Considerettes

“Physician, heal thyself.”

Blogging will be light today. In fact, this post may constitute the sum total of my contribution today. The reason is one I’m slightly embarassed to relate.

My laptop died.

Now, there’s nothing particularly embarassing about that in and of itself. However, in dying it showed my woeful lack of preparedness for this circumstance. A good backup of one’s data, I have told family & friends time and time again, is the best, and often cheapest, insurance you can have. A promise of replacement hardware is good as far as it goes, but it’s the data that you really use the computer for. And I…

Well, first of all, in my defense, all the desktop machines in my house do a nightly backup across our home network to another machine. And I was doing semi-regular backups on my old laptop because, frankly, it was old. This machine I’ve been using was less that 4 months old and yesterday the hard drive just decided to retire. (Nice work if you can get it.)

So I’ll admit it: The most recent backup of this machine is from soon after I got it, so I’m going to lose about 3 months worth of E-mail, which is the life blood of most folks these days, especially in business. Most of the actualy software development I do is on other machines, and my laptop is mostly used for connecting to those machines or keeping documents related to said software.

Anyway, I’m really bummed today, and it’s mostly my fault. But, the lesson has been learned (again) and I’ll assume nothing about how good a hard drive is based solely on its age.

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The stereotype is that Republicans allowed “Jim Crow” laws while Democrats were against them. Perhaps not. The Buzz Blog notes this:

Republican Mike Coan co-sponosored legislation repealing Georgia’s Jim Crow laws - something Georgia’s Democrats never quite got around to (the 2005 session of the Georgia Legislature is the first time since Reconstruction that the GOP has had a majority in both Houses). Today, Governor Sonny Perdue (R) will sign the bill and Jim Crow will officially be dead.

That’s a long time to let those things languish on the law books, and Buzz also mentions that these law in Georgia were enacted and enforced by Democrats. Thanks to Republicans, they’re gone.

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Could “Ahnold” be in as much trouble as Gray Davis was when the latter was thrown out of office?

What once seemed unthinkable has now become a reality: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings have plummeted to Gray Davis levels, and the cornerstone of his ‘’Year For Reform'’ agenda is on shaky ground.

In 90 days, Schwarzenegger’s popularity has tumbled by 20 points and potential voters are now voicing doubt about the state spending restrictions the Republican governor wants them to approve in a special election this fall.

Just 40 percent of Californians think Schwarzenegger is doing a good job and half say he’s faring poorly, according to the non-partisan survey by the Public Policy Institute of California released today.

That’s a big tumble in a short amount of time, and it suggests either a PR situation (not enough for him or too much against him) or the advancement of a very unpopular policy. The administration seems to think it’s a combination of the two.

The numbers suggest that the governor’s attempt to get back on offense by jettisoning his contentious pension overhaul plan so he could focus on other proposals has so far failed. Now some Republican strategists are suggesting that Schwarzenegger consider abandoning the special election.

But there are few indications that the governor plans to back down. On Wednesday, Schwarzenegger’s political advisers met with top Republican lawmakers to discuss campaign strategy.

Margita Thompson, the governor’s press secretary, said the governor’s approval ratings and support will rise once they begin a more aggressive campaign.

‘’The governor still believes that we need change and we need it as soon as we can,'’ she said.

Part of the question has to be how badly do Californians want to have their government operating with fiscal responsibility. Democrats, fond of giving away more and more of your money, have been able to count on the votes of those who get the money. Asking people to do with less from the government is always a hard sell, but Democrats have been especially protective of their own special interest groups rather than the state as a whole.

Heading into his second year as governor, Schwarzenegger had enviable support from two-thirds of Californians, including a majority of independent voters and more than 40 percent of Democrats.

But his support among Democrats and independents began to erode in January when he unveiled his 2005 agenda that took aim at Democrats and their union allies. Rather than accede to his demands, the governor’s opponents quickly organized to challenge Schwarzenegger and his proposals.

“We like our bankruptcy just fine, thank you.” How thoughtful. And here’s the PR campaign that could be a big part of the cause of the drop.

The aggressive campaign, complete with millions of dollars in TV commercials attacking Schwarzenegger, has taken its toll. The governor’s 20-point slide is more precipitous than Davis’ tumble in 2001 when the Democratic governor stumbled through the state energy crisis. At that time, the governor’s approval ratings fell from 62 percent to 46 percent over four months.

In a bid to get back on track, Schwarzenegger earlier this month abruptly pulled one of the four main pillars of his ‘’Year for Reform'’ package that would have revamped state retirement plans. Support for the proposal dwindled as a parade of police and fire widows went public with concerns that the changes would deny them benefits.

Bringing in people with “concerns” needs to be backed up with actual proof that these concerns about a bill are founded, or at least with ideas on how to temper it. Instead Democrats use concerned widows for political advantage; to torpedo the whole thing. Why not just argue the merits in the legislature?

At the time, Schwarzenegger aides trumpeted the move as a strategic retreat that would deprive Democratic opponents of their main bludgeon. Instead, it has allowed Schwarzenegger critics to turn their sights on the new centerpiece of his special election package: an initiative that could contain excessive state spending and revamp the formula for funding schools.

The poll found just 44 percent of likely voters favor the idea while 37 percent said they are opposed.

If the governor can’t rally support for that proposal, which Thompson called ‘’the most important leg of the stool,'’ it could further undermine prospects for a special election this fall.

And the question returns: How badly do Californians want a fiscally responsible government? When a reform is taken off the table, they’re against the next one in line. Part of this could be the battle of the PR campaigns, but people (everywhere, not just in California) need to decide realistically what they want from government and work toward that. Instead, they’re saying essentially that they want the budget fixed without raising taxes or cutting spending.

Make your choice and stick with it.

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Erick Erickson over at RedState.org notes that Chris Matthews of “Hardball” is going to play the segment he had with Zell Miller at the Republican convention, including the part where Zell challenged him to a duel. He’s doing this in response to Zell’s new book release, “A Deficit of Decency”. Since he’s bringing this up again, the publisher’s thought that Chris should tell the rest of the story.

The only question is, in Senator Miller’s absence tonight will you tell the whole story as to why he was angry with your comments? In chapter 6 (Hardball Huff) of A Deficit of Decency, Zell explains that the reason he challenged you is that before he came on the set you claimed he was an “old time seggy.”

Will you renounce your baseless claim that Senator Miller is a segregationist?

Hold not thy breath, but it would be interesting to see.

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Why it takes a federal law to allow people to skip scenes in movies is something I just don’t understand.

President Bush on Wednesday signed legislation aimed at helping parents keep their children from seeing sex scenes, violence and foul language in movie DVDs.

The bill gives legal protections to the fledgling filtering technology that helps parents automatically skip or mute sections of commercial movie DVDs. Bush signed it privately and without comment, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

The legislation came about because Hollywood studios and directors had sued to stop the manufacture and distribution of such electronic devices for DVD players. The movies’ creators had argued that changing the content - even when it is considered offensive - would violate their copyrights.

The legislation, called the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act, creates an exemption in copyright laws to make sure companies selling filtering technology won’t get sued out of existence.

Critics of the bill have argued it was aimed at helping one company, Utah-based ClearPlay Inc., whose technology is used in some DVD players. ClearPlay sells filters for hundreds of movies that can be added to such DVD players for $4.95 each month. Hollywood executives maintain that ClearPlay should pay them licensing fees for altering their creative efforts.

I’ve talked about ClearPlay here and here. To me, it’s just a complete misapplication of copyright to insist that fast-forwarding past objectionable stuff is somehow illegal. I’m glad this legislation passed, although I wish it wasn’t necessary.

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Restating the obvious:

The CIA’s chief weapons inspector said he cannot rule out the possibility that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were secretly shipped to Syria before the March 2003 invasion, citing “sufficiently credible” evidence that WMDs may have been moved there.

Inspector Charles Duelfer, who heads the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), made the findings in an addendum to his final report filed last year. He said the search for WMD in Iraq — the main reason President Bush went to war to oust Saddam Hussein — has been exhausted without finding such weapons. Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the early 1990s.

Again, Saddam had WMDs. The only question right now is where they are. If they’re in Syria, proving that will be difficult.

But on the question of Syria, Mr. Duelfer did not close the books. “ISG was unable to complete its investigation and is unable to rule out the possibility that WMD was evacuated to Syria before the war,” Mr. Duelfer said in a report posted on the CIA’s Web site Monday night.

He cited some evidence of a transfer. “Whether Syria received military items from Iraq for safekeeping or other reasons has yet to be determined,” he said. “There was evidence of a discussion of possible WMD collaboration initiated by a Syrian security officer, and ISG received information about movement of material out of Iraq, including the possibility that WMD was involved. In the judgment of the working group, these reports were sufficiently credible to merit further investigation.”

But Mr. Duelfer said he was unable to complete that aspect of the probe because “the declining security situation limited and finally halted this investigation. The results remain inconclusive, but further investigation may be undertaken when circumstances on the ground improve.”

Ending the investigation with a “we don’t know, and right now we can’t know” shouldn’t give Democrats anything to get smug over. Regardless of where they are, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons simply disappeared. If that’s good enough for Democrats, I’d submit that’s exactly the reason they can’t be trusted with national security.

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Air America, probably noting the latest ratings problems, decided to get some free publicity. (Link is on Drudge’s site, where nothing is truly a permalink.)

AIR AMERICA RADIO INVESTIGATED AFTER BUSH ‘GUNSHOTS’

**Exclusive**

The red-hot rhetoric over Social Security on liberal talkradio network AIR AMERICA has caught the attention of the Secret Service, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

Government officials are reviewing a skit which aired on the network Monday evening — a skit featuring an apparent gunshot warning to the president!

The announcer: “A spoiled child is telling us our Social Security isn’t safe anymore, so he is going to fix it for us. Well, here’s your answer, you ungrateful whelp: [audio sound of 4 gunshots being fired.] Just try it, you little bastard. [audio of gun being cocked].”

The audio production at the center of the controversy aired during opening minutes of The Randi Rhodes Show.

“What is with all the killing?” Rhodes said, laughing, after the clip aired.

“Even joking about shooting the president is a crime, let alone doing it on national radio… we are taking this very seriously,” a government source explained.

Bet Rhodes is a hoot at airports when she jokes she has a bomb in her carry-on bag.

The target audience is, of course, the short-attention-span liberal who doesn’t remember when Clinton and other Democrats said that Social Security needed saving. But now that it’s a Republican doing it, it’s a Bad Thing(tm). Welcome to partisanship at its ugliest.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to the same story on WorldNetDaily. Just quotes Drudge, but the link will probably hang around a lot longer. Also, Byron York has further information on the decline of Air America’s ratings, including putting the lie to the claim by Al Franken that he was beating Rush Limbaugh for a time.

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Good news from Lebanon:

MASNAA, Lebanon (AP) - Syria ended its 29-year military domination of Lebanon on Tuesday as soldiers flashing victory signs completed a withdrawal spurred by intense international pressure and massive Lebanese street protests against a force that once reached 40,000.

Without the ousting of dictators in Afghanistan and Iraq, this wouldn’t have happened. Instead of inflaming the “Arab street”, as most liberals predicted, our actions have furthered democracy and freedom among nations in the Middle East. In some cases, as in this one, no troops were required.

Those on the left will try to plead “historic inevitability” as they did with the fall of the Soviet Union, but that’s really dishonest. If we’d followed their policies of appeasement, nothing would have changed. Thanks, Dubya.

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Looks like no one in Iraq knew anything about moving WMDs to Syria.

The U.S.-led group that scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has found no evidence Iraq hid such weapons in Syria before the U.S. invasion in March 2003, according to a final report on the investigation.

The 1,700-member Iraq Survey Team, responsible for the weapons hunt, also said in a report released late on Monday it found no Iraqi officials with direct knowledge of a transfer of weapons of mass destruction developed by former President Saddam Hussein.

However…

The new report posted on the CIA Web site said: “Based on evidence available … it is unlikely that an official transfer of WMD material from Iraq to Syria took place. However ISG was unable to rule out unofficial movement of limited WMD-related materials.”

It said investigators “found no senior policy, program or intelligence officials who admitted any direct knowledge of such movement of WMD.”

“Indeed, they uniformly denied any knowledge of residual WMD that have been secreted to Syria,” the report said.

The big question has been, since the UN and all these other countries knew they did exist (at least for the reason that Iraq had used them before), where did they go? Hope all these Democrats who’ve put down the whole WMD issue feel safe with this uncertainty.

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While the spotlight is on Tom DeLay, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle are scurrying around trying to clean up their own messes.

Members of Congress are rushing to amend their travel and campaign records, fearing that the controversy over House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will trigger an ethics war that will bring greater scrutiny to their own travel and official activities.

Lawmakers are paying old restaurant bills, filing missing forms and correcting erroneous ones as journalists and political opponents comb through records and DeLay (R-Tex.) attempts to answer questions about travel financing and his past relationships with lobbyists.

It cites examples from Republicans and Democrats (including Pelosi herself) that have had to revisit past trips and how they were paid for to cover their tracks, just in case the DeLay stuff spills over. Ain’t this just like Washington?

The solution, of course, is smaller government. If there weren’t as much central decision making in this country, lobbyists would have to sway 50 states instead of a handful of Senators. The money wouldn’t go as far and we’d have a check on its power.

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Today’s Odd “Considerettes” Search Phrase - fresh power chewing gum made in germany for animals [#1 on Yahoo! Search]

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Byran Preston at Junkyard Blog note a difference in the reaction to two movies:

A year ago Easter, a film debuted that depicted a single killing. It was a violent film to be sure–the individual was tortured and mocked before his execution–but it wasn’t the most violent film ever made, or even the most violent film I’d ever seen. It was, in fact, a very moving film that told a true story that should be heard by all.

But long before that film opened, protestors were already out in force. Movie reviewers smeared it with every vile insult in the book–it was too violent, it was too bloody, excitable Andrew Sullivan called it “pornography,” and lots and lots of professional spinmeisters called it anti-Semitic. Yet it depicted the torture and killing of only one man.

That describes the first movie. Now the second.

A bazillion people die in this film, most of them after enduring some manner of inhuman treatment. Cops are almost all depicted as evil, hookers are noble (or hot gun-toting samurai, take your pick) and the biggest villians are connected directly to the Catholic church. In fact, the two worst villians are the only people in the entire film that seem to have any sort of belief system at all, and their belief seems to consist of pretending to believe in God while **SPOILER ALERT** eating His children. Yes, you read that right. Not only is Sin City violent beyond words and without a shred of decency, it comes with a side dish of Cardinal cannibalism. Lovely film. Make sure to bring the kids.

The first movie was “The Passion of the Christ”. The second one is “Sin City”. Now, Bryan points out something missing from the second movie.

But unless I missed something, no one’s out there protesting Sin City. It has gotten positive reviews and negative reviews, and has otherwise generated little reaction. No protestors line any street near any theater showing Sin City.

They protested that other film, which one guy essentially bankrolled by himself and which had few stars, though it was far, far less violent than Sin City, and unlike Sin City, it actually had a point.

What’s the difference?

Why did that film generate so much passion, when a far more pointlessly violent generates none? What was it about The Passion of the Christ that had excitable Andrew comparing it to the worst that the world of hard core can dream up, and had protestor shock troops out to denounce it as evil and racist? And why aren’t those allegedly anti-violence protestors out there now to battle Sin City?

I think we all know the answer. The passion about The Passion was not about the violence. It was about the Passion.

This has been another Liberal Double-Standard Alert. We now resume our regularly schedule blog.

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I really don’t want to hear Democrats talk about “mean-spirited Republicans” ever again, or at least until they get rid of this guy.

Howard Dean may not be running for anything, but his elbows appear to be as sharp as ever.

Since taking over as chairman of the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, the former presidential candidate has been quoted in newspapers making unusually caustic remarks about Republicans.

Dean has suggested that they are “evil.” That they are “corrupt.” He called them “brain-dead” during a stop in Toronto — and while the Terri Schiavo case was still in the news. He has tagged Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) as a “liar.” Last week, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that he mimicked a “drug-snorting Rush Limbaugh” at an event there.

To borrow a phrase from James Taranto, if he were a Republican, this would be “hate speech”.

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I tried calling in to “Bill Bennett’s Morning in America” radio show this morning, with information about HR 501 aka the “Fairness Doctrine”, but was politely rebuffed. When I explained why I was calling, the call screener (Jeff, I think) said that they didn’t think it’d get majority support at all. So they didn’t take my call (which was understandable; the judicial and Bolton nominations are the big news today).

Anyway, hope they’re right. I’ll keep an eye on this, in any event.

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“Fairness Doctrine” news & views update:

• Kaye Grogan:
  

  The reason why I find the proposed law extremely funny? … because a liberal Democrat wouldn’t recognize “fairness” if it knocked them upside the head. Where were people like Ms. Slaughter when the one-sided liberal views dominated every news organization in the country?

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