So Barack is going to give his acceptance speech from a minature version of an ancient Greek temple.  And what were those temples normally used for?  Worshiping the Gods, naturally.

(UPDATE: ‘Who mourns for Adonis’?  Absolutely perfect!)

Such an exceptional ego requires portrayel by the exceptional talent of Tennyson Hayes, who comes through again with an appropriate offering:

The Political Enquirer

The Democratic party has gathered in Denver for what will be without question one of the most exciting political conventions in decades.

Granted, this is like saying that Moe was without question one of the smartest Stooges. The political conventions have been pointless and boring for years, culminating in 2004, when MSNBC, during its prime-time coverage of the Republican convention, broadcast 38 straight minutes of Chris Matthews snoring and drooling into his lap. (This got by far the highest ratings.)

But this year will be different. This year there is high drama in the Mile High City as the Democrats gather under their official 2008 convention slogan: ``A Unified Party, United in Unity Together As One, Undivided.''

Already there has been sporadic gunfire between the Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton delegates. Political observers see this as indication that there is still some underlying tension between the two sides. Yes, Clinton has been making speeches urging her supporters to work for Obama; but at the same time she has also been using what one Obama adviser described as ``a lot of air quotes.''

It's hard to blame Sen. Clinton for being bitter. Here she is, the smartest human ever, PLUS she spent all those years standing loyally behind Bill Clinton wearing uncomfortable pantyhose (I mean Hillary was, not Bill) (although there are rumors), PLUS she went to the trouble and expense of acquiring a legal residence in New York State so she could be a senator from there, PLUS she assembled a team of nuclear-physicist-grade genius political advisors, PLUS she spent years going around to every dirtbag community in America explaining in detail her 23-point policy solutions for every single problem facing the nation including soybean blight. And after all that, she loses the nomination to a guy who has roughly the same amount of executive governmental experience as Hannah Montana. Hillary is like: ``Are you KIDDING me?''

Excellent stuff.  Go read the rest.

So, today's latest and greatest kerfuffle revolved around a question posed of Sen. John McCain over how many homes he owned. He couldn't give a definitive answer and said that his staffers would have to get back to them.

Democrats quickly pounced on this. Why? Well, they thought they had a gotcha moment, but I think they didn't entirely game this out, but we'll get to that in a moment.

They quickly attacked McCain, as seen in this video with Gov. Tim Kaine doing the attacking. It's got all the usual leftist tripe, including class warfare and belittling McCain because he's managed to accumulate wealth and supposedly is out of touch with the common folk.

Sounds great, but it's less filling. In fact, it's empty calories because there's nothing there there.

So, Obama's folks said that McCain owns seven properties. Politico turned up eight in Cindy McCain's name, but nothing under John's.

Why is that relevant? Well, because John McCain doesn't own the homes - Cindy and various trusts do. McCain signed a prenuptial with Cindy and each has separate assets.

The answer to the question posed of McCain is zero. McCain doesn't own any homes.

But here's the real kicker.

Why would Obama open the door to questions about real estate? Don't these two words mean anything to Obama?

Tony Rezko.

They should.

Can you say trap? I knew you could.

Obama and his staffers walked right into a trap. They thought they had their gotcha moment, and yet it boomerangs right back at Obama because it raises questions over how exactly Obama did manage to buy that mansion in Chicago and what exactly were his ties with Tony Rezko.

The Democrats thought they could paint McCain as the rich and out of touch Republican (Rethuglican as the leftists usually post online), but who exactly has the million dollar mansion? That would be Sen. Barack Obama. Right.

Who exactly is rubbing shoulders with the ultra rich ultra leftist George Soros? Obama. Who has made it a habit of rubbing shoulders with Hollywood types who have millions in the bank? Again, that would be Obama. You know what they say about the company you keep.

And speaking of ties to shady characters and company that one keeps, what's the deal with Obama's ties to Bill Ayers and Bernadine Doern, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorists. Seems that papers relating to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which Ayers and Obama were both key particpants, are being held up at the University of Illinois at Chicago so that researchers and journalists can't see what kind of juicy connections Obama has to Ayers.

A final question: Why is it so important to know about how many buildings that McCain owns? Wouldn't it be interesting to know what Obama's position is on his buddy Ayers attempting to blow up buildings? You know - like their terrorist group's plans to blow up the Capitol, Pentagon, NYPD headquarters, and other government buildings.

Did the Democrats really want to go there? Because they've unwittingly opened up a Pandora's box of bad stuff for Obama.

UPDATE:
Why do Democrats want to make an issue of this? Wasn't the former Democratic Party nominee for President, John Kerry, the owner of multiple homes? Those homes were generally in the name of John's wife Teresa Heinz, but the fact is that like Kerry, McCain married a wealthy woman. I don't begrudge either of them for doing well.

Lawhawk

Greetings, all.

I rarely blog about things in my life, but this seems to be plaguing quite a few other folks here at tBlog.

I've done a lookup on the originating IP, and it is owned by a Hosting company in Canada, Mediast Services Inc.  You can get to their website here.

If you try to follow the referrer link, you get this:  (At least in Firefox... :))

Secure Connection Failed 

67.228.219.3:2087 uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self signed.
The certificate is only valid for s4.mediast.com

(Error code: sec_error_untrusted_issue r)

    * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.

    * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

Or you can add an exception…

If you continue on through an exception, you get this certificate:

Never a good sign for a commercial website.  Basically, what this means is that you have to trust that they are who they say they are.  It's akin to printing up your own ID card, and expecting everyone you show it to to just believe you really, really *are* who you say.  Big Red Flag.

If I go directly to the offending IP:

Hmmm...  cPanel login.  Not terribly surprising, as the IP belongs to a hosting company.  cPanel is used for a front end to manage domains and web sites.  But, here's a clue!  cPanel usually runs on Linux.  I likee Linux.  Being the inquisitive sort that I am, I decided to give the server a good once over with nmap:

Holy smokes!  1,709 OPEN PORTS???  What this indicates is:

1.  Their System Administrator is either extremely careless, or a moron.

2.  They have absolutely INADEQUATE firewalling in place.

OK, I've been doing 'net security for longer than I care to remember, so this takes our little referrer problem to a whole new level.  I am beginning to suspect that this server has been rooted, or "compromised," and may be being used for nefarious purposes.  To the Batcave!

UPDATE:  13:54 GMT -6

Just called Mediast, and tried to get someone in Tech Support.  Big surprise, voicemail.  Left a message outlining the situation.  Will update this post as appropriate.

UPDATE:  15:13 gmt -6

Haven't heard anything from the hosting company, so I shot them e-mail to support@mediast.com and cced tblog.  Just got this:

This is the mail system at host mail34a.mail.iad.mlsrvr.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can
delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system <support@tblog.com>: permission denied. Command output: maildrop: maildir over quota.

FINAL UPDATE:  16:18 GMT -6

Cancel Red Alert.  Apparently Nickster OWNS Mediast, and is looking into why we're getting so many entries.  Looks like we're safe!  :)

THE LEFT VS. FREE SPEECH

AFTER a lecture to the Marine Memorial Association last week, a reporter thrust a mike toward me and asked if I thought I should be tried for war crimes for my columns in The Post supporting our military.

The reporter - who avoided revealing what outlet he was with - thought he was being wonderfully clever, but what fascinated me about the silly encounter (it was in San Francisco, after all) was how unintentionally revealing it was about the shameless hypocrisy of the left.

Think about it: For expressing my views to readers like you on these pages, hardcore leftists believe I should be put on trial as a war criminal.

It tells you all you need to know about the extreme left's view of the First Amendment: Free speech is great, as long as it's their free speech (or extreme pornography). But dissenting views must be censored. The more effective the opponent, the more important it is to shut him down.

The extreme left loves to pretend it stands for freedom. It never has and never will. From the Reign of Terror in Paris onward, its core agenda has been the tyranny of egomaniacal intellectuals. The hard left hates an open debate - especially these days, when it's out of new ideas.

The left pretends that campuses should enjoy freedom of speech, yet activist students shout down, harass and even attack speakers whose views they dislike. That's brownshirt behavior, folks - as surely as show trials are Stalinist.

Hardcore leftists never welcome a freewheeling debate - they'd rather force their beliefs on the rest of us. It's an article of faith for the left that folks like you and me are too stupid to know what's good for us (we're so dumb, some of us even believe in God).

For many years, the left's tactic was to pretend to care about average citizens. In the last century, the motto was the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (still a dictatorship, of course). Then, when American workers showed no interest in the Sovietization of Michigan, outraged leftists retreated into the Dictatorship of the Intellectuals.

Now we have the would-be dictatorship of the pseudo-intellectuals.

The stunning hypocrisy of the march-in-step left was brought home to me again on Sunday while I waited in a green room for a C-Span spot.

The show preceding mine featured a young woman, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan, who's published a book about the poor, innocent, kitten-loving prisoners at Guantanamo. Her interview climaxed with the claim that Guantanamo is the equivalent of the Holocaust.

I guarantee you that no one from MoveOn or DailyKos questioned that outrageous comparison. (Nor did the patsy interviewer challenge it.)

The Holocaust's victims were 6 million innocents. The handful of prisoners at Guantanamo are accused terrorists. Guantanamo has no gas chambers; prisoners aren't forced into slave labor. They aren't tortured or starved or shot. And their trials are open to members of the press.

The truly outrageous aspect of such comparisons is that the American left, with its Stalin-redux willingness to rearrange history, neglects to mention that, outside of Japan, all of the 20th century's great totalitarian regimes had roots on the political left.

It wasn't just Lenin and Stalin whose propaganda machine prefigured MoveOn. Nazi is an acronym for "National Socialist." Read Mein Kampf. It isn't a tribute to free-market capitalism, folks. Mussolini was a populist. Mao was a leftist, as was Pol Pot. The last century's worst censors and book burners all emerged from leftist ideologies.

At the moment, the American left evokes our Communists in 1939, who contorted themselves to justify the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Stalin and Hitler. As this column recently pointed out, Support Our Troops, Bring Them Home! disappeared from the political scene the instant Obama called for sending those troops to Afghanistan and Pakistan, instead of back to Fort Hood.

For the hardcore left, the party line always trumps conscience. MoveOn isn't new - it's just Pravda with poor punctuation.

The more I think about that proposed war-crimes trial, the more excited I get. If we could just delay it until President Obama invades Pakistan, he and I could share the prisoners' docket together.

Of course, the charges he'd face would be far worse, given that Saddam Hussein was a genocidal dictator and Pakistan's a democracy. But the left is right: We can't let war crimes go unpunished.

Ralph Peters' latest book is "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Broken World."

Outstanding.

New York Post

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on Democratic proposals to bring relief to Americans at the pump:

“Democrats offered a real solution to high energy prices that would bring immediate relief within 10 days by forcing the President to free our oil from the nation’s stockpile.  The Republicans propose to giveaway public lands to Big Oil, which will not immediately reduce the price at the pump and save Americans only 2 cents 10 years from now.  This Republican hoax is unworthy of the serious debate we must have to reduce the price at the pump and promote energy independence.

“House Republicans have opposed forcing oil companies to drill on the 68 million acres they already control, new investments in renewable energy, increasing vehicle fuel efficiency standards, making mass transit more affordable, cracking down on price gouging, and releasing oil from the government’s stockpile.  When it comes to energy policy, Republicans are once again promoting the interests of Big Oil and the Bush Administration that has resulted in $4 a gallon of gasoline.

“Democrats in Congress are aggressively addressing the range of economic issues confronting American families, and in the past few weeks alone, protected homeowners from foreclosure, invested in college affordability, ensured women receive equal pay for equal work, protected our children from toxic toys and products, and made another historic investment in veterans healthcare.  Democrats are poducing and passing real economic solutions for the American people.”

Nancy, you ignorant slut...

Isn’t it interesting how releasing 10 billion barrels of oil from ANWR will make only a one cent difference in the price of gasoline, but releasing 700 million from the petroleum reserve will make a twenty or thirty cent difference?

Link

A few laps into Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix and few would have given McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen much chance of victory. Yes, he was clearly faster than those behind him, but it was also obvious he didn’t have the pace to live with team mate Lewis Hamilton and the Ferrari of Felipe Massa ahead of him.

His chances changed dramatically, however, as his rivals hit trouble. First came a front-left damaged tyre for Hamilton at just gone half distance, which dropped the Englishman from second to 10th. Then Massa was robbed of almost certain victory by an engine failure just three laps from home.

"I feel sorry for Felipe because he drove a great race, but my car felt good and I knew I could push for the victory,” said Kovalainen after his maiden win. “This is a great moment for me, something I’ve been targeting for many years. Hopefully, this victory will be the first of many."

Hamilton was philosophical after his misfortune saw him finish fifth, enough at least for him to retain a healthy advantage in the title standings. A poor start from pole dropped him behind Massa on lap one, but the Brazilian’s late demise ensured a bad race was not as disastrous as it might have been for the Briton.

“I feel I could have had a go at passing him (Massa), but the damaged tyre halted my progress,” said Hamilton. “I don’t yet know what happened. But at least I scored four points and maintained my lead in the championship, so this result is not too bad for me."

Massa was understandably devastated after driving a superb race, which, had he won, would have seen him leave Budapest leading the championship. As it is he now lies third on 54 points, three behind team mate Kimi Raikkonen and eight shy of Hamilton.

"It happened completely without warning, without giving the slightest indication,” said the Brazilian of his engine failure. “I was managing the race, because I had a good advantage over second place after Hamilton was delayed with a problem and I was taking no risks whatsoever. I am very frustrated at the moment, because today we had a great car and we had done everything perfectly until just a few kilometres from the finish.

“Unfortunately, racing can be a cruel sport. We had given it our all, but these things can happen. Now we must not give up, but instead we must react quickly. There are seven races to go and 70 points up for grabs, which means there is plenty of time to make up ground. Our rivals are strong but we have shown we are at their level."

Ferrari’s woes allowed McLaren to take a significant bite out of the Italian team’s lead in the constructors’ championship, with the difference now just 11 points.

Serious bummer.  At least Kimmi had an amazing drive toward the end.  I had to move my Ferrari flag to half-staff...

F1.com

SHELBYVILLE, Tenn. - Workers at the Tyson Foods poultry processing plant in Shelbyville will no longer have a paid day off on Labor Day but will instead be given the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr as a holiday. 

According to a news release from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, a new 5-year contract at the plant included the change to accommodate the hundreds of Somali Muslims who work at the plant .

Eid al-Fitr — which falls on Oct. 1 this year — marks the end of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting.

Union leaders say implementing the holiday was important for the nearly 700 Muslims, many of them Somalis, who work at the plant that employs a total of 1,200 people.

The Shelbyville Times-Gazette newspaper quotes union spokesman Randy Hadley as saying the negotiating team felt this change was "extremely crucial, since this holiday is as important to Muslims as Christmas is to Christians."

The newspaper also quotes the union as saying two prayer rooms have been created at the Shelbyville Tyson Foods' plant " to allow Muslim workers to pray twice a day and return to work without leaving the plant."

And the dhimmification of the US continues apace...

One News Now

Let them know what you think:  Customer Service Form

The founder of the legendary rock band Queen has completed his doctoral thesis in astrophysics after taking a 30-year break to play some guitar.

Brian May's thesis examines the mysterious phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, a misty diffuse cone of light that appears in the western sky after sunset and in the eastern sky before sunrise. Casual observers, if they live under very dark rural skies, can best see the light two to three hours before sunrise as they look east, and many people have been fooled into seeing it as the first sign of morning twilight. A Persian astronomer who lived around the 12th century referred to it as "false dawn" in a poem.

Astronomers now know that Zodiacal light represents reflected sunlight shining on scattered space debris clustered most densely near the sun. The millions of particles range in size from tiny asteroids to microscopic dust grains, and extend outward beyond the orbit of Mars.

May's work focuses on an instrument that recorded 250 scans of morning and evening Zodiacal light between 1971 and 1972. The Fabry-Perot Spectrometer is located at the Observatorio del Teide at Izana in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

The completed thesis appears as the book "A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud" (Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd., 2008).

"I have thoroughly enjoyed my years playing guitar and recording music with Queen, but it's extremely gratifying to see the publication of my thesis," May said. "I've been fascinated with astronomy for years, and I was happy to finally complete my Ph.D. last year and record my studies of the Zodiacal Light in this book."

May officially received his doctorate on Aug. 24, 2007, from the Imperial College in London. He also gained the appointment of chancellor for Liverpool John Moores University in November of that year, showing that he's not just any guitar hero.

Cool.

Live Science

This is rich. A dispatch by the Associated Press's Mike Glover, filed from Rolla, Mo., during the wee hours this morning (4:39 a.m. Eastern Time), seems to be the latest example of "accountability journalism." Glover credits Barack Obama for his high-minded, if possibly unpopular, approach to the problem of high gasoline prices:

Obama is once again betting that his eloquence can persuade price-weary consumers--read that as voters--to take the long view and not jump at a short-term fix when it comes to soaring energy prices.

It worked in his presidential primary contest against New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton when she proposed a "gas tax holiday" for the summer, a pitch he opposed despite its popularity with many voters. But that was in April before gasoline shot past $4 a gallon. . . .

At issue for Obama's Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, is opening up offshore drilling to boost production, a move McCain and others GOP lawmakers say would increase supply and help control soaring gasoline prices. Opponents, including Obama and many other Democrats, say new offshore oil would be years away from reaching consumers and even then would make little difference in prices and the ongoing U.S. need for foreign oil. . . .

Obama seeks to turn the issue on its head, arguing that McCain and Bush are practicing the old politics of simply promising people something that's symbolic without addressing the real problem. Discounting drilling, he proposes energy rebates, a crackdown on oil speculators who manipulate the market and a renewed focus on energy alternatives.

Obama was right about the gas-tax holiday, a temporary measure that would have lowered the retail price of gasoline only temporarily and by only about 5%. But drilling would increase supply, and therefore lower prices, over the long term--and the mere promise of a change in policy vis-à-vis drilling has already reduced oil prices in the past few weeks.

As for Obama's opposition to gimmicks, that promise lasted less than seven hours. In another Glover dispatch, filed from St. Petersburg, Fla., at 11:01 a.m. Eastern, the AP reports on Obama's latest brainstorm:

Obama on Friday called for a $1,000 "emergency" rebate to consumers to offset soaring energy costs amid fresh signs of a struggling economy with the nation's unemployment rate climbing to a four-year high.

Obama told a town-hall meeting the rebate would be financed with a windfall profits tax on the oil industry.

It doesn't seem to occur to Obama that the oil companies would pass the "windfall profits tax" on to consumers. What a great plan: You get relief from $4-a-gallon gas, and the only downside is $5- or $6-a-gallon gas!

What a poltroon.

WSJ Online