Offsite Comments

Man, that picture had me exclaim out loud! What a moment!

From wildwood15's reply, I'd say, good call on asking instead of just deleting. I, too, wanted the facts behind the statement, because it would be hard to imagine West saying that about Palin, and I agree with wildwood15's later comment, it seems the article, not West, extended the characterization of "lukewarm" to Palin. West seemed to be speaking of announced candidates.

There's nothing "lukewarm" about the handshake and smiles, that I can see!

wildwood15, and others, as I commented the other day here:

Remember, kids:

Be aware of concern trolls.

Don't become a concern troll.

Don't fall for concern trolls.

ABC again:
"Assuming his role as the nation's pastor on Sunday…."
LINK and doubtless many elsewheres.

I didn't go searching for this. Just clicked the first article in the first clump of stories at the top of Google US News today.

Read this article earlier today. Then, just past 9pm tonight, I turned on the car radio to see what ABC thought was worth 5min of news. I heard just a second of O'Bama's voice, then before I could turn the radio off, the newscaster called him "the nation's pastor." I managed to just turn the radio off without smashing the switch.

Couldn't resist adding the caption to this photo currently on Drudge.

[Hmmm. Had to put the raw URL. Can one not imbed an image in a comment here?]

ANTI-PALIN PROPAGANDA WATCH

The can't-win celebrity beauty queen sure does get a lot of vitriolic verbiage for being so utterly irrelevant. :P

Sarah Palin goes behind enemy lines

"[The NE is] a part of the country she’s mostly avoided since 2008, conspicuously not setting foot in early presidential state New Hampshire at all during her two book tours and her 2010 tea party campaign swings. Now, however, with her luster dimmed and her national relevance in question, she has chosen to venture into the belly of the beast."

(Emphases added.) The article goes on and on in that manner. I couldn't bother turning to page 2.

The venom for President Palin will make it seem by comparison that they adored GWB!

Had the radio on in the truck, and heard a concern troll on Laura Ingraham. His line was, the Democrats would love to have Sarah Palin be the GOP candidate because it would ensure O'Bama's re-election. Laura asked, well, you don't think that, do you? The caller sputtered and finally said, no, I don't, but "all my friends" do. He said that nobody's going to think of her as anything but a glorified beauty contestant. (Really! Never was mayor. Never was Governor. Never was V-P candidate. Just a beauty contestant!) I turned it off and went back to picking up sticks from the storm.

Made me think, there really are two flavors of concern troll. One is the enemy who is pretending to be a friend. The other is a dupe of the concern trolls. Which one this fellow was? Who knows? Who cares?

Remember, kids:

Be aware of concern trolls.

Don't become a concern troll.

Don't fall for concern trolls.

JJ, I appreciate the job colorists face on b&w strips with unclosed areas. "Fill" tools just won't work. My daughter (then 15) did the coloring on one of the first comics I posted online, back in 1997. She did what I thought was a great job, too, considering it was originally a b&w drawing with lots of open-ended areas!

You may have answered this colorization question before (like maybe 1000 times), but one thing I've often noticed is that little hair that sticks up on Arlo's head gets colored in, making it a shock of hair instead of a strand, as it were. Since this is so frequently done, I wonder what you intend, and, if not what you intend, whether you get to at least tell the colorists about it?

Technically-minded minds love such trivia. :)

Ooo, to be able to edit all the places I mis-typed … (…) and — (—) today! When entities (or HTML tags) come out right, it's so nice; when they don't, ugh, eh? Okay, this one looks good in the live preview below the input text box. The live preview is a very nice touch I've not seen on any other site, but it doesn't always show up for me.

Just so this isn't a completely wasted message slot, here's a link to the master list, for those interested:

GOOD night, Gracie! :)

Accidentally :) heard Glenn Beck today talking about Ed Schultz's crude insults of Laura Ingraham (and apology, and "week off"). Beck opined, don't suppress such folks. Let them rant, let them rail. IOW, let them dig their own grave. My first thought was, leave them in plain sight so they can be publicly dealt with ("beaten up" virtually) like the twitterers have taken on O'Bama's new Minister of Propaganda, if one can do such a thing on Facebook. But advocating violence crosses the line, so, probably, yeah, object and get them shut down. FB would probably make that decision, anyway.

"Mildred 'Patty' Baena's daughter is breaking her silence about her mom's scandal -- claiming the ONLY reason people care about it is because Arnold was in an interracial affair." TMZ

Reading of Arnold's affair only further verified my already-bottomed-out opinion of der Gubernator — I found it as disgusting as the rest of the cheats Coulter listed. Since I just saw mentions and hadn't ready deeply about it, I had no idea "race" was involved until love-child hit the news. Suddenly, I'm a racist?

The more I've thought about this, the more I'm not just outraged at the tyranny, the more I'm disgusted with the WEENIES of the Texas senate. Where's the Texas-size testicular fortitude? CAN YOU IMAGINE what would REALLY happen if the Feds canceled flights to Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston? REVOLUTION! C'mon, Texas, let the Feds BRING IT ON!

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING!

Maybe this is old news, but somehow I didn't see this one sneaking up in the rear-view mirror.

Black boxes for vehicles to be compulsory by next month

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle. &hellp; in order to monitor driving habits and provide a snapshot of the final moment of impact if the car crashes.

The snapshot will be able to be viewed by law enforcement, insurance companies and automakers and the owner of the vehicle will not be able to turn it on or off.

Critics of the mandate see it as another Big Brother-style invasion of privacy by the government while others believe it is a way to keep tabs on drivers.

…A lot of cars already contain black boxes of course and General Motors have been installing them in almost all of its vehicles with airbags since the early 1990s.

GM's senior manager of field incidents Brian Everest told Wired: 'In the early nineties we could get diagnostic data, seatbelt use and crash severity.

'Currently, we can get crash severity, buckle status, precrash data related to how many events the vehicle may have been in and brake application.

'It’s about trying to understand what a particular system's performance did before a crash. In a great many cases, we can use data to understand whether it had any merit to it or not.'

The newest vehicles also can determine steering input and whether lane departure warning systems were turned on."…

By next month, every driver in the U.S. will be required to have a black box in their vehicle. &hellp; in order to monitor driving habits

Nice that "critics" got half a sentence.

It's one thing to have a crash monitor, but with just the addition of transmitters — and you know if they aren't there already they soon will be — any cop (or robocop automated traffic monitoring device) will be able to look inside your car and pull out everywhere you've been, every turn you took, whether you unbuckled your seat belt for a moment, and anything about your body that can be remotely monitored.

If laws were reasonable, this would be offensively invasive. Since cops have increasingly become "[you name it] warriors" instead of peace officers, traffic cops are increasingly required (and some delight) to be unforgiving, and citizens are increasingly seen as "revenue enhancement" sources, this is frightening tyranny.

Or is it just me? :)

Deseret News

"I don't have very much say to you. I know exactly what you did, and I know that you know what you did was wrong and you did it with a full knowledge of that," Elizabeth Smart told her kidnapper in a calm, collected, confident and emphatic voice.

"I want you to know that I have a wonderful life now. No matter what you do, you will never affect me again. You took away nine months of my life that can never be returned. But I know that in this life or the next, you will be held responsible for what you have done and I hope you're ready for that when it comes."

…

Assistant U.S. attorney Felice Viti said that in his years as a prosecutor, he has "never met a more poised, dignified or special person than Elizabeth Smart. ... I just thought, 'Good for her. She finally had the opportunity to talk to Brian David Mitchell in a setting that she was empowered.' "

Prosecutor Diana Hagen also praised Smart and her family for their commitment to seeing justice done. Every time the prosecution struggled with how much they should reveal in court publicly about the abuses Smart suffered and how much detail to go into, Elizabeth Smart and her family showed extreme courage to do whatever was needed for a conviction, she said.

…

Assistant U.S. attorney Felice Viti said that in his years as a prosecutor, he has "never met a more poised, dignified or special person than Elizabeth Smart. ... I just thought, 'Good for her. She finally had the opportunity to talk to Brian David Mitchell in a setting that she was empowered."

All clear. The "seven dead" (at last report) was four dead and three children critically injured.

Jerry in Fl, appreciate your concern. Seriously, nice to see how people are taking care of each other over the web now. However, if someone 'round these parts is in this weather, and is sitting there just cluelessly reading Arlo & Janis blog (no matter how wonderful!!! it is), I think, at most, one message ought to do. :)

We were trying to figure out how to get the two large dogs and four housecats to hunker down in the small central room with us. Thank God we didn't have to!

Jerry, we're under the front edge right now. Yeah, it's a bad one. Seven confirmed dead already. "Lost count of tornado warnings" the man says. I've been hearing reports I've never heard. Like yesterday's forecast "many tornadoes" and reports right now about "debris balls" a thousand feet in the air. Possible tornado a few miles south of us. Got Tulsa radio on live stream, but the AM radio handy. Should be on us within the hour, lightning is flashing, thunder rolling, sky darkening, and waiting for our rural power to cut out any minute.

Keep them prayers going, especially for the battered folks over in Joplin, but also all across the path of this storm.

Harry Reid rebukes Barack Obama over Israel (h/t sistertoldjah.com headlines sidebar)

When the Senate leader added, "No one should set premature parameters about borders, about building, or about anything else," the lights quickly came up on the vast audience and most in the crowd at the Washington Convention Center rose to their feet and applauded.

Just read the full text of Netanyahu's speech before Congress. Powerful!

Contrast. Netanyahu repeatedly praised O'Bama, in ways that seem, well, at least politically clever at painting O'Bama into his corner, considering Obama's '67 border comment before he "explained" he didn't mean what he said. OTOH, Reid seems to be opposing O'Bama's first statement, but maybe he was just playing into O'Bama's Sunday remarks.

Aw, Grail Guardian beat me to it with

Michelle: "Are they expecting us to drink this crap?"

Except I thought the comment would better fit the look on Barry's face. That guy in between them could be waiting for them to take a gulp and do a spit-spew.

I developed a taste for Guiness decades ago at dear old Sterch's, where owner Bob Smirch had it on tap, at the right temperature, too!(I was told the correct temperature would be approximately that of a castle basement.) If I must drink fizzy brew, make mine Guiness!

Somehow I just doubt O'Bama has the same appreciation. ("Have they quit looking? Can I quit pretending to drink this?")

One thing I've had a (small) problem with here on HillBuzz is the casual cattiness. Sure, the bad-mouthing and name-calling never sink to the vicious, mean-spirited, vitriolic level of the Other Side (or else the moderators are doing a magnificent job), but even the site leaders have been known to mock "Moochelle" in various awful ways. It's really disturbing... AW, never mind all that uprighteous carp! Aurora7777's comment had us ROFL! I can't imagine a caption to top it! "I'll let you back in after we've cleared the bump, honest." BWAH HA HAAAAH! The "honest" was a perfect extra touch!

Yesterday we spent some of the day picking up from the microburst that downed trees and scattered branches all around our house Wednesday before last. Then, about to head into town late in the afternoon, still under clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine, we looked to the east and saw towering cumulus clouds poking through a low, flat cloud ceiling. Some looked liked multiple nuclear mushroom clouds. Very beautiful in the evening light, going brilliant red at sunset. Beautiful to us, especially knowing it was moving away from us, but plainly fearsome for those in its path.

This morning the first headline I read was that 75% of Joplin was gone. An excited Red Cross woman's estimate made those headlines, but calmer authorities put it at 20%, still horrendous. Six miles long and a half-mile wide, taking out a major commercial area, schools, that hospital, and hitting south suburbs very hard. Approaching a hundred dead at last count, with more sure to be uncovered. As the mayor said, Joplin will survive, and rebuild better than ever, but it's a major disaster at the moment.

Also this morning, I've watched the radar as a a tiny cell just north of us has grown into another small but ugly-looking monster, getting bigger, wider, and seemingly aimed right at Joplin. Surely won't be as bad as yesterday, but certainly unwelcome in the midst of recovery and rescue efforts!

Fortunate that the hospital at least had enough warning to move patients into the hallways. Photos of the building show glass blown out everywhere. In the hospital parking lot, a helicopter lying on its side is nearly unrecognizable, and vehicles are piled on top of one another.

On one site, the first commenter blamed global warming (presumably meaning human-caused global warming) for the "abnormal" weather. Most delightfully, the next commenter remarked, why is everyone so excited? We get tornadoes every year. The knee-jerk "global warmist" comment reminds me of the YouTube of a lawn sprinkler with rainbows in the spray, and a woman talking about how they never had rainbows on the ground when she was young, it must be some government plot. And she was serious.

A few sources with vids and pix of Joplin (hoping the link gremlin is asleep):
AccuWeather
CNN
Weather.com

Will a late post on Friday's page even be seen? Let's find out.

Tom in Glendora, CA #comment-39046

Ah, yes, the Pinto fireball. I've never had a Bic explode, though. By the metaphor I just meant "disposable." Aluminum engine: Good idea: light weight; bad idea: had a rep for freezing up for good after so many miles. Sold it to my brother-in-law, and he and his wife drove it to Mexico and all over the place and eventually sold it, so I guess it lasted a good while. Link

Also used in — among others — the Pontiac Astre, whatever that was. Link

The Chevy Vega: the Worst Detroit Car Ever? "But even worse than the Pinto, many readers insisted, was the Chevrolet Vega."

Went from a Mach I V8 to a 4-cylinder toy. What WAS I thinking? Still, in 1979, we had a sprout business and twice a week packed coolers full of different kinds of bagged sprouts and toodled around town delivering to groceries and restaurants. The hatchback Vega was great for that. Can't imagine doing that with the Mach I! Utility is the determinant. The old 2-door Scout served until the twins. Too hard to get sleeping tots out of the back seat. A good old Astro was our first family wagon.

Mustang, Mustang Mach I, Vega, Scout, Suburban, Travelall, Astro, and Quest. Wish I still had ‘em all. Except the Travelall. It nearly killed us. Couldn't get rid of it fast enough. Eventually saw it parked on the street, wrecked up.

This is also not my Mach I, At least, not as I remember it.