A glimmer of hope in the wilderness

According to Gallup, 46% of the American people now see the Democratic party as "too liberal."

That compares with 43% who see the Republican party as "too conservative."

More Americans see the Democrats as "too liberal" than as "about right."

HT: Drudge

Minnesota humiliated again

For the second time in recent years, Minnesota has become the laughingstock of the nation.

Mean-spirited clown Al Franken has been declared the winner in last year's Senate race in that state. Franken appeared on election night to have been narrowly defeated by then-Sen. Norm Coleman. But Coleman's margin was close enough to trigger an automatic recount under Minnesota law.

Then, as the recount proceeded under the supervision of a highly-partisan Democratic Secretary of State, it was soon Florida in 2000 and Chicago in the bad old days all over again."Missing" ballot boxes began to be "discovered," other ballot boxes began to go missing, votes in heavily Democratic areas started being re-counted twice, and- under a heavy cloud- a walking joke became a United States Senator.

HT: Drudge

Which party dragged its heals?

In view of the recent U.S. Senate vote to apologize for slavery (a resolution long, long overdue, btw), the remarks of my far-Left senator, Tom Harkin, need to be held up to the light of historical evaluation.

Why did it take so long, anyway?

Hint: The political party responsible wasn't the one that was organized with the explicit purpose of fighting slavery.

It was the one responsible for Jim Crow... and the Civil War.

Supreme Court reverses Sotomayor- again

Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonja Sotomayor has had sixty per cent of her rulings overturned by the very Supreme Court to which she has been nominated.

It happened again today.

Ordinarily, a record like that would preclude a judge from even being considered for appointment to the nation's highest court. Ordinarily, the nomination of a candidate with such a record would be the target of massive derision from the media. But in the Obama Era, it seems, all things are not only possible but commendable in the eyes of the media and the cultural elites- if only they are the Will of Beloved Leader.

HT: Drudge

Mr. Obama seems a tad unclear on the concept

President Obama has opined that this past weekend's coup ousting Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was "not legal."

Thank you for clarifying that point, Mr. President. After all, most countries have provisions in their constitutions allowing for coups, don't they? After all, a legal coup is one thing, but...

Oh? They don't? Well,imagine that!

Legality was no more the issue here than it was when Abe Lincoln- illegally, but necessarily- suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War. The same question Lincoln asked then can be asked with regard to the Honduran coup: "Should all the other laws go unenforced, so that one law may be kept?" If you're interested in what really happened in Honduras (as opposed to what the Castro/Chavez/Obama axis is telling us happened), read this cogent summary by former Polk County GOP chair Ted Sporer.

"Legal" or not, the Honduran military was acting to enforce a decision of the nation's Supreme Court, and to prevent Zelaya from becoming a dictator. Would that have been "legal?"

HT: Drudge

Barack Obama shower curtain

No, I'm not kidding.

HT: Rev. Christopher Esget

That does it!

After fifty-two years as a Cub fan, I have finally had enough.

I didn't think it was possible for my disgust with the Cubs to exceed what I felt when, after a spectacular season, they laid down and died for the Dodgers in the first round of the playoffs last October, swept out of the post-season in the first round for the second time in as many years. I said at the time that as far as I was concerned, the 2009 season would begin in October.

Division championships no longer thrill me. Been there, done that. I am one of many Cub fans who at long last has gone through the salutary transformation which Boston Red Sox followers experienced a decade or two ago, and decided that my loyalty deserved to be rewarded by a competent and earnest effort on the part of the organization to which it was given. I decided a couple of years ago that any season in which the Cubs failed to at least reach the NLCS would, as far as I was concerned, from henceforth be a failure. Boston's fans decided that they would no longer tolerate incompetence either on or off the field, and they have been rewarded by two world championships they waited for almost as long as we Cub fans have waited for our next one. Many of us who grew up rooting for the North Siders have reached the same point in recent years, and it's more than about time.

My disgust after last October's second annual autumnal choke only deepened this winter when I (like every Cub fan I know) was demoralized by the news that General Manager Jim Hendry had traded Mark DeRosa- last year's starting second baseman, capable of playing third and the outfield at need as well, and with little drop-off from their regular occupants- to Cleveland for a couple of second-rate prospects. Hendry's lame excuse: DeRosa- a key member of last year's division-winning team, for whom no comparable replacement was on hand- batted from the wrong side of the plate.

Hendry then signed a closer from off Florida's disabled list- Kevin Gregg- and Milton Bradley, who was supposed to plug the one remaining hole in the Cubs' starting lineup (before Hendry opened the one at second base by trading DeRosa and turning the position over to the distinctly mediocre Mike Fontenot) for enough money that if these turned out to be mistakes, cutting our losses would not be an option. They both turned out to be mistakes. Last year's closer, long-time Cub favorite Kerry Wood, had (understandably, perhaps) been let go in order to cut salary. DeRosa's utility position was to be filled by Aaron Miles, who- like Gregg (and most of the team, for that matter)- also turned out to be a complete dud this year. Bradley has had more luck hitting Gatorade machines than baseballs, and was ordered out of his uniform and the stadium for it by a disgusted manager, Lou Pinella, the other day.

The team that figured to run away with the National League Central (one magazine predicted this Spring that they'd clinch the division by August) turned out to be a complete mediocrity. Player after player who starred last year apparently forgot over the winter how to play the game. I don't suppose you can blame Hendry for that.

But from the disappointment that began with last year's unceremonious ouster from the post-season, to Hendry's indefensible trading of DeRosa, to the signings of mediocrities like Milton Bradley and Miles and Gregg for enough money to essentially preclude any turn-around for at least a couple of years, to a season of ineptitude even from players from whom we could reasonably have expected far better up and down the roster, being a Cub fan has been a constant torment for the last eight months. It has long since been clear that my decision not to bother with the Cubs until October meant, in essence, that I didn't have to bother with them at all. It's been clear for a long time that they'll be watching the first round of the playoffs on television this year, right along with the rest of us.

Cub fans have gone from the exhilaration of thinking that we had a team that would contend for world championships for years to come, to the heartbreak of October's second consecutive post-season collapse, to the all-to-familiar feeling of betrayed outrage at inept personnel management by the front office over the off-season, to the new, bleak prospect of mediocrity during the very time span we had reasonably had hoped for glory-and all of this in eight, agnonzing months. During that time, the Cubs have gone from shooting themselves in the foot on the field, to doing it in the front office- and likely murdering their future over the short term. But today, the ultimate insult was added to the injury.

The hated Cardinals traded for Mark DeRosa- and I hope he takes them to a World Series.

I won't be watching the Cubs when the play the Cardinals next week. If I were, I'd be tempted to root for DeRosa and the Cards.

Tom Ricketts and the new ownership will take the Cubs over eventually. Maybe I'll start paying attention again then. The firing of Hendry- whom I have defended vociferously ever since he first got the job- would be pretty much a non-negotiable for me to give a damn about the Cubs again.

One thing, though, is certain: the season I said last October wouldn't begin until this October is doubly over for me now. For the rest of this season, and quite possibly next, I'm done with the Chicago Cubs. After the mediocrity of the Fifties, the repeated heartbreak of 1969, the early Seventies, 1984, 2003, 2007 and 2008, I've finally come to the point where my disgust simply has overflowed my capacity to care.

Until further notice, I have ceased to care about the Chicago Cubs one way or the other.

ADDENDUM: It gets worse.

The scuttlebutt is that Hendry had decided to make a bid to get DeRosa back at the trading deadline. But he procrastinated- and the Pestilential Ruddy Fowl did not.

House passes ill-advised "climate change" bill

The House dealt the staggering U.S. economy a potentially devastating blow when it narrowly passed the costly and probably unnecessary "climate change" bill today.

The vote was 219-212. Eight Republicans defected to make the result possible.

HT: Drudge

Not that I'm really paying attention anymore....

...but there's no way to end a losing streak like taking the Laundry to the cleaners.

I resemble this remark!

The MSM has largely ignored it, but President Obama thinks that maybe we should save money by just not treating fragile old people for medical conditions if it isn't going to stop them from being fragile.

I just turned 59, which may not qualify me as a senior citizen yet. But I'm close enough- and Mr. President Dude... we vote.

ROTFL!

Russia says that Iran's rigged election was "an exercise in democracy."

Sure. The same kind of democracy Russian tyrants from the Tsars through Stalin and Brezhnev and now Putin have always specialized in: the kind where everybody gets to vote, but only the votes cast for the "proper" candidate get counted.

HT: Drudge

Wow!

The International Space Station just happened to be flying over an uninhabited Russian island north of Japan island when a volcano on that island explosively erupted.

The shock wave from the eruption blew a hole in the clouds and permitted the taking of some unbelievably spectacular shots of the event by the astronauts.

This is a truly incredible coincidence, and something which it is a privilege to witness even in photographs- especially in photographs taken from Earth orbit!

Another ocean-moon in our solar system? Or not?

Pictures from various probes have shown saltwater geysers on Saturn's moon Enceladus, shooting columns of water high into the sky. Some scientists have suggested that Enceladus- like three of Jupiter's four largest moons, Ganymede, Callisto and Europa- has an ocean beneath its frozen crust, which may harbor life.

But a dissent comes from scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder, whose studies of the sodium content of the water from the geysers based on their photographic spectra make them suspect otherwise. It may simply be that the moon merely harbors underground caverns full of brine.

Either way, the moons of our system's gas giants are turning out to be fascinating worlds indeed.
Enceladus, incidentally, is one of two moons in our solar system- Saturn's largest moon, Titan, being the other- known to have a significant atmosphere.

Top ten goals from the Conference Finals

Here's a nice video of the top ten goals from both the Wales and Campbell Conference Finals.

Nice to care again:

Tweeting in "Tehran"

I've just joined what I'm told is a global movement all over the Twittersphere, and struck a blow for democracy and religious freedom by changing the location on my Twitter account from Des Moines, Iowa to Tehran, Iran.

The idea is that if people all over the world do this, it will make it harder for the religious police in Iran to keep track of the tweets that actually do originate in Tehran.

Juvenile? Futile? Perhaps. But satisfying- and fun.

The solution to Big Business's blunders is not bigger government!

Here is a good look at what the fate of the Detroit auto giants can tell us about the prospects for the common weal under an orgy of Obama-era big government.

Bigness didn't exactly help General Motors and its ilk.

I don't know why Obama swallowed the fly...

But I hope he doesn't die.

And not only because that would make court jester Joe Biden POTUS.

ADDENDUM: Oh. He didn't SWALLOW a fly. He SWATTED one.

I can understand that.

Of course, as the poet says,

If Noah had been very wise,
He would have swatted those two flies.

Which would have solved everything.

I am old

I am 59 today.

Yesterday the congregation threw me a wonderful birthday party after church- complete with my favorite dirty rice by Mary Ann and Dannielle's birthday cake (Dannielle, her cake, and yours truly, above)- and presented me with books by Hermann Sasse and others (a Chemnitz to follow).

Nevertheless, I am old- and at some level react to birthdays the way Dave, the Wonder Dog, does:

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Letterman has no class

I was a big fan of Dave Letterman throughout his afternoon and late night career, and during the first part of his Late Show stint. But his patented combination of Far Left snarkiness and tasteless humor cost him my viewship long ago.

Now stupid, malicious gags about Sarah Palin and sexual innuendo about her teenage daughter have become his stock in trade.

The guy simply doesn't have a smidgen of class anymore. And with his talent, it's a real shame. Oh, well. Now I have one more reason for my status as a confirmed Conan O'Brien man.

ADDENDUM: And it looks like Letterman isn't going to issue a genuine apology, either.

ADDENDUM II: Give him credit. He finally did.

Hey there, Cthulhu

Here's a composition Eben Brooks (his sanity blasted and cerebrum turned to tapioca by the contemplation of the blood-curdling Necronomicon of the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred), who shares both my admiration for the eldrich tales of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, and my twisted sense of humor.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

The Monkees: what they were really singing

Just in case you wondered:



HT: Rob Olson

They're BAAA-ack!

The campaign for the 2012 Iowa Caucuses has already begun.

Actually, I don't think the last one really ever ended...

HT: Drudge