From Mark Grimsley's book "And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864":

Eighteen sixty-four was a presidential election year, only the second time Americans would choose their leader in wartime -- the first had been during the War of 1812 -- and the outcome was universally seen as crucial. If Lincoln lost, he would be succeeded by a Democrat, certainly a candidate opposed to emancipation and possibly opposed to continuing the war at all. And Lincoln's defeat was quite conceivable. He was under fire on a variety of charges. The war had dragged on too long because of his mismanagement. His emancipation policy had converted a war for the Union into an unconventional and hellish plot to free the slaves. His administration had abused its authority through political arrests, the suspension of habeas corpus, and military conscription. He had intransigently refused all negotiations with the South and thus had scuttled any chance to reach a political accommodation. Under such circumstances, Lincoln needed all the reelection support he could get.

What's amusing is the juxtaposition of modern figures for historical ones -- Bush for Lincoln, Obama for McClellan, Petraeus for Grant. History is indeed repeating itself, and if Obama is elected, the slaves will remain slaves.

A $47,000 trip by educators to an exclusive resort, when the meeting could have been held by the district at a local high school. Read this.

Bill had a very bad day on January 15, 2003 -- the kind of day all who live in Windows World are familiar with. Due to the courtesy of discovery in the Comes v. Microsoft lawsuit, we have this memo from Bill to illuminate our travails:

So I did the download. That part was fast. Then it wanted to do an install. This took 6 minutes and the machine was so slow I couldn't use it for anything else during this time.

What the heck is going on during those 6 minutes? That is crazy. This is after the download was finished.

Then it told me to reboot my machine. Why should I do that? I reboot every night -- why should I reboot at that time?

So I did the reboot because it INSISTED on it. Of course that meant completely getting rid of all my Outlook state.

So I got back up and running and went to Windows Update again. I forgot why I was in Windows Update at all since all I wanted was to get Moviemaker.

So I went back to Microsoft.com and looked at the instructions. I have to click on a folder called WindowsXP. Why should I do that? Windows Update knows I am on Windows XP.

What does it mean to have to click on that folder? So I get a bunch of confusing stuff but sure enough one of them is Moviemaker.

So I do the download. The download is fast but the Install takes many minutes. Amazing how slow this thing is.

It's interesting how many applications in Windows think they are the OS and want you to reboot. It's part and parcel of the rather loose security framework Microsoft has built. Even more interesting was the admission by Bill that he needed to reboot his machine every night. Even in 2003 I didn't need to reboot my machine every night, because I used Linux!

But wait, there's more!

Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable? The file system is no longer usable. The registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place but now it is all crapped up.

Bill can be consoled by the fact that he made billions off of that "crapped up" stuff. I can't. My day of revelation came when I discovered I would have to pay again to "upgrade" to Windows 3.1, after Microsoft sold me a "crapped up" Windows 3.0 which never ever worked right in the first place, and about which I had complained numerous times to Microsoft tech support. That's what started my affairs with DR DOS, OS/2, and, finally, Linux (after Microsoft's trojan horse free NT Server install totally destroyed my OS/2 system).

My rant:

What idiot would pay to participate in a beta program -- especially one run by Microsoft?

President Bush, paying a visit to Isreal, went before the Knesset today and made a rather interesting observation on appeasement of evil:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," the President said to the country's legislative body, "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

He said this without naming names, not even the American Senator (Republican William Borah) who made the declaration that talk might have deterred Adolf Hitler from his agreement with Josef Stalin to partition Poland.

From the context of his remarks, it was obvious that he was directing the remarks at Jimmy Carter, who famously went and talked to Hamas (an Iranian proxy) and got nothing at all, not even promises of further diplomacy.

Out of the woodwork comes Barack Obama, with this counter-observation:

It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 6Oth anniversary of Israel's independence to launch a false political attack. It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power -- including tough, principled, and direct diplomacy - to pressure countries like Iran and Syria. George Bush knows that I have never supported engagement with terrorists, and the President's extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel.

Barack's point, which betrays an overwhelming level of insecurity, comes from a Presidential candidate who's afraid to talk to Fox News, and who withdrew from a debate scheduled to be held on the Fox network. If he's afraid to talk to Fox, how could he do better trying to engage either Iran or Syria, whose leadership is far more seasoned than he.

The response from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino is priceless in its brevity and incisiveness:

It is not. I understand that when you are running for office sometimes you think the world revolves around you. That is not always true and it is not true in this case.

Left dangling is why Barack Obama would think that a failed policy of appeasement would apply to him. Perhaps it's his endorsement by aforesaid Jimmy Carter, the leader in both failed diplomatic initiatives and application of force in the resolution of issues between the United States and Iran. The Iranians repaid Carter for his diplomatic acumen by waiting until Reagan's first day in office to free the hostages. [Reagan graciously showed the unity of the United States across administrations by dispatching Carter to Europe to greet the returning hostages, something we will never see from Barack Obama].

It doesn't look like a false political attack to me. Bush is merely pointing out the fallacy of Neville Chamberlain "peace in our time" style diplomacy with people who view diplomacy merely as a way of stalling for time until their swords are sharp and ready.

We have engaged in tough diplomacy with Syria and Iran over their support for terrorism and desire to own weapons of mass destruction.

According to some Indianapolis voters contacted by the NY Times, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's racist and bluntly anti-American rants have no bearing pro or con with respect to their decision to vote for Barack Obama.

“Why should it?” Mr. Crockett said. “No one should be tainted because of Reverend Wright.” “I think Reverend Wright will give a lot of people an excuse not to vote for Obama,” Mr. Crockett said. “They’re looking for an excuse, and this will be it.”

“People that are supporting Obama are continuing to support Obama,” said Mr. O’Connor, who has endorsed Mrs. Clinton though the county party has made no official pick. “I think they are looking at this with raised eyebrows about the attention it’s getting, but not from the perspective of changing their view of who to support.”

So, it's no big deal that, for 20 years, Barack sat in the pews and attentively listened as the Rev. Wright claimed that America invented AIDS to kill Africans, damned America, blaimed America for 9/11, called Italians Garlic Noses, said he was "coming after" him if he were elected President. This is the man who Barack called a spirtual mentor, and who, when denounced for his positions, claimed that Barack was only doing what politicians do -- lying about his viewpoints in order to gain votes.

Either way, the issue has great bearing on Barack -- he could have chosen a different church than TUCC after hearing the good Reverend Wright speak, or even challenged Wright before the people of the congregation as he witnessed for the truth. Instead, he was meek and quiet to the point of approval -- if he weren't, the Reverend would not have had an official position in the Obama campaign, would not have been the minister to marry Barack and Michelle, and would not have been the spiritual leader who baptized the Obama children.

What comes out of this whole thing is a question about Barack Obama's honesty and strength. If he refused to challenge Wright, was his continued membership in a church, whose articles of faith he has stated he does not agree with, done for political gain? When he did finally challenge Wright, was his departure from that same church for political gain?

Faith is constant, isn't it?

Divorced minister Marty Parrish used up about 30 seconds of his 15 minutes of fame at a McCain town hall meeting in Des Moines yesterday:

"This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I've been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a cunt?"

The room fell silent for several seconds while McCain adjusted his mike and started to answer: "Now, now. You don't want to ...Um, you know, that's the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don't .... There's people here who don't respect that kind of language. So I'll move on to the next questioner in the back."

Actually, if you listen to the YouTube clip, the room did not fall silent -- it was anything but in the immediate aftermath of the question. Had Marty not been taken from the room immediately afterward, he might have suffered a bit of physical abuse much worse than the verbal abuse he accuses his ex-wife (with about as equal an amount of evidence as his attributions to McCain) of having foisted upon him.

The question posed by Reverend Parrish was a slander first put forth by author Cliff Schecter in a book he wrote about McCain and why he views McCain unsuited to be President. The c**t phrase is attributed by Mr. Schecter to three "anonymous" reporters:

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Attempting to find anything on Wes Gullett or Doug Cole (the two names in the "anonymous incident") yielded only this, which indicates that Wes Gullett has also adopted a child as did the McCains.

This sort of question is just the kind of things politicians would love to ask other politicians -- take this anecdote from Hunter S. Thompson:

'Lyndon was running about 10 points behind, with only nine days to go... He was sunk in despair. He was desperate... he called his equally depressed campaign manager and instructed him to call a press conference at two or two-thirty ( just after lunch on a slow news day) and accuse his high-riding opponent (the pig farmer) of having routine carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows, despite the pleas of his wife and children... His campaign manager was shocked. 'We can't say that, Lyndon,' he said. 'It's not true.' 'Of course it's not,' Johnson barked at him, 'but let's make the bastard deny it.'

Lyndon Johnson had it right. If his opponent tried to deny the accusation, the headlines would read "X denies having sex with pigs." If McCain had answered Marty's question, what would the headlines say?

If one goes to Marty's page, one finds that he references Mathew [sic] 5:9, which is the famous "Blessed are the peacemakers..."? I have no idea that using a Lyndon Johnson campaign ploy amounted to peacemaking. Marty maybe needs to think this thing over a bit more. He claims to be an ordained minister and he claims that his wife abused him. One can expect the conservative mudslingers to dig deep into Reverend Parrish's former life before he became a McCain stalker, and we shall see what is true and what isn't.