Sen. Gregg makes Melissa Block’s head go ’splodey

I just happened to have WKSU on the radio when I left work. I’ve been trying to avoid NPR news of late; the overarching message seems to be “We’re all poor, and only Obama can save us.” But there was Melissa interviewing Judd Gregg about the Obama “budget” (scare quotes because a real budget is about allocating a relatively fixed amount of money)

“The budget is reasonably honest, and in fact, I give them credit for having brought on line and made clear the costs of the war,” Gregg told NPR’s Melissa Block. “But the budget itself has some real serious problems, in my opinion, because it is a massive expansion in spending and a massive expansion in taxes. And the real problem is that in the out years, not only does it increase spending in taxes, but it passes on to our children a government that can’t be afforded, and that’s a big problem.”

So Missy asked/told the Senator that Obama was elected on a specific platform, and doesn’t he have a mandate to do that?

“I don’t think he was elected to bankrupt the country”

So then Missy came up with another question/statement asking for validation of her worldview. It wasn’t quite “You do believe in the Communist Manifesto, don’t you?” It was something more like, “Isn’t it reasonable that the wealthiest among us should pay more to help create a more equitable society?”

And Gregg said, “Well, I know that’s the NPR position, but it’s not my position.”   Melissa was left sputtering.  Sen. Gregg felt sorry for her and helpfully backtracked, “It’s certainly your question’s position.”  And right then I shut off the radio, because nothing could be better than that, and I had to stop the laughter somehow.

The NPR page is interesting in what it leaves out of the exchange, like the news of their ace reporter being left speechless. There’s the video, which I’ll watch at work tomorrow to get the exact quotes. And there’s the comments, including one who mentioned the “cheap shot”.

It wasn’t a cheap shot; it was the truth, and if this had been a Democratic senator, it would have been defined as “speaking truth to power.”  What’s a “cheap shot” is the constant assumption by the press of a Marxist worldview. It’s so natural and reflexive that they don’t even notice they’re doing it, and when called on it, the callout seems totally alien. Actually, NPR is generally better about this than they were tonight: being a quasi-governmental organ, they have to at least pretend to be objective in order to be taken seriously at all. But since the bias is so ingrained and unnoticed, it still escapes.

UPDATE:  Listening to the recording to get the exact quotes (installed above), she seemed less inarticulate than when I heard her. Did anyone else catch this? Did NPR doctor the tape to make Missy sound less flat-footed?

Copyright asses

Paul Aitken, the group’s executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon’s Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”

“They” (whoever ‘they” are) aren’t reading a book. A machine (i.e., not a moral actor, but a tool) is reading a book. If it’s my tool, it’s reading it for me.  It’s funny that, to the best of my knowledge, people haven’t thrown fits over readers for the blind. But doesn’t adaptive technology such as this do exactly what the Kindle does? Doesn’t it equally violate copyright? Do the handicapped get to violate laws that the rest of us do not?  What if I’m a bad reader and move my lips while I’m reading? And this is the Writer’s Guild, not the the Screen Actor’s Guild or Equity or whoever represents voice talent in books-on-CD. Sandoval is right; if this is IP crime, then parents have been committing it for centuries.

Meanwhile, the Brits have decided that living musicians need to be protected from competition from dead ones, and are upping their protection of sound recordings to 95 years.

Romanian woman makes clothes from her own hair

Somehow this reminds me a bit too much of the booger-hut hermit. I’m all for self-sufficiency (it it doesn’t enter commerce, it can’t be taxed), but really…

UPDATE: apparently human hair is also good for auto upholstery.

Big tobacco buries the competition with SCHIP

Forget saving a few bucks by rolling your own:

On February 4, 2009, President Obama (an occasional smoker himself) signed the SCHIP bill into law, thus continuing the government’s war on tobacco.

The federal tax on cigarettes is going up from $.39 a pack to $1.0066 per pack. While the increase will surely hurt the cigarette companies, and ultimately, the cigarette consumer, the real victim here is the roll-your-own (RYO) cigarette tobacco industry. RYO cigarette tobacco has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially as the economy has worsened, as it was cheaper to roll your own cigarettes instead of buying a pack of Marlboros. Staying true to the tradition of big businesses not really favoring less regulation and smaller government, the lobbyist for big cigarette companies sought and received the favor of raising the tax on RYO tobacco from $1.10 per pound to $24.78 per pound!

They certainly got their money’s worth. Not only did they turn their backs on their brethren in the tobacco industry, they essentially made it so that the RYO companies will be put out of business. Not only will it now be more expensive to roll your own cigarettes, and therefore eliminate the entire point of rolling your own, but many retailers and looking to blow out their remaining inventories of RYO tobacco before the $23.68 per pound floor tax takes effect on April 1. After that, many retailers are simply going to keep from ordering any more RYO tobacco and either exit the cigarette business altogether or simply sell packs of cigarettes.

It sounds like my wife needs a friend in Kentucky.

“…deserve to get it good and hard.”

If he pursues this course of action — a government-centric recovery plan that in fact does little to spur private sector recovery — he puts his presidency and his vision of a new Democratic “permanent” majority at risk. The public did not vote for a European-style social welfare state. They did not vote for an acceleration of the failed economic policies of the last year of the Bush administration. And they certainly did not expect a trillion dollar spending bill with only double digit unemployment and inflation to show for it.

Well, what did they vote for, Jennifer? Change. The first black President. A rock star. Nobody voted on substantive policy issues. People barely ran on them. The guy who ran a fundamental critique of current policy ended up with, what, a handful of delegates…who then betrayed their candidate in the interests of party unity? Obama isn’t going back across the Rubicon, any more than John, Son of Cain would when he would have done the same things.

Susine-Irish as stupid as Susine-Americans

The Irish police have been looking for a mysterious serial traffic violator who constantly changes his address, a Polish immigrant named Prawo Jazdy…which is, duh, “Driver’s license” in Polish.

He’s starting to become a folk hero, I hear.

God Hates Fags cult banned from England

...or at least its leaders.

Nobody should be banned from a country for ideas, no matter how aberrant. But if you’re going to do that, the Phelpses are certainly more deserving targets than Geert Wilders.

UPDATE: Aargh! I wasted my thousandth post on Fred Phelps!? What a long strange trip it’s been!

Depression news

Yeah, I know, like you don’t get enough from the Lamestream media.

The McDonald’s From Hell (Euclid at E. 115th) has closed. Yes, I know, McDonald’s has been doing well. But note the sobriquet. It didn’t help that it had no drive-through, or that a bunch of better fast-fooderies have opened recently closer to the center of campus. But the real issue was the substandard service. They were hiring (and feeding) townies, not students, and the townies didn’t have much of a work ethic. And management wasn’t good at making sure that menu items were in stock,or at any other element of management for that matter. We can’t blame this one on the bursting of the Mother Of All Bubbles, but it didn’t help.

Down the road at the Food Co-op, there are changes. Deli hours have been shortened. There was a children’s play area, which now seems to be occupied by a woman selling jewelry. They are “phasing out” disposable bags of both sorts in favor of Einkaufstaschen that everyone will forget to bring when they need them — a decision which I suspect is economics masquerading as Green religion. Selection seems to be leaner, and prices are up. $2.39 for soft wheat berries? I can buy meat for less than that! Again, location and competition doesn’t help, with a Whole Foods in the Heights, and Wild Oats and Mustard Seed out where the money is.

On a brighter note, here’s an update of “The Monster Mash“. Not as good as it could be, but still cute.

Libtard PBS commentator hunted gays for LBJ

Only a few weeks before the 1964 election, a powerful presidential assistant, Walter Jenkins, was arrested in a men’s room in Washington. Evidently, the president was concerned that Barry Goldwater would use that against him in the election. Another assistant, Bill Moyers, was tasked to direct Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater’s staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers’ memo to the FBI was in one of the files.

When the press reported this, I received a call in my office from Mr. Moyers. Several of my assistants were with me. He was outraged; he claimed that this was another example of the Bureau salting its files with phony CIA memos. I was taken aback. I offered to conduct an investigation, which if his contention was correct, would lead me to publicly exonerate him. There was a pause on the line and then he said, “I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?” And then he rang off. I thought to myself that a number of the Watergate figures, some of whom the department was prosecuting, were very young, too.

Old news? Maybe libtards don’t read the WSJ. But it’s in the Washington Post today:

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

Tip o’hat to Vox Day Ace of Spades is on it too.

Canadian frou-frou food

# POTUS Canadian lunch menu dessert: Saugeen Yogurt Pot de Creme w/ Lemon&LavenderSyrup, WildBlueberry&Partridgeberry jam +more! #obamacanada about 3 hours ago from web

# POTUS Canadian lunch menu @ parliament: tuna w/ Chili & Citrus dressing, Maple&Miso Cured Nunavut Arctic Char, veggies, bison.

If Obama really wanted to win my heart, he’d say, “So where’s the back bacon, eh?”