JASON DAVIS EMAILS: “McCain has a ready made commercial from Hank Williams Jr. He could simply run this unedited against Obama and watch the votes roll in from the key battleground states.” Well, possibly.
UPDATE: Reader Matt Johnson recommends this song: “I admit Hanks song is perfect commentary on Obama’s gaffe. A little more contemporary is Trace Adkins’s ‘Songs about me’ — while I would bet a million dollars that nearly everyone one of Obama’s bitter constituents would say hell yeah that song is about me, I can imagine Obama wouldn’t have the first idea what in the world Trace is talking about.”
OBAMA ON HILLARY: “She’s talking like she’s Annie Oakley! Hillary Clinton’s out there like she’s on the duck blind every Sunday, she’s packin’ a six shooter! C’mon! She knows better. . . . I want to see that picture of her out there in the duck blinds.”
MICKEY KAUS: “Hillary Clinton had apparently stopped losing ground in PA polls before Obama’s ‘cling’ fling in Frisco. It’s a bit unfair to say that ‘Obama had been gaining ground until …,’ though I think I’ve heard that nascent myth being spread at least three times today. … P.S.: Obama’s lead on Rasmussen (11 points a week ago) has gone and disappeared. Note that the slide began pre-gaffe.”
WHAT HILLARY WISHES SHE COULD SAY: “She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naïve Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps won’t tell the story. . . . Obama has serious problems with Jewish voters (goodbye Florida), working class whites (goodbye Ohio) and Hispanics (goodbye, New Mexico.) Republicans will also ruthlessly exploit openings that Clinton—in the genteel confines of an intra-party contest—never could. Top targets: Obama’s radioactive personal associations, his liberal ideology, his exotic life story, his coolly academic and elitist style.”
CONFESSIONS OF A BIONIC MAN: “In 2005, I got new software that made music sound brighter and clearer. The software’s improved frequency resolution enabled me to distinguish between tones that had sounded identical before. It was a simple upload; no surgery was necessary. . . . I’ve gotten used to the idea of having a quarter of a million transistors in my head — now it’s just part of my normal life. I boot myself up in the morning, and when my transmitter attaches itself magnetically to my implant, it takes only a second or two for it to begin sending data.”
Just don’t tell the Robophobes among us! It’s best to “pass” whenever you can.
HMM: Hurricane Expert Reassesses Link to Warming. “The new study, in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, is hardly definitive in its own right, essentially raising more questions than it resolves. But it definitely rolls back his sense of confidence about a recent role for global warming.” Of course, now that we know global temperatures are down from their 1998 peak, the relative paucity of hurricanes over the past couple of years makes sense . . . .
UPDATE: Brendan Loy has comments, and emphasizes this passage:
This should put to rest a lot of the nonsense about a global warming conspiracy among scientists. Emanuel, faced with new evidence, has moderated his viewpoint. That’s what responsible scientists do, and most are responsible. The amount of scientist-bashing when it comes to global warming is generally quite deplorable.
The journalists, as usual, are less responsible than the scientists — though in fact, some of the public spokescientists have gotten ahead of the science, and others at least have muted any criticism of, say, Al Gore’s stretching of the truth. When you allow your work to be politicized, politics follow.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Eric Soskind emails:
I think you said: I’ll treat it like a crisis when the people who keep telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.
The latest example, in Maryland:
Feb. 19, 2008:
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (expressing support for a bill requiring Maryland to reduce emissions by 90%):
“The climate crisis is real, and we must act now to reduce global climate change…”
“Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) announced yesterday morning that he will bar commercial wind turbines from state-owned land.”
Yeah. It’s as if they only take the problem seriously when they want to raise taxes or something.
PUNGENT THOUGHTS ON TAXES, from Rachel Lucas. I think we should move Election Day to April 16. It would make a difference!
A BIG FAT BEER TAX IN CALIFORNIA. Reaction: “Do the Democrats want to throw Califreakinfornia to the Republicans?” 30 cents a bottle is nothing to sneeze at.
What would happen if a person charged with murder ended up before a tax court judge?
No doubt it would have many repercussions — a review of how prisoners are handled in the court house, most likely, and certainly the accused would be sent back to await trial before a criminal court.
It is unlikely that the judge would issue a ruling saying: “I have not heard any evidence, but the accused sure looks guilty — and there are a lot of other killers out there just like him.”
But that is just what happened this week in Ontario.
Except that you have to be smart to be a Tax Court judge. And more here:
The Ontario Human Rights Commission seems to like it both ways.
It declines to prosecute columnist Mark Steyn for an allegedly Islamophobic piece published in Maclean’s, as its legislative mandate doesn’t cover publications.
Then, its chief commissioner Barbara Hall calls Steyn’s article an example of how media portrayals of Muslims made “Islamophobic” attitudes more prevalent, “including an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of their religious beliefs and practices. . . . Explicit expression of Islamophobia further perpetuates and promotes prejudice towards Muslims . . .”
It’s as though the witchfinder-general has identified the witch, but with no pyre upon which to burn him, is thereby aggrieved.
Poor old Steyn. If his case had gone to a tribunal, he wouldn’t have had much of a defence: Human rights tribunals don’t regard truth, or fair comment. But, he could have raged against the proceedings with his customary wit.
In this drive-by mugging, his response isn’t even a matter of official record.
And here’s more from The Toronto Sun: “We have a different suggestion for Premier Dalton McGuinty. Premier, isn’t it time your government reined these folks in?”
I’m glad to see the Canadian media focusing on the thuggishness of these so-called “human rights” commissions. The witch-hunt analogy seems about right. In fact, I believe I’ve found the model for the “human rights” commissions.
Of course, according to Nicholas Kristof, it’s all because of global warming: “Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches.” Forecast? It’s already starting!
What Obama implicitly regards (in both his statements) as signs of disintegration, as reflections of popular frustration, are in fact examples of a thriving culture. . . . Yet Obama’s approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.
SO I JUST FINISHED MICHAEL CHABON’S The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and it was, well, okay. Given all the great reviews it’s gotten, I was a bit disappointed. The premise is interesting — the founding of Israel failed in 1948, and the U.S. offered a chunk of the Alaska panhandle as a substitute homeland — but Chabon doesn’t really do much with that, considering. Has the Alaska setting changed the people who move there? Not a lot, it seems, or at least Chabon doesn’t show us beyond relatively minor occasional references. Anyway, it’s not bad, but I couldn’t help but think that Harry Turtledove could have done a lot more with the setting. It was one of those books I picked up and put down over a couple of weeks, not one that sucked me into the story. But if you follow the link and look at the reviews you’ll see that a lot of people liked it more than I did.
Her lower lip bulging from a dip of Skoal, Sen. Clinton put her Bible in her handbag, and drew out her own Para Ordnance Warthog .45 caliber pistol.
As reporters looked on, the Democrat presidential candidate emptied one 10-round magazine after another, with fair accuracy, at a human silhouette target.
It’s actually easy to picture Hillary as a good shot, though I would expect something more like a Walther PPK/s.
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