Don Singleton: 2008-01-20

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Another strike against Hillary

Caroline Kennedy wrote in New York Times Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

On the heels of a major loss in South Carolina,and many prominent Democrats objecting to some of the tactics the Clintons are pulling, and Bill acting as pit bull not being fitting for a former President you have to believe they are not happy to see Caroline Kennedy endorse Barack Obama

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Violence Continues in Kenya a Day After Talks

New York Times reported The political bickering continued in Kenya on Friday, and so did the violence, with young men in gangs from opposing ethnic groups killing one another in the streets with machetes and bows and arrows.

Gun control advocates take note. If people want to kill each other they will find a way to do it.

Nakuru, one of the biggest towns in the Rift Valley, seems to be the new trouble zone. Witnesses said fighting erupted there late Thursday when mobs of Kikuyus, the ethnic group of Kenya’s president, mobilized to avenge attacks suffered at the hands of other ethnic groups.

You kill our people, we will kill you. Talks are not going to have an effect.

Witnesses said Kikuyu gangs built roadblocks to stop police officers from entering certain neighborhoods and then burned homes and businesses belonging to two other groups, Luos and Kalenjins.

The Luos are the Muslim tribe that wants to impose Sharia law on the others. But this is not a battle between Christians and Muslims, it is just tribal warfare where each tribe wants to be in control.

Those groups sent out their young men to confront the attackers, resulting in a riot with hundreds of homes burned, dozens of shops destroyed and at least 10 people killed. Some witnesses said dozens of corpses filled the town’s morgues.

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Okla. Immigration Law Blamed for Death

KSTP.com reported Edgar Castorena had diarrhea for 10 days and counting, and the illegal immigrant parents of the 2-month-old didn’t know what to do about it.

If this is an Oklahoma story, why is it covered by Minneapolis. MN TV, Rochester, NY TV, and the International Herald Tribune. And at the time I am writing this, the article on Topix for Tulsa has 6 comments, all supporting House Bill 1804

They were afraid they would be deported under a new Oklahoma law if they took him to a major hospital. By the time they took him to a clinic, it was too late.

This occurred months before House Bill 1804became law. How could it be to blame.

A ruptured intestine that might have been treatable instead killed the U.S.-born infant, making him a poster child for opponents of House Bill 1804 months before it was enacted as the Oklahoma Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act of 2007.

If he child died before the law went into effect, the law was not the cause.

"The sad part of it was the child didn’t have to die if House Bill 1804 didn’t ever come around," said Laurie Paul, who runs the clinic where Edgar was finally taken. "It was a total tragedy because the bill was there to create the myths and untruths and the fear."

No the law is in place to get people who are here illegally to deport themselves, so we don't have to do it.

The law, billed by its backers as the nation’s toughest legislation against illegal immigration, took effect Nov. 1. It bars illegal immigrants from obtaining jobs or state assistance and makes it a felony to harbor or transport illegal immigrants

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Friday, January 25, 2008

Another Clinton attempt to twist things er way

Talking Points Memo blogged The Clinton camp really needs to be shut down on this new gambit of theirs to muscle the party and the other candidates into seating the Michigan and Florida delegate slates.

And let me be very clear about what I mean. It was very debatable decision whether the DNC should have punished Florida and Michigan with the loss of their delegates slates because they broke the rules the party had set down for scheduling their primaries. By 'debatable' I don't mean it was right or wrong, only that it was a pretty draconian move and I know there was a lot of discussion about whether or not it was the right thing to do. But that was the decision -- one that each of the candidates at least implicitly agreed to. Indeed, each agreed not to campaign in either of these states, again implicitly agreeing to the decision not to seat the delegates.

The Clinton camp is just pushing to seat these delegates now because the contingencies of the moment mean that the decision would favor Hillary. She was the only one whose name was on the ballot in Michigan, thus insuring her win. She has a wide lead in every Florida poll taken this month....

But all these particulars are secondary to the principle, which is that you don't change the rules in midstream to favor one candidate or another.

But for Clinton nything is fair if it helps them win.

This is no more than a replay, with different factual particulars, of the attempt to outlaw the at-large caucuses in Nevada after the Culinary Union endorsement made it appear they would help Barack Obama.

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Boycott ESPN?

The Anchoress had a very good post about the incident when ESPN anchorwoman Dana Jacobson graphically attacked Jesus Christ at a recent roast of her colleagues; she was reportedly intoxicated. At the January 11 event, Jacobson roared from the podium, “F*** Notre Dame,” “F*** Touchdown Jesus,” and finally “F*** Jesus.”: Clearly, we’re not going to go extreme and call Jihad on these folks,

The Anchoress is absolutely right. Christians are not going to riot in the street, or kill people, or even threaten to kill people. We know Christ. We are not insecure about our faith, and we know that an offensive thing said about our faith is not going to hurt us or hurt Christ. We leave that to the "Religion of the Perpetually Offended" where most of its followers can't even figure out that the clerics urging them to die to collect 72 virgins, never even think of risking their own lives.

but I would be upset to see us go “wimpering Oprah victim” over it, either. Jesus has big shoulders, wide open arms and room for Dana Jacobson. I think the best thing any of us can do is pray for her and wish her peace. Because if she has the peace of Christ within her, she won’t need to make stupid jokes to be “cool.”.... The job of the Christian is to hold fast in the face of chaos and recall that Christ is more powerful than any man or media, and that darkness does not overcome light. To be honest, all the fretting from us Christians is a bit unseemly. If we are secure in what we believe, a cartoon does not take us down, no matter how perverse and offensive, because Christ is alive, and Grace abounds

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Bill Clinton's Old Politics

Robert Reich blogged I write this more out of sadness than anger. Bill Clinton’s ill-tempered and ill-founded attacks on Barack Obama are doing no credit to the former President, his legacy, or his wife’s campaign.

He does not care. All he wants is power, and if he can't get the West Wing, he will work from the East Wing.

Nor are they helping the Democratic party. While it may be that all is fair in love, war, and politics, it’s not fair – indeed, it’s demeaning – for a former President to say things that are patently untrue

Was it OK for him to do it as President, but not former President?????

(such as Obama’s anti-war position is a “fairy tale”) or to insinuate that Obama is injecting race into the race when the former President is himself doing it.

If he screams enough others are doing something, he hopes they will not notice him doing it.

Meanwhile, the attack ads being run in South Carolina by the Clinton camp which quote Obama as saying Republicans had all the ideas under Reagan, is disingenuous. For years, Bill Clinton and many other leading Democrats have made precisely the same point – that starting in the Reagan administration, Republicans put forth a range of new ideas while the Democrats sat on their hands.

Because they did not have any.

Many of these ideas were wrong-headed and dangerous, such as supply-side economics.

Even though they worked.

But for too long Democrats failed counter with new ideas of their own; they wrongly assumed that the old Democratic positions and visions would be enough. Clinton’s 1992 campaign – indeed, the entire “New Democratic” message of the 1990s – was premised on the importance of taking back the initiative from the Republicans and offering Americans a new set of ideas and principles. Now, sadly, we’re witnessing a smear campaign against Obama that employs some of the worst aspects of the old politics.

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Kucinich drops presidential bid

Cleveland's Plain Dealer reportedCleveland Congressman Dennis Kucinich is dropping out of the Democratic race for president. Kucinich will make the announcement Friday at a news conference in Cleveland. In an exclusive interview with Plain Dealer editors and reporters, Kucinich said he will explain his "transition" tomorrow.

The transition involves beaming up to the mother ship; he just does not know when it will arrive. I hope he takes Ron Paul with him.

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Venezuelan troops seize food

tvnz.co.nz reported Venezuela's top food company has accused troops of illegally seizing more than 500 tonnes of food from its trucks as part of President Hugo Chavez's campaign to stem shortages.

Price controls just cause shortages. And now the government steals private property to keep the people happy. But what happens when there is nothing left for the government to steal?

... The highly publicised campaign has also included government crackdowns on accused smuggling, with the military seizing 1,600 tonnes of food and sending 1,200 troops to the border with Colombia.

Can't export to another country without price controls.

.... Another 165 tonnes were impounded in an eastern state on accusations of hoarding, he added.

Can't wait until price controls are raised.

.... Business leaders say shortages of these products are caused by strict price controls, which have lagged inflation that is Latin America's highest.... He announced an increase of more than 30% in the retail price of milk in an effort to ease shortages that have created headaches for consumers of all social classes.

Price controls cause shortages.

He also threatened to expropriate companies selling food above regulated prices.

That will not generate more food; ou just take their inventory to prop havez up for a little longer.

"Anyone who is distributing food ... and is speculating, we must intervene and we must expropriate (the business) and put it in the hands of the state and the communities," Chavez said during the inauguration of a new state-run market in Caracas.

CQ blogged Chavez has looked for excuses to confiscate property a little at a time. With price controls keeping private production low, he has decided to raise prices just as the state enters the market on its own -- and then keeps his cost of production low by simply stealing the product.... What do Venezuelans see from this process? Hugo steals from the rich and gives to the poor, without noting the manipulations necessary for him to succeed in doing so. At least Hugo hopes that's all they see. If Venezuelans start figuring this out, he'll have to have that last flight out of Caracas on standby.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Obama's Clinton Education

WSJ writes One of our favorite Bill Clinton anecdotes involves a confrontation he had with Bob Dole in the Oval Office after the 1996 election. Mr. Dole protested Mr. Clinton's attack ads claiming the Republican wanted to harm Medicare, but the President merely smiled that Bubba grin and said, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

In other words the Clintons are willing to do or say anything to get power.

We're reminded of that story listening to Barack Obama protest his treatment by the now ex-President Clinton on behalf of his wanna-be-President wife. "You know the former President, who I think all of us have a lot of regard for, has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling," Mr. Obama told a TV interviewer. "He continues to make statements that are not supported by the facts -- whether it's about my record of opposition to the war in Iraq or our approach to organizing in Las Vegas."

Surprise, surprise.

Now he knows how the rest of us feel.... Then there's Mr. Clinton's moaning before Saturday's Nevada caucuses that his wife's supporters were being strong-armed by pro-Obama unions at casino voting sites. Clinton campaign allies sued and lost on the matter, and the former President sounded like a Chicago ward heeler as he told reporters about the Obama campaign's voter-intimidation tactics. Yet on the day of the vote Mrs. Clinton won at seven of the nine casino sites, and the Obama campaign was left asking if its vote had been suppressed. It wouldn't be the first time Mr. Clinton accused an opponent of doing something his own campaign was planning to do.

In fact that is a typical Clinton tactic; accust the opponent of doing something Clinton plans to do, so if caught Clinton can say everyone does it.

The Onion publishes a cute satirical story Bill Clinton: 'Screw It, I'm Running For President'

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You want an economic stimulus? Open ANWAR

Investor's Business Daily reported We have billions of barrels of oil locked underground in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and on the Outer Continental Shelf. We have two trillion barrels of crude in oil sands here and in Canada. All this supply is enough to keep our economy humming until adequate oil replacements can be found.

You want an economic stimulus? Open ANWAR

With prices today nudging $90 a barrel, we're paying roughly $1 billion a day more for crude than we did just two years ago. This amounts to a tax that the Democrat-led Congress has irresponsibly refused to remove by letting us develop more oil. And the tax falls heaviest on the lower-income Americans that the Democrats profess to represent.

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Cloaked submarines

COSMOS magazine reported They're already masked beneath the waves, but soon these silent killers could be harder to detect - even using sonar. American scientists have proven that a cloaking device which would render submarines and ships invisible to sonar is theoretically possible. "We've devised a recipe for an acoustic material that would essentially open up a hole in space and make something inside that hole disappear from sound waves," said Steven Cummer, an electrical and computer engineer at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

I understand the Romulans and Klingons already have this technology.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Fred Withdraws

Fred File reports Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.

I am sorry to see him go. I am not surprised, but I would rather have had any of the other candidates bown out than him.

Monday, January 21, 2008

Nobody said they were smart

Yahoo! News reported A would-be Canadian robber picked the wrong place at the wrong time this week, attempting to hit a liquor store -- right across the street from a police station in the midst of a shift change.

Wrong place at wrong time. Nobody said they were smart.

Saudi women can now stay in hotels alone

Yahoo! News reported Women in Saudi Arabia can now stay in a hotel or a furnished apartment without a male guardian,

Welcome to the 31st century. But since they cannot drive a car, how will they get to the hotel?

according to a government decision that comes as the country faces increasing criticism for its severe restrictions on women. The daily Al-Watan, which is deemed close to the Saudi government, reported Monday that the ministry issued a circular to hotels asking them to accept lone women — as long as their information is sent to a local police station.

So the police do have to be notified.

The decision was adopted after a study conducted by the Interior Ministry, the Supreme Commission of Tourism and the religious police authority known as the Commission for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

Also known as the idiots that forced girls to die in a burning building because their heads were not covered.

Saudi women, under strict Islamic law, suffer severe restrictions on daily life: They are not allowed to be anywhere with an unrelated man, cannot drive, appear before a judge without a male representative, or travel abroad without a male guardian's permission.

But they can now stay in a hotel room, alone, as long as the police are informed.

The paper interviewed some Saudi women who complained that they had been severely inconvenienced by the rules banning them from staying in the hotels alone. It quoted a woman identified as saying that she once arrived late at night at King Fahd airport on an internal flight and was denied a hotel room because she was alone.

I hope she had a man's permission to fly on the plane.

Another woman, Fatima Ibrahim, said her son-in-law quarreled with his wife and daughters and threw them out of the house. When they tried to get a hotel room, they were asked to get a permission from the police.

And now the police will just be informed autmatically. How civilized.

Sweetness & Light blogged In view of recent developments in our own country, however, let’s hope they don’t get carried away and allow women the vote.

They might even want to run for President.

Widespread Cheating & Vote Suppression by Clinton Campaign

Daily Kos reported Clinton operatives tried to close the doors at 11:30--a full thirty minutes before the doors were supposed to close. In some cases I am hearing they actually succeeded, and voters were turned away before more knowledgeable people could get there to reopen them. The Clinton campaign had obviously told their people to be there by 11:30--and they knew that the higher the turnout, the worse for them.

A play on the "Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats on Wednesday, except this one was no joke.

... At least two reports (including my own) of disabled voters being coerced into the Clinton camp against their will, or even having their voter card filled out for them against their will.

Isn't it nice, helping the disabled.

... A few reports of probable out-of-state Clinton operatives being counted among the voters--though since checking ID is illegal, and other Hillary operatives from in-state would vouch for them, it's impossible to say.

This is an example of why IDs must be checked, and why we need to make sure people can't have IDs in two different states allowing them to vote both places.

... At least one report of ballots being filled out in advance for Hillary in mass.

Good old fashioned stuffing of the ballot box.

... At least one report of Hillary supporters saying that the caucus location was just the Hillary room--and that Obama supporters had to go to a faraway location.

Another dirty trick.

... The Clinton operative herself had a Brooklyn accent and I overheard her mention having been from New York. When she stood to be counted in the middle of the room, I objected and asked her if she was actually from Nevada. She said yes. I talked to the chair and asked him to ask her name and find her on the list. He asked her her name and checked the list, and she was not on it. At this point the chair said, "well, I can't ask for ID."

You should be able to.

I said, "She can't participate if no one will vouch for her." At this point a Hispanic man wearing a Hillary shirt said she was his wife.

Is he here leally? Deport both of them.

CQ blogged The Democrats want to end secret ballots for union organizing elections. Republicans have objected, saying it will leave workers at risk of intimidation by both sides. The behavior at the Nevada caucuses make an excellent argument against the Democrats -- and we can use their own objections as evidence.

Edward Morrissey blogged Caucuses benefit party apparatchiks, not candidates and certainly not voters. People in each state should demand a secret-ballot primary rather than the caucuses that create the worst conditions for a rational selection of candidates.

Rick Moran blogged The Clinton’s have demonstrated an appetite for power simply for the sake of exercising it with policies a secondary consideration or worse, simply a means to an end. And that end is the acquisition of control. This has been their modus operandi since coming to Washington 16 years ago. Why should we expect them to change now?

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Dangers of remote Javascript

O'Reilly reported As we move to a widget web, where the goodies on your site may not necessarily come from your site, it's worth sparing a thought for security. We at O'Reilly just got bit on perl.com, which redirected to a porn site courtesy a piece of remotely-included Javascript. One of our advertisers was using an ads system that required our pages to load Javascript from their site. It only took three things to turn perl.com into porn.com: (1) the advertiser's domain lapsed, (2) the porn company bought it, (3) they replaced the Javascript that we were loading with a small chunk that redirected to the porn site (note that nothing on or about perl.com changed). Our first concern was that we'd been hacked and "run this remote Javascript" inserted from our servers without our knowledge, but that hadn't happened—our change records and RT logs show we've had that Javascript and advertiser since May 2006.

This happened to me to. In my case a couple of pages were using a widget that reported the geographical location of visitors, and that company went out of business and Network Solutions grabbed their domain, and replaced my websites with web pages promoting Netwoek Solutions. I thought for a while my domain names had expired and they had grabbed them.

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