There have many characterizations of Obama being “The Next…”

Currently, the media has settlde on America’s worst President ever: FDR

William Rees-Mogg of the Times of London thinks they’re right.

And that this should scare you.

You really need to read that.

Need another nudge?

Samizdata blogger Johnathon Pearce scrounges up some numbers from the US Dept. of Commerce

1930: 8.7%
1931: 15.9%
1932: 23.6%
1933: 24.9%
1934: 21.7%
1935: 20.1.%
1936:16.9%
1937:14.3%
1938:19%
1939:17.2%
1940:14.6%

Those are FDR’s unemployment stats. In two terms as President, his dismal policies actually extended the suffering of the nation.

FDR made America worse in many ways, but one of the worst was brainwashing people into believe that they couldn’t succeed without the help of government.

Could we please get these people some more facetime on the national media?

Jane Smiley believes that John McCain’s sorties are equivalent to William Ayers’ bombings.

But, of course, John McCain’s defense is that he was performing his patriotic duty, and that’s what William Ayers would have said, too. I remember the Vietnam War. It was not a war of self-defense that the U.S. had to wage or had to win. It was a war of aggression, a waste of resources, lives, manpower, global good will, and national spirit. And, many would say, it was a war crime. Those who were against it viewed their protests as essential patriotism, a way of correcting terrible choices and profound injustices.

According to the New York Times article, William Ayers’ case was thrown out of court because of “illegal wiretaps and prosecutorial misconduct”, exactly the sort of activities that will get cases brought against the Guantanamo detainees by the Bush Administration thrown out of court. Deja vu all over again.

In the meantime, what about the case against John McCain? The next time he goes abroad, might some enterprising human rights activist step up to him and put him under a citizens’ arrest for war crimes and get him hauled off to the The Hague?

Please, will someone put her on CNN so she can spout this crap.

Olbermann, where the fuck are you, dude?

It seems the best we can do so far is get one Seattle blogger to compare Ayers to Henry Kissinger.

And why is this all coming up again? Because Sarah Palin mentioned it a couple times on the campaign trail.

Over the weekend, the Obama camp sent a message to the McCain campaign saying that if they didn’t shut Palin up, the Obama folks would magically have the entire Obama-faithful media “discover” the Keating 5 scandal.

Barack Obama’s allies warn that John McCain’s attacks on the Democrat’s character will lead to the political equivalent of mutual assured destruction: Fire your big weapon at your own peril.

Several Obama surrogates said his supporters may start reminding voters of McCain’s ties to Charles Keating, a convicted savings-and-loan owner whose actions two decades ago triggered a Senate ethics investigation that involved McCain as one of the “Keating Five.”

A scandal from which McCain was completely exonerated by a Democrat controlled Congress of any wrong doing.

CNN’s “Truth Squad” spent the weekend publicizing their shitty debunking skills and categorizing Palin’s words as “FALSE”

How many times do you think that the alphabet soup networks (because they’re “in the can”) can run Keating 5 montages a day?

I’m sure that by the end of this week, the politically aware of the nation will have the names of the others involved, who actually were found to have made serious ethics violations, memorized from hearing them over and over again.

This is a euphamism:

Interception Modernization Programme

Spies will tap into all emails and calls

ALL telephone calls, emails and text messages in Britain will be monitored under new Government snooping plans.

A £12billion identity database at the GCHQ spy centre could even log every website visited by computer users nationwide.

Hundreds of bugging probes will be installed in the telephone system and computer networks to monitor communications traffic.

GCHQ has already been handed £1billion of taxpayers’ cash to begin developing the database.

After the top-secret plans were leaked yesterday critics accused the Government of stalking the public. Michael Parker of anti-identity card group No2ID said: “It is a shocking intrusion into privacy. This is stalking. If an individual carried out this sort of snooping, it would be a crime.

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said the proposal marked “a substantial shift in the powers of the state to obtain information on individuals”. And after a series of embarrassing security blunders including the loss of child benefit records for every family in the country, he questioned Whitehall’s competence to keep such data. He said: “Given the Government’s poor record on protecting data and seeing how significant an increase in power this would be, we need to have a national debate and the Government would have to justify its need.”

National debate?

A “Need”?

Peon, get with the programme. We own you.

You get a lot of socialists whining about how, if we just kept our corporations “In Check” like the europeans do, that we wouldn’t be any troubles.

Yeah, right.

EU car makers seek loan

Europe’s car makers plan to ask the European Commission for a €40 billion ($55.22 billion) loan to accelerate the transition to environmentally friendly cars, a spokesman for Fiat SpA of Italy said.

The request follows a similar move in the U.S., where Congress approved $25 billion in loans to help U.S. auto makers improve fuel economy.

Just how much more “fuel economy” can those guys eek out of a mill? The only compact car I’d even think of buying would be one of the VW TDI series. And that is just one of the Euro micro-sippers the auto makers are willing to import.

Seen on Hwy 580 Westbound, Part 1

Not what you usually expect to see in the next lane over.

(Yes, this was taken with my cell-phone camera. California law-enforcement officials can go screw.)

Seen On Hwy 580 Westbound, Part 2

It’s the front end of a jet for display at the USS Hornet floating museum in Alameda. I’ve never visited it but will have to rectify that soon. The view of San Francisco from the deck is spectacular. The NRA recently held a fundraising dinner on the Hornet; I was sorry I couldn’t make it.

Kitteh Style

After having to chase Ulthar off the counters and tables with the squirt gun, The Wife has adopted the title I bestowed upon him while taking these pics the other day: Ulthar the Terrible

X-Style w/Teeth

(Push the button … )

What kids and their computer-controlled robots are doing these days! Jim Rawles found the best video you’ll see all weekend. Food for lots of creative thought.

Yes doing it with a real gun would be highly illegal. Doesn’t mean you couldn’t set one of these up as part of a VERY interesting nonlethal home security system.

Larry Correia finds a find:

I am under 45 years old,
I love the outdoors,
I hunt,
I am a Republican reformer,
I have taken on the Republican Party establishment,
I have many children,
I have a spot on the national ticket as vice president with less than two years in the governor’s office.

(Push the button … )

If you have one person saying that someone did a good job, one person saying that that same person did a bad job, and a third person saying that they did an OK job but that said person didn’t help them decide on something, how do you get this headline?

The view from Spokane: Palin’s not ready

Go ahead, read the editorial. I can’t figure out how DingDongDanny Westneat got to that position, unless he had it before the debate.

The Times publishes Dan Balz’s column from the WaPo and he said that Palin did well enough. So what is up Westneat’s ass on this?

Oh, probably something resembling this.

Btw, I don’t think she did all that great. She went out of her way to stuff talking points into the conversation. But with Ifill giving Biden the last word nearly 80% of the time and Biden’s 14 lies, she handily bested the old man.