Blue Crab Boulevard

This is funny :

Another bit of Clinton campaign madness, courtesy of Newsday’s Glenn Thrush (who, coincidentally, had a bit part in the Mandy Grunwald debate debacle the other day). The Mariachi Divas, an all-female pan-Hispanic music ensemble, appeared before a Hillary rally at Cal State Los Angeles. But when their performance was over, they were kicked out with the words: “Thank you! You were awesome!…There's no room. You can listen outside. Thank you!"

The original report elaborates:

"Thank you! You were awesome!" said a young Clinton volunteer, escorting the group, decked out in rhinestone-studded costumes and toting guitars and fiddles, out a set of double doors.

"But we want to see her," a member protested.

"There's no room. You can listen outside. Thank you!" said the Clintonista, pointing to a crowd listening on loudspeakers outside in the chilly quad.

Another member turned to a reporter and said incredulously, "They're kicking us out!"

We are sorry,  Mariachi Divas. You really must realize: Hillary has professed that she loves diamonds and pearls. Rhinestones are just so tacky. But thanks so much for warming up the crowd and voting for her. Surely you understand? Your vote counts.

You, however, do not.

The New York Giants just killed the New England Patriots chances of a perfect season. 

Sometimes things just work out. 

AP Report : 

GLENDALE, Ariz. - The Giants had the perfect answer for the suddenly imperfect Patriots: a big, bad defense and an improbable comeback led by their own Mr. Cool quarterback, Eli Manning.

In one of the biggest upsets in Super Bowl history, New York shattered New England's unbeaten season 17-14 Sunday night as Manning hit Plaxico Burress on a 13-yard fade with 35 seconds left. It was the Giants' 11th straight victory on the road and the first time the Patriots tasted defeat in more than a year.

It was the most bitter of losses, too, because New England (18-1) was one play from winning and getting the ultimate revenge for being penalized for illegally taping opponents' defensive signals in the season-opener against the New York Jets.

But its defense couldn't stop a final, frantic 12-play, 83-yard drive that featured a spectacular leaping catch by David Tyree, who had scored New York's first touchdown on the opening drive of the fourth quarter.

That didn't end the way a lot of people assumed it would. 

UPDATE: Well, McCain just got a vote.  

Very little, apparently . A new poll published by a British television network says that about one quarter of the people who answered believe that Winston Churchill was a fictional character. It gets worse. About a half thought Sherlock Holmes did exist.

Never, in the field of human ignorance, have so many known so little about famous Britons.

A quarter of the population think that Winston Churchill never actually existed, a survey suggests.

While a poll recently named him the greatest Briton of all time, the wartime prime minister is seen by many as a mythical figure along with the likes of Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh.

This could well have something to do with the TV insurance adverts inviting viewers to "challenge Churchill" and featuring a lugubrious talking dog.

According to the survey of 3,000 respondents, many believe the inspirational Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington are also characters dreamed up for films and books.

Some think Charles Dickens was himself a character in fiction rather than the creator of David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and Martin Chuzzlewit.

In a damning indictment of the nation's historical knowledge, many of those surveyed said they believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person, along with the pilot Biggles and even the Three Musketeers.

Well, these are television viewers who watch a network that runs old shows. So it may be a bit skewed. But it sounds pretty awful, doesn't it? 

I have no idea why the Associated Press is doing this, but this is probably the single stupidest thing they have done recently. They are advertising a North Korean website that supposedly offers goods for sale. They even provide a link. What are they thinking? Sure, there's a trade embargo against the country, so that's bad enough. But why not just click through and get your identity stolen. This is criminal. No, I am not going to link it.

 SEOUL, South Korea - Fancy a sleek made-in-North Korea SUV? How about a pair of boxing gloves from the famously pugnacious communist country? They're potentially just a click away.

North Korea, known more for nuclear saber-rattling than its consumer products, is offering overseas shoppers the chance to buy hundreds of its goods via the Internet.

Those who keep a close eye on North Korea say the move is likely a bid by the perpetually impoverished country to earn cash and also raise awareness about what it has to offer.

The Web site — available Korean, English, Chinese, Russian and Japanese — also sells bicycles, commemorative stamps, roller skates and uniforms for Taekwondo, a Korean martial art. It includes a shopping cart icon and says credit cards are acceptable.

 And they'll be quite happy to get their hands on your credit card information. This is a country that has been producing counterfeit currency for years - and the AP is pimping their websites?

Totally insane.  

The words of Sherm Frederick in the Las Vegas Review Journal describing the antics of the Clinton Campaign. He recaps the trail of slime they have left behind them everywhere they go during this election cycle.

The Clintons are evil, politically speaking.

There's no other way to describe Hillary and Bill going racial on Obama after her Iowa loss. They are sly about it, of course, but racial nonetheless. For example, she used the civil rights struggle to contrast her ability to enact change with Obama's. She said that despite the "pretty" speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., it took President Lyndon B. Johnson to get the Civil Rights Act passed and signed into law.

In other words: "Blacks have their place … and it's not the White House."

To their eternal discredit, the Clintons made subsequent statements highlighting Obama's race, prompting this blunt rebuke from the Rev. Al Sharpton: "Shut up!"

In Nevada, the race-baiting tactic took a new form. The Clinton campaign euphemistically calls it their "fire wall" against Obamamania. But let's call it by its right name: racism. The Clintons know racial tensions exist between brown and black communities. Tapping into that is one of the ways Team Clinton blunted the Culinary union endorsement. A whisper here and a reminder there about Obama's race touched just enough of a reaction from rank-and-file Culinary workers (many of whom are Hispanic) to help overcome the union's endorsement.

And now we are 48 hours away from Super Tuesday. By all accounts the "firewall" politics of the Clintons are in full gear, for she knows that if she can fuel the Hispanic resentment of blacks, she can win the nomination.

In California, 22 percent of eligible voters are Hispanic; in Arizona, it's 17 percent; Colorado, 12.3 percent; New York, 11.4 percent; and New Jersey, 9.9 percent. It's enough to win. All that's needed is voter turnout, and the best way to do that, as they learned in Nevada, is a whisper of hate here and a reminder of hate there.

It could not be simpler, or uglier.

No, it couldn't. Or more typical of what we can expect for years if the Clintons regain the White House.  

I'm posting this from my Dell Latitude D400 running Ubuntu 7.10 Linux. I threw a spare hard drive in it this morning and installed the system. When it booted up, it immediately recognized that it needed two proprietary drivers for the wireless card and the software modem, located and installed them. The entire system is up and running flawlessly. This is an operating system that complete amateurs can load and run. 

Up until now, getting wireless and especially WPA encryption has been a bit difficult. No more. This operating system is simple and the software tells you what it needs, then asks your permission to install it. If you have been thinking about trying Linux, give this system a try. I think you'll be impressed.

Fred Barnes has a suggestion for conservatives: take Barry Goldwater's advice.

Even a united Republican party will be at a disadvantage in the general election. Democratic primary turnout has doubled from 2004, reflecting a level of enthusiasm among Democrats that hasn't been seen for decades. And the party has the money to fund another massive get-out-the-vote drive this November. In 2004, it took an unprecedented effort by 1.4 million Republican volunteers to overcome the Democratic turnout machine manned by paid campaign workers.

The key to the 2004 success was the passionate commitment of these volunteers to reelecting George W. Bush. These weren't moderates or independents or McCainiacs. They were hardcore conservatives–and particularly social conservatives attracted by Bush's opposition to abortion, gay rights, and embryonic stem cell research.

McCain needs to attract hundreds of thousands of these Republicans as ground troops for his campaign. He's off to a good start. In a new TV ad dubbed "True Conservative," he refers to himself as "a proud social conservative who will never waver." He's expected to get the endorsement soon of the National Right to Life Committee, the influential anti-abortion group, and that will help…..

…..A Republican strategist had this advice for McCain: "Call the top conservative talk radio hosts. Tell them you don't question their independence. But insist you'll be talking about conservative issues. If they want to get in touch with you at any time, here's your cell phone number. And if they call, you'll answer." That is good advice. McCain might feel it's demeaning, but he shouldn't. The stakes–keeping Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama out of the White House–are too high to be prideful.

McCain, probably alone among Republicans, can win this fall, but not without the full-blown support of conservatives. If he continues to reach out to them while running as a conservative, they need to heed Barry Goldwater's advice in 1960. "Let's grow up, conservatives," he said. "If we want to take this party back, and I think we can, let's get to work."

What pains me this year is that some people who I consider quite smart appear to be willing to cut themselves completely out of the political process if McCain is the Republican candidate. That strategy will do three things, as I see it. It will shatter the coalition that has worked for a good many years and it will brand conservatives as untrustworthy allies in politics. Most important, it will cost conservatives a place at the table when it is most needed. I keep pointing out that the opposition in Venezuela decided to sit out the legislative elections with catastrophic results. That strategy, such as it is, has been tried over and over again in many countries and in many elections.

It has never worked. Staying in the game and working to influence decisions does work.

Peter Baker, writing in the Washington Post, notes that this year's Presidential contest is being partly defined by the perception of Bill Clinton's legacy. How voters see him may well determine the outcome.

NORMAN, Okla. — It fell to Mike Turpen, a former Oklahoma attorney general, to warm up the crowd, and he did so with gusto. "Bill Clinton!" he shouted to several thousand people gathered in the McCasland Field House at the University of Oklahoma. "He gave us eight years of peace and prosperity! Do you remember?"

In case they didn't, the former president bounded onstage, took the microphone and spent some of the next hour reminding them: He balanced the budget and paid down the national debt. He made student loans more affordable. He worked with the rest of the world on global warming and arms control. But, he said, "I want you to understand this is not me. This is her."

Maybe, but it seems more than a little bit about him, too. As Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama clash on multiple political fronts heading into Super Tuesday, William Jefferson Clinton's record as president has emerged as a key battleground. How Democrats define his legacy could determine which presidential candidate they choose: Hillary Clinton, to extend it, or Obama, to make a clean break from it.

Bill Clinton's attacks on Obama on the campaign trail — and the generally negative reaction they provoked — have helped focus attention on the former president and seem to have created misgivings about his possible return to Washington. According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 55 percent of Americans view the former commander in chief favorably, unchanged from a year ago. But just 50 percent said they would be comfortable with him back in the White House, down from 60 percent in September.

There is quite a lot more, including some rather revisionist claims of what Clinton accomplished in office. (Charles Krauthammer pointed out on Friday that Bill Clinton essentially left no legacy behind.) If Hillary gets the nomination, you can bet that Bubba's years in office will become a campaign topic. It's interesting to see the declining numbers of people who would be comfortable with him back at the White House, though.

There is a word of caution at the end of the article that Republicans might want to take to heart. 

Former congressman Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.), one of the House managers who prosecuted Clinton in the Senate trial, said he still believes the impeachment was a noble attempt to enforce the rule of law. But he said it should not be relitigated this year. "There were some who were so personally engaged in it that they had a hard time cutting loose of it," he said. "They may try to resurrect it this year. But that would be a mistake. History has passed them by. You'll be on the losing side of history if you let this dominate your life."

I have pointed out before that I thought the impeachment was not a good idea. If you read through the article you'll note that the younger people remember very little of that whole series of events. It really would be a mistake to hammer at that very much, if at all.

The San Francisco Chronicle - believe it or not - points out an ugly truth: no matter which party controls Congress, that party inevitably becomes the party of pork. They note that the Democrats have become pork kings since they took charge of Congress, immediately taking the place of the Republicans who they denounced for the same behavior.

Pelosi also bristled at President Bush for asserting during his State of the Union speech, "The people's trust in their government is undermined by congressional earmarks." Noting that Bush had no problem signing bills with pork-barrel spending sent to his desk by Republicans, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland dismissed Bush's born-again opposition to earmarks as rank "hypocrisy."

Bush is guilty as charged. He came too late to the anti-pork party. For all his tough talk about vetoing earmark-laden bills, Bush punted by refusing to curtail thousands of earmarks inserted into a massive spending bill he signed last month.

But the lesson of this dance of trading places is how quickly principles vanish when control of Congress changes hands. The Party of Pork is the party that happens to be in power at any given moment.

This time, the Democrats are on the wrong side of an issue they once so passionately championed.

Yep. That's why those of us keep pointing out that every voter should be against pork. It is an invitation to corruption, regardless who holds the reigns of power in Washington. That is our tax money they are spending and we should be telling them to stop it, regardless of party affiliation.

The US Navy has test fired a weapon prototype straight out of science fiction. The successful test of an electromagnetic railgun brings the navy one step closer to giving their ships an unfair advantage over any opposition - exactly what the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, wants.

The big gun uses electromagnetic energy instead of explosive chemical propellants to fire a projectile farther and faster. The railgun, as it is called, will ultimately fire a projectile more than 230 miles (370 kilometers) with a muzzle velocity seven times the speed of sound (Mach 7) and a velocity of Mach 5 at impact.

The test-firing, captured on video, took place Jan. 31 in Dahlgren, Va., and Navy officials called it the "world's most powerful electromagnetic railgun."

The Navy's current MK 45 five-inch gun, by contrast, has a range of less than 23 miles (37 kilometers).

The railgun has been a featured weapon in many science fiction universes, such as the new "Battlestar Galactic" series. It has also achieved newfound popularity among the 20-something-and-under generation for its devastating ability to instantaneously shoot a "slug" through walls and through multiple enemies in video games such as the "Quake" series of first person shooters.

The Navy's motivation? Simple destruction.

The railgun's high-velocity projectile will destroy targets with sheer kinetic energy rather than with conventional explosives.

"I never ever want to see a Sailor or Marine in a fair fight. I always want them to have the advantage," said Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead. "We should never lose sight of always looking for the next big thing, always looking to make our capability better, more effective than what anyone else can put on the battlefield."

No explosives, no propellants, just a big, old slug traveling very, very fast. A straight kinetic energy weapon. This will mean no more risk of accidental explosions on board the ships. The test rig looks somewhat bulky, of course. They have some design refinement to do. But it will be interesting to see if they actually get these out into service. Here's a video of the test shot. They report getting a 10.64MJ energy level and a muzzle velocity of 2,520 meters per second. Here's a link to NSWC Dahlgren.