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‘Oh My!’ indeed.  Does anyone think North Korea’s successful test of a nuclear weapon and the subsequent launch of several short, medium, and long range missile systems is something to pay attention to?  I am not talking about the kind of attention where we go running to the UN with the misguided impression that they’ll actually do something about it, I mean the kind of attention where America decides to stand up and do what needs to be done.

This is how the recent history of the world has played out every time:

European nations sit around and talk about the power of negotiations.
The effectiveness of sanctions.
The need to resolve things peacefully.

Those all sound great on paper, but in the real world things don’t always work out like they do in the movies.  Somehow that point is lost on most of the world.  Sure, we all live on the same planet, but some of us have a, shall we say more rosy view of how things work.

The Bloviator is concerned about what North Korea is doing.  I would suggest that you think for yourself rather than listening to what you hear in the media every day.  There is reason to be worried here.  There is cause to pay attention.  This is more important than whoever won that damn ‘American Idol’ contest this year.  While I am concerned for the 30k+ troops we have in South Korea waiting to apply the beat-down if necessary, I am more concerned about the possibility that North Korea will sell this technology to more dangerous nations.

The Bloviator thinks this week has been one big sales demonstration.

Kim Jong Il is the leader/dictator of a poor and isolated nation that desperately wants to make it in the big leagues.  What better way than to make some noise, blast off some firecrackers (potentially capable of carrying a nuclear warhead) and show nations like Iran what’s on the market.

I sincerely hope that our president is paying attention and doing something behind the scenes.  If we continue to waste our time with the UN we will get nowhere, while North Korea continues to develop their weapons systems and potentially starts to sell them to even more dangerous nations.  Perhaps this is the “test” that Vice President Big Mouth mentioned on the campaign trail last fall.  Let us all hope that we are doing the right thing.

America, up to now, has had a proud tradition of stepping up and acting to do the right thing, even when such actions are not popular to the rest of the world.  America is supposed to stand up for freedom and prosperity, and not apologize for doing so afterwards.

The Bloviator, for one, would rather be safe and proud of what his country has done than be ‘liked’ by the rest of the world.  America acts first and asks for forgiveness, not permission, when the stakes are this high.

Ok – so I promised I would be back, and what a week to get back into the bloviation game.  Nancy Pelosi.  All I can think of to say about this mess that Madam Speaker has created is ‘wow.’  It would seem that the democrats, in their blind rage of efforts to discredit everything the former Bush administration did, have opened up a Pandora’s box that now seems to include everyone – including the very people who started this mess in the first place.

Let’s think logically for a few moments.  If you know that your fingerprints are all over something, are you really going to go straight to the police to file a complaint?

Let’s think even more logically for a few moments and take a few steps back.  The word “torture” has been thrown around by a lot of people on the left…”torture memos” and “torture photos” are all over the news.  “Enhanced interrogation techniques” (or EIT) are the subject of every other news story on the 6 o’clock news each night.  If all you did was listen to the media coverage (like, I should point out, the rest of the world does) you would think we were cutting off fingers, shooting prisoners in the knees, and breaking toes one at a time until prisoners talked.  This is, contrary to what you might be hearing on MSNBC, is just not the case.

To put it as simply as possible, something your brother did to you when you were 9 years old, like throwing a beetle on you, making you eat bugs, or throwing sand in your face is just NOT TORTURE!  By and large, these are the types of EIT tactics that the government has used.  We’re talking about making someone listen to Pantera with the volume turned up (hmmm…no different than sitting at a traffic light in Jacksonville during Spring Break).  We’re talking about a prisoner who was made to sleep in a cell at Guantanamo with the air conditioning turned up so the room was cold.  Ok – come on here, Git-mo is pretty hot, I mean, it’s in Cuba, so is turning on the AC really that bad?

I could go on and on, but I digress…back to Speaker Pelosi and her constantly changing story about what she knew, didn’t know, was told, wasn’t told, forgot about, and now it seems, was lied to about.

So first she didn’t know anything about it.  Then it turns out she was at a briefing where she was told about the EIT’s we were using, but she’s so intelligent that she thought they were talking about something they would do in the future.

To pause for a minute:  First – I’m so proud that my house speaker is so smart that she can’t even understand the present, past, and future tense in an important briefing.  That makes me feel real good about the direction our congress is headed.  Second, even if she thought they “were” going to use these techniques but hadn’t yet, if she objected to them shy didn’t she speak up?

So next those pesky facts that politicians hate so much started to catch up with Pelosi.  Her story changed from not knowing that they had used EITs to now saying she wasn’t consulted, just told about it.  That didn’t make much sense, so then she threw one of her aides under the bus and claimed that he went to some briefing and told her, well, something.  That’s not very clear based on her comments.

Confused yet?  Well so was the press, even the liberal press, so they continued to press the speaker for answers.  It came to a head earlier this week when Pelosi gave a press conference that could have been a public service announcement to keep children from doing drugs.

This is the best part, at least to The Bloviator.  If you look past all of the erratic and spastic body language (the speaker looked like she was dancing the robot during the presser) the basic point she made was that the CIA must have lied to her.  This is about the stupidest thing The Bloviator has ever heard, especially since there is a stack of documentation to support what really happened during the briefing.  Apparently Pelosi is either the one lying herself, in some desperate attempt to blame the Bush administration for something she herself was aware of and condoned at the time, or she has somehow been able to convince herself that the garbage she’s spouting is the truth.

One way or another, she’s single-handedly been able to take an issue away from the left and point the gun straight at herself.  We’ll see how it plays out – The Bloviator predicts that nothing will come of it, as Pelosi is from the San Francisco district where just about everyone is drinking the Kool-Aid – but it’s a fun ride nonetheless, and at the least she has been able to make this issue so toxic that no one seems interested in it anymore, including the White House.  Press  Secretary Robert Gibbs essentially said in a briefing a few days ago that he, and by proxy Obama, weren’t touching this with a ten foot pole, and that’s fine with The Bloviator.

So, sit back and watch the fireworks.  I cannot wait to see what she says next.  Maybe she’ll claim that aliens from space (working in conjunction with the Bush administration of course) modified her memory.

Ok, so yes, it’s been a little while since The Bloviator has, well, bloviated.  So sorry, all that jazz, but I will try to find the time to make regular updates again.  There is so much going on right now, too, we’ve got the swine flu, a sorry ass government, a gargantuan debt, and a race to determine who the next Supreme Court justice will be.  There is no shortage of things to be pissed off about, that’s for sure.

We will also be restarting our weekly wrap-up column in addition to the random postings related to the stupidity of the day.

Just remember, until I get my next post up in a day or so, don’t pay attention to anything Joe Biden says!  Just because he’s a moron and tells the country that he intends to avoid all travel, wear a gas-mask, and dig an apocalypse bunker in the backyard of that massive compound he lives in doesn’t make things unsafe!

Ok – I’ll try and be delicate in how I phrase this, as I am, and have been, an avid fan of NatGeo’s programming for years now. I am an amateur astronomer and avid science, physics, and space geek. This being said, it is understandable that I’ve spent many waking hours either watching educational specials on TV and many more hours actually looking at the cosmos through my own telescopes.

I have been excited about the “Journey to the Edge of the Universe” for weeks now, my TiVo has been waiting many, many days to record this special. To my glee, I found it was a 2 hour program. Jackpot, right? Two hours of great National Geographic programming about my favorite topic, the cosmos.

Less than five minutes into the show, however, I am sitting dumbstruck by how, well, bad, this program is. Maybe “bad” is the wrong word, as I see lots of positive comments by other posters here, but at the very least, I am disappointed. Weeks of anticipation have culminated in Alec Baldwin’s poor attempt to recreate what the great Carl Sagan did decades ago on his own program “Cosmos.”

I am glad so many people seem to have gotten some pleasure out of this program, and I hope a lot of people have learned something from it, however at only 38 minutes in I have concluded that there is nothing new this “Journey” has to offer.

I hope not to offend anyone who thinks this was a great program. I hope your eyes have been opened to the vastness of the universe and what we know…what we think we know…and what we don’t know about it, but I promise you, there are scores of better produced, more educational, and less trite and non-patronizing programs out there.

To National Geographic: If you think of this program as a “gateway,” an attempt to get those not proficient in the lore of space interested in the cosmos, good for you. I only wish you would have billed the program as such and I could have saved some time on my TiVo’s hard drive. However, if you see this program as your triumphant gift of education, knowledge, and wonder to the world, then you should truly be ashamed.

 
Okay everyone – The Bloviator has to formally apologize for the utter failure to post, well, anything on the blog here.  I could use the excuses of being busy, visiting some family, traveling on business – which are all true – but really, The Bloviator has been tired.  Tired of the election, tired of where it seems that our nation is heading, and utterly tired of hearing about Barack Obama.

One quick comment, and then hopefully I can resume the normal posting schedule of at least an article every other day or so, including resuming the normal Weekly Wrap-Up schedule tomorrow.

The quick comment – what the hell is with Obama standing in front of signs stating “The Office of the President Elect?”  Yes, he won the election, but it didn’t take very long for Mr. Presumptuous to start milking the “I’m the f-ing President” angle, did it?  And did you notice, his Presidential seal is back on those placards?  

Here’s an image to illustrate the point – and again, more to follow in tomorrow’s Weekly Wrap-Up…

Earlier this week Senator and Vice-Presidential nominee Joe Biden said of Barack Obama:  “Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. . . . I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate. And he’s gonna need help.”  Biden even added that the Democratic base “would have to stand with them because it wouldn’t be apparent that Senator Obama would have the right response.”  Too bad they cannot seem to give the same benefit of the doubt to President Bush and the Iraq war, which now seems to be headed towards victory when everyone wrote the effort off as a lost cause more than a year ago.

Biden was trying to speak about the world testing an Obama presidency in some way, however whatever his intention was the words just did not come out right, and since then John McCain and Sarah Palin have been pounding the Obama campaign for it.  Biden’s comments seem to fit right into McCain’s claim that Senator Obama is simply not ready to lead, and that the American people should not elect someone who will need on the job training during such a crisis as Biden seems to be promising us.

One would assume such a statement would be big news, but assuming that would also require an assumption that the mainstream media was not already in the tank for Barack Obama.

The NY Times buried Biden’s quote in an article on page A18 under the headline “Obama Briefly Leaving Trail to See Ill Grandmother.”  Similarly, NBC and MSNBC News both have refused to run the full text of Senator Biden’s quote.  If there were any remaining doubt that these organizations were not in the tank for Obama this act should resolve those questions.

The Bloviator finds himself agreeing with Sean Hannity in that 2008 is truly the year that journalism died.  My last remaining hope is that once Obama is elected…and that is the way things are headed right now…the media will turn on him and start to report on the issues of the day again rather than spending their time covering up their candidate’s mistakes.  Who does the press think they are, anyway, to decide what the American people should and should not know about?  Their job is to tell us everything – it is our job to decide what is important and what is not.

So much has happened again this week, so much that it’s been hard for The Bloviator to keep up with things.  Obama’s ads popped up in XBox games, we had the third and final Presidential debate – starring Joe the Plumber, the New York Times trashed Cindy McCain, the Supreme Court upheld a decision making it easier for voter fraud to occur in Ohio, and Sarah Palin makes an, albeit short, appearance on SNL.  Topping all of that, The Bloviator has been busy in his real life too (you know – the Clark Kent stuff), so there have not been that many posts this past week.  So, let’s get to the Wrap-Up…

Presidential Debate #3 and ‘Joe the Plumber’

First things first, The Bloviator wants to know where the John McCain we saw on Wednesday night has been for the last few months.  Senator McCain was fired up and, while he could have hit Obama harder on topics like his tax-cut that isn’t really a tax-cut, McCain did a pretty good job of hitting Obama where it counted.  For the first 45 minutes of the debate it looked as if McCain had Obama on the defensive, hitting him over and over again on taxes and even scoring a great hit when he told Senator Obama that if he “wanted to run against President Bush” he “should have run 4 years ago.”  That was a good line, but it may be coming at a point too late in the race to matter.  With under 20 days until election now most voters have already made up their minds…and those who were still undecided will likely pull that lever for Obama out of nothing more than pure hatred for President Bush.

Senator McCain pushed Senator Obama on his response to ‘Joe the Plumber’ earlier in the week where Obama said, among other things, that he wanted to “spread the wealth around” in his administration.  That sounds a lot like socialism to The Bloviator, and McCain attacked that as nothing more than a welfare program.  McCain brought up Joe more than 20 times through the course of the debate, and at this late point in the game, if anything is going to resurrect McCain’s campaign it is Joe the Plumber – or more appropriately Obama’s response to his question.

Aside from from pointed questions and responses about the negativity in both campaigns, and McCain’s constant attacks using Joe the Plumber as a “Joe six-pack” metaphor, the rest of the debate was pretty much just the same old talking points we’ve heard from the candidates for the past many months now.  While McCain came out strong and kept on hitting, Senator Obama more or less kept his cool and just let McCain punch himself out.  By the end of the debate Obama was back on his game and just spouting the same old lines we’ve heard from him for over a year now.

Can we no longer ask candidates tough questions?

If you’ve heard any newscast since Senator Obama dropped the “spread the wealth around” response on Joe Wurzelbacher, you’ve likely been subjected to the smears of this ordinary America.  Joe, whose real name is Samual Joseph Wurzelbacher, did not go out of his way to see Senator Obama.  He did not seek to crash a campaign rally or anything of the sort.  Senator Obama was in Joe’s neighborhood so he decided to ask him a question…and it was a good question.  In fact, as Senator McCain said recently, Joe managed to get more honesty out of Senator Obama than all the mainstream media and press have been able to for the last 20 months.

It is because of this honest question, and the honest answer Obama gave him, that the media have systematically scoured through Joe’s personal life.  They have uncovered that Joe is really named Samuel (Joe is his middle name…big deal), that he is not actually licensed as a plumber (he currently works under someone else’s license…call the FBI), he owes around $1,200 in back taxes, the list just goes on.  In 48 hours the liberal media managed to uncover more about Joe the Plumber than they have found about Barack Obama in 20 months.  This is a scary thing to The Bloviator.  All Joe did was ask a simple question, and he got a simple answer.

Senator Obama’s answer reeks of socialism, and for that the media attacks and attempts to discredit Joe rather than asking Obama about his position.  The moral of this story seems to be that if you intend to ask Obama a question that makes him look bad you’d better make sure there is nothing in your past that can be used against you, because Obama’s Gestapo will be coming for you in the night.

Colin Powell Endorses Obama

In a move that is no big surprise for anyone in politics, former Bush Secretary of State and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell announced on Sunday morning that he is endorsing Senator Obama for President.

The Bloviator really could care less who endorses who for what, as I do not think endorsements mean anything and policies and track records mean everything, however I feel I must ask a simple question.  Powell was for the Iraq war in a way that almost no one else was back in 2003.  It can be argued that without his testimony in front of the UN holding that vial he claimed was filled with WMD agents from Iraq, the US would have never gone into that war.  On the contrary, Senator Obama claims to have opposed the war from the start.  Do you think you’re going to hear Obama come out and denounce Colin Powell for his role in bringing the US into this war?  The Bloviator isn’t holding his breath.

Now, I should also say that I admire and respect Gen. Powell a great deal, but in his press conference this morning he claimed that the recent negativity from the McCain campaign was part of his reason for deciding to support Obama.  Powell went so far as to say that McCain had called Obama a muslim.  I feel I must point out this could not be further from the truth, and in fact Senator McCain stopped to chastise someone at a recent rally for suggesting that fact.  One would think that Gen. Powell could have at least had his facts straight.

Sarah Palin Appears on SNL

This Saturday evening there were two Sarah Palins on Saturday Night Live, the character played by Tina Fey and the real deal, Governor Palin herself.  I should preface that I have not paid one bit of attention to SNL for many years now as it has been many moons since that show was anything close to funny.  However, it still gets Tivo’d in my house, so I happened to see the two short skits the Governor was in this week.

I have only one comment about the appearance.  What was the point again?  Governor Palin did herself no service by appearing on the show, except perhaps to look Tina Fey and Lorne Michaels in the face behind the scenes.  Her skits were not funny, and she had about 60 seconds of total speaking time.  The only thing of note Palin managed to accomplish was to deliver the “live from New York, it’s Saturday night” line.  Perhaps I’m just biased against SNL as I truly hate that show now, but I just do not see what Governor Palin gets out of a deal where she in turn validates the jack-asses on SNL by proxy of her presence.

Security Clearance Shopping Season Starts Earlier and Earlier

It was announced on Sunday morning the the government has approached both Senators McCain and Obama to determine who will have potential seats in their respective cabinets so they can begin the initial research portion of the security clearance process.  This is reported as a needed step due to potential terrorist activity immediately following the election, however The Bloviator wonders if this is actually a move to vette some of Senator Obama’s potential cabinet members before he has a chance to take office as President (as it does look more and more like Obama is going to the White House).  No, I am not a subscriber to the “right-wing conspiracy” mentality, but seeing as how Obama would not even qualify for security clearance in his own administration this may be a prudent step to take while the government still has the power to do so.  More on this story as it develops over the coming days…

In the interest of time…

Other events of note this week included the fundraising Al Smith dinner at which the candidates both appeared and gave very funny speeches, the roller-coaster that is the Dow, and the horrible article in the New York Times attacking Cindy McCain, however The Bloviator is out of time in this week’s Wrap-Up, so analysis of those items will be forthcoming in the next few days.

 
Oh what stupid things the candidates sometimes say.  Barack Obama told the New York Times this week that he is “convinced that if there were no Fox News, I [Obama] might be two or three points higher in the polls.”

He continued to say “If I were watching Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me, right? Because the way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak! I am the latte-sipping, New York Times-reading, Volvo-driving, no-gun-owning, effete, politically correct, arrogant liberal. Who wants somebody like that?”  

Pardon The Bloviator’s French, but what the hell is that?  Obama tries to clarify the point he was making was that “there is an entire industry now, an entire apparatus, designed to perpetuate this cultural schism, and it’s powerful.”

Boo-hoo, Senator Obama.  Have you been so spoiled by the mainstream media’s coddling and failure to ask you any tough questions or challenge you on any of your policies that you honestly believe that Fox News is out to get you?  Is this the powerful right-wing conspiracy striking again?  The Bloviator thinks not.

Do American’s really want a President that whines about a little tough questioning?  Wouldn’t it be so easy if there were just no Fox News, no one to ask tough questions, no one to actually look into a candidate’s background, and no one to provide fair, balanced interviews on topics that actually matter to the American public?

If that is all true, if we should just not ask tough or hard-hitting questions, then by the same logic could we just wish Iran away by telling the NY Times ‘the world would be a much safer place if there were no Iran developing nuclear weapons?’

The Bloviator thinks that Senator Obama had better toughen up.  He has exhibited this type of behavior before, whether it be his preemptively playing the “race card” with that ‘Presidents on the dollar bills’ comment or his constant attempts to label anything unfavorable to his campaign as a “distraction.”  

If Senator Obama wants to lead the United States, and by proxy the free world, he had better learn to deal with tough questions and, yes…maybe even a person or two who does not share his perfect vision of the world.  Obama may be getting a pass from the media during the campaign, but does he really expect that to last after the election?

 
Jermoe Corsi, the author of the bestselling book “The Obama Nation,” was detained by Kenyan authorities last week just before he was supposed to hold a press conference to discuss Barack Obama and links to the Kenyan government.  Corsi, who also authored “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” surrounding the 2004 Presidential election, was also intending to give a $1,000 check to Obama’s half-brother George Obama, who currently lives in a Nairobi slum.

Corsi’s claim, which is now published on World Net Daily, is that Barack Obama has been providing direct support for Raila Odinga’s failed 2007 presidential campaign in Kenya.  Odinga’s loss was followed by chaos and deadly violence in Kenya that, according to emails collected by Corsi while in Kenya, damaged hundreds of Christian churches.  

Dr. Corsi was intercepted by Kenyan authorities in Nairobi just a few minutes before he was to hold a press conference to announce his findings.  The Kenyan government has several different accounts of the event, ranging from Corsi being held to “answer some questions” to his not having a work permit for his activities. 

According to a Times Online story, “a source at Nyayo House, where Dr Corsi was being held, said the author had been detained for references made to Raila Odinga, the Kenyan prime minister, and allegations that his Muslim supporters had engaged in a wave of violence that rocked the country after December’s disputed elections.”

Obama’s father is well known as an economist and widely admired in Kenya, offering potential motivation for Barack Obama to have campaigned for Odinga.  Odinga is seen by many in Kenya to have been cheated out of the presidency in the 2007 election.  Barack Obama is very popular and was met by thousands of supporters in his last trip to Kenya in 2006.  Obama’s image appears on buttons, t-shirts, and buses throughout Kenya, where the locals are following the US Presidential election closely.

Corsi was held until just before his return flight to London was to depart and was then allowed to leave.  You can read additional details and first-hand accounts of Corsi’s detention at World Net Daily’s website.

In an interesting note today, Fox News is reporting that Senator and Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama is advertising on billboards…on the XBox 360.

Gamers playing the online version of ”Burnout Paradise” are now seeing virtual billboards along the side of the virtual roads reporting that “early voting has begun” along with the website voteforchange.com.

The game is produced by EA Games, who claims that they do not support any political candidate and would offer advertising to John McCain should he inquire.  According to EA spokesperson Holly Rockwood, EA Games, “like most television, radio and print outlets…accept[s] advertising from credible political candidates.” Ms. Rockwood emphasizes that “these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

The Bloviator sees nothing wrong with this, it really is no different than television or print advertising in my opinion, however it does make me cringe a bit anyway.  What happened to the days when video games were an escape from reality?  Now there is no place sacred from political campaigns.

Perhaps it would not be quite so creepy if there were virtual Obama and McCain sprites walking the streets of Liberty City in “Grand Theft Auto,” at least then we could have a little fun with them.

Image courtesy Foxnews.com