Archive for the ‘opinion/news’ Category

Steele Calls, Ok Nancy whatdaya got?

Posted: August 21, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Do you know the secret to a successful bluff, once in a while you have to have the cards.

“Get it to the floor. Up or down, baby,” Steele said at a news conference at the state GOP headquarters. “Put it on the table. And if you don’t think you’ve got enough votes to get to 60, you’ve got the nuclear option. You’ve got 51.”

These guys aren’t counting votes on the floor, they’re counting votes to keep their chairmanships in 2010 & 2012 and the pork that comes with it.

Update: Hotair notices but Byron doesn’t think it’s a bluff.

And Byron is VERY smart.

Am I the only Palin Supporter who didn’t…

Posted: August 21, 2009 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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…have a problem with this video?

Context is everything here. You are dealing with a pair of apparently superficial people who can’t get along. They are smug, they are smarky and they think they know it all…

THEN they need protection and they find themselves needing that woman with the shotgun to keep them alive. The “Oh my God it’s Sarah Palin” clip is exactly the reaction a pair of liberals might have, but they know that they need a Sarah Palin to keep them alive. When put in a different world they can’t cope.

I think it’s a perfect illustration of the reality.

When we whine about this kind of stuff we look not very much like the acolytes of the One. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.

Unlike some others guys like Professor Banbridge or Allahpundit are allies to be eventually persuaded and given time Sarah Palin’s performance will do so.

I’ve always maintained the right thing is usually the smart thing. The treating professor Bainbridge as “unclean” is not only wrong; it’s stupid.

A leader is known not only by who they are but by who follows them, to wit:

If we take our cues from the cult of Obama then our candidate will not only lose but it will be our fault, not hers.

(And yes this is in the free speech category. If a conservative is not allowed to disagree with Sarah Palin, I’d call that a free speech issue)

Update: This is exactly what I’m talking about:

You would think that any effort to reform our health care system would include tort reform, especially if the stated purpose for Obama’s plan to nationalize our health care industry is the current high costs.

So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?

Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.

The most effective advocate for Sarah Palin is her own good sense.

Hey that doesn’t mean the climate summit has flopped…

Posted: August 20, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
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…it means that those thousands of guests are being green by not traveling?

The Foreign Ministry has cancelled 20,000 overnight hotel reservations meant for people attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December.

The move is expected to cost the hotel industry about 40 million kroner in lost revenue, calculated by each night in a hotel room costing about 2,000 kroner, reports Business.dk.

I would think they would be proud to see so many people not increasing their carbon footprint by traveling. After all that’s what really important right? It’s not like the whole idea of this is to provide a good time for a lot of hotshots from the UN and NGO’s is it?

Marx is popular? Let’s check at amazon

Posted: August 20, 2009 by datechguy in amazon reviews, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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How about that the New York Times says Marx is back in vogue.

Thanks to globalism’s discontents and the financial crisis that has spread across the planet, Karl Marx and his analysis of capitalism’s dark, wormy side are back in vogue. But what of Friedrich Engels, Marx’s best friend and closest ally, the co-author of “The Communist Manifesto” and the man who selflessly supported Marx while he wrote “Das Kapital”?

Oh really? Lets steal some stats from this post taken from Amazon.com. After all I’m a top 1000 reviewer* there so that’s a good reference point:

Lets start with a non conservative book UPDATE: (in fairness Mr. Scarborough would disagree with my characterization so lets call it “conservative lite”) by Joe Scarborough.

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #28,738 in Books

How about Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #31 in Books

That’s after 5 months, how about Dick Morris’ Catastrophe?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47 in Books

How about Michelle’s Culture of Corruption?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14 in Books

Her book is a month old, and finally how about Glenn Beck’ Common Sense?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #9 in Books

Those figures are all from yesterday, so lets see how they compare with Marx and some fellow travelers. Lets start with Das Kapital:

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #301,437 in Books

Well that’s an expensive edition, lets try something else, how about The Communist Manifesto and Other Revolutionary Writings: Marx, Marat, Paine, Mao Tse-Tung, Gandhi and Others (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback) Hey that’s got a bunch of people and it’s in paperback too and a Thrift edition that must be selling right?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #76,448 in Books

Hey Marxism isn’t just Marx, lets try Essential Works of Lenin: “What Is to Be Done?” and Other Writings (Paperback).

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #180,943 in Books

Well how about Trosky? Let’s try his book Marxism and Terrorism (Paperback)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #590,286 in Books

Well lets take a look at the actual book the New York Times was talking about; Marx’s General by Tristram Hunt, brand new book , favorablly reviewed by the times and Marxism is hot surely it can compete with all these guys who can’t stand Marx and Marxism? Can’t it?:

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,317 in Books

Guess not.

Hey lets give Marx fans one more shot. How about a classic, like Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United states. After all it’s back to school and a ton of colleges are assigning it as required reading I’m sure it can crack the top 100 or maybe the top 150?

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #171 in Books

Nope.

Michelle Malkin who is #1 on the Times bestseller list again links to human events which says:

Book readers seem to care less and less about what the newspaper thinks of a particular book, he says.

“You can do very well without the imprimatur of the New York Times,” he says. “The dirty little secret is that the Times doesn’t matter anymore, or it matters less and less. Many other outlets beat the Times to the stories and provide much fuller coverage.”

A chapter in Harry Stein’s new book, I Can’t Believe I’m Sitting Next to a Republican, is dedicated to the culture wars flaring within the publishing industry. Republican recalls how mainstream publishing houses turned down future smashes like Bernard Goldberg’s Bias simply because they couldn’t relate to its themes — or preferred not to even try.

I guess NYT must stand for Not (worth) Your Time.

*Ok and I admit it I’m 746 under the old system and only 1010 under the new system but I’m working on it, can I help it if Doctor Who Audios are a niche market?

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