The Hound Of Ulster

I find it ironic/fitting that the Election falls so close to Bogeyman Day.

THESE are the sorts of things that scare me.  THESE are the sorts of things that give me slight hope.  And THESE are the sorts of things that make me spitting mad.  (“Thanks,” Mark LEVINE.)
 

1,475,392 WLIIA points to the person who can identify the actor, the character he’s playing, and the film itself.  (Except for you, Meg.  You know already.  Quiet!)
 

Why does THIS work?

When asked if he was only able to buy a half-hour in primetime because he broke a promise on campaign financing, Obama said, “Well look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we’ve raised in this campaign has been extraordinary, and surprised me as much as anybody, maybe more than anybody. What I would simply point to is, the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country, in an unprecedented way.”

That answer does have “campaign” in it, and deals with finance.  But it absolutely avoids/ignores the actual question.  And he’ll get away with it.  How?

(Or perhaps “Why?” would be the better question here, too.)
 

ESPN’s Pat Forde is crazy.  But sometimes, he comes up with something worth thinking ABOUT:

Willingham’s successor, Charlie Weis, was handed a new 10-year contract worth more than $30 million during his first season in South Bend — which remains indefensible.

Weis has compiled a 27-17 record with the Irish by doing one thing well: he’s consistently beaten the bad teams on the schedule. Against opponents that ended the season with losing records or, in the case of 2008, currently own losing records, Weis is 18-1. Against opponents that ended the season with records of .500 or better or currently own .marks of 500 or better, Weis is 9-16.

In his past 14 games against .500 or better competition, Weis is 1-13. And the lone exception — the 28-21 victory over Stanford earlier this month — could wind up going the other way by season’s end. The Cardinal are 4-4 with games remaining against USC, Oregon and California.

That’s a poor record.  He’s gonna have to turn it around before too long, or he won’t be seeing the end of that 10-year contract.
 

THIS is a strange interview.

I’ve never understood why one would want to make two films of The Hobbit.  I don’t see quite enough material there for two films, unless the spectacle were to rise to absurd (more absurd?) levels.  But this just confuses me:

As for the end of the first episode, the movie everyone assumed will follow the events of the novel fairly accurately? Where in the text will it finish?

“We are finding out,” GDT quipped. “I think Smaug dies in the first movie. So draw your own conclusions.”

How could Smaug die in Film One, and del Toro have even remotely enough story for Film Two?  I realize (even if I’m unhappy about it) that PJ and del Toro mean to have the Hobbit film(s) run right into The Fellowship of the Ring, but I can’t see how that will possibly work if Smaug dies in the first film.  Arriving at the Wood Elves, I could see.  But Smaug’s death?  That’s way too late in the story.

Unless they make a bunch of stuff up.  Which would be horrible.
 

Why these sorts of stories come out with 6 days to go is beyond me.  I think they’re just trying to make me mad.  It’s not as though these stories were not readily available before.  Take THIS Campbell Brown gem, for example:

One year ago, he made a promise. He pledged to accept public financing and to work with the Republican nominee to ensure that they both operated within those limits.

Then it became clear to Sen. Obama and his campaign that he was going to be able to raise on his own far more cash than he would get with public financing. So Obama went back on his word.

Was this reneging a recent THING, Ms. Brown?  Why bring it up today, then?  Perhaps because of THIS?

A hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue - who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. And that, it seems to me, is what we’re doing now.

Former Sen. Wendell Ford once gave me good advice about public issues and votes: “If it takes you more than 10 minutes to explain why you voted a particular way, you probably voted wrong.” It would take me a lot longer than those 10 minutes to explain why I’m not outraged by Obama’s decision to opt out of funding - which has given him a decisive spending advantage over Sen. John McCain.

Actually, I could keep my answer under 10 minutes if I were willing to answer that it’s now to my advantage to act in contradiction to my previously stated beliefs. All I would need to say is that, on the issue of public funding in 2008, I was a hyprocrite.

Don’t worry, though.  Kerrey - (note the spelling) - is pretty sure it’s only short-term hypocrisy.  He’s just going to change his long-cherished opinion.  “If your principles cause you to stumble, change ‘em.”

Where did this vast fund-raising superiority come from, anyway?  Is it all quite KOSHER?

The Obama team’s disclosures came in response to questions from The Washington Post about the case of Mary T. Biskup, a retired insurance manager from Manchester, Mo., who turned up on Obama’s FEC reports as having donated $174,800 to the campaign. Contributors are limited to giving $2,300 for the general election.

Biskup, who had scores of Obama contributions attributed to her, said in an interview that she never donated to the candidate. “That’s an error,” she said. Moreover, she added, her credit card was never billed for the donations, meaning someone appropriated her name and made the contributions with another card.

$174K is a nice little chunk of change.  Anyone confident that the Biskup Dustup was a one-time thing?  If so, you’ve got a lot more confidence in Obama’s system than I do.  (Mark Steyn’s got MORE.)

Perhaps we were mistaken in making light of Obama’s “community organizer” credentials.  They seem to be serving him pretty well at the moment.

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully.  The more politically active black students.  The foreign students.  The Chicanos.  The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.  We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.  At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.  When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society’s stifling constraints.  We weren’t indifferent or careless or insecure.  We were alienated.

Still SCARED.
 

Can you think of a better description for the lone McCain supporter on the staff of Slate?  The single McCain voter out of a LIST of 60+ employees and supporters?  The breakdown:

Barack Obama: 55
John McCain: 1
Bob Barr: 1
Not McCain: 1
Noncitizen, can’t vote: 4

And yet, I’m sure Slate is convinced that they are both even-handed and unbiased. 

A couple of them in particular caught my attention.  This one’s from “Tim Wu, Contributing Writer:”

Most of all, I like his obvious inner calm. It suggests that his decisions will come from somewhere other than expediency, anger, or fear. It’s like electing Obi-Wan Kenobi as president.

Nice attempt at a cultural reference, Mr. Wu.  Are we talking about the guy who made the most horrific character judgement and damaging prudential decision in the entire Star Wars universe?  The one who was convinced that he could train the Ultimate Cinematic Villain in the ways of the Force without losing control of him at the same time?  “Elect Obi-Wan, because great good will come out of great evil.  How can you bring balance to the force if you don’t mess things up royally to start with?”  Still, I guess that is a silver lining, isn’t it?

And then this gem, from Emily Yoffe, “Dear Prudence Columnist:”

Please, please, Barack, don’t become another Jimmy Carter.

Personally, I’d be thrilled if Obama ended up being only as damaging to the American fabric as was Jimmy Carter.  (See Mark STEYN.)
 

Not in the “ordinary” sense of “fortelling the future.”  At least I hope not.

More in the Biblical “seeing the world the way it really is” sense.

Which isn’t much more ENCOURAGING, really:

Peggy Noonan thinks a President Obama will be like the dog who chases the car and finally catches it: Now what? I think Obama will be content to be King Barack the Benign, Spreader of Wealth and Healer of Planets. His rise is, in many ways, testament to the persistence of the monarchical urge even in a two-century old republic. So the “Now what?” questions will be answered by others, beginning with the liberal supermajority in Congress. And as he has done all his life he will take the path of least resistance. An Obama Administration will pitch America toward EU domestic policy and UN foreign policy. Thomas Sowell is right: It would be a “point of no return”, the most explicit repudiation of the animating principles of America. For a vigilant republic of limited government and self-reliant citizens, it would be a Declaration of Dependence.

The Age of Entitlement is just around the corner.
 

Michael S. Malone is a journalist.  Actually, let’s be a bit more accurate.  He is “one of the nation’s best-known technology writers. He has covered Silicon Valley and high-tech for more than 25 years, beginning with the San Jose Mercury News as the nation’s first daily high-tech reporter. His articles and editorials have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Fortune, and for two years he was a columnist for The New York Times. He was editor of Forbes ASAP, the world’s largest-circulation business-tech magazine, at the height of the dot-com boom. Malone is the author or co-author of a dozen books, notably the best-selling “Virtual Corporation.” Malone has also hosted three public television interview series, and most recently co-produced the celebrated PBS miniseries on social entrepreneurs, “The New Heroes.” He has been the ABCNews.com “Silicon Insider” columnist since 2000.“

And he’s EMBARRASED:

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.

You need to understand how painful this is for me. I am one of those people who truly bleeds ink when I’m cut. I am a fourth-generation newspaperman. As family history tells it, my great-grandfather was a newspaper editor in Abilene, Kan., during the last of the cowboy days, then moved to Oregon to help start the Oregon Journal (now the Oregonian).

My hard-living — and when I knew her, scary — grandmother was one of the first women reporters for the Los Angeles Times. And my father, though profoundly dyslexic, followed a long career in intelligence to finish his life (thanks to word processors and spellcheckers) as a very successful freelance writer. I’ve spent 30 years in every part of journalism, from beat reporter to magazine editor. And my oldest son, following in the family business, so to speak, earned his first national byline before he earned his drivers license.

So, when I say I’m deeply ashamed right now to be called a “journalist,” you can imagine just how deep that cuts into my soul.

…

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those people who think the media has been too hard on, say, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin, by rushing reportorial SWAT teams to her home state of Alaska to rifle through her garbage. This is the big leagues, and if she wants to suit up and take the field, then Gov. Palin better be ready to play.

The few instances where I think the press has gone too far — such as the Times reporter talking to prospective first lady Cindy McCain’s daughter’s MySpace friends — can easily be solved with a few newsroom smackdowns and temporary repostings to the Omaha bureau.

No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side — or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn’t Sen. Obama’s fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media’s fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so.

This is exactly why the endorsements of folks like Christopher Buckely and Douglas Kmiec (to name only a few of the distressingly increasing number of “Obama Republicans”) make so little sense to me.  We know next-to-nothing about the man.  And what little we (almost accidentaly) seem to have discovered ranges anywhere from the vaguely troubling to the profoundly disturbing.

Why is it that his endless mantra of “Hope” and “Change” has convinced normally shrewd and intellegent folks to overlook the fact that the “Change” he actually intends to bring will crush out the very lifeblood of the ”Hope” they think we need so desperately?  I can’t even begin to imagine what might happen to the principles and proud history of this country during a 4-Year Obamareign.

I’m scared.

OK, so this SERIES is not turning out the way I expected.  Not at all.

I’m pleased to see NL dominance, of course.  And it’s always fun to have a pitcher homer, just to show those DH folks that the “only 8 hitters” argument doesn’t work all the time.

Ironically, the Rays’ DH’s are hitting .166 in the series, with a single run scored.  And the Phillies’ pitchers are hitting .200 with a run and an RBI, courtesy of Blanton.

But the heart of the Rays order has been horrible.  Pena and Longoria having about 752 strikeouts in 755 ABs.  They definitely seem to be pressing.  (Fine.  Let’s be accurate: Pena and Longoria are a combined 0-for-29 with 15 strikeouts.)

And now they get Hamels again.  Not good for Tampa Bay fans.

(One last note: Blanton rounded the bases in Ruth/Bonds Time.  Not quite such a fan of that.  Course, he’s a big kid.)