Say Anything Blog

The news may be late but the issue is still pertinent.  Is Rush Limbaugh overstepping his responsibilities as a reporter in Operation Chaos: his instructions that his listeners switch over and vote for Hillary in Indiana to create for a chaotic and drawn-out battle against Obama, weakening the nominee?

The difference he substantiated by his instructions, as reported by him, enabled Hillary to win.  If so, then he has successfully tampered with the votes--an incredible power.

Is it too much power? The Democrats DO have television, and Rush has talk-radio. I want your thoughts.

In symbols:

To disprove p: one uses the tautology (p → (R ∧ ¬R)) → ¬p, where R is any proposition and the ∧ symbol is taken to mean “and”. Assuming p, one proves R and ¬R, and concludes from this that p → (R ∧ ¬R). This and the tautology together imply ¬p.

See here for background on the following substitutions:

1) Let ‘p’ equal ‘Pilgrim is correct’.

2) Let ‘R’ equal ‘its good when UW students suppress free speech’.

To disprove p or ‘Pil is correct’: one uses the tautology (p → (R ∧ ¬R)) → ¬p, where R is ‘its good when UW students suppress free speech’ and the ∧ symbol is taken to mean “and”.

Assuming p, one proves R and ¬R, and concludes from this that p → (R ∧ ¬R).

If Pil is correct then its good when UW students suppress free speech and its not good when UW students suppress free speech.

This and the tautology together imply ¬p.

If the assumption that Pil is correct leads to a contradiction, then Pil is not correct.

Pil is not correct.

McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer

PRESCOTT, Ariz.—Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain’s 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain’s legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

The Audubon Society described the exchange as the largest in Arizona history. The swap involved more than 55,000 acres of land in all, including rare expanses of desert woodland and pronghorn antelope habitat. The deal had support from many local officials and the Arizona Republic newspaper for its expansion of the Prescott National Forest. But it brought an outcry from some Arizona environmentalists when it was proposed in 2002, partly because it went through Congress rather than a process that allowed more citizen input.

...Betts is among a string of donors who have benefited from McCain-engineered land swaps. In 1994, the senator helped a lobbyist for land developer Del Webb Corp. pursue an exchange in the Las Vegas area, according to the Center for Public Integrity. McCain sponsored two bills, in 1991 and 1994, sought by donor Donald R. Diamond that yielded the developer thousands of acres in trade for national parkland.

We may now understand why Barack does not wear a flag lapel pin. He’s afraid that Bill Ayers will stomp on him.

Larry C. Johnson (writing at the Huffington Post) Heh.

Hat tip: The Campaign Spot

Cross Posted at Proof Positive

ANCHORAGE - Facing a prison sentence of 3½ years, a former Alaska lawmaker said he’s broke and has lost respect for the U.S. government, but that his conscience is clear.

Former state Rep. Vic Kohring was sentenced Thursday for bribery and two other felony corruption charges, convictions he blamed on prosecutors who twisted his words and a judge with a conflict of interest.

“I refuse to cower before you in hopes of receiving a lighter sentence,” he told U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick.

The seven-term Republican from Wasilla said he had to borrow a truck to drive to the courthouse and it broke down on the way. He hitchhiked and was picked up by a loyal constituent who immediately put him on his church’s prayer chain, Kohring said.

Kohring was convicted in November of accepting at least $2,600 from executives of VECO Corp., an Alaska company with more than 4,000 employees that provided engineering, construction and facility maintenance services to major oil producers. Its officers also carried enormous political clout, sponsoring fundraisers and donating to candidates.

Kohring was the third Alaska Republican lawmaker with ties to VECO convicted last year of bribery charges. The FBI also is investigating remodeling work that VECO employees did at the home of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history. Stevens has said he paid all bills presented to him.

Sorry I let you all down.
This filthy gop was picked up late last month.

State Sen. Randy Scott “berated” Dorchester County deputies after failing three field sobriety tests, according to a Sheriff’s Office report released Monday.

The five-page incident report outlines Scott’s arrest this weekend on a driving under the influence charge. The senator allegedly threatened the arresting sergeant and the county magistrate with their jobs.

The arrest, made late Saturday in Summerville, comes just weeks before a primary election that pits Dorchester County political interests against one another.

Scott, a Summerville Republican finishing his first term in the Senate, is arguing that the arrest is politically motivated. He is running against former state Sen. Mike Rose, a Republican, in June.

According to the report, Scott repeatedly argued that politics were at play while deputies conducted field sobriety tests. At the jail, he “berated and at sometimes appeared to be intimidating deputies,” it said.

H/T to Republican Offenders

I am NOT making this up! From the BBC:

At least one of Britain’s birds appears to be coping well as climate change alters the availability of a key food.

Researchers found that great tits are laying eggs earlier in the spring than they used to, keeping step with the earlier emergence of caterpillars.

Writing in the journal Science, they point out that the same birds in the Netherlands have not managed to adjust.

Well? What did you think the story would be about?

(Just waiting for Rob to tell me the story just ain’t right without pictures!)

Hat tip to Mullings

Despite the lamentations of our resident military non-expert cut and paste specialist, it seems things are not so grim for the Armed Forces…

USMC Overrun By Recruits
By Jim Dunnigan
Strategy Page

May 7, 2008:  The U.S. Marine Corps has had more success than expected in attracting recruits, and has moved up the date for completing their current expansion. Last year, Congress ordered the marines to expand their strength from the current 181,000 to 202,000. At first, the marines thought it would take them four years to do it. But between the large number of recruits, and the many current marines who are staying in, the expansion will be accomplished by next year.

I’d not bet against Dunnigan…

...since their current leader, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, (who was what, the fourth or fifth so far to hold that title) has been captured by Coalition Forces.

Al-Masri the Egyptian falls
By Wretchard

Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq was captured today in the northern city of Mosul according to the Iraqi ministry of defense. Al-Masri’s life parallels that of al-Qaeda itself. Born an Egyptian he followed al-Qaeda’s fortunes from the Middle East to Central Asia and back. According to US sources, Masri was born in 1967, “joined the Muslim Brotherhood, and in 1982 ... joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which later became part of al-Qaeda. He went to Afghanistan in 1999, where he became an explosives expert. In 2004 he was put in charge of al-Qaeda’s overseas networks, and in 2006 he succeeded al-Zarqawi as the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Intrestingly enough, Masri was captured in Mosul. Bill Roggio says Al Qaeda’s senior leadership was thought “to be attempting to regroup in Mosul. US and Iraqi forces have killed several key al Qaeda leaders in Mosul over the past several months”. Mosul, you will recall, is the hub of one of the remaining al-Qaeda ratlines along the Euphrates. General Petraeus in testimony to Congress in early April, provided a interesting chart showing Mosul to be the hub of one of the remaining “ratlines” or infiltration routes stretching down from Syria. It was natural for al-Masri to be somewhere in the vicinity.

Read the whole thing, then spare a tear for the Defeat at any Cost coalition.  Or don’t.

Hat Tip: Instapundit

I do believe we’ll see a lot of this, as historians and serious analysts dig deeper into Feith’s book (War and Decision) and compare the source documentation it contains to the ”first draft of history” as presented by the MSM.

Rethinking the Iraq Critics
Opinion
By Michael Barone
U. S. News and World Report

In trying to understand news about the conflicts in Iraq, I work to keep in mind the difference between what we know now about decision-making in World War II and what most Americans knew at the time. From the memoirs and documents published after the war, we’ve learned how leaders made critical judgments. But at the time, even well-informed journalists could only guess at what was going on behind the scenes.

Today we’re only beginning to learn about what went on behind the scenes on Iraq. One important new source is the recently published War and Decision by Douglas Feith, the No. 3 civilian at the Pentagon from 2001 to 2005. Feith quotes extensively from unpublished documents and contemporary memorandums, just as in the late 1940s Robert Sherwood did in Roosevelt and Hopkins and Winston Churchill did in his World War II histories. The picture Feith paints is at considerable variance from the narratives with which we’ve become familiar.

...

...the administration allowed its critics to frame the issue around the fact that stockpiles of weapons weren’t found. Here we see at work the liberal fallacy, apparent in debates on gun control, that weapons are the problem, rather than the people with the capability and will to use them to kill others. The fact that millions of law-abiding Americans have guns is not a problem; the problem is that criminals can get them and have the will to kill others. Similarly, the fact that France has WMDs is not a problem; the fact that Saddam Hussein had the capability to produce WMDs and the will to use them against us was.

Indeed.  False premises fed by selective leaks have calcified the thinking of the anti-war left.  A phenomenon we see here frequently.

Five surgeons from big cities are discussing who makes the best patients to operate on.

The first surgeon, from New York , says, ‘I like to see accountants on my operating table because when you open them up, everything inside is numbered.’

The second, from Chicago , responds, ‘Yeah, but you should try electricians!  Everything inside them is color coded.’

The third surgeon, from Dallas , says, ‘No, I really think librarians are the best, everything inside them is in alphabetical order’.

The fourth surgeon, from Los Angeles chimes in: ‘You know, I like construction workers..  Those guys always understand when you have a few parts left over.’

But the fifth surgeon, from Washington, DC shut them all up when he observed: ‘You’re all wrong.  Politicians are the easiest to operate on. There’s no guts, no heart, no balls, no brains and no spine, and the head and the ass are interchangeable

You all are at least somewhat famllar with Gores film that predicted a huge increase in ocean levels flooding coastal cities and his other doomsday prophecies.  Well, the esteemed Walter Williams in Environmentalists’ wacky predictions writes that doomsday forecasts are nothing new.

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s ... hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

It’s really amazing that these environmental alarmists have any credibility left at all.  With regard to how much concern the government have about Global Warming, Williams closes by writing.

Here are my questions: In 1970, when environmentalists were making predictions of manmade global cooling and the threat of an ice age and millions of Americans starving to death, what kind of government policy should we have undertaken to prevent such a calamity? When Ehrlich predicted that England would not exist in the year 2000, what steps should the British Parliament have taken in 1970 to prevent such a dire outcome? In 1939, when the U.S. Department of the Interior warned that we only had oil supplies for another 13 years, what actions should President Roosevelt have taken? Finally, what makes us think that environmental alarmism is any more correct now that they have switched their tune to manmade global warming?

Read the whole thing.

A country legend died today just days short of his 90th birthday. He is more of my generation, but he was unfailingly kind, a real gentleman, he was married to one woman for a lifetime. Although, while he was still quite popular his wife was middle aged, with middle-aged spread, with grey hair and yet he still loved her deeply and I admired him as much for that as well as his music.

As I get older more of my family members and friends pass away and more of the people I admired, like Arnold, pass away and are not even known by most of the people alive today. That’s too bad, Arnold was worth knowing.

REP. FOSSELLA ADMITS TO AFFAIR, LOVE CHILD
WON’T RESIGN FROM POSITION

Rep. Vito Fossella, a married congressman from Staten Island, this morning admitted to having an out-of-wedlock child with a former Air Force officer with whom he carried on a longstanding extramarital affair.

The stunning admission comes exactly a week after the Republican politician was busted for drunk driving in Alexandria, Va. presumably on the way to visit his mistress and their young child.

“I have had a relationship with Laura Fay, with whom I have a three-year-old daughter,” Fossella, 43, said in a statement.

Fay, 45, is a retired Air Force intelligence officer who may have met Fossella when she served as a congressional liaison from the Pentagon

..."While I understand that there will be many questions, including those about my political future, making any political decisions right now are furthest from my mind,” he said.

“Over the coming weeks and months, I will to continue to do my job and I will work hard to heal the deep wounds I have caused.”

Representative Vito J. Fossella was driving with a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit when he was pulled over and faces a mandatory five days in jail if convicted, a Virginia prosecutor said on Friday.

...The report said Mr. Fossella failed several sobriety tests on the street, including a preliminary breath test on which he registered a blood alcohol level of 0.133 percent. After he was arrested, he recorded a level of 0.17 percent on another machine. The legal limit in Virginia, as in most states, is 0.08 percent.