WHILE THE GOVERNMENT FIDDLES WITH THE BALLOTS, here are the numbers on Zimbabwe’s meltdown. They’re pretty grim.
Archive for 2008
March 30, 2008
OUCH: “Clinton Pushes Housing Market Fixes As Campaign Manager Sits on Board of Bankrupt Lender.” Do read the whole thing, as it explains a lot.
UPDATE: A McCain connection, too.
BLOGGER CLAYTON CRAMER is running for state senate with an Army of Davids approach.
SO I WONDERED why the Vatican was pushing the story that Muslims outnumber Catholics. But then I saw this column by Spengler and it started to make sense.
UPDATE: Related item here.
SAN FRANCISCO show-and-tell.
The lights on the suspension cables of the western side of one of the busiest bridges in the world are just for decoration, not for navigation safety or whatever. They sure make a big difference to the look of San Francisco at night when they are turned off.
Question: Turning off these decorative lights for an hour saves enough electricity to power Al Gore’s house (his actual house, not his San Francisco condo SOMA that’s visible on the right) for how many minutes?
Answer: About 13 minutes. Let’s work on that math, after the jump.
Amusing.
DAVE HARDY: “Who’d ever have dreamed that someday the two leading Democratic presidential candidates would be claiming they supported the Second Amendment individual right? . . . I’ve been involved in this issue for decades, and so have a long term view. It’s been steadily downhill for the other side.”
BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple news. Mac Minis as substitutes for Apple TV, MacBook Air as a Windows machine, and replacing those boring flag lapel pins with Apple-key lapel pins!
AND YET THE PLAN SEEMED FOOLPROOF:
A pizza deliveryman told Des Moines police that he shot a man who robbed him at gunpoint when he delivered a pie late Thursday to a south-side address.
The alleged assailant, Kenneth Jimmerson, 19, was taken to Mercy Medical Center in serious condition. He was charged this morning with first-degree robbery and will be taken to Polk County Jail when released from the hospital, police said.
Melanie Stout, 18, the woman who placed the order for the pizzas, was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery.
Pizza delivery guys are doing God’s work. People who try to rob them deserve to be shot. Meanwhile, Pizza Hut has suspended the driver.
UPDATE: Thoughts from Dr. Weevil.
MORE ON OBAMA’S SELF-INVENTION: Obama keeps bending space and time regarding his biographical details, which is a problem for a guy who’s made his biography such a centerpiece of his campaign.
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Women Push Back in Support of Clinton: “Amid mounting calls from top Democrats for Clinton to step aside and clear the path for rival Barack Obama, strategists are warning of damage to the party’s chances in November if women – who make up the majority of Democratic voters nationwide, but especially the older, white working-class women who’ve long formed the former first lady’s base – sense a mostly male party establishment is unfairly muscling Clinton out of the race.”
IF TRUE, THIS IS UPSETTING: Amazon Insists Publishers Use Their On-Demand Printer. More here.
We’re certainly seeing Amazon move outside its traditional role as distributor and retailer.
Much, much more on this subject at The Daily Brief.
ZIMBABWE UPDATE: Mugabe apparently faces major defeat in Zimbabwe. Only if he runs out of fake ballots.
UPDATE: “Robert Mugabe’s Defeat Cannot Be Covered Up.” Plus, in South Africa, “Our Silence Is Deafening.” And, from The Guardian’s Chris McGreal in Harare: “Mugabe clings on despite election defeat.”
HILLARY: Not quitting.
A DIARIST AT MYDD IMAGINES general-election attack ads against Obama. “If we choose Obama as our nominee, we are locked-in to this narrative. There is no going back, no bogus NBC polls to save the day. No Anderson Cooper softball interviews or phony charges of racism that will rescue us.” Their mashup doesn’t quite ring true to me, but I suspect it will create a stir among Democrats.
UPDATE: Editorial suggestions.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Ed Morrissey: “It’s interesting to note that MyDD employed 9/11 footage that even the networks haven’t used for years — namely, the people jumping to their deaths in the minutes before the collapse. We finally get to see that again, and only in the context of one Democratic blogger attacking a Democratic candidate. . . . The ‘GOP will use it’ argument simply serves as a dodge for an attack on Obama over the Wright Stuff.”
MORE: Via the comments at the MyDD post — where the Obama backers are quite upset — here’s another homemade anti-Obama ad, though I’m not sure of its provenance. But it’s already gotten 439,000 views.
STILL MORE: An email from a guy who says he’s the MyDD diarist. Click “read more” to read it. And a reader sends this bit of lefty unhappiness with Obama, too.
EDWARDS PRAISES BOTH CLINTON AND OBAMA: Interesting photo. (Via Internet Scofflaw).
THIS IS A BIT AWKWARD: “The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit confirmed Thursday the entire Detroit office has been recused from the Al-Hanooti case, but officials would not say why. The case is instead being handled by government lawyers from Washington, D.C. The indictment alleges that an ex-Iraqi Intelligence Service officer asked a former official with the Life for Relief — Muthanna Al-Hanooti — to publicize the damage of U.S. sanctions. As part of that, the indictment alleges, Al-Hanooti helped organize a trip to Iraq by a congressional delegation. Al-Hanooti allegedly received a potentially lucrative oil contract from Saddam’s regime in return for his services.”
A MICKEY KAUS NIGHTMARE? Only if the shirts are designed by Chris Bangle.
A boy in his mid-teens learned Wednesday afternoon that it is not a good idea to try to rob a former U.S. Marine at knifepoint, even if the former Marine is 84 years old, police said today.
Santa Rosa police Sgt. Steve Bair said that’s what happened around 2 p.m. in the 1600 block of Fourth Street. The elderly man was walking with a grocery bag in each arm when the boy approached him with a large knife, Bair said.
The boy said, “Old man, give me your wallet or I’ll cut you,” Bair said. The man told the boy he was a former Marine who fought in three wars and had been threatened with knives and bayonets, Bair said.
The man then put his bags on the ground and told the boy that if he stepped closer he would be sorry. When the boy stepped closer, the man kicked him in the groin, knocking him to the sidewalk, Bair said. The ex-Marine picked up his grocery bags and walked home, leaving the boy doubled over, Bair said.
Perhaps this will divert the young man from a life of crime.
UPDATE: Okay, the story says he’s a Marine, but this video has him as an alumnus of the 101st Airborne. Since he’s wearing a Screaming Eagles hat, I think that’s likely to be right. Do reporters not know the difference?
JOE LIEBERMAN: “I say that the Democratic Party changed. The Democratic Party today was not the party it was in 2000. It’s not the Bill Clinton-Al Gore party, which was strong internationalists, strong on defense, pro-trade, pro-reform in our domestic government. It’s been effectively taken over by a small group on the left of the party that is protectionist, isolationist and basically will –and very, very hyperpartisan. So it pains me. I’m a Democrat who came to the party in the era of President John F. Kennedy. It’s a strange turn of the road when I find among the candidates running this year that the one, in my opinion, closest to the Kennedy legacy, the John F. Kennedy legacy, is John S. McCain.”
Related thoughts here.
STOP-LOSS ORDERS: Saving vets from the hellish civilian economy!
“A DAD IS MORE THAN A PAYCHECK.” Indeed.
PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Jacob Sullum writes:
On Friday March 21, a House Appropriations Committee Web site was so overwhelmed by legislators’ wish lists that it crashed, forcing the committee to extend the deadline for earmark requests until Monday. Most members of Congress seem to think the problem with earmarks is like the problem with the committee’s server: not any particular person’s demands, just all of them together. . . .
On the face of it, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain, and the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, take a different view: All three supported a one-year moratorium on earmarks that the Senate recently rejected by a wide margin. But only Mr. McCain has taken a principled stand against the pet projects that legislators love to slip into spending bills.
“We Republicans came to power in 1994 to change government,” Mr. McCain told the Riverside, Calif., Press Enterprise last year, “and the government changed us. That’s why we lost the election: We began to value power over principle.”
Well, he’s got that right.