Hugh Hewitt, who seemed to be wobbly on the ports deal just days
ago, seems to have figured some things out:
The president appears to
be counting on his well-earned reputation for sincerity on matters of security to settle the ports issue. It may, or it may
not. But it is clear he doesn't mind the debate. And increasingly it is obvious why not.
As with the Patriot Act,
as with the debate over the NSA program to conduct surveillance of al Qaeda communicating with its agents inside America,
and as with the war on all of its fronts, the president and the party he leads are serious about the debate and the stakes.
The Democrats aren't.
A photo op at the harbor
with [Chuck] Schumer and Hillary is just another in a long line of stunts that is supposed to pass as a policy: Congressman
Murtha's demand for an immediate withdrawal; Harry Reid's gloating that he "had killed the Patriot Act," John Kerry's never-ending
campaign --they are all the same stunt.
It didn't work in 2002.
It didn't work in 2004. And it isn't going to work in 2006.
If the issue is the nation's
secuirty in a time of grave and growing threats, the answer isn't, and probably won't be for at least a generation, the Democrats.
Bush is setting up the next
eight months to be yet another referendum on the war's conduct. Incredibly the Democrats have agreed to the terrain, which
always has them fighting uphill. They seem to think that some combination of Katrina and the ports debate will allow them
to emerge as a credible alternative on national security --when they refused to allow exploration in ANWR, opposed SCOTUS
nominees in large part because Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito might agree that the president has stand-along war
powers pursuant to Article II, and routinely argue idiocies like Dick Durbin's assertion that members of the American military
are similar in their action's to the thugs of Hitler's, Stalin's and Pol Pot's regime or Howard dean's blanket assertion that
the war can't be won, and that it is another Vietnam.
The sneering and jeering
of Democrats on the ports issue is instantly recognized as rank posturing, the political equivalent of a demand for better
exercise equipment from the morbidly obese.
I think these folks still haven’t figured out that they will
not be running against George W. Bush in 2008 nor 2006.
Oh well.
As I’ve written before, President Bush has backbone where it
matters most. To his credit, he immediately made it clear he was sticking with this deal – polls be damned. Especially when
those polls amount to nothing more than taking the temperature of a gossip index.
It’s very interesting to watch the NFL Combine live on the NFL Network. Money is being made and lost, based on some standardized drills. Chad Jackson from Florida was
the number one timed receiver in the 40-yard dash. Ingle Martin, a transfer from Florida
to Furman, just made a couple of good throws in the QB drills and may find himself a place in the League, too.
Been there, done that: Gerard Van Der Leun calls out those who have a convenient problem with making money (except when it’s them making the money):
Over
the nearly four decades since 1968, the list of regimes dedicated to, and capable of, the destruction of the United
States shrank. They either took a long dirt nap in history or are now shambling towards the
graveyard of all other failed but deadly fascist ideologies. The political genius and destiny of the United States lies, after all, in the fact that we do not require you to be a friend.
You simply have to not be an enemy. The American Way
is, after all, that nothing need be personal when it can just be business. One on one, we can be very warm, understanding
and generous. But piss us off too much and we'll bomb your cities to rubble. We don't like business to be disrupted too much.
In
all this, the world at large has gone forward and, all in all, improved for the better. We call it "Globalization" and it
seems, slowly, to be working out well for most of those people who have, as they say, "gotten with the program."
But
there remains a group of us who, although they batten off the program, don't want to get with it at all -- except when it
comes time to buy a new Prius or get a country home. They take pride in never having sold out, even as they buy in.
Those
Americans of the 60s whose fantasies were lit by a dream of a destroyed United
States have very few friends left out of the long list of countries once dedicated to totalitarianism.
And the list becomes shorter with each passing year.
Time
and chance also makes the list of those Americans still dedicated to becoming life-long friends of countries and movements
dedicated to the destruction of AmeriKKKa shorter every year. Yet most still live and thrive in the place they hate the most.
They have made prosperous lives for themselves in local, state and national governments and politics, as well as in academia,
the entertainment world, and the media. Greying now they still continue in their quest for an enemy of their enemy to make
their friend. They are the American Left and, risen from their impoverished conditions in 1968, they have now tenure, high
position, or acolytes from which they draw comfortable stipends. Of late, they've taken more and more to coffee klatches with
Islamic fundamentalists who, if they don't have the armies to bring about the destruction of the United States, have at least shown they've got enough hate to kill Americans here
and abroad retail and wholesale. Besides, they're out shopping for a nuclear weapon and some smallpox, so what's not to like
about these guys from an American Leftist's point of view?
I wouldn’t say this of “the left” but I would of “the far left,”
also lovingly known as the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. You know, those folks who think Nancy Pelosi is “a moderate
with an edge.” Right!
One of Gerard’s readers put it quite nicely:
Dancing with the Moonbats, Everybody feeling warm and right, It's such a fine and
natural sight-- Everybody was dancing with the Moonbats.
Yeah, buddy. Good music from those days, updated quite nicely.
This is a personally self-absorbed lament but, hell, I had
to post it anyway. It occurred yesterday, during a period of time when I was intent on figuring out how to add an RSS feed
to my site. This of course led me to technical support for my host service, an outfit that previously was of no use whatsoever
on this very same question. Modern technology being what it is, this is how the episode began:
Welcome to Bama-Lamma LiveChat. Your chat session will begin shortly.
Not at home and
you want to read your email? With Bama-Lamma Web Mail you can check your email from any computer with an internet connection!
‘Technical
Support’ says: Thank you for contacting Bama-Lamma LiveChat, how may I help you today? RattlerGator:
I previously submitted a question about adding an RSS feed to my
blog and was unsatisfied with LiveChat’s inability to help me with the question. Can this question be submitted for further
review? Technical Support: I will give my best to answer your question
and I apologize for the inconvenience caused. Technical Support: Let me know the domain name. RattlerGator:
Good. The domain is at www.englishandwhite.com/rattler_gator_blog
and because the site creates a permalink for each new blog entry, I’ve been told Trellix should have a simple process for
adding the RSS feed feature because the permalink is already there.
[there is a period of delay; my Uh-Oh meter is now on full alert; if I now get a hand-job of a response, I already know that’s not going to
cut it and I will have to insist Bama-Lamma
meets a higher standard]
Technical Support:
I am sorry, Bama-Lamma
does not support RSS feed . RattlerGator:
Okay, you’ve given me a package using Trellix software. It seems
that a greater response is owed me other than you don’t support RSS feeds. Technical Support: Trellix software will help you in building
the website. [2:33 p.m.] RattlerGator: I’ve already
built the site, as you should have seen. How about this -- how do I contact Trellix so that I may resolve this problem? Can
y’all at least help me with that?
[2:35 p.m.] RattlerGator:
Hello?
[2:37] Technical Support:
I am with you. Technical Support: Please give me a moment. RattlerGator:
Cool.
[2:40] Technical Support:
Thank you for your patience. Technical Support: Please use the link given below: Technical
Support: http://www.trellix.com/press/pr.asp?id=4 Technical Support: This third party web site link is provided
by Bama-Lamma as a convenience to you. The content or software provided on this web site is not owned or maintained by Bama-Lamma.
Bama-Lamma is not responsible for the information, software downloads, or other material, on this third party web site. Any
software you download from a third party site is subject to the license terms contained on that site.
RattlerGator: Thank you, Bama-Lamma. Good day.
Well, thank God for small miracles. Because of that link to
an August 10, 2000 press release announcing a “Trellix Café”
where website builders could gather online and discuss all things Trellix, I happened to notice that the press releases ended
in the year 2002! Proceeding further,
it became clear that Interland was now running the show after acquiring Trellix. Could they be of some help? Mickey-fickey, please. I somehow wound
up in some seemingly-related forum and posted my plea for help at 3:57 p.m. By 4:25 p.m., I was forced to reply to my own plea for help with this sorry admission:
Okay, further exploration led me to a page indicating
the product I use is not supported here.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
As of this writing, my request had received 23 or so views.
There was no need to waste their time because I somehow stumbled onto this link, advising me of much more than Bama-Lamma
apparently could be bothered to do (there are limits to technical support, don’t you know):
Trellix Weband Site
Builder powered by Trellix Web Expressare
two distinctly different products. (Neither of which are the same product as CuteSITE Builder.)
[RattlerGator: CuteSITE technical support generated this advisory]
In order to find an accurate answer to your Trellix
question, please first determine if you are using the Trellix Web software that resides on your local computer, or if you
are instead using the free online Web site builder powered by Trellix or Trellix Web Express provided by your hosting provider
or ISP.
If you launch
Trellix Web and build and save your Web site on your local computer before publishing it, then you are using Trellix Web. Click Help > About Trellix Web to confirm the version you are using. HP, Dell, Tripod and many other companies
at one time provided free versions of Trellix Web in return for your Web hosting business. Trellix Web, a pc-installed program, is supported on this forum.
If instead you
must first connect to the Internet and then build your site using your Web browser then you are using Site Builder powered
by Trellix Web Express although your Web hosting company may
refer to it by some other name. Examples of this are the Web site builder services offered by Verizon, Earthlink and PeoplePC.
GlobalSCAPE has no affiliation with these companies, your Web host, your ISP, Interland or Trellix. This forum does NOT support discussion of the ONLINE SITE BUILDER
product since it is not related to the pc-installed software used by GlobalSCAPE users.
Please click here for more answers to questions about Trellix and Trellix Web.
Oh.
Damn.
That explains my difficulty . . . I guess. And in more ways
than one, at that. Thus ends my personally self-absorbed lament. With a small, and I mean small, thanks to Bama-Lamma, me
thinks I’m finally making progress on that RSS feed thang.
The RPI uses a system
of averages. Because 50% of your overall score is from your opponents record this can overpower the 25% that comes from winning
percentage. Often when very good teams play very bad teams, their
RPI goes down even though they won the game. Likewise the RPI for the very bad team rises even though they lost the game.
Since winning margin is not a factor, it should be impossible to have your score drop after a victory. After all winning was
the best possible result. When ranking the very top teams, the key to gaining a great RPI is not so much winning, but rather
avoiding the really terrible teams.
That last sentence explains why the RPI is a tool for use at
the end of the season and is incredibly misused as a tool during the course of the season.
One of the first national announcers I remember watching on
TV, Curt Gowdy, has died in Palm BeachCounty.
Many Miami Dolphins fans [RattlerGator: count me in that number] remember the epic postseason game
Gowdy worked on Christmas Day, 1971. The Dolphins and Chiefs played into the second overtime period at Kansas
City before Garo Yepremian won it for Miami at
82 minutes and 40 seconds, the longest game in pro football history. Gowdy recalled it years later with the same matter-of-fact
style that framed all of his work in reality as much as drama.
“There was a full moon and when Yepremian’s kick tumbled through the goalposts, it was the quietest I ever heard a
packed stadium,” Gowdy said. “It was eerie. ...They just packed up their seat cushions and left.”