God, I love Ann Coulter

BIDEN SECRET SERVICE CODE NAME: 'ASSASSINATION INSURANCE'
by Ann Coulter
October 1, 2008
While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president -- or maybe take a stab at guessing the decade when televisions were first available to the public.
Being interviewed by Katie Couric on the "CBS Evening News," Biden said: "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"
For those of you who aren't hard-core history buffs, Biden not only named the wrong president during the 1929 stock market crash, he also claimed a president who wasn't president during the stock market crash went on TV before Americans had TVs.
Other than that, the statement holds up pretty well. At least Biden managed to avoid mentioning any "clean" Negroes he had met.
Couric was nearly moved to tears by the brilliance of Biden's brain-damaged remark. She was especially intrigued by Biden's claim that FDR had said the new iPhone was the bomb!
Here is Couric's full response to Biden's bizarre outburst about FDR (a) being president and (b) going on TV in 1929: "Relating to the fears of the average American is one of Biden's strong suits."
But when our beauteous Sarah said that John McCain was a better leader on the economy than Barack Obama, Couric relentlessly badgered her for evidence. "Why do you say that?" Couric demanded. "Why are they waiting for John McCain and not Barack Obama? ... Can you give us any more examples of his leading the charge for more oversight?"
The beauteous Sarah had cited McCain's prescient warnings about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But Couric, the crackerjack journalist who didn't know FDR wasn't president in 1929, demanded more examples from Palin.
We are currently in the middle of a massive financial crisis brought on by Fannie Mae. McCain was right on Fannie Mae; Obama was wrong. That's not enough?
Not for the affable Eva Braun of evening TV! "I'm just going to ask you one more time," Couric snipped, "not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?"
This would be like responding to someone who predicted the 9/11 attacks by saying: OK, you got one thing right. Not to belabor the point, but what else?
Obama was not merely wrong on Fannie Mae: He is owned by Fannie Mae. Somehow Obama managed to become the second biggest all-time recipient of Fannie Mae political money after only three years in the Senate. The biggest beneficiary, Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd, had a 30-year head start on receiving loot from Fannie Mae -- the government-backed institution behind our current crisis.
How does the Democratic ticket stack up on other major issues facing the nation, say, gas prices?
Shockingly, Sen. Joe Biden was one of only five senators to vote against the first Alaskan pipeline bill in 1973. This is like having been a Nazi sympathizer during World War II. If Sarah Palin does nothing else, she has got to tie that idiotic pipeline vote around Biden's neck.
The Senate passed the 1973 Alaskan pipeline bill by an overwhelming 80-5 vote. Only five senators voted against the pipeline on final passage. Sen. Biden is the only one who is still in the Senate -- the other four having been confined to mental institutions long ago.
The stakes were clear: This was in the midst of the first Arab oil embargo. Liberal Democrats, such as senators Robert Byrd, Mike Mansfield, Frank Church and Hubert Humphrey, all voted for the pipeline.
But Biden cast one of only five votes against the pipeline that has produced more than 15 billion barrels of oil, supplied nearly 20 percent of this nation's oil, created tens of thousands of jobs, added hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. economy and reduced money transfers to the nation's enemies by about the same amount.
The only argument against the pipeline was that it would harm the caribou, an argument that was both trivial and wrong. The caribou population near the pipeline increased from 5,000 in the 1970s to 32,000 by 2002.
It would have been bad enough to vote against the pipeline bill even if it had hurt the caribou. A sane person would still say: Our enemies have us in a vice grip. Sorry, caribou, you've got to take one for the team. But when the pipeline goes through and the caribou population sextuples in the next 20 years, you really look like a moron.
We couldn't possibly expect Couric to ask Biden about a vote that is the equivalent of voting against the invention of the wheel. But couldn't she have come up with just one follow-up question for Biden on FDR's magnificent handling of the 1929 stock market crash?
Or here's a question the public is dying to know: "If Obama wanted a historically delusional vice president, why not Lyndon LaRouche?" At least LaRouche didn't vote against the Alaskan pipeline.

Still going on in the background...

There seems to be a lot of background chatter about a possible impending attack by Israel on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Reuters reported yesterday that an Israeli television report quoted unnamed diplomatic sources as saying the U.S. won't permit Israel to attack Iran's nuclear program as long as U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq.

"The report on Channel 10 said any strike against Iran would leave U.S. forces based in Iraq vulnerable to retaliation. Depending on who becomes the next U.S. president, troops could remain in Iraq from under two years to indefinitely," Reuters said.

And there's this report in fractured English from the Press Trust of India, also yesterday:

New York, Oct 6 (PTI) Symbolising Israel as a signature mark of the United States in the middle east, Iran's foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said that any offensive action by Tel Aviv would be seen as an attack by Washington.
Iran does not believe that Israelis or Americans will attack its nuclear facilities but any attack by Tel Aviv would be considered an attack by Washington, Mottaki said.

"In the Middle East, (no one) makes a distinction between the US and Israel," the minister told Newsweek in an interview.

Asked why his country is calling for wiping out Israel from the map of the earth, Mottaki said Tehran does not recognise Israel.

Reiterating to continue its uranium enrichment programme, he said "What we are doing is completely legal," emphasising that negotiations are the only way to arrive at mutually acceptable solution to the issue.

Mottaki, however, welcomed the Bush administration's decision to send its Under Secretary William Burns to attend recent talks between Tehran and European Union on nuclear issue saying as "the first realistic step" by Washington.

"We welcomed the participation by Mr Burns in the Geneva talks. We feel that if this is the realistic approach taken by the US right now vis--vis the nuclear issue, they must continue with such efforts," he added.

Previously, Mottaki said the US administration attached certain provisos to their presence in the talks.

Burns' "presence in Geneva meant that those were no longer in play. An effort has started and if it is to succeed in resolving the nuclear issue, we have to take it to the next step," he added.

Reuters also moved a story about French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner urging Israel not to launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear program:

Kouchner, in the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, urged the Jewish state to continue to support Western-backed sanctions and dialogue to press Iran to halt its atomic project, the Haaretz daily said.

"I know that in Israel, and the Israeli army, there are those who are preparing for a military solution or an attack" aimed at halting the Iranian program, Kouchner told the paper in an interview.

"In my opinion that's not the solution," he said, adding that the possibility of Iran achieving a nuclear weapon was also "absolutely unacceptable."

Kouchner called the risk of an Israeli strike on Iran a "danger." He said Tehran was aware Israel had said it would not wait until Iran could produce a nuclear bomb.

He said the West should pursue "talk, talk and more talk," including further sanctions to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear program. Tehran denies seeking to build an atomic bomb, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

"I don't think the alternative is to bomb first," Kouchner said.

Kouchner said France believed Iran may be able to produce one atomic weapon within two to four years.

Tehran last month rejected a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding it halt its nuclear enrichment work.

Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only nuclear power, sees Iran's nuclear program as a security threat, citing remarks by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling for the Jewish state's demise.

Howard Stern, Martha Stewart and John Madden? No, thanks.

I've been an XM Satellite Radio subscriber for several years and have never regretted that I chose XM over Sirius.

Now that the two have merged, I'm being offered a chance to get "The Best of Sirius" for an additional $4/month.

So what does that mean?

• Playboy Radio
• NASCAR
• NFL Football
• Martha Stewart
• Howard Stern

I think they've made a big marketing mistake here. I'd pay an additional $4/month not to have Howard Stern and the rest of this crap on my XM radio.

I can't get away from Crawfordsville's Lew Wallace

I visited the Shiloh battlefield twice while at the Return to Shiloh BMW rally last weekend - once on Friday and again on Saturday morning.

And, once again, I was struck by the solemn beauty of the place.

I was pleased to see the film and exhibits in the Visitors' Center included fellow Hoosier Lew Wallace.

Gen. Wallace and his Indiana boys might have changed the character of the first day of the two-day fight had it not been for somewhat ambiguous marching orders given him by Gen. U.S. Grant that caused him to arrive late at the point where he was intended to support Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's troops, who were under attack by Confederate forces.

Wallace found himself at the rear of the advancing Rebel forces and might have done them some serious damage if he had seized the initiative. Instead, he countermarched back and finally reached Grant's defensive line at Pittsburg Landing late in the day when the battle was winding down.

And, by the way, isn't it amazing that Wallace didn't realize how ridiculous he looked with that beard and mustache stuck on the front of his face?

But enough history.

After three nights of tossing and turning on a Thermarest air mattress, I was ready to come home and sleep in a real bed.

I struck camp Sunday morning and was on the road about 8:15. I stopped for gas at Corinth, Miss. and made a gas/restroom stop just north of West Memphis, Ark., rolling into my garage at 12:06 p.m.

There was much talk of reconnecting with my Indiana BMW friends next weekend at the Falling Leaf Rally in Potosi, Mo. At the moment, I'm not very keen on another weekend in a tent and the weather may also mitigate against going.

I had supposed Potosi was considerably closer to home than was the Shiloh Rally site, but I just checked with Google maps and discovered it's 177 miles (Shiloh was 199) with an estimated riding time of 3 hours and 57 minutes - pretty much the same time/distance on worse roads.

We shall see.

Karaoke

Here's the karaoke setup outside the Botel - a riverside hotel and restaurant built on the hull of a barge that got beached during a flood.

Best Rally by a Dam Site

That's what we call the Return to Shiloh Rally at Pickwick Dam State Park along the Tennessee River just north of Corinth, Miss.
This campsite in the fragrant piney woods will be my home for the next few days.
I expect some Indianapolis folks momentarily and another bunch tomorrow, so I've staked out an Indy Club camping area.
Unfortunately, this is a Sprint roam zone so I may not be able to blog from here.

Oh, really?

This video is the answer to Barack Hussein Obama's rant about "failed Bush administration economic policies."

Fritz Hippler, who ran the film department of the Propaganda Ministry of the Third Reich, was an expert in selling lies to the public. His formula: simplify and repeat - that is reduce an idea to a word or a short phrase ("change" or "failed economic policies") and repeat it as often as possible. People will eventually come to accept it as fact.

The FACT is that the Democrats pushed through the Community Reinvestment Act during the Carter administration to give incentives to help low-income borrowers get a home. It worked fairly well until 1995 when, during the Clinton administration, the Democrats expanded it and made it possible for groups like Acorn (referenced in the above video) to pressure banks into making home loans that were certain to fail, all in the name of social engineering. And Obama was right in the middle of it, training Acorn people in Chicago to coerce banks into financial suicide.

He calls it "community organizing." Simplify. Repeat. Simplify. Repeat.

The Bush administration proposed a new agency to oversee Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003 in what the New York Times called "the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago." The Democrats killed it.

John McCain was a co-sponsor of the Housing Enterprise Regulatory Act of 2005, also designed to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Democrats killed it too.

So when you hear Obama and Nancy Pelosi chanting the "Bush administration failed economic policies" mantra, understand that it was the Democrats who created the mechanism for this economic disaster and who repeatedly thwarted attempts to avoid it.

And, yes, I take this personally because I've been making two house payments for a year and am sitting on a house that was once appraised at $210,000 but I couldn't sell it for $10,000 today because nobody can get credit to finance a house purchase.

And I'm watching my 401K's value drop like a rock. In short, the accumulated savings of my lifetime are being wiped out and a significant portion of the public wants to put the blame on the people who tried repeatedly to prevent this calamity.

We are being asked to ignore the facts, pretend that John McCain is indistinguishable from George Bush, and reward the very people who are wrecking our economy by electing one of the principal players to the White House.

So that's why I'm in no mood to write a chatty little blog post about the weather or my dogs or some motorcycle trip I'm planning.

How we got here

Click here and watch the video.

It's not right-wing propaganda and everything in it is fact.

A negative response

Yesterday's mail brought the announcement of the 45th anniversary reunion of the Delphi High School Class of 1963.

It will be Oct. 25 at the Carroll County Country Club in Delphi and I almost certainly won't be there.

I just can't justify spending 16 hours in the car and burning about $150 worth of gas for a four-hour event. This would be the first one I've missed since graduation, but my heart's just not in it this year.

The only circumstance that might permit it would be if there is some compelling reason for us to return to Indiana that weekend in connection with our house being sold, leased or rented.

If the world doesn't end in 2012 (some people read the Mayan calendar as predicting the end in December 2012), I'll plan on catching the 50th anniversary reunion in 2013.

102 degrees

The forecast was for a high temperature of 85 degrees here today, but all of my online sources say it's 102!
They also put the relative humidity at 21 percent and the dewpoint at 55 degrees, so I guess the low humidity is why it doesn't feel particularly hot.

Selling out and backing up

Considering that I haven't set up my 100-disc Pioneer CD player since we moved here a year ago and considering that I hardly used it in the three years since I got an iPod and loaded all of my music onto it, and considering that my enormous CD collection was still in boxes in the garage, and considering that we're bleeding to death financially from two mortgages and rising prices, I decided it was time to sell some CDs.

So I dug out a few boxes of CDs and started listing them on Amazon.com and suddenly I was flooded with orders. I have a big U.S. Postal Service basket loaded with about 30 orders to ship this morning and have about 200 titles listed with lots more to add.

Nothing goes out of here that hasn't been ripped to mp3 or m4p, so I'm not really losing anything and I'm gaining some cash and garage space.

But what if my computer crashes and I lose all of that music in my iTunes folder?

The answer came yesterday when I scanned the Office Depot insert in the Sunday paper and noticed they were blowing out Seagate Free Agent 500 GB external hard drives for $89.99. And the Free Agent comes with backup software.

As I write this, my new Free Agent is backing up the iTunes folder from my C: drive and will continue to do so every day at 1 a.m.

Now I'm off to the postoffice.

Referral

We set out today to buy a new cell phone from a Sprint store.
Morgan's phone is in bad shape and our plan is to do whatever deal is cheapest and results in her having a working phone.
Sprint lists two stores here - one in the 1300 block of Stadium and the other in the Mall at Turtle Creek.
We discovered the Sprint kiosk in the mall has been eliminated.
The sign on the door of the Stadium Avenue location refers Sunday shoppers to the Mall kiosk.
What a bunch of morons.

For Lauri

Maria thought you might like this.

Morgan's back in the Blogosphere!

My stepdaughter Morgan has revived her blog, titled "A cat walks into a bar..." It's one of the cleverest blog titles I've seen and is based on real life - her cat Henry was a stray who showed up in a bar in Bloomington, Ind. and ended up living with her.

Welcome back to the Blogosphere, Morgan! We missed you.

Incredibly stupid human tricks

At the Farmers Market

Must be Saturday morning.

K1200GT in Colorado Canyon

Hey, I know this road! It's Utah 128 northeast of Moab. I first rode it in July, 1986 with Tim and Linda Balough.

BMW R1200 RT vs Harley

I'm not sure this proves anything, but it's fun.

BMW K1200S acceleration from 0-280 km/hr (168 mph)

Yes, it's very fast.

BMW K1200S in Budapest!

Here's really cool video featuring a couple of BMW K1200Ss.