Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Another Brutal Kidnapping Thwarted

The stories of the assaults on pregnant women are proliferating, causing one to wonder if this is a common crime or a new fad. Michelle Malkin notes a heroic woman who fought off and killed her attacker.

You know, there are a lot easier ways of getting a baby.

Posted by Matt on 02/15 at 02:40 PM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, February 14, 2005

Never Bet Against the Pope

There’s something grisly hilarious about this:

With odds against the pope’s survival set as high as 12-1, Las Vegas’ biggest sports books took a massive financial hit last weekend when the ailing pontiff pulled off a huge upset against his heavily favored archrival, death.

“No question, it’s a catastrophic loss,” said Bally’s sports book director Tony Silvestro. “You’ve got a frail and gaunt 84-year-old man with massive health problems and he finally gets the flu. It’s like a gift from God for oddsmakers. I’ve never been more confident of a betting line.”

Death opened as a whopping 16-1 favorite, but early betting on the pope gradually lowered the line to 12-1. A few lower-tier casinos dropped the line until it began attracting equal dollars from death and pope bettors, but the normally cautious big casinos felt death’s victory was such a sure thing that they allowed themselves to become overextended.

“We’ll go back and look at the algorithms and computer models,” a glum Silvestro said. “You have to after a loss like this. But you also gotta give the old guy credit. Put him up against death and he’s just unbeatable.”

I’d have backed the Pope, no question. He’s not planning on meeting his illustrious predecessor St. Peter anytime soon from what I can see.

Posted by Matt on 02/14 at 10:21 AM
(4) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

And the Nominee Is …

To this, I have one thing to say.

Oh please, pretty please, pretty, pretty please ...

Posted by Matt on 02/14 at 10:15 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Silly Grammys

The entertainment industry’s love affair with the Clintons appears to have more fire than their own, what with Bill now winning a second grammy for his cinderblock book:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton won the second Grammy Award of his career on Sunday, when he was honored in the spoken word category for his best-selling memoir “My Life.”

The Clinton’s now have three grammys between them - but not to worry, I’m sure they’ve got another one set aside for Hillary for whatever next drips from her poison pen ...

Posted by Matt on 02/14 at 09:48 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Friday, February 11, 2005

Light Posting

Posting will be light at best over the next couple of days, but meanwhile, the American Thinker has a cool story about a pretty determined guy.

Posted by Matt on 02/11 at 09:22 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Ron Reagan for the Blue States

Hot on the heels of the smashing success of Air America Ron Reagan Jr. is to get his own show:

Reagan will host “Connected: Coast to Coast” from MSNBC.com headquarters in Redmond, Washington, MSNBC said in a statement.

The show, which will air twice daily, will base its other host—Monica Crowley, a former Richard Nixon aide and Fox News analyst—at MSNBC headquarters in New Jersey.

I get it, one is in Washington and one is in New Jersey. One could hope there is more to the show that that, but given how little RR Jr. seems to have learned of politics despite his father, it may be in vain.

Posted by Matt on 02/10 at 10:05 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Anheuser-Busch Ad

If you missed the salute to the troops during the Superbowl, it can be seen here.

It speaks for itself.

Posted by Matt on 02/09 at 09:55 AM
(3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

The Buzz Goes Up a Notch

Many people do not much care for Dick Morris - possibly because of his celebrated falling out with the Clintons - but I’ve always found him to be pretty incisive. I’ve been touting Condi Rice as the Republican nominee for president in 2008 for some time, but as our new Secretary of State barnstorms Europe, the speculation is rising.

The political fact is that a Rice candidacy would destroy the electoral chances of the Democratic Party by undermining its demographic base. John Kerry got 54 percent of his vote from three groups that, together, account for about a third of the American electorate: African-Americans, Hispanics and single white women. Rice would cut deeply into any Democrat’s margin among these three groups and would, most especially, deny Clinton the strong support she would otherwise receive from each of them.

Rice’s credentials for a candidacy are extensive and will grow throughout her tenure at the State Department. As former chancellor of Stanford University, she would have much in common with the pre-political careers of Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower, presidents of Princeton and Columbia universities. Her service as national security adviser during a war and her current efforts as secretary of state demonstrate her ability to handle crises and to conduct herself with dignity and impact on the world stage.

True enough - she has never held elective office, but there are precedents for that. Personally, I think she’s Hillary Clinton’s worst nightmare.

Posted by Matt on 02/09 at 09:28 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Tuesday, February 08, 2005

Rice Stands Tall

Unlike the Eurolemmings who bow before all things Palestinian in their rush to blame Israel, Condi Rice is showing the world the US will have none of that. From the Jersalem Post:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made no acknowledgement of Yasser Arafat’s grave when she met the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah on Monday before concluding a whirlwind trip to Israel and the PA.

Unlike a long line of other leaders who paid some kind of homage to Arafat’s grave at the entrance to the Mukata, when visiting PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), Rice’s car simply pulled into the compound, passed the grave and Rice got out and walked into the building.

On the way out, she also made no acknowledgment of the grave, unlike other leaders, like EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana who laid a wreath or British Prime Minister Tony Blair who walked by and nodded.

One US official said that the question of how Rice would comport herself around the grave did not come up in preparatory meetings for the visit. “It was not an issue,” he said.

The PA decided not to make a fuss about the issue to avoid marring relations with the US.

Indeed, there is a range of options, but apart from the fact that Dr. Rice is a classy lady, it’s easier for a guy to do that.

In other news, Yasser Arafat is still dead after dying from unknown causes in Paris.

Posted by Matt on 02/08 at 10:11 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, February 07, 2005

On the Crocodile Tears of the Left

Douglas Hanson has the numbers.

Posted by Matt on 02/07 at 04:55 PM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Keen Insight from the Belmont Club

At the end of a good post about the Cole-Goldberg kerfuffle is this unalloyed pearl of wisdom from Wretchard of the Belmont Club:

In truth, the ground for civilized debate has been shrinking progressively from September 11. The sharp animosity that has sprung up between the Left and Conservatives may be a kind of emergent behavior arising from the wide-ranging changes that have taken place since that fateful day. One could hardly expect that the end of the Cold War, the decline of Europe, the ascendancy of India and China, the collapse of the UN and the advent of terrorism would leave political relations between Left and Right unchanged. But it was the declining vigor of Marxist thought coupled with new conservative ideas that poured the most fuel on the flames. Discourse between Left and Right could only remain civil for so long as Conservatives remained meek or had no counter-pulpit. The weakening of the traditional media and the stresses caused by war have created a kind of ‘play’ in the system which now allow unchained weights to crash about. In that sense, there is nothing surprising about Juan Cole calling Jonah Goldberg names. One gets the feeling he has been calling people names all his professional life; and I think Mr. Goldberg can handle it. What has changed is that, with the decline of the MSM, there is nothing which prevents incivility from becoming a two-way street. And I’m not sure either the Left or the total system can contain the stress.

I’m sure about the Left, but hopeful for the system.

Posted by Matt on 02/07 at 04:48 PM
(0) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink

Diplomad Filing Last Dispatch

Feeling mission accomplished and the press of other duties, the Diplomad is shutting down his blog consulate at Foggy Bottom. This star that briefly lit the blogging firmament will be sorely missed.

For those who’ve had the pleasure of reading Diplomad’s keen insights or for those who never did, the archives will be available for a while. Stroll over and check them out.

Nothing like going out on a high note.

Posted by Matt on 02/07 at 10:21 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Latest Carnival of the Cats …

... is up at Running Scared.

Remington makes an appearance so Daphne is not the only Birman this week.

But I don’t plan on telling her that.

Posted by Matt on 02/07 at 10:18 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Saturday, February 05, 2005

Volkswagen Hoax Ad Update

VW has decided not to sue the creators of an ad where a suicide bomber blows himself up inside a VW.

Good for them.  Apparently one of the grownups made it down to the legal department to stop them from looking any more foolish. Alas, they have forced the creators to take the video off their website though it’s still available here and here.

If VW was smart, it wouldn’t have sued these guys, it would have hired them.

Posted by Matt on 02/05 at 10:04 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Friday, February 04, 2005

New Sleeping Arrangements

As a followup to last week where I noted that the cats are not thrilled with New England winters, I present some of the other new sleeping arrangements the ladies have come up with. Chloe, for example, has taken to sleeping under my desk:

image

This has the drawback of she occasionally nips my toes when she wants something, like a drink or a piece of salmon.

Meanwhile, Daphne has found something more akin to a perch:

image

And no, you don’t get to ask what a giant Oscar Mayer Wienermobile is doing at Villa MartiniPundit.

Posted by Matt on 02/04 at 04:38 PM
(5) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

As Andrew Sullivan Evaporates

Readers of this blog from the beginning (way back in May) will recall that Andrew Sullivan was once at the top of my blogroll. In truth, at that time I was wondering if he deserved it, but I was going as much on past performance as anything else, and figured he was in a slump.

The slump proved to be permament. When he comes back - if he comes back - I doubt he’ll have the audience he once did.

It was not just that his blog degenerated into all gay marriage all the time - it was and is an important issue and if as a gay man Sullivan wanted to blog on it that was his business. It was when the President came out in support of the FMA and Sullivan not only opposed the President on that issue but suddenly every other issue as well. The intellectual dishonesty of that was breathtaking and exploded his credibility with me entirely. He moved to the bottom of the blogroll and eventually off it entirely.

So I haven’t been reading him much - indeed a headline that grabs my attention loses it the instant I see his name on the byline - but have been amused by the continued attention the blogosphere pays to this charlatan. I always felt his pledge drives were a bit sleazy and never contributed myself, but to take a month off after dunning one’s readers for 120 grand is despicable. This after getting them to cough up 80 grand a few months before. Then to take an indefinite hiatus a couple months after that to run off to Europe is tantamount to fraud. Those who contributed must have a pretty sour taste in their mouths right now.

Michelle Malkin - who apparently has been the target of some of Sullivan’s puerile humor - has a roundup of reactions from the blogosphere. I’ll admit, I’m also wasting some pixels on the guy, but it still amazes me how much credence - nay respect - he’s still given from the old guard like Glenn Reynolds. Someone said Sullivan was blogging before blogging was cool and that’s true. That and 200 grand will get you a nice trip to Europe.

Posted by Matt on 02/04 at 01:05 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

On the Unhappy Global ‘Elite’

Victor Davis Hanson is at it again, slicing through the cognitive dissonance to bring tonal clarity:

Why would the world listen to a stumbling George Bush when it could be mesmerized by a poet, biographer, aristocrat, and metrosexual of the caliber of a Monsieur Dominique de Villepin? Why praise brave Iraqis lining up to vote, while at the same hour the defeated John Kerry somberly intones on Tim Russert’s show that he really did go into Cambodia to supply arms to the mass-murdering Khmer Rouge — a statement that either cannot be true or is almost an admission of being a party to crimes against humanity if it is.

Second, political powerlessness follows from ideological exhaustion. Communism and Marxism are dead. Stalin and Mao killed over 80 million and did not make omelets despite the broken eggs. Castro and North Korea are not classless utopias but thugocracies run by megalomaniac dictators who the world prays will die any minute. The global Left knows that the Cold War is over and was lost by the Left, and that Eastern Europeans and Central Americans probably cherish the memory of a Ronald Reagan far more than that of a Francois Mitterrand or Willy Brandt.

A must read, but then you knew that.

Posted by Matt on 02/04 at 10:50 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Move Over DVD

Just when you thought that massive DVD collection you’ve been assembling from Wal-Mart’s bargain bin was going to last forever, the propeller heads up the ante. They’re calling it HVD.

Six companies, including Fuji Photo and CMC Magnentics, have formed a consortium to promote HVD technology, which will let consumers conceivably put a terabyte (1TB) of data onto a single optical disc.

A TB-size disc would certainly compress movie collections. The consortium said an HVD disc could hold as much data as 200 standard DVDs and transfer data at over 1 gigabit per second, or 40 times faster than a DVD.

Sounds grand but they better make the players backwards compatible. DVD adoption rates have been even higher than CDs were in the 80s and a lot of people have a lot of them.

Of course, by that point, we’ll all be watching video stored on our Petabyte capacity hard drives.

Posted by Matt on 02/04 at 10:25 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Thursday, February 03, 2005

Thoughts on the State of the Union Address

image

President Bush’s fifth State of the Union Address was longer than I might have expected, taking nearly an hour. It had the usual laundry list of issues and proposals, though not nearly as much as I remember President Clinton would always lard his SOTUs. The mispronunciation of nuclear as ‘nucular’ which annoys Lefties so much was on display, and there was some political theater. The Iraqi woman voter whose father had been murdered by Saddam hugging the mother of a fallen Marine was schmaltzy but touching and the ink-stained fingers showing the solidarity of one of the oldest democracies with the newest was a powerful symbol.

There were nods to the FMA, stem cells, AIDS, and immigration. I’m not sure how one will manage a tight border in conjunction with a liberal guest worker program, but the border is far too porous and the need for migrant workers is all too real. However, in reality, there were two main themes to the address: Social Security and Terrorism.

The talking heads and the Democrats are presently engaged in a game of semantics over whether the Social Security system is in crisis, in trouble, or sound as granny’s piggy bank. My personal view for some time is that it’s nothing more than a giant Ponzi scheme (the only one that’s legal) and I’m unikely to see a dime of the money I’ve paid into the system. It’s another tax and a pretty regressive one at that. I’d welcome the opportunity to take control of that money or a portion of it but the details are still too sketchy to know just what we’re talking about. The President laid out the case for reform, and that seems to me the right approach. Until people are convinced that there is a need for radical reform, nothing will happen, and the President needs to do as much convincing among the Republicans as he does the Democrats. He may be the only President in our lifetime who can dare touch the ‘third rail of politics’ as his political career is over in four years and he need not worry about Cheney. One thing I didn’t know is that Federal workers already have some form of this - the Thrift Savings Plan - which appears to be similar to a 401k but may serve as a blueprint for reform. We’ll see.

From my point of view, this was the key passage:

To promote peace in the broader Middle East, we must confront regimes that continue to harbor terrorists and pursue weapons of mass murder. Syria still allows its territory, and parts of Lebanon, to be used by terrorists who seek to destroy every chance of peace in the region. You have passed, and we are applying, the Syrian Accountability Act—and we expect the Syrian government to end all support for terror and open the door to freedom. Today, Iran remains the world’s primary state sponsor of terror—pursuing nuclear weapons while depriving its people of the freedom they seek and deserve. We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing, and end its support for terror. And to the Iranian people, I say tonight: As you stand for your own liberty, America stands with you.

Extending the logic of the Inaugural Address, Bush has fingered the next two targets. They are no surprise, of course, but the Assad regime and the mad mullahs in Tehran have been told by a fine poker player to put up or shut up. The irony is that we probably don’t need to even invade to push Iran into the democracy column. The Special Forces incursion that so frightened Seymour Hersh is probably real, and like Afghanistan, most of what will be needed. Supporting the democracy movement in Iran that already exists will achieve most of our strategic goals for that country - freedom, no nukes, no sponsor of terror. As to Syria, something tells me that Assad will be pulling a Quadafi before long. It can’t have escaped the notice of the Syrians that the Iraqis among them were voting last Sunday.

A couple of observations on the floor: Kerry was there but no sign of Ted Kennedy. Dennis Kucinich fluttered a few feet from the President as Barack Obama handed Bush something for his autograph, and Sheila Jackson Lee and Bush shared a humorous moment which makes one wonder what ever that could have been.

The Democratic response was silly as always. I don’t quite see the point of opposition response - not now and not when the Republicans were in the minority. It’s not like one ever hears anything new in them - Reid said nothing substantive but promised to work with the President when they believe he’s on the right track. Good grief - pigs and cows will both fly before that happens. Meanwhile, Pelosi is just an embarrassment - she’s calling for broader participation in the Iraqi elections. Uh, 72%? Better than we do? But how sad that she’s parroting the line of the Sunnis who deliberately sat the election out and are now saying it’s illegitimate because it didn’t have enough Sunni participation. By aligning herself with that line of reasoning she undermines the Iraqi achievement and makes herself look like either a stooge of the anti-democratic forces or just plain foolish.

All in all, about as expected. Bush laid the necessary foundation for reform of Social Security but he must continue to use the bully pulpit to lead on the issue or it will never happen. And at least as importantly, he telegraphed a serious warning to Damascus and Tehran. Sometimes a shorter laundry list is best.

Update

Wizbang has a roundup of reactions from the Blogosphere.

Posted by Matt on 02/03 at 10:20 AM
(1) Comments • (2) Trackbacks • Permalink

Trackback Spam

The trackback spam is out of control this week. I’ve noticed it on other blogs and thought I had taken the right steps to end it here but I was mistaken.

To my readers - online poker and texas holdem are spam and will be deleted as I see them. Please do not click on these links for any reason. (I realize they’re trying to raise their Google rankings, but I don’t want them to profit in any way from stealing my bandwidth.)

To the spammer scum - I’ve reported your domain names to your hosting service and will do so with each new one I see.

Posted by Matt on 02/03 at 09:07 AM
(3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 2 of 3 pages  <  1 2 3 >