Miscellaneous Threads Worth Reviewing:

As I have a few minutes to cover some things on the blog, here are some threads for your consideration along with some off the cuff musings on my part. Without further ado...

How the Democrats Could Lose (Richard Cohen)

While I could point out a few areas where I do not concur with his outlook, suffice to say Richard Cohen does point out what some did not seem to realize but what your host always has: the Democrats can lose in November. I will go further and say they could also lose one or more houses of congress as well even if that does not appear at this point to be likely. But a year is an eternity in politics so we have 2/3rds of an eternity until it is all decided and a lot could happen.

If McCain vs. Obama, 28% of Clinton Backers Go for McCain, If McCain vs. Clinton, 19% of Obama backers go for McCain (Gallup)

For those who think that McCain may lose the votes of a sizable chunk of self-identified conservatives, they would do well to consider the defection factor amongst supporters of either Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama. And with more Clinton supporters willing to defect to McCain if Obama is nominated{1}, those who think Obama would stomp a mudhole in McCain in November would do well to...aw heck, you are right folks, it is all over!!! Heck, it is so already over that you Obama supporters need not even turn out and vote at all -it will be that much of a rout!!!

But returning to your regularly scheduled blogging, we have this little tidbit:

Clinton backers warn Pelosi on superdelegate rift (Reuters)

The plot thickens folks...now Sen. Clinton's supporters are telling Speaker Pelosi to "butt out" essentially. Well, that is not how the article put it of course:

A group of prominent Hillary Clinton donors sent a letter to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday asking her to retract her comments on superdelegates and stay out of the Democratic fight over their role in the presidential race.

That is basically a nice way of telling Speaker Pelosi to shut up. I hope Speaker Pelosi makes it clear to them that she intends to speak her mind on the matter at hand. And that is not all...

Barack Obama Throws Grandma Under the Bus (Ben Shapiro)

This one is too rich for a mere small snippet to deal with so here is a larger appetizer:

Barack Obama will throw his own grandmother under the bus if it helps him get elected -- and he has. After the mainstream media finally caught on to the fact that Obama attended a black radical church for two decades, Obama made a speech in which he compared his America-hating pastor to the white grandmother who raised him. "I can no more disown (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.) than I can disown my white grandmother, a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe." Also, a woman Obama will knife if it helps him in the polls.

Here's the story of Obama's "racist" grandmother: She brought up a daughter who married a black man, then raised their mixed-race son when her daughter took off. Here's her supposed Bull Connor moment: Obama rips on her in his bestseller, "Dreams From My Father," for harboring fears about an aggressive black panhandler who accosted her at a bus stop. Not exactly the stuff of which Simon Legrees are made.

Here's the story of Jeremiah Wright Jr.: He was Obama's spiritual mentor for 20 years. He also says 9/11 was a case of "America's chickens … coming home to roost." He thinks the U.S. government created AIDS and distributed it in the black community. He believes America sentences crack cocaine dealers more harshly than regular cocaine dealers because of racism. God, he avers, should damn America, not bless it. He is, in short, a tremendously racist, despicably anti-American rabble-rouser.

For Obama to attend Wright's church is disgusting enough. For him to compare his grandmother to Wright is simply sickening.

Schapiro forgot to mention that Wright has claimed that Israel (and presumably the US or with out assistance) created some sort of "ethnic bomb" to kill "black and Arabs." Oh well, with the sort of space limitations with periodical and online essay publications, one must pick and choose of course.{2} Moving on we have this little tidbit from Debbie Schlussel on Sean Hannity:

Vannity, You Look Great in Brown: Sean Hannity Must Come Clean on White Supremacist Neo-Nazi Friend Hal Turner; Incriminating Tapes For Sale (Debbie Schlussel)

It is probably the case that many would presume that I have been some major promoter of Sean Hannity over the years because on several subjects he and I are to a degree simpatico. But on reviewing my archive briefly, I found only nine references to Hannity in it and they were covered in this thread earlier in the week.{3} But having done those things, here is my view on Hannity and as is my wont I am consistent:

--Sean Hannity if he has cozied up to white supremicists is a scumbag and deserves to lose all credibility. PERIOD. Notice I said if.

I have not looked into this matter and do not intend to but that is my position and it is not going to change. He certainly is a hypocrite (again, if the assertions against him are true) for speaking out against Jeremiah Wright's abominable statements{4} considering that affiliation on his part. If those assertions are false, then even those who are not fans of Hannity's should in principle stand up for him. Likewise, if they are true, his fans should in principle stand against him. That is at bottom what it means to be moral and ethical: avoiding double standards and recognizing the same principles apply across the board, regardless of whom they help or harm.

Notes:

{1} Something I would not have foreseen happening admittedly but this election year continues in so many ways (in this area) to go against the norm so in that respect, it should not surprise.

{2} That is the nature of writing for those mediums of course.

{3} I decided to compile and post that thread prior to finishing and posting this one for a ready reference should that issue crop up in the future.

{4} "Everything's AlWright" Dept. (circa March 29, 2008)

Miscellaneous Mutterings on Barack Obama and Double Standards (circa March 21, 2008)

For those tuning in who want something more than a weblog posting on weblog reformatting, I doubt this subject is going to come up again any time soon. Nonetheless...

The 200 space limitation on post tag length really has been an annoyance to your host because we like to utilize a variety of primary and secondary tagging patterns{1} at this weblog for easier classification of threads thereof. And with such limitations, if a post is found to have a glitch in it that needs fixing -either a formatting one, a spelling one, or something similar- we then have to manually re-add some of the tags after it is published to insure that it reads as it did prior to being corrected.

Upon things hitting critical mass in that area, and particularly since the weblog reformatting may well mean various archive posts may need to be republished to correct formatting or font colour glitches that developed with the new system, it became evident to me that the post tags in general needed to be tagged with shorter titles to minimize the sort of hassles that this sort of situation can involve. So without further ado, here are the post tags that were revised with the revised titles below the originals in sequence. First a few of the primary post category titles:

Dialogues/Mailbag Discussions

Dialogues and/or Mailbag


Miscellaneous Threads/Briefer Musings

Misc. Threads/Brief Musings


Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus

Lyrics/Poetry


Lyrics/Poetry/Haikus/Plus Musings

Lyrics/Poetry/Musings


Stray Links of Interest

Interesting Links


And then various secondary post tags in no particular order:


Capitalism/Commerce/Economics/Trade

Business/Economics


The John Roberts Court

The Roberts Court


The Fundamental Rights of Man

Fundamental Rights


Politics/Elections/Sociopolitical/Geopolitical

Pol/Elect/Sociopol/Geopol


National Security

Nat. Security


JunkYard Blog -The Bryan Preston Years/Bryan Preston

Old JYB/Bryan Preston


Perversion of Law/Government Theft

Perversion (Law/Gov.)


President Bill Clinton

Pres. Bill Clinton


President Ronald Reagan

Pres. Reagan


President George W. Bush

Pres. Bush


US Constitution/Founding Fathers/Federalist Papers

US Constitution/Founders/The Federalist


War in General/War on Terror/Iraq War

War/WOT/Etc.


Beer/Wine/Various Spirits

Beer/Wine/Spirits


Barack Hussein Obama

B. H. Obama


Hillary Rodham Clinton

H. R. Clinton


I also added a tag for posts involving President Bush's father. As the current president's tag reads "Pres. Bush", the one for his father reads "Pres. Bush Sr." While there may be some additional changes along these lines over time, I doubt there will any sort of significant adjustment of a whole host of category titles as there was in recent days which this posting drew attention to.

Note:

{1} Basically, every posting has some kind of primary post tag on it and the purpose of this is to insure that posts can be categorized without overlapping when it comes to primary descriptive tags. The secondary tags are simply a further notation of particular features to the post itself and in this area, overlap is basically a given. This format makes it so I do not have to do the sorts of arduous weblog updates anymore that were standard on this weblog from its founding through the last day of 2006: both lack of time as well as a desire to not do that anymore contributed to the post tagging approach we undertook last year even if it has been tweaked in minor ways since then.

Meghan McCain (daughter of John McCain) has a blog.

A Weblog Archive Collection of References to Sean Hannity:
(Aka a Rerum Novarum Recapitulation Thread)

My reason for posting this thread is to avoid cluttering up the thread that will follow it with these references and my notes on each. Anyway, here are all the mentions in the archive of this humble weblog of Sean Hannity in order from oldest to newest. Without further ado...

I have not watched Hannity and Colmes for a while but it is nice to hear that Sean Hannity did the Ash Wednesday show with ashes on his forehead. Now I realize that the Gospel for Wednesday speaks against acting as a Pharisee and I also realize that the homily I posted from Fr. Reginald talked about the significance of wearing the ashes. From most appearances it would appear wrong for Sean Hannity to have done what he did. But in this case I believe he was right...

I am not sure if this is what Mr. Hannity did but frankly it is nice to see a Catholic in the media who by all appearances (and by what he says) takes his faith seriously. And I am sure that for at least one day Alan had a fairly easy day because Sean was probably less inclined to slam his arguments. But not having seen the show I could well be mistaken. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa March 13, 2003)]

I will readily admit that when those words were written, I had a fairly high view of Sean Hannity and listened semi-regularly to his radio program. With the advent of Michael Medved to KTTH and their radio launch in January of 2003, I gravitated to that station as they had many of the radio hosts I had listened to in previous years. But at this time, I was still listening somewhat regularly to Sean Hannity on the radio and watching him on television.

Fox News has picked up Dennis Miller to be a regular contributor. He'll start out doing a weekly gig on Hannity and Colmes, but look for him to get a show of his own before long. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa June 21, 2003) quoting from The JunkYard BLOG]

The above quote was from a JunkYard BLOG (JYB) update of the sort we used to do somewhat regularly on this humble weblog.{1} My listening to Hannity by this point had gone into significant decline compared to in the two previous years.

I remember when Mike Siegel was a flaming liberal on 1090, before Rush Limbaugh's show jumped the shark{1} when Alan Combs (of Hannity and Colmes) used to have a noon show on KVI...

Sean Hannity at noon is up against Michael Medved - I like both shows but I listen more to Medved. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa July 14, 2003)]

I had started sometime before those words were written listening much more often to Michael Medved's radio program than Sean Hannity's. The reasons were varied and if the subject of talk radio is raised in the future on this weblog{2}, I may well explain some of the reasons why.

I agree with Sean Hannity that she can't win nationally. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 30, 2003) quoting from an emailer]

That was a comment about Senator Hillary Clinton from an email dialogue posted to this weblog. I am not sure if by that point I had stopped listening to Hannity on the radio completely or if I was still dabbling on occasion{3} but if I was still listening at that point, it was not that often.

Limbaugh's show originated four or five years earlier in Sacramento on a single radio station before it was launched nationally on fifty-six stations in 1989. Since then, he has gone onto be over six hundred stations (including Armed Forces Radio) and accumulate an audience of twenty odd million a week. And with Limbaugh's success came a new format for conservative voices which many others (i.e. Ken Hamblin, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, Michael Medved, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, etc) were to join making this the first significant challenge to major media. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 16, 2004)]

The above was a footnote where I was noting something on conservative talk radio in general and mentioned Hannity in the mix of a bunch of other radio hosts -some I liked and listened to (either at that time or in the past) and others I did not (either then or previously).

I was still at that point giving Bill O'Reilly the old college try but my patience was wearing out on him as someone I could listen to regularly. By that point, I had for a variety of reasons stopped listening to Hannity on the radio but I did still watch Hannity and Colmes on FOX occasionally at that time.

It bears noting here that those who share certain elements of a common view (as Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, and Novak do) will tend to have similar views on issues. As far as "tow[ing] the line", they do so with the Republicans much the way counterparts in the mainstream media generally do for the Democrats. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa November 20, 2004)]

That was a response to someone else who mentioned Sean Hannity and a bunch of conservative-minded people. The idea that they all "towed the line" or that their listeners did was what got a response from me -as I had (and have) disagreements with all of them in some areas- not any intention to write on any of them individually at that time.

Few if any of us actually listen to Sean Hannity and at least some of us do not particularly care for Bill O'Reilly. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa July 2, 2005)]

By that point, I was not only not listening to Hannity on the radio (and rarely watching him on television) but I had had it with O'Reilly overall too -though the audio of it does not seem to exist anymore{4} I had noted this on the weblog as of seven months prior to those words being written.

That's nearly a word-for-word exchange that took place on Hannity today--him trying in vain to get her to answer a simple question, her letting those questions pass between her ears as she lurched from one idiotic talking point to another. I kept urging Hannity to just hang up on her, ban her from his show for life, etc, but of course I was only talking to myself. And he kept her on the show and let her keep spouting enemy bullet points and nonsense .[Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa September 16, 2005) quoting from The JunkYard BLOG]

That was a quote from a posting to the JYB on one of update threads in years past. I commented on the overall factor being referenced there but not on the mention of Hannity personally.

If you were paying attention at all, you would know that I am hardly a fan of President Bush's at all. Nor do I care much for Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity as a rule. [Excerpt from Rerum Novarum (circa March 12, 2006)]

I doubt I have listened to more than an hour of Sean Hannity's radio show in the past four years. That comment was in response to someone who presumed based on stereotyping that I must be a fan of President Bush, Bill O'Reilly, and Sean Hannity. Nonetheless, I only mentioned Hannity to respond to the stereotype being perpetrated -having long since stopped listening to him on the radio and watching him on television.

My reason for noting this recapitulation of Rerum Novarum archive references to Sean Hannity will be made evident in the coming days.

Notes:

{1} Back in the days when Bryan Preston was the proprietor of that weblog as he was prior to about late 2005.

{2} Either on my own initiative to do so or (more likely) if a reader emails me on the subject and I happen in the mood to talk a bit about it.

{3} It is hard to remember with precise dates when I stopped listening to certain programs on the radio or watching them on television.

{4} I would like to find out that all the audios recorded with audioblogger on this weblog between mid 2004 and late 2006 are still accessible somewhere on the web -but thus far am not encouraged that they are unfortunately.

Still working on the template here and there...however I have moved from the dabbling I mentioned late last night to a more substantive approach and have found myself stumped. If anyone reading this knows how to widen these blog template boxes a bit, it would be most appreciated if they could kindly fill me in. The technology on weblogs has changed since the last major structural overhaul which was back in 2002. (I refer to setting the boundaries of the type and the boxes including the main area and the side margins, not changing colours of font or background or adding links to the side margin.) I also operated all my adjustments over the years from within the boundaries of an old template called the Sandbox even if I completely revamped it in colour and all other parameters.

As of yesterday, this is a completely different template format and while I have imported features from the older template (including font colours, background colour, various links, etc) I nonetheless have found a nut I am not able to crack format wise. The problem with this template is that rounded corners feature. I need the main body of the weblog to be larger -say 50% or so- but when I do that, the type spills outside the rounded corner structure.

Basically I either want to widen the rounded corner structure or completely remove it from the template. But at the same time, I do not want to mess up the weblog presentation. In short, any formatting gurus out there your assistance on this would be most appreciated.