Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the ‘sphere: The BitsBlog Nightly 
[1]Ramble
- HERE WE GO AWAY AGAIN: I’ll be leaving town on Sunday morning, early for I’m not sure how long. I’ll be in Dayton, OH for at least a few days and then I’m not sure after that. Obviously, we’ll be back in a situation where my connectivity is limited for the duration of my journeys. I’ll post as I can and update you. With any luck, this will be the last time I’ll have to be off the grid, since the laptop is already in the budget. With any luck, I’ll be sending pics to the site.
- WHAT’S THEIR OPINION? Some interesting questions and answers in this weeks’ Right Wing News Polling. With everything that’s been going on around here of late, I wasn’t able to respond to John’s call for votes. (Feel kinda bad about that…) But here’s the responses anyway. [2]
- BYE BYE LORAN: Apparently, based on budget cuts, the Coast Guard has decided to terminate the LORAN-C system [3]. I have a number of problems with this move, not least of which the lack of redundancy. I understand that the majority of shipping these days uses GPS. But how much does it take to jam such a signal? Satellites , on which GPS is based, have a tendency to fall out of the sky occasionally. You may recall that we are a little short of weather satellites just now for that very reason.
- ANOTHER ‘RAT DESERTS THE SINKING SHIP: Word from The Politico [4] that Patrick Kennedy plans to retire at age 42. He apparently said in a taped announcement that his life was going in a different direction, after two decades in politics. The Politico article goes on to suggest however that he is the fourteenth house democrat to announce his retirement in this particular election cycle. It’s a good point, and an admirable speculation, that what Kennedy is reacting to is voter anger against the Democrats. and that, and of course his own substance abuse issues, which were going to make his reelection difficult at best. cap that with a legislative record that has been far from stellar, and you begin to understand the problem, and the reason for this rather drastic solution.
- BIPARTISAN JOBS AGREEMENT FAILS- [5] Alex Bolton at The Hill says: [5]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is rewriting a jobs bill after Democrats complained of too many concessions to Republicans.
Reid announced Thursday that he would cut drastically back on the jobs bill Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) introduced only hours earlier, essentially overruling the powerful chairman.
The Politico, meanwhile, says: [6]
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid led colleagues and the White House to believe he supported a bipartisan jobs bill — only to scuttle the plan as soon as it was released Thursday over concerns it could be used to batter Democratic incumbents, according to Senate sources.
The problem here is obvious… as usual the Democrats, Reid in particular, are after submission, not bipartisanship. The bottom line here is that the only way jobs are going to get created is to get the government of the way. That’s the one thing that the Democrats will never agree to. (By the way, that’s something that the magnificent Moron, Grassley, should have known going in… the history of the thing speaks for itself) On its face, thereby, any “bipartisan” bill is never going to function. It’s never going to be able to work as advertised. Fortunately, there are still enough republicans with backbone in the how it to keep such nonsense from becoming law. So, we have a chance . Even if it is a small one.
- CLINTON’S HEART: Yes I saw all the web traffic surrounding the incident with former President Bill Clinton [7](God, that still feels good to say). I didn’t say anything about it because frankly, and despite all the news nets going wall to wall on it, I didn’t consider it all that newsworthy. That said, I spoke with a few readers about it last night, and universally they all wondered that the man actually HAS a heart. A few people questioned the timing… a reflex action, by now, I suppose. The man never does anything without regard for the political implications, after all. Maybe this is the exception, but I do understand the response.
- WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED? I have as much problem with these full body scanners and airports as anybody, mostly on freedom and privacy grounds, but one and Islamic group steps up to the podium [8]and suggests that such scanners violate the teachings of Islam, am I alone in being suspicious, I wonder?
- THIS WAY TO THE GREAT EGRESS: Joyner at OTB [9] points out:
“Support for Gays in the Military Depends on the Question,” Kevin Hechtkopf informs us [10] in the No Duh Headline of the Week. But the specifics are interesting: It seems people are much more sympathetic to “gays and lesbians” than to “homosexuals.”
There is a great old story about PT Barnum. Say what you will about the man, he understood pack mentalities, and thereby crowd control. THe story goes that one of his shows was wildly successful. So much so, in fact, that they were becoming dangerous. People were so packed in that there was a genuine danger of there being trampled people. So he had some of his workers open some of the gates, and had his barkers stand out front crying “This way to the great Egress” of course it was at this point that the crowds learned that the great egress in fact was the exit. Thus do we better understand the penchant of the left for, upon encountering public resistance to a particular idea, simply changing its name. “the public option” being changed to “the people’s option’ or whatever they fell to calling it, as an example. Or rasing middle class taxes being changed to ‘investing in America”.
- TREATING THEM LIKE MERE CRIMINALS AND NOT ILLEGAL COMBATANTS: Scott puts up a post at Powerline that’s well worth the read. [11] I have been saying all along, most recently in my most recent Pajamas Media article, that what we have here is the 9/10 mentality, including the Gorelick wall, reinfesting our anti-terror policy [12]. Scott.. and by extention former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, make the case for me on that score. I’d urge you to read it.