We ran as fast as we could but still were not able to escape the awfulness of it all.

We couldn’t successfully campaign to get T.V. monitor above our treadmill at the gym switched to hoops on ESPN this evening so we were forced to watch Hardball on MSNBC and the playback of the video of Bush on his regrets. His list: The “dead or alive” and “bring it on” remarks and the “Mission Accomplished” banner.



We nearly fell off the treadmill….

That’s what he regretted? Was this some kind of joke? Is this how he is going to spend his last days in office… kissing liberal ass..? for what….? Talking tough?

The man spent 8 years in Washington D.C. single-handedly destroying the Republican brand and he’s reduced to apologizing for speaking from the gut when our nation was at war and for a banner that was meant as a salute to this nation’s armed forces for indeed toppling the regime of Sadaam Hussein, all so that Bob Herbert of Newsweek might say nice things about him? Excuse us, Bob Herbert of the lying, intentionally misleading and journalistically negligent Newsweek.

8 years of “compassionate conservatism” and bipartisan crap like No Child Left Behind, CFRA and Amnesty thinking that might buy him some cross-aisle goodwill and he’s going to apologize for Olberman-fodder? Wonderful.

8 years and a half-assed attempt to reform social security and another half-assed attempt to pull the Raines in on Freddie and Fannie (oh yes we did), presiding over the nationalization of the banking industry and putting future generations on the hook for these colossal bailouts and he’s apologizing for wanting to salute the troops?.

Herbert did say that Bush looked like he had checked out already… like a quarterback in the locker room after the game explaining to reporters the interception he threw to lose the ballgame and we can’t argue with him on that account.

Well, guess what? You’re still on the clock for another 69 days, Tex and that means it’s Pardon Season and while you may be making the rounds in legacy-building mode, there are a few people we’re going to suggest be on that list if harbor any hopes of salvaging your sad domestic legacy in these parts. Let’s just say a couple of border patrol agents and a man whose nickname is synonymous with small, motorized two-wheelers better be at the top of the list.

Yeah, bring it on.

Commenter Picture Caption of the Day

...courtesy Awful Announcing

"Wife: Honey, I'm really tired. Do we really have to go to this party at the moontower?
MM: Hey, hey, hey, watch the leather man!"
- Birdman

28 years ago today?

(..... ) won the White House by campaigning against an unpopular incumbent in a time of economic anxiety and lingering foreign policy concerns. He offered voters an upbeat message, praised the nation as a land of opportunity, promised tax cuts to just about everyone, and overcame doubts about his experience with a strong performance in the presidential debates.

If we’re playing fill-in the blank here you get credit for entering either Barack Obama's or Ronald Reagan’s name. And this again, bolsters our contention that the gleeful dirt-shoveling of many in Big Media on the graves of Reagan ideology and conservatism is not only premature but bordering on intellectual dishonesty as there is scant evidence this country wants to make any sharp veer to the left.

Indeed, the most liberal member of the Senate made a middle-class tax cut his closing argument and as Williiam Kristol points out in his article here, that though the nation gave a big victory to the Democrats, polling indicated no real perceptible shift in conservative/liberal/moderate ideological identification. (Recall, also, Bill Clinton campaigned on a (undelivered) tax cutting platform in ’92)

In fact, as this article from Scott Rasmussen points out and from which the opening paragraph was pulled, the Reagan “brand” remains very much a popular one with the voting electorate which polling also suggests is not keen on the bailout plans.

So what does all this mean? It means that the G.O.P. will be getting its just desserts here for a while for abandoning many core conservative principles. It also means the voting public will be watching the new administration very carefully with respect to policy and legislation, especially regarding the bailouts and this much-ballyhooed tax cut.

Bucketfulls of Bush-era policies like the executive ban on federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research is going out the window as soon as Obama takes office but that is the price Republicans will pay for their backsliding.

It would appear that the silver-lining of this economy is that it may prove to be an effective “containment” for any big government shenanigans in which Obama may want to engage. The ‘Kos kiddies will take extreme umbrage with that development but…. that will be the President's problem, not ours.

H/T: Blue Crab Blvd.

Programming Alert

Our bro, B-Daddy has shut things down for the time being at TILoBO and started up a new site at The Liberator Today which will champion the principles of free markets, free trade, freedom of speech and equal justice for all human beings. From his first post:

The intellectual underpinnings of limited government always face an uphill fight in the war of ideas. Advocates of bigger government point to some problem, and there always is one, and say, "we can solve this if we have the will," not adding "and your tax dollars." That the solutions then cause more problems is only gravy on the turkey for the left, because new problems have been created to "solve." It is a challenge to propose less intrusive solutions or to defend the position that no solution at all is really needed.

Please click on over there to read the entire thing. We have graciously been invited to guest blog from time to time but we really look forward to reading what B-Daddy has to say about the aforementioned principles of which he has been a fierce and articulate advocate for as long as we’ve known him.

Can't Imagine Living Anywhere Else

We would have completely missed this if we had not happened to look outside a few minutes before this picture was taken and seen the orange-ish hue that the evening sky had thrown on everything.

Must see T.V.

You're probably sitting back today and asking yourself, "Self, what did Google do today to honor the troops?"

(click to enlarge)



Impressive!

Veterans' Day 2008

Urban Miyares was stuffed into a body bag in Vietnam and lived to tell about it.

What Miyares, then a 20-year-old Army platoon sergeant, remembers of that day in August 1968 outside Saigon was advancing single file across rice paddy dikes when the silence was pierced by yelling, screaming, gunfire and mortar shells. His last recollection was falling face down into muddy water.

It was like a dream. Everything was spinning. Then I hit the water,” Miyares recalled.

Two days later he woke up in a military hospital. One of his 9th Infantry platoon colleagues checked on him and broke the news: An Army medic had pulled him out of a body bag.

Continue here.
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And this is how you name a warship:

One of the Navy’s largest new surface warships will bear the name of a Navy SEAL who received the nation’s highest award for valor.
“DDG 1001, the second ship in our newest class of destroyers, will be named after Michael Monsoor,” Navy Secretary Donald Winter said remarks prepared for an address to be given Wednesday night in New York.

Garden Grove, California native, Michael Monsoor was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor back in April. Our thoughts at the time, here.

Also, Information Dissemination is encouraging its readers to participate in a fund-raising drive that is operated by Soldiers' Angels. We’ve donated to these folks in the past. They’re a good and worthy outfit. Please read about ID’s experience with Soldier’s Angels.

And finally, a special shout-out to our two older brothers and our brother-in-law who served proudly in this nation’s armed forces. None of what we enjoy today in this, the greatest nation on Earth, is possible without the selfless sacrifices that have been made and continue to be made by the men and women in our armed forces. May God bless all of them.



This picture is a couple years old but remains one of the most moving we've seen. Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraces Marine Staff Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr. during a Veterans Day commemoration in Dallas. Graunke lost a hand, a leg and and eye when he was injured by a bomb in Iraq.

H/T: BlackFive

We're getting the distinct impression these people would not have taken a loss well.

We were reading an article today in Politico.com about the massive voter turnout that never happened when we ran across this:

It sort of calls into question some of the vaunted ground game discussion, the whole turnout machine,” said a Democratic strategist who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing Obama’s campaign. “The GOTV effort was redoubled in 2008 compared to 2004, but it did not seem to make that big of a difference.”

…. And these were the guys that won?

And check out Obama Transition Team honcho, Valerie Jarrett, on Meet the Press over the weekend talking about how Obama is prepared to “take power and being to rule Day One.”



Obama… dude… we’re trying to give you an even shake, here – but you need to get a grip on your website and some of your followers. This is getting beyond one or two simple slip-ups and/or gaffes and speaks directly to the perception of your imperious nature and the unreasonableness of your supporters.

(We were walking to the pub Saturday evening to watch some football and we came across a house that had a bunch of cars out front and red, white and blue balloons in the front yard. In that same front yard there was a sign that read “Obamanos”. Seriously, who the hell has a house party because their candidate got elected? Who in a white middle-class neighborhood does this…? Unreal.)

Then again, maybe we should be thankful Obama got elected. Given what we’ve seen to date, we’d hate to see what may have happened had Obama actually lost.

Happy Birthday, U.S. Marine Corps!

Congratulations to the men and women of the United States Marine Corp which turned 233 yrs. old today.

It's morning in America

The Federal Reserve is refusing to identify the recipients of almost $2 trillion of emergency loans from American taxpayers or the troubled assets the central bank is accepting as collateral.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in September they would comply with congressional demands for transparency in a $700 billion bailout of the banking system. Two months later, as the Fed lends far more than that in separate rescue programs that didn't require approval by Congress, Americans have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return.

For those of you out there who still think the myriad of bailout plans that have been approved and those which remain out there for consideration are a good thing because “we had to do something”… enjoy your steaming bowl of something with a big fat side of “we told you so”.

What is your favorite NBA team's Myers-Briggs typology?

Here’s a cool little political spectrum/personality trait-like graph we pulled from AOL Fan House that charts team quality (bad on bottom and progressing upward on the “Y”-axis through the better teams) and offensive tempo (plodding, walk-the-ball-up-court on the left progressing rightward on the “X”-axis to uptempo, fastbreaking… Showtime! offenses).




By this reckoning, the Lakers have the best and and one of the most uptempo team in the Association and we are inclined to agree. Laker center and wunderkind, 21-year old Andrew Bynum missed the 2nd half of last season and is just getting his sea legs underneath him again after playing so well before his knee injury. Because the Lakers played the last half of last season and made it to the Finals without him, its like they added a #1 overall draft pick-caliber player to the roster this season.

How stacked is this Laker team? We caught a little of a replay of a Lakers/Suns first round playoff game from 3 years ago where the Lakers had a starting lineup of Smush Parker, Kobe, Lamar Odom, Kwame Brown and Luke Walton. Good lord…. Only Kobe remains a starter and Lamar comes off the bench as a sixth man.

Another way to look at it is through the eyes of our little brother, “Matty” who asked us the other night how it is one can know how deep the Laker roster is. This didn’t take much thought knowing the utter disdain our brother holds for the play of this person so we replied, “Is it because Luke Walton and his game doesn’t see the light of day from the end of the bench?” Bingo. Hey, we like Walton. Smart, hard-working and completely void of any real NBA caliber athleticism. A starter 3 seasons ago to riding high pine this season so maybe Matty's one up on us.

The 4-0 Lakers take on the 3-3 Houston Rockets this evening at the Staples Center.