, hunting, and snow-mobiling (her husband has won the 2000-mile Iron Dog race four times). Check out this campaign video of her and her family loading up their single-prop float-plane (not a corporate jet!) with sporting gear — that’s got to be at least as cool as Obama shooting hoops.

It doesn’t hurt that Gov. Palin is attractive and photogenic. (She was not, as Jonah Goldberg recently wrote, Miss Alaska, but she was Miss Wasilla; last December Vogue Magazine came to photograph her and her three daughters back in Wasilla; and comedian Craig Ferguson declares that she has a “sort of naughty librarian vibe.”) But she’s climbed through local and state politics on her own — not based on who her daddy or her husband is (or was).

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Beldar may have influenced the thinking of sometimes-somewhat-Conservative Ann Althouse, who on June 12th, made a 10:06 video of a discussion with Rachel Sklar in which she strongly contrasted Palin with Hillary, as a woman who made it into high office on her own.

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They should all be feeling pretty good about now.

One of those viral emails arrived today, at the end of a long succession of forwards, containing the amusing above photos, accompanied by the following text:

A fawn followed this beagle home—right through the doggie door—in the Bittinger, MD area. The owner came home to find the visitor had made himself right at home. This hit the 6 o’clock news big time

I was a little skeptical, but the story seems to be true.

Apparently, the home was really located in Accident, Maryland, asnd it happened last month, according to poster No. 10 in this Grantsville, Maryland forum. And the original photos can be found at the Deep Creek Times site here.

Hat tip to Candice Kobetz.

Mark Steyn comes out in support of John McCain’s vice presidential selection.

Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, “all-American”, but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I’m not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin’ Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who’s done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of “community organizer” and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Read the whole thing.

1:43 video

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

David Brooks wrote the speech that should have been given at recent democrat convention. A must read.
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Hat tip to Scott Drum.

link

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Hat tip to Benjamin Duranske.

Discussing Hillary’s situation, she is against whining. She thinks attacks and intense scrutiny are an inevitable feature of the political process. And she believes women need to do their best and prove themselves. It looks to me like she’s ready.

1:33 video

Stingray puts a dramatic spin on the everyday adventure of using a PC.

Ok, who brought the cheetos?”
“Yo.”
“Sweet, we’re all set. Everybody got their characters rolled?”
“Yeah, what’s this run again? Will there be decent gold? I need more gold.”
“Shaddup. You know you’ll find out when you’re in there. All right. It’s morning and your party is preparing to adventure.”
“My sysadmin orders a barrel of coffee.”
“My programmer lights a cigarette.”
“The first challenge approaches. A digital anachrotroll draws near, brandishing the smoking ruins of the laptop you prepared for last week’s adventure.” ...

“The laptop remains broken.”
“All right. My sysadmin casts information request.”
“Rolling… you receive gibberish.”
“Damnit. My sysadmin arranges a pickup on the machine.”
“The troll misses the pickup and grows irritated.”
“Screw it. Your turn.”
“My programmer arranges a pickup.”
“The troll arrives with the laptop and deposits the smoking yet still slimy remains on your best pack.”
“Delightful. Will you have your damn sysadmin fix this thing already and get rid of the troll?”
“Yeah yeah. I’m rolling. Crap, the dice are not friendly today. At least it’s fixable, technically. Ok, my sysadmin returns the laptop in working order.”

Read the whole thing.

Noemie Emory, in the Weekly Standard, explains why the choice of Sarah Palin is a brilliant strategic move.

1. Steps on the story of Obama’s speech (and convention), and possibly the bounce coming from them, and wipes them off the news cycle. The Sunday news shows will be all-Palin, all of the time.

2. Sends Republicans into their convention on a huge head of steam.

3. Wipes out the image of McCain as the crotchety elder and brings back that of the fly-boy and gambler, which is much more appealing, and the genuine person.

4. Revs up the base AND excites independents, which no one else in the party, or perhaps in the world, could have accomplished.

5. Puts youth, change, and history on both of the tickets.

6. May detach some young people, especially women.

7. May attach some women pissed off about Hillary.

8. As a pro-life super-achiever, puts feminists in a tizzy.

9. Revives some of the double-edged nature of the Democratic primary, which featured a black vs. a female trail-blazer, and put both sides on notice on sensitivity issues. Democrats used to raising charges of racism against Obama’s critics may face charges of sexism and/or condescension if they try to diss her.

10. Steps on Obama’s claims to have been a reformer, as he reformed nothing (much less the corrupt mare’s nest of Chicago arrangements), while she was a dragon-slayer up in Alaska.

11. As a mother of five, one a Down Syndrome baby, helps her side take on the Democrats on abortion extremism and the Born Alive bill.

12. Reignites the deep and unhealed stresses inside the Democrats, some of whom will now wonder more loudly than ever why they didn’t pick Hillary.

13. Counters Michelle in a way Cindy couldn’t.

14. Counter-intuitively, makes the issue of Obama’s light resume more potent than ever. Her lack of experience is no more than his is. And he’s—to use a term from Alaska, and the Iditarod—their lead dog.

McCain displayed with this selection a boldness and willingness to gamble uncharacteristic of Washington politicians. It’s more in the spirit of the US Navy, going completely on the offensive and being willing to risk everything to deliver a decisive blow in a form the enemy could never have anticipated and prepared for.

I don’t think McCain came up with all of this himself, but he is clearly getting some very clever advice these days, to which he is paying attention. He may very well be president yet.

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H/t to Karen L. Myers.

Today is one of those days. I’d love to comment on the democrat party’s lemming-like drive toward electoral disaster. Those unable to learn from History, being obliged to repeat it, and repeat it, and… But, Hughesnet is having a problem with its satellite, and my Internet connectivity is only fleeting. Maybe later today.

Bill Clinton addresses 2008 democrat convention

Stephen Green provides some help in reading between the lines of the former president’s address to the democrat convention last night.

Clinton came out swinging, boldly stating right up front that, “I am here to support Barack Obama.” “Second, I’m here to warm up the crowd for Joe Biden. I love Joe Biden and America will, too.” And that’s about as much mention as Biden got in Clinton’s speech.

And why does Bill think Obama is “the man for the job?” Let’s take a look at his words.

Well, Clinton based that endorsement on “everything I learned in eight years as President.” It’s all about Bill.

And why is Obama so good? Because “the long, hard primary” had “strengthened him.” In other words, Obama was weak to start.

And with Joe Biden on board, “America will have the national security leadership we need.” Obama wasn’t qualified, so he picked a veep who was.

But the digs didn’t end there.

Clinton very pointedly mentioned crushing “credit card debt.” And Biden is pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of Delaware’s many credit card companies. Clinton knows that. The media know that. And pretty soon they’ll remind you of it, too.

And then there was the claim about Obama’s “acute grasp of foreign policy,” which is sure to remind folks that Obama was against the surge before he admitted it’s working, and that Biden — like Hill — voted for the Iraq War.

He claimed that, “Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she will do everything she can to elect Barack Obama.” But that’s not the speech most people heard her give last night. And, “that makes two of us. Actually, that makes 18 million of us.” The 18 million figure is the number of people who voted for Hillary during the primaries, and that served as a pointed reminder that the Clintons remain a powerful force.

It was a powerful speech, expertly delivered — and much of it could have come straight from Hillary’s stump speech. The recurring theme was that “the job of the next President is to rebuild the American Dream and restore American leadership in the world.” Those are not the themes Obama is running on. No hope, no change, were anywhere to be found.

Michelle Obama noticed, too. When Michelle really smiles, she lights up the entire Pepsi Center. All she gave Clinton was her tight, closed-mouth smile. And unlike Clinton’s rhetoric tonight, that doesn’t light up much at all.

In America, we didn’t previously arrest reporters for filming on the public sidewalk.

Washington Post:

An ABC News producer was arrested outside a downtown hotel here Wednesday while he and a camera crew tried to shoot footage of corporate donors leaving a meeting with a group of Democratic senators.

Asa Eslocker, who works with the network’s investigative unit, was charged with trespass, interference and failure to follow a lawful order. He was released four hours later on a $500 bond.

“We expect to see this kind of behavior in Myanmar, not in Denver, Colorado, at a national political convention where a reporter is trying to videotape big-money donors trying to meet with elected officials,” said ABC spokesman Jeffrey Schneider.

Footage of the incident showed one police officer constantly pushing Eslocker as the producer walked backwards across the street, and another officer placing his hand around Eslocker’s neck. Eslocker kept saying that it was a public street and asking what law he was violating. Schneider said Esocker never entered the Brown Palace Hotel, where the meeting was taking place.

And, in America, we didn’t previously try to silence the opposition through legal manuevers and intimidation.

New York Times:

As Senator Obama’s campaign makes its argument for his candidacy before a national audience here this week, it is waging a separate, forceful campaign against a new conservative group running millions of dollars of ads linking him to the 1960s radical William Ayers Jr.

Lawyers for the campaign have asked the Justice Department to investigate the group — which is operating under rules governing non-profit corporations — calling on television stations to cease airing the spot, and, campaign officials said, planning to pressure advertisers on stations that refuse to do so. The ad is running in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

Since I detest Vista, I’ve started fooling around with Linux on a new laptop. Ubuntu installed easily, but there is this little problem with accessing the Internet.

My wife sent me the following cartoon some weeks ago as a warning, and I’m afraid it already seems to be a very accurate picture of my Linux experience.

One of the favorite talking points at the democrat convention this year is “investing in green technology to create new jobs.”

Green technology, insofar as it exists, represents only significantly more expensive approaches to very ordinary things, chosen on the basis of ideology by poseurs and nutjobs. The green technology that B. Hussein and Al Gore talk about is just like fairy dust, a purely imaginary fantasy-substance useful only to gratify the desires of children in dreams.

Green technology is just one more proof of the arrested development of liberals. There is no price in dirt, ugliness, and polluted lands and streams for industrial civilization, human prosperity, and economic abundance. The calculative powers of human reason are completely omnipotent when supplemented by Leviathan’s coercive power and purse. Throw federal money at reality and all the tragedies and limitations of the human condition can be abolished. Force people to quit smoking and avoid fatty foods, and we’ll all live forever. The idle, the dissipated, and the dishonest will become just as prosperous and successful as the hard working and the prudent. The lazy and the stupid, even the mentally retarded, will not be left behind. Little boys and girls will all go to Ivy League colleges and become doctors and lawyers, if we just raise teachers’ salaries and build fancier schools.

Just grant more dollars to Obama cronies like Antoin Rezko, and desirable housing in good neighborhoods will magically become available permanently to the kind of people who shoot up and urinate in elevators. We won’t have to burn black, nasty fuels like coal or oil, or deal with radioactive substances. We won’t have to take out the ashes, change the oil filter, or fill the tank. We won’t have to dig in the ground or cut down trees. Even the most remote and worthless frozen landscapes will be preserved like fine art in a museum on Manhattan’s Upper East side. We can do anything and everything, yes, we can. And none of it can possibly have any untoward costs, drawbacks, or side effects, or impose any burdens or inefficiencies or unreasonable costs on anyone but “the rich,” and screw them.

Children. Our elite, the backbone of the moocher/looter party, consists of spoiled and stupid children, incapable of reasoning or dealing with reality. They are good at their professional specialties, which typically involve only the manipulation of words, symbols, and ideas. Outside those small and limited areas of actual competence, they are clueless, irresponsible, and destructive.

Reuters:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

Politicians in past elections have typically spoken from the convention site itself, but the Obama campaign liked the idea of having their man speak to a larger, stadium-sized crowd not far from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, at the Denver pro basketball arena.

Maybe he’s running for emperor.

Photocommentary here. Heh.

Pejman: Will Zeus be the next Democratic nominee?

Chinese news service photo of USS McFaul delivering humanitarian supplies at Batumi

EarthTimes quotes an Interfax News Agency Russian press release indicating that the Russian Black Sea Fleet is “shifting positions” to the rear.

Elements of Russia’s Black Sea fleet shifted locations on Wednesday in an possible move to avoid a confrontation with a growing NATO warship flotilla near Georgia. Russian naval vessels operating off of Georgia’s coastline had moved from a station in the vicinity of the Georgian port Poti into “Abkhazian territorial waters,” said Sergei Menialo, commander of Russia’s Novorossisk naval base, according to an Interfax news agency report.

The shift took a group of some six to eight Russian warships that had been patrolling near the Georgian port of Poti out of the path of US warships reportedly planning to make a humanitarian aid delivery to the same location. ...

NATO led by the US began a dramatic increase to its naval presence in the Black Sea in mid-August, after Russian refusal to abide by a Russo-Georgian ceasefire plan engineered by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

The NATO flotilla led by the American destroyer USS McFaul already has exceeded ten warships and will reach eighteen vessels in coming days, Kremlin officials citing Russian intelligence said Tuesday.

German, Polish, Spanish, and Canadian warships are among the members of the multi-national squadron being assembled in the Black Sea, according to Georgian media reports.

Russian admiral Sergei Kasatonov admitted the growing NATO naval formation would soon be stronger than the Russian Black Sea warships off Georgia and Abkhazia’s shore, but added the Kremlin could in case of a confrontation deal with the western vessels “using other forms of combat power, including aviation assets.”

Years ago, when I was working on military simulations games, a historical discussion got going within the development group, a gang of hard-core military history buffs, about the threat to US and Nato forces posed by a much-reported Soviet Naval build-up.

“When was the last time Russia won a major naval engagement?” sardonically asked one of the senior designers.

Despite the vast store of expertise on matters of this kind readily at hand, puzzlement ensued.

One authority suggest the Battle of Navarino in 1827 during the Greek War of Independence. But the example was rejected because Russia had merely participated in a combined operation with France and Britain, under British command.

Finally, smiling, one of the most knowledgeable people present, suggested John Paul Jones’ 1788 victory over the Turks in the Liman arm of the Black Sea. “But, they won’t have Jones in command today, will they?” he concluded, reducing the crowd of analysts and prognosticators to gales of derisive laughter at the idea of what would happen to the Russian Navy if it tried taking on a naval service like our own, one with a firm and unbroken tradition of victory.

So the Alien has an actual model in Nature: the Goblin shark (Mitsukurina owstoni). It figures.

1:40 video

From Atomic Nerds via Karen L. Myers.

Years later, after driving the House Majority Leader out of office, and serving as key ammunition for democrats to use to overthrow the GOP majority in Congress with corruption charges, the last undismissed count of the contrived and partisan indictment of Tom Delay by radical Austin, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle has been demolished by an Appeals Court ruling noting that the alleged illicit financial cooperation between two political entities involved checks, and the Texas statute applied only to cash.

The Austin American Statesman story does its best to give all possible credit to the theory that the contribution of money by one Republican political organization to another really was a form of money-laundering in a deliberate attempt to evade the law. The story fundamentally incorporates also the dubious premise that opportunistic interpretations of the the arcane technicalities of state campaign finance regulations really make the victims of their unique and partisan application genuinely culpable. And it fails to note the rather important point, that though Mr. Delay was nominally and formally involved with the Texas organizations, he was actually in Washington, DC, serving in the very active role of House Majority Leader, and obviously far too busy with Congressional leadership to be personally in charge of the financial operation and details of those local organizations.

It also fails to mention that a previous grand jury declined to find in favor of Earle’s proposed indictment, and that, in an unusual and highly controversial prosecutorial move, Earle empaneled another grand jury and tried again.

We win,” said Dick DeGuerin, DeLay’s lawyer. .. it means every crime Ronnie Earle indicted Tom DeLay for was not a crime.”

Where does Tom Delay go to get his reputation back?

Where does America go to get two years of a democrat majority in Congress back?

Previous postings.

Recycles a line by Hillary.

0:32 video

1:04 Obama supporters’ video mocking Hillary.

Democrats are such nice people.

Hat tip to Larry Johnson.

The Republican Party of Texas produced this anti-Obama ad, which I think makes a very telling point.

0:33 video

George Will notes how liberals like Obama believe government can simply order new energy sources to come into being.

Obama recently said that he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term—more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.” ...

What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon Jan. 20, 2009.

Obama has also promised that “we will get 1 million 150-mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on our roads within six years.” What a tranquilizing verb “get” is. This senator, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, is going to get a huge, complex industry to produce, and is going to get a million consumers to buy, these cars. How? Almost certainly by federal financial incentives for both—billions of dollars of tax subsidies for automakers and billions more to bribe customers to buy cars they otherwise would spurn.

Conservatives are sometimes justly accused of ascribing magic powers to money and markets: Increase the monetary demand for anything, and the supply of it will expand. But it is liberals such as Obama who think that any new technological marvel or other social delight can be summoned into existence by a sufficient appropriation. Once they thought “model cities” could be, too.

Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: “I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming—an 80 percent reduction by 2050.”

No, he won’t. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans—40 million more households. So Obama’s cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those “in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood.”

Liberal statism is a cult, fundamentally based on a narcissistic belief in the omnipotence of the calculative powers of human reason employed by an educated elite, to which class its subscribers by some curious coincidence invariably belong.

The Wall Street Journal describes how policies imposed by environmentalist outsiders are making it difficult for human residents of Eastern Indonesia to co-exist with Varanus komodoensis.

These locals have long viewed the dragons as a reincarnation of fellow kinsfolk, to be treated with reverence. But now, villagers say, the once-friendly dragons have turned into vicious man-eaters. And they blame policies drafted by American-funded environmentalists for this frightening turn of events.

“When I was growing up, I felt the dragons were my family,” says 55-year-old Hajji Faisal. “But today the dragons are angry with us, and see us as enemies.” The reason, he and many other villagers believe, is that environmentalists, in the name of preserving nature, have destroyed Komodo’s age-old symbiosis between dragon and man.

For centuries, local tradition required feeding the dragons—which live more than 50 years, can recognize individual humans and usually stick to fairly small areas. Locals say they always left deer parts for the dragons after a hunt, and often tied goats to a post as sacrifice. Island taboos strictly prohibited hurting the giant reptiles, a possible reason why the dragons have survived in the Komodo area despite becoming extinct everywhere else.

For us, giving food to the dragons is an obligation, our sacred duty,” says Hajji Adam, headman of the park’s biggest village, Kampung Komodo.

Indonesia invited the Nature Conservancy, a Virginia-based environment protection group, to help manage the park in 1995. An Indonesian subsidiary of the group, called Putri Naga Komodo, gained a tourism concession for the park in 2005 and is investing in the conservation effort some $10 million of its own money and matching financing from international donors.

With this funding and advice, park authorities put an end to villagers’ traditional deer hunting, enforcing a prohibition that had been widely disregarded. They declared canines an alien species, and outlawed the villagers’ dogs, which used to keep dragons away from homes. Park authorities banned the goat sacrifices, previously staged on Komodo for the benefit of picture-snapping tourists.

“We don’t want the Komodo dragon to be domesticated. It’s against natural balance,” says Widodo Ramono, policy director of the Nature Conservancy’s Indonesian branch and a former director of the country’s national park service. “We have to keep this conservation area for the purpose of wildlife. It is not for human beings.”

When people hunt deer, it poses a mortal threat to the dragons, which disappeared from a small island near Komodo after poachers decimated deer stocks there, officials say. “If we let the locals hunt again, the dragons will be gone,” says Vinsensius Latief, the national park’s chief for Komodo island. “If we are not strict in enforcing the ban, everything here will be destroyed.”

But, while the deer population remains stable in the park, many dragons these days prefer to seek easier prey in the vicinity of humans. They frequently descend from the hills to the villages, hiding under stilt houses and waiting for a chance to snap at passing chicken or goats. Much to the fury of villagers, park authorities, while endorsing the idea in principle, so far haven’t acted on repeated requests to build dragon-proof fences around the park’s inhabited areas. The measure is estimated to cost about $5,000 per village.

“People are scared because, every day, the dragons come down and eat our goats,” complains Ibrahim Hamso, secretary of the Kampung Rinca village. “Today it’s a goat, and tomorrow it can be our child.”

A year ago, a 9-year-old named Mansur was one such victim. The boy went to answer the call of nature behind a bush near his home in Kampung Komodo. In broad daylight, as terrified relatives looked on, a dragon lunged from his hideout, took a bite of the boy’s stomach and chest, and started crushing his skull.

“We threw branches and stones to drive him away, but the dragon was crazed with blood, and just wouldn’t let go,” says the boy’s father, Jamain, who, like many Indonesians, goes by only one name.

Unlike in the U.S. and many other Western countries, park rangers here don’t routinely put down animals that develop a taste for human flesh.

A few months later, Jamain’s neighbor Mustaming Kiswanto, a 38-year-old who makes a living selling dragon woodcarvings to tourists, and whose son had been bitten by a dragon, was attacked by another giant lizard after falling asleep. In June, five European divers, stranded in an isolated part of the park, said they successfully fended off an aggressive dragon by throwing their weight belts at it. ...

To the villagers in Komodo, the recent incidents provide clear evidence of an ominous change in reptile behavior. “I don’t blame the dragons for my boy’s death. I blame those who forbade us from following custom and feeding them,” says Jamain. “If it weren’t for them, my boy would still be alive.”

Officials at the Nature Conservancy’s Indonesian headquarters in Bali dismiss such widespread belief about a connection between the attacks and the ban on feeding the dragons as “superstition.” The group and its Komodo subsidiary reject any responsibility for Mansur’s death.

The boy “shouldn’t have crouched like a prey species in a place where dragons live,” says Marcus Matthews-Sawyer, tourism, marketing and communications director at Putri Naga Komodo. “You’ve got to be very careful about extrapolating and drawing any conclusions.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

As they assemble in Denver to worship the Obamessiah, James Lewis wonders how is it possible for liberals to be so gullible?

The Democratic National Convention is a great time to reflect on the Conundrum of The Century: Why are our liberal buddies so amazingly gullible? Why do they fall for the most obvious scam artists? Why, when Hillary crashes, do they slobber all over the next edition of God’s Anointed on Earth? ...

The Left could be divided up into fools, prophets and knaves. The knaves are just the Edwards-Clinton-Obama types, expert hustlers who can bring the crowds of suckers to their knees—just watch the Convention. There’s a sadistic-sociopathic kernel in some of the knaves of the Left; they’re not satisfied with exploiting dupes, they need to rub it in. That’s what brought down Bill Clinton; he had to stick it to more and more of his victims, to prove that the old mojo still worked. These are not nice people. Some of them are malevolent. ...

What staggers me is the lib masses—“masses” is a very Marxist word—who always come back for more, even after they find out they’ve been duped again. These are the people who are honestly disappointed by John Edwards’s cheatin’ heart. They were shocked by Monica’s Blue Dress—but not enough to blame Bill Clinton. He was an innocent victim.

The sucker masses include our “professional media,” slack-jawed dupes, every single one. They just never admit they’ve been had. Even Dan Rather couldn’t bring himself to admit that he had been suckered out of his job as the Most Trusted Man in America by some wild-eyed Bush-hater out of Texas.

The liberal masses are True Believers, the little old ladies of both sexes, who hate-hate-hate George W. Bush so much that when one Saviorette gets dirt on her skirt they desperately beat the bushes for a New Messiah to replace last year’s model. Liberal victims are terribly out of place in the bloody jungle of politics. They should never vote. They are too needy emotionally, and their yearnings drive them to worship any idols in sight. They can’t accept that John Edwards would ever lie to them. Or Bill Clinton. Or Barack the Savior. Never! ...

William James called the libs of his time the “tender minded,” in contrast to the “tough-minded” people who try to stay in touch with reality, like farmers, plumbers and accountants. If your toilet leaks all over the floor you can’t deny reality; but if you’re in the media game, fantasy-mongering is your bread and butter. It’s a huge difference between human beings.

In the 19th century New England grew tender-minded folk in large batches, flocking to hear uplifting speeches from Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York City was for tougher characters at that time, and not many liberals survived there until the sentimental middle class grew big and prosperous. By the 20th century New York City was taken over by libs—they called themselves “progressives”—with well-known results: street crime, violent schools, family breakdown, broken windows and ugly graffiti, and of course biggest scammers of all running City Hall.

Read the whole thing.

Greg Pollowitz titles the Lynn Sweet picture.

Iowahawk reports new Obama surge aimed at vital Reagan democrats.

With new polls showing Barack Obama’s once-commanding lead over John McCain all but evaporated, the Obama campaign announced today it has begun deploying its vast volunteer army of downtown hipster douchebags to help reconnect the presumptive Democratic candidate with middle-American voters.

“Unlike Iraq, this is one surge that is actually going to work,” said Obama campaign manager David Axlerod.

Sources within the campaign say the new strategy was prompted by recent national poll trends indicating McCain pulling even with, and in some instances even overtaking, Obama. More troubling for the campaign were internal tracking polls that show the candidate losing significant ground in key Midwestern, Southern and Western battleground states. As the numbers dropped, some within the campaign were left in stunned disbelief.

“It really didn’t make sense,” said Carly Voorhees, an East Village experimental performance poet, Cooper Union graduate student and member of Obama’s 600-expert foreign policy team. “We knew in theory there were a handful of stump-toothed biblebillies and neocon dead-enders out there, but by all rights we should have had at least a 60%-75% lead. Even after Barack threw that awesome victory rave in Germany, the numbers kept deteriorating.”

“At first we were stumped,” she added. “Then it dawned on us—McSame’s subliminal attack ads were stoking the deep-rooted, latent racism of white middle America. We needed to warn these uneducated simpletons that McSame was exploiting their superstitions and genetic bigotry. The big question was—how?”

At first, the Obama team looked into major media buys in key battleground states. But with a campaign budget already strained by price increases in arugula and Hawaiian airfare, the impact was deemed to be minimal. Instead, they turned to a key campaign asset—a dedicated cadre of young urban hipster douchebags willing to take Obama’s message of change to America’s small town streets and rural blacktops. An intensive eVite recruitment campaign on websites like the Daily Kos and Huffington Post yielded over 1,500 volunteers for the potentially dangerous mission.

“I couldn’t be prouder of all of you wonderful young indy rock assholes,” said Axlerod at a swearing-in ceremony at the campaign’s official training center in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “You represent our party’s finest, the best of best—you are our Douchebag Delta Force.”

Highly motivated, and with skills ranging from post-modern gender theory to espresso cafe blackboard chalk art, the volunteers were eager to get to work on the campaign trail. But before deployment Obama officials insisted that all recruits undergo an intensive training regimen to prepare them for the rigors of life in Red Country.

“A lot of the plebe douchebags come in here full of swagger, thinking all it takes is a few hours of FM country music endurance training, and I have to tell them they have no idea what they’re up against,” says Ethan Dodge, a Seattle conceptual theater set designer and veteran douchebag of Obama’s Iowa caucus campaign. “Believe me, I’ve been to Dubuque. I know.”

To toughen up the recruits for the task ahead, Dodge and other drill instructors take a direct approach.

“We tell them straight up: we aren’t your mommy or daddy or your au pair. There aren’t any independent lesbian film festivals in Youngstown, and just because Iowa has a lot of farmers it doesn’t mean they are going to see a lot of Sunday chill-out farmers’ markets,” says Voorhees. “After that shock wears off, we tell them about how the natives drink Pabst unironically.”

“Sure, it scares some recruits off,” admits Dodge. “But the ones who stay are much less likely to crack under the pressure of a two week isolation from American Apparel or Urban Outfitters.”...

Whether Obama’s douchebag heartland surge will ultimately succeed remains to be determined, but longtime political analyst and What’s the Matter With Kansas? author Thomas Frank thinks the basic strategy is sound.

“Unfortunately this election comes down to winning the hearts and minds of whitebread, middlebrow, middle-class, middle-Americans,” says Frank.”This effort shows that Obama troops are willing to reach out and condescend to them, one-on-one, no matter how pathetic and stupid they are.”

Read the whole thing.

Michael Silence:

The kid and the grandpa:
Obama was 11 when Biden entered Congress. I guess they’re going fishin’ together.

Joe Biden does bring one big constituency with him – the Hair Club for Men.

———————————————————————————
Glenn Reynolds:

He’s at least as fresh a face as Madeleine Albright.

———————————————————————————
J.D., a Little Green Footballs Commenter (no. 67) observes:

Joe Biden? I feel the same way I did at the end of the last episode of “The Sopranos.” Sure, some people considered the go-to-black ending nuanced, but as far as I was concerned, the producers punted. They chose a non-ending because they couldn’t decide on a strong ending. ...

This has the potential to become very very ugly.

During the 1988 democrat nomination campaign, Joe Biden tells a reporter exactly who has the bigger IQ, and goes on to outline his own distinguished academic career.

2:38 video

———————————————————————
Chris Reed corrects most of Biden’s mistatements.

The tape, which was made available by C-SPAN in response to a reporter’s request, showed a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ‘’Frank.’’ Mr. Biden looked at his questioner and said: ‘’I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do.’’

He then went on to say that he ‘’went to law school on a full academic scholarship – the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship,’’ Mr. Biden said. He also said that he ‘’ended up in the top half’’ of his class and won a prize in an international moot court competition. In college, Mr. Biden said in the appearance, he was ‘’the outstanding student in the political science department’’ and ‘’graduated with three degrees from college.’’

In his statement today, Mr. Biden, who attended the Syracuse College of Law and graduated 76th in a class of 85, acknowledged: ‘’I did not graduate in the top half of my class at law school and my recollection of this was inaccurate.’’

As for receiving three degrees, Mr. Biden said: ‘’I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science. My reference to degrees at the Claremont event was intended to refer to these majors – I said ‘three’ and should have said ‘two.’ ‘’ Mr. Biden received a single B.A. in history and political science.

‘’With regard to my being the outstanding student in the political science department,’’ the statement went on. ‘’My name was put up for that award by David Ingersoll, who is still at the University of Delaware.’’

In the Sunday interview, Mr. Biden said of his claim that he went to school on full academic scholarship: ‘’My recollection is – and I’d have to confirm this – but I don’t recall paying any money to go to law school.’’ Newsweek said Mr. Biden had gone to Syracuse ‘’on half scholarship based on financial need.’’ Says He Also Received Grant

In his statement today, Mr. Biden did not directly dispute this, but said he received a scholarship from the Syracuse University College of Law ‘’based in part on academics’’ as well as a grant from the Higher Education Scholarship Fund of the state of Delaware. He said the law school ‘’arranged for my first year’s room and board by placing me as an assitant resident adviser in the undergraduate school.’’

As for the moot court competition, Mr. Biden said he had won such a competition, with a partner, in Kingston, Ontario, on Dec. 12, 1967.

Mr. Biden acknowledged that in the testy exchange in New Hampshire, he had lost his temper. ‘’I exaggerate when I’m angry,’’ Mr. Biden said, ‘’but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.’’ Mr. Biden’s questioner had made the query in a mild tone, but provoked an explosive response from Mr. Biden.

———————————————————————
Biden failed to mention in his impromptu vitae that he was nearly thrown out of law school for plagiarism.
———————————————————————
Back in 2001, in Newsweek, Michael Crowley provided a less-than-flattering profile, beginning with the following anecdote:

It’s a bright early October morning on Capitol Hill. Joe Biden is bounding up the steps of the Russell Senate Office Building, wearing his trademark grin. As he makes for the door, he is met by a group of airline pilots and flight attendants looking vaguely heroic in their navy-blue uniforms and wing-shaped pins. A blandly handsome man in a pilot’s cap steps forward and asks Biden to help pass emergency benefits for laid-off airline workers. Biden nods as the men and women cluster around him with fawning smiles. Then he speaks. “I hope you will support my work on Amtrak as much as I have supported you,” he begins. (Biden rides Amtrak to work every day and is obsessed with the railroad.) “If not, I will screw you badly.”

A dozen faces fall in unison as Biden lectures on. “You’ve not been good to me. You’re also damn selfish. You better listen to me…” It goes on like this for a couple of minutes. Strangely, Biden keeps grinning—even fraternally slapping the stunned man’s shoulder a couple of times. When we finally head into the building, Biden’s communications director, Norm Kurz, turns to me. “What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden.”

Meet the current chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Biden’s mouth does him as much harm as good. ” He gives Castro-length speeches,” says one exasperated Senate staffer. In Democratic caucus meetings, he is famous for declaring, “I’ll be brief,” and then talking the room into a stupor. (Biden’s colleagues have been known to burst into laughter when he makes that promise.) People who know Biden also warn that his loose talk often reflects muddled thinking. In his classic study of the 1988 presidential candidates, What It Takes, Richard Ben Cramer wrote, “Joe often didn’t know what he thought until he had to say it.” In one recent committee debate, recalls an observer, Biden delivered a rambling explanation of his opposition to a foreign aid amendment, by the end of which he had seemed to talk himself out of his original position.

What does this choice tell us?

Biden is the safe choice. Though always far too much of a lightweight to make an effective presidential candidate, it’s kind of like standing the average fellow next to the class wimp in the gym. When you contemplate Biden versus you-know-who, Biden suddenly seems like an impressive political figure with a long record of accomplishment and a statesman capable of bringing a major load of experience and depth to the ticket.

By current democrat party standards, Biden is a moderate, and he is on record criticizing the nutroots base’s extremism and urging democrats to run closer to the center.

Obama’s only real political record consists of a plethora of radical associations, so the choice of Biden has to be seen as a defensive move, representing a timid quiver of fright by an increasingly nervous deer (Obambi) trembling as the first rumbles of the avalanche which is going to bury him can be heard far off in the distance.

Personally, I don’t like Biden in the least.

He has always struck me as precisely what you’d get, if there was some magical process that could subtract the beer belly and florid nose from the old-time Irish saloon-keeper-cum-precinct-boss that would at the same time polish him up into a fashionable modern yuppie.

Biden is notorious for his hair implants. A typical photogenic democrat, he’s glib, shallow, and self-important, and he can be a vicious bully to representatives of the other party or judicial nominees.

Kitagawa Utamaro (1753?-1806), Mono omou koi (Reflective Love),
from the series of five prints entitled Kasen koi no bu (Anthology of Poems: The Love Section), c. 1793-94

Estimated to sell for $1,000,000 – $1,500,000 at the Christie’s auction sale of Japanese & Korean art scheduled for September 18, 2008 at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Jeffrey Olson’s excellent description reads (in part):

Her underrobe lies loose about her neck, as in a casual moment at the end of a day, and her eyes are unusually compressed to give the sense of the heavy-lidded stare of the daydreamer. Features or dress that might define personality or status or period are absent. Utamaro is using “delicious approximations” to decant the sensation from the scene.2
The visual glory of Reflective Love begins with the contrasts between the planes of color. The violet inner robe and matching silk hair tie are breathtaking. Purple, one of the most fugitive hues, tends to fade to grayish brown. The muted colors of the Reflective Love in the Musée Guimet prompted Richard Lane to remark on Utamaro’s subdued palette.3 Its cool tone conveys a somber mood, a brooding over something lost or never to be. The impression here—-the vermilion lips and cuff lining, the velvet swirl of hair—-is stirring (fig. 1). The underrobe is in a traditional tie-dyed dappled pattern (kanoko shibori moyo) that appears often in Japanese prints, usually on undergarments. Utamaro uses it to stage intimate settings, as here. The middle robe has the trellis design of plain-weave robes from crossing warp and weft threads. The fabric of the outerrobe represents crepe treated with wax resist so that the clusters of plovers and dots, symbolizing clouds or waves, appear white against the dyed grey.
The pink mica ground is exceedingly rare. ...

kino kyo Yesterday, today—kumo no hatate nino matter how I gaze in vacant reverie
nagamu tote toward the cloud tips
mi mo senu hito no tinted in the evening, how can I know
omoi ya wa shiru the feelings of one I cannot see?
(Fuga waka shu X: 954)

2:19 recording.

Obama’s has his own seal and his own salute. Obviously he needed his own handbag. And it willl go beautifully, too, with his Donatella Versace signature collection.

CBS3.com reports that a woman dumped by a lion in Second Life tried to kidnap the real life individual behind the offending game avatar armed with a taser, a BB gun, and duct tape.

A woman wanted in the bizarrely complicated attempted kidnapping of her former virtual boyfriend has been apprehended after a multi-state search.

New Castle County Police said 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan of North Carolina was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Delaware came to an end.

The pair apparently met online in “Second Life.” A virtual relationship began between the victim, whose character was a Lion, and Jerrigan, whose online persona was said to be a virtual woman.

When the two met in reality several months ago, police said the victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

In the beginning of August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim’s Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint. While she was unsuccessful, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim’s Delaware address.

Police said Jernigan posed as a postal worker in order to locate the victim’s new address, as he had recently moved. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

With her dog Gogi in tow, investigators said Jernigan cut and removed a screened window in order to enter her virtual ex’s apartment.

When the victim arrived home on Thursday, August 21, he told police he saw someone pointing an object at his chest that was projecting a laser beam. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted police.

Officers arriving at the scene discovered a pair of handcuffs, a roll of duct tape, a Taser and a BB gun as well as the suspect’s dog.

Police said Jernigan had bound her dog Gogi with duct tape and put him in the bathroom as he was making too much noise. The dog was said to be uninjured, but the SPCA is looking into possible charges of animal cruelty.

Mac may be humiliating poor old PC in those amusing television commercials, but both of them have been caught napping by the penguin in the high tech world of special effects, Stephen J. Vaughn-Nichols reports at ComputerWorld.

While top animation and FX (special effects) programs are run on Macs and some of them, like RenderMan Pro Server are being ported to Windows, it’s on Linux clusters that the really serious movie and television visual effects are created. As Robin Rowe writes at LinuxMovies.org, “In the film industry, Linux has won. It’s running on practically all servers and desktops used for feature animation and visual effects.”

Rowe’s not just being a Linux booster. It’s the Gospel truth. The animation and FX for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; Star Wars: The Clone Wars; WALL-E; 300; The Golden Compass; Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix; and I Am Legend, to name but a few recent movies, were all created using Pixar’s RenderMan and Autodesk Maya running on Linux clusters.

The really short version for why this is so comes down to Linux clustering enables you to put massive computational firepower into rendering 2D and 3D images. It’s ironic. While getting the most out of NVIDIA and ATI graphic cards on a Linux desktop is still a pain and there’s always some trouble dealing with proprietary video formats on Linux, the top animated and FX-heavy videos usually have their start on Linux systems.

Specifically, most photo-realistic special effects are created with programs using Pixar’s RISpec (RenderMan Interface Specification) compliant programs. RISpec is an extremely detailed open-standard set of APIs (application program interfaces) for 3D graphics rendering programs. To be more precise, RISpec isn’t quite an open standard. While Pixar, the animation giant owned by Disney, has published the specifications for all to use, and no longer even requires a no-charge license to create a RISpec-compliant rendering program, Pixar doesn’t go out of its way to specify exactly how developers can, or can’t use RISpec.

That said, there are open-source RISpec-compliant programs like Pixie and other rendering programs such as Blender, which can be used as a source for RISpec software. Pixar’s RenderMan software suite itself, while it relies on Linux in most animation and FX shops, is unlikely ever to be open-sourced.

So, while you can’t point to animation and special effects software as a major win for open-source software, there is absolutely no doubt that every time you gasp at a breath-taking escape by Indy or grin at a particularly clever visual bit of fun in Ratatouille, you’re appreciating the power of Linux.

Effective anti-Obama ad highlighting his Bill Ayers connection. Now running in Virginia.

1:01 video

Jeff Schreiber reports:

A prominent Philadelphia attorney and Hillary Clinton supporter filed suit this afternoon in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic National Committee and the Federal Election Commission. The action seeks an injunction preventing the senator from continuing his candidacy and a court order enjoining the DNC from nominating him next week, all on grounds that Sen. Obama is constitutionally ineligible to run for and hold the office of President of the United States.

Phillip Berg, the filing attorney, is a former gubernatorial and senatorial candidate, former chair of the Democratic Party in Montgomery (PA) County, former member of the Democratic State Committee, and former Deputy Attorney General of Pennsylvania. According to Berg, he filed the suit—just days before the DNC is to hold its nominating convention in Denver—for the health of the Democratic Party.

“I filed this action at this time,” Berg stated, “to avoid the obvious problems that will occur when the Republican Party raises these issues after Obama is nominated.”.

Berg cited a number of unanswered questions regarding the Illinois senator’s background, and in today’s lawsuit maintained that Sen. Obama is not a natural born U.S. citizen or that, if he ever was, he lost his citizenship when he was adopted in Indonesia. Berg also cites what he calls “dual loyalties” due to his citizenship and ties with Kenya and Indonesia.

Even if Sen. Obama can prove his U.S. citizenship, Berg stated, citing the senator’s use of a birth certificate from the state of Hawaii verified as a forgery by three independent document forensic experts, the issue of “multi-citizenship with responsibilities owed to and allegiance to other countries” remains on the table.

In the lawsuit, Berg states that Sen. Obama was born in Kenya, and not in Hawaii as the senator maintains. Before giving birth, according to the lawsuit, Obama’s mother traveled to Kenya with his father but was prevented from flying back to Hawaii because of the late stage of her pregnancy, “apparently a normal restriction to avoid births during a flight.” As Sen. Obama’s own paternal grandmother, half-brother and half-sister have also claimed, Berg maintains that Stanley Ann Dunham—Obama’s mother—gave birth to little Barack in Kenya and subsequently flew to Hawaii to register the birth. ...

Should Sen. Obama truly have been born in Kenya, Berg writes, the laws on the books at the time of his birth hold that U.S. citizenship may only pass to a child born overseas to a U.S. citizen parent and non-citizen parent if the former was at least 19 years of age. Sen. Obama’s mother was only 18 at the time. Therefore, because U.S. citizenship could not legally be passed on to him, Obama could not be registered as a “natural born” citizen and would therefore be ineligible to seek the presidency pursuant to Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Moreover, even if Sen. Obama could have somehow been deemed “natural born,” that citizenship was lost in or around 1967 when he and his mother took up residency in Indonesia, where Stanley Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian citizen. Berg also states that he possesses copies of Sen. Obama’s registration to Fransiskus Assisi School In Jakarta, Indonesia which clearly show that he was registered under the name “Barry Soetoro” and his citizenship listed as Indonesian.

The Hawaiian birth certificate, Berg says, is a forgery. In the suit, the attorney states that the birth certificate on record is a forgery, has been identified as such by three independent document forensic experts, and actually belonged to Maya Kasandra Soetoro, Sen. Obama’s half-sister.

Read the whole thing.

I doubt that this lawsuit will succeed, or that Barack Hussein Obama will be proven to have been born in Kenya or to have lost his citizenship via adoption by Mr. Soetero, but I would not be prepared to dismiss completely the possibility of there being substance in any of these contentions. Barack Obama is a peculiar candidate of very unusual background, and is remarkably little known. We have no Office of Eligibility for Public Office in the United States which routinely investigates the qualification of candidates with respect to citizenship. Frankly, with respect to many offices, I doubt that anyone would care very much. In the case of the Presidency, though, questions about major candidates with a serious possibility of being elected really should be investigated and resolved by impartial and responsible authorities.

Barack Obama is almost certainly going to be found to be, yes, Virginia, really a US citizen, but I tend to think American voters would prefer to know for sure.

Maybe he’ll defend you against Islamic terrorists

The Telegraph reports that the British Legion was obliged to cancel plans for an annual Veterans Day Parade when the Doncaster Town Council claimed it lacked “the amenities.” Imagine their surprise when Doncaster hosted its first Gay Pride Parade last Sunday.

Obama says McCain forgot how many houses he owns, and he owns seven houses.

0:30 video

McCain replies mentioning Antoin Rezko assisting Obama buy his house:

0:30 video

Actually, it’s John McCain’s wife and her family trusts which own 8, not 7, residences, of which some are only condos used by her children and by an elderly relative.

John McCain spent five years in a Vietnamese prison cell undergoing torture. When he got out, he came home and married the proverbial passionate rich blonde whose father owned a beer distributorship. The universe has a way of seeing to it that things even out.

If I were Barack Obama, and I’d acquired a $1.65 million mansion with the aid of a sinister figure recently convicted for political corruption, I’d stay away from discussing houses.

Paul Collins at Stale tries some recipes from Vincent Price (Y 1933)’s 1956 cookbook.

My wife and I—she being the Mary to my Vincent—began our day of all-Price cooking with one of his great culinary loves: pancakes. They’d already come a long way from the days of a 1935 cookbook like Someone to Dinner, where the recipe for crêpes Savannah reads, in full, “Pancakes, the ordinary size, served with hot maple syrup.” No such fainthearted stuff for Vincent: The name Banana Pancake Flambé Stonehenge alone murders all culinary competitors. You wrap sautéed bananas into crêpes, vigorously stab strips of bacon atop them, and flambé it all in banana liqueur. It’s a dish that rewards sleepy incompetence: If you don’t flambé it properly, the pancakes immediately soak up copious amounts of hooch, leaving you woozily imitating lines from The Abominable Dr. Phibes while you twirl a villainous moustache and choose your victims for lunch.

Amusingly enough, we’ve got a sinister bottle of banana cordial (inherited from Karen’s mother) right here in the house. It is certainly an appropriate elixir for Price-ian crêpe preparation. I often hear it whispering, whispering very softly, to me as I pass the liquor cabinet.

What’s that? What is it saying?

It wants me to show Karen’s new basset hound the special amontillado in the basement?

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers (Y 1975).

Barack Obama is campaigning on the slogan: Yes, We Can. But, as Thomas Lifson points out, in his role as head of the Annenberg educational foundation in Chicago, Obama had a chance to prove that he could effectuate change in a failing public school system by enfusing money into the system intelligently. He failed.

Barack Obama’s most important administrative leadership experience, helming an expensive educational reform effort in Chicago that failed to produce any measurable academic gains, according to the project’s own final report. ...

The four plus years (1995-1999) Barack Obama spent as founding chairman of the board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) represent his track record as reformer, as someone who reached out in a public-private collaboration and had the audacity to believe his effort would make things better. At the time he became leader of this ambitious project to remake the public schools of Chicago, he was 33 years old and a third year associate at a small Chicago law firm, Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland.

This was a big test for him, his chance to cut his teeth on bringing hope and change to the mostly minority inner city school children trapped in Chicago schools. And he flopped big time, squandering lots of money and the time of many public employees in the process.

Meanwhile, so unsavory were Obama’s associations with extreme radicals (and former revolutionaries) Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky that a cover-up, denying media access to Chicago Annenberg Challenge records has been making headlines.

Earlier “Ayers Connection” posting here.

The Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, The Swamp, and even the news-agency-not-to-be-named are all commenting sardonically on the over-up.

The wraps are going to come off. The beans are going to be spilled. What Thomas Lifson calls “the cloak of media invisibility” is beginning to lift.

Rush Limbaugh explains exactly how the democrat party may very possibly have snatched for itself another opportunity for landslide defeat by nominating a leftwing radical with little more than an undistinguished record as a State Senator from a safe-seat minority district for the Presidency on the basis of a single speech.

It is striking how unqualified [Sen. Barack] Obama is and, and how this whole thing came about with, within the Democrat Party. I think it really goes back to the fact that nobody had the guts to stand up and say no to a black guy.” Limbaugh went on to say: “I think this is a classic illustration here where affirmative action has reared its ugly head against them.

It is almost that simple. Obama’s candidacy, of course, also benefited from his personal ability to operate as a pop culture celebrity and his consequent utility as a fashion statement. Alas! he is rapidly becoming so last week. But, there is the consolation, that while while the Obama craze lasted, so many people could be proud of America for the first time.

Former State Representative (54th District Texas, R) Dr. Suzanna Gratia-Hupp testifies before a Senate Committee including Chuck Schumer to her own tragic experience with the consequences of gun control restrictions on law-abiding citizens carrying concealed weapons, and concludes by identifying the most important basis for the Constitutional right of citizens to keep and bear arms.

5:23 video

Hat tip to Rich Duff.

J.R. Dunn, at America Thinker, identifies Obama’s fatal flaw.

Barack Obama will be defeated. Seriously and convincingly defeated. Not due to racism, not due to the forces of reaction, not even due to Karl Rove sending out mind rays over the national cable system. He will lose for one reason above all, one that has been overlooked in any analysis that I’ve yet seen. Barack Obama will lose because he is a flake.

I’m using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a “fool with energy”, as the Russian proverb puts it. ...

Here’s a young man who graduated from Columbia with high marks, with a choice of positions anywhere in the country. He comes from a state generally held to be a close match to Paradise. One, furthermore, that can be characterized as the most successful multiracial society in the world, with harmonious relations not only between whites and blacks, but also Japanese-Americans and native Hawaiians as well. To top it off, a state controlled in large part by a smoothly-functioning Democratic machine. So where does he choose to go?

To Chicago. One of the windiest, coldest, most brutal cities in the country. One that is also infinitely corrupt in a sense that Hawaii is not. One that remains one of the most racist large cities in the U.S. (Cicero, Al Capone’s old stomping grounds, a suburb that is effectively part of the city, is completely segregated to this day.) It would be nice to learn which of these aspects most attracted young Obama to the city. But if you’d asked at the beginning of the campaign, you’d still be waiting.

And what does he do when he reaches the city? Why, he joins a cult. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church has been turned inside out since the videotaped sermons appeared early this year, without anyone ever quite explaining exactly what Obama was thinking of when he joined up in the first place. Street cred, so it’s claimed. But there are a plethora of black churches that would have provided him that without the taint of demented racism that Wright’s church offered. ...

Back at school, Obama got himself named editor of the Harvard Law Review. This is a signal achievement, no question about it. The kind of thing that would be mentioned about a person for the rest of his life, as has been the case with Obama. But then… he writes nothing for the journal.

Now, let’s get this straight: here we have one of the leading university law journals in the country, one widely cited and read. Entire careers in legal analysis and scholarship have been founded on appearances in the Review, including some that have led to the highest courts in the country. Yet here’s an individual who, as editor, could easily place his own work in the journal—standard practice, nothing at all wrong with it. But he fails to do so. And the explanation? There’s none that I’ve heard. We can go even farther than that, to say that there is no explanation that makes the least rational sense.

We follow Obama down to Springfield, where as a state legislator, he voted “present” over 120 times. What this means, as far as I’ve been able to discover, is that he voted “present” nearly as much as he voted “yes” or “no”. ..

We turn eagerly to learn what his term in the U.S. Senate will reveal, only to be disappointed. But it’s not surprising, really. After all, he was only there for 143 days.

And there lies one of the keys to Obama’s rise. David Brooks pointed out in a recent New York Times column that Obama spent too little time in any of his positions to make an impact one way or another. This is what saved him from the normal fate of the flake: he was never around long enough for his errors and strange behavior to catch up with him.

There’s more truth than poetry here, I suspect.

Surprise, surprise.

Last week’s story of the discovery of a deceased Sasquatch in northern Georgia has been debunked. When the block of ice enclosing the alleged body was melted, a rubber Bigfoot suit emerged. California Bigfoot “researchers” claimed they had been deceived and were disappointed. George’s Clayton County Police said they were going to fire the police officer involved.

An unnamed news agency reports.

You can buy your identical Sasquatch suit.
—————————————
Original story.

Did Russia’s invasion of Georgia have an impact?

Zogby:

Republican John McCain has taken a five-point lead over Democrat Barack Obama in the race for President, the latest Reuters/Zogby telephone survey shows.

McCain leads Obama by a 46% to 41% margin.

Can it possibly be that the media’s chosen candidate’s abilities and appeal may have been a trifle overrated? Robert Stacy McCain thinks so.

The mainstream media spent months ignoring the National Enquirer’s scoop about John Edwards’ mistress. Now they’re ignoring a potentially bigger Democratic scandal: The political incompetence of Team Obama.

Sen. Barack Obama’s brain trust of David Axelrod and David Plouffe emerged from the Democratic primary campaign with a reputation for strategic genius. That reputation is deeply entwined with the conventional wisdom among the political press that Obama is a sure thing to win in November.

Since Obama clinched the nomination in June, however, evidence has steadily accumulated that Axelrod and Plouffe—who masterminded the Illinois Democrat’s upset of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton—are out of their league when matched against a Republican in a national election.

Two months ago, on the same day a Newsweek poll showed Obama ahead by 15 points, the Democrat debuted his own personalized presidential seal. That emblem, with its Latin translation of his “Yes, We Can!” motto (“vero possumus”), quickly became an object of derision, symbolizing the overconfidence of a campaign that now finds itself locked in a neck-and-neck contest with 75 days remaining until Election Day.

Not since Frank Mankiewicz and Gary Hart steered George McGovern to the nomination in 1972 has a Democratic presidential campaign committed such laughable blunders. With few exceptions, however, the media ignore the possibility that the Axelrod-Plouffe magic simply won’t work against Republican Sen. John McCain.

And perhaps it was never magic at all.

Says David Brooks.

On Tuesdays, Senate Republicans hold a weekly policy lunch. The party leaders often hand out a Message of the Week that the senators are supposed to repeat at every opportunity. Sometimes there will be a pollster offering data that supposedly demonstrates the brilliance of the message and why it will lead to political nirvana.

John McCain generally spends the lunches at a table with a gang of fellow ne’er-do-wells. He cracks jokes, razzes the speaker and generally ridicules the whole proceeding. Then he takes the paper with the Message of the Week back to his office. He tosses it on the desk of some staffer with a sarcastic comment like: “Here’s your message. Learn it. Love it. Live it.”

This sort of behavior has been part of McCain’s long-running rebellion against the stupidity of modern partisanship. In a thousand ways, he has tried to preserve some sense of self-respect in a sea of pandering pomposity. He’s done it through self-mockery, by talking endlessly about his own embarrassing lapses and by keeping up a running patter on the absurdity all around. He’s done it by breaking frequently from his own party to cut serious deals with people like Ted Kennedy and Russ Feingold. He’s done it with his own frantic and freewheeling style, which was unpredictable, untamed and, at some level, unprofessional.

When McCain and his team set out to win the presidency in 2008, they hoped to run a campaign with this sort of spirit. McCain would venture forth on the back of his bus, going places other Republicans don’t go, saying things politicians don’t say, offering the country the vision of a different kind of politics — free of circus antics — in which serious people sacrifice for serious things.

It hasn’t turned out that way. McCain hasn’t been able to run the campaign he had envisioned. Instead, he and his staff have been given an education by events.

I think Brooks’ analysis of the changing McCain campaign methodology is interesting and enlightening. He’s right that McCain has been gaining good traction at the expense of the Obamessiah.

Brooks, of course is just about as much of a non-meaningfully-conservative RINO as McCain, so he views McCain’s eagerness to double-cross the GOP leadership in favor of his own interest with a sympathy I’m not quite able to muster. I suppose electing a me-too, Eisenhower Republican, in favor of Socialism just like the democrats, only a little less is better than electing an out-and-out Marxist like Barack Hussein Obama, but don’t expect me to vote for him.