The Daily Brief

I’m with Timmer that tonight marks a transition that takes us from the charged atmosphere of an election, with the natural partisan and sometimes raw competitive tendencies that go with such things, to a state where we all, as Americans, must respect the office that President Elect Obama has won through the voice of the people. At the risk of damning with faint praise (which is by no means intended) I sincerely hope that the pragmatism to which he has aspired in his campaign is a hallmark of his administration; that many of his seemingly contradictory convictions can now be laid to rest because there really is no higher office to which he can achieve. He now has only one constituency, and I pray that the gravity of office will so inspire him in both his aspirations and his deeds.

That is my hope tonight. I’ll call it a day with the recognition that his election carries a presumption of good will and respect predicated on the more honorable attributes of the American people, and the prayer of Godspeed to his administration. Note Mr. President elect; any such presumption has a shelf life beyond which it must be earned.

Oh yeah, the title of this post. I have to confess that I truly enjoyed a lot of the humor that was directed at past administrations – all of them – and will continue to do so. It sure beats spending the next four (hopefully not eight) years in the fever swamps that many of my liberal friends have haunted (hint to Keith Olberman et al. – your paradigm just shifted and I can’t wait to see how you evolve over the next couple of years).

Despair is not only a sin but bad tactics.

No matter who you’re voting for, or what you think of the candidates, please take a moment to reflect on the frailty of life.

HONOLULU (AP) — Barack Obama’s grandmother, whose personality and bearing shaped much of the life of the Democratic presidential contender, has died, Obama announced Monday, one day before the election. Madelyn Payne Dunham was 86.

Obama announced the news from the campaign trail in Charlotte, N.C. The joint statement with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng said Dunham died peacefully late Sunday night after a battle with cancer.

Senator, I offer you and your family my deepest condolences for your loss. I’ll be praying that God gives you peace and comfort.

source

There is a nice twenty-mile stretch of Wisconsin 29 from the interstate to Kewaunee.  The road is straight, but hilly and and there are only a few places where you gotta slow down for towns.

A whole lotta people who live on that road have yard signs. I didn’t count but I’d guesstimate it’s an even split between Obama – Biden and McCain – Palin signs [1]. 

Who has put up the signs grabbed my attention.

There are a fair number of businesses out there.  Not concessions or chains but single- proprietor shops; a gravel pit, heavy equipment rental and repair shops, metal fabrication shops, a lot of farms.

Every Obama-Biden sign was at a private residence. Every business that had a sign – and most of them did – had prominent signs up for John Gard .. and McCain-Palin.

Means nothing of course and it’s only anecdotal – but it sure is interesting.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[2] This is not an endorsement of vandalism, just noting the humor.

Wow.  I’m gonna need those middle-class tax credits [1] that Senator Obama wants: they’ll come in handy to pay my electricity bill.

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know — Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

Awesome.  Because expensive power driving costs through the roof is exactly what we need.

As a campaign slogan I’m not sure ‘Vote Obama – he’ll double your electric bill‘ is a winner but what do I know?

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Of course, I only qualify for two of them.

The polls open in two days in what has been, to me, one of the most disheartening election cycles in my lifetime. It’s not because “my guy” is down in the polls. It is because a small radical minority in this nation has finally hit on the right formula to capture the passion of enough useful idiots to even make this election close. I use the term “useful idiots” purposefully. In speaking with people who support Obama, many of whom are very close friends and family, I am struck by their blind adoration that is utterly devoid of any ability to acknowledge the truth of what he believes or the factual history of his ascendance though the Chicago political machine. And here I thought that, after having been able to vote for 36 years and making the transition from liberal to conservative to independent, I could intelligently argue either side of any of these labels. I see now that I was behind the curve, because the arguments on the part of the left are now limited to ad hominem attacks, moral equivalence, and blind recitation of talking points (cf. Alan Colmes) – none of which are based on reason but are nonetheless effective with an electorate that has been conditioned, in a spookily Pavlovian way, to truly believe that the present administration is not humanly flawed but rather a manifestation of true evil.

From the beginning of this election cycle, Obama seemed a little too liberal for my tastes, but McCain’s ideas on how to fix many of the big problems of our day, although well intentioned, seemed always to manifest in unintended consequences (campaign finance reform or general immigration amnesty anyone?). So, in keeping with my belief that the privilege to vote carries an equal responsibility to perform due diligence, I set out on my journey of discovery to find out whether I could live with an Obama administration as I did with the Democrats that preceded him. My first impression was that he was a stereotypical liberal with a thin resume. Boy was I wrong – he is neither of those things. Rather, he is a left wing radical with an impressive resume of association with individuals and organizations who believe that the U.S. Constitution was a low ebb in western civilization and that this great nation must be protected, despite itself, against the center-right instincts that have prevailed from its founding. Stanley Kurtz, who I guarantee will see a wider audience for his work over the next few years, lays out a fairly detailed picture of what I am talking about here.

And, in anticipation of the negative commentary that this post will incite, I would encourage at least an intellectual discourse based on the merits of his thesis – failure to do so will merely prove my next point.

Useful Idiots was a term used by the Soviet propaganda machine to describe Soviet sympathizers in the west who were, in fact, held in contempt by their handlers. I have countless friends and family members who, almost without exception, are voting purely on the basis of hope and willful ignorance. Interestingly, this is an affliction of many notable heretofore conservatives as well (Colin Powell, Christopher Buckley, I’m talking to you).

Barack Obama has masterfully hidden from the American electorate what he stands for and who he stands with. That, in and of itself, should disqualify him not only from the presidency, but even a mid-level security clearance. He has been associated with voter fraud (yes, that’s right VOTER FRAUD – are we expected to believe that Acorn’s purpose was merely to distribute cigarettes and money to the disadvantaged?). He and his campaign have actively promoted censorship. His vision is to take this country to the lowest common denominator – how else to ensure that every single citizen is, by his definition, equally advantaged.

Honorable people can disagree. I can even hold a great deal of respect for those with whom I disagree. But I have no respect for useful idiots. Do your due diligence, and if you truly believe in mainstream liberal beliefs, write in Hillary Clinton. If I am wrong in my premises, provide some thoughtful commentary. BUT DON”T BE A USEFUL IDIOT! Remember, they will eventually come for you when you’ve served your purpose.

And finally, if you want to see this great republic stand for another century as one which embodies the visions and aspirations of our founding fathers, get out and vote. It’s important that you do, because those of us who share those beliefs only get one vote. We need each and every one.

P.S Let me also suggest paying attention to the writings of Bill Whittle and Michael Yon.

I had a brilliant flash of the obvious this morning while reading this post by Jay Tea over at Wizbang.  Jay does a pretty good job of showing how Senator Obama has abused the press, even as they fawn all over him.

The longer the campaign draws out, the more I suspect that it’s all really something much simpler.

Senator Obama simply looks and sounds better on television.  It’s Nixon/Kennedy taken to the nth degree.

Those of us who pay attention to politics find deeper things to explain this and that, but how many Americans even know what’s going on?

It’s easy to forget how weird we are compared to the majority of the country.  We assume that there’s a lot of political thought and deliberation going on when in truth, not so much.  I know people, relatively intelligent in their chosen fields who have NO idea what a candy company, Fannie Mae, has to do with real estate.  A lot of folks simply don’t have the time or inclination to watch the news.  My daughter finds it too depressing, has no idea what’s happening on a daily basis.

News has become entertainment and Senator Obama is the better showman.  He didn’t really have to be that great a showman.  Seriously, after the past four years, hell, after the past four months, all he really had to do is to NOT be President Bush, and not be the party that gave us President Bush.  I know staunch Bush supporters from four years ago who are voting for Senator Obama and are doing so with absolutely no apologies.  They’re just plain pissed.  I understand that, that’s how I voted for President Clinton the first time.  Truth be told, if I could get past Senator Obama being from the Chicago Machine, I’d probably be voting for him too, and that’s knowing everything I know about Ayers, Reverand Wright, Rezko, ACORN, etc. etc. etc..  I simply don’t want Machine Politics taken to the national level.  Hell, the sheer number of indictments alone make me shudder.

But he HAS been a great showman, $5M for a stage to close the DNC?  He’s paying the City of Chicago another $2M for election night to add ANOTHER stage to Grant Park for his victory celebration?  For those of you not familiar with Grant Park, there’s already a stage, under a very nice bandshell I might add, in the park.  And let’s not forget the music videos, the non-stop viral attacks against Senator McCain and Governor Palin on the web, and did I mention $5M for a stage to close the DNC?  And he looks and sounds better for those that do manage to see and hear him.  Compared to Senator McCain he’s a superstar.  Even when McCain is happy and upbeat, it looks forced and quite frankly, fake.

Again, I think it’s that simple, Senator Obama looks and sounds better and THAT I think is the reason he’s going to win on Tuesday.  Issues?  Issues/smissues, entertain me and everything will be alright.
Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends, I’m so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.

From Politico:

Fox News anchor Brit Hume, reflecting on his 12 years at the cable news network, recalled that during its formative stages, a New York Times television writer said the news division of Rupert Murdch’s network was like an “imaginary friend.”

So it was “quite amusing,” Hume said in a interview this week, to see the same Times writer liken the network’s current line-up to the New York Yankees — a testament to how much Fox has grown in influence and acceptance in the media world.

It’s hard to imagine such a quick ascent without Hume, who just two months after Fox launched in October 1996 took a roll of the dice, dumped his 23-year career at ABC News — the industry’s gold standard — and cast his lot with Murdoch, the super-rich, conservative media tycoon. Hume became the fledgling network’s chief Washington correspondent and managing editor.

Now, he’s stepping aside from those roles after this year’s election. And predictably, that’s cause for hand-wringing laments among colleagues and fans on the right, and fist-pumping cheers from his critics on the left.

Now that I’m working and in Mountain Time again, I’ve been missing his “Special Report” but seriously, the first half hour is worth any three hours of any other news broadcast in the country. 

On the other hand, I saw something the other day where that “sick twisted freak” Glenn Beck is moving to Fox this spring, again, at a time when I’m at work.  So CNN has who else now?

From SB7

Here’s a doozy of a non sequitur from Hege123l:

I don’t want a for profit company making life and death choices for me. Government healthcare seems to work fine for government workers, the military and our politicans…

Seems to work fine. We might imagine that Hege123l has never talked to anyone in the military.

Fort Ritchie, Maryland, 1989. It’s wet and rainy and cold in Maryland in the winter, and my nearly year-old son has chronic ear infections. Fort Ritchie has a clinic, so to the clinic we go. Sensibly (for the Army) dependents must wait until active duty soldiers are seen. Including the Light Duty Brigade showing up to get just one .. more .. day on their Work Avoidance Chit. Also, sensibly, unless you’re about to die you are seen in the order in which you show up. Appointments are for sissies.

What this really means is that if you want to be seen for anything you show up early and wait in a crowded room until after lunch time.  If your kid is in a lot of pain, you show up early .. and wait in a crowded room. This is actually less fun than it sounds with a one-year old doing a lot of crying and vomiting.

The Clinic from Heck has two doctors. One doctor has the bedside manner of a brick and while you’d like to avoid the bastard, you can’t because it’s luck of the draw. By the fifth visit my son has learned the diff between Doctor Asstard and The Good Doctor. By the tenth visit he whimpers when we’re in the wrong examining room and cries when the guy shows up.

The doctors – over the course of eighteen months – managed to miss that B. was going deaf and has a whole lotta scar tissue on his eardrums. His ear infections didn’t really go away until we moved to North Carolina, where the Navy farmed their dependent care to civilians who looked at B, said ‘wow, he’s deaf, no wonder he can’t talk well’, popped tubes in his ears and .. lo, he could hear.

Now, mistakes happen and anecdotes are only that.  Also some of the finest care I’ve ever gotten has been from Navy corpsmen, dentists and PAs.

But – from my experience – saying that ‘it seems to work fine’ is to ignore a whole lot of experience that says there are some pretty serious problems with ‘government health care for the military’.  To me, government health care will always be that small clinic at Fort Ritchie with one good doctor and one bad doctor and waiting in a ‘first come first served line’ with a baby in a lot of pain.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Sorry ’bout the broken link in my previous post – I’ve been playing around with Google Chrome and, although I think it loads pages much faster, it still has some beta issues. Here is the crux of the story:

“The Air Force is creating a new command to manage the nation’s nuclear arsenal better after a series of embarrassing missteps in the handling and oversight of its most sensitive materials.

Donley said the latest shuffle would be a “new starting point” that would reinvigorate the service’s nuclear mission. He also said it would help the Air Force focus on the arsenal’s management, no matter how small it might become under future international agreements.”

The last paragraph is interesting. Those of us a little older might remember the humorous story about “What the Captain Meant To Say” which transposed an official Viet Nam era account of a dog fight with what the pilot actually said, F words and all.

I wonder if, in this instance, what the captain really meant to say is that after 4 November 08 the new Commander in Chief will give us just slightly more confidence in the security of our strategic arsenal than what we have in, say, Pakistan’s. Just thinking out loud.

Maybe I missed something when I read this, but isn’t that why we had SAC?

I live in real America.

I was born in Oregon, most of my family still lives there. I was raised in Oklahoma, then joined the Marines, saw a bit of the world. Now I live in a medium-sized town in Wisconsin.

It’s nice here.

We’ve got some manufacturing, some light industry, some business. We’ve got a river and a lake. We’ve got a park called ‘Riverside Park’ – the river sweeps by the place in a gentle curve. There is a World War One cannon there, looking over the river, pointing at the boat house on the other side. A flagpole with lights. A pavilion.

There is a new playground there with a giant plastic rocket as a centerpiece – a businesses in town donated most of the money to build it.

I take my kids there some Saturdays. There are always a lot of kids in and around it.

All of the parks here have purpose built sledding hills.  We don’t have any natural hills you can sled on. So the city built them for the kids.

That’s pretty nice as well.

There are some things that are not so very nice.  They’re the same things that everyone else has problems with, everywhere: the economy, politics.

Those things come and go. Thirty, fifty years from now, people will still bring their kids to Riverside Park, just like their parents and grandparents did. They’ll sit on the same bench I sit on, and watch their kids do what mine do: run around, play, have fun.

That’s pretty nice.

What about your Real America?

Idea from Bard Bloom.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Wait .. a what? SMB vulnerability?  As in directory shares between windows computers?  Whoops!

If you take a peek over at the National Vulnerability Database, we can see this article Here is the overview:

Buffer underflow in Microsoft Windows 2000 SP4, XP SP2 and SP3, Server 2003 SP1 and SP2, Vista Gold and SP1, and Server 2008 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a Server Message Block (SMB) request that contains a filename with a crafted length, aka “SMB Buffer Underflow Vulnerability.”

This means this vulnerability could be exploited to create a worm. Further it means if one PC gets infected on your network, then quickly all of them will.

After doing some more research it seems there is already an exploit in the wild – it is set to “go off” during the Thanksgiving holiday here in the states.

Aw – that’s okay Microsoft.  I wasn’t planning on getting any actual work done today.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Well dang ..

Barack Obama raised more than $150 million in September, a stunning and unprecedented eruption of political giving that has given him a wide spending advantage over rival John McCain.

I expect – any day now – a chorus of outrage from the Usual Suspects about how money is buying an election and kvetching about how money is ruining the race and how it just ain’t fair.

Any day ..

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.