Red Sox watch

I had to stay up last night to catch the end of the Red Sox's win over the Evil Empire on opening day...it was just too sweet to miss.

It started rough for Boston, with Josh Beckett giving up two home runs in the second inning, one each to Jorge Posada and Yanks newcomer Curtis Granderson. It got downright ugly by mid-game, with the Evil Empire extending their lead to 5-1.

But thanks to a miscue or two by the Yanks and some heroics from Pedroia and Youkilis, the good guys prevailed, 9-7. Nice way to start the season.

Banditos

It's been a while since I've posted a music video, so here's a blast from 14 years past.

The Refreshments' most-played song is probably the theme music from "King Of The Hill", but this is unquestionably their best song, and one of my personal all-time favorites.

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama..."

A friend e-mailed this to me today, and it was tagged "Author Unknown":

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.

If you know who wrote it, please leave something in the comments.

About those Tea Party "racists"...

Ever since the Tea Party thing launched about a year ago, Democrats and their loyal media have attempted to paint the entire movement as a pack of racists. The theme has become so pervasive that casual observers have come to believe it, upholding Vladimir Lenin's theory that "a lie told often enough becomes truth".

Last Sunday during the health care debate on Capitol Hill and the attendant Tea Party demonstration there, a number of black Congressional leaders claimed to have been jeered with racial slurs, and one even claimed to having been spit upon. Not to be left out, Rep. Barney Frank claimed to have been targeted with homophobic epithets. Naturally, the media took every unsubstantiated claim, packaged them up nicely, and reported them as undisputed fact.

Now supposedly, these acts occurred repeatedly as the accusers were walking to the Capitol building from a nearby Congressional office building on the Capitol grounds. Since the underground tunnels connecting the buildings is the preferred route, their presence on the grounds was unusual enough that there were dozens of members of the media and their cameras covering their walk. And yet not one video tape of any of these alleged incidents has surfaced. Not one.

Someone given to conspiracy theories might even think that their very choice of an outdoor route among the Tea Partiers was premeditated just so that they could make such accusations.

But not me.

File under: "Told ya so"

Nearly four years ago, I wrote a post here in which I speculated on a "take no prisoners" policy forced upon us by the Left's (and the Democrats', but I repeat myself) position on Guantanamo Bay. Well, kiss my ass and call me Nostra-fucking-damus.

Without a location outside the United States for sending prisoners, the administration must resort to turning the suspects over to foreign governments, bringing them to the U.S. or even killing them.

In one case last year, U.S. special operations forces killed an Al Qaeda-linked suspect named Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in a helicopter attack in southern Somalia rather than trying to capture him, a U.S. official said. Officials had debated trying to take him alive but decided against doing so in part because of uncertainty over where to hold him, the official added.

It's not that I'm going to shed any tears over these guys, but it'd be nice to squeeze a little intel out of them.

Barack Obama campaigned on this issue, and one of his very first acts after taking office was to issue an executive order to close Gitmo. I can't believe 53% of American voters wanted this walking disaster as President.

Pelosi: Do it for the Bohemians

If you ever thought that the health care reform debate was simply about health care, this little bit from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow should put that to rest:

So, you can‘t—everybody has so much to gain from this, small businesses, as I said, seniors, young people, women, our economy. Think of an economy where people could be an artist or a photographer or a writer without worrying about keeping their day job in order to have health insurance or that people could start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk, but not job loss because of a child with asthma or someone in the family is bipolar—you name it, any condition—is job locking.

That's right, folks. Your Democratic betters in Congress think ObamaCare simply must pass so that artists can quit their day jobs. Left unsaid, of course, is who shoulders their fair share of the cost burden.

Pelosi's little slip of the tongue reveals that this is more about creating permanent wards of the state.

File under: "What if Bush did it?"

Yet another entry in the WIBDI file, this one coming from Wired.

Now there’s DNA sampling. Obama told [America's Most Wanted host John] Walsh he supported the federal government, as well as the 18 states that have varying laws requiring compulsory DNA sampling of individuals upon an arrest for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. The data is lodged in state and federal databases, and has fostered as many as 200 arrests nationwide, Walsh said.

The American Civil Liberties Union claims DNA sampling is different from mandatory, upon-arrest fingerprinting that has been standard practice in the United States for decades.

A fingerprint, the group says, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks, and, according to some, can predict a propensity for violence.

Note that this is upon arrest, not upon conviction. Setting aside for a moment the question of civil liberties, this would be a hideously expensive proposition. As noted over at Ace's place, there are around 38,000 arrests per day nationwide not counting traffic violations, so this would require massive infrastructure.

Is he or isn't he?

Yesterday afternoon Twitter was buzzing with news that the tubby American traitor Adam Gadahn, aka Abu Al-Babee Fhat (OK, not really, but I like the name) among other aliases, had been captured in Karachi, Pakistan. Then came the buzz-killing news that maybe it wasn't Gadahn who'd been captured, after all.

This morning, ABC is carrying an article that seems to claim conclusively that the captured terrorist isn't Gadahn. Well, sort of.

A Taliban leader who goes by the name Abu Yahya, just like American-turned-al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, was picked up in Karachi in recent days, but that person is not Gadahn, a senior Pakistani government official told ABC News.

But there are conflicting reports about whether it is notorious Adam Gadahn.

Reports of the capture of an American-born al-Qaeda member by Pakistani authorities gave rise to speculation over whether it was Gadahn, the 31-year-old California-born Muslim convert who has been wanted since 2004.

The official told ABC News the leader who was arrested was possibly Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam, said to be another American member of al Qaeda, but the Pakistanis have yet to make that identification positive, the official said.

Dawn, an English-language newspaper, reports that Abu Yahya Mujahdeen al-Adam is an Egyptian-born U.S. citizen from Pennsylvania who helps command foreign militants fighting in Afghanistan and coordinates activities from Dubai.

I dunno...seems fishy. Granted, these guys claim more names than they do wives so there's sure to be some overlap. But to have two upper-echelon guys so similarly named? Possible, I guess.

Still, this is exactly the way I'd play it if I were the US intel guy on the spot and the captured figure was Adam Gadahn, given that Gadahn is a US citizen with a federal treason indictment.

He was captured by the Pakistanis and is in their custody subject to their interrogation, and Pakistani intelligence can squeeze the guy in ways we can't. So the US and Pakistan can play the yes-he-is, no-he-isn't game for a while and let Pakistani authorities get whatever intel they can, and then turn him over to US officials. At that point, as a wanted US citizen, he'd rightfully be turned over to the federal criminal justice system and have the right to shut up and get a lawyer.

Well, here's to hoping, anyway.

The wrong way to eat an elephant

There's an old expression that goes something like this: "What's the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time." That, of course, would be as opposed to trying to swallow the whole thing at once, which is effectively what Obama and congressional Democrats are trying to do in their comprehensive health care reform efforts.

The problems with health care (and there are problems) are a collection of separate issues, each of which can be fixed independently of the others. So why not eat this elephant one bite at a time by crafting focused, targeted, separate pieces of legislation to address each one?

Over the course of a couple of years we'd see noticeable, incremental improvements for millions of Americans. Instead, Democrats want to make history by passing sweeping, pork-laden legislation and as a result, either nothing at all will get done, or all the wrong things will get done.

This is stupidity, narcissism and hubris on display on a grand scale.

Axelrod: Gee, wouldn't it be great if Obama was a dictator?

In this New York Times piece bemoaning Barack Obama's lack of forcefulness in pushing his agenda, White House senior advisor David Axelrod is caught wishing Obama was Commandante and Absolute Supreme Dictator...or something:

I would love to live in a world where the president could snap his fingers or even twist arms and make change happen, but in this great democracy of ours, that’s not the way it is.

One might almost think he uses the phrase "great democracy" derisively.

Important physics discovery

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California has now identified with certainty the heaviest element known to science.

The new element, Pelosium (PL), has one neutron, 25 assistant neutrons, 88 deputy neutrons, and 198 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312.

These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Pelosium is inert, and has no charge and no magnetism. Nevertheless, it can be detected because it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A tiny amount of Pelosium can cause a reaction that would normally take less than a second, to take from 4 days to 4 years to complete.

Pelosium has a normal half-life of 2 years. It does not decay, but instead undergoes a biennial reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places.

Pelosium mass will increase over time, since each reorganization will promote many morons to become isodopes.

This characteristic of moron promotion leads some scientists to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a critical concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as critical morass.

When catalyzed with money, Pelosium becomes Senatorium, an element that radiates just as much energy as Pelosium since it has half as many peons but twice as many morons.

H/T to my friend Jim, who e-mailed this to me the other day.

Coalition of the Swilling links. Thanks for the link, Mr. Bingley!

Why do we need an envoy to a religion?

A tweet from Jake Tapper caught my eye this morning in which he said in part "POTUS to name new envoy to Muslim world" and linked to this item on his Political Punch blog.

President Obama will make some news in his video address to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Doha, Qatar today, sources tell ABC News, announcing a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

With 57 member states on four continents, the OIC is the second largest inter-governmental organization after the United Nations. It bills itself as "the collective voice of the Muslim world" working to "safeguard and protect the interests of the Muslim world in the spirit of promoting international peace and harmony among various people [But by no means ALL the people! --ed.] of the world."

All editorial snark aside, what is it about Islam that compels us to provide an "envoy" to a religion? Yeah, I'm aware that we have diplomatic relations with the Holy See in Vatican City, but that's an established city-state with nominal membership in the United Nations. If we have envoys to the Buddhist or Episcopalian worlds, I'm unaware of them.

Tapper points out in his piece that this isn't new with the Obama administration. George W. Bush appointed the first envoy to the OIC in 2007.

Gadget review: iFeelU EX2 "Body-sonic" Headphones

I came across this product in a pretty odd way. I just got back from a trip through Asia (my excuse for no blogging lately!), and my last stop was Seoul, Korea. While out for drinks and dinner there one night with a co-worker, I got into a conversation with a Mr. Alex SM Han, CEO of iFeelU, a Korean consumer electronics company. He had me try out a pair of these headphones, and after listening for a couple minutes through my BlackBerry's media player, I was sold.

What makes these different from other conventional in-the-ear headphones is the way they deliver bass effects -- they literally rattle the little bones in your ears. What's even weirder about them is that there's no battery or other external power source. The, um, vibrators are powered by the sound source. Holding them in your hand, you can actually feel them vibrating, which feels kind of strange at first in your ears.

This Gizmodo article inexplicably claims that for music, these headphones "suck balls". I beg to differ. I found the sound quality -- particularly the bass -- to be fantastic. The date of the article corresponds to right around the date of the product launch (May 2008), so who knows...maybe improvements were made since then. I also used them for the in-flight movies on the 13-hour flight back from Seoul, and was very satisfied with the sound quality. Oh, did I mention Mr. Han gave me a set? He did. Very nice man, that Mr. Han.

The phones fit comfortably in the ears, and there are two simple dials on the in-line control labeled SPK and VIB. SPK controls the basic volume, while VIB controls the bass (amount of vibration).

The Gizmodo article says the product is expected to launch in the US "soonish" and retail for around $40, but I haven't seen them yet. But if I understood Mr. Han correctly, start looking for them at CostCo in the coming months.