Nightly Ramble:COLD!;Oil;Unions; Buyer’s Remorse, More

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read on the ‘sphere… BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.

A cold, cold Monday, today. Buffalo had 14 degrees, this morning. Syracuse had a low of 5. My truck struggled to life this morning, and then after advising me it was 16 outside… (Making my driveway the garden spot in the state).. that there might be ice possible. Always helpful information, that truck. I can’t complain. Years ago, I had one that your name would have to be Petty or something to get it started on a cold morning.

• Heck, Billy, I called the oil price crumble long before August… both here and at Q&O.  Of course none of the drooling morons who called me out on that… including Erb,  never showed up to point out I was right, either… not that I expected it.  It’d be nice if someone reminded them, though. At the moment, I’ll say I didn’t expect the price to drop quite as low as it has. I figured we’d bottom at $2/gal for gas. I paid $1.67 at Irving, NY Saturday night. While cheaper than everything else around here, that’s not really that far off the national average of a $1.85.  I’ll tell you this; I don’t expect this to last, given Obama. In fact I fully expect I’ll have my camper in the driveway most of next summer because taking it out will be too freakn’ expensive.
• And while I’ve got you, Billy, I have to say that I wonder if that “prank phone call” didn’t light a fire under Pakistan to find and arrest someone they say was involved with the Mumbai attacks. Don’t go reading too much into this; I’m not convinced anyone was motivated to do the right thing, here.. I don’t trust that the arrests made weren’t just for show both to India and the west… but at the same time, I wonder if that overt show of effort wasn’t made because at least for a while, Pakistan took the prank threat seriously… long enough to get the wheels moving. I dunno, but I wonder a little.
• True to form, we’re now starting to hear that the problem for the Big Three isn’t the unions are too strong… it’s because other car makers aren’t unionized yet. Apparently the trick ts to make sure misery is spread around. And yes, that’s how I view Unions; misery imposed.
• Speaking of unions, did you see this in Chicago? They’ve killed the golden goose and then blame everyone else? Sorry, no… I have no sympathy at all for them.
• Buyer’s remorse is apparently becoming more prevelant than ever among the left. Apparently there’s no amount of compromise these idiots will take… As I suggested when presdient Bush was trying to satisfy everyone with a centrist cabinet. I wonder, though just how ‘right wing’ some of these appointments are. I look at the list of people he’s appointed and no matter how I look at it, it still comes down way, way to the left. So, there’s really two things going on, here. First, Obama is clearly trying to thorw  the right off the scent by SAYING he’s appointing center to right people. And the left? Well, there’s no satisfying them anyway.
• Speaking of The Chosen One, did you see the Meet The Press interview over the weekend? Orwell, in his wildest fantasy couldn’t have gone farther away from reality.
  

  “I think the important principle, because sometimes when we start talking about taxes, and I say I want a more balanced tax code, people think, well, that’s class warfare. No. It turns out that our economy grows best when the benefits of the economy are most widely spread. And that has been true historically.”

  Actually Reagan showed us rather differently. But as for what Obama means, here’s the translation: “What I want to do is spend more taxpayer dollars on the roughly 40% who pay no income tax whatever. And of course, I’ll soak the rich for it.” That by definition is not only class warfare, it’s dishonesty, as well. Boortz note the same thing, this morning, and says:

  Now another Obamamabit:

  ” …part of what I’m hoping to introduce as the next president is a new ethic of responsibility where we say that if you’re laying off workers, the least you can do when you’re making $25 million a year is give up some of your compensation and some of your bonuses … That kind of notion of shared benefits and burdens is something that I think has been lost for too long, and it’s something that I’d like to see restored.”

  Restored how? By government edict? What are we heading for here, government control over executive compensation? Maybe government control over ALL compensation. Yeah .. that’s the ticket, isn’t it? We’ll let the private sector continue to own and operate the businesses, but we’ll put the government in control of setting all salaries.

  By the way … do you know what you call an economic system where the means of production are privately owned but controlled by government. No, it’s not socialism. Under socialism the government owns the businesses. And it’s not capitalism. Under capitalism ownership and control is private. So … what’s the word? A very few of you know … and the rest of you are about to find out. It’s the “F” word. Fascism. So .. what does that make Obama?

  Bootz naled it. That’s exactly what we’re dealing with… and it doesn’t take a great deal of reserach to note that is exactly Hitler’s idealsim at work, here. Hitler never was a lover of capitalism, in spite fo what you may have heard. From an end user perspective, there really isn’t more than a hair’s difference between Hitler and Marx, in the end. Not taht they don’t each have their supporters.

• Speaking of ol’ “One Nut”, by the way, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, Nobel wonk that he is, has informed us that the Internet might have stopped Hitler. I see where he’s going, but I’m not so sure. I look at Obama’s rise to power, and what he proposes to do with/to our counry and II can’t help thinking that at best,  Le Clezio’s pronouncement is about to be put to the test. The similarity is frightening.
• Now why would Amsterdam be shutting down it’s red light districts? Apparently, what has happened is they got a reminder why such things were outlawed in the first place.
• I see a lot of traffic on the right about the USSC declining to hear the Birth Certificate case of Barack Obama. Almost universally, they seem happy about the case being turned down. I’m not convinced it’s a good thing, myself from several angles.  For one thing, if I was Obama, I might want the air cleared, assuming that I actually had a valid Birth cert. There’s no denying the case has grown legs in public opinion, and the public interest, to say nothing of Obama’s… would have been well served to have the matter fully read into the record.  I’m not convinced we should be quite so dismissive of the charge, or those bringing it. Obama may possibly be well proven to be eligable for the office of POTUS, but I have yet to see such an argument presented, from ANY corner, particularly Obama’s. In any event, If he is in fact eligable for the office, is it really so much to ask for him… or anyone else running for the office, for that matter, to prove it?
• Hey, Glenn, I expect whisking Rockstars out of security lines is for security purposes. Hard to maintain order when there’s a lot of mulling around the star seeking autographs and whatnot. Annoying, sure, but understandable from a security point of view.
• The Media is losing interest in Global warming. Apparenty, the government doesn’t beleive the Global Warming nonsense, either.
• According to sources, the New York Times is preparing to borrow quarter billion dollars, more or less, against it’s Manhattan site.  Who’s dumb enough to sign off on that loan?
• The Miami Herald is up for sale, too. I’m starting to wonder, which city will be the first, sans a city newspaper?
• By the way… has anyone noticed we’ve not seen any news flashes about the approval ratings of congress of late?
• I know David already blogged William “Freezer” Jefferson lost his re-election bid. But I find it interesting that even the local papers down there are noting Jefferson lost in a district specifically redrawn to give black voters an electoral advantage… a point they wouldn’t dare have made before the election, or had he actually won the thing. That’s a big enough story in it’s own right. Perhaps the more frightening story, here is it was still a close one.
• Speaking of close ones that are scary, the story of the suppsoedly missing Frankenvotes continues, by way of Mark Hemmingway.
  

  The latest official tally shows Norm Coleman with a 192 vote lead in Minnesota’s senate race. Yet, Marc Elias began the Franken campaign’s latest conference call by announcing that they are still ahead by four votes according to their unnofficial counting methodology (which I explained here)..

  Yeah, well, about that… it’s a bitch, complainnig the election was ‘stolen’ from you, if you’re not spreading the idea that you’re actually ahead. And since they’re not going to rule on any of this until the 16th, you know they’re going to keep making those noises until then.

• And finally, from Maggie Gallagher:
  

  Because. . . .why stop at redefining marriage?  Somebody out there is furiously writing the Christmas lyrics right this minute. ”  The AP reports:  “A Dutch gay group has organized a ‘Pink Christmas’ festival for the first time in Amsterdam, featuring a manger stall with two Josephs and two Marys.”

  It’s like I keep saying, most recently with “Saint Andrew the Incontinent” the other day,  this is about self-justification. Keep re-writing history and the meanings of things until you’re considered ‘Normal’. Gotta pay more attention to Maggie, I think.