But where, exactly?

New Orleans, maybe.

National Guard troops stood ready and batteries and water bottles sold briskly as the New Orleans area watched as a storm marched across the Caribbean on the eve of Hurricane Katrina's third anniversary.

With forecasters warning that Gustav could strengthen and slam into the Gulf Coast as a major hurricane, a New Orleans still recovering from Hurricane Katrina's devastating hit drew up evacuation plans.

Since Louisiana has a competent governor this time around, it appears that the state and the city will be ready to deal with whatever comes their way.

Of course, it could still head for Houston -- so I may yet have to bug out.

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After all, he dared to question The Sportscaster's blatant shilling for Barack Mugabe Obama.

At a forum on Sunday, when Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell called MSNBC "the official network of the Obama campaign," Brokaw said, "I think Keith has gone too far. I think Chris has gone too far."

Insiders say Olbermann is pushing to have Brokaw banned from the network and is also refusing to have centrist Time magazine columnist Mike Murphy on his show.

I'm not necessarily a fan of Tom Brokaw, but I do respect him as a journalist. To argue that his criticism of The Sportscaster should result in a ban from MSNBC is the ultimate proof of the megalomaniacal view that Olbermann has of himself and his importance -- and his slavish devotion to the Obama campaign.

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But then again, what else is new. Even when the group is on the right side, it often espouses thoroughly wrong-headed principles to get there.

The case itself seems pretty straight-forward (sorry about the term) to me.

When a high school senior told her principal that students were taunting her for being a lesbian, he told her homosexuality is wrong, outed her to her parents and ordered her to stay away from children.

He suspended some of her friends who expressed their outrage by wearing gay pride T-shirts and buttons at Ponce de Leon High School, according to court records. And he asked dozens of students whether they were gay or associated with gay students.

The American Civil Liberties Union successfully sued the district on behalf of a girl who protested against Principal David Davis, and a federal judge reprimanded Davis for conducting a "witch hunt" against gays. Davis was demoted, and school employees must now go through sensitivity training.

Let's be real honest here -- the principal was wrong in how he handled the situation. While I don't have a problem with his having the position he does on homosexuality (or even with expressing it), I do have a problem with the directive to "stay away from children. And while I don't have a problem with his telling the girl's parents (she was clearly "out" in the school setting, and it would not be unreasonable for a faculty member to discuss such public information with her parents), I do have a problem with his efforts to suppress the First Amendment rights of the students who supported her. And while I oppose "sensitivity training" as nothing less than indoctrination, I would thoroughly support a workshop on how to deal with bullying, harassment and student rights.

But I'm particularly bothered by this statement by a representative of the ACLU.

"I think a shirt that says 'I support gays' is very different from a shirt that says 'Gays are going to hell,'" said Benjamin Stevenson, an ACLU attorney. "One can be very disruptive for a child's self-esteem; the other supports other people and their ideas."

And that is where I have a problem -- the notion that schools should be censoring one side of the debate on a controversial social issue. I've seen it all too often -- support for homosexuality or abortion is OK, but support for traditional morality is banned as "hateful and intolerant". Apparently all it takes for the ACLU standard to be invoked is one student on the right (make that "left") side to be troubled by the message for it to be banned -- but if a conservative or Christian student were to object to the right (make that "left") views supported by the ACLU and d teh kid would be deemed a hate-monger and referred to a sensitivity class a brainwashing program.

For the ACLU to support such a message ban while also supporting the rights of the KKK creates the warped situation where the most extreme views are protected by the Constitution, but mainstream views are not. And for us to attempt to raise students to be responsible citizens fully aware of and prepared to exercise their rights by showing them that government actors are free to censor "unacceptable" speech at every turn is utterly absurd.

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And here is exactly the sort of stuff that we knew would happen in Red China during the Games, which is why freedom-lovers around the world called for the cancellation or boycott of the 2008 Tiananmen Olympics.

Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights advocates.

The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to the police this month in an effort to get permission to protest what they contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in Beijing.

During their final visit on Monday, public security officials informed them that they had been given administrative sentences for “disturbing the public order,” according to Li Xuehui, Ms. Wu’s son.

While the women were released with an admonition that they could be sent to the camps at any time if they continued their efforts, at least half a dozen would-be protesters have been detained for the crime of seeking a protest permit.

So even though Mao's hardliners are dying out, the Maoist hard-line is not going anywhere.

H/T Malkin

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But somehow I doubt that we will be hearing complaints from the Democrats that the network is skewed in its presentation of the issues.

Just in time for the closing rush of the presidential election, MSNBC is shaking up its prime-time programming lineup, removing the longtime host Dan Abrams — its onetime general manager — from his 9 p.m. program and replacing him with Rachel Maddow, who has emerged as a favored political commentator for the all-news cable network.

The moves, which were confirmed by MSNBC executives on Tuesday, are expected to be finalized by Wednesday, with Mr. AbramsÂ’s last program on Thursday. After MSNBCÂ’s extensive coverage of the two political conventions during the next two weeks, Ms. Maddow will begin her program on Sept. 8.

The scary thing is that, as skewed to the left as Abrams often was, he was at least professional in his approach most of the time. I'm not sure that we will see any such thing out of Maddow, whose time in the cesspool that is Air America should disqualify her from work in any sort of news organization.

But key to all this is that MSNBC is abandoning all pretense of ideological neutrality and balance. And in doing so, it raises serious questions about the entire NBC brand, given the cross-over work between the two networks in the NBC stable.

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You never know what will happen in Houston, Texas -- it sure is great to be back from vacation!

Take this story.

A Houston police officer shot a man who was wielding a sword at him Saturday night, officials said.

Police found the man in a driveway in the 3300 block of Hastings. The man, whose name was not released, approached police with the sword.

Officers retreated, asking the man to put down the weapon. Police said the man continued to advance toward the officers.

One of the officers shot him once in the chest.

HPD has already released the video of the incident.

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Remember -- rising oil prices were all George Bush's fault -- at least according to the Democrats. I assume that they are equally prepared to give George W. Bush credit for the latest development regarding oil supply and prices.

You know, the fact that oil production by OPEC is up, and oil prices have dropped by 24% to only $113 a gallon in the last month.

After all, if shortfalls and price hikes are the responsibility of the President, then so are supply increases and price drops.

Unless Democrats are willing to admit their claims were all a bunch of partisan hot air, and that they have been engaged in rank partisanship on oil rather than attempting to deal with the price of energy -- especially since Nancy Pelosi will allow no votes on offshore drilling, despite the fact the price began to drop when Bush dropped the Executive Branch ban on such drilling.

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Are conservative blogs going to be silenced by the Democrats if they manage to re-impose the Fairness Doctrine?

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.

* * *

“I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right,” McDowell said. “I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem.”

"Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else,” McDowell said. “So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”

The implications of this are startling -- will Blogger or WordPress have to monitor their websites to make sure that they have not become too political in one direction or the other -- especially if a politicized definition of "fairness" and "balance" is being enforced by liberal political censors regulators? Will individual web sites -- like this one, for example -- be forced to open themselves up to views not supported by their owners, thereby cutting into their available bandwidth? Will certain bloggers be forced to flee to offshore web hosts in order to exercise the rights theoretically guaranteed by the First Amendment -- or will the physical location of the blogger lead to regulation of content no matter where the server is located?

Scary stuff -- and one more reason to oppose both the so-called Fairness Doctrine and Barack Obama.

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Well, that isn't exactly what he said -- but it is what NY Times columnist David Carr's comment in a CNN article really boils down to.

"I was taught when I was a young reporter that it's news when we say it is. I think that's still true -- it's news when 'we' say it is. It's just who 'we' is has changed," Carr said.

"Members of the public, people with modems, people with cell phones are now producers, editors. They can push and push and push on a story until it ends up being acknowledged by everyone."

And since the NY Times -- according to their own public editor -- didn't even deign to seriously investigate the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter story despite the easy availability of corroboration, it clearly wasn't news.

Except for those damn bloggers who kept pushing the issue after the elitist liberal media declared the affair/love child to be non-news. They kept up the pressure until it became news.

Call it the democratization of reporting -- something that Carr and the rest of the elitist liberal media seem to be lamenting today.

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I hope not, but I can think of a couple of cheerleaders I have taught recently who would try this stunt -- and who would have been in Austin.

How many cheerleaders can cram into an elevator? Apparently not 26. A group of teenage girls attending a cheerleading camp on the University of Texas got stuck and had to be rescued after trying to squeeze into an elevator at a residence hall Tuesday night.

One girl fainted and was treated at a hospital and released. Two others were treated at the scene.

The elevator doors refused to open after the pack of 14- to 17-year-olds descended from the fourth to the first floor, police said. Responding to a few panicked cell phone calls from the group, police and firefighters summoned an elevator repairman, who spent about 25 minutes extricating them.

Dumb kid stuff.

Right until the cable breaks.

Will there be consequences?

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We all know that sex sells -- but I never considered the possibility of using sex quite so explicitly to sell coffee.

Baristas at the new Belfair Espresso Gone Wild will have to cover up to meet the county's zoning laws.

The stand's sister store in Gorst features scantily clad baristas and "pastie Tuesdays and Fridays." But the Mason County has ruled that such attire puts the stand in the category of "erotic entertainment," which is prohibited in the Belfair urban growth area.

The Belfair stand opened about a week ago, but it was temporarily closed shortly afterward when county planners determined there were code violations, according to county Commissioner Tim Sheldon.

It seems that there was a great public backlash against the unusual attire of the young women in question -- but also long lines of cars on Tuesdays and Fridays. Proof, I guess that there is a wide range of moral views in that community.

And interestingly enough, this isn't the only place in the Seattle area that such issues have come up. Must be a Pacific Northwest thing -- and I say that as a guy coming from a region that may have more strip clubs per-capita than anywhere else in the country.

But I also have a different question -- what about health and safety regulations?

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It really all depends upon how you look at the numbers.

Exxon Mobil once again reported the largest quarterly profit in U.S. history Thursday, posting net income of $11.68 billion on revenue of $138 billion in the second quarter.

Oh, that is a very ugly number by itself. And if you look at it in isolation, what you appear to have are really bloated profits.

Until you break it all down.

You see, $11.68 billion is a mere 8.4% of the total revenue taken in by the corporation. Put differently, if you owned a company that did $100,000 in a quarter, you would have actually only earned $8400 during that time period -- which would mean that your annual income as a business owner would have been a paltry $33,600. So as you can see, the profit as a percentage of revenue is hardly exorbitant.

Now on the other hand, there are some other numbers in this article that you should consider.

In addition to making hefty profits, Exxon also had a hefty tax bill. Worldwide, the company paid $10.5 billion in income taxes in the second quarter, $9.5 billion in sales taxes, and over $12 billion in what it called "other taxes."

Got that -- Exxon paid $32.36 billion in taxes worldwide last year. Put differently, that means that 23.4% of revenues went to pay taxes. And going back to my hypothetical small business making $100,000 in a quarter, that would translate to $23,400 in taxes for the quarter or $94,600 in taxes for the year. O, yeah -- that would mean that the government would be taking roughly $2.78 for every dollar that you as a business owner made.

The other 68.2% of the revenue? That would be spent on business overhead -- including employee pay. I wish that the financial reports supplied broke out how much Exxon was contributing to the economy in terms of employee salary and benefits. I suspect it far dwarf that $11.68 billion in profit.

But then again, focusing on that number might put an end to the class warfare rhetoric of certain segments of our body-politic.

H/T istockanalyst.com

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Mental midget Keith Olbermann, whose rise as a political commentator is proof that even a second-rate sportscaster can pass himself off as a legal expert on a par with a noted Constitutional scholar like Justice Antonin Scalia, has handed down his ruling on the Second Amendment.

Despite years of fog created by the NRA and right-wing organizations, that isn't very complicated: For the purposes of forming a state militia, you're entitled to keep and bear arms. Obviously, those would have to be the kind of arms in use in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was passed — the musket, the wheel-lock, the flint lock, the 13th century Chinese hand canon.

Well, Keith, let's consider some things:

1. Every other time the Bill of Rights gives a right to "the people" it refers to an individual right.
   
2. Every extant writing of the individual Framers indicates they saw the right to keep and bear arms as an inalienable right of the individual.
   
3. No source dating to the 1790s supports your interpretation of the Second Amendment, while virtually all of the jurisprudence and legal writings of the first 150 years of the Republic supports Scalia's view.
   
4. A quick review of the proceedings of the state conventions ratifying the Constitution (to which the Second Amendment was a response) presumed the right of private citizens to own and keep MILITARY-STYLE ARMS in their homes -- meaning that Scalia's opinion, if anything,failed to go far enough in protecting the individual right to keep and bear arms.
   

But fine, Bathtub Boy, let's have it your way despite all the evidence to the contrary. You certainly won't object to this interpretation of another amendment.

Despite years of fog created by the ACLU and left-wing organizations, that isn't very complicated: For the purposes of engaging journalism, you're entitled to freely operate a printing press. Obviously, those would have to be the kind of printing presses in use in 1791, when the Bill of Rights was passed — the hand-cranked, hand-set, hand-inked lead-type printing press and the quill pen.

And since we are going to agree on the understanding of the Bill of Rights as passed in 1791, let's not forget that insulting and critical comments directed against the President of the United States may legitimately be punished as sedition (remember the Alien and Sedition Acts), individual states may provide tax support to houses of worship, public sectarian prayer may begin any government proceeding, and capital punishment may be imposed for a variety of offenses, with no lower age limit for its imposition. Oh, yeah -- no abortion or gay marriage, either -- and sodomy may be punished as a crime.

Most of us, however, don't adhere to quite so extreme a version of original intent as you seem to -- or should I say as you pretend to, for you would never for a moment accept even a single proposition I put forward as parallel to your absurd proposition. Indeed, you would never accept even one of my parallels, even though your objections would completely undermine your position on the Second Amendment.

And there's the beautiful thing about our country -- they say anybody can grow up to be a an over-paid, under-educated, historically and legally ignorant buffoon with his own television show. And in Keith Olbermann, there's your proof, and every-damn-day's "Worst Person in the World"!

H/T NewsBusters, Right Wing News

Posted by: Greg at 12:44 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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