Category: Uncategorized

Our national news just sucks. Including FNC, although they at least aren’t slavishly devoted to liberal ideals like CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, PMSNBC, et al., and they do have incredible news babes unlike the aforenamed.
Let’s review why this is (the suckage, that is). First, an inability to decide what is really of national import. (The Fox Car Chase Channel is how I often refer to FNC…one guess why. Who really gives a damn, other than people in the area affected, that some moron is leading cops on a high-speed chase down the freeway?) Second, the same inability to let go of a story as a dog has to let go of a favorite bone. Third, a complete parochial ignorance of anything international UNLESS it has specific ties or import to Americans.
The third reason is why we don’t hear about Bali, or about the financial mess in Japan that’s due to the fact that the government is unwilling to bite the bullet like we did in our savings and loan “crisis” and bail out the banks that are holding almost nothing but worthless paper. Or about what’s really going on in Russia these days, or in Canada, both places being countries where the citizenry don’t think like their governments and don’t really hate Americans like their governments do.
There is no real investigative reporting done today that is worthy of the name.
And that is perhaps the real shame. Because Americans don’t really know what is going on in the rest of the world. And it is directly the fault of our own news media — who are closing down international bureaus left and right in the name of saving money — that this is the case.
Why were Americans so shocked on 9/11? Not because the CIA or the FBI screwed the pooch, although it’s pretty clear they did. Rather, because our vaunted news media let us down and lulled us by 10 September 2001 into the same false sense of security that we had on 6 December 1941.
The infamy is that the news organizations have, ever since 9/11, scrambled to point fingers everywhere but at themselves. An informed public will not let its government go slack on national security. An uninformed public won’t even know national security is slack until a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 happens in their face.
The whole thing is a shandeh un a charpeh. (You could look it up.)

I would like to state for the record that I think it is a sin that American media have not given the kind of attention to the nightclub bombing in Bali that they have to other things (like this idiotic Washington Sniper chatter that shouldn’t be monopolizing national news services 24/7; it would be one thing if the local stations went 24/7 with it, but there are other things going on in the rest of the country — like elections coming up in only a couple of weeks — and in the rest of the world — like Iraq and like Bali). I am friendly with a number of Australians and I mourn with them for their losses. But I’d barely know that the bombing had occurred if I got all my news from TV or radio, or even from the newspapers.
I don’t think Americans per se are self-centered to the extent that they don’t care about terrorism unless it happens on our own shores. But I do think that the major American news media aren’t interested in overseas news unless Americans are directly involved. And I find that to be a crying shame, because it makes it look like Americans don’t care, when the fact of the matter is that American news media don’t care.
Australia is one of our best and most important allies. We do them no service by ignoring their pain. Bali was very much their own 9/11 and we ought to be just as horrified today as regards their loss as they were the day the towers went down, the Pentagon burned, and Flight 93 smoldered in a farmer’s field.

Here’s my take on North Korea. Warning: Contains strong language. (Oh, wait, that would be normal for this blog.)
It’s time to walk up to the little fucker who ruins [sic] that place and be very firm with him. Our envoy should say, approximately (but clearly),
“Set one of those nukes off, boy, and I mean anywhere in the world, even on your own soil just to prove you’re a big man, and your country will very quickly resemble a big glass parking lot. And if you don’t start dismantling them immediately, with full disclosure and 100% inspection, it may end up resembling said parking lot anyway.”
And we should tell our friends the Chinese that if they think we’re bluffing the DPRKs about this, they should encourage their butt boys up there to set off a nuke somewhere.
I’m minded of a story from my teen years, when my father used some fairly rough language with his father in regard to letting his 14 dogs have the run of his house trailer when Grampa could hardly breathe from emphysema (coal smoke from the railroad, not cigs) to start with. I said, “Dad, why do you cuss at Grampa so much?” He thought about that for a few moments and said, “Because sometimes that’s the only language he understands.”
Well, strength and power is the only language these jackoff dictators understand. A 20 megaton fireworks show over Baghdad would be a great starter. Then maybe the world would take us seriously.
(I know, I know…we fight our wars more in sorrow than in anger. But a little anger is a good thing from time to time. And it would sure feel good to see that mushroom cloud climb over Saddam’s crispy butt.)

Noted via Best of the Web:

An Arvada [Colorado] man filed suit in federal court challenging the constitutionality of Colorado’s voter registration law after he missed the deadline for registering and learned he is ineligible to vote Nov. 5.

Gee, who would possibly think this was a major problem? Oh, wait:

Proponents of Amendment 30, which would allow residents to register and vote on election day, paid James Annibella’s $150 filing fee in U.S. District Court in Denver on Thursday.

With all of the chances you get to register, what with motor-voter and all, how did this moron possibly miss the deadline?

“I am denied my right to vote because of some snafu in the law,” Annibella said Thursday outside the court during a news conference by Yes On 30.

No, you aren’t, sir. You are denied your right to vote because of a snafu in your idiotic life called “I don’t have a clue”.

“I couldn’t believe it. It’s very frustrating.”

I’m sure it is quite frustrating to be a moron, but the law is the law.

Annibella became ineligible to vote after he moved a year ago from Denver to Arvada and failed to register under his new address before the deadline, which is 29 days before the election.
Residents can still register if they swear they did not know of the deadline, said civil rights lawyer David Lane, who donated his services to file the suit.
Annibella said he knew of the deadline but has been working 12 hours a day as a financial consultant and didn’t have time to register.

Good God, man! When you pick up the change of address forms at the post office, they have a mail-in change of registration form right in the package! (I know…I’ve used it!) How much time could that possibly take you? In the privacy of your own home, even, and I think it’s postage-paid.
What we have here is a failure of civic virtue. If you wanted to vote, you should have registered like everyone else.

Lane said Colorado’s registration law violates Annibella’s constitutional rights.

No, but his suit violates mine.

Dave Minshall, spokesman for Yes On 30, said 40 percent of people move between elections, and many, like Annibella, are not eligible to vote because they fail to register under their new address.

My heart bleeds. My wife didn’t get to vote in our primary in May because she’d never changed her registration (even after living here for nearly two years). She accepted the responsibility and sent in a registration change, and now she’ll be able to vote next month.

“It’s unfair to keep some voters from voting because they didn’t change their address by an outdated deadline,” Minshall said.

What’s outdated about it? It gives the election officials time to make sure that they have proper records at the polls on election day.

Six states that offer election-day registration have seen an increase in voter turnouts, he said.

And how much increase in vote fraud goes along with that?

Davidson and dozens of county clerks across the state oppose election-day registration because they say it would be costly to implement and invite voter fraud.

Well, duh. I’m not concerned about the cost as much as I am about the fraud aspect.
This suit needs to be dismissed out of hand, and with extreme predjudice. Frankly it smells like a big fat Democratic setup.

Well, not exactly, she wants something she doesn’t have to reload quite so often. I wonder if I could paint my Colt like that without my father’s ghost kicking me in the butt.
Some interesting overheard conversation and even more interesting Rachel commentary below this. Including:

I think 2 million Democrats should join the NRA so they could change the message of the group…

Wouldn’t that be like Republicans crossing over to vote in Cynthia McKinney’s primary? Sigh. Liberals are so predictable. “You can’t do this, but we can.”
(One question: Would that really be “Doctrinaire” or “Doctrinairess”?)

Garry Trudeau hasn’t really had anything to say since he took his long hiatus years ago and aged all the characters. Today’s comic is case in point. (Link via the Professor)
My wife is beginning to think I’m nuts because every Sunday I’ve been scratching out Trudeau’s name and writing in something like “Assface Motherfucker” before I’ll read his Sunday panels. Naturally this is done in public 🙂

Steven Den Beste notes the Aussie response to a nutcase campus gunman.
Makes me think of that case in West Virginia…except of course that the Aussie students wouldn’t have been allowed to carry weapons.

Tom Daschle’s at it again.
And this guy wants to be President? Not in a million years. Not if people with any sense have anything to say about it.

As a student of the interwar period and more particulary its diplomacy, I find Jeff Jacoby’s column today compelling reading.

Rachel’s got a story about a guy in Texas who tried to jack a hunter’s car…when the hunter arrived back at the car with his bow and arrow in hand.
It didn’t end well for the would-be car thief. At least as far as he was concerned.