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Nightly Ramble: Got the Blu’s? Sarkozy, It’s Just Words,(And His Wife), Kosovo, And More

  • The Jawas say [1] Toshiba‘s given up on HD-DVD, and Sony will win this one with their Blu-Ray.. I dunno, after they lost on Beta, I guess it makes sense. The difference being this time quality at the consumer end, and not production costs, were the motivator.(And yes, I still have a Beta machine in my quiver, here) Personally, I wonder how that standard is going to work in computers. I’ve not looked closely at it, but I suppose I’d better.
  • I see Sarkozy has France with it’s turbans in a twist over his plan [2] to have government school kids study 11,000 Jewish children who were holocaust victims?  Now why do you suppose that would bother them? See, I doubt it bothers many French people. But the recent Islamic influx is here the rub lies, and Sarkozy is dealing with it correctly, I think.  Clever man, that Sarkozy.
  • Do we really care that Barrack Obama is ripping off speeches of people whom he’s like to be pictured as? And by the way, Careful, there, Hillary [3]…lest people start examining YOUR speeches.
  • And why do we care what Obama’s wife has to say? [4] Still, I suppose JPod [5] nails it well.

    …it suggests the Obama campaign really does have its roots in New Class leftism, according to which patriotism is not only the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the first refuge as well — that America is not fundamentally good but flawed, but rather fundamentally flawed and only occasionally good. There’s something for John McCain to work with here.

    (Bolding is mine) Yeah, well, if McCain understands the need, and the difference between his new leftism, and theirs. Meantime, I suppose we oughta let her enjoy it; it won’t last long.

  • OK, so everyone else knows by now that Kosovo has declared itself an independent country. It even made the White House feed [6], yesterday. I wonder if this will be another problem with Extremist Islam? I note Serbia’s ambassador got recalled from the US for our recognition of Kosovo’s independence. I’m not convinced that Serbia’s annoyance with this will amount to much, in the long run.
  • Pakistan’s election [7] looks to be in the hands of Benazir Bhutto‘s party. I wonder, though if they really understand what they’re asking for.
  • New feeds on my list to add, (but not yet installed) include The State Dept, Defense Link, NASA, The Congressional Budget office, USDOT, the Federal Reserve, the FCC, The Navy, the Marines, the DOD, (Yes, David, still looking for the Air Force) The Census, The FDA, and a few more. You’ll notice a leaning toward governmental sources, here. The big reason for this is copyright law.  It’s not under copyright restrictions. Within that framework, I’m trying to use feeds which you’ll actually find useful. I’m starting to notice traffic on those pages already. A few inbound links…(Likley automated) and about 40 hits from sources that obviously came in from Google Searches. Which is what I intended. I note it’s taking at least a couple hours per group of feeds, to install.  The VOA feeds took two hours, mostly because of the sheer numbers.  It’ll take away from my posting time, to some degree, initially, but I think it’ll be worth the effort. An amazing bit of software, is WordPress, made moreso by it’s plugins, without which I’d not be able to do any of this.  As you may imagine, I’m doing backups more frequently due to all the added structure, so that takes time, too.  I have it flow restricted so you don’t notice when I’m doing it, which means a single backup of the PHP and the database takes around 3 hours total each time. Lately, this has been happening a few times per day. At the rate we’re going though, this place will be downright huge, come spring.
  • By way of Boortz, I note RCP has a note up by Ruben Navarette. [8]

    SAN DIEGO — Defeat has a way of unmasking Hillary Clinton. It’s when she suffers setbacks that the real Hillary comes out.And it’s not a kinder and gentler version of the original. There are those political observers and pundits who insist that after Clinton lost Iowa, she demonstrated a personal vulnerability that helped her triumph in New Hampshire.

    That is — to borrow a phrase — a fairy tale. When Hillary loses, she gets angry and condescending and terribly unappealing.
    The same goes for her supporters. Former President Bill Clinton’s “bubba eruptions” came after Hillary Clinton had lost key contests. It was after Hillary’s loss in Iowa that her husband Bill ripped into the media for allegedly going soft on Obama. And it was after Hillary lost South Carolina that Bill tried to cut Obama down to size by comparing him to Jesse Jackson.

    That seems to have backfired and made Hillary appear as unlikable to some Democrats as she has long been to many Republicans.

  • Ummmm…  No Duh. As a guess, this is going to be the first election in recent memory wherein both nominees have to run their election campaigns without their respective political bases.  And I suspect this is going to produce some rather strange results. I see this as particularly dangerous if the party leadership takes the election of either candidate as a message for future elections and the political direction of the country, given that any election,a nd thereby it’s message, will be at best muddled in the extreme.

  • Speaking of RCP, it’s via that source I see EJ Dionne [9]suggesting the Democrats should challenge McCain on the War on Terror. Of course, that both Democrat candidates have proven themselves idiotic on that subject, doesn’t help his point much. Or their chances, should they decide to follow his advice. It does show us how left-radicalized Dionne has become, however… and that everything he writes should be viewed in that very unappealing light.