Nightly Ramble: The Future Camper Edition

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere… The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the “Future Camper” Edition

• I have the POWER…. So now Arlen Specter is willing to compromise on “Card Check”?  I keep telling you, and perhaps now you’ll understand me when I say it again: It’s always been about remaining in power.
• SITYS:  Remember that Pajamas Media article I wrote saying Obama would vindicate the policies of Bush on the War on Terror? Here’s another case in point.
• Starting a Fire:  Speaking of PJM, that article I ran yesterday has really got things going, in ways I can’t even calculate.  Thanks to all who dropped me feedback. If the response this thing is getting is of any indication, I under-estimated the anger out there. What are they angry about?
• Glenn Beck says it well: Let’s see where we are after only a few months of Obama being in power.
  

  There’s defense: Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Israel and neighbors like Iran at their throats; the War on Terror that apparently no longer exists, don’t worry about that, even though Pakistan is about to be taken over by the Taliban and Somalia is being overrun by Muslim insurgents. Meanwhile, Gitmo is being closed, but we have no plan for the prisoners.Then there’s the economy: The unemployment rate is at 8.9 percent and the underemployment rate is 15.8 percent.

  And what about the bailouts? It’s not like the Obama administration is sitting back. They already fired the CEO of GM and now they’ve cut Chrysler’s ad budget in half. What’s next, are we going to have Harry Reid supervising the agents in the Citigroup call center?

  Then you’ve got our long-term structural issues: We found out Wednesday that Medicare will now be insolvent in just eight years. Meanwhile, we’re leveraging our future by monetizing our debt, which basically means we crank up the printing presses anytime we need more cash.

  And what about corruption? Nancy Pelosi and waterboarding; Chris Dodd and his sweetheart deal with Countrywide; Tim Geithner and his taxes; you’ve got ACORN, a organization charged with fraud that’s seemingly connected right to the White House.

  You’ve also got climate change, illegal immigration, failing schools, universal health care, Russia, China… the list goes on and on.

  Can you imagine the screaming going on from the left is Republicans were at the helm of all of this? Why are Republicans so damned complacent?  Well, based on the reax to my PJM article, yesterday, perhaps that’s not true, anymore.

• Check out the Conservative Grapevine: Lots of stuff going on over there.
• Checks for Industry… Checks for the Dead… With apologies to Firesign Theatre,  it appears to be the pattern for this administration. The checks for the dead thing I mentioned yesterday is far larger, now that they’re actually looking at it.   And we want to turn our health care over to this crew, why, again?
• Unsustainable? NOW, he tells us…. The Chosen one has finally gotten around to the idea that the current level of spending can’t be sustained. Like, haven’t we on the right been saying that since January? What the blink does Obama think those tea parties were all about, anyway?  Now, we both know that cutting spending is never in the mind of a Democrat, including Obama.   Never, never, ever.  Guess what this Obama statement means? Yep… Tax increases.
• Let’s imagine:  the left likes to ride Sarah Palin for a lot of reasons that don’t really exist. Let’s imagine that it was President Palin. How would she fare, if she’d pulled what Obama has so far?  Victor Davis Hanson looks at that question, and lets you decide the answer..
• Delayed reaction:  Scrappleface says Pelosi first heard of the 9/11 attacks in 2003.  Well, yeah, I guess that’s about at believable as her saying the CIA lied to her.  As I predicted in my update to David’s piece, I suspect the Democrats are going to try and cut their losses, lest other Dems get dragged into the spot light. The story they’re offering isn’t going to hold up under oath, which is why they’re resisting all attempts to get a hearing going on the subject.
• Krauthammer:  OK, speaking of Pelosi, go re-read the comments of David and myself, and then read Krauthammer’s comments.  There’s no longer any doubt Pelosi is lying. The only question now is at whose direction?
• Let the screaming commence: Carrie Prejean has a new gig at Fox News.  I can hear the screaming from the left, already. Know what? I really don’t much care.  Here’s an idea… in deference to the Keith Olbermans of the world, maybe “Perez Hilton” can get a job at MS-NBC. It’s my guess that the majority of MS-NBC’s viewers including Olberman, would find that pink wig very attractive, indeed.  Indeed, perhaps Ol’ Keith can die that lettuce he calls “a Toupe”,  pink, eh?
• Hey, Neighbor:  Bruce McQuain notes the threat of a trade war with Canada hasn’t gone away. Ah, yes. Hope and Change.
•  Socialism 101: How socialism works in the real world. Oughta be required reading  in High School.
•  The Automobile and this administration:  Ever wonder why the Administration doesn’t seem overly worried about the 150 thousand jobs that the dealership closings are going to cause? 
• Ya knew it was gonna come out: Already, we’re hearing locally here in the Vampire state, complaints that some dealerships are being closed because of the race of their owners.   I’ll quote a little because the site I’m pointing at may not leave the story up for long…
  

  The owner of Webster Chrysler Jeep has a similar idea.”The last to the dealership table are the first to be told to leave,” said attorney H. Todd Bullard.

  Bullard represents Randy Henderson, the owner of Webster Chrysler Jeep and the only minority Chrysler dealer in New York State. Bullard says it is no coincidence the auto giant wants to shut him down.

  “Part of our theory is that this was going to have a disproportionate impact on those dealers last at the automotive table, which in this case is the minority dealers,” said Bullard.

  The financial world is burning down around these morons and they’re claiming they were singled out because of race? Oh, please. File under ‘things we’d like to see’, Henderson taking it up with the new CEO of Chrysler… Barrack Obama.   Go ahead, Henderson, charge him with closing you down on account of your race.  God, what an idiot.

• Welcome to the party, guys:  It’s amazing what the threats of bankruptcy will do for a paper’s morals. When even the NY Times decides Murtha’s dirty, you know there’s a lot of other things going on under the surface of the thing.  Or maybe they’re just trying to divert attention from the list Beck mentions above, eh?
• Bogus marketing?  Michelle looks at the Cheerios thing I mentioned yesterday, and says maybe we should apply that standard to the government.
  

  Well, how about the bogus marketing of the fiscal “stimulus?” President Obama and the Democrats promoted the trillion-dollar package as job creation salvation. The White House claims 150,000 jobs have been “created or saved.” But since February, the nation has lost more than 1.3 million jobs. The current 8.9 percent unemployment rate in the wake of stimulus passage is worse than the 8.8 percent unemployment figure Obama’s economists darkly predicted if Congress didn’t immediately adopt their recovery plan. (See Innocent Bystanders.)

  The “stimulus” was supposed to provide aid to the country’s neediest areas. It’s not. The Associated Press reported after reviewing 5,500 planned transportation projects that “states are planning to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than in communities with the highest.” 

  … and so on… you get the idea.  She’s got a point, ya know.  At what point does Obama admit the failure of big government, much less take action to stem the failure?

• A lesson in free market: Newsweek  isn’t selling enough copies to pay for itself. Do they change content? No. Do they cut staff? Well, yes, but not enough. No, they raise the price to $6 or so a copy. Yeah, that’ll sell more magazines. Right?