An "I have to go work for pay" roundup

Blogging is fun but it don’t pay the rent. While I’m off doing what I have to do to get paid (note – my paypal/amazon buttons have moved to the right side column!) here is a round-up of things you might find interesting, in no particular order! Enjoy!

Say it again: Socialized Medicine does not work! Read this at Fausta’s and feel the chill wind. And the poor care.

Christopher Hitchens, oozing disdain for the Clintons and their race-baiting.

Pre-Dawn, February 3, be there, or be square: A lightshow in the sky. If you were a wise man, you might know what it means. I’m not one, and I don’t. But I want to see it, anyway.

Ed Morrissey says a sea change is taking place in how the press feels about the Clintons. I dunno. The press has invested 15 years into the “Clintons are practically perfect in every way” (just like Mary Poppins) narrative. If she takes the nomination, a lot of them will go scurrying back to her, so I would take their sudden awarenesses with a grain of salt. As we’ve seen with President Bush, the press certainly has the power to filter, marginalize, minimize and destroy a politician they don’t like.

If Hillary gets back into the White House there will be hell to pay for those who dared to write negative about her. So, the press needs to decide about Hillary: has Obama freed them enough that they can throw the Clintons onto the scrap heap of history? If so, they’d better be as thorough as a dentist drill about it, because if they clutch and chicken out, they will do her bidding once more and forever. Interesting…interesting. Also interesting that Obama is not trying to play the press.

So, Valerie Plame’s cover was blown even before Richard Armitage outted her. Interesting. Do you know how powerful the press narrative can be? I STILL regularly read people saying “Bush outted Plame,” even after Armitage has admitted he did it.

Remember when Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton “our first black president?” She’s endorsing Obama.

Fallujah, The Final Battle: Michael Totten takes you there Also, Pajamas Media has the much-missed Arthur Chrenkoff writing on good news and Iraq.

Also at Pajamas: Bob Owens writes about “the media blackout on the truth” in Gaza.

It’s the WORLDVIEWS, Stupid!: Bender sends along this very interesting article spelling out the difference between Obama and Hillary:

Hillary believes, to the core of her political being, that what changes people’s lives are government programs. . . . “Most Americans need a president—not everybody, probably not the two of you,” she said with a smile, gesturing to me and her press secretary, Jay Carson. “So you are free to vote however you choose. You can vote on a feeling, you can vote on a speech, you can vote on a debate, you can vote any way you want. But if you’re on the brink of falling out of the middle class, if you’re worried about health care, home foreclosures, and all these other problems, you need a president that you really can believe in and count on to deliver.” . . .

The unconventionality of Obama’s campaign is the source of its power—and of many of the frustrations and worries it incites. Like any presidential candidate, he has position papers up the wazoo, but his rhetoric is almost entirely devoid of programmatic specificity. This gaping hole can make his bid seem narcissistic, even messianic: La campagne, c’est moi! But behind it lies a rigorous conception of the presidency and a diagnosis of what ails the political system. Obama believes that a fundamental change in how Washington works—an end to the intense partisanship that’s reigned for the past two decades, in particular—is a precondition for major policy advances. He believes that, as he often says, “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” He’s convinced that unity is attainable through the right kind of leadership: his. [Emphasis mine – Admin]

Suicide attacks across Europe have been derailed. Terrorism? Still a problem?. It’s so easy to forget, when things are so awful here in the United States under George W. Bush.

Hillary and the Royal Blue Suit – seems like everywhere you look, that’s the picture, today. Is anyone in the world getting more press than her and her husband? When will they go away? I still think it’s going to take an “ill Bill narrative” to totally get him offa her stage.

Mickey Kaus thinks John McCain is lying about immigration. I’m plotzing, so shocked, I am.

Random Jottings remembers what I said about McCain a long time ago. I wrote a little snarkier back then, I think, and apparently…I was especially cranky that day.

Must get to work. Later, gators!