President Obama and Bill O'Reilly (Part Two!)

Last night on the “O’Reilly Factor”, Bill continued his interview with President Obama which was not shown on the live broadcast prior to the Super Bowl.  As with the previous post I will go over this question by question, answer by answer, and give you my impressions. As before, the questions and answer will be paraphrased for brevity. If you want to watch the interview, click here.

Q: Are you confident that we’re going to win in Afghanistan? Is it worth the blood and treasure to the American people?
A: Yes, we will defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban. I’m not 100% certain, but our troops have done an incredible amount of work, and they are on the offensive. The Taliban are still going to be an element in Afghanistan, as long as they lay down their arms and become part of the political process.

Q: Do you trust Karzai?

A: I trust he cares about his country and the relationship with the US. But he has some changes that he has to make in his government.

Olbermann Lands on His Feet

It seems that Keith Olbermann, recently fired from his ‘Countdown’ gig at MSNBC, has found himself a new job.  According to Yahoo News; ‘Keith Olbermann will return to cable television this spring as host of a new primetime news and commentary show on Current TV’.  Current TV was founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt in 2005.

I have never heard of Current TV, not even sure if my provider in the area carries it, and if it di, I wouldn’t ask for it.

I have been watching Keith Olbermann on and off for the past 23 years.  When I was stationed at George AFB in southern Cali, we got the LA TV feed and Olbermann was the sportscaster for KTLA and KCBS. He was a riot. I thoroughly enjoyed watching him every night dissect the sports news of the day. He liked to poke fun at the rich and famous athletes that played for the various teams in the LA Basin.

President Obama and Bill O'Reilly (Part One?)

Sunday night, before the Super Bowl, Fox’s Bill O’Reilly had a 15 minute live sit down with President Obama. I myself didn’t watch it live, too busy preparing items for a Super Bowl party that my family and I were attending.  But I did review it later with the intent of going over the interview afterwards. But I decided to delay when I heard at the end of the interview there was going to be an additional 10 minutes that wouldn’t be shown live.

Here is my take, question by question, answer by answer (paraphrased A LOT for brevity). Before I get started, I know there have been complaints from the left blogs about O’Reilly interrupting President Obama something like 20 times. Get over it. O’Reilly has never liked bullcrap and he can smell it from a mile away. Plus, if he didn’t interrupt, Obama would have stood on the soapbox the entire 15 minutes. Like a lot of Presidents, Obama likes to hear the sound of his own voice. He is probably the worst though.

Q: Is Mubarak going to leave soon?

A: Egypt is not going to go back to what it was. Get all the groups together for an orderly transition.

Letting Teenagers Vote?

I think this idea is taking the empowering kids a little too far. State Sen Scott White (D-Seattle) wants to give kids as young as 14 the right to vote in school board elections. As the father of two teenage boys who are probably a little more politically engaged than the average teen, there is no way I would want either of them having a role in these kinds of decisions. I just don’t think the thought processes of teenagers are developed well enough to rationally look at the issues and really make informed decisions of this magnitude. 

Think about this for a minute. Nearly all teenage boys act like complete knuckleheads when they get behind the wheel of a vehicle. All of them know the statistics. The CDC says that “(M)otor vehicle crashes are the leading cause for US teens, accounting for more than one in three deaths in this age group.” Insurance rates for teenage boys are through the roof because of these statistics. They know this, yet they still decide to get behind the wheel and drive much beyond their skill limits. And now someone wants to let people like this vote? Good Grief!

California Gets Hammered Again

California continues to take economic blows from every direction. Recently, Forbes released the list of the 20 most miserable cities in the USA (slideshow included), and California took 8 of the 20 slots, including a staggering 4 of the top 5 (bottom 5?).  Main reasons for this many cities in CA to be included on the list are high crime, crippling housing value declines, and oppressive tax rates.  Unemployment in the 12% range doesn’t help matters.

I have lived in CA twice in my life, once (1971-1975) as a kid when my dad took a US Forest Service transfer to Redding working as the Shasta-Trinity National Forest Engineer. I came back to Cali (1987-1992) while in the USAF, stationed at George AFB outside of Victorville. George AFB closed in 1992.  I met my wife the second time through CA, and then I took her away from the sun.  She really wants to go back, but me, not so much. And with the state of the economy being what it is in CA, finding work will be more difficult than it is here in the PACNW.

Erik Scott

Here is the latest update in the Erik Scott case in Laws Vegas NV. If you are new to my blog I have been providing links to the Confederate Yankee’s Mike McDaniel articles that are following the aftermath of a civilian shooting by LVPD. I highly recommend that you take a gander at all the articles and related links he provides.

Super Bowl 45 (Now What)

The game is over, the keg is dry, the chips have all been eaten, clean up has been postponed until tomorrow evening (maybe), and all the dishes of potato salad and bar-b-q beef have been put away. The Green Bay Packers have defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 in what turned out to be a fairly exciting game.

I am not a fan of either team but I was rooting for Green Bay nearly as hard as I would for the Raiders or Cowboys. The reason for the one day alliance with the cheese heads? Any team that is playing the Pittsburgh Steelers is my favorite team for that day. My intense dislike for the Steelers goes back to 1972 and the Immaculate Reception. I still cannot get over that play. I firmly believe the Raiders would have beaten the Dolphins and gone on to the Super Bowl. Did the ball miss Fuqua completely? Probably not. Did the ball hit the turf before or as Harris was catching it? Inconclusive since the camera angles don’t have the entire ball in the pictures. It was a great play and will go down in the annals as one of the greatest of all time.

AOL Buys "The Huffington Post"

George Soros and his sidekick, Arianna Huffington, have managed to expand their media reach even further. This doesn’t fall in the category of a Soros’ purchase of a media outlet; rather AOL has agreed to buy “The Huffington Post” for $315M. As part of the deal, Ms Huffington will be put in charge of AOL’s new division. AOL head-dude hopes that adding “The Huffington Post” and Ms Huffington will boost a lagging AOL. Read Ms Huffington’s article on the merger here. This merger will include several different sites from both AOL and HuFFPo, but one that I want to point out is the link to HuffPost Divorce. I point this out because neither sites offers a AOL-Marriage or a HuffPost-Marriage site. Leave it to a progressive site to have a section on making divorce easier, (offering advice on how to make a divorce less traumatic can be a good thing), but how about a corresponding site on how to avoid divorce?

This could be really interesting as it gives an already widely read progressive “news” source and even wider audience, perhaps even gaining a lot of traction overseas. Even more interesting is putting Huffington in charge of news content. Do you suppose they will sheath the fangs a bit and give the news a little more balanced coverage, say like not pounding on Palin quite so much or not trying to defend the goings-on at some of the Planned Parenthood clinics that was recently uncovered? I don’t think we should hold our breath.

Weekend Links

In the past month I have posted here, here, and here about attempts by the federal government to get their grubby little hands on the Internet. Over at RedState.com they have more. It seems the FCC wants to look a little close at the traffic data with a possible attempt to manipulate the numbers for their purposes.

If you’re a reader from LA, or just want to know what is going on in LA, click on over the Patterico.com.  There are several stories today that focus on the LA media and their viewpoints, which, as you might image because they are a newspaper, tilt progressive. Unbiased they are not. One of the best is a post on the unbalanced reporting (opinion?) on Palin’s speech paying tribute to Reagan on his 100th birthday.

Seeing that we are celebrating Reagan’s 100th birthday I thought I would post a couple of videos from the Great Communicator.

In light of the recent reflections on the Challenger Disaster, take listen to Reagan attempting to, and succeeding, comfortable a grieving nation. I rank this as one of his best. “…and slipped the surly bonds of earth, to touch the face of God.”

Here is his Berlin Wall speech. He put the entire Soviet Union on notice. The speech is a bit long, but historic.

Take a listen as Reagan says goodbye after eight years as the great President (IMHO) of the 20th century.