Microsoft's Browser Stinks if you are a Blogger

I have the new Internet Explorer 7.0 on my computer. And, God bless its evil little heart, it will not let me consistently post to this blog.

I have things to do today and I cannot afford to waste time sitting with this computer trying to get blogs to post.

Grrrrr....may the fleas from a thousand camels infest Bill Gate's you-know-what!

Fishy Ohio Senate Polls [link]

The poll linked to above, by SurveyUSA, seems unbelievable. It shows Democrat Sherrod Brown with a commanding 57% to 37% lead over Mike DeWine. The other two major polls out show that this is an 8 point race.

DeWine has been a popular senator and has not been tied to any of the recent scandals (including the Bureau of Workers Comp scandal that mostly involved Dems but which the statewide media have long since forgotten). Things just don't feel THAT bad in Ohio. I checked out SurveyUSA's track record and they supposedly have done a fairly good job in the past. But this just does not feel right.

Ahhhh....and it helps to read the small print. Very cute. The composition of the 563 "likely voters" was 35% Rep and 42% Dem. That is a rather small sample (1,000 total people were called) and it is biased towards the Dems.

What is the potential fallout from biased polls? The Republican GOTV effort seems to be going well. I have been called countless times to come and volunteer (I am a state employee so I can't). Yard signs are popping up. Most of the Reps will crawl over broken glass to get to the polls. Will the Dems be so motivated? This is an off year election. If they feel it is in the bag (whether or not the polls are accurate) will they turn out?

We shall see.

Getting married? Have a GAY old time in New Jersey! [link]

Debra! Megalon! If you can't find the men of your dreams, move to New Jersey and marry each other!

I have not had a chance to read the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision (I have linked to several postings at the Volokh Conspiracy that I will read later today that will hopefully have an intelligent discussion of htis issue).

My first guess, knowing little of what has happened, is that this is good news for Republicans in New Jersey, and nationwide. A story showing the public what will happen if we allow liberals to continue to exercise judicial powers. Some of those purple states might start looking a little redder today.

We have less than two weeks till election day. Hopefully this story will start a little Republican momentum to build. I really do not want to be represented by Sherrod Brown in the US Senate.

Bureaucrats GONE WILD! [link]

How's this for madness. A man joins a voluntary trash recycling program and accidentally puts a piece of junk mail into the wrong bin. The result? He gets charged with a crime and prosecuted! Even worse, they also charged him with the additional crime of putting his trash bins out on the wrong day.

Let's see, this is a VOLUNTARY program. So who in their right mind is going to sign up for this VOLUNTARY program if the slightest mistake can land you in jail?

Mr Reeves said his first mistake was to put his rubbish out a day early, but only because he was going on holiday the next day. It was met with a warning that any further slip-ups would result in legal action.

"Duly warned I carried on separating the rubbish,' he said. Then came the summons accusing him of breaching the order. "I was shocked and had no idea what to do,' he said. "I couldn't sleep. At one point I even thought I might end up in jail."

He added: "The irony is that I would have been better off not recycling at all, just loading everything into a single rubbish bag. But like most people I supported the principle and was happy to play my part."

Well, we know better now. Recycling can be harmful for your health!

The BIG Bang Theory [link]

Interesting reading over at The American Thinker (see the link above). J.R. Dunn writes that, according to columnist Bob Novak, there are members of congress who are trying to encourage the US Navy to recommission the last two battleships (the Iowa and the Wisconsin).

One suspects that much of the passion comes from people unwilling to see an era die. It’s easy to be sympathetic with that position. For a large portion of the 20th century, the battlewagons were the Kings of the Seas, unmatched for firepower, armor, and sheer elegance. Certain individual battleships – the Bismarck, the Yamato, the Arizona, and the Missouri – have entered into legend in a way that ships of no other class can match. Truly, something has vanished now that the battleship sails no more.

But the weight of the argument lies with the other side. Iowa-class battleships, requiring crews of over 1,500 sailors, are extremely hard to man. They utilize obsolete technology that is difficult, and often impossible, to replace or repair (not to mention problems in training info-age sailors to operate it), and they are expensive, even by modern standards.

The single unanswerable contention lies in those big 16-inch guns, unequaled by any weapon in any fleet on any ocean. (The naval standard these days is the puny 5-inch gun). The Mk. 7 gun is capable of firing a 1,900 lb. round over 25 miles – a hammer that would make any anvil ring. That’s a hard argument to beat – it’s a shame that we can’t take the guns and leave the old hulls, with all their associated problems, to their honored rest.

Yeah, this really excites me! Those big guns are impressive...most impressive. And Mr. Dunn points out that we can keep the guns and lose the warships:

And that may well be possible, through a revival of a nearly forgotten naval configuration – the big-gun monitor.

* * * *

So there’s our answer. Remove the guns from the Iowa and Wisconsin, and place them on new hulls, configured as monitors for the mission of infantry support. The old ships can go on to become museum pieces, while their offspring, perhaps given related names, carry on the tradition.

That would actually work quite well...provided you have a hull that can support the massive turrets and give adequate stability.

It would be great fun to see how Muslim militants cope with 1,900 pound shells raining down on their heads! Send them on an express elevator to hell...GOING DOWN!

****AMUSING DIGRESSION****

For another type of "big bang" you should take a look a this article in the Wikipedia. Sometimes those scientists with the pocket protectors and the coke bottle bottom glasses make the tiniest little error and then...oops!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Bravo

Maybe a major OOPS [link]

The Democrat candidate for Governor of Ohio may be in trouble. It seems that he may not be properly registered to vote in Ohio. If he is not a properly registered voter, then he may be ineligible to run for office.

The controversy was sparked by a complaint filed last week with the elections board by an East Liverpool woman whose son, Larry Long Jr., is a volunteer worker for the Blackwell campaign.

The complaint questioned whether Strickland lives where he is registered to vote — in an apartment above his field office in Lisbon. Strickland listed the field office as his principal residence for purposes of voting after he was elected as the area’s new congressman in 2002.

Records show that in 2003 Strickland and his wife purchased a condominium in Columbus and on the paperwork listed it as their principal residence.

Strickland has to be a registered voter to run for office, and being disqualified as such by the elections board could mean, at least in theory, he no longer could be a candidate for governor.

The New York Times published and editorial yesterday condemning the Ohio Secretary of State's office for attempting to enforce Ohio's election laws:

Voters in Ohio can be forgiven if they feel they have been beamed out of the Midwest and dropped into a third-world autocracy. The latest news from the state’s governor’s race is that the Republican nominee, Kenneth Blackwell, who is also the Ohio secretary of state, could rule that his opponent is ineligible to run because of a technicality. We’d like to think that his office would not ultimately do that, or that if it did, such a ruling would not be allowed to stand. But the mere fact that an elected official and political candidate has the authority to toss his opponent out of a race is further evidence of a serious flaw in our democracy.

The full editorial can be found here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/opinion/17tues1.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I guess technicalities only count if they work against a Republican candidate. One need only look at the efforts in Florida where Dems are suing to keep election officials from posting signs informing voters that votes cast for disgraced Congressman Mark Foley will count for a different candidate. And the Dems successfully sued to keep Tom DeLay's name on the ballot in Texas.

I have seen other candidates knocked out of Ohio races because of errors. In the last 20 years there have been two uncontested races for mayor of Columbus because of errors with nominating petitions.

Compliance with the technical requirements of the law is not optional. If the Dems made a mistake...too bad.

You're a Frakking Awesome Machine [link]

You're my new battlestar and you've come so far.
I love your slanted walls and your A shaped halls.
You're full of Cylon clones and those old fashioned phones.
You're a frakking awesome machine.
So much better than the one with Lorne Greene!

Follow the link above to the best Galactica laugh I've had in a long time!

I love your blue-ish glow and your drunk XO.
I love that you've brought back old Richard Hatch.
You're a frakking awesome machine.
So much better...than the one with Lorne Greene!

Blame for No Ko Nuke

Liberals are trying to blame the Bush administration for North Korea's nuclear provocation. In their dream world, President Clinton and former President Carter negotiated an agreement in 1994 that kept the NKs from developing nuclear weapons and that alleged diplomatic failures by the Bush administration caused the NK's to break out of that agreement and restart their nuke program.

The liberals are ignoring reality. 1994 was the last time the world had a chance at stopping the NK's while they were still lacked the ability to actually build nuclear weapons. The NK's gratefully accepted the incentives offered by Clinton and Carter, then secretly continued with developing nuclear weapons in secret. By 2001 the NK's had the ability to build weapons and they no longer needed to hide that fact. When evidence of their violation of the 1994 "Agreed Framework" was brought to their attention, the NK's promptly announced that they were no longer going to follow its terms.

So what did Clinton and Carter accomplish? They gave billions of dollars in aid to the NK's and they allowed the NK's to continue developing their nuclear program past the point where they could be stopped. By 2001, there was nothing the Bush administration could do, short of war, to keep the NK's from building weapons.

Liberals will howl that the NK's did not build nukes during the Clinton years. They conveniently ignore the fact that the NK's violated an agreement reached with the Clinton administration and secretly continued developing those weapons. Clinton's failure of nerve, incompetence, and stupidity allowed NK the additional time needed to complete their nuke program and build weapons in secret making any effort to stop the NK's too expensive to consider.

Atomic Weapons and Perversion [link]

Over at CNN, Jeff Greenfield writes:

So does the North Korea test trump the Foley scandal? Here's one point to keep in mind: there's a month to go before Election Day. The North Korea story may well fade by then (not that it won't resurface in months or years to come); the Foley follies are likely to stay front and center for weeks.

How perverse. A rogue state tests a nuclear weapon, yet a CNN writer says that this is less important than a scandal involving a pathetic homosexual politician chasing teenaged boys.

Perhaps Mr. Greenfield is correct. But I hope that the American public is wiser. I hope that the American public realizes that the Foley scandal is merely entertaining silliness and that Kim Jong Il is a growing danger.

POP goes the weasel

Just when things were looking absolutely desperate for the Republicans, Kim Jung Il goes nuclear. That should take Marky Foley off the front pages for a day or so. And when the media goes back to Foley, it will seem unimportant.

The fear for the GOP is that Republican voters will be demoralized and not show up at the polls on November 7th. The Foley scandal demoralized Rep voters just as their enthusiasm was showing upward momentum. At the same time, the scandal was increasing the moonbats' anger at Reps and increasing their enthusiasm. The result could have been explosive: lower Rep turnout and higher Dem turnout (with a signficant moonbat component) could have resulted in a 30 to 50 seat pickup for the Dems in the House and a 7 to 8 seat pickup in the Senate.

But now we have an international crisis of maximum importance...one that highlights the failures of the Jimmy Carter/Ned Lamont kumbayaa approach to foreign policy. Excuse me, exactly WHO negotiated the 1994 agreement with North Korea to keep them from developing nuclear weapons? Hmmmmm.

Hastert should resign - LATER

I believe that the time has come for Speaker Hastert to announce that he will step down as Speaker of the House at the end of this current session of Congress. An immediate resignation would do more harm than good.

Hastert is a weak hand at the controls and everybody knows this. Today there are columns by Bob Novak, Ann Coulter, George Will and others describing the disfunctionality of the House leadership. New blood is needed.

Stepping down at the end of the term would allow the party to look forward to a necessary change in leadership without the drama of being leaderless right before the mid-term elections. The expectation of new leadership would minimize (though not eliminate) the Dem message of "Had enough?"

Mark Foley - is he also a gay American?

Ok, in 2004 Jim McGreevey ... [pregant pause until Megalon stops laughing] ... deflects attention from his scandal ridden administration as Governor of New Jersey by telling the world that he is a "gay American" as he announces his resignation. The media applauds his "courage."

In 2001, California Congressman Gary Condit is discovered to have been having an affair with a young female intern, Chandra Levy, who has been missing (and who was later found to have been murdered). Rather than assist law enforcement officials by giving them pertinant information about her recent activities, he gave minimal and misleading information. It is possible that better participation on his part may have helped law enforcement officials uncover her fate and find more clues to her death. Condit refused to resign but was later voted out of office when he lost a contested primary.

In 1990, Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank is reprimanded by the House leadership (controlled by Dems at that time) because it was discovered that his male lover, Steve Gobie, was running a prostitution ring out of Frank's Washington, DC townhouse. Frank had previously hired Gobie to serve on his congressional staff. It was also learned that Frank had fixed 33 of Gobie's parking tickets. According to the rumor mill, Frank was willing to accept a reprimand, but that if a more severe punishment was sought, he would "out" several Republican gays who were in the closet. Charming...isn't it? Massachusetts voters continue to elect Frank.

In 1983, Massachusetts Congressman (what IS it with Massachusetts Congressmen?) Gerry Studds admitted to having had sex with a 17 year old congressional page ten years earlier. The House of Representatives voted to censure Studds...who turned his back as it was read. Voters sent him back to Congress for five more terms.

What do all of these politicians have in common? They are all Democrats.

In 2006, Republican Congressman Jim Foley is discovered to have been sending dirty instant messages and/or emails to Congressional pages. There is, as of yet, no proof that he actually had sexual relationships with any underaged youths. The news breaks on a Friday...Foley resigns that very same day. He does not claim to be a "gay pedophile American." He is not called a hero. No one comes to his support. He is OUT. Yet, this is not enough for the main stream media. They condemn the entire Republican leadership.

The timing of this story is intriguing. Several news outlets had information regarding Foley for over a year...but the story does not break until five weeks before election day. Curious, huh? The Dems always claim that the Reps are going to pull some October Surprise...but it always seems to be the Reps who are on the receiving end.

Time for Hastert to Go [link]

The time has come... to say fair's fair; to pay the rent; to pay our share.

And the time has come for Denny Hastert to go. I do not know anything about his actions behind the scenes. I do not know how effective he has been organizing administrative matters in the House. But he has been a complete non-entity in an important leadership position.

Longtime readers (reader?) know that I believe that the Republican leaders in the House selected Hastert to be Speaker precisely because he lacked authority and power. A weak hand on the levers of control means that everyone has greater freedom to act. But this freedom has become chaos.