An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
Archive for 11 March 2008
I Don’t Get It
What is the lefties fascination with Jim Hightower?
There Was a Primary?
Obama Coasts to Victory in Miss. Primary
Barack Obama coasted to victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary Tuesday, latest in a string of racially polarized presidential contests across the Deep South and a final tune-up before next month’s high-stakes race with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania.
Obama was winning roughly 90 percent of the black vote but only about one-quarter of the white vote, extending a pattern that carried him to victory in earlier primaries in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.
His triumph was widely expected, and seemed destined to do nothing to shorten a Democratic marathon expected to last at least six more weeks – and possibly far longer – while Republicans and their nominee-in-waiting, Sen. John McCain, turn their attention to the fall campaign.
Yeah, yeah….I knew there was a primary. I couldn’t help but know since the stations out of Memphis have enundated us with with Obama ads. Now, will they stop? At least for a while? PLEASE?????
Way Cool Toy
Can I have one? 
H/T: American and Proud
Stuff and Nonsense
Ferraro’s Remarks About Obama Decried
Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she disagrees with Geraldine Ferraro, one of her fundraisers and the 1984 vice presidential candidate, for suggesting that Barack Obama only achieved his status in the presidential race because he’s black. In a brief interview with The Associated Press, Clinton was questioned about Ferraro’s remarks.
Why? I mean why did she ‘decry’? The only reason she’s a candidate is because: one, she’s female, and two, she’s been campaigning since before she was born.
Ferraro told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
I’m not a big Ferraro fan, but the woman is right. He doesn’t have a real platform….’hope’….’change’….yeah? And then what?
Clinton said, “I do not agree with that,” and later added, “It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”
“We ought to keep this on the issues. there are differences between us” on approaches to health care, energy, experience.
Uh huh. So, if experience is important, neither one of them should be in the race. And issues? Well, socialism isn’t my idea of good way to run the country….at least not THIS country.
Obama called Ferraro’s comments “patently absurd.”
“I don’t think Geraldine Ferraro’s comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd,” he told the Allentown Morning Call. “And I would expect that the same way those comments don’t have a place in my campaign they shouldn’t have a place in Senator Clinton’s either.”
Is he kidding? The party of divisiveness? Pfft!
Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Ferraro should be removed from her position with the Clinton campaign because of her comments.
Well, if you are old enough, you’ll remember the only reason Fararro was a VP candidate was because….GASP….she’s a woman!
Box…..Rocks
1 in 4 Teen Girls Has Sexual Disease
At least one in four teenage girls nationwide has a sexually transmitted disease, or more than 3 million teens, according to the first study of its kind in this age group.
A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls – nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.
For many, the numbers likely seem “overwhelming because you’re talking about nearly half of the sexually experienced teens at any one time having evidence of an STD,” said Dr. Margaret Blythe, an adolescent medicine specialist at Indiana University School of Medicine and head of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on adolescence.
But the study highlights what many doctors who treat teens see every day, Blythe said.
Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s division of STD prevention, said the results are the first to examine the combined national prevalence of common sexually transmitted diseases among adolescent girls. He said the data, from 2003-04, likely reflect current rates of infection.
“High STD rates among young women, particularly African-American young women, are clear signs that we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk,” Douglas said.
Well, gee willakers Mr. Wizard! How can we stop young girls from getting those ol’ nasty SEXUALLY transmitted diseases? Uh…gosh Poindexter, I dunno! How ’bout we give a pill and some bananas to put balloons on!
It’s GOT To Be The Water
Bench-Warmers Sought to Block Homeless
SAN DIEGO (AP) – A community activist thinks a few couch potatoes, strategically placed on sidewalk benches in an upscale shopping district, will keep transients on their feet and on the move.
Esther Viti, who oversees the donation of public benches for a merchants’ association in La Jolla, sent an e-mail to 45 other activists last week asking them to sit in three-hour shifts, no bathroom breaks allowed.
“After all, you MUST OCCUPY THAT BENCH continually for three hours to prevent that homeless person from sitting on that bench,” the e-mail said.
Donors weren’t happy that transients were sleeping on benches they had provided for the public, Viti said.
The group previously tried installing benches with metal dividers that split the seats. Transients simply began sleeping upright, said Deborah Marengo, president of Promote La Jolla.
No one has offered to sit a shift yet, Viti said. Some potential recruits expressed concern that the bench brigade could provoke retaliation from displaced transients.
In 2006, the Regional Task Force on Homeless estimated the homeless population at 9,600 countywide, which included 4,400 people within the city of San Diego.
How else do you explain it? If you donate something, it’s no longer yours. If you donate something to the public, it belongs to the public. Are they saying the homeless are not part of “the public”?
The Whole Low Down
Texas Fred has been kind enough to let us know exactly what has been going on lately.
One thing….Fred, if you ever scare me like that again, I’m gonna have to come over there and smack ya! Don’t do that ever again!
I’m extremely grateful you are still kickin’ butt!
Good Read
The greatest triumph of leftist intellectuals in their attack on the vast body of knowledge and education inherited by the modern era from the treasury of ideas of Western civilization has been to fragment ideas and language itself until neither have any meaning, except as vehicles for emotional rhetoric or a specialized vocabulary.
Today we live in a world filled with idealism but devoid of ideas. We are surrounded by agitation and argument, but it takes place in an environment without historical context in which the very idea of history has been rendered meaningless and objective standards have been banished.
Idealism used to be grounded in ideas. Today idealism is a form of nebulous self-expression, an optimistic attitude or the willingness to believe anything you are told. The Obama campaign is only one of a succession of such nexuses of candidates who are idealists without ideas. Obama has exploited a campaign of personality, becoming the male Oprah to a public that wants to hear an upbeat message without having to pay attention to the words.
Read the rest here!
Heh
Morning Coffee 03/11/08
Is scandal enough to sink Spitzer for good?
Before Monday, Eliot Spitzer was a rising star in the Democratic Party — his squeaky-clean image as a corruption buster led to his being mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate and possibly even a future White House contender.
Now, after federal investigators have linked the New York governor to a top-dollar prostitution ring, political advisers are split over whether Spitzer has any political future at all.
Honestly, I don’t care which party you are affiliated with….if you’re going to talk the talk, you damn sure better walk the walk!
Iranian Students Urge Kidney Donations to Raise Funds for Bounty on Israeli Officials
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Mossad spy agency director Meir Dagan and military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin are the targets of the bounty and are blamed for last month’s assassination of Hezbollah mastermind Imad Mughniyeh.
The rewards were announced by the Justice Seeking Students Group on Sunday at a ceremony in Tehran entitled “setting the bounty for the revolutionary execution of the designers of state terrorism,” ISNA said.
The bounty for Defense Minister Barak is set at $400,000 while those for Dagan and Yadlin are $300,000 each, AFP reports. It is not clear where the funds will come from.
Yet, they are such a peaceful bunch. Pfft! If I hear one more time how it’s just a handful….. Well, that might be so, but I don’t hear anyone in the Muslim world standing up to condemn such actions.
Contest would pay ‘worst’ teachers to quit
A Washington-based anti-union group hopes to ”jump-start a conversation” about the difficulty schools face in getting rid of bad teachers — with a stunt that sounds as if it was designed for reality TV.
The Center for Union Facts on Tuesday will ask parents, students and other teachers to nominate the ”worst unionized teacher in America.” The center says it will choose 10 and offer each $10,000 to quit; ”winners” must allow the center to write about them on its Web site. The center plans full-page ads today in USA TODAY and The New York Times.
An interesting idea. However, I don’t think it’ll fly too far. Sadly. Heh. Really bad teachers don’t seem to be aware they are really bad. Since they’d lose all those benefits if they quit, 10 grand won’t take ‘em too far.
Israel reportedly ‘agrees to 30 days of quiet’ with Hamas
The report quoted a “senior Palestinian source” as saying that if the 30-day period proves successful, Israel will assent to the Egyptian calm initiative, including the cessation of ground and air attacks in the Gaza Strip and refraining from retaliating for the terror attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva last week.
Another London-based pan-Arab daily, Al Hayat, quoted an Egyptian source as saying that the specific Israeli conditions for the 30-days test period included a complete halt of rocket attacks against Israel and on construction of smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.
And this would accomplish what? You can have a month or two of quiet, but if they (Pallies) don’t stop breeding hate into their children, it’s not ever going to stop.
Militants Launch Rocket at Israeli City
Palestinian militants in Gaza launched a rocket Tuesday at the Israeli city of Ashkelon after several days of quiet, causing no injuries, Israeli police said.
The rocket hit an open area south of the city of 120,000, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. The launch came during a lull in fighting between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert left the city a short time before the rocket hit.
Uh….yeah…..see above.
Deadly blasts hit Pakistani city
At least 24 people have been killed and 100 injured in two suspected suicide car bombings in the city of Lahore in eastern Pakistan.
A majority of the victims died in a car bomb attack that hit a federal police building in the heart of the city.
Another bomb in a suburb killed three, including two children, police say.
There are a lot of difference between “us” and “them”. One of the biggest….we don’t actually target children, where they don’t give a flying flip if they kill one child, or thousands.
Dems downplay ‘dream ticket’ talk
Barack Obama beat back any notion of giving up his presidential bid to be Hillary Rodham Clinton’s running mate, urging people voting today not to be tricked by the New York senator or former president Bill Clinton, who have fanned the idea in recent days.
“I don’t know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to someone who is in first place,” Obama said Monday in Columbus, Miss. “You all know the okey-doke. When somebody is trying to bamboozle you, when they are trying to hoodwink you.”
Dream? Ack! Either one of them in charge would be a nightmare!
Turkish military leader laments lack of international cooperation against terrorism
Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Yasar Buyukanit complained Monday about the lack of global cooperation against terrorism and lamented that some countries are still supporting terrorism in various forms.
Gen. Buyukanit said terrorist organizations carrying out legal or illegal activities in foreign countries to raise funds or deceive people to join them should be considered as international terrorist activities.
“Otherwise, fight against global terrorism will lose ground,” Buyukanit told the Global Terrorism & International Cooperation Symposium in Ankara’s Bilkent Hotel organized by the Command of Center of Excellence Defense Against Terrorism.“Supporting terrorism is equal to feeding a venomous snake,” Buyukanit said. “You can never make sure that the snake would not bite the feeder. The boomerang effect of terrorism will sooner or later harm collaborators of terrorism.”
Y’all listening in D.C.? Bezerkley? And everywhere else in between??
Gun rights to be argued in Supreme Court
A prominent black conservative leader says individual liberty and one of the most fundamental constitutional rights is at risk in a case before the nation’s highest court next week.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments March 18 in a case challenging the District of Columbia’s 30-year-old ban on handguns. Attorneys for the District plan to argue that the Constitution protects only the gun rights of militias and that the Second Amendment does not prevent states from enacting firearms regulations.
“We the People” ARE the militia!
Bredesen backs $50,000 going to child who named uncle as killer
Gov. Phil Bredesen said Monday afternoon he hopes the child survivor who identified Jessie Dotson as the killer in the Lester Street slayings last week can be given the $50,000 state reward.
“I asked our attorneys this morning to look at this to see if it’s possible under the law,” Bredesen said at an afternoon press conference.
I really hope these kids will be able to have that money put in a trust for them. No child should ever have to go through such a horrific crime.
A victims’ fund will pay for funeral and burial expenses for the four adults and two children killed in the attack, and the remaining funds will go toward paying for the medical costs of Cecil Dotson Jr., Cedric Dotson and Ceniyah Dotson. Any money left over will go toward the surviving children’s continued physical and emotional rehabilitation and their education. Donations are being accepted at Bank of America locations. Checks should be made out to Lester Street Victims Fund.
Living in an area where gun fire is just background noise defies logic, and plain decency.
Verse of the Day
Deuteronomy 7:9
9Â Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations
