Nightly Ramble Monday

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

• SIGNS OF ANOTHER ATTACK? Drudge seems to think so.
• IS THERE A BIGGER IDIOT THAN JOE KLEIN? Well, there may possibly be such a  critter, but I tend to doubt it after reading his output of this morning. Klein gives us a good picture of the frustrated progressive:
  

  Absolutely amazing poll results from CNN today about the $787 stimulus package: nearly three out of four Americans think the money has been wasted. On second thought, they may be right: it’s been wasted on them. Indeed, the largest single item in the package–$288 billion–is tax relief for 95% of the American public. This money is that magical $60 to $80 per month you’ve been finding in your paycheck since last spring. Not a life changing amount, but helpful in paying the bills.

  No, you moron…  First of all, it’s not big enough in reality… there’s that word again…  reality…. to help most Americans at all, particularly when Liberal policy has become such a demonstrated job killer. . And secondly with the amount of spending going on most Americans are smart enough to understand that the bill’s gonna come due.

  The next highest amount was $275 billion in grants and loans to states. This is why your child’s teacher wasn’t laid off…and why the fire station has remained open, and why you’re not paying even higher state and local taxes to close the local budget hole.

  So that’s where all your job savings are coming from? Government jobs, and jobs which in the largest number are unionized?  Yeah, big help. Shut up, sit down over there in the corner with the pointed hat, Klein. You’re too stupid to bother with.

• ASTROTURF:  Patterico has a summary of what we’ve learned about the astroturf campaign I wrote about the other day, involving “Ellie Light”
• THE SEX TAPE: George Carlin used to say that if you mail to boards together in a way that’s never been done before, sure as hell, some schmuck will buy it.   So I suppose it must be for reports that John Edwards has a sex tape.  Yeah, you got it right… Wouldn’t it be a gas if the guy stopped every two seconds to brush his hair?
• HOW LAME CAN PRESIDENT TELEPROMPTER GET?:  Can someone pleeeassssseeee explain to me why Obama feels the need to bring a  teleprompter to speak to a  6th grade class? Is the president of the united states that incapable of independent thought?  Does he figured the sixth grade classes going to be hitting him with questions he won’t be able to answer without the political impact?  Or is it that he’s just so scared of being a deeper hole with his mouth, already? One of Dan Riehl’s readers  looks at this one and says:
  

  What is even more disturbing than the need to whip TOTUS out to talk to school kids is the purpose of Obama’s visit to that school. He was announcing his desire to put billions more into hisprogram “Race to the Top” (RttT in Obamaland cutespeak) and also create a means for school districts to bypass the authority of their State Boards of Education in order to apply for federal RttT funds. What is so disturbing about this? One of the requirements of winning this federal grant money is that local school districts must contractually agree to adopt federal curriculum guidelines, even those that have not yet been defined by the Obama Administration. Yup….the federal core curriculum issue rears its ugly head again.
  Obama created the local school district bypass to these federal dollars in response to Rick Perry’s decision for Texas to opt out. Obama can’t stand Perry and the State of Texas….and was not about yield the chess board

  The point is taken. With all that, maybe we now understand why Obama would want to be very controlled indeed in what he says. It’d be interesting to see how much of that was contained in what he told the students, and how uch was hidden or ignored.

• OBAMA’S VERSION OF GROWTH: Poverty rate hits 17.5% in Nashville. Meanwhile, December home sales are off by 17%… that’s a 40 year low. Yet the Democrat party answer is to blame Bush.