Obama Quits His Church

Obama is scheduled to have a press conference regarding quitting his church – this is even faster than I expected. Given the DNC Rules Committee meeting today and the backroom dealing for superdelegates, it’s pretty safe to assume that he has been pressured into getting this over with as quickly as possible in order to secure some uncommitted SDs.

I categorize this as yet another example of how the Dems take blacks for granted. He was a member of that church for 20 years, married in it, baptized children in it, and received spiritual guidance from its leader. The real message of his resignation is that he is willing to discard the organization that supported him to prominence in Chicago politics now that he has a national stage. It’s too late for him to quit in a credible manner.

EDIT: Initial reaction to his statement and the Q&A – the Church is a distraction. So it’s yet another thing we aren’t supposed to talk about.

My Election Predictions

I’m ready to make a prediction regarding the 2008 election: McCain will win and the Dems will gain control of Congress.

Rationale for McCain victory:

Obama will be triangulated by: TrinityChurchGate; the Iraq Visit Issue; and The Debate.

The recent fracas regarding Rev. Pfleger’s racist sermon-political rally are keeping the Rev.Wright one alive, and putting pressure on Obama to repudiate either the church leadership or to resign from the congregation altogether. Either one is a no win situation for him. He has ridden The Black Liberation Train to the national political stage. If he stays with the Church, he alienates moderate and swing voters. If he leaves, the Race Huckster Industry will turn on him. It could be argued that the latter is already happening. A Post Racial candidate (even a Faux One) doesn’t help them in the business of keeping racial strife alive while they blackmail for tax redistribution.

The Iraq Visit creates a risk for Obama to be trapped into a Dukakis In The Tank photo-op. If he goes, he will look awkward and out of place among the troops. If he doesn’t, he hands McCain and the 527s that support him a great commercial.

The hypotenuse of the Right’s Triangle is The Debate. McCain will annihilate Obama on the topic of national security. In addition, the debate format does not play to Obama’s strength. He is a story-teller who is effective delivering a script. Improvisation and thinking on his feet have resulted in the growing list of public gaffes. McCain will exploit this weakness. Obama’s camp has probably figured this out – which is why FanBoy predicts there will be no debate. Again, Obama loses either way. The McCain camp will invite him frequently and publicly. He will either be defeated or look like a coward.

Regarding the Congressional elections, Bush Fatigue will hand the Dems victory in 2008, which will result in two more years much like the past two. The GOP, if they return to basic fiscal conservatism, can exploit this and regain ground in 2010. In the meantime, the best strategy is gridlock.

Frankly, I like gridlock. It’s better that they do nothing than add to our tax and regulatory burden.

The Man Behind McClellan’s Curtain: George Soros

This Splains’ So Much. Little Green Footballs outs George Soros as the financial muscle behind the publication of Scott “The Weenie” McClellan’s Tome of Revenge.

The owner of PublicAffairs Books is a company called Perseus Book Group. Here’s their ownership tree: Perseus Books Home.

The firm is owned by Perseus Funds Group (holding company Perseus LLC), a capital management firm that grew from about $20 million in 1995 to over $2 billion now. Big infusions of cash seemed to help it grow exponentially, and it closed funds almost as fast as it opened them. The board has tons of liberals from the Clinton and Carter Administrations, with far-left credentials that almost put Osnos’ to shame. Their web site is here: PERSEUS-Merchant bank and private equity fund management.

If you go to the New York Department of State web site and enter “Perseus” in the “Business Organization” search, you get this on page 2 of the results:

TA DA – Several funds run by George Soros.

Next up: Oliver Stone’s announcement that he is making it into a movie.

Last night on Special Report, Charles Krauthammer summarized the two possible conclusions regarding McClellan. He is either: a) a collaborator who knew all these horrible things and never spoke up; or b) just another disgruntled, ineffective, marginalized former employee who sees one shot to capitalize on his 15 minutes of fame prior to the end of the Bush Administration.

I’m going to go with the latter. He just doesn’t seem smart enough to pull of the first.

BART Opens First Automated Library

This is very coolth. BART has opened a branch library in the Pittsburg/Baypoint station. Anything that encourages literacy is a good thing, in my book. I did several years of volunteer work for the local library system. Among the morass of misguided government waste, libraries are a refreshing oasis of reasonable services for a good purpose.

BART has teamed up with the Contra Costa County Public Library system to set up a novel automated book-lending system that will launch Thursday at the Pittsburg/Bay Point station.

A vending-like machine located at the station will hold some 400 books that can be checked out for free by anyone with a valid Contra Costa County library card. A patron will insert the card, get access to the available titles and check out up to three books. A robotic arm will retrieve the books.

They must be returned to the book-lending machine within three weeks.

The public will have access to the machine during BART’s normal hours of operation. The stock will include both fiction and nonfiction titles.

The county public library plans to install three other machines at the transit village at the BART station in Pleasant Hill, a site in Byron/Discovery Bay and another location, not yet determined.

Vaclav Klaus: The Anti-Goracle

What a refreshing breath of carbon dioxide! Vaclav Klaus has nicely belled the cat of the Climate Change movement and rightfully identified it as a direct ideological descendant of Communism and other forms of Totalitarianism. It’s significant, and slightly sad, that a former subject of the Soviet Union is a more vociferous leader against the oppression of the Church of Climate Change than the vast majority of our duly elected representatives.

Excerpt from Blue Planet in Green Shackles (courtesy of RealClearPolitics):

I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar.

I see the current danger in environmentalism and especially in its strongest version, climate alarmism. Feeling very strongly about it and trying to oppose it was the main reason for putting my book together, originally in Czech language, in the spring of 2007. It has also been the driving force behind my active involvement in the current Climate Change Debate and behind my being the only head of state who in September 2007 at the UN Climate Change Conference in New York City openly and explicitly challenged the undergoing global warming hysteria.

My central concern is – in a condensed form – captured in the subtitle of this book. I ask: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is: “it is our freedom.” I may also add “and our prosperity”.

Tales of a Swinging Cook #2

Last night, I made my Dad’s recipe for meat loaf. Having it for dinner last night was merely the pretext to have cold leftover meat loaf for a sammich today. There are few culinary comfort food delights as satisfying as a homemade meat loaf sammich.

Stan’s Meat Loaf

1 1/2 pounds of lean ground beef
1 onion, minced
1 or 2 cloves of garlic, finely minced
1 cup of chopped up fresh mushrooms
2 eggs
6 ounces of tomato sauce
2 T. soy sauce
1 T. Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 cup dried parsley
1/2 cup Progresso bread crumbs (gratuitous product placement)
pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients except for the ground beef to ensure dry and wet are blended. Tear bits of beef into bowl (much easier than dumping one big lump into the mix). Mix lightly, yet thoroughly with a fork. Press mixture lightly into a loaf pan, applying enough pressure to remove pockets of air without turning it into a brick. Bake at 350 for approximately 1 hour. Pour off grease and let rest for 10 minutes before serving. Make sure to save enough for a sammich the next day.

15 Days ’til the Big Belch

Only 15 remaining preparation days to make the biggest possible Carbon Belch. Do your part to show the Climate Change Inquisition that you won’t be intimidated by their comfy chairs and soft cushions.

More from Information Week:

Conservative grassroots group Grassfire.org wants people to waste as much energy as possible on June 12 by “hosting a barbecue, going for a drive, watching television, leaving a few lights on, or even smoking a few cigars.”

The point: the group wants to “help Americans break free from the ‘carbon footprint guilt’ being imposed by Climate Alarmists.”

Grassfire.org says it’s skeptical over claims that man-made sources of carbon dioxide emissions — from automobile exhausts to manufacturing plants — are raising the Earth’s temperature at a dangerous rate. Theories about global warming were highlighted by former Vice President Al Gore’s 2006 film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Grassfire.org president Steve Elliott, in a statement, said such theories are off the mark. “It’s time for Americans to purge ourselves of the false guilt that Al Gore and the Climate Alarmists have placed on us,” Elliott said.

Grassfire.org said it chose June 12 as the day it wants Americans to rev up their SUVs because it coincides with expected debate in Congress over a $1.2 billion carbon tax rebate program. “Carbon Belch Day will have at least as much impact on the so-called ‘planetary emergency’ of man-made global warming as the goofy save the earth mandates telling us to turn our lights off for an hour,” said Elliott.

Cities around the world went dark for an hour on March 31 to mark “Earth Hour,” an event created by the World Wide Fund for Nature to inspire people to find ways to use less energy.

Grassfire.org is the latest group to question whether global warming is a real phenomenon, or whether it’s as severe as portrayed in Gore’s film. London’s Daily Telegraph this week called environmentalism “the new secular faith.”

The paper said the United Kingdom’s carbon credits program for industry is “just like the medieval trade in indulgences, where remission for sins was granted by the Church once the sinner confessed and received absolution.”

What A Weenie

Initial reaction to Scott McClellan’s “memoir”: What A Weenie.

There is something creepy about the self-promotion and smarmy exploitation on the part of a disgruntled former employee. There is no bloody way I am going to spend one thin dime on this tome. Politico purchased a copy and has a good overview. Fortunately, there is someone who can stomach reading the noxious stew.

Summary impression: A Big Whinge (excerpts from Exclusive: McClellan whacks Bush, White House)

Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):

• McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war.

• He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

• He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

• The longtime Bush loyalist also suggests that two top aides held a secret West Wing meeting to get their story straight about the CIA leak case at a time when federal prosecutors were after them — and McClellan was continuing to defend them despite mounting evidence they had not given him all the facts.

• McClellan asserts that the aides — Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser, and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff — “had at best misled” him about their role in the disclosure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.

A few reporters were offered advance copies of the book, with the restriction that their stories not appear until Sunday, the day before the official publication date. Politico declined and purchased “What Happened” at a Washington bookstore.

The eagerly awaited book, while recounting many fond memories of Bush and describing him as “authentic” and “sincere,” is harsher than reporters and White House officials had expected.

McClellan was one of the president’s earliest and most loyal political aides, and most of his friends had expected him to take a few swipes at his former colleague in order to sell books but also to paint a largely affectionate portrait.

Instead, McClellan’s tone is often harsh. He writes, for example, that after Hurricane Katrina, the White House “spent most of the first week in a state of denial,” and he blames Rove for suggesting the photo of the president comfortably observing the disaster during an Air Force One flyover. McClellan says he and counselor to the president Dan Bartlett had opposed the idea and thought it had been scrapped.

Hydrox vs. Oreo Snackdown

Kelloggs is temporarily reviving Hydrox cookies due to the loud gnashing and lamentations of the cookie’s devotees. I fondly remember Hydrox from my childhood. We didn’t buy store bought cookies very often – we were a “homemade” kinda family. Every once in a while, Dad would surprise us with Hydrox cookies or Zingers (the vanilla ones were delish when frozen).

Sadly, over the years, the mighty marketing muscle of the Oreo brand squashed the smaller budget of its predecessor cookie. Hydrox was introduced four years earlier than Oreo by what became the Sunshine Biscuit Company. Good cookie; horrid chemical sounding name.

I hope it makes a come back and will purchase some for the office in support of this effort.

Go Hydrox!

From today’s WSJ:

Hydrox, the defunct chocolate-sandwich wafer, is returning for one more rematch with its nemesis, the Oreo.

Bowing to more than 1,300 phone inquiries, an online petition with more than 1,000 signatures and Internet chat sites lamenting the demise of the snack, Kellogg Co. has decided to temporarily relaunch Hydrox, the left-for-dead cookie.

“These loyalists can be proud to know they’ve been heard,” says Brad Davidson, head of Kellogg’s snack division.

Kellogg quietly killed off Hydrox in 2003, ceding victory to its longtime rival, Oreo, made by Kraft Foods Inc.’s Nabisco unit. Many Hydrox eaters initially thought their cookie had just become more difficult to find, learning only much later that the cookie had been discontinued. The online mourning and efforts to bring it back were the subject of a page-one article in January in The Wall Street Journal.

Kellogg’s move is more about marketing, and showing its responsiveness to consumers, than about a permanent product reintroduction: The cookie will be sold nationally starting in August, but only for a limited time.

Mr. Davidson is leaving open the possibility the cookie with the vanilla crème filling would come back for good, “if it takes off and there turns out to be a real affinity for it,” he says.

He doesn’t guarantee the relaunched version will have the same recipe. One difference: no trans fat. “We maintained all the good we could and took out a little bad,” he says, noting this year marks Hydrox’s 100th anniversary.

Daily Theme Song: May 27, 2008

Tis another day.

Today’s Theme Song is: “Good Day” by Luce

Chakra: Crown
Color: Violet
Energy: Divine Connection

Lacking any profound or significant reason, I just feel happy and balanced today – which makes it a Pretty Good Day.