Nightly Ramble: Teleprompter Edition

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘shpere… The BigsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Teleprompter Edition.

We have written a virus that only works on Teleprompters, as demonstrated here, on the President’s prompters in Washington  a few days ago. I gather that all 12 of the prompters loaded into Air Force One for the G20 trip, were infected with this virus.  Given his proclivity for reading whatever is placed there, our hit rates should skyrocket for a few days.

• The Bug: So, Conflicker didn’t turn out to be the doomsday thingie everyone figured on? Gee, big shock.  Yeah, I made mention of it, once, and last night…but that’s about all… because frankly, that’s all that ever happens with these scare scenarios.
• Yeah, right: These are the people that will save Detroit? The Politico:
  

  …what’s  in the driveways of White House aides? A lot of foreign cars, as it turns out.

  A survey of West Executive Drive, where White House staffers park, revealed only five American cars out of 23 –a Dodge Grand Caravan, two Ford Escapes, a Jeep Cherokee and a Cadillac.

  The lot was sprinkled with BMWs, Mercedes, Hondas, Toyotas, Saabs, Audis, Volkswagens and a Volvo.

  Tell me again how I shouldn’t be concerned.

• But where will you go? Remember I said I was seriously considering moving out of New York? Here’s a couple of reasons why.On the other hand, where do we go? Farm Country? Apparently not. Art Smith has more details at Conservative Reader.   I begin to seriously wonder if there’s any escape from these facist morons.

• Do Democrats EVER pay their taxes?  Apparently not. Here we go again, this time with Kathleen Sebelius who didn’t get around to paying $7000 owed until just prior to her confirmation hearing. The Tax Prof blog has the details.  Is it some kind of requirement that Obama nominees must be tax cheats?
• A great post from The Deceiver:
  

  So, you think it’s unfair to criticize Joe Biden for the actions of his daughter. And you could be right. But did you say the same thing about Bristol Palin? Her pregnancy was supposed to prove something bad about her mom’s advocacy of abstinence education. (Even though Sarah Palin also advocates teaching birth control, which somehow always gets left out of such arguments.) Her private, personal decisions have been strewn all over the media landscape. She’s been torn apart everywhere from Good Morning America to Saturday Night Live. And what she did isn’t even illegal.If Bristol Palin’s actions reflect badly on her mom, why don’t Ashley Biden’s actions reflect badly on her dad?

  Oh, and let’s not forget another acquaintance of Joe’s who was known to snort a line or two in his time. You now know him as Mr. President.

  You know you’re not supposed to ask stuff like that.

• I feel a long-form column coming on:  Want an indication of how easily we can sweep these idiots from power?
  

  BBS News Photo

  It was that house fire in Doncaster the other day. Did you hear about that?  House fire, people trapped and dying. Neighbors want to help save the people inside. Local cops prevent them from doing so.. and stand and watch the people die, that they were sworn to protect, including a five year old girl. Read Mark Steyn:

  The characteristically moronic behavior of the braindead British coppers transformed it from a family tragedy to a national metaphor. I have written recently in Canada of the disturbing passivity of the “citizenry”, but Britain’s nudged it on a stage: Even if you understand the obligation to act in such a situation, the state will forcibly prevent you and (if recent form is anything to go by) ensure that if you disobey them you’ll be prosecuted — pour encourager les autres to remain obedient sheep to the government shepherd.It’s interesting to read the words of the South Yorkshire Police spokeszombie:

  The senior officer in charge is confident we handled this incident as professionally as possible. In a situation like that you could end up with more deceased bodies than you had in the first place

  Well, there weren’t any “deceased bodies” at the time Her Majesty’s constabulary showed up. And there might not have been any had they not shown up at all. The incident has strange echoes of that fire at a school in Saudi Arabia not long after 9/11, where the fleeing schoolgirls escaped the blazing building but, because they were unveiled, were beaten back by the stick-wielding religious police to die in the flames. In both cases, the emergency responders who are supposed to save you (or at least make an attempt) instead wind up killing you — because a rote prostration before rule enforcement trumps their basic humanity.

  What kind of person is so risk averse as to allow such things to happen?  Since we’re talking about a happening in England perhaps it’s best to quote Sir Winston… (thus, I suppose, annoying Obama and company…)

  The Optimist sees Opportunity in every danger, the pessimist sees danger in every opportunity.

  Frankly, I’ve always viewed pessimism as a coward’s way out.  If something fails, you’re covered from your lack of trying; it was doomed to failure anyway, right?  With big government types, we’re dealing,  dear reader, with cowards of the first order, and there’s going to be no clearer indication of that cowardice than this incident, and the governmental shoulder shrugging in reaction to it. Relience on the all powerful government is a coward’s brand. Given that, it should be a fairly simple matter for even a very few people of courage who still have their roots in the basic rights of humanity… rights which government, being force, not morality,  ignores, to stomp this big government stuff in a hurry.

• I was struck by Billy Beck’s writing, yesterday, as I often am. In going over Steyn’s comments just now, I wonder a bit at the takeaway within the context of the Doncaster thing mentioned above. Different topics… at least they’re intended that way, but I wonder. Stay with me here…  I don’t think he intended this, but in my mind this brushes up against the Doncaster thing, in an interesting way. Billy:
  

  “Just then my two oldest children thundered down the hall to burst into my room.

  ‘We just found the coolest song,’ said my daughter, a senior in high school.

  ‘You’ve got to hear it,’ her brother, a sophomore said, handing me his iPod.

  I inserted the earbuds. A growling, boogie-woogie like piano. Drumsticks on a cymbal. A sudden, lush upwelling of saxophones, followed a moment later by a trumpet blast.

  ‘”Little Brown Jug,”‘ I said, after listening for only a few seconds. ‘Glenn Miller and his orchestra.’

  My daughter and son exchanged a look of amazement. ‘How did you know?’ my daughter asked.

  ‘Your grandfather,’ I replied.”

  Peter Robinson — “Little Brown Jug — The Sheer Innocent Americanness of Glenn Miller”

  OK, as I say, I know Billy is looking at this from a totally different wavelength. But I wonder as I read it why these kids had to discover Miller’s work for themselves, by accident, instead of being taught it as a simple matter of being American.  Have we forgotten so much of our history? I fear we have.  I say that after reading the whole of Robinson’s column.  Clearly, these kids were not taught the history that Robinson himself was, at least until this incident.   Robinson suggests that the song…

  … represented not merely a glittering artifact in itself. It was the product of an entire lost civilization. …

  But why is it lost? Because until that moment, those kids had never heard of it, had never been taught about it, until the scene Robinson describes to us. I’m not making accusations agaist Robinson, or Billy for that matter, just connections. Isn’t the scene at Doncaster trying to tell us, I wonder, that we’re not teaching the humanity side of the equation well enough to the future generations?  We’ve spent a lot of time dealing in the law, but have we spent enough time,  enough effort, in teaching the society, the morality, the human side of the equation, that the law was supposed to uphold? I submit that may of these problems like Doncaster are a direct result of not teaching the next generation what their own history is.  And so rudderless, they succomb to anyone/anything claiming authority over them. They’ve forgotten their cultural history… and with it their freedom, and what it means.

  Think about that in a political context, for just a moment, with me; Around half the voters in the last election, have no clue who Ronald Reagan was, or why he is important to our history, being at most four years old when he left office.  Those same voters have no clue as to the social and moral fabric that made up our country for the past several generations, indeed, mostly having only the slightest clue about what makes up the mores of their parents, being given at best a twisted view of them by our so-called educational system, and largely abesentee parental units.  Does anyone not think that’s going to affect us going forward?

  OK, this bit has gone on overlong for a Ramble, I know. These get that way sometimes. But I would urge you, look at the kids in your life… and not just yours. How will they represent us going forward, basing as they do, their perceptions about what we are/were on what we teach them?

• Idiots: Interesting, how there are so many protestors at the G20 summit. They’re protesting, supposedly, against Capitalism. What they don’t understand is at the G20, they have what amounts to the world socialism conference… being the biggest collection of anti-capitalists ever seen… inculding, alas, Obama. And these protestors think themselves smart, I’ll bet.
• NY20 is a dead heat. Now, doubtless we’ll hear all about how this is a victory for the Democrat party. Given this is their seat being defended, even a near loss seems an odd thing to be hoisting a flag of victory over. Then again, given these are members of Obama’s Democrat party. So, since when do claims of victory have to make any sense? Sorta like the G20 protestors come to think of it.