Monthly Archives: September 2010

Anyone know what this Wilson “ethics” thing is?

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I haven’t written anything about the supposed ethics investigation of Joe Wilson because I don’t have the slightest clue what it is supposedly about. Neither the MSM nor the campaigns themselves have been particularly helpful on this point.

For instance, this release I just got from Rob Miller:

Dear Brad,

By now, I’m sure you have all heard the news.  Congressman Wilson is under investigation for breaking Congressional ethics rules.  Joe would have you believe that this is about some “glorified shot glasses” that he bought on one of his many taxpayer-funded junkets.  You and I both know that you don’t get investigated over $12 in trinkets.

Joe Wilson knows that, too– it’s why his staff won’t stop talking about $2 goblets, but won’t say if those are the limit of the investigation.

I believe in the iceberg rule.  The corruption we see in Washington is only 10% of the problem; the rest is hidden away, protecting the insiders, because if the public knew what was going on, they wouldn’t stand for it.  Joe Wilson was willing to steal $12 from taxpayers in public.  What is he willing to do in private?  Pocketing any amount of taxpayer money is not only wrong, it’s illegal.

From raising his own pay five times, to giving away hundreds of billions of dollars to Wall Street, to voting against South Carolina teachers and jobs, to being investigated for breaking the public trust, Joe Wilson is everything wrong with Washington today.  We deserve better.  Stand with me and fight for it.

Semper Fi,

… which as you see doesn’t indicate one way or the other what is allegedly going on. It merely insinuates, and lamely. Personally, when I see the tip of an iceberg I at least know, by implication, what lies below. I have no such helpful clues here.

Mr. Wilson himself is no more helpful, merely sending out such nonsense as the following:

Dear Subscriber,

Public disapproval with the liberal establishment in Washington is at an all time high. Folks have become aware that the path of smaller government and Reagan conservatism will lead us out of this dark era of liberal recklessness. This sentiment is felt all across the country, and people in South Carolina are demanding that their legislators respond with conservative solutions.While many representatives are hiding under their desks in fear of the public outrage, Congressman Joe Wilson is out touring the state to help cultivate this rich environment for change and reform. He is meeting with the real economic experts in this state – workers and small business owners.

On the “Joe Means Jobs” bus tour, folks in every corner of the state are talking with Joe and telling him how much they want the era of Big Government to end. Joe strongly agrees with this demand and is under attack from the liberals in Washington because of it. Nancy Pelosi and her liberal friends are funneling money into South Carolina’s liberal campaigns, in an effort to oust honest conservatives like Joe Wilson from office.

It is a long uphill battle that Joe must fight until November, but he is not backing down from Nancy Pelosi’s intimidation tactics. It is imperative that Joe stay out on the campaign trail to help spread the word about what liberals in Washington and even here in South Carolina are doing to bankrupt this state and country.  And to let folks know what he is going to do about it.

Click here to watch a video of Joe while on his bus tour!

Will you stand with Joe today and help him defeat the liberals in Washington? It is obvious that they desperately want Joe gone, since they specifically targeted him with their opposition money.

Please help Joe by clicking here to make a donation today!

I don’t know about you, but “It’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault” doesn’t help me any more than when the Dems moan about everything being Bush’s fault. Just another sad attempt at misdirection. In fact, he doesn’t even mention the charges in this particular piece, merely alluding darkly to “Nancy Pelosi’s intimidation tactics.” Sigh.

Has anyone read anything that I’ve missed that would shed a light? If so, please share…

The South won’t rise again, but it will keep on making head fakes in that direction

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Imagine the irony! I was listening, via Pandora, to an excellent live version of Levon Helm singing his masterpiece, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” It opened with a little horn riff on “Dixie” itself. The song is simply magnificent, capturing everything that was noble and tragic and horrible and epic and personal in our ancestors’ fall into defeat.

So imagine how it was ruined for me by, even as I was listening to it and appreciating it, reading this low farce from Karen Floyd:

Dear Subscriber

An unprecedented event recently occurred, where the president of the United States issued a report to the U.N. Human Rights Council that bashed a state law. In a desperate attempt to gain the awe and admiration of global elitists, President Obama sounded off about the many “sins” in America’s history, including Arizona’s new illegal immigration bill.Obama writes, “A recent Arizona law, S.B. 1070, has generated significant attention and debate at home and around the world. The issue is being addressed in a court action that argues that the federal government has the authority to set and enforce immigration law. That action is ongoing; parts of the law are currently enjoined.” He also went on about how he is seeking to offer free health care to illegal immigrants.

The context of this U.N. forum is to discuss human rights in the United States. Apparently, Obama thinks that Arizona’s law is in violation of human rights, which is why he is not only suing the state, but also reporting it to the U.N. council.

Lesson learned everyone: a liberal will always seek the praise and respect of foreign powers over the rights of the American people or the Constitution.

As a direct result of Obama’s ridiculous report to the U.N., the Arizona law will come under formal review on November 5 by the three member countries of the UN Human Rights Commission: France, Japan, and Cameroon. The U.N. Commission will then issue directives on what they recommend the United States do in response to the Arizona law.

This is simply outrageous! How can an American president sell out his own countrymen to a foreign entity over a state law that simply enforces existing federal laws? Our president should be bowing to the people’s demands, and NOT the whims of an international organization.

Folks, it is time to fight back. We desperately need trusted conservatives like Mike Mulvaney, Nikki Haley and Jim DeMint to fight for our liberties and state sovereignty. The elitists in Washington are trying to allow a foreign power to dictate your life and safety. Will you allow this to happen?

Click here to help fund conservative change and individual rights! Let’s help elect individuals who will enforce the Constitution and stand up for our rights and sovereignty.

Sincerely,

Karen Floyd

SCGOP Chairman

P.S. Let’s take the battle to them and send Obama a message! Please click here to donate now.

Just as elites conned the poor white population into being their cannon fodder in a lost and bankrupt cause in 1860, this new strain of Radical Republicanism keeps playing on the same resentments and sensitivities and inferiority complexes to manipulate the great mass of white voters in the South today.

They just keep on driving Dixie down.

God showing off, again

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Just thought I’d share a bit of last night’s glorious sunset, as I shot it on my Blackberry.

Actually, I guess that’s not technically a sunset — more of a dramatic interaction of sun and cloud independent of the time of day. One usually thinks of something like this in connection with the term, “sunset.” But then again, maybe it is a sunset but only technically, in that it occurred as the sun was setting.

Anyway, sights such as this beggar language.

Virtual Front Page, Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010

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Nothing local at this hour, but here’s what we do have:

  1. Wall Street Surges After Upbeat Reports on Economy (NYT) — Partly based on surprisingly good U.S. manufacturing news.
  2. Obama condemns W Bank ‘slaughter’ (BBC) — And hopes the latest murder of Israelis by Hamas doesn’t derail the peace talks that started today.
  3. August U.S. Car Sales Plummet (WSJ) — Of course, that’s up against “cash for clunkers” last year.
  4. Report Shows Unauthorized Immigrants Leaving U.S. (NPR) — Which is actually NOT good news, since it reflects the lack of jobs here.
  5. Police: Hostage standoff ends, suspect dead (WashPost) — So… who would be moved to violence by the Discovery Channel?
  6. GOP Promises Detailed Agenda, If Not A ‘Contract’ (NPR) — Remember the “Contract On America”? That was what they called it, right?

Mojitos: The best new thing I’ve tried lately

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Since I’ve become a Mad Man, I’ve branched out a bit in my eating out. Since for me every unknown menu is like a minefield, my usual M.O. is to approach eating out the way a cautious commander approaches a military campaign: Only on familiar terrain using proven tactics — in other words, going to three or four places where I know the menu, and only ordering one or two things from it. (And don’t even eat out, if it can be avoided. Mamanem know what you can eat.) Hey, it’s kept me alive so far.

But Lanier, Brian and Lora eat out pretty much every day, and invite me along. So I’ve come to try and enjoy new things at Al Amir, and Nick’s, and Doc’s Gumbo Grill, the Mouse Trap and other places. I still pull them toward my old faves — Yesterday’s, Longhorn and the like — whenever I can get away with it, but my horizons have been broadened.

Today, however, I must report having enjoyed the best new thing I’ve tried since starting at ADCO. It was at Mojitos Tropical Cafe on Gervais, a place that just opened a couple of weeks back. It was fantastic, especially what I had — the pulled pork with saffron rice, black beans, sweet plantains and yuca con mojo.

We also had a great chat with the matriarch of the family that runs this joint and Salsa Cabana, Jane Fishburne, whose mother was Spanish and comes by this sort of cuisine honestly (although it’s her daughter, Lynette, who does the cooking). I gave her a card and urged her to consider a blog ad. She responded by saying that the Shop Tart has brought them about half their business so far.

So I’ve been scooped. In fact, the Tart even wrote about the place before it was opened. An excerpt:

Speaking of good stuff, Tracie and the Shop Tart spent a while chatting with owner Jane, who is in the process of opening another business, Mojito’s Tropical Cafe on Gervais in the space formerly occupied by night club Hush. She is awesome and introduced them to her daughter Lynette, who will be the chef at the new place. They also met Jane’s son Gabriel and his girlfriend Crystal, who might be the best-looking couple in all of Columbia, if not the world. They noticed the Shop Tart’s empty glass and insisted on getting her next round. They asked what she was drinking. She hesitated, not wanting to be greedy. “Vodka soda,” she answered, not wanting to admit to the pricey Grey Goose she has come to love. (Thank you, Fergie.) Crystal’s response? “Grey Goose, right?,” with a wink. Perceptive lady. (And yummy vodka.)

So she was ahead of the curve on that. Not to mention being way ahead of me on the blog ad front. Oh, well — her success is well deserved.

And Mojitos is deserving of all the success the Vista can provide. I’ll be going back, for sure. And if — no, when — you go, be sure to tell Jane you read about it here. And try the pulled pork. It was pretty awesome. For one used to barbecue, the more subtle flavorings on the meat were a really nice change of pace, and a great accompaniment to the beans and rice.

Oh, and watch out — while the place wasn’t crowded when I was there, Columbia’s Mad Men are discovering it, so it’s liable to be jammed before you know it. David Campbell from Chernoff Newman came in with a couple of others just as we were leaving. Dang, just like that guy Ted Chaough tracking Don Draper — every time I look in my rearview mirror, there’s Campbell…

Another step into the Innovista…

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Mike Fitts chronicles this latest step toward achieving the potential of Innovista:

A company based on the engineering smarts at USC — in students and faculty — has been launched to commercialize that prowess.

SysEDA, a 10-employee company that provides engineering software, is moving into the USC Columbia Technology Incubator.

SysEDA’s software has been developed over the years principally by Roger Dougal, professor of electrical engineering at USC. Dougal estimates that about 50 students in the past 15 years have provided refinements to it, and many students in the engineering school use it regularly as part of the their work.

The software, called a Virtual Test Bed, is designed to simulate the inner workings of electrical engines. Once it is offered in the Internet “cloud,” it will allow different engineers from around the world to see how their proposed modifications to an engine affect the entire system before a prototype is built….

The company already has a client: the Office of Naval Research.

Dougal has worked with the Navy for more than a decade as it has explored electric power options for its ships. Now SysEDA has a $2.4 million contract to work with global engine giant ABB on such engines and design systems.

SysEDA is working with the incubator and is also receiving mentoring from Bang! Technologies, a company that specializes in boosting tech companies through their growth phases…

Congratulations to all involved as they take one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such steps that need to be taken for the Innovista to realize its potential over the next decade or two.

The Fatties vs. the Fantasists: A hypothetical rematch with the Japanese

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Last night, by way of explaining to my daughter more fully why Roger Sterling was so abominably rude to the guys from Honda in last week’s “Mad Men” I popped in the first episode of “The Pacific.” (As I’ve mentioned, since I’m currently reading the books that series was based on — I’m on Eugene Sledge’s With the Old Breed now — that theater is much on my mind.)

For most of us, buying Hondas and Toyotas, and even, most improbably, Mitsubishis (as in, the Zero) comes fairly naturally. There is probably less conflict in the national psyche over those than over, say, Volkswagen. But for those who fought in the less-understood Pacific war, the stress of fighting a suicidally aggressive enemy with seemingly superhuman commitment to his cause, would be something that would mark you forever.

But if we had a rematch with the Japanese, it might go differently.

Did you see the NYT story on the front page of The State today, about how Army training has been “walked back” a bit to  make it less stressful on recruits who grew up playing video games instead of baseball? An excerpt:

FORT JACKSON, S.C. — Dawn breaks at this, the Army’s largest training post, with the reliable sound of fresh recruits marching to their morning exercise. But these days, something looks different.

That familiar standby, the situp, is gone, or almost gone. Exercises that look like pilates or yoga routines are in. And the traditional bane of the new private, the long run, has been downgraded.

This is the Army’s new physical-training program, which has been rolled out this year at its five basic training posts that handle 145,000 recruits a year. Nearly a decade in the making, its official goal is to reduce injuries and better prepare soldiers for the rigors of combat in rough terrain like Afghanistan.

But as much as anything, the program was created to help address one of the most pressing issues facing the military today: overweight and unfit recruits…

Now, I’m not about to call today’s war fighters wimps. Especially not the tip-of-the-spear types like the Marines, or the Airborne divisions, or the Rangers or other elites. They are, if anything, tougher than ever, and certainly more lethal.

But that story gives us a hint of what it would be like if the Army ceased being so selective because it was handling a mass mobilization such as that of 1941-45. Imagine soldiers who had never done a pushup in basic trying to make their way through a fetid jungle in 100-degree-plus temps.

But fear not, because in today’s WSJ, we have evidence that they would not be met with shrieking madmen eager to die for their emperor. Get a load of this:

Since the marriage rate among Japan’s shrinking population is falling and with many of the country’s remaining lovebirds heading for Hawaii or Australia’s Gold Coast, Atami had to do something. It is trying to attract single men—and their handheld devices.

In the first month of the city’s promotional campaign launched July 10, more than 1,500 male fans of the Japanese dating-simulation game LovePlus+ have flocked to Atami for a romantic date with their videogame character girlfriends.

The men are real. The girls are cartoon characters on a screen…

Love Plus+ re-creates the experience of an adolescent romance. The goal isn’t just to get the girl but to maintain a relationship with her.

After choosing one of three female characters—goodie-goodie Manaka, sassy Rinko or big-sister type Nene—to be a steady girlfriend, the player taps a stylus on the DS touch-screen in order to walk hand-in-hand to school, exchange flirtatious text messages and even meet in the school courtyard for a little afternoon kiss. Using the device’s built-in microphone, the player can carry on sweet, albeit mundane, conversations.

Wow. Get those guys charged up on saki, and they’re not going to be screaming “banzai,” but drooling over decidedly unwomanly avatars, hoping for a pretend peck on the cheek.

So maybe a nation of fatties could take them. But probably only in a virtual war, fought on a virtual playing field. At least our video games are tougher than theirs, if this is an example.

Maybe Harry Turtledove will take on this topic.