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Two teams Texas beat, Oklahoma and Missouri, will play for the Big Twelve championship, and Zero U goes on to the BCS one in Miami. Blame the BCS computers. I suppose we could also blame the Ags for not being ranked? Yeah, that might work.
MORE: Our only hope for Miami now, it seems, is for the Okies to lose to Mizzou. Not much hope.
The Seablogger points to his own and some other recent posts on the logic of Al Q eventually setting off a nuke in D.C. Seems right to me, especially since they have a history of second tries on missed targets and they pretty much failed on their first big D.C. strike in 2001. On the other hand, does the sea-attack "commando" assault on Mumbai, India, not portend a similar strike on the ports of Miami, Boston or San Francisco?
UPDATE: The Jews and Israelis taken hostage in Mumbai were tortured before they were slain.
MORE: More, nonspecific, support for the nuke idea. But the report's lack of specificity regarding the "terrorists" is pathetic.
Banner, flown over Stillwater, OK, during ESPN Game Day, reads: "Texas 45 OU 35 - Settled On A Neutral Field." Doubt it will help, though. We'll find out this afternoon with the new BCS rankings.
Or BCS mix. Anyhow. Nice to see Baylor thrashing Texas Tech 28-14 28-21 at the end of the third quarter in Lubbock. Baylor winning would give the Longhorns a shot at the Big Twelve championship. Then, if Oklahoma loses to Oklahoma State tonight, Texas would still have a shot at the BCS championship, as well. Not likely, I suppose. But then Baylor isn't supposed to be beating Tech. So far. Confusing, to say the least.
UPDATE: Oh, well, nice try Baylor. No more doormat for the Big Twelve. Now it's up to OK State. ;-)
HOWEVER: I notice the ESPN guys saying that it might be better if the Sooners win. For then there'd be a three-way tie in the Big Twelve South, with the highest ranked South team in the BCS playing for the championship. Meaning it would be between Oklahoma and Texas. But... Loved the plane towing the banner over Stillwater today: "Texas 45 OU 35. Settled On A Neutral Field." BCS, take note.
FINAL: Sooners win 61-41, creating a three-way tie for the Big Twelve South winner to be decided by BCS ranking. My guess is that aerial advertising aside, it will be Oklahoma ahead of Texas followed by Tech and thus Oklahoma in the BCS championship as well. Leaving the Fiesta Bowl for the Longhorns.
La Raza's senior veep Cecilia Munoz will be Barry's new director of Intergovernmental Affairs at the White House. Little bit of inside radicalism, it seems, for the open-border crowd while Barry talks moderation for his acolytes in the Big Media. I'm glad someone is keeping up with this stuff.
Not good, says Lower Colorado River Authority meteorologist Bob Rose, and not likely to get better soon:
"Year to date rainfall at Austin-Camp Mabry through Tuesday total[ed] only 15.61 inches, over 15 inches below normal. As of today, 2008 is the 4th driest year on record, dating back to 1856 and is the driest year since 1956! This is a very intense drought, rivaling some of the terrible drought years of the 1950s. And long-range forecasts are not very encouraging for rain going into early 2009."
It is worth pointing out, for Global Warmists and other hysterics, that 1856, when reliable weather records began being kept in the central city, was only one hundred fifty-two years ago. A lot of droughts certainly occurred before then, and some of them undoubtedly were worse than this one.
I've always thought of the gulf as fairly shallow when, in fact, it may be up to more than two miles deep in the southwest off Mexico. This giant squid, apparently of a species family called Magnapinna, with elbow-like tentacles, was videotaped by a Shell Oil company robot vehicle near a drilling site at about a mile and half below the gulf's surface. Worth a look. A still photo here of the unknown species, taken off Hawaii, shows that they do get around.
Via Instapundit.
Good game, with Texas up 21-3 at the half. Colt has taken some hard hits but he keeps coming back for another touchdown. The main question is whether Mack will run up the score. Possibly, for revenge for the last two years of losses to A&M. Or not. We'll see.
UPDATE: Well, I guess you could call 49-9 running it up. But the second string accounted for the last touchdown. I'm still not sure why the Ags wore the 4th ID's patch on their uniforms, just that they did. Colt, the Tuscola Kid, had a great night. He's done all he can do for the Heisman, and the team for the BCS. The rest is up to the voters, the computers and Oklahoma State on Saturday night. ;-)
While Mom makes up Turkey Day goodies a day in advance, and Mr. B. is on a play date in the country with a class friend, I am figuring where best to park tomorrow for us to attend the biennial Texas A&M parade up Congress Avenue to the Capitol of the Fightin' Texas Aggie Band and the Corps of Cadets, particularly the seniors in their senior boots and drawn sabers. Last time we took Mr. B. we missed all but the tag end for failing to find a parking spot close enough to the route. But that was at eight a.m. This one, mercifully, isn't until one p.m. so we should be able to get to it with no problem. The parades are fun to watch, along with all the white-haired Aggie alumni who live here, even if we do root for the Longhorns to win the game.
THURSDAY's UPDATE: Mr. B. enjoyed the band and the Parsons Mounted Cavalry the best. The cav brings up the rear, with the poop scoopers behind them. Great parade as always. You could smell the dry cleaning on those cadet uniforms!
Reality check from Doug Ross @ Journal.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Dems and their state-run media are playing up the stock market jitters (largely over Barry's ascendency) while national output has declined just one half of one percent. But, hey, it's a great time to spend tax money in the name of "job creation," mainly for their buds.
Another software quackware company change, another fouled up registration system. TypePad says I can use my old TypeKey registration i.d. and password. But it's a lie. I cannot. Thus I can't even get into my own comment system here. If you're wondering why I haven't replied to your comment, that's why. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: Still waiting, hours after my email request for "guidance," to get a response from the bozos. Finally heard back, but all they wanted was the error message content. Sent it off and... Still waiting.
MORE: Two days later, on Wednesday, MovableType informs that: "The TypePad Connect team is working on a resolution for this in the application but I don't yet have a timeline for that. We apologize for the issue." Still waiting...
AND: By Friday, the word was to wait a few days more: "We plan to have a resolution for this next week..." But by evening, it was fixed. Whew.
Mr. B.'s car tied for second out of sixty-one cars this afternoon in his Cub Scout pack's annual Pinewood Derby race. Much better than last year when he came in dead last, sixty-sixth out of sixty-six cars--essentially because of a sticky wheel. Better even than his Tiger year when his car came in third out of sixty. We think part of what did it this year was having an optimal, wedge shape, using the same wheels and axles from the third-place car, and arranging it so this year's car had only three wheels touching the track. What cost him first apparently was the weight distribution on the car. Too much in front of the rear axle. No trophies this year, but he got a ribbon.
Oklahoma vaulted past Texas in the USA Today coaches poll today for what USA Today called "style points" in Oklahoma's rout of Texas Tech last night. In that game, the word makes some sense, I suppose. In Florida's humiliation of a lesser opponent, i.e. the Citadel, earlier in the day, it doesn't. Where is there any "style" in crushing an outclassed opponent?
Even Tech didn't deserve to be humiliated when it was plain they were outclassed. Style, to my mind, is Mack Brown's refusal last week to run the score up on Kansas after the Longhorns had them by three touchdowns. Instead, Mack sent in the second string. Now that's style.
I could have asked for a lot more communication with us all on the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, Gitmo, the Patriot Act, etc. George fell on his butt there. Quite inexplicably. Maybe someday we'll find out why. But, in general, as John Weidner lists so well, the fellow I voted for in 2004 will leave office with a lot more accomplished than the partisan Big Media would have you believe--certainly more than his despicable predecessor Slick Wllie who always has communicated well but delivered little but sleeze. All in all, a very tough act for Barry to follow, which Barry is already dropping the ball on by appointing that lying dimwit Hilarity as his secretary of state. If he doesn't want to go down in history as merely the first (half) black man in the White House, he'd better get it together. Not that I care. I want him to be a one-termer.
A majority of the daily's sportswriters expected Oklahoma to win tonight's game, but none of them predicted that Texas Tech would commit suicide. With the Sooners on top 42 to 7 at the half, it certainly looks like the Red Raiders have no way back to a win. Particularly not with a crumbling defense and a struggling offense. At this rate, the Okies will not only crush Tech but vault over Texas in the BCS rankings and run away with the Big Twelve. So Tech has got to come back and even it up.
UPDATE: They couldn't. Sooners won it 65 to 21. Now we wait to see what the BCS computers decide.
You can see in this U.S. News & World Report recent sliming of Sarah just how afraid the Big Media continue to be of her chances in 2012. But it's worth the read for the fisking mockery John Weidner applies to it. No wonder USNWP has had to terminate their print magazine. Time was when they produced a reasonable alternative to the liberal pablum of their competitors. Now they are no different than the rest--all of them declining in circulation and bound to soon follow USNWP's lead.
Victor Davis Hanson, a classics professor, wants high school students to have four years of it:
"...such instruction would do more for minority youths than all the ‘role model’ diversity sermons on Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Montezuma, and Caesar Chavez put together. Nothing so enriches the vocabulary, so instructs about English grammar and syntax, so creates a discipline of the mind, an elegance of expression, and serves as a gateway to the thinking and values of Western civilization as mastery of a page of Virgil or Livy (except perhaps Sophocles’s Antigone in Greek or Thucydides’ dialogue at Melos)."
He's right, of course, though I don't think I'd want to take four years of it. I only had to take one year, in 1960-61, and I still remember how cool it was to translate text so old yet still recognizable in its human concern. My grandmother taught Latin at Southern Methodist University in Dallas in the 1920s. But that was college.
As Shelby Steele has said, no white man could have been elected president on a promise to raise taxes and reintroduce "Great Society" welfare, but white guilt apparently worked to elect a half-black man who was doing it. Job creators, however, still are having trouble with it. They've been signaling their distress since late September when Intrade's bettors began foreseeing Barry's election.
Gov. Sarah Palin? No, the soon to be new U.S. Secretary of State designee Hilarity Clinton. Well, she was shot at in Bosnia. No, wait, that was a lie. She was/is demonstrably a cuckold. Not sure if that will help or hurt.
The barbar said the other day that, try as he might, he couldn't bring himself to root for the Sooners under any circumstances, not even in their game tomorrow night against the Red Raiders of Texas Tech.
An Okie win, the conventional wisdom has it, is the only chance the Longhorns have left to make it into the national championship game--possibly against Florida after the Gators whoop Alabama. But, it seems to me, there's just as big a chance that a victorious Oklahoma would then vault over Texas in the BCS poll, leaving the Longhorns about where they are now, at No. 3, or even a bit lower. So I don't know what to do, other than to watch the game and hope for the best by Sunday evening when the poll comes out. My inclination, like the barbar's, would be to cheer for any Texas team against Oklahoma, but maybe not. We'll see.
Al Gore, call your office. Seems those allegedly "indisputable" climate forecast models lack a reliable estimate of the soil's significant (but very slow) contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide. Meaning global warming predictions are overestimated.
Via Hot Air.
MORE GLOBAL WARMING DEBUNKING: From, of all places, the U.S. Senate.
What a laugher. No science is beyond dispute. Dispute is what science does. Only a pol would say something so stupid.
Via the Seablogger.
Or, rather, the first facillitator of crooks: Barry's apparent nominee for attorney general. Eric Holder, Slick Willie's pardon-adviser. Well, he is black, and all that.
A mosaic of astronomical images by Davide De Martin of Sky Factory, explained here. Via Bad Astronomy.
"The Governor of California has just said that the US is the greatest polluter in the world, which is manifestly untrue on any level."
In politics, distraction is always good. For the politician. Keep your eye on the moving pea.
Folks who think today's politics are particularly vicious should read up on their American history. For instance, once upon a time, especially during slavery days, a speech-giving white politician might suddenly be interrupted by a handful of black children paid by his opponent to rush at him yelling "Daddy! Daddy!"
Nowadays the old slanders are being put to new use. Diversity Inc. magazine is giving away a poster (for a $19.99 one-year subscription) claiming that Barry isn't the first black president but merely joins Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge in the distinction. The proof? Black People and Their Place in World History, a littleknown self-published 2002 book by an amateur historian and professional eye doctor named Leroy Vaughn. Vaughn uses hearsay, mostly from the aforementioned presidents' enemies, to claim they were of mixed race.
Which leads me to the inevitable comment: that Vaughn's and Diversity Inc.'s claim is an obvious case of eyewash.
This traditional fiddler's ditty is described as a "wild melody" in H.W. Brand's 2005 book Andrew Jackson, His Life and Times, which I'm enjoying. It was apparently played for Jackson and his wife, Rachel, to dance to at one of several dinners held in their honor after the defeat of the British at New Orleans in 1814 1815.
Nevermind Barry's cult of personality, it's the global warmists we have to fear. The ones who want to remake our economy to resolve their notion of eco-pocolypse. Though Barry apparently will step up offshore drilling, he is also likely to back the EPA's impending enforcement of carbon dioxide reductions (better hold your breath), and maybe buy up Detroit for the UAW to make teenie, weenie greenie cars. (Just so long as the Dems don't require us to buy them.)
Meanwhile the Seablogger, freshly home from a blogged cruise to the Virgin Islands, sees perfidy behind the recent alleged NASA "blunder" in announcing October as the warmest month ever--when, in fact, it was one of the coolest. Anything to promote the Gorebot cult and Nancy Pelosi's green "recovery," don't you know. Big Media may get its long-touted depression yet if Barry and his party deepen the recession. At least we'd have the pleasure of seeing him voted out after one term. Or is he, perhaps, smarter than that? We're going to find out.
Another chill night at the rancho, which brought out a duet between a Hoot Owl and a Screech Owl, high in the maples of the upper forty a while ago. The cry of the hooty sounds like his name. The cry of the Screech is more bizarre--rather like the repeated whinney of a horse.
For years I quite mistakenly thought the two squat little mortars that guarded either side of the main doors at the south side of the Texas Capitol were the famous Twin Sisters. The ones used to fire handfulls of musket balls, broken glass and busted horseshoes at the Mexican soldados in the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Whatever they were (and I think they were removed during the Capitol renovations in the 1990s), they weren't the "sisters." Texana author Mike Cox reminds me the real ones are still lost, buried somewhere in either Houston or Harrisburg in East Texas at the end of the Civil War. So replicas at the battlefield park are all there are for the present.
Sunday morning's low was only about forty at the rancho, but the airport recorded two degrees below freezing. After a blistering summer, I was looking forward to a mild fall. Instead... Was only thirty-one in the back forty by first light today. Brrrr. All part of what the LCRA's Bob Rose says looks like an early winter. The good part is his forecast of normal fall rain, though we haven't seen it yet.
ONE GOOD THING: LCRA has updated their Hydromet Web site to make the maps easier to read.
The Veterans Day pix below caught my eye last night, reminding me that I'd fallen down on the job, so to speak, and failed to post anything about it back on the date of the event. The pix did that to me because of an email I'd gotten a few hours earlier from the wife of an old Army friend, Chuck Buchana, saying he is recovering from a serious heart attack and a stroke that has left him struggling to fully regain his sight. Chuck was the Signal Corps Vietnam veteran behind our OCS class's reorganization in 2001 and subsequent first reunion at Fort Benning in 2003. There've been two more reunions since then and another is scheduled next summer. So we need you well, Chuck, to make it to the gathering. What would we do without the guy who started it all?
Nice pix via Morgan at House of Eratosthenes.
So far, judging by the transition team, Obamalot looks to be as phony as Barry's lying, illegal fund-raising, vote-frauding campaign: dominated by the lobbyists who he claimed weren't going to dominate. Even his projected appointments are the same-old, same-old. Let's make him a one-termer, okay?
I've tried, but I can't really imagine how the 9-1 Longhorns could lose to the 6-4 Jayhawks. Neither can Mr. B., so he's forsaking the game for cartoons. I am willing to admit that with a) the cold weather in Manhattan, Lawrence, Kan, b) the KU revenge factor, and, especially, c) all the Horns' injuries, particularly Brian Orakpo, that anything's possible. Even if it's no particular contest, I'll enjoy watching Austin's boyz do their Saturday work. Burnt Orange Nation still has the fan forum if you're into that sort of thing. Fun to follow the rants and raves, sometimes.
UPDATE: Texas 14, Kansas 0 at the half. Nice to see Brian is in, after all. KU defense, however, is pretty formidable. Fortunately, so is the Texas D. Saw some sidelines beseeching going on between roommates Colt and Jordan. Wonder what that was about.
FINAL: Texas wins it 35-7. Tough losing Blake Gideon to a possible concussion, though. Later, he checked out okay. No concussion.
It's two years old and, therefore, a little dated. No mention of our success in Iraq or Barry's ascendence to the White House. Nevertheless, Mark Steyn's America Alone is quite a read. Not a pleasant one, mind you, but worth your time and thought. Unless you buy the Religion of Peace la-de-da, in which case you will find it irritating. Or, needless to say, if you are a recent "revert" to Islam. Though, even then, you might find illuminating the extent to which your co-religionists have succeeded in laying the groundwork for the takeover of Europe and growing agitation in the USA.
Seems non-Islamic America still has a replacement birthrate, which non-Islamic Europe and Canada do not. And American evangelical Protestants like Gov. Sarah Palin continue to thrive and increase, unlike Christians of whatever stripe elsewhere in the West. Not that Hollyweird and the multiculti apologists aren't trying to make soft secularists of us all, just that they aren't succeeding. While the West's fastest-growing religion is Islam, which can reasonably hope to someday outlaw the infidel whores of Hollyweird, and all the feminists and gays. Ironic that, so far, only the evangelicals and conservatives are holding back the hoardes of the Dark Ages. But for how long? About as long as us non-Muslims keep making babies who have the will to resist.
The educators are supposed to be the enlightened ones. So why are they so ill-informed?
Parents at Mr. Boy's elementary school have been advised to "take extra precautions" after four teens robbed a couple in their apartment last night across from the local high school.
The high school's written alert, passed on to us by the elementary school's PTA, locked down the high school's campus for the day. It says the armed robbers were men. The police told the news media they were in their late teens. The alert makes it sound like the robbery was a random act of violence. The police say the victims knew their assailants.
The PTA prefaces email distribution of the high school's alert this way:
"Please take extra precautions. Keep doors locked at all times, keep an eye on your children when they are playing outside, note and report all suspicious persons or activities."
This would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic.
Independent correspondent Michael Yon on Bush's major achievement with little to no Dem help:
"I'm with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I'm with haven't fired their weapons on this tour and they've been here eight months. And the place we're at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there's nothing going on."
Glad to see our troops did it before Barry and Hairplugs Joe could foul it up. The Afghan campaign will be enough for them.
The Hubble Space Telescope has made the first visible-light snapshot of a planet orbiting another star: Fomalhaut b circles the bright southern star Fomalhaut, just twenty-five light-years away in the constellation Piscis Australis, the "Southern Fish."
Time for a little fractured Jewish prayer via Miss Celenia.
Amusing little article here in Columbia Journalism Review followed by even more amusing comments.
The top half of the comments are the usual remarks from the usual crowd of Big Media players or wannabees, fiddling around as though nothing much is happening to the craft other than a vexing problem of layoffs and declining profits. The bottom half is the angry audience, lured to the site by Instapundit. They are burning (and sometimes a little shrill) to let the fiddlers know that their Barrymania is going to lead to far more losses. Indeed, it may be too late to turn it around even if the fiddlers were inclined to play a new, objective tune. Assuming they still have the chops for objectivity, which is doubtful.
UPDATE: Indeed, the lickspittle reporting continues, as Iraq suicide bombings become "progress" on Barry's watch.
"Doesn't this look like the most fun day ever?" -- Squidward.
I would prefer to see her run for president in 2012, but this also makes a certain amount of sense.
Alhough it would be best for her to ignore the alleged (always anonymous) insiders twisting the knife the pro-Barry Big Media put in her back, continue to be a good governor, add to her political accomplishments, write a bestselling memoir, and form a SarahPAC to raise money for conservative candidates in 2010.
Whatever the sixty-six million who voted for Barry think of her, we in the fifty-eight million who voted for Mac are impressed. And by 2012, at least nine million more could be well fed up with him.
Hope you can read the key. We are only in moderate drought, which is unusual considering this has been the sixth driest January thru October, at 14.95 total inches of rain at Camp Mabry, since 1856.
Jules Crittenden, in using the phrase "tar baby" to describe how the economy is likely to affect Barry's manoeuvreability on other issues, feels the need to asterisk it and explain:
"* Tar baby: traditional American saying for something attractive that you grab and gets stuck all over you. Mistaken by morons in recent years for a racial pejorative."
Are we beyond all this tortured manipulation of language now, Br'er Rabbit, here in fabled Obamalot I mean, or has that much really changed?
Via Instapundit.
Via Doug Ross @ Journal.
Disney's incredibly inept coverup is finally, sadly, but voluminously (and, indeed, artfully) exposed.
At least in the BCS, where it counts! The computers continue to love us. For now. Unless Tech loses to Oklahoma on Nov. 22, No. 3 is where the Longhorns will sit through the end of the season. Then, if Florida, as expected, beats Bama, Tech will be No. 1 and Florida will be No. 2 and they will play for the championship in Miami. Then all that No. 3 will be worth will be a bowl game. The only hope, I suppose, would be that Tech would have to play Missouri for the Big 12 championship--and might lose then. But that's unlikely at the moment. That Missouri could beat Tech, I mean.
UPDATE: The daily's Suzanne Halliburton reminds that, if Tech loses one before the end of the season, the Big 12 South team with the highest ranking in the BCS would play for the conference championship--which could be the Longhorns. But, at this point, that's a big if.
Barry's apparent aim to force middle and high school students to do federally-supervised community service is still in the planning stages. The details continue to be left purposely vague, even to the extent of more of his campaign's airbrushing of previous Web disclosures. I suppose it will be some form of selective service, minus the selective part. Unless some animals on the farm are to be more equal than others, as the old military draft worked it. Sounds so progressive, why, how could anyone complain? Only, you know, the lazy and the anti-social. Will the children get nice armbands, too?
His Holland America cruise ship has "a nice deep sea heave," Alan Sullivan reports, as he sails into hurricane weather out of Miami. The water in the upper deck swimming pools is "jumping and sliding like limbo dancers." He had to pay one hundred dollars for two hundred fifty minutes of Web connection time via satellite, so he's limited in what he can do. But he's already promising photos soon. Click on the blog title at the top of the page to check for the latest post.
UPDATE: A nautical tracking map shows where his ship, the Noordam, is at the moment.
Barry's already planning to throw about $50 billion in tax money at the incompetent makers of crummy cars too few people want to buy, even though they just opened a new plant in St. Petersburg. Not Florida. Russia.
I didn't take this game seriously, so I forgot about posting on it. The halftime score of 28-14 conceals how well Baylor is playing, particularly their QB Robert Griffin who sure can run and pass. Colt's two interceptions are not going to help his Heisman campaign. Burnt Orange Nation still has the best fan forum.
UPDATE: Final 45-21 was not surprising. Pity backup Texas QB John Chiles had a good TD run called back for a penalty not of his making.
Hey, Barry did compare himself to JFK--minus the military service, war-hero part, of course:
"The terrorists won’t bother us again
Because everyone on Earth is now our friend
Charisma he has lots
Specifics he has not
But happily we really don’t care here
In Obamalot."
Chuckle.
Via Don Suber.
"...let your children overhear you saying complimentary things about them to other adults," is a bit of wisdom I've decided to try that comes from Treppenwitz in Israel, in an essay worth a read for the other good ideas as well.
President-elect Barry backtracks a bit on Iran at his first news conference since the election:
"Iran's development of a nuclear weapon I believe is unacceptable. And we have to mount a international effort to prevent that from happening. Iran's support of terrorist organizations I think is something that has to cease."
No talk at all of welcoming the loudmouth Iranian dictator to the White House. But these are still early days.
MORE: Barry's apologizing already for a careless joke. That was fast.
"Sucking up to a black politician does not mean that you are colorblind," says the subhead on this delightful analysis at National Review Online, a conservative publication the Dems' proposed assault on conservative talk radio will not affect, unless they try to repeal the First Amendment.
Indeed, we've been through this before. In the 1980s when Jesse Jackson ran for the Dem nomination, and again about ten years later when Gen. Colin Powell was touted by insiders for the Rep nomination. Jackson lost, Powell declined to run (and now we know why, he wasn't a conservative).
Not to mention the Rep appointment of two black secretaries of state, though only Powell was celebrated. Condoleeza Rice was villified even by some American Africans (my preferred locution).
It's touching to see some American Africans get emotional at Barry's election. But Big Media's claim that only now could a black man have been elected is the usual liberal blather. I wish that Barry was descended from American Africans, as Jackson, Powell and Rice are. Instead he's the first Kenyan-American elected president (his Kenyan father never became a citizen). That's not nearly the same thing as an election finally resolving America's racial past and continuing combustion, as Barry's cult would have us believe. It's also sad that the first black man elected president is a dishonest radical more skilled at speechifying, breaking campaign finance laws, and promoting vote fraud than anything else.
If Barry was a white Republican, this would be obvious and the subject of much Big Media complaint. Instead, silence is the rule, and on to the gala inauguration. So much for campaign finance reform.
Via NewsMax.
Ann Coulter nails it, as usual:
"We have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president."
Don't all get in line at once, now. Take your turns. We've got four years, after all.
Via Sonia-Belle.
Miriam, a librarian, after all, summons William Butler Yeats for a poetic reaction to Barry's ascendence:
"...what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"
Ouch.
Well, maybe they did back in the days of green eyeshades. I can remember a lot of uncorrected mistakes in the '80s and '90s. They certainly don't hasten to balance their obvious bias anymore. Like most of the nation's newsrooms, AP is staffed by liberals who vote Democrat. How could they not be when the journalism schools are liberal and a journalism degree has become the entry requirement?
Fox's Hannity says Big Media's obvious Barry-bias in the campaign just departed signified "the death of journalism," as in its credibility. But did it ever have any? Journalists have long been even less popular than lawyers. My old colleague Pantrypuff defends such partisan reporting as natural emotional involvement, but adds that newsrooms do not encourage innovation. They certainly don't encourage political balance, either, despite pretending to be objective.
Via Lileks.
UPDATE: MSNBC, still in Barry's bag. They can't help themselves. It just comes bubbling out. And that's why this media analyst thinks Big Media's influence over presidential elections is over.
Steven Den Beste, who I think of as the dean of conservative realists in the blogosphere, pretty much speaks for me:
"I think Obama is going to turn out to be the worst president since Carter, and for the same reason: good intentions do not guarantee good results. Idealists often stub their toes on the wayward rocks of reality, and fall on their faces. And the world doesn't respond to benign behavior benignly. But there's another reason why: Obama has been hiding his light under a basket. A lot of people bought a pig in a poke today, and now they're going to find out what they bought. Obama isn't what most of them think he is. The intoxication of the cult will wear off, leaving a monumental hangover."
The gullible are congratulating Barry for "his brilliant campaign." They are presuming, against all evidence, that he will govern as a bi-partisan centrist. They've already forgotten the fellow who flipped the bird to Hillary and Mac, and called Sarah a pig. Who helped ACORN commit vote fraud, intentionally gathered illegal foreign contributions, and etc., ad nauseum.
But me, I'm going to skip derangement and just look askance, stop writing about politics unless it affects me personally, as in whether Barry's coming tax and electricity hikes actually cost me money. Otherwise, I'm going to get back to the original war-supporting, eclectic intentions of this blog.
I'm taking my Holiday from History. Adios. Good luck. You're going to need it.
UPDATE: Well, that's a promise I'm not likely to able to keep. And to give the devil his due, here's a transcript of Barry's victory speech which I finally got around to reading. It's very Democrat, with all the historical Democrat tropes familiar to supporters of FDR and Truman, Carter and Clinton. Maybe he means it. We're going to find out.
The novelty act was voted best of show. Good grief.
It will be fascinating to read of Rev. Wright leading future prayer breakfasts at the White House, while expounding on his theories of the differences between white and black brains. Not to mention Minister Farrakhan's bow-tied Fruit of Islam on the rope line.
I suppose the F.O.I. will form the backbone of Barry's proposed federal civilian militia. Something tells me they won't be operating in Texas, not if they value their lives. I suppose we can look forward to unrepentent terrorist Bill Ayers (the Obama family babysitter) receiving the Medal of Freedom for his bravery in cop-killing and Pentagon bombing so long ago. He has dedicated his new book to Sirhan Sirhan, RFK's assassin, which should please his acolyte Barry enormously. What will Hugo Chavez and Mamoud the Mad get? Besides state dinners, rides in the presidential helicopter, and salutes from the (choke) U.S. Marines?
This is going to be a strange and, potentially quite bitter, four years with the nation's first radical president whose bizarre attitudes will come clear, as someone said, when the pixie dust wears off. Former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a notorious anti-Semite whose political machine taught Barry much of what he knows of politics, including how to get around the campaign contribution laws, is probably sitting up in his grave wondering whether to cheer or spit. His machine finally took the White House, but at what cost?
As the Seablogger says, I hope the Secret Service works overtime to protect Barry. The thought of a President Biden, who is not a radical but is a fully-fledged moron, is even more fearful.
Bobby Jindal is now the best Republican hope for 2012. In the new person-of-color-game we'll trade ours for yours. At least ours has executive experience and loves his country. Sarah's another good choice. Or both--if Bobby'll take veep. ;-)
Mac's final internal polling numbers:
PA: MCCAIN 52%, Obama 40%, Undecided 6%
NJ: Obama 47%, McCain 45%, Undecided 7%
MI: McCain 45%, Obama 44%, Undecided 7%
VA: McCain 53%, Obama 42%, Undecided 3%
CO: McCain 50%, Obama 44%, Undecided 4%
MO: McCain 49%, Obama 42%, Undecided 7%
FL: McCain 52%, Obama 44%, Undecided 3%
Via Texas Hill Country.
Prediction from HillBuzz, a P.U.M.A. still angry enough at Barry to vote for Mac:
"...young voters are the Holy Grail of election delusions, because every Democrat, every election, claims 'young people love me and will come out in record numbers to vote for me!' Well, let us just tell you that early voting ended today [Oct. 31] in Chicago. In our building, there is a suite full of about 6 frat boys who sometimes stop us in the laundry room to talk politics. They are all hot DePaul hockey players, so we are glad to chat them up any time they want. All of them said they were going to vote for Obama, and all of them forgot to early vote. All of them have class and work on Tuesday. We honestly believe all 6 of these guys are going to forget to vote on Election Day — and the polling station for our neighborhood is literally one street away. We think this will happen not just with the hot hockey players in our building, but in many other buildings in Chicago, and in cities across the US."
Heh. Good luck with the youth vote, Barry.
P.S. from HillBuzz: "Don’t be Eeyores on Tuesday! Get those Eeyore butts off your couches, away from toxic TV, and GO VOTE."
P.P.S. from me: Despite living in a neighborhood near abundant apartments filled with college students, I saw not a single one this morning when I went to vote. Just us old folks and no lines at all. I did stand out for not having on sandals and tie-dye, but 'twas nary a youth in sight. Heh.
Oh, yeah, that'll win votes in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Colorado, etc. Really, really smart.
Mac's sending an AIM 9 up his tailpipe on this one, however.
And while Barry's working over coal, he plans to force your electric bill through the roof. Gotta save the whales from the global warming fantasy, ya know.
All this jabber about the socialism Barry will bring if he's elected is more than a bit silly. He might bring more welfare programs, it's true, but all he can do is add to what's already here, and that's plenty: Social Security. Medicare. Medicaid. The sacrosanct Farm Subsidies that keep agribusiness, not family farmers, in the chips. What are they if not socialism, be it with a small or a capital s?
Nevertheless, for reasons of his radical politics, campaign donation fraud, and thuggish associates, I hope Barry loses today. I did my part this morning, voting straight Republican. Not that that's likely to have any effect on liberal Dem Austin, or on Republican Texas, but it will help add to Mac's popular vote total.
For once I can't argue with the BCS computers, which only dropped Texas to No. 4. I could wish that Tech had risen to No. 1 instead of merely No. 2. Making Alabama No. 1 seems a little silly, considering their win Saturday was over an unranked team. But they've got LSU up next, so who knows how long they'll stay up there. Tech has OK State to contend with. Texas has Baylor, the doormat of the Big 12. Most years.
Cylindrical magnetic passageways about the width of Earth, depicted here with a measuring satellite in the foreground, open and close between Earth and the Sun every eight minutes. They allow tons of high-energy particles to flow one-way across ninety-three million miles as they form above the equator and then roll over the poles.
Satellites have flown through them, measured their dimensions and sensed the particles flowing past. Now scientists are studying the portals to see how they work and what they do. Among the unanswered questions: why do they form every eight minutes? Here's betting they affect our climate a lot more than carbon dioxide does.
Possibly the best, via Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online, in a remark about Reagan:
"Reagan spent his entire life standing up to the bully. From boyhood on, he interposed himself between the bully and the innocent. He stood up to the bullies in his schools. He stood up to the Communists in Hollywood, and to the coercive unions. He stood up to the student radicals and their abettors. He stood up to the Soviets. He simply stood up.
"In the world today are a lot of bullies to stand up to: al-Qaeda, the mullahs, the North Koreans, the Chinese Communists, the Castro brothers, Chávez. John McCain will almost certainly do it. Barack Obama will almost certainly not."
Posting will be minimal, if any, for a while. My DSL modem is on the fritz. AT&T has promised to come Monday and check the line, if not necessarily replace the modem. The thing's warranty is out, and it seems to be the major difficulty, so I hope they replace it.
If not, I may consider switching ISPs, though that would be a major hassle and AT&T has provided good service up to now. We think a thunderstorm a couple of weeks ago, which knocked out the landline service (which contains the DSL connection) may have been the culprit here. The techs said the line was the victim of a power surge. We were thinking about having the landline disconnected anyhow. We use the cell phones most of the time.
ADDENDUM: Yes, we were disappointed by last night's Texas loss to Texas Tech. But Tech, a longtime in-state rival, played a great game and deserves to be No. 1, even if the BCS computers don't agree. The Horns also beat themselves, with too many dropped passes (and one almost-interception), costly penalties, an OL that couldn't stop Tech's D, etc. Hope Texas stays in the top five. They'll be back.
