The audacity of chutzpah.

After 20 years of church membership, Senator Gravitas now claims he had no idea of the anti-American, leftist hate speech from his pastor,

“None of these statements were ones I had heard myself personally in the pews,” Obama told FOX News. “Once I saw them I had to be very clear about the fact that these are not statements that I am comfortable with. I reject them completely they are not ones that reflect my values or my ideals.”

Right.

Are we back to parsing statements, and redefining the meaning of “is?”

Better yet, why don’t we just define what Obama is lying about.

If in fact he never heard Wright’s hate-filled sermons, it simply means that he wasn’t in attendance on the numerous times that Wright went on a rant.

But, it doesn’t mean that Senator Gravitas wasn’t aware of Wright’s words, or his separatist views. And it doesn’t explain why he waited until now to disavow Wright.

It simply means he never heard it from the pews. And frankly, that’s just not good enough.

It’s clever, but not clever enough.

Ok Hillary, the ball is teed it up for you. If you don’t slap this sucker baldheaded, then you don’t deserve the nomination.

Bob’s Bites asks, Is Obama Lying?

He expects us to believe, that in twenty years of attending the same church, he never knew his pastor hated America. I find it hard to believe he didn’t know about the hatred Rev. Wright has for America. This man preaches about America spreading HIV to blacks on purpose, planning Sept. 11, 2001, and preaches God Damn America. How in the world can Obama not have heard about this in 20 years of attending this church.

Update : The Smoking Gun ….. In a story by the NYT [ screenshot ] dated March 6, 2007, Jeremiah Wright recalls a telephone conversation with Obama. In that call, Obama explains why it was necessary to distance himself from Wright.

“You can get kind of rough in the sermons, so what we’ve decided is that it’s best for you not to be out there in public.”

That clanging sound you hear is the sound of all four tires flying off the Obamagasm Express.

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Update : Obama campaign throws Wright under the bus. But, MSNBC is not above a little moral equivalence, comparing Wright’s hate speech with recent comments by Geraldine Ferarro…

Wright was the latest in a series of advisers to Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., who have stepped aside as supporters of both candidates trade racially charged accusations.

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Update : Youtube pulls the Wright “G-D America” video (h/t velvethammer)

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Here are a few stories that have caught my attention today…

The Airborne Laser Cannon — Ready to Deploy

Creating a laser that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we’re not talking aluminum cans. Boeing’s new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations—the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

“Lower the drawbridge” … Yuma AZ ponders digging a moat (I kid you not)

There have been virtual fences, real fences, increased patrols and night-vision cameras. Now the latest initiative by the US to seal its increasingly porous border with Mexico harks back to one of the oldest approaches: dig a moat. City officials in Yuma, in south-western Arizona, have come up with a scheme to create a “security channel” along the nearby border by reviving a derelict two-mile stretch of the Colorado river.

“The moats that I’ve seen circled the castle and allowed you to protect yourself, and that’s kind of what we’re looking at here,” Yuma county sheriff Ralph Ogden told the Associated Press. The scheme would see engineers dig out a two-mile stretch of a 180-hectare (440-acre) wetland known as Hunters Hole.

Harvard student database hacked, posted on BitTorrent

Harvard University says about 10,000 of last year’s applicants may have had their personal information compromised.

At least 6,600 Social Security numbers were exposed. Worse, a compressed 125 M-byte file containing the stolen student data is currently available via BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer network.

In a statement published Monday night Harvard officials said the database containing summaries of GSAS applicant data for entry to the Fall 2007 academic year, summaries of GSAS housing applicant data for the 2007-08 and 2006-07 academic years, and administrator information had been compromised. The server had been taken offline for several days last month to investigate the extent of the problem.

AP: This winter has been WARMER than average

Winter storms and snow notwithstanding, this winter was still warmer than average worldwide, the government reported Thursday.

The global temperature for meteorological winter — December, January and February — averaged 54.38 degrees Fahrenheit, 0.58 degrees warmer than normal for the last century, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

Temperatures have been rising over recent years, raising concerns about the effects of global warming, generally attributed to human-induced impacts on the atmosphere.

No, wait a minute …. NOAA: Coolest Winter Since 2001 for U.S., Globe

The average temperature across both the contiguous U.S. and the globe during climatological winter (December 2007-February 2008) was the coolest since 2001, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. In terms of winter precipitation, Pacific storms, bringing heavy precipitation to large parts of the West, produced high snowpack that will provide welcome runoff this spring.

A complete analysis is available online.

Financial News Roundup………………

President Bush addresses ECNY. Calls for “Political Courage”

In a speech to The Economic Club of New York, Bush said this was not the first time the economy has been rattled and that he is certain that it will ride out its troubles. “These are uncertain times,” he said.

Security Capital Assurance Halts Taking on New Business

Troubled bond insurer Security Capital Assurance Ltd. on Thursday posted a massive fourth-quarter loss and said it will stop writing new policies in an effort to preserve capital.

The Bermuda-based company reported it lost $1.2 billion, or $18.67 per share, in the last three months of the year as the value of securities backed by home loans the company insured deteriorated rapidly. During the same period in 2006, SCA posted a profit of $35.8 million, or 56 cents per share.

JPMorgan and Fed Move to Bail Out Bear Stearns

Bear Stearns, facing a grave liquidity crisis, reached out to JPMorgan on Friday for a short-term financial lifeline and now faces the prospect of the end of its 85-year run as an independent investment bank.

With the support of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JPMorgan said in a statement that it had “agreed to provide secured funding to Bear Stearns, as necessary, for an initial period of up to 28 days.”

For the next month, JPMorgan will work with Bear Stearns to reach a solution for its financing crisis. Options could include organizing permanent financing or, according to people briefed on the discussions, buying the bank for a discounted price.

Carlyle may help CCC investors: Rubenstein

Private equity group Carlyle (CYL.UL) will look at ways to help investors who have lost money in Dutch-listed Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC) (Amsterdam:CARC.AS - News), Carlyle co-founder David Rubenstein told media in statements confirmed to Reuters by a spokeswoman.

In an interview with France’s Les Echos newspaper, Rubenstein said Carlyle had done all it could to help CCC, citing a $150 million credit line provided by its partners “no doubt at a loss” but wanted to try and make amends.

Congress Examines Municipal Bond Ratings, Bond Insurance Industry

The fast-spreading U.S. mortgage crisis prompted lawmakers Wednesday to explore problems with municipal bonds, painting a bleak outlook for bond insurers that one official said imposes a “secret Wall Street tax” on state and local taxpayers.

Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is investigating how credit rating agencies grade the risk of municipal bonds and said the existing system is “quite possibly illegal.” He joined other state officials in calling for changes at a House committee hearing.

Carlyle Capital Corporation: commentary

No one can complain that they weren’t warned. The implosion of Carlyle Capital Corporation is a spectacular failure, probably the most damaging to sentiment in credit markets since Northern Rock. But this time all those closely involved were consenting adults.

Those who read the prospectus for the company had no doubt about its potentially precarious nature. You lose count of the number of references to “leverage without limit”. Never mind the eye-popping 32 times gearing CCC opted for. There was nothing in the company rules to prevent it leveraging up 320 times.

Read the Prospectus? What a novel idea!
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This is the World Famous Friday Open Thread: A Free Speech Zone.

Please feel free to post your comments, shout-outs, questions, ponderings, musings, poetry, video, linkage, or whatever grabs your attention, or otherwise strikes your fancy.

WFFOT: Open Threads are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

So, what does John F. Kerry (who served in Viet Nam) have in common with the current crop of winter soldiers? From Obiter Dictum

In May 2006 an IVAW member named Jesse MacBeth appeared in a video widely circulated on the Internet. MacBeth claimed to have been a Ranger in Iraq who had committed horrific atrocities with his unit, including the execution of hundreds of men, women and children. However, MacBeth was exposed as a fraud who had been dismissed from the Army before completing Basic Training. Source: Seattle Times

In 2005, IVAW co-founder Jimmy Massy, a Marine veteran of Iraq, was found to have fabricated stories published in the Modesto Bee, the Sacramento Bee and the Associated Press. Ron Harris of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and four other embedded reports and other Marines in Massey’s unit refuted the claims. The news organizations published retractions. Sources: Jewish World Review / Michelle Malkin

In an interview in March 2005, IVAW leader Camilo Mejia was asked if he had ever abused or tortured detainees in Iraq and replied in the negative. During his court martial for desertion Mejia again made no claims to have done or been ordered to do so, which claim if made might have strengthened his defense. However, in an interview the next August with Dahr Jamail, author of “Beyond the Green Zone”, Mejia’s story changed to “I tortured guys.” Sources: PBS / Dahr Jamail’s Mideast Dispatches / Point of Clarity News
In the same interview with Dahr Jamail in Aug 2005, Jamail wrote of what several IVAW members were telling him “I type furiously for three hours, trying to keep up with the stories each of the men shared….about the atrocities of what they saw, and committed, while in Iraq.” IVAW member Harvey Tharp was quoted by Jamail saying “Most of what we’re talking about is war crimes…war crimes because they are directed by our government for power projection.”Mideast Dispatches / Yemen Times

However, in an interview with the Yemen Times published on Feb 25, 2008, Tharp admitted to never having witnessed an atrocity in Iraq. Sources: Dahr Jamail’s

Michelle Malkin says, “Grab the Popcorn” as you watch John Kerry try to run away from his past. Jason Mattera’s video interview of Kerry needs to go viral, doncha know. Cha-ching!

After Google, what’s next? Writing at Times (UK), Jonathan Richards talks to the “real” inventor of the world wide web (sorry Goracle), Tim Berners-Lee, and speculates on the future of the internet. A fascinating article indeed. Here is an excerpt:

The semantic web is the term used by the computer and internet industry to describe the next phase of the web’s development, and essentially involves building web-based connectivity into any piece of data — not just a web page — so that it can “communicate” with other information.Whereas the existing web is a collection of pages with links between them that Google and other search engines help the user to navigate, the “semantic web” will enable direct connectivity between much more low-level pieces of information — a written street address and a map, for instance — which in turn will give rise to new services.

“Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web,” Mr Berners-Lee said. “Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.

Read it all

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• E-mail inventor: I didn’t foresee spam

• Web 3.0 and beyond: the internet’s next 20 years

• Technology giants spark innovation free-for-all

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First up, a cool video from the Military Channel, comparing Mark46/Mark 48 machine guns.

(w00t!)

Next is a piece from Christopher Hitchens, describing the argument from the Left — it’s apples and oranges –

Iraq: Worth the Price

Think how many candy-canes and vacations I could have if it were not for the space program, or the cost of carrier-groups or special forces or — I don’t know — Black Hawk helicopters. (If you think I am being unkind or frivolous, see if you can detect the thread of reasoning that connects Iraq expenditures with the crisis in the mortgage system.) There are days when I think that the money raised by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama might have been better spent on the alleviation of poverty, but I can still tell an apple from an orange and am not hopelessly stuck on the zero-sum fixation. Once again, the economic “experts” turn out to know the price of some things but not the value of anything.

Time to start moving dirt…. the Toyota deal is bringing the beginnings of a boom in north Mississippi …

Auto parts maker Vuteq USA plans to build a $31 million plant in New Albany to supply molded plastic pieces and other components for Toyota’s assembly plant in Blue Springs.Vuteq, a Japanese company with seven facilities in North America, will hire 130 people to work at the New Albany plant and up to 500 to prepare parts kits at the Toyota plant.

Vuteq’s building will be the first in the Martintown Industrial Park, open land Union County bought with Toyota suppliers in mind.

Primary day in the Magnolia State … Beagle Scout who lives down on the coast in MS 1st district, is calling for voters to cross over and vote for Hillary. I live in the 3rd, and I won’t be crossing over. We’ve got a pretty good selection of hopefuls vying for the Pickering seat. The Club for Growth jumped in and endorsed Charlie Ross, to which I say, “forget Charlie Ross.” I’m pulling for David Landrum. So is Mrs. Nuke. Sure hope he makes the runoff.

U.S. House, 3rd District. For the Democratic nomination, Randall Eads of Starkville will meet Joel Gill of Pickens. On the Republican side, voters will choose between Gregg Harper of Pearl, Charlie Ross of Brandon, David Landrum of Madison County, John Rounsaville of Madison, Bill Marcy of Meridian, Gregory Hatcher of Meridian and the Rev. James Broadwater of Flowood.

So what’s going on in your neck of the woods?