Fire CNN's John Roberts

Why? Because he is a Democrat operative. He is not an objective journalist.
I fully expect the Liberal Left to attempt to discredit and smear Vice-President choice Governor Sarah Palin. But news organizations are supposed to be objective.

Yeah, I know. Of course they are not. But when you can't even get straight news from an on-screen anchor then that news organization is not about news at all. It is about shaping opinion and steering voters towards candidates that they support and away from ones they want to destroy.

There is of course a long list of such "journalists" but the short list has names like Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews near the top of it. Matthews wants to be in politics so badly that he behaves on air as a Liberal wanna-be Pennsylvania Senator.

And Olbermann is honestly suffering some mental disorder.

John Roberts of CNN jumped out early against Governor Palin. Showing his incredibly heart-felt support for Special Needs children he spewed this on August 29:
"Children with Down's (sic) syndrome require an awful lot of attention. The role of Vice President, it seems to me, would take up an awful lot of her time, and it raises the issue of how much time will she have to dedicate to her newborn child?"
Really? Where did Roberts' new-found concern for working women come from? If Palin were a Liberal Democrat he would be praising her "courage" and "resolve" in the face of such family difficulties.

Also on the same day he said: "Now, she is a manager. She is the governor of a state. She does have limited experience, though. She's also been the mayor for a city in Alaska. And for a time she was the ethics chairman of the Alaska oil and gas conservation commission. But that does not add up to broad experience, particularly the type of broad experience you think should launch you to the national level."

Right. I'll leave it to you to judge how he would have framed a Liberal Democrat's similar experience. Never mind that Barack Obama has less executive experience than the Governor. No, Roberts will not go there.

And his latest "oops" moment was a Freudian slip of epic proportions-- though you will never hear about it except from Newsbusters.org and now on Youtube.

Here is what Roberts says in that video. (Emphasis mine):

"You know, this almost looks like what happened in 2004 where the Bush campaign was very, very good at defining John Kerry in their own terms, and he was on the defensive, and he was always trying to fight back against them. Do we risk, or does the Democratic Party here risk Barack Obama becoming John Kerry II?"

Hey Roberts, your bias is nauseating. You should just come out of the news closet and embrace your inner Liberal. You'll feel better.

And America will be better off knowing who you support politically. So drop the pretense of objective journalism... mmmkay?

You have made changes in the past for the better. That's right.. I remember your Trojan helmet mullet.

Hey, Team Obama: Learn to use 'the Google'.

So the Obama campaign has yet again walked into a propeller, shot itself in the foot, screwed the pooch or whatever your favorite cliche is for idiocy, by producing this Unbelievable Web Ad

If you'd rather not view it, the ad smears McCain by claiming he is so old and out of touch that he doesn't know how to use a computer and can't even send an e-mail.

A cursory search on McCain would reveal that he is quite computer savvy. As FORBES MAGAZINE revealed eight years ago in 2000:

In certain ways, McCain was a natural Web candidate. Chairman of the Senate Telecommunications Subcommittee and regarded as the U.S. Senate’s savviest technologist, McCain is an inveterate devotee of email. His nightly ritual is to read his email together with his wife, Cindy. The injuries he incurred as a Vietnam POW make it painful for McCain to type. Instead, he dictates responses that his wife types on a laptop. “She’s a whiz on the keyboard, and I’m so laborious,” McCain admits.

Maybe the Obama team is on to something here. Look for more ads like these...McCain can't even comb his own hair, McCain can't throw a baseball, McCain can't tie his shoes, return a salute or place his hands behind his back.

Yeah, being tortured almost daily for five and a half years has a tendency to cause things like dislocated shoulders, broken arms, broken teeth caused by the butt of an AK-47.. those kinds of things that the Obama campaign seems to take little notice of.

McCain was tapping Morse code through prison walls to fellow POWs and being beaten for it if caught, while Barack Hussein Obama was smoking weed and trying to score some blow.

Another morsel of wisdom for you Barack: Presidents can't e-mail anyway. Any and every piece of e-mail is subject to subpoena. Clinton sent TWO e-mails in his entire term.

So who is more out of touch with the people? John McCain or the campaign that has offended The Women Vote, The NRA Vote, The parents of children with Special Needs vote, The Democrat Catholic vote, the Veteran Vote and now the Old Vote.

I dare say that man-child Obama could not even open the canopy on McCain's A-4 Skyhawk without googling his Blackberry.

Feinstein's Folly.

Washington DC has had a ban against owning handguns or keeping one in your house since 1976. But registered rifles and shotguns were permitted to be owned and kept inside the home, unloaded and dis-assembled or trigger locked. So if you were a victim of a burglary or worse, you had no handgun to grab. Instead you must turn the light on, grab your reading glasses, find your key to your trigger-lock, get your disassembled shotgun put together, find the shells, load the weapon and hope you haven't already been assaulted---Assaulted by someone who DOES have a handgun. Of course it is an illegal one in DC but hey, maybe he just didn't know that handguns were illegal in the nation's capitol.

By the way, trigger locks don't work and I'll tell you why. Gun safety's first empirical rule is that you NEVER touch the trigger of any firearm until you are ready to fire it. Every trigger lock manufacturer tells you; DO NOT attempt to install a trigger lock on a loaded weapon because the weapon could discharge while installing it. And if the gun has a light trigger pull, it could possibly still be fired after the lock is in place.

So if you must only install a trigger lock on an unloaded weapon.. (wait for it...) why do you need a trigger lock at all? It is a feel-good measure designed to do nothing more than instill a false sense of security. An "innocent" kid who finds a gun, finds the ammo for it, deliberately loads it, racks a round into the chamber, flips the safety off and shoots a friend BECAUSE THERE WAS NO TRIGGER LOCK ain't an innocent kid. Better to gunproof the kid and educate him than rely on a cheap piece of plastic that could cause someone to be maimed or killed.

So the bad guy who invades a good guy's house in DC knows there are no accessible guns there..otherwise the homeowner is a criminal too. That's right, since 1976 anyone who lived in DC and had a handgun in the house was a criminal.

Today the Supreme Court held that DC's handgun ban was unconstitutional--by a slim 5-4 decision. Imagine the high court barely agreeing to restore the right that everyone in DC already had under the Constitution of the United States: The rights guaranteed by the 2nd Amendment.

The decision scares me more than it elates me because with just one more Liberal justice, 2nd Amendment rights could have been trashed.

And then Senator Diane Feinstein proclaimed thusly:
"And with this decision, seventy years of precedent has gone out the window. And I believe the people of this great country will be less safe because of it.”

So, lemme get this straight Senator Feinstein..
DC has been the murder capitol of the world many times over since this handgun ban became law in 1976.
And you Senator, think that law abiding citizens of DC and the rest of the country will be less safe WITH a means to protect themselves from murderers.
Less safe WITH the legal and GOD GIVEN right to defend themselves and their loved ones.

Is that your final answer? Wanna stick with that one?

Feinstein you magnificent idiot.

Here's a news flash Senator: It is murderous intent that kills people REGARDLESS of the method. Disregard for human life in a violent society is what kills people.

I'm blue in the face from saying this but..
A firearm lying on a table will continue to lie on that table until the end of time unless and until a human being decides to pick it up and decides to use it as a weapon.

Otherwise it is simply an inanimate piece of steel.

Remember Senator, 99+% of the 200,000,000 guns in America have never had, and never will have, any connection whatsoever to accidents, crime or evil.

200 MILLION!

As the saying goes, your friend Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than all of my guns have.

No Instant Replay in Baseball!

As you know, MLB has been considering implementing instant replay in baseball games for disputed home run calls. They had intended to begin the experiment after the regular season, during winter ball in the Grapefruit League.

You know, to work out the bugs and such.

Now MLB is considering starting this fresh hell in the 2008 season.
In August.


When every team is getting playoff fever.

When every pitch is critical.

Am I the last person who still thinks this is a bad idea?

And it's not that I am against every change in baseball; I think inter-league play is a good thing. And I do like the idea of the Wild Card in the playoffs. And awarding World Series home field advantage to the winning league in the All-Star game is novel and has made the game much more important. (Though I was always a fan of the All-Star games for the non-seriousness of it and the enjoyment of watching players compete in a whole new way).

People who already don't like baseball say that the game is "boring" and "moves too slowly".
Instant Replay will make the game even slower.

And where does Replay stop?
What's next..reviewing plays at the plate? Sure, why not? Replays at first base on disputed calls of out or safe? Why not? Balls and Strikes? Why not? Once Replay is implemented it will NEVER GO AWAY... kinda like taxes and toll booths.

Listen up Bud Selig!!! I have a radical but low tech solution for this.
I know it sounds crazy but... here goes:

Hire two more umpires per game.

One each down the foul lines at the walls.

And their only job is to make the call on home run balls. The current configuration puts the first base and third base umps at a huge disadvantage trying to make calls on hits that they can't even see well.

Please Bud. I know Baseball can afford to hire two more sets of eyes per game.

Before you go dickin' around with the world's greatest sport, before you start trying to improve a game that is already nearly perfection, please consider using more of the very thing that makes Baseball great:

Humans.

Remember Them During The Holidays

To all our armed forces in harm's way I humbly offer a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. A grateful nation loves you and thanks you.

May God Bless You all.

Least we forget
The reason we beget
For granted we have
The freedoms we hold
The lives we give true
A Christmas to you
Forget not you less

Fred on the SCOTUS and 2nd Amendment

More wisdom from Fred.
I quote:

Here's another reason why it's important that we appoint judges who use the Constitution as more than a set of suggestions. Today, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case of District of Columbia v. Heller.

Six plaintiffs from Washington, D.C. challenged the provisions of the D.C. Code that prohibited them from owning or carrying a handgun. They argued that the rules were an unconstitutional abridgment of their Second Amendment rights. The Second Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, provides, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The District argued, as many gun-control advocates do, that these words only guarantee a collective "right" to bear arms while serving the government. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected this approach and instead adopted an "individual rights" view of the Second Amendment. The D.C. Circuit is far from alone. The Fifth Circuit and many leading legal scholars, including the self-acknowledged liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, have also come to adopt such an individual rights view.

I've always understood the Second Amendment to mean what it says - it guarantees a citizen the right to "keep and bear" firearms, and that's why I've been supportive of the National Rifle Association's efforts to have the DC law overturned.

In general, lawful gun ownership is a pretty simple matter. The Founders established gun-owner rights so that citizens would possess and be able to exercise the universal right of self-defense. Guns enable their owners to protect themselves from robbery and assault more successfully and more safely than they otherwise would be able to. The danger of laws like the D.C. handgun ban is that they limit the availability of legal guns to people who want to use them for legitimate reasons, such as self-defense (let alone hunting, sport shooting, collecting), while doing nothing to prevent criminals from acquiring guns.

The D.C. handgun ban, like all handgun bans is necessarily ineffectual. It takes the guns that would be used for self protection out of the hands of law-abiding citizens, while doing practically nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining guns to use to commit crimes. Even the federal judges in the D.C. case knew about the flourishing black market for guns in our nation's capital that leaves the criminals armed and the law-abiding defenseless. This is unacceptable.

The Second Amendment does more than guarantee to all Americans an unalienable right to defend one's self. William Blackstone, the 18th century English legal commentator whose works were well-read and relied on by the Framers of our Constitution, observed that the right to keep and bear firearms arises from "the natural right of resistance and self-preservation." This view, reflected in the Second Amendment, promotes both self-defense and liberty. It is not surprising then that the generation that had thrown off the yoke of British tyranny less than a decade earlier included the Second Amendment in the Constitution and meant for it to enable the people to protect themselves and their liberties.

You can't always predict what the Supreme Court will do, but in the case of Heller and Washington, DC's gun ban, officials in the District of Columbia would have been better off expending their efforts and resources in pursuit of those who commit crimes against innocent people rather than in seeking to keep guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens who would use them only to protect themselves and their families. And that is why appointing judges who apply the text of the Constitution and not their own policy preferences is so important.

In A Silent Way

He died in the same city where he was born: Vienna. In between birth and death was an amazing amount of life. As a child, Josef Zawinul was a prodigy at the piano. And his remarkable talent was instantly recognized by elements of Hitler’s Third Reich shortly after Germany had invaded Austria. The Nazis decided that young Zawinul’s contribution to the Third Reich would be that he would become the greatest pianist in the world, and they procured the best staff to bring that about-- among his teachers was a student of Franz Liszt. In between his lessons, there was everyday living in Nazi occupied Vienna, with many harsh realities to witness and experience... among them, seeing Wehrmacht soldiers drinking gasoline as a desperate substitute for alcohol.

After coming to America in the fifties, he played with Dinah Washington, Maynard Ferguson and Cannonball Adderley for whom he wrote one of the most soulful songs ever: “Mercy, Mercy Mercy”. By playing Wurlitzer electric piano on that recording he helped to propel jazz into a movement called ‘fusion’.

Fast forward into the seventies. Zawinul’s ground-breaking band Weather Report had just released their second album entitled Sweetnighter. After a concert in Indianapolis, Zawinul attended a party with some locals. Between passed wine bottles, someone asked Zawinul what it was like to have played on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. He said (after a pull on the bottle) “It was arright”.

Wow. THE seminal recording of the entire jazz-rock-fusion era, made by one of the most important musicians in all of history, and Zawinul says it was “arright”.

How I love that answer.

When asked what he had been listening to lately he said “Art Tatum...Jan Hammer..Herbie Hancock...Oscar Peterson..and a whole lotta rock and roll!”

I was that person at the party who asked him both of those questions and hung on his every word while accepting the wine bottle from him.

The reason he said “arright” goes to the same reason Miles asked him to play on Bitches Brew in the first place. Zawinul has always been a courageous, forward-looking innovator. Just like Miles. The night before a recording session, Davis told Zawinul to “bring some music”. He did. One of the pieces he brought was “In a Silent Way”, written on the occasion of his grandfather’s death. It became the title song of the album, (although Miles’ version is very much different than Zawinul’s).

“In a Silent Way” was recorded before Bitches Brew, and it is not a stretch to say that Zawinul was every bit as important to the birth of jazz-fusion as was Miles Davis. One needs only to scan the personnel on In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew to understand why those sessions were the launch pad for jazz-fusion. Every important band of the movement was formed from those sessions: Weather Report. Mahavishnu Orchestra. Return to Forever. Bitches Brew did not feature Tony Williams or Herbie Hancock, but they went on to form Lifetime (with Larry Young) and Headhunters (with Bennie Maupin) respectively.

Too bad the fusion genre never fully realized its potential and has now been hijacked by a few fake musicians that don’t deserve to have their names mentioned in the same breath as Josef Zawinul. (Hint: one of them plays soprano sax hideously).

Back to the after-party in Indy.

As the evening winded down, the host asked if Zawinul might play some music. He walked up to the Hammond organ and asked if he could remove the various playing cards and folded pieces of paper that had been placed between some of the organ’s keys (the host was apparently a big fan of long sustained notes). He then proceeded to play some incredibly haunting chords and passages unlike I had ever heard.

Zawinul’s technique was overwhelming. He could quite literally play anything in either hand. And he was always challenging himself as every true innovator does: He had one of his synthesizer keyboards altered so that middle C sounded C, but if he played UP from C, the pitches went DOWN and if he played DOWN from C the pitches went UP (!) Think about that. He actually wrote the song called Black Market on that inverted keyboard.

I volunteered to give Mr. Zawinul a ride back to his hotel after the party, and on the way we chatted casually. I was trying very hard not to ask him a million questions.
On reaching the hotel he got out of the car, came to the window and shook my hand warmly and said “thanks very much for the ride”.

Thank YOU Mr. Zawinul.
Rest in Peace.