Digital Brainwaves

Pajamas Media points out in, of all places, a review of The Dark Knight, an interesting difference between conservatives and liberals:

Liberals live in a world of “and.” Full security and full civil liberties. Universal health care and the best quality with no waiting. A dynamic economy and full welfare and unemployment benefits. Liberals, in other words, live in that scene in Spider-Man in which Spidey, forced to choose between saving a tram car full of innocent civilians and saving his girlfriend, chooses both. Liberals live in a fantasy.

Conservatives, though, live in a world of tradeoffs, of either/or. For having this relationship with reality, conservatives are caricatured as grumpy, stingy and negative. Surely all it takes is a bump in taxes on the wealthy and everything will be affordable? Where’s the Hope? Where’s the Dream? Yes, we can!

I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but it seems pretty reasoned. Have a look at the whole article (the quote is from page 2).

I’d vote for him in a second.

Beck’s live stage performance in Dallas, TX was simulcast into over 300 movie theaters across the country, including Regal Eastview Mall in Victor, just outside of Rochester.

The theme of the second half of the show was a campaign pitch for Beck for President, with him putting forward the thoughts and ideas that no politician dares to put forward, because they’re too afraid of the backlash they’d get if they did.

It’s too bad, ’cause I bet they would get a lot of votes if they did. Dude’s a genius, and he’s hilarious about it, too.

I hope this letter is real, and doesn’t turn out to be a hoax email forward, cause it’s too hilarious. Not to mention dead-on.

June 27, 2008

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

United States Senate

476 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Mrs. Clinton,

I recently read where you have incurred substantial debt with your unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Your plight concerns me and I would like to help as much as I can. I would certainly hate for you to feel pressured, due to the size of your debt, to support a candidate that you do not truly believe is ready to be “Commander in Chief on Day One.”

I have always believed that our form of government, while less than perfect, is the best the world has to offer. I’ve also always believed that Congress with 535 elected members has more power to do good for this country than only one person or even nine people. Congress has the power and ability to guide and direct this country like no other group.

I vividly remember in 2006 how the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress trumpeting “Change” and a better America. Let’s review how that has worked out for us.

* Mortgage companies have declared bankruptcy costing thousands of people their jobs
* Home values have nose-dived
* Millions of Americans have lost their homes
* World oil prices have risen astronomically
* The Democrats continue to block drilling in oil rich reserves to continue and even increase our dependence on foreign oil
* Gasoline prices have increased to over $4 a gallon and there appears to be no end in sight even though Americans have reduced their driving over one billion miles a month.
* The stock market, where most Americans’ retirement hopes are invested, has dropped by more than 15%.
* Food prices are increasing at an alarming rate fueled mostly by rising energy costs

All in all I’d have to say that the Democrats fulfilled their promise and have brought change to our country. It isn’t good change, but it is change. Unfortunately, because of all this change, change is all I have to give you to help you retire your debt.

I am enclosing one penny for you to add to your campaign “war chest.” I think that’s a fair trade. Everything you’ve done for me is worth about a penny and because of the success of the Democrats, that’s all I have. Just so you know that you really aren’t alone in this, I had to borrow the penny from a friend.

I do have one simple request in return. I would really appreciate it if you could teach me how I can get the American people to pay off my debts that I knowingly and willingly incurred. Isn’t this a great country?

Good luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Steve Russell

American citizen, patriot, veteran, taxpayer and voter

Interesting article in today’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. With New York’s US senator Hillary Clinton soon to depart the race for president, Clinton supporters who don’t care for Barack Obama and John McCain’s appeal to some independant voters, the state of New York could be in play for the first time since Ronald Reagan won the state (and all the others, too, save for Minnesota) in 1984.

UPDATE: The article also points out that this could all go out the window if Clinton becomes Obama’s running mate. Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal why he shouldn’t pick her: “She doesn’t turn the page. She is the page.”

Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL15) had a column yesterday on TheHill.com regarding NASA’s “greatest regret and greatest concern” — needing to rely on Russia for access to the International Space Station during the estimated five-year time frame between the retirement of the Space Shuttle program and the start of its successors, Project Constellation and the Orion spacecraft. His proposal involves flying the shuttle as is for an additional three years, and accelerating the design and creation of Constellation, but, sadly, the plan hasn’t met with much success in the House:

Some have criticized my plan citing the fact they believe the Shuttle is a “flawed” vehicle and must be retired. But if the Shuttle is so inherently dangerous why are we still flying it today? The Shuttle won’t be any more dangerous to fly in 2013 than it is in 2010. The bottom line is – NASA is flying the Shuttle because it is worth the calculated risk. NASA currently recertifies the Shuttle’s safety each time it flies.

Sadly, Congress was set to act on the gap but, Speaker Pelosi dealt two significant blows to NASA - making more challenging our ability to address this problem. In January 2007, Speaker Pelosi shepherded an omnibus bill through the Congress cutting $570 million from the Constellation program. Then late last year House Democrats stripped $1 billion from the Senate approved NASA budget. $1.5 billion would have been a strong down payment toward closing the gap. Pelosi said no.

Give it a read.

 ABC News, and just about every other mainstream media news outlet, thought they had their damning evidence against the war in Iraq:

It’s government report the White House didn’t want you to read: yesterday the Pentagon canceled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s availability and didn’t make the report available via email or online.

Based on the analysis of some 600,000 official Iraqi documents seized by US forces after the invasion and thousands of hours of interrogations of former officials in Saddam’s government now in US custody, the government report is the first official acknowledgment from the US military that there is no evidence Saddam had ties to al Qaeda.

That’s not really what the report says, though. As usual, it’s been spun to make readers believe what they want you to believe, instead of believing the facts. The report does not state there were no links, only that there was no evidence, in the small percentage of files they had examined, of an “operational link” — which is to say, Saddam wasn’t giving al-Qaeda orders.

Richard Miniter, writing for Pajamas Media, goes into great detail on what links were there, and concludes:

No connection? Well, Al-Qaeda and the Iraqi state certainly had a lot of meetings, money changed hands, some terrorist training occurred in Iraq, and a lot of personnel — including Abu Musab al Zarqawi — moved freely through the Iraqi police state. In short, there are connections.

None of this means that Iraq ran Al-Qaeda or had foreknowledge of its most gruesome attacks. It certainly does not mean Iraq was behind the 9-11 attacks or even knew about them in advance. [emphasis mine -- P]

Still, for there to be “no connection” between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, it would mean no meetings, no money, no training and no movement of personnel. On the strength of much weaker evidence, Saudi Arabia is “connected” to Al-Qaeda. Why is Iraq the one nation given the benefit of the doubt?

Have a read.

I either randomly stumbled across it in an article someplace (if I did, I didn’t save the link), or someone mentioned it in conversation recently, but I remembered the other day that I’ve blogged about man due to be sworn in as the next Governor of New York tomorrow, David Paterson, before. He had the wacky idea at the time to try to legislate that cops should, when things get dicey enough to require use of arms, get fancy and shoot to wound rather than shoot to kill.

Hopefully he’s got that idea shook out of his head.

That was fast:

“At Virgin Mobile, you’re more than just a number. When you call us we’ll treat you like a person, not a client. Whether you’re #9 or #900, you’ll get hooked up with somebody who’ll finally treat you just how you want to be treated.”

The stereotypical complaint is that FOX News Channel and its website, FOXNews.com, are politically biased to the right. Which is a reasonable comment, especially considering how far to the left most every other news outlet is; even being a little bit to the right of center is drastic, relative to everyone else.

But even FOXNews.com doesn’t mention that resigning New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is a Democrat until the 19th paragraph of this story.

If he were a Republican, you know it’d be the first word in anyone else’s article copy.

EDIT: I initially identified the article as being from FOX News, however it now shows as credited to the Associated Press; I don’t know whether it changed or I misread it. Now I’m less surprised that it’s so far down the article; in fact, I’m almost surprised the party affiliation was mentioned at all.

That Governor Spitzer may have been caught up in a prostitution sting…

…or this rather silly-looking picture from his abrupt press conference this afternoon?

(AP photo, retrieved from FOXNews.com)