The sinking of MSM Titanic

Funny Day-by-Day cartoon. Pre-election, but it has a timeless quality, I'm afraid.

Protein Wisdom on Sovereignty

He's said it well, and I could hardly agree more. The issue of treaties under our next administration is one that's got me worried...

Sigh.

Maybe next time.

One more thing I hope

is that the popular vote tallies remain as close as Fox News has them right now: 51 Obama vs. 49 McCain. I want this to have been a much closer election than the opinion polls have been predicting, with the last Real Clear Politics average having Obama up by 7.6%.

I've never bought the idea of a "mandate" for the President. The President gets his mandate by being elected, no matter how slim the margin. What I want tonight is for the results to show that McCain was just about as popular with the country as Obama was, despite the near-universal opinion that the country is some near-solid mass pushing for Obama.

Murtha wins

The offensive jerk from Johnstown, Penna. has apparently won re-election. Maybe now he'll feel free to tell his constituents what he really thinks about them.

Comments from Mark Levin

On The Corner:
"John McCain just gave a classy concession speech. If McCain had won, we were told of possible riots."

Good point.

And McCain's conceded...

California puts Obama over the top

Fox News has just called it for him. 275 electoral votes.

Well, congratulations to the Democrats for their victory. I'm going to go hide, now.

*%&*(!^!

Virginia goes to Obama. Dang Yankee carpetbaggers in the D.C. suburbs...

Too many in a row!

Nuts! Harry Reid hit "change" twice and "mandate" once in the same sentence. I forgot "hope." Adding it to the rules below...

P.S: It's a good thing I'm just drinking water.

Murtha calls it for himself. Voters might or might not.

Jack Murtha (Jerk-PA) is holding a press conference to congratulate himself on his win, despite his ignorant, racist, redneck constituents. The networks aren't so sure he's won it, though. Nobody's called it yet, except him!

I'm calling Tennessee for McCain...

OK, that wasn't a big surprise. Pleased to see that McCain's got about 300,000 more votes than Obama so far, though. With Pennsylvania and Ohio going for Obama, it's going to be really tough for McCain to win 270 electoral votes.

For now, then, I'm at least hoping that McCain gets Virginia and North Carolina. If these Southern states go for a liberal Yankee, I'm going to be too embarrassed to hold my head up tomorrow.

Speaking of which, this will be the first Yankee Democrat to win the presidency since Kennedy. The wife and I were wondering the other day if this would be the left's chance to replay the Kennedy administration. A lot of the hagiography of Kennedy comes form him being an inspiring leader who was killed partway through his first term. In a sense, he didn't get the chance to let them down. My uncle was doing a computerized poll for the Republican party, leading up to the 1964 election, and he thinks that Kennedy wouldn't have won re-election. He was seeing Democratic voters starting to go for Goldwater. Admittedly, this was Texas, but it was movement away from the 1960 results.

So Obama might well get the chance to disappoint his followers. So much expectation is getting attached to him that he can't possibly live up to it all. I doubt his experience is up to the task, although he might be a quick learner and do passably well by the standards of a normal President. But I think that the bar is going to be set much higher for him than for a "normal President." The messianic fervor is just bizarre, and my question is whether it will burn out or keep going for a full term.

Election night drinking game

We're coming up with rules and phrases for election night drinking games here. I might have to add a few as the night goes on, but here are some phrases to start with:

One drink:
--------
filibuster
mandate
economy
change
"move the country forward"

Two:
----
hope
some version of "repudiate Bush"
Iraq
racism
redneck
backwards
Palin

Finish the bottle:
-------------
"I, for one, welcome our new messianic overlord!"
"I feel a tingle running up my leg."
"Comrades!"

UPDATE: Added "hope" to the two-drink list.

Hubble back up and running

I didn't see this earlier, but the primary camera on the Hubble is again sending data. That's the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). This had been down for a few weeks, not communicating with the ground. They'd been able to send commands up (they thought), but only the Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) were talking back.

This short item from NASA doesn't make clear the status of the other cameras, so I don't know if there's still any problem remaining. I suspect so, actually. The New York Times article mentions that they booted up the "side 2" electronics on the camera--backup electronics designed for just such an emergency, in case the primary circuits went down. Trouble is, they're designed a little differently than the primary ("side 1") circuits. (You'd have thought they would make an identical copy, wouldn't you? Well, we were both wrong, then...) So it took a bit of work to make sure everything checked out with them.

Let's hope the other cameras are OK!

Maverick John McCain

Although I certainly want McCain to win, I still enjoy this 5-year-old Paul Shanklin (Rush Limbaugh Show) parody of the "Maverick" TV show theme. If you're not familiar with "Maverick" or only saw the movie (starring Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, and James Garner--excellent film!), here's the original show's song. And here is Shanklin's parody. Heh, heh...

You know, if McCain hadn't made a career out of snubbing conservatives, he would have a base more fired up for him and would get more votes. As it is, Palin's been the one to draw the crowds and needed conservative support. Which is why I've got to disagree pretty strongly with the Republicans or erstwhile conservatives who've been criticizing the Palin choice as hurting him with "moderates." From an interview I heard on XM radio's P.O.T.U.S. '08 channel (presidential politics channel--like C-SPAN, but even better!), history shows that you win elections more by turning out your base to vote than by attracting votes from moderates. McCain may attract some moderates--that's who he mostly appeals to--but he's really hurting support among the GOP base, and there are a lot more potential votes there. Palin's the least he could do for us.

Another reason to vote for McCain-Palin...

...to "devastate" the bureaucrats at the UN. Quote: "It will be devastating if Obama loses," the official said. "There has been such an amount of faith placed on the outcome."

John Bolton is characteristically straightforward:

"The fact is that most conservatives, most Republicans don't worship at the altar in New York, and I think that aggravates them more than anything else," said John R. Bolton, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "What they want is the bending of the knee, and they'll get it from an Obama administration."

Yep.

Producing x-rays with Scotch tape!

I already knew you could easily generate light by peeling Scotch tape off of something (in fact, it's hard not to, although you need to be in a darkened room to see it), but the Mrs. told me yesterday that you get a decent amount of x-rays if you peel it off in a vacuum. Now, that's neat! It's coming out in this week's issue of Nature, and they're suggesting it as a way of making cheap x-ray sources.

The Obama revolution: "History Repeating"

I was listening to Propellerheads' great pseudo-Bond song, "History Repeating," yesterday, when I noticed the lyrics could nicely describe the Obama Revolution phenomenon:

The word is about, there's something evolving,
whatever may come, the world keeps revolving
They say the next big thing is here,
that the revolution's near,
but to me it seems quite clear
that it's all just a little bit of history repeating

The newspapers shout a new style is growing,
but it don't know if it's coming or going,
there is fashion, there is fad
some is good, some is bad
and the joke is rather sad,
that its all just a little bit of history repeating

.. and I've seen it before
.. and I'll see it again
.. yes I've seen it before
.. just little bits of history repeating

Well, at least I'll have a little laugh from this to keep me company under the New Regime.

Frank Schaeffer goes nuts on Orthodox-on-Orthodox violence

I'd never read anything by Frank Schaeffer until today. I don't think I'll bother reading him again. This whole article is just nuts. It's got the hallmarks I've seen elsewhere of a convert (political, religious, or in this case, both) who loses his rationality when discussing the group he left.

Here, he's writing about the Russian invasion of Georgia and essentially defending Russia (at least excusing them). I don't know if I want to bother refuting too many of the...um, "points" he tries to make, because he isn't very consistent and doesn't seem to have thought really hard about it.

Sigh. OK, I just need to say a couple or three things. He seems driven in all of his arguments here by a desire for pan-Orthodox dignity, centered on Russia. If the US (and the West, generally) make contacts with former Soviet republics and satellites, helping their struggling democracies and extending NATO membership, he makes that out as us "encircling" the Orthodox world. That implies that we're threatening the Orthodox world. Somehow, this excuses Russian threats against fellow Orthodox countries like the Ukraine and Moldova, and a flat-out invasion of Orthodox Georgia. Yet when we aid Orthodox countries like Greece, Romania (both NATO members), the Ukraine, and Georgia (both being considered for NATO membership), that's a "threat" to the Orthodox world. The only Orthodox country we've attacked this whole time has been Serbia, and that's only because of the deliberate attacking of civilians and ethnic cleansing.

Does the non-Russian-allied Orthodox world see themselves as under attack from the West? Not from what I can tell. Rather, they see themselves as under attack from Russia. Where would they get that idea? Mostly from Russia attacking them. (Or threatening to attack them.) So is the rest of the Orthodox world as disdainful as he towards America and Bush? Again, not from what I can tell. In fact, these same sorts of places tend to be where Bush is quite popular (Romania, Georgia, and the Ukraine, in particular--not so much in Greece, though). My Orthodox in-laws in Romania tell us how popular Bush and America are there.

Somehow, Schaeffer spins this all into a web of anti-Orthodox bigotry on the part of the West, and he throws a bit of snide remarks against President Bush's being an American Protestant. I don't buy into much psychoanalysis, but "projection," anyone?

What's funniest is that this is all supposed to explain why Russia invaded Georgia, a fellow Orthodox country. I'm tempted to do a take-off on that joke from some late '50s liberal comedian whose name I can't remember: "Every time America attacks an Orthodox country, Russia decides to retaliate by attacking an Orthodox country."

Internationalist Jerk.

This column really must be read in its entirety to be believed. The whole thing is lousy with contempt for American sovereignty in a way that I had thought was only a caricature of liberal internationalists. This guy actually seems to think that we should worry whom the rest of the world wants us to have as our president!

Advice to the rest of the world: Mind your own business! Go back to making cheese or starting ethnic wars or living off welfare or whatever it is you do best. We'll elect our own president, thank you very much. And you can elect/install/depose your own president/presidente/presidente-para-la-vida/fearless leader. Best of luck with that. Let me know how that works out for you.

Foul-mouthed Jerk.

You stay classy, CBC.

How many South Ossetian civilians dead?

2,100 (Russian claims) or 40 (recorded in Tskhinvali's main hospital)? You think the Russkies might have been...exaggerating to justify their little invasion?

'Way to go, big 'U'!

(I felt like paraphrasing a "Hunt for Red October" quote just now.) The Ukraine has just told Russia that the Russkies have to inform the Ukraine of all ship movements out of the Russian-leased, Ukrainian-owned base of Sevastopol...or else. Russians must get permission from Ukrainian authorities at least 24 hours in advance of any ship movements, or the Ukraine can expel the Russian ship from its port.

You think Russia over-played its hand in Georgia? Hmm?

Cold-War-style paranoia in Moscow

Dick Cheney got Russia to invade Georgia to keep Obama from getting elected! I thought Karl Rove did it, actually.

The Russians are convinced Cheney made them invade?! That's like the lefties here thinking Rove faked the Texas Air Nat'l Guard memos and convinced Dan Rather to run with them.

What we should do for Georgia

John McCormack on Max Boot on the Russo-Georgian War. I especially think that there should be absolutely no Russian "peacekeepers" within South Ossetia under any circumstances. They're a party to the war, not neutral peacekeepers. And I'd love to see some of those shoulder-fired US "Javelin" anti-tank rockets knocking out the Russian columns advancing into Georgia...

Democratic unity

This is the kind of Democratic Party unity I love to see. These are the guys who are trying to force a floor vote on nominating Clinton at the Democratic convention this fall. According to XM Radio's "P.O.T.U.S. '08" channel yesterday, they have 2/3 of the signatures they need.

Love the acronym...I can't believe they actually titled their group this way.

US "antisatellite test" really was done for safety

Imagine that: the official explanation was the real explanation. Who'da thunk?

[P.S.: the spell-check correctly underlined "who'da" but for reasons unknown to me didn't seem bothered by "thunk."]

Is Russia really losing, in the end?

Classical values thinks so. I'm not so encouraged, but I'd like for it to be true.

Russian tanks moving towards Tbilisi

The BBC News is reporting a column of Russian tanks moving on the road from Gori towards Tbilisi. They can't say where they're intending to wind up. There's a cease-fire in place which was made on the Russian terms, and the Russians say their military operations are over. But this is the Russians we're talking about. They were also bulldozing a Georgian military base recently.

One BBC reporter suggested that although the Georgian artillery is well south of the disputed zone, they're within firing range of it, so the Russians might simply be going down to clear them out. Well, that would be the Russian argument.

The most despicable thing of this whole war is the Russian attempt to get rid of Georgian president Saakashvili. They've absolutely refused to deal with him personally, and in terms that shock me to hear. What exactly do they have against him? They're making a claim of war crimes, but come on...this sounds simply like made-up propaganda, which the Russians are experts at. For their part, the Georgians have made the same accusation in return, which is smart, whether or not it's true.

Imitations of famous movie scenes

I'm watching 5 Against the House on Turner Classic Movies. It's a 1955 crime caper--college friends figure out how to rob a casino in Reno. Guy Madison has just come into his fiancee Kim Novak's dressing room. The camera looks at him from under her outstretched leg, framing him standing in the doorway as she puts on her hose.

It's almost the same camera shot that was so famous in The Graduate! The only difference is that in 5 Against the House, Kim Novak's leg makes a right angle, framing Madison on two sides (we're looking completely under her leg at him).

I can't find any stills of this scene, unfortunately. And I don't see any references online to the similarities between these. Of course, I'd never heard of this movie before I tuned it in...

The propaganda waged at the Chinese Olympics

Good grief, what shallowness! But read the article carefully, and note how all of this fakery and deception is considered necessary propaganda to make sure China comes off as impressive as it can. Ugh! A similar report is here.

Saakashvili addresses crowd of 50,000 in Tbilisi

I imagine this is the rally that was called for 3:00 Georgia time today. The BBC reports about 50,000 people in the square in Tbilisi. Lots of Georgian flags in evidence. Saakashvili seems to be a pretty good orator, although they're not translating his speech, so I'm just going on body language. The Georgian flag, incidentally, is a really pretty one.

From last night: Georgia "overrun" by Russian troops

This is a little out of order, but it's a useful article still.

One thing I'm worried about for the US (and just raised by the BBC reporter) is how our reputation will be affected by this. I was hoping for a stronger response (sheesh--the Georgians were sure hoping for more!), but as far as any outside country's actions have gone, we were/are leading whatever diplomatic opposition there is to Russia.

The reporter in Gori said that Georgians there were disappointed in the lack of military support from the US. We'll see if our help in shuttling their troops from Iraq to Georgia, or our diplomatic efforts count for anything. It's best not to let your allies down when they're being invaded.

South Ossetian war blog

"Russia and Georgia at War". It's from a Georgian perspective.

Russia calls halt in military operations

BBC news is reporting now that Medvedev has called a halt to Russia's invasion of Georgia. I haven't seen anything on the web (or at least, not linked by Drudge--I'm lazy).

One thing I've been thinking of: Those ethnic Georgian villages within South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Assuming Russia just gets to keep their little prizes there, will the borders include those ethnic Georgian towns? If it's OK to invade Georgia to "protect" the Ossetians...if we can carve up Georgia to separate the ethnic groups into different borders, then wouldn't Georgia be just as justified in claiming the Georgian towns there as its own?

This is the sticky part of popular sovereignty, and there's probably no really satisfying solution. And I'm saying this as someone in favor of the principle.

OK, it's probably the latter explanation

Accusations Russian hackers are launching a cyber war against Georgia.

Servers in [European] Georgia not responding

Or at least not the one I tried. Not surprising, I reckon, but that tells you how widespread the damage is. I wonder if this is physical damage to the hosting site, heavy traffic, or if it's Russian hackers doing a bit of cyber warfare.

Russians take Gori

Gori's just 60 miles from the capital in Tbilisi. Georgian troops are supposedly pulling back to a town just 15 mi. from Tbilisi.

I've got a good friend there in the capital--my college roommate. Gerry Fernandez, I hope you and the family are safe!

Why Georgia lost the war

The one over in Europe, of course. Strategy Page has a useful article.

"They seem to have gone beyond the logical stopping point"

No kidding.

One thing I'm glad for, though...

...is that in this post-Communist era, European (and in this case, really, "Caucasian") wars and power struggles no longer have quite the ideological stakes they used to. Now it's mostly back to balance-of-power politics and classical wars for land and ehtnicity. I'm gung-ho for our political ideology, actually, but I'm not a gambler, and the stakes were really, really high back then. They seem lower nowadays, when if someone on our side loses, there's less chance of brainwashing and reeducation camps or the wholesale slaughter of classes of people. (contra, see "Balkan Wars (1992-whenever)") You might wind up under a strongman regime like Russia's, but you're not going to be under a totalitarian one.

So in some sense, there's less for me to worry about. And then on the other hand...

Russian warships steam towards Georgia

I'm afraid the war's going to be over very soon, and Russia will have won. Russia's already bombed the port city of Poti, far from the disputed region of South Ossetia.

In principle, I support the independence of just about any state or province that wants it, and I'm in favor of self-determination. So absent the events of this past week, I might look kindly upon the independence of South Ossetia as well.

What I can not support is Russia invading, whether South Ossetia or Georgia in general. This "we're just trying to protect Russian citizens" line doesn't fly. They're only Russian citizens because Russia's been handing out passports to them like candy. This is a little different from the old Russian policy of resettling ethnic Russians in the conquered nations so that the locals would be diluted and the Russian claim would be stronger. But it reminds me strongly of Germany's claims on the Sudetenland in 1938. Sure, it's in Czechoslovakia, but there are a lot of ethnic Germans there, and they're being mistreated by the mean ol' Czechs. We just want to protect Germans, wherever they might be. With tanks. In this case, there are very few ethnic Russians, but lots of Russian citizens, so it works out pretty close to the same.

Charles Krauthammer the other day said that there would be a lot of diplomatic bluster, and eventually the calls for a ceasefire might bear fruit. This would allow the Russian forces to solidify their hold on the region. And then the UN would get around to meeting on this, and they would decide they really didn't want more fighting and would essentially bless the facts on the ground, allowing Russia to keep what it took. I'm afraid he's going to be right.

Russia invades [the country of] Georgia

About 50-150 tanks rolling in.

Popping the oil bubble?

Wouldn't this be nice?

Hot spot in California: ground warms to 812 deg.

Wow.

Let's regulate the press when it comes to global warming discussion

So a lefty British professor of journalism is advocating a government regulatory scheme to oversee published material discussing global warming. Let's keep this caricature of the Left as the guarantors of free speech and a free press going, right?

Here's a bit from the opposing side. A good antidote.

Obama is pro-inflation but anti-drilling

Dean Esmay does the math on Obama's inflate-your-tires energy plan and says they don't add up. There's some wiggle room in there for Obama, but you've got to give generous interpretations of his words, and even then it's not a practical solution.

One thing technocrats often miss is that they're dealing with live people in a society, and people have their own ideas about how they're going to live and what they're going to do. So while it's good advice to properly inflate your tires and keep the car in good working shape, and most people already do, you won't be able to force the remaining 27% of people (those driving around with seriously underinflated tires) to do your bidding. Maybe a major publicity campaign for inflated tires will reduce that percentage somewhat, but you will always, always have some percentage who won't take your advice. Maybe they're lazy. Maybe they don't have the time or money to go and get the car tuned up as often as you want them to. Maybe they don't want you telling them what to do. And so you won't get to that magical number you've cited for a goal. You won't equal even the predictions for oil from offshore drilling, much less from ANWR.

So: how about encouraging vehicle maintenance and expanding exploration and drilling? Offshore, ANWR, South Dakota, whereever! Put in new nuclear plants, windfarms, and even solar panels. The best of all worlds.

Pravda sympathetic to the czar?!

"Russians mark 90 years since murder of Russian czar and his family" Note that word: "murder." This is Pravda. The whole article seems quite sympathetic to the czarist, anti-Communist side. Huh. Maybe Pravda is just as happy these days to take a pro-Russian side, even if that means sounding a little anti-Communist.

Perusing Pravda tonight

"NASA hides the truth about Mars." ("Source: agencies") It's been observed before, but Pravda's turned into the National Enquirer Russian edition lately. Which is probably unfair to the Enquirer, ever since they stopped running articles about UFOs.

bin Laden's driver found guilty

Not that I was biting my nails on this one or anything. But if we're going to have to run the whole war on terrorism this way?...it's going to be more of a Long War than anybody's been thinking. Didn't I hear some complaints the last few days that this guy wasn't properly Mirandized? Sheesh.