As you watch this video, pay attention to the sheer joy on the face of the master playing the piano, Oscar Peterson. I don't know when this was recorded, but the man playing guitar is Joe Pass, who died in 1994. The song is Soft Winds.
Oscar Peterson has passed away. He was 82. The world is a poorer place.
Music, Video | Gaius Monday, 24 December , 2007 | 
Comments (1)
Harry Reid has decided to again maintain a mockery of a Senate "in session" by having Jim Webb of Virginia play the role of official Senate court jester. Why? Well, it is to keep President Bush from exercising his express right under the Constitution of the United States to make recess appointments. This is not a trivial matter. This is the second time Reid has pulled this particular stunt and it will eventually come back to haunt the Democrats.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The US Senate is holding special one man sessions throughout Christmas and the New Year to prevent President George W. Bush from making appointments without the approval of the Democratic majority.
With the bang of a gavel, Democratic Senator Jim Webb declared the first session open on Sunday morning before closing it seconds later, without any of his colleagues present in the hall.
The brief ceremony will be repeated every two to three days until January 18, when lawmakers resume their work after the Christmas and New Year's holidays.
The Democratic majority is staging the move to avoid any formal recess for Congress extending over several days. A recess would allow Bush to appoint ambassadors, judges and other top posts without seeking a Senate confirmation for his nominations.
At some point, there will be a Democrat in the White House who has his or her constitutional powers blocked by a recalcitrant Senate majority leader. They will have nobody to blame but themselves.
Here's wishing everyone a very merry Christmas. May you and your loved ones have a wonderful holiday filled with good times, good food, good company and merriment all around.
Merry Christmas!
UPDATE: Steveegg at No Runny Eggs has a roundup of Christmas greetings posts from around the 'sphere.
Senator John Kerry today proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was and is completely unfit for higher office - or even for the office he currently holds. He has threatened to bring the full power and might down up the National Football League - unless they nationally televise the final New England Patriots game of the regular season.
With the New England Patriots now one win away from finishing the regular season undefeated, Sen. John Kerry is stepping up his campaign to get the final game broadcast on national television.
The contest Saturday with the New York Giants is to air locally in Boston and New York. But outside those markets it is scheduled to appear only on the NFL Network, a cable channel that reaches just 35 million households nationwide while the league and cable operators dicker over pricing and distribution.
Kerry asked football Commissioner Roger Goodell today to move the game to NBC – and threatened Senate hearings if he does not.
“Under the unfortunate circumstance that this matter remains unresolved, leaving 60 percent of households across the country – including thousands in Massachusetts – without access to Saturday’s game, I will ask the Senate Commerce Committee to hold hearings on how the emergence of premium sports channels are impacting the consumer,” he wrote to Goodell today in a letter released by his office.
The Massachusetts Democrat added that he would “consider what legislative measures may be necessary to ensure that consumers are more than bystanders in this process.”
Kerry, who had offered earlier to convene a meeting between the league and cable operators, is only one of several lawmakers attempting to intervene. Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have threatened to reconsider the league’s federal antitrust exemption if the sides do not come to an agreement.
Every, single one of these Senators is guilty of attempted extortion and are abusing their offices. Period. Try acting like elected officials and not like low-level mob enforcers, Senators.
Crime, Politics | Gaius | Comments (8)
This is not exactly cheerful holiday news, but I rather suspect this was released quite intentionally by the Israeli media to remind certain foreign governments that the price of hitting Israel with weapons of mass destruction would be very high, indeed.
WASHINGTON- All out nuclear war between Israel and Iran: a doomsday scenario that we all fear deeply. A new study compiled by the US Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), headed by former Pentagon analyst Anthony H. Cordesman, explored just such a nightmare scenario, noting that it could lead to the death of between 16- 28 million Iranian civilians, and 200-800 thousand Israelis.
This hypothetical, research-oriented study also explored other contingencies for unconventional warfare in our region, noting the tactics that various countries could potentially employ in such instances.
As pertains to nuclear warfare, the study found that an Israeli nuclear scrimmage with Iran would most likely last for about three weeks. Aside from the aforementioned direct casualties, the study could not determine how many additional long-term casualties would arise from fallout and radiation in the weeks and months following such an attack.
One essential requirement for nuclear confrontation in our region, according to the study, is allowing Iran’s nuclear program to develop, unhindered by a pre-emptive strike by either Israel or the United States. If US or Israeli preemption does not occur, the study found, Iran could very well have 30 nuclear warheads available for warfare between 2010-2020. Israel, by comparison, currently has 200 nuclear war heads with both air and sea launch capabilities, according to the study.
How high would the butcher's bill rise if Syria and Egypt were to try to attack as well? More than 20 million more casualties in those two countries. Anyone who thinks that a dying Israel will not take its enemies into death with them is, frankly, insane. No pressure from the UN will stop it; no threats from any other nation will deter it. Iran would cease to exist as anything more than a glowing glass parking lot. The Iranian people would pay for the aggression of their leaders.
War, World news | Gaius | Comments (9)
Time Magazine looks at how Hillary Clinton lost her title of Her Inevitableness and notices how Clinton has been trying on one hat after another in Iowa, trying to gain traction. The frantic scramble to find the right message and the right image for Clinton resembles a mad tea party.
"She has never really been ahead here in Iowa," says Arthur B. Sanders, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines and author of Losing Control: Presidential Elections and the Decline of Democracy. "Her national lead made it easy to assume she would win here as well, especially since her national campaign gave off an image of her 'inevitable' victory. And a national press that had not spent time here did not really understand how different the situation was here."
Clinton has also shaken up her message in recent weeks, trying on different hats: angry Hillary; warm-and-fuzzy mommy Hillary; commander-in-chief Hillary; insurgent change-candidate Hillary. "It's a very close race in Iowa, and quite naturally, the Clinton campaign has decided to throw in everything it's got, plus the kitchen sink," says Larry Sabato, head of the University of Virginia?s Center for Politics. "She?s both the candidate of change and the candidate of experience, the candidate with a hard side and a soft side, and the candidate of the establishment past and the progressive future. Maybe voters are getting confused, or maybe she?s patching together just enough voters to win or tie. We'll all find out together on January 3rd."
Her new message, to be rolled out after the holiday is "Time to Pick a President." Which falls a bit flat since it really is time to pick a candidate first. But then, it is all a bit mad, isn't it?
Fausta has another of her Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean roundups posted. (Thanks for the link, Fausta.) As always, there is a huge number of fascinating stories and blog posts from all over, put together in one handy package.
Blogosphere, World news | Gaius | Comments Off
Karl Inderfurth, currently a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, writes an op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor excoriating what he calls "Washington's phobia of global treaties." Inderfurth, who served in the Clinton administration as US special representative of the president and the secretary of state for global humanitarian demining, is not exactly a neutral party in this issue. He is arguing that the US should accept UN negotiated treaties on land mines and a number of other subjects.
washington - Three quarters of the world's countries have signed an international agreement to ban antipersonnel landmines. The Ottawa Mine Ban Treaty – to never again use, produce, acquire, or export these so-called "hidden killers" of civilians – reached its 10th anniversary this month. But the United States is still not a signatory.
Unfortunately this "just say no" approach to international treaties has become a pattern for the US, especially under the Bush administration. This trend must change. The president's successor should make it a high priority for the US to rejoin the world and reassume the country's role as a globally respected leader.
In some cases the rationale for US opposition is tied to security, economic, or legal considerations. But in all cases the unifying principle behind the Bush administration's refusal to join these treaties seems to be ideological – not wanting to encumber the US with further international obligations or to constrain America's freedom of action.
This "America unbound" approach is making the US the odd man out on critical global issues. In March of this year, a new human rights treaty was opened for signature at the United Nations, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The convention would ensure that people around the world with disabilities enjoy the same rights as everyone else to equal protection before the law, and in work and education opportunities.
Revisionist history is unbecoming of an academic. The opposition to a lot of these initiatives predate the Bush administration, and in fact hearken all the way back to a rather famous and influential person from the early days of the United States. That would be George Washington, not Washington, DC.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils 7 Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. (Emphasis added.)
Those words are as true today as on the day they were delivered to the American people in 1796. They are from his farewell address delivered when Washington stepped down from the lead role he had held in the formation of this nation since accepting the command of the Continental Army. I'd also like to point out the highlighted sentence above - then re-read what Inderfurth has written. It would seem that George Washington was more than a little prescient.
The fact is, that no matter how laudable some of the ideals of the UN may be, the organization itself is hideously corrupt, hopelessly inept, downright criminal in many instances and increasingly a venue for thugs and tyrants. Any treaty that is produced by that body should be avoided. Or, as George Washington also said:
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world….
Yesterday, I linked to an article from the Washington Post that detailed concerns some people have with what they see as "coded racism" coming from the Clinton campaign. As several people in comments have pointed out, this only comes as a surprise to Democrats who have been silent when some truly reprehensible, blatantly racist things have been done or said by Democrats against Republicans who happen to be black. That is absolutely true. It is also absolutely true that the Democrats themselves have a long, long history of be the party of institutional racism in America. Bruce Bartlett has taken the trouble to round up a long list of quotes from some very famous people from American Democratic party history. The quotes are damning.
In his new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal," New York Times columnist Paul Krugman makes a strong case for his belief that the political success of the Republican Party and the conservative movement over the past 40 years has resulted largely from their co-optation of Southern racists that were the base of the Democratic Party until its embrace of civil rights in the 1960s. A key piece of evidence for Mr. Krugman is that Ronald Reagan gave his first speech after accepting the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 near Philadelphia, Miss., where three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964. In the course of this speech, Reagan said he supported "states' rights." Mr. Krugman says this was code declaring his secret sympathy for Southern racism.
Others, including Mr. Krugman's Times colleague David Brooks and Reagan biographer Lou Cannon, have come to Reagan's defense, denying that he was a racist or had any racist intent in his 1980 speech. That's fine but unlikely to change the minds of those like Mr. Krugman who are determined to smear the Republican Party with the charge of racism, and who are adept at finding racist code words like "law and order" by Republicans that are completely convincing to liberals and Democrats in support of this accusation, even though they are invisible to those with no political ax to grind.
However, if a single mention of states' rights 27 years ago is sufficient to damn the Republican Party for racism ever afterwards, what about the 200-year record of prominent Democrats who didn't bother with code words? They were openly and explicitly for slavery before the Civil War, supported lynching and "Jim Crow" laws after the war, and regularly defended segregation and white supremacy throughout most of the 20th century.
Following are some quotes from prominent Democrats largely drawn from my new book, "Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past." Even with the exclusion of all quotes that contain the N-word, it is clear that many of the Democratic Party's most important historical figures have long made statements that reduce Reagan's alleged transgression to a drop in the ocean. If we are going to hold him and his party accountable for a single mention of states' rights, then the party of those listed below is far more culpable in promoting and defending racism.
It is a very long list of people and some of them will surprise people who have not been paying attention. Of course, many of the people who made the statements Bartlett quotes have been dead for many years and policies and people's opinions do change. But the Democrats don't want people to remember that their party is the one that filibustered to try to stop Federal action on racial equality. They should not be able to smear others for supposed "coded racism" when they themselves have such a shameful past of blatant, open racism.
History, Politics | Gaius | Comments (2)
Quilly Mammoth over at Just Barking Mad gets an Instalanche for his post detailing some of the concerns he has about Mike Huckabee.
Mike Huckabee is the type of politician that I would like to like. But I always had a funny feeling about the guy based on allegations made when he was governor. Subtle innuendos about influence and Big Business that I would pick up when business took me to NW Arkansas. Now it seems that Huckabee has many things in common with another former Arkansas governor…those just not quite over the legal line ethics.
Go on over and read the whole thing. He lays out a number of reasons why he is uncomfortable with Huckabee. Let's add a Crabatrickle to the load on his hit counter!
Phil Valentine, writing in The Tennessean Explores the new energy bill just signed into law and discovers an inconvenient truth, indeed. What the new law accomplishes is to make sacrifices on the altar of "environmentalism" at the cost of the people's happiness. Misery is required for the Gore crowd to be happy.
I was reminded of Rand's classic as President Bush and members of Congress recently gathered for the signing of the new energy bill. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is less about energy and more about control. The most ambitious projections by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy predict it will cut our energy consumption by a whopping 7 percent by 2030.
Yet, it forces products and standards on the American public that could not be achieved in the free market. For instance, it forces automobile manufacturers to increase average fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2020. This mandate will include light trucks, which means your pickup and SUV, heretofore exempt, will now be subject to higher mileage standards. According to J.D. Power & Associates, SUVs, pickups and minivans make up about 60 percent of auto sales. Hybrids' market share is just under 3 percent. People apparently like the safety and comfort of a larger ride, all of which will be sacrificed with higher mileage standards. But it doesn't much matter what you want.
The new bill also mandates a fivefold increase in biofuels like ethanol, which will continue to drive up the price of corn as energy and food interests compete. I drive a flex-fuel vehicle that uses ethanol. I'm all for it but, again, the market should decide, not the government.
This so-called energy bill also bans most incandescent lightbulbs by 2012. The incandescent lightbulb is replaced — by force, not by choice — with the compact fluorescent lightbulb. Right now, the market share of these CFLs is about 6 percent, and there's a reason for that. They produce dim, dull light. Roughly 94 percent of the country doesn't want them, but that doesn't matter to our nanny-state government. We're going to use them whether we like it or not.
The Tennessean has, of course, not been particularly kind to nor supportive of Tennessee's Oscar-winning son, repeatedly hammering the hypocrisy of Gorezilla's massive energy consumption as well as his interests in recreational strip-mining. The real goals behind the global warming hysteria have always been about bureaucratic control, of course. Many of us have pointed that out over and over. The UN wants control of the global means of production and the power to levy taxes. The Bali conference showed that naked ambition quite clearly. Al Gore has a vast economic stake in getting his controls forced into law - and therefore a huge conflict of interest.
In an op-ed in today's New Hampshire Union-Leader by Paul Hertneky, the author tries to look at actual accomplishments of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, instead of focusing on the nebulous claims of experience. While I'm guessing that Hertneky is much more favorable to Obama than Clinton, it is a pretty telling list. Obama does appear to have actually accomplished more things directly than Clinton has.
INSTEAD OF COMPARING Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's experience — a vague set of claims — I turned my attention toward accomplishments. Not what they've accomplished for themselves, but what they've accomplished for others.
In doing so, I excluded purely personal gains. I also eliminated all distinctions or honors. For similar reasons, I ignored the elections they've won. These credentials are well-known.
Also, like any alert prospective employer, I am informed by what they support, worked on, worked toward and fought for, but I am more interested in what they have accomplished for their constituents.
After graduating from Columbia, Obama went to work with churches that organized job training and other programs for residents of a massive housing project in Chicago. He persuaded the city to provide summer jobs, remove asbestos, repair toilets, pipes and ceilings. He went door to door, offering help for three years, then went to Harvard Law School.
Upon graduating from Wellesley, Hillary Rodham made a commencement speech that moved her audience. She went immediately to Yale Law School.
Obama returned to Chicago to lead Project Vote, which signed up about 150,000 new African-American voters. He also joined a big law firm.
Following Yale, and a year in Washington, Rodham moved to Arkansas and married Bill Clinton. She taught at the University of Arkansas and joined a big law firm.
Hertneky is identified as a free-lance writer and a teacher at Antioch College. The paper does not identify whether he is a partisan for any particular candidate, nor does he show up in Federal Elections Commission records. So I couldn't tell you whether he is acting as an operative or not in writing this. But it may change a few mids in New Hampshire. And with Clinton's high negatives, every vote lost hurts.
Our Founder
