[1]Welcome dear reader to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere BitsBlog’s Nightly Ramble.
Only one more shopping day until Black Friday. Good gosh, it’s November, already? I must be getting old; this stuff is going faster than it used to.
- Congrats to fellow BitsBlogger YetAnotherJohn for his first place finish at this week’s caption contest at OTB [2], where I finished (gasp!) second. I’ll get you for this, John.. and your little dog, too.
- Ann Coulter’s got a new book [3]. No, I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m sure I will.
- Those Russian warships as I mentioned yesterday, are now off the coast of Venezuela [4]. You can imagine the WH says it’s watching things closely down there. But, as you may imagine, there’s not a great deal we can do about anything but make some noise. After all, in the Jimmy Carter sense they have had a free and fair election, right?
- Speaking of which, I see one of Joe Biden’s lackeys is now taking his Senate seat [5]. I ask again, rhetorically… this constitutes change, how, again?
- Last night, I remarked about the number of peple bitching about the banks being bailed out, spending promotional money on sports venues. The obvious complaint involves use of tax money for such matters. As I said last night, tax money being used to build and support sports venues? This is new? Well, tell you what… How about Citibank and others paying Bill Clinton 2.1 million [6] a pop to come and grace them with his red nose? Why does nobody complain about that? You know why.
- I’ve not linked EjectEjectEject in quite a while. Here’s a cure for that one [7].
Perhaps, in future editions of the … (Anti-Harrassment) …handbook, we can add another victim group to the protected category: rational adults. Perhaps I might contribute a chapter to this sensitivity training. Something like:”The rational adult is a small and shrinking minority in the workplace. His cultural heritage – which is just as valuable as anyone else’s! – has taught him that “personal responsibility” means he has a right to feel insulted, offended and harassed when being lectured on things that he did not do, nor would ever contemplate doing. In this ancient and primitive culture, a person’s “honor” and “integrity” are relied upon to govern behavior. If such a person unknowingly gives insult, they will “apologize.” According to their tribal ethics, people who intentionally harm, insult or harass others deserve to be fired on the spot.”
Glenn notes the same link [8], and asks, innocently… (Well, OK, perhaps not so innocently)
If sexual harassment training makes men feel uncomfortable on account of their sex, isn’t it, you know, creating a hostile environment?
You know, Glenn, it’s common sense questions like that that will isloate you in the higher education environment you’re in. I wonder, how have you managed to last as long as you have?
- Along those same lines…. At some point, someone’s going to figure out that government is not the proper arbitor of human rights [9], at which point entire swaths of former government employees will be asking “Do you want fries with that?”. See, here’s the real probem. When government gets involved with “protecting” human rights, one is forced by logic to answer the question, what human rights ARE… which is a question even our founding fathers couldn’t answer with any granularity. Then, based on that, enacting laws accordingly. And laws of course, are, by their very nature, limits. The founders decided that government wasnt going to be able to protect our rights. In fact they decided, rightly, that government was the problem where rights are concerned… so they wrote the constitution to protect us from government which is why a government run commission on rights is about as screwy as a football bat. In the end the problem with the HRC is that by defining rights, we limit them. And isn’t defining and limiting rights what the Harrassment handbook is all about, as well?
- Heh… the guy who is about to be the EU presdient, demonstrates he has a firm grip on reality, publicaly calling AlGore an ‘Apostle of Arrogance’… [10] now if only we had people here in the states with that kind of stones.
[11]You may recall, Donna has a Ford Fusion. We LOVE the car. Well, she likes it; I love it. If I didn’t pull the 5500lb camper with my Rainier, every other weekend in summer, I’d own one. Seriously.. it’s that good. The engine in this thing (It’s the V6) seriously out punches it’s weight, and the performance of the rest of the car… handling, brakes and so on are like to what we get with the engine. Fun? OMG… what a rush when you punch that thing. I’d like to see the torque curve on the thing, though. I’ll bet that between 4000 and 6000 rpm it goes straight up… it’s like a turbo coming on, with Nitrous added. The power rush in this thing is Volcanic, to say the least. I’ve driven quicker cars, more powerful, but I’ve never seen one that so seriously shocks the driver, in reminding them this is no mere econobox. If the new Fusion Hybrid’s [12]performance isn’t much dimmed by the different drive train, (And they claim the performance is comparable) then this thing will be a real winner for Ford. Think on this; They’re claiming 39mpg city. For a full-sizer? Sweet. Assuming the UAW doesn’t muck it up, we’ll see a lot of these soon.- Want proof that having robes doesn’t prove you’re not a whack-job? Here you are. [13]
- President Bush, meanwhile, has pardoned fourteen people [14]including druggies and tax evaders. But notably absent in that list are the two border patrol agents that should ahve been pardoned before the echo died. I will forever consider that a black mark on Bush’s record, and indicative of less than above board priorities that these two brave men who were charged with protecting our borders are still in jail. Not that I expect Obama to make this right, mind you.
- I asked a while ago why nobody was celebrating the removal of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Maybe it’s because everyone figured the new guy would be just as bad. [15]
- Hasn’t anyone figured out the Democrat connection to Citibank, yet? St Robert Of Clinton, indeed [16].
- I see the artist formerly known as “The Artist formerly known as Prince” is denying reports [17]of anti-homosexual comments. Looks like someone’s trying tocreate controversy again. All that is bizzare enough, but I suppose what really confuses them is all that purple.
- Hey, Neal, I’ve got news for you… you should pardon the pun… the reason most people consider opinion pages as a viable main source of news [18]? Because they’ve figured out that the usual news sources are nothing but opinion pages and proapaganda sheets anyway.
- It occurrs to me that with Barry O as Presdient, there’s but one safe job in the country… the guy in charge of Barry’s teleprompter.
- Congrats to the Jawas for knocking off yet another Jihadi site. Good freind Bluto fills in the blanks [19], here.
