We knew that with any major switch of the software like this, that there would be issues. Especially when we kept it secret and didn’t let you all test first!
I know there have been many people asking questions and making suggestions. Be aware that I’ve seen them all, and have been paying attention, even if I haven’t had a chance to reply to each one personally.
To answer many questions at once though, here is a summary of the development status:
Chris Matthews for Senate? I have some questions about the idea. I don’t know if they will be answered; Matthews seems too much in love with himself to bother explaining why he ought to be a Senator. With any luck, that will be his undoing, though I am sure he counts on his celebrity status to keep a substance-free candidacy afloat.
See here. Note again the fascination people like Penn have for murderous dictators. It’s a mystery to me why the likes of Hugo Chavez prevent people like Sean Penn from seeing and understanding the brutal truth about life in places like Venezuela. About the kindest explanation I can offer is that there is some kind of secret conspiracy that aims to give us hagiographies we can mock as a way to pass the time and release tension.
The most dangerous politician around is the kind whose bad policies are enabled by an adoring public.
Nicolas Sarkozy has become a very dangerous politician:
At 4 a.m. on Sept. 30, as the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. was shaking up investors on six continents, President Nicolas Sarkozy convened an emergency meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris to broker the bailout of French-Belgian bank Dexia SA. For an hour, he grilled Finance Minister Christine Lagarde and Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer on the terms of the 6.4 billion euro rescue plan, says François Perol, Sarkozy’s economic adviser.One of his top requirements: Dexia Chief Executive Officer Axel Miller must leave and forfeit his 3.7 million euro severance paycheck.
With that gesture, Sarkozy, who took office pledging to instill a work-hard, get-rich ethos in a country known for its disdain for money, turned into something more familiar to the French: a politician who intervenes in private companies, subsidizes jobs and bashes the bosses.
“By conveying the message that the state can do better than free markets, Nicolas Sarkozy is appealing to the French’s old instinct for protection,” says Philippe Waechter, chief economist at Natixis Asset Management in Paris. “He seems to be turning his back on his reformist agenda meant to give the French economy more inner resilience.”
The circular firing squad forms, as promised:
Democrats are growing impatient with President-elect Barack Obama’s refusal to inject himself in the major economic crises confronting the country.Obama has sidestepped some policy questions by saying there is only one president at a time. But the dodge is wearing thin.
“He’s going to have to be more assertive than he’s been,” House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., told consumer advocates Thursday.
Frank, who has been dealing with both the bailout of the financial industry and a proposed rescue of Detroit automakers, said Obama needs to play a more significant role on economic issues.
“At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time,” Frank said. “I’m afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have. He’s got to remedy that situation.”
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Now, what about you?
From: Gary Welsh
Subject: What Kind of Conservative Are You?
Date: December 4, 2008 9:40:31 PM EST
To: contact@redstate.comThere is nothing more enraging to conservatives like me than conservatives like you who no longer respect the rule of law. Go ahead and make your snarky little comments about the Obama birth certificate issue, but because of idiots like you on our side, this total fraud is now going to be our president. He lied about his birth. He lied about his Muslim upbringing. His college years are a total mystery. Indonesian records show he was adopted by his Indonesian step father and became a citizen there. His autobiography, Dreams From My Father, contains one lie after another. We were told we couldn’t say a damn thing about this issue because of John McCain’s problem with being born in Panama. This is total horse s***. Arnold Schwarzenegger will never be president because of the rule of law, but because idiots like you think you know better and think we all have to be nice little soldiers and go along with the scam, the Manchourian candidate chosen by an illegal secret government that your buddy Newt Gingrich promotes at every turn will do just fine during the Obama years. You and Gingrich should pack up and leave the GOP for good. You sure aren’t helping it out.
No, Gary, I think it guys like you who probably could have been effective mounting an opposition to Obama, but decided to go on a wild goose chase, who are enabling the coming of the Obamessiah.
BTW, I bet you voted for Ron Paul.
Two months ago Sam Van Voorhis calls my old church, says he’s in the PCA, and he needs to know the circumstances surrounding why I was no longer at that church. The church secretary hang up on him after he became angry when she wouldn’t tell him why I was no longer there. The only thing I can connect it to is a couple of posts I wrote questioning who was making the independent expenditures for the party.
A week ago a friend pointed me to the flawed absentee ballot mailer in Georgia and connected it to Sam Van Voorhis.
I called a friend at the NRSC. He confirmed it was Voorhis’s group that did it.
Yesterday I finger Van Voorhis.
Today, Van Voorhis calls the church again, does the same thing, demands to know why I was no longer at the church, etc. The preacher tells me the guy was really rude.
Tonight my friend from the NRSC calls and tells me it was his mistake. Van Voorhis’s group was not connected to the mail piece and Van Voorhis did not get to decide who would do the mail for Georgia anyway.
This all adds up to a barrel of rotten fish.
Insert lines about Denmark here. My gut tells me there is something very suspicious here.
UPDATE: Having posted this, some friends connected to party operations here in Georgia tell me they were told weeks ago that Van Voorhis’s company would be doing the absentee ballot in question.
So it has finally wound up going to the Supreme Court. Big freaking deal. I have asked, and the contributors have long agreed, to avoid this topic.
Now that it is making legitimate headlines, let me offer my very firm opinion on the matter.
(1) There is reasonable doubt on the issue.
(2) The issue is being badly misreported, including making statements about the legal proceedings relating to Phillip Berg and others that are simply not true.
(3) The whole thing with David Souter and Clarence Thomas is offensive to me. The Court treated the matter as any matter would be treated and all of a sudden, because something was done by SCOTUS, the matter has been given a legitimacy it does not deserve. If it were a suit to demand Obama hand over his martian DNA, it would have been treated the exact same way. The only reason Clarence Thomas referred it on to the other black robes is because he has a great sense of humor and knew they all needed a laugh.
(4) And this is my biggest one: let’s say it is all true. Let’s say Obama really is from Kenya. Let’s say the birth certificate, despite being validated by a Republican administration in Hawaii and despite a birth announcement in a Hawaiian newspaper — let’s say it’s all a fraud. So what? Does anyone really, really think five justices of the United States Supreme Court are going to throw him out of office or deny him the right to run again? Seriously? After over 50% of the nation voted to elect him? That will not happen. And if it did, there’d be a greater percentage of people up in arms over than voted for the guy.
So, in all of this talk about the birth certificate, the people pushing the story are distracting themselves from the real news. I bet Obama is really, really thrilled that so many people are focusing on the birth certificate because these same people will wholly ignore all the other stuff.
The real story here is not that Obama is a foreigner. He’s not. The story is Obama’s pattern of lying. It wouldn’t surprise me if he listed himself as Kenyan to get preferred treatment at Harvard. There are lots of lies that I can believe. The man talks out of both sides of his mouth to get his way and get ahead.
But the birth certificate stuff is a total distraction.
Here you go. Have at it.
A couple of things to go over here:
After being sent home over Thanksgiving to revise their pitches for a multi-billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded “bridge loan” to keep them a float through the end of the year, Michigan’s “Big Three” automakers returned to Capitol Hill this week to renew their respective cases.
The retooled bailout plan included requests from automotive manufacturers that Congress pass legislation requiring every individual to purchase a vehicle (whether or not the definition of “everybody” includes Americans who are under the age of 16 or resident aliens is expected to be worked out at a later time) and mandating the price of gas be cut by 30%.
The preceding paragraph is, of course, not true. However, if it sounds more than a bit over the top to you (as it should), then consider this: America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the official lobby of the national health insurance industry, has made a series of recommendations to Congress for health care “reform” that is identical to the aforementioned example in every way except one: it’s real.
Matt Lewis pointed it out. So does Michael Barone.
I agree with them. Because Saxby guarantees the Democrats can’t get to 60 in the Senate, Al Franken’s victory becomes rather meaningless to a group of people who don’t much like him anyway. The odds decrease daily that the United States Senate will sit Al Franken — especially considering he has never led during the recount despite his campaign’s statements to the contrary.
For Franken though, tempers are still flaring.
The city of Chicago is pushing through two changes: first, side streets will now only be plowed during union working hours, which apparently are weekdays 7am-3pm (hat tip: Neal Boortz, via americanthinker.com):
CHICAGO (CBS) — Mayor Richard M. Daley said Tuesday that city crews will cut back on plowing side streets this winter in an effort to save money. The mayor said the city will only plow side streets during weekday union business hours this winter, rather than during overtime hours.
The other change? City parking meters are being outsourced and will have their rates double or more over the next 5 years, plus the meters will have to be fed 24/7 (hat tip: my wonderful girlfriend):
From the diaries, by Erick.
The WSJ has an interesting opinion piece written by David Kopel, of the Cato Institute. It discusses the recent news regarding Giants wide receiver Plaxico Burress and the incident in a New York nightclub where he possessed an unlicensed, in NY, loaded glock and he accidently shot himself in the leg. The point Mr. Kopel brings up is regarding New York City’s gun law, which states if a person is found to be carrying a firearm illegally, it carries a minimum three and a half year prison sentence, and how it punishes those that are discriminated by the state for not recognizing out of state permits and not issuing permits to non-residents, which in the wake of Heller, is up for discussion.
Folks, just so you know, we do have a few bugs to work out around here. We (meaning Neil) are working them out as fast as possible. I appreciate all the positive emails and comments about the transition. We thought you’d like it.
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From the dairies by Erick. Dang is it easy to promote now!
Apparently, the Service Employees International Union is worried about the state of California’s budget. The SEIU, one of the nation’s biggest employee unions for state workers, would like Sacramento to know they have a cure for the millions in the red state budget.
Could it be that the union is going to offer cutbacks for its exorbitant union perks? Maybe a cut in their overly generous pension is in order? How about a cut in the pay scale that they enjoy, a scale that exceeds the private sector in nearly every way?
Well, don’t be ridiculous. The union is not offering to help the state with its budget. The union is demanding that the state raise taxes to keep them in the lifestyle to which they undeservedly have become accustomed.
Yesterday, I wrote about Sam Van Voorhis. He is the independent expenditure guy for the NRSC. People tell me, including people at the NRSC, that Van Voorhis has, in his position as independent expenditure director, directed money to Majority Strategies a/k/a NextWave Communications. Sam happens to run that shop.
You can read about it here.
Today, my preacher calls. Or, I guess I should say former preacher, though he is still my preacher. Christy and I have moved churches.
In any event, my preacher calls and says some guy named Sam Van Voorhis called demanding to know why I no longer go to church there. Sam Van Voorhis claimed to be in the Presbyterian Church of America (my denomination) and insisted on information. My preacher says Sam was rather unpleasant when they would not cooperate.
What is more interesting is that Sam called a few months ago doing the exact same thing to the church secretary. Sam needed, for some reason, to make sure I hadn’t been forced out of the church.
Sam, I think, is looking for dirt on me.
Fascinating.
Hey, don’t scowl at me: scowl at the New York Times. It’s their headline:
WASHINGTON - On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.
But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary - likely to be necessary - to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.
This is your must read of the day.
The impulse to blame social conservatives arises nearly every time Republicans fail. They were blamed for the elder Bush’s 1992 defeat, as though he would have won if only Pat Robertson had not spoken at the Republican convention. They were blamed for losses in the House in 1998. And now they are being blamed for McCain’s rout.
Exactly, and without them the GOP can’t win.
Ramesh continues
If the pundits’ advice were right, Republicans would be doomed, since they are highly unlikely to take it. Luckily, that advice is misguided. No, actually, it is worse than that: The case that an overemphasis on socially conservative positions has been a major cause of Republican defeats is obviously ridiculous.
Hahahahaha. This is way too funny.
Elections officials in Minnesota’s largest city today discovered that one precinct came up 133 ballots short of election day totals, resulting in a net loss for Democratic challenger Al Franken of 36 votes.
The development wipes away what had been a boon for Franken in his bid to overtake Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, after Ramsey County officials found an additional 37 votes for Franken from a Maplewood precinct on Tuesday.
Mind you, Franken has been telling everyone he was in the lead. Not quite so now.
Karma.
