Preckwinkle said, “My view is you have to bring your constituency along with you. Granted, you have to make some tough decisions. Granted, sometimes you have to make decisions that people won’t understand or like. But it’s your obligation to explain yourself and try to do your supporters the courtesy of treating them with respect.” Ivory Mitchell, who for twenty years has been the chairman of the local ward organization in Obama’s neighborhood—considered the most important Democratic organization on the South Side—was one of Obama’s earliest backers. Today, he says, “All the work we did to help him get where he finally ended up, he didn’t seem too appreciative.” A year ago, Mitchell became a delegate for Hillary Clinton.
The same month Mitchell endorsed Clinton, the Obama campaign reached out to Preckwinkle, and eventually she signed on as an Obama delegate. I asked her if what she considered slights or betrayals were simply the necessary accommodations and maneuvering of a politician making a lightning transition from Hyde Park legislator to Presidential nominee. “Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?” she said. “Is that the question?” She stared at me and grimaced. “I’m going to pass on that.”
The Constitution is a product spec for limited government.
The dissenting Justices in the Heller case are equivalent to developers who completely disregard the spec, or treat it as mere suggestion, and code whatever they personally think the product should be instead.
The Stevens dissent is a ludicrous read, ultimately saying that the Second Amendment is unimportant enough that it can be legislated away bit by bit. In Stevens’ view, you have the right to defend yourself with a handgun that magically appears in your own home, but not the right to purchase, own, or transport that handgun, and this is an allowable restriction of a right specifically mentioned as the SECOND amendment to the Bill of Rights.
This same Justice has found a right to privacy mentioned nowhere in the Constitution, a right of habeas corpus for illegal enemy combatants, and a right for government to confiscate property for the benefit of political contributors, but he can’t read a simple sentence and decipher its meaning.
He says the majority “would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons.” Hmm, if they weren’t making that choice, then what’s the point of even having the 2nd Amendment at all? Nobody is this stupid, except someone who has already decided what they think, and is then attempting to justify it.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a right to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the justices’ first major pronouncement on gun rights in U.S. history.
The court’s 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s 32-year-old ban on handguns as incompatible with gun rights under the Second Amendment. The decision went further than even the Bush administration wanted, but probably leaves most firearms laws intact.
“If we all register and vote, we will have the first black president in the history of America,” Sean “Diddy” Combs told the crowd Tuesday at the Shrine Auditorium before chanting “Obama or Die” - a declarative remix of his neutral “Vote or Die” motto from the 2004 presidential election, when he attempted to boost the youth vote.
“Obama or Die”. Yes, that’s right. “Obama or Die”. Quite a fascist little moment there for Mr. Diddy.
I’m reading Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg right now, and he has really struck upon something there. Highly recommended based on the first chapters I’ve read.
John Tierney has an article up about Ray Kurzweil, futurist and author of The Singularity Is Near. If you agree with his ideas, as I do, it will change the way you view both the future and the present.
Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite, but by all means, I implore you to read the whole thing.
Do you have trouble sticking to a diet? Have patience. Within 10 years, Dr. Kurzweil explained, there will be a drug that lets you eat whatever you want without gaining weight.
Worried about greenhouse gas emissions? Have faith. Solar power may look terribly uneconomical at the moment, but with the exponential progress being made in nanoengineering, Dr. Kurzweil calculates that it’ll be cost-competitive with fossil fuels in just five years, and that within 20 years all our energy will come from clean sources.
Are you depressed by the prospect of dying? Well, if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy will keep rising every year faster than you’re aging. And then, before the century is even half over, you can be around for the Singularity, that revolutionary transition when humans and/or machines start evolving into immortal beings with ever-improving software.
At least that’s Dr. Kurzweil’s calculation. It may sound too good to be true, but even his critics acknowledge he’s not your ordinary sci-fi fantasist. He is a futurist with a track record and enough credibility for the National Academy of Engineering to publish his sunny forecast for solar energy.
Rumors are flying around the internet about a supposed very damaging videotape of Michelle Obama. Of course, they’re just rumors at this point, but spreading unverified damaging rumors about people you don’t like is what blogs are for, hehe.
The deal prompted one of her chief advisers, Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee himself, to declare that Mrs. Clinton’s fight may not be over, even though Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is only days away from gaining enough delegates to claim the nomination.
“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Mr. Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets. His words drew cheers from Clinton supporters, including many who yelled, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” — implying that the fight could go all the way to the convention in that city.
…
As the votes on the agreements were taken, one woman, wearing a blue “Team Hillary” shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel. Another woman in a white Clinton shirt hung her head in her hands.
“That was a crime!” a man shouted.
“McCain in ’08! McCain in ’08!” a woman yelled from the back of the room. “No-bama! No-bama!”
It’s OK if Indy 4 sucks, and it’ll be OK too if I ultimately decide that GTA IV is something of a letdown (The verdict isn’t in yet, but I’m about halfway and I find myself hoping something.. different happens before the end). I’m not even going to watch the Olympics or acknowledge that they exist.
I have been enjoying this election year SO very much, considering that I think that all three of the possible winners are impossible to vote for.
Jeremiah Wright though, is my MVP so far. My analysis of the recent situation is that Wright has made so much money off of his “racist AmeriKKKa” schtick, and he sees so much more to be made when Obama loses due to racist AmeriKKKa refusing to vote for a black man, that he’s torpedoing Obama’s campaign himself.
I haven’t seen politics played this cynically in, well, maybe ever. Good show.
FWIW, Obama will not be President. I would wager quite a bit on that. It’s not going to be because America is racist though. It’s because a guy with no experience has nothing to run on but his superior judgment and instincts, and JW has utterly demolished any pretense to that Obama might have been able to put forward.
McCain isn’t even going to need to hit him over that. He’ll shy away from it, a Republican attacking on that front would just be declared racist and nothing he could say would stick. Besides, McCain will have plenty of ammunition provided by the still-to-penetrate-the-MSM connections between Obama and his pet terrorist William Ayers. See here for an example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. Political dynamite.
Scientists around the world are researching or seeking the funds to research ways to produce meat in the laboratory—without killing any animals. In vitro meat production would use animal stem cells that would be placed in a medium to grow and reproduce. The result would mimic flesh and could be cooked and eaten. Some promising steps have been made toward this technology, but we’re still several years away from having in vitro meat be available to the general public.
This is exactly the kind of thing PETA should have been doing all along, rather than hectoring people into following their chosen lifestyle. I’ve long said that people in general will only consider killing an animal for food to be wrong when they can hold that view and still eat a nice juicy steak without being a hypocrite.
Wow, I haven’t posted anything in ten days. I’ve been working like crazy, and I’m going to be writing another blog for work dealing with our developer’s program but that stuff is pretty different than the content here hehe.
And oh yeah, CentSports is a hell of a lot of fun.
Recent polling shows that almost 30 percent of Clinton supporters and nearly 20 percent of Obama supporters say that if their preferred candidate doesn’t win the nomination, they’ll vote Republican.
The Democrats are tearing each other apart, and the Republicans have the perfect candidate in McCain that many Democrats will feel they can live with.
I really need to buy some McCain presidential shares on TradeSports before the price goes up. Last I checked a contract paying $100 if McCain wins was running at about $37, a steal if you ask me.
Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been—and were—applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it “inflammatory” to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it “controversial.” It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.
The Constitution is a product spec for limited government. The dissenting Justices in the Heller case are equivalent to developers who disregard the spec and code whatever they think the product should be instead.
