Nightly Ramble Monday

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

• JOHN HAWKINS IS AT IT AGAIN: This time, it’s in the form of the 40 most obnoxious quotes of 2009. A few free samples:
  

  29) I write a lot of songs that could be interpreted as big patriotic songs, but in reality they’re questioning the direction the country is going. After every song in Boston, 20,000 people were going, ‘USA, USA.’ I thought, man. I almost asked them to stop, stop doing that. I don’t like it. I don’t like hearing that chant. — John Cougar Mellencamp

  28) Do you remember tea baggers? It was just so much easier when we could just call them racists. I just don’t know why we can’t call them racists, or functionally retarded adults. The functionally retarded adults, the racists – with their cries of, ‘I want my country back. You know what they’re really saying is, ‘I want my white guy back.’ They apparently had no problem at all for the last eight years of habeas corpus being suspended, the Constitution being [expletive] on, illegal surveillance, lied to on a war or two, two stolen elections – yes, the John Kerry one was stolen too. That’s not tin-foil hat time. That’s just…” — Janeane Garofalo

  19) Fox News and their Republican collaborators are the enemy of America. They’re the enemy of anybody who cares about health care, the enemy of anybody who cares about educating their children, the enemy of anybody who wants energy independence or anything good for this country. And certainly the enemy of peace, there’s no doubt about that. — Alan Grayson

  7) Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq. There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda. —Congressman Maurice Hinchey

  The one with Mellencamp I find particularly annoying, if only because unlike most liberals, the guy actually has some talent about him.I like a lot of his stuff. Too bad a brain and a heart didn’t come with the talent.

• THINGS I FOUND WHILE LOOKING UP SOMETHING ELSE: A collection of funny signs…. both intentional and uninentional can be found in a huge thread at flagerchat.com I almost didn’t get my backups done last night because of it.
• JOHN KERRY AND IRAN: I see where John Kerry has been denied access to Iran by the Iranian Government… a trip supposedly approved of by the White House. Of course, now that the trip has been denied access to that country, the White House is denying that such a trip was ever planned. Follows almst exactly the rule: If at first you don’t succeed, expend all your effort on denying you ever attempted it. The only really troublesome aspect about all of this, is why Iran would deny carry access to the place to begin with.  I’d think having a useful idiot like John Kerry around, would be helpful.

• SOCIALISM’S SUCCESS STORIES: In another huge success story for socialism Crazy Uncle Hugo has the entire nation of Venezuela starting the year out right; with electricity rationing. I tell you… if there were a brain in the whole of Venezuela, there is at least one person there, questioning the sanity anyone supporting socialism of course, it, because it’s getting to that here in the states. And about that…..

• WE DISAPPROVE: America has seen the changes and has decided that isn’t what they wanted after all. The Washington Examiner opines:
  

  What a difference one year makes. Liberals may be forgiven for looking at the latest public opinion surveys and wondering if they somehow stumbled into the Valley of Death instead of Obama’s promised paradise. The president remains somewhat popular personally, but, as Matthew Continetti of The Weekly Standard wrote recently, “Obama’s domestic program is exceedingly unpopular. The public disapproves of the president’s bailouts, stimulus, health care reform, and cap and trade policies, not to mention his decision to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay.” That Continetti was perhaps too kind is seen in this stunning fact: When George W. Bush returned, bloodied and bruised, to his Texas home after eight years in the White House, 43 percent of Americans surveyed by Scott Rasmussen “strongly disapproved” of the job he had done. Today, after less than a year in office, 46 percent express the same intense level of opposition to Obama.But it’s not just Obama who has generated a massive shift, particularly among independents, against what the Pew Research Center’s Andrew Kohut calls “activist government.” Only a fourth of all Americans approve of the direction Obama and Congress are taking the country, according to a Gallup survey. A similarly dismal proportion approve of the job being done by Congress under the leadership of Reid and Pelosi. Nearly three-fourths of those surveyed prefer that Congress do nothing to reform health care rather than take final action on either the Senate or House versions of Obamacare. And 79 percent of Americans view government corruption as the most important issue facing the country. That can’t be encouraging to a president who learned his politics the “Chicago Way.”

  I told you this was going to happen.  I said it repeatedly last November that this was precisely what was going to happen.Once reality caught up with the thing, there was no place else for it to go.  As I have been saying for the last couple of weeks now, it’s going to be a very rough three years .  It’s only going to get slightly easier if the Republicans take both houses of Congress as I suggest they probably will. The problem there, of course, is that the republicans have been thinking too much like democrats the last twenty years or so.  They’ve forgotten Reagan altogether. for the meanwhile, the Republicans are are show-in for the next couple of cycles. they will benefit greatly from Obama having united the nation against liberalism.  Not exactly the Obama advertised program.

• CLIMATEGATE ECHOES: Neil Frank writing an Op-Ed in the Houston Chronicle over the weekend
  

  The revelation of Climate­gate occurs at a time when the accuracy of the climate models is being seriously questioned. Over the last decade Earth’s temperature has not warmed, yet every model (there are many) predicted a significant increase in global temperatures for that time period. If the climate models cannot get it right for the past 10 years, why should we trust them for the next century?

  Exactly so, and we said as much here, both David and myself and Art as well, repeatedly.  At some point, however, we’re going to have to get over this notion that somebody managed to hack into the mail servers at the CRU. It’s my opinion, that those mails were distributed by somebody who had access to them legally.  Barring a shred evidence being produced to the contrary, I will continue to believe so.  That makes far more sense to me, given the level of lies going on here.  It’s my take, that somebody’s conscience caught up with them.

• HOW BAD IS IT? How far off are those predictions of global warming?  Here’s a few examples culled from Drudge’s headlines this morning
  

  Temps Plunge to Record as Cold Snap Freezes North, East States...
  CHILL MAP...
  Vermont sets 'all-time record for one snowstorm'...
  Iowa temps 'a solid 30 degrees below normal'...
  Peru's mountain people 'face extinction because of cold conditions'...
  Beijing -- coldest in 40 years...
  World copes with Arctic weather...

  The evidence is in, and it strongly suggests that we’ve been lied to. You’ll pardon me, I ahve more evidence of Global Warming to shovel out of my driveway…. about a foot of it.

• NIGERIA COMPLAINING… WHO CARES? So Nigeria is now complaining about the new security measures for passengers flying to and from the United States, because those security measures are applied to only fourteen countries in the world, including Nigeria.  They call it discriminatory.  I call a common sense.  And who in the blank cares about what Nigeria has to say anyway? Forgive me, but after putting up with charges of “discrimination” all my life, for anything that ran the fall of what one group or another wanted, I’m getting a little tired of it.  I must say, though, that this is probably the most egregious use of the phrase I’ve ever seen.  And by the way, some of you may recall that I spoke to this point about Nigeria last week. The  ANd about that attack….
• A TWIST OF WORDS: Boortz makes an interesting point:
  

  Political correctness liberal’s intense reluctance to ever label anything as “terrorism” or to label someone as a “Muslim terrorist” is going to get some people killed. There’s an enemy out there. Refusing to recognize and identify the enemy for what and who it is only weakens us and strengthens those who want to kill us. To some extent you have Janet Napolitano to thank for that. Take a look at this interview she did with a German magazine. THIS is the woman in charge of our Department of Homeland Security:

  SPIEGEL: Madame Secretary, in your first testimony to the US Congress as Homeland Security Secretary you never mentioned the word “terrorism.” Does Islamist terrorism suddenly no longer pose a threat to your country?

  NAPOLITANO: Of course it does. I presume there is always a threat from terrorism. In my speech, although I did not use the word “terrorism,” I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.

  Well .. how prepared were we for some Islamic terrorist boarding an American aircraft with a bomb? Not prepared at all. Napolitano’s approach is clearly working brilliantly. And then came the moment we all savored. This Muslim tries to kill 270 people. Passengers stop him. The flight crew takes care of him until the plane lands in Detroit. The news gets out … Americans are anxious … and here comes our amazingly capable Homeland Security Director to speak to the American people … and what does she say? How about “One thing I’d like to point out is that the system worked.”

  WTH? The system worked? We have 270 people alive today not because the system worked … but because the bomb didn’t. The Obama crowd is trying to put the best light on Janet’s absurdity by saying she was talking about the system in place to arrest someone AFTER they’ve tried to kill a bunch of people. Know what? Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that most Americans think that a system that “works” is a system that would stop this Islamic rat-bastard BEFORE he tries to blow up a plane .. not after.

  The point that really laptop that me from this passage is this.  You’ll recall, perhaps, that I raised a stink about comments from Steve Benen over the weekend. I’d like you to reread his comments, specifically with regards to age of wording, as regards the “war on terror”… A phrase which he disapproves of.  Yet, he doesn’t seem to have any trouble whatsoever with Janet Napolitano labeling incidence of terrorism “manmade disasters”.  .

• BUMPER STICKER OF THE DAY: