Rush Limbaugh taken to hospital

"chest pains"

so anyway, if you're the praying-type, please include Rush in your ritual tonight. The details are slim, but it looks like Rush was taken to the hospital (three-ish hours ago) for "chest pains".

The scant details, from KITV (via memeorandum) are here; via Ace of Spades HQ are here.

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UPDATE! 01JAN10:

He's fine. h/t to Ace (actual) for the vid:



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Hey? Can't I just finish my waffles?

"Extraordinary year" makes The President "tired"

so anyway, I was half way through my first cup of coffee this morning when I tripped over this little gem:

CAPITAL CULTURE: Big first year leaves Obama tired

I siht you not. It's from some outfit called "AP", whoever that is. I've never heard of them. A few snippets of this vapid excuse of reporting:

".....President Barack Obama made a not altogether surprising admission. He was tired.

Who could blame him? The president was on his ninth foreign trip to his 21st country; (after trips to all 57 states during the campaign - ed.) he added a 10th trip the following week. The year had been bookended by the two most intense periods of his young presidency — the early decisions to bail out the nation's banks and automobile industry (personal note: his "bail-out" of the auto industry has left me unemployed for over seven months - ed.), steps the president deemed unpopular but necessary, and his December orders to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to fight the war ("of necessity, not a war of choice" per The President's own words) in Afghanistan....."

Difficult decisions, to be sure. If he had only read the job description for the position to which he applied, he should have knowd.

"Throw in an unemployment rate in the double-digits, a health care bill still stuck on Capitol Hill, and last-minute negotiations on a global climate change agreement....."

By "last-minute negotiations on a global climate change agreement" the writer must mean "having all the data proven to be falsified and the purveyors of the falsified data loosing their jobs and facing criminal charges". It's a subtle point.

".....the president is tired, and looking forward to recharging during his year-end family vacation in Hawaii.

Not that the commander in chief really thinks he can escape his duties, even on an island. Amid golf, tennis, gym workouts and dinner, Obama has been called on to monitor the airliner attack in Detroit last Friday ("Chief? I know you hung the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the door-knob, but this is kinda important, and it's, like, you know, your JOB." - ed.) and what appeared to be another attack on Sunday — that incident turned out to be a false alarm. On Monday, Obama worked out in the morning and played tennis before making his first public remarks on airline security, then hit the golf course (again - ed.)."

Read the whole thing, it goes on for another eleven similarly "self-fisking" paragraphs.

A lot of people are "tired". Most people do not have recreational opportunities on the scale that The President enjoys. Sound to me like "Barry from DC" needs to man up.

Dave Barry's "Year in Review"

I'm a couple of days late, as per my usual.....

so anyway, via doubleplusundead, the much anticipated link to Dave Barry's "Year in Review" column:

In government news, top Washington thinkers, looking for a way to goose the economy along, come up with the "Cash for Clunkers'' program, under which the federal government provides a financial inducement for people to take functional cars, which are mostly American-made, to car dealers, who deliberately destroy these cars and sell the people new replacement cars, which are mostly foreign-made. This program, which was budgeted for $1 billion, ends up costing $3 billion and is halted after a month. The administration declares that it has been a huge success, which everybody understands to mean that it will never, ever be repeated. With this mission accomplished, the top Washington thinkers are free to train all of their brainpower on the nation's health-care system.

Read the whole thing.

Flight 253

the "lone nut" explanation's pants just caught on fire.....

so anyway, via The Other McCain, I saw that the Administration's official position on the attempted act of terrorism on Flight 253 was that is was "just a lone nut with explosive underpants". R.S.McCain quotes The Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. has "no indication" that an attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight was part of a larger plot by a terrorist group, a top Obama administration official said.
"Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger, but obviously the investigation continues," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on CNN's "State of the Union" program on Sunday.

Apparently, Al-Qaida didn't get the memo, as their branch office in Yemen had an announcement of their own:

CAIRO – Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the attempted attack on a U.S. airliner on Christmas day, saying it was retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen.

In a statement posted on the Internet, the group said 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab coordinated with members of the group.....

....The group said the would-be bomber used explosives manufactured by al-Qaida members.

Although the exact translation of their announcement is still in process, the post script of Al-Qaida's announcement is thought to read: "Yo! Napolitano? Enjoying very much are you the taste of our ass?" I'll update once the translation is complete.

Kudos to the translators, your first draft is solid "B+" material.

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Curious observations

up is down, black is white, Donny is Marie (to paraphrase Jeff G. of ProteinWisdom fame)

so anyway, it's not everyday that you find the brighter lights of the right side of the blogosphere praising one of the left's leading voices. But, it's true!

First, Dennis the Peasant of Dennis the Peasant fame named Jane Hamsher of firedoglake the "Best Political Blogger of 2009". Color me stunned, but Dennis has his reasons:

OK, I'm sure this one's got you scratching your head. Jane's a true-blue progressive and I'm the sort of conservative who'd just as soon serve polar bear in a mushroom sauce as cut back on my carbon footprint. But hear me out on this one. Jane isn't winning because I agree with her politics, she's winning because she - and she alone - has been utterly fearless in documenting (and criticizing) Bambi Obama's complete sell-out of progressives over health care, er, insurance reform.

Where just about every other Democrat/liberal/progressive blogger on the planet is now attempting to polish the turd that is Obama's health care, er, insurance reform, Jane Hamsher has stuck to her principles rather than equivocate for the sake of The One's political legacy.

You have to wonder what Bambi could have done had he been born with a pair the size of Jane's.

Read the whole thing.

Next, Ace mentions Ms.Hamsher's appearance on FoxNews:

Jane Hamster on FoxNews: Hey, Defeat ObamaCare, It Will Increase Taxes on the Middle Class

Right, then. Good on Ms.Hamsher for maintaining her integrity.

As an aside: I stopped reading "left / progressive" blogs (Kos, DemocraticUnderground, insert-your-own-crazy-here, etc.) three or four years ago, because I couldn't afford to keep "going Elvis" on semi-expensive monitors and repairing other not-so-minor property damage that it drove me to. Of course, the time-frame in which I was regularly reading the leftards was at the peak of their "Bush Derangement Syndrome". Who knows, maybe they've gotten over the whole BDS thingie and we can resume a healthy debate.

Or not. It's not like I'm holdin' my breath or anything....

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The First of the "Year in Review" post round-up

I think we may have a winner.....

so anyway, plebian has a "2009 summed up in one (long) sentence" post up over at doubleplusundead that begs you attention. A taste:

"We started the year with a president that everybody hated but fortunately we got rid of him pretty quickly and replaced him with a new president that didn't look like at all any of the previous presidents which we were told was a very good and historic thing because it proved that we had finally gotten to the point where those kind of things didn't matter any more so then....."

It gets better and better. Read the whole thing.

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One of the many reasons...

that I miss Ronald W. Reagan

so anyway, via the Over Night Thread over at Ace's place, comes this juicy little insight into the mind of Ronald W. Reagan:

Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, out with his latest page turner, Rendezvous With Destiny, chronicling the Gipper's winning 1980 campaign, reminds us just how much the cold warrior hated communism. "After Reagan was re-elected in 1984," Shirley writes, "the diplomatic tags on the cars used by the Soviet Embassy in Washington were changed to begin with the initials 'FC.' Nobody needed to guess what it stood for." Hint: "F" is an expletive, and "C" stands for commies.

Remarkably, that's exactly the kind of thing that I would do, given the opportunity.

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"Climate Change is Natural"

I remember when we used to call it "weather"

so anyway, via memeorandum, I saw a good piece in the UK's Daily Express on the whole "global warming" dealio that all the kids are talking about these days.

Climate Change is Natural: 100 Reasons Why

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made.....

I'm reading through their list now, and it appears to be a good point-by-point rebuttal to what the Alarmists would have you believe.

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Lt.Colonel Allen West

watch this and wish that you could vote for him

so anyway, my old blog-pal Insolublog has the good stuff on Lt.Col. Allen West:



Me? I'm digging it deep. I like Lt.Col. West's call to action, it reminds me of this:

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." -- Ronald W. Reagan

"don't let your children down" Indeed.

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"Morally Correct"

is this how far we've fallen?

so anyway, via Memeorandum, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D.-Crazyville) has a somewhat twisted sense of "moral" issues:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein told CNSNews.com that using tax dollars from pro-life Americans to pay for insurance plans that cover abortion is morally correct.

Really? There was a time when we debated over whether abortion was right or wrong, now the debate is over who should pay for it.

So, the science is settled, is it? Perhaps the good Senator could put me some knowledge as to exactly when life begins, 'cause the last time I checked, no one has figured that out.

Sen.Feinstein continues:

"Is it morally correct? Yes, I believe it is. Abortion is legal, and there (are) certain very tragic circumstances that a woman finds herself in. Married, with an unborn baby that’s unable to survive outside of the womb, her doctor tells her it’s a threat to her health. I think she ought to have a policy available to her."

CNSNews.com asked: "So it’s morally right for pro-life taxpayers to have to help pay for plans that cover abortion?"

Feinstein responded: "Please. We pay for a lot of things that we may or may not agree with, and taxpayers pay for it, for those things, as well."

I could go on for days about the things we pay for but do not agree with (the Department of Education and the NEA spring to mind), but I would not frame my arguments against on "moral" grounds. I prefer to debate such issues on a Constitutional basis. Not that Sen.Feinstein has any concerns about the Constitution.....

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Climaquiddick fallout

manbearpig is going to give it a miss....

so anyway, it looks like former Vice President Al "An Inconsistent Truth" Gore, Jr. has cancelled his appearance at Chicken Little's "The Sky is Falling" conference in Denmark.

"We have had a clear-cut agreement, and it is unusual with great disappointment that we have to announce that Al Gore cancels. We had a huge expectation for the event. . . . We do not yet know the detailed reasons for the cancellation," said Lisbeth Knudsen, CEO of Berlingske Media, in a statement posted by the company.

Emphasis mine, of course. Could it be that every time algore gives a speech, anywhere, the locality suffers their coldest day ever? We know that algore has special powers: he can tell you what the climate will be fifty years from now, but don't ask him if its going to snow next Tuesday. He's a visionary, not a mere weatherman.

It's beyond the scope as of this writing, but keep checking the weather forecast for Copenhagen. Time will tell....

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