Herd Watching

Here is the full text of a letter from John McCain to Barack Obama on Feb 6, 2006. I think it pretty much sums up how much Obama is not anything new under the sun. Just another flip flopper.

On a side note, McCain is a damn funny guy. I like him more and more.

February 6, 2006
The Honorable Barack Obama
United States Senate
SH-713
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Obama:

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership’s preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter to me dated February 2, 2006, which explained your decision to withdraw from our bipartisan discussions. I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won’t make the same mistake again.

As you know, the Majority Leader has asked Chairman Collins to hold hearings and mark up a bill for floor consideration in early March. I fully support such timely action and I am confident that, together with Senator Lieberman, the Committee on Governmental Affairs will report out a meaningful, bipartisan bill.
You commented in your letter about my “interest in creating a task force to further study” this issue, as if to suggest I support delaying the consideration of much-needed reforms rather than allowing the committees of jurisdiction to hold hearings on the matter. Nothing could be further from the truth. The timely findings of a bipartisan working group could be very helpful to the committee in formulating legislation that will be reported to the full Senate. Since you are new to the Senate, you may not be aware of the fact that I have always supported fully the regular committee and legislative process in the Senate, and routinely urge Committee Chairmen to hold hearings on important issues. In fact, I urged Senator Collins to schedule a hearing upon the Senate’s return in January.

Furthermore, I have consistently maintained that any lobbying reform proposal be bipartisan. The bill Senators Joe Lieberman and Bill Nelson and I have introduced is evidence of that commitment as is my insistence that members of both parties be included in meetings to develop the legislation that will ultimately be considered on the Senate floor. As I explained in a recent letter to Senator Reid, and have publicly said many times, the American people do not see this as just a Republican problem or just a Democratic problem. They see it as yet another run-of-the-mill Washington scandal, and they expect it will generate just another round of partisan gamesmanship and posturing. Senator Lieberman and I, and many other members of this body, hope to exceed the public’s low expectations. We view this as an opportunity to bring transparency and accountability to the Congress, and, most importantly, to show the public that both parties will work together to address our failings.

As I noted, I initially believed you shared that goal. But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

Sincerely,

John McCain
United States Senate

Awesome.

I have previously posted part one of the Hardfire video where “Ace Baker“, a fully qualified musician, takes on the New Word Order with his awesome video analysis skills. His theory? That no planes hit the WTC on 9/11 and that it was all done with special effects video doctoring. Never mind the eye witnesses, they must be agents of our overlords. Ace has not yet stated whether those overlords are reptiles.

Ace is typical of your troofers… he has almost no real understanding of the physics, technology or effects he is discussing but he knows what he believes dammit. As theory after theory of his gets slapped down with a reality stick by Steve Wright it doesn’t phase him at all… because he just brings up more of it. Quality of ignorance makes up for a lot in the troofer world.

Anyone with any objectivity after finding out that their work was so wrong time and again their analysis was so wrong would start to question the conclusion. Not Ace though - he just points to all the other wrong work and says “but there is so much of it!”

It’s all amusing, and Ace is just hilariously foolish wrong.

Enjoy.

This is the problem…

“Wow, We Nominated The Black Guy” - Chris Bowers

So many on the left are desperate to elect “a black guy” that they don’t really care who he is. So we get a politician with slimey friends, no real policies, lousy credentials and no experience.

Less than 1 term as senator and they want to put this guy in the white house!?!

That’s just dumb overall, but it isn’t any better when we are at war. Not just that dust up in Iraq and the places we have troops - I mean the real war against the huge numbers of folks who want to wipe us off the map.

The is not the time to prove how sensitive you are by picking the first “black guy” you think you can jam into the Oval Office. The fact that they consider that the important thing shows you their priorities. Ideology over survival.

It’s awesome. Ace Baker is a “no planer” crank. That means he doesn’t think the WTC was hit by any airplanes at all and to hell with all those hundreds of eye witnesses. Dammit, he’s a musician! Little did the world spanning, multi-billion dollar conspiracy expect the full skill set of someone who once shot a music video!

People like Ace need a conspiracy of just the right size. It needs to be talented enough to fool “the masses” and inept enough to be brought down by some fool analyzing the VHS tape his buddy made. Here’s a hint - go watch Transformers, then shut the hell up. If they had faked this then the budget would have covered getting a decent composite involved, moron.

He gets beat like a rented mule (new favorite phrase this week) on Hardfire by Steve Wright who actually knows something about composition and video. Obviously as someone with a clue the troofers will dismiss Steve as a government shill… but it’s fun anyway.

Don’t worry if you feel the urge to point and laugh, Ace is used to that by now I am sure.

As usual, the folks with the least sense of humor find all the best stuff. I present to you, my loving audience, the wonder that is Wrongcards.com…

Not only is it damn funny, but it might actually contribute to the downfall of society!

“One of these days people are going to have to wake up and realize that “humor” like this is corrosive. Just looking at it causes brain damage. How much more of this can our society withstand?” - Pagan Tree of Life

Now, when I say the downfall of society, obviously we just mean the evil men folk.

“I don’t understand why people would think that such subjects are funny when in fact it’s degrading to women in particular. The way I see it, it’s mostly men that are doing the ruining of our society and really the whole world, so this is just bad on many levels.” - Dave

Being that they are pure evil, the bastards at Wrongcards knew that this sort of thing would happen so they embrace it. I am reproducing the while thing here just in case they do get nuked.

“Free speech. Many organizations love free speech because it allows them to be publicly, audaciously ridiculous.

Of course, the same organizations don’t really believe that free speech is something others should have. And if you walk around being honest enough, sooner or later the propaganda wing of these organizations will come gunning for you.

It is a fair measure of success, however, when your find your work getting banned by organizations like these. It’s a sign that your parents raised you right.

When an organization or a religion can crush your freedom of speech, society is in danger. You may think it doesn’t matter - that it doesn’t effect you. But what we don’t know is what the next century will be like.

I don’t want for us to be unable to publish a scientific paper because it disagrees with an overriding dogma claiming that the world was assembled in seven days. Or that it might confirm global warming. I don’t want our web hosts shutting us down when we post discussion about the putting-down of dissent in Tibet on our blogs. You know, a popular political site was shut down for publishing a photograph of flag-draped coffins. The retention of Free Speech is a scrabble up long, never-ending slippery slope. What’s the phrase: constant vigilance?

If you don’t mind, post links to us in forums and on your blogs. Sooner or later someone will try and ban us, it’ll be awesome, and good ole ma will be proud.

And hopefully I’ll make a nice spike of ad revenue while I frantically move the site to the same webhosts Pirate Bay use, or something, but I don’t look at it from the perspective of making gobs of money. God, who needs that?

When really it’s only about the fame and the glory.” - Ban Wrongcards!

I think I’m in love.

I’m by no means a global conspiracy guy or a Ron Paul supporter. I do think the UN is one of the most corrupt and inept organizations that has ever existed, but that’s just a simple reality. So it takes more than shrill panic on the conspiracy blogs to raise my eyebrows.

However the fact that Obama supports something as ill considered as S.2433 (the desperately named “Global Poverty Act of 2007″) tell me a lot about the guy, and none of it good. The bill is at best a pointless political machination to pretend he did something, and at worst it is a sign that this guy really is naive enough to think the UN is the answer to anything.

“To require the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1 per day.” - S.2433

Sounds OK right? Now here is where the freakoids will start screaming about the UN coming to take your guns and wire up your fillings in the next 24 hours. That isn’t my point here. My point is that this bill (as many do) binds a US administration to support and further a UN action that has radical problems.

While S.2433 is careful to limit it’s literal scope to a subset of the goals included in the UN “Millennium Development Goals” you can’t rally pick and choose when you support something like this. The MDG’s are part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration.  The UNMD starts off as the normal kind of useless feel good UN crap we expect, but then the interesting stuff slips in.

• The UNMD advocates member states to recognize the authority of the international criminal court - a bad idea.
• The UNMD pushes member states to adopt the deeply flawed Kyoto Protocol
• There is a desperate plea in there to give the UN more power and resources, with the illusion that investing more heavily in this thing will make it effective

This think can be spun into all sorts of panic… none of it needed. It is just silly, and doesn’t make me love the guy - but I don’t think it’s a secret attempt to deconstruct the US.

Well done.

Enjoy!

There is a lot of complaining these days from the Obama camp that many of the votes for Clinton are possibly from Republicans who crossed into the Democratic primaries to vote for her. The purpose? Twofold…

1. Attempt to insure that if the Democrats win the Presidency, we aren’t stuck with Obama and his extreme left hangers on
2. Attempt to prolong the Democratic primary, because the longer Obama and Clinton tear at each other the better McCain’s chances are

This is entirely legal. This is not in any way fraud. No one voted twice. No one voted for a dead person*. No one is, for example, preventing the entire states of Florida and Michigan from voting in the primaries**.

The core concept of a democracy is that each of us gets one vote. This generally extends to the primary process as well. The idea is that we can use that single vote in any way we wish to most effectively bring about our political goals.

If the best thing I can do to further my goal (McCain in office) is to vote for Hillary in the primary then that is a completely ethical thing to do (provided I am not breaking the law). No one gets to tell me I voted for the wrong reason. No one gets to tell me I don’t get to make a free choice.

So stop whining and suck it up. Seriously.

* note: a classic trick most recently used by the Democrats in the 2004 election

** note: oh wait, the Democratic party leaders are

Warning: May trigger people with no sense of humor and a need to be offended. A good friend of mine gave me this quote in IM…

“Scientists have discovered that all women will , at some point, contain intelligent DNA. Unfortunately 95% of them will spit it out.”

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny right there…

Moving away from politics for a moment and onto cooler stuff, Grand Theft Auto IV is a massive hit and lots of fun to play. As a bonus, it is sending a lot of seriously stick up the ass types into choking fits. So now we know who they are.

From Slashdot comes a link to this awesome tale of life in Liberty City… (archived here since the original site is down)

“We usually don’t write many personal pieces here on TEB, but I just have to share the story of my wife playing GTA IV for the first time. I want to make a couple things clear before I start this absurd story. 1. I love girl gamers. I think its awesome when girls get really into video games and break stereotypes by whooping ass in COD4 or GTA IV multiplayer. I’m not trying to hate on girl gamers. 2. I love my wife and she is very understanding of my video game obsession.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is over, I can proceed with the story.

As of late, much of my time has been spent in the friendly confines of Liberty City, and my wife has been extremely tolerant of my gaming time. Last weekend we were about to go out to eat, so I began shutting the game down when the thought popped in my head, “After watching me play for hours, I wonder if my wife wants a turn?” She was sitting on the couch next to me, so I extended the controller to her and asked, “You wanna drive around for a bit?” She replied, “Sure, why not.” During her time in Liberty City, my wife somehow manage to suck all of the fun out of GTA IV.

I was in some shitty coupe when she took over the wheel, and she began tooling around the city in a leisurely fashion. I mentioned that she might want a slicker ride, and helped her exit the car and attempt to jack another one. She ran up to a car with two homeboys in it and yanked the door open, but that’s when things went horribly wrong. She walked away from the car, and one of the gentlemen came chasing with a baseball bat. In all the excitement, she clicked the left stick sending Niko into a crouch then yelled “Why does my guy keep ducking??” I yelled “Click the left-stick” repeatedly without realizing she would have no idea what that actually meant. Attempting to flee the scene, she crouch-walked down the street only to get whipped some more with by the guy with the bat. Miraculously, somehow she ended up punching the guy several times, knocking him out, and getting his bat. After walking around in circles a few times, it was finally time to leave the scene. As she was leaving, we saw the guy she just beat up limping away. I suggested she finish him off and she said “Awww, that’s not nice, he learned his lesson.” He learned his lesson indeed.

After making it through our first big fight, my wife ran up to a trash dumpster and began repeatedly hitting it with her new baseball bat (because she wanted to swing the bat but hitting people is mean she said). This went on for around 2 minutes before I suggested that she moved on to a different, perhaps more entertaining, activity. She ran over to a huge semi truck and jacked it. I thought to myself “This should be fun, there is no way she is going to be able to drive that around and not get in trouble.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. As the semi began to lumber out of its parking spot my wife exclaimed, “Oooh, you know what will be fun, driving around and obeying all of the traffic rules.” Yeah, because THAT’S what makes GTA IV a great game, obeying all the rules! What the holy hell is wrong here!?!?

My wife played this mind-numbingly boring game of obeying traffic lights for around 5 minutes before accidentally hitting an elderly pedestrian while traveling about 2 miles an hour. My wife gasped and lept from her truck to “check and see if she is ok.” I’m not making this shit up. I asked my wife, “What are you going to do if she is injured…throw her in your semi and take her to the hospital?” to which she replied, “Can you do that in this game?” Sadly…no. (unfortunately, the poor old woman did not make it through the accident.)

After the tragedy of mowing down the old woman, my wife decided driving a semi was a little to much vehicle for her to handle in a safe manner. She jacked a parked car and immediately was pursued by Liberty City’s finest. Amazingly, she was able to escape the grasp of the long arm of the law (I believe she ran some stoplights during the chase.) That may have been a little too much excitement because after fleeing to safety she decided her time in Liberty City was over. She handed the controller back to me, and I immediately began plugging pedestrians with my shotgun because I was full of pent up GTA rage from watching that lame-ass traffic law game. Seeing my murderous rampage, my wife yelled “Stop! Stop! You’re being like that kid from Virginia Tech!” Seriously, I’m not making this shit up. Chalk one up for Jack-fucking-Thompson.”

Awesome.