Nightly Ramble:The Luxury Yacht Edition

Welcome one and all to the most intense nightly Read on the sphere: The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

This is the Luxury Yacht Edition. Yes, it’s a little small, but it serves the purpose.

• Bumper Snicker: Seen on a bumper sticker over the weekend: “The Left is stealing our Rights”
• Intentionally mistaken Identity: Ever notice we never see Mona, Rick Ellensberg and Glenn Greenwald in the same place?
  
• How Far We have Slipped: Steyn:
  

  Once upon a time we killed and captured pirates. Today, it’s all more complicated. The attorney general, Eric Holder, has declined to say whether the kidnappers of the American captain will be ‘brought to justice’ by the U.S. ‘I’m not sure exactly what would happen next,’ declares the chief law-enforcement official of the world’s superpower. . . . Meanwhile, the Royal Navy, which over the centuries did more than anyone to rid the civilized world of the menace of piracy, now declines even to risk capturing their Somali successors, having been advised by Her Majesty’s Government that, under the European Human Rights Act, any pirate taken into custody would be entitled to claim refugee status in the United Kingdom and live on welfare for the rest of his life.”

  A measure of how far in the wrong direction we’ve come. As I said the other day… Consider the kind of message being sent by our inability to deal quickly with a bunch of starving pirates with automatic weapons in a rowboat. Our inability to deal with that situation logically raises the question of how we will deal with the much more difficult situation of, say, Iran shutting off the Strait of Hormuz.

• Luck not leadership: The amount of defense being put up for Obama in the matter of these pirates and the WH (non-) response to it, is nothing short of frantic. Obama fouled this one up, gang. Period.  And before you start, I’m not wishing for failure, here.  Actually, I’m delighted at the outcome, as much as I would be if my five year old had flushed my money down the john, and it all floated back up. That doesn’t mean the path to the result was at all desireable or correct, or that my five year old deserves praise for his actions. Obama’s inactions (in the name of peaceful resolution, of course) was as likely to cause the death of Captain Phillips as to save his life. That’s an unacceptable gamble, if the return is that Obama gets to look like a peacemaker… if the Navy manages to pull the extraction of Phillips off without a shot.  What happened,in thye end, was sheer  luck, and not leadership. It’s troubling that Obama and his followers don’t understand the difference. Frugal Cafe has a nice piece on all of this you’ll want to see.
• There’s Diplomacy and Diplomacy: It is only when this situation is viewed in light of other diplomacy situations that the import of it becomes clear; Barack Obama is seemingly intent on bending over forward (Quite literally, at least once) for the Muslim world, while apparently seeking to annoy the Catholic Church. Too much in the mold of Religion and Guns, I suppose.
• Blithering idiot: Hey, Ron Howard… Be careful what you wish for, you drooling idiot. I used to have some respect for you, when you started coming up through the ranks in Hollywood.  Then you decided it was appropriate to start opening your mouth and remove all the illusions of intelligence. It’s people like you that cause me, in my more Menkenish moods,  to think that we’d be better off calling in an air strike on Hollywood and start over.  The place has polluted far too many people, for far too long.
• Tea and Beer: A Tea Party in Yakima Washington. Meantime a few hundred miles to the south, in Salem Oregon, they are contemplating a 1900% tax increase on beer.  Given the large number of micro breweries spread out across the state, it appears that support for small businesses not on the minds of the lawmakers. Estimates are somewhat varied, but most of them seem to be centered on $5.00  to $6.00 for a pint of the stuff.  Gee, do you think that will affect their sales?
• Brother’s keeper? Granted, News of the World is place I’d go for a reliable news. then again, reliable, and news, I’m not too worried generally here used together from the main the world of Obama.  Particularly in a story such as this.
  

  AMERICAN president Barack Obama’s half brother was REFUSED a visa to enter the UK after being accused of an attempted sex attack on a young girl in Berkshire.

  The News of the World can reveal that Kenya-based Samson Obama tried to get into Britain on his way to Washington for his family’s big day, the historic inauguration in January.

  But eagle-eyed immigration officials at East Midlands Airport, using the latest biometric tests, discovered he was linked to an incident here last November. The hi-tech database revealed that Samson – who manages a mobile phone shop just outside Nairobi – was the same man arrested by British police after he approached a group of young girls, including a 13 year-old, and allegedly tried to sexually assault one of them.

  Oh, I’m quite sure that I will be called a bigot, I will be told that there’s no connection between them, that this is all an attempt to smear the president, and so on. But can you imagine such a story being passed up by the mainstream press as this one has been, if it had involved someone in the Bush family, for example? I can’t, either.So why are they ignore and the story now?  You know why.

• The Difference Between them: I’ll let Glenn carry the ball on this one.  Go and read. It won’t take long, I promise you. I will only add a snip from my Pajamas Media article, from Friday:
  

  But imagine what would have happened if one or more of the bankers in that meeting with Mr. Obama had had the courage to stand up and remind him of of the facts:

  “No, Mr. President. The only thing between the Democrats and the pitchforks is us, the bankers, and that’s the way it always has been. You Democrats used us to buy votes with home loans, requiring us to lend money to people who could not pay it back. You left us holding the bag, Mr. President — you and the rest of the Democrats then in Congress. And you need our cooperation to save your political hide from the people with the pitchforks.”

  One can only conclude we’d all be in better shape (both from a financial standpoint as well as from the standpoint of freedom) if the bankers showed that kind of mettle. Trouble is, I fear, such courage is not in them.

  The point is this; look at the pictures that Reynolds puts up in that article. Which one of the two groups do you think has the support? Do you suppose that if those in high positions in our financial institutions saw which way the wind was blowing it’d help them to grow a spine? I suggest to you, these protests will have an effect.

• It’s for self-protection: Meanwhile, I’m hearing unconfirmed rumors that the Democrats in Congress are considering a bill which would require a ten day waiting period before purchase of tea bags.