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Nightly Ramble: The “Still in the Truckstop” Edition

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

ramble-trucking [1]This is the “Still in the truck stop” edition

  •  Minority Broadcasters, again: Limbaugh touched on this yesterday [2]:  I lived through the ‘minority broadcasters’ nonsense in the 70’s, and saw the crap being shoveled first hand.  So I was shocked not at all to see this pop up again [3]. Based on my previous experience, I’ll tell you Limbaugh’s comments are dead on, here.  Irony abounds;

    “In addition to the credit crisis, also weighing heavily on minority broadcasters is a significant decline in advertising revenues, particularly the loss of automobile advertising.” Ha! Make me laugh! It is Obama who has slashed the advertising budgets of the auto companies! Obama, the first black president, has cut the Chrysler ad budget in half; he’s going to do the same thing to General Motors.

    Rush Limbaugh [4]

    Rush Limbaugh

     That hurts the media, and particularly the minority-owned media, according to this story. So Obama will get an opportunity to buy into the broadcasting business. This is shades of Hugo Chavez. But the unintended consequences of these people taking over the automobile companies — they haven’t stopped to think. Shutting down all of these dealerships? Did they know how important to communities dealerships are, these owners, what they do, they donate to charity, they prop up the local symphony, they do a lot of things, and they’re being shut down. The lack of revenue in local communities that will result from these dealerships being shut down is going to be devastating. It’s going to mean more people out of work, not just at the dealership. It’s going to mean less charitable operating revenue in these communities, all so that Obama can get you driving a lawn mower with a couple of seats on it.

    Really. Tell me again how this is all going to help is recover economically.

  • Great article from John Hawkins, today:
    jhawkins [5]

    John Hawkins

    If candidates who believe in small government, fiscal responsibility, a strong military, patriotism, freedom, and traditional values can no longer win elections in the United States, then we’re finished as a great nation.

    A choice between modern liberalism and the “Democrat-lite” philosophy of people like Arlen Specter, Charlie Crist, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is like a choice between cutting your throat with a chainsaw or a rusty saw: one may be a little faster than the other, but both will eventually kill you dead as a doornail. This is something the average conservative understands, but the GOP establishment does not.

    Exactly the argument I’ve been making, since Nixon, when the party was beholding to what we used to call “Rockefeller Republicans”.   In discussing this online with a chap who lives out by the Reagan Library last night, he wondered if the Republican party was the party of Reagan, anymore.   I responded that in reality, it never was.

    The fact is for all the accolades heaped on Reagan, and for all the invocations of his name from people like Specter (Well, at least until a few weeks ago) what Hawkins calls the ‘old bulls of the party’ never really did like him.  He was a means to an end, that end being power. They looked down their noses at Reagan, and the grassroots who supported him. They never quite understood how Reagan and his values managed to capture so much of the American Spirit. What they didn’t understand was that he’d not captured it, he reflected it, and better than they.  For all that can be said of Newt Gingrich, he at least was smart enough and perceptive enough to catch a glimpse of what all that was about and focus it through the lens of the Contract With America… which was a document, again, that reflected American values in the way that the Republican establishment never really has since then.

    That grassroots power, that American spirit that Reagan so successfully reflected, is not only valid, but vital, if we are to pull our futures out of the sausage grinder that is the Democrat party.   If the GOP leadership can’t understand that, they’re part of the problem, instead of the solution… And as demonstrated in the elected attempt of John McCain, the electorate knows just what to do about that.

  • Shout to Karl Rove:   Yeah, he’s adopting Bush’s terrorism policy [6]. We know. And I told you he would last January. [7] 
  • The HDI is Bunk: James Joyner, freshly back form his vacation yesterday posts this morning some comments about the so-called “Human development Index”. [8]Let’s just say he finds it wanting, essentially doesn’t think it makes sense for the states context:
    jamesjoyner [9]

    James Joyner

    This is yet another instance of a trend that I’ve long found aggravating: the ordinal ranking of relatively similar bodies to create the illusion of substantial disparity.  We usually see it in the form of international comparisons, which have the United States ranked 35th on some attribute despite being essentially the same as the country ranked 1st.  Here, we’re doing the same with states. It’s junk social science.

    Have a look at the map of the thing:

    human-development-index-by-state-map [10]

    Look at the states that are claimed as being ‘more developed’, again, and consider that the darker states on the map are with the possible exception of Alaska, liberal strongholds, if not Democrat strongholds. Places like Louisiana, for example are certainly Democrat strongholds, but I would argue are never considered, even by liberals, to be among the liberal elite.

    Notice also, that the map (With again, the exception of Alaska) shows the states with the biggest cities as ‘developed’. right online with what the UN has been pushing for for decades… they want the populations in the cities (It’s currently being sold as being green)…

    If as James suggests, and I agree, the report makes no sense in it’s stated context, might a logical explanation of the release of this report be that someone’s trying to make a connection between the liberal elite, their Utopian wet dreams, and human development?

    “You’re a (shudder) conservative? You’re from flyover country? Why, you backward putz, you…”

  • Relax, Billy:  Look, man in reading your thing [11]this morning, my instinct is to just say, ya do what you can. Saying something each day isn’t a panacea, either…. I’ve been putting several posts a day up without fail for years, and I’m not convinced it’s always made a difference in my following.  And in any event, let  I remind you of your own words.
    Billy Beck [12]

    Billy Beck

    I will not post daily simply in order to meet others’ expectations. If I don’t have anything to say, then I won’t bother. I completely expect that this will happen periodically, if not frequently. I am never amazed at the fact of being struck speechless by bloody nonsense, which is a going concern, these days.

     (nod)   It’s true.  There’s a lot of nonsense out there, and sometimes one must simply sit back and watch in amaze. My own response is to talk about it even at the risk of repetition, whereas you tend to avoid repeating yourself a bit more than I, I think. Which is the better method? I’m not sure I know, and I’m quite sure you don’t know the answer any better than I.   But yours is yours, and uniquely so, and is part of why you have the following you do… which I think to be larger, by the way, than your counters suggest. Most of us only have the ripples on the surface, to judge the amount of influence we’re having, one way or the other.  We can never know, I think, the degree of influence we have on others in our lives, (folks who have their minds changed for them seldom trumpet that fact) and perhaps it’s just as well. If we knew all that we do, all that we influence, we’d react to that knowledge, and change our behavior in the process…. and not always for the better. Indeed, usually not, if we may judge the matter by some in the media, and some blogs, for that matter.

    We’re currently getting around 3k/mo here. It’s been as high a 10k month before the election.  We’ve gotten lots of great feedback, and links from a lot of the majors, and several newspapers, over the years. I’ve got a perch over at Pajamas Media, which I consider a real cap feather, I’m seen regularly with guest slots at several other blogs (American Thinker, Conservative Reader, and so on)  and I’m content with the progress we’re making.

    As for the Obama business and it needing a full treatment, let me put it to you this way; Obama has if nothing else flooded that field. It’s so vast, so many things are blowing up at once on this guy’s watch, that nobody no single individual, or even a group, can ever hope to give it the treatment it deserves. I’m content to be a part of the treatment; to be one voice among many raised against the cabal. And I for one am glad you’re around to add your part.

  • Time out for this reminder:  Terrorism is still an issue. [13]
  • Cheney’s approval rising, while Obama’s falls: I’ve said for years the best campaign advertisement for electing Republicans, is Democrats in power.  Case in point [14].  Rasmussen reports that only 38% of the country [15] think we’re moving in the right direction.  Do you understand the electoral meat grinder Democrats are headed for at this pace?
  •  Are they doing this on purpose?:  Bruce McQuain posts a list of points about cap and Trade (really cap and tax) from The Heritage Foundation [16]:

     

    1. Cap and Trade Is a Massive Energy Tax2. It Will Not Make a Substantive Impact on the Environment

    3. It Will Kill Jobs

    4. It Will Cause Electricity Bills and Gas Prices to Sharply Increase

    5. It Will Outsource Manufacturing Jobs and Hurt Free Trade

    6. It Will Make You Choose Between Energy, Groceries, Clothing, and Haircuts

    7. It Will Be Highly Susceptible to Fraud and Corruption

    8. It Will Hurt Senior Citizens, the Poor, and the Unemployed the Worst

    9. It Will Cost American Families Over $3,000 a Year

    10. President Obama Admitted “Electricity Rates Would Necessarily Skyrocket” Under a Cap-and-Trade Program (January 2008)

    So, what can you expect when they realize that number 8 makes it a very regressive tax?

    That’s right, a subsidy will somehow become part of the arrangement. And who pays subsidies? What those who they arbitrarily determine can “afford” them.

    Personally, I think it clear they’ve always known this. All of it. And yet they’re going for it anyway. It’s been noted by people smarter than I, that the policies the Democrat party espouses always end up making things worse economically in spite of their claims of making it all better. there is no way the democrats could get it so precisely wrong each time they try without some degree of intent about it.  At some point, we must start making the assumption that the end effect of these policies are the actually intended ones… that these people actually WANT to cripple America, and start treating them accordingly.

  • Holiday:  I’ll be in town over the holiday weekend, but my schedule won’t support my being able to do the job that needs to be done to put up a Ramble as well as the other work I have planned this weekend. So, Nightly Ramble will be off on Friday and Monday, to return Tuesday, the 26th.