sisu

"This seems to be an issue with the dynamic publishing platform"

Tuck's making the most awesome ship model ever of the original America of cup fame. The kit comes from Spain and is short on details, with some missing altogether. It takes a real man to fill in the interstices. Tuck's the man.

Know what? We spent hours and hours today fighting against "the man." In this case it was TypePad, the blogging program that gives life to our blog. We discovered by chance the other day that months and months of our blogposts were missing one, two or more images. Images are the very lifeblood of our blog, of course. It took us over a day to get a response from the good people at TypePad as to what was up. This from Coleen today:

Ok, I see now. It looks like these images are missing file extensions (ie: the "jpg" part of "image.jpg") There was an issue associated with that that's been fixed for newly uploaded images. I'm going to trigger a full republish of your weblog now to see if that helps.

Tuck in his shop recalls Goomp and St. Jerome in their studies.

Of course that's ridiculous as far as extensions of our image files, which are consistently from day one of the jpg type. Then this:

The republish didn't seem to help, but I made a change to your account (put it back on the static publishing) and now the images are loading. So this seems to be an issue with the dynamic publishing platform.

Right now, your blog is on the static platform which means that certain features, like pagination and the comment feeds, won't work but the images should all be loading.

Whah?

We can ask engineering to see if they can make your images work again on the dynamic platform but I don't know how likely that is for one isolated case like this [You think?]

If possible, we'd like for you to re-upload the images yourself and we can give you 3 free months of free service to compensate for the issue.

If you'd like to do that, we can put your account back on the dynamic platform and you can re-upload the images.

Yes, of course. Let's get back up to speed. But can we acknowledge the burden of everything is upon Sissy? It's taken us 45 minutes to fix June 2007 alone. Now on to the previous six months of last year before that.

Update: Last time something similar happened -- we lost 29 images a couple of years back, compared to perhaps 100 this time -- then SixApart Chairman & CEO Barak Berkowitz sent a personal email saying:

"We will be extending your TypePad subscription free by 12 months in recognition of the inconvenience we have caused."

Too late to ask for 12 months this time since we've already accepted three. Sigh.

It's the technologies, stupid

Snow Lion Tiny is the pride of the winter landscape as an overnight dusting of snow retreats in the early afternoon sun.

"These two look like Lincoln and Douglas next to what we see on TV now," emails our Iowa correspondent, referring to a video of the late Bill Buckley debating U.S. foreign policy with Noam Chomsky on Firing Line in 1969:

It makes one somewhat depressed about the intellectual level of our national debates today compared to forty years ago.

"With WFB, I doubt whether it really was a true debate," notes our imail correspondent:

She: Bill knew how to level 'em, in the most gracious way.

We: Totally. The hapless Noam was left gasping for air.

Fun to watch, unlike the national televised yawners of our day. As we blogged a coupla years back in our post "After you, my dear Alphonse" re the 2000 vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joseph Lieberman:

The issues don't change much from decade to decade, and it's fascinating to watch how arguments pro or con a particular point go back and forth between parties depending upon the current occupant of the White House. One thing that has changed between those halcyon pre-chad, pre-9/11 days and our Fahrenheit 911/527's/MoveOn, campaign-finance-reform-loophole era is the tenor of the debate. C-Span rebroadcast Cheney's and Lieberman's oh-so-civilized and -- in Donald Rumsfeld's term -- helpful debate last night. Low key, measured and rational. Who knew there were such things in this day and age?

"Campaign finance 'reform' has been enormously destructive to civil society, in my opinion," commented Glenn Reynolds at the time -- which it has -- but if "everyone is effected mostly by their enemies," the more alert among the citizenry have moved far beyond getting "their news" from what we used to call the mainstream media. Likewise, candidates are using the airwaves and cyberspace in exciting new workarounds that go over the anchors' heads, leaving three-hour formal debates moderated by Tim and Brian and Chris in the dust. Today, for example, the two frontrunners were taking advantage of cable's 24/7 news maw, thrusting and parrying back and forth from their individual campaign trails with biting, witty soundbites, practically in real time. Lively and informative. That's entertainment:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of making ill-informed comments about Iraq and al-Qaeda in Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate, signaling that a general-election brawl between the colleagues would center in part on who has the foreign policy experience to lead a country at war.

Despite McCain's war-hero status and years of foreign policy experience, Obama made it clear that he will not back down from such a fight, issuing a quick rebuke of McCain that linked him to President Bush and the war in Iraq.

In Honest Abe's day it was a series of three-hour formal debates held at seven sites throughout Illinois -- one in each of the Congressional Districts where the two candidates were competing for a US Senate seat -- that caught the public's imagination. Wikipedia:

The debates in Freeport, Quincy and Alton drew especially large numbers of attendees from neighboring states, as the issue of slavery was of monumental importance to citizens across the nation.  Newspaper coverage of the debates was intense, as major papers from Chicago sent stenographers to create complete texts of each debate. Then newspapers across the nation reprinted the full text of the debates as published by the Chicago papers. Interestingly, newspapers that supported Douglas edited his speeches to remove any errors made by the stenographers and to correct grammatical errors, while they left Lincoln's speeches in the rough form in which they had been transcribed. In the same way, Republican papers edited Lincoln's speeches, but left the Douglas texts as reported.

Human nature hasn't changed a whit. It's the technologies, stupid.

Update: At Modulator's Friday Ark, it's the animals, stupid.

Update II: At Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities, it's the nutcakes, stupid.

Update III: At Momma Grace & Company's Carnival of the Cats #207, it's the cat's meow, stupid.

To persuade with the power of your ideas

"Looking for something else in our snail files yesterday, we stumbled upon this venerable issue of National Review from June 21, 1993.  We started rereading and couldn't put it down:  An entire issue dedicated to one of our favorite topics, 'The Decline of American Journalism,'" we captioned this image three years back.

In homage to the oner of a man who met his Maker yesterday -- the late, great William F. Buckley -- spiritual father to so much that is good and true and in danger of being lost amidst the din of idea-free rhetorical noise that fills the ideosphere, a republication of our post of March 2, 2005, "A blog of a different color":

"Rebels on the right were pioneers in the political exploitation of new and alternative technologies long before anyone knew what blogs were," writes Lucianne's boy, National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg.

Clip from "The Media Elite Revisited" by Ted J. Smith III in the January 21, 1993 issue of National Review, drawn from our snail files. In those days, unable to select, copy and paste salient passages into our blog, we underlined the points we wanted to remember with our trademark magenta pen and sent off -- via snail mail -- xeroxed copies of articles to our small circle of readers (parents, siblings, friends).  Gratifying that we still agree with ourselves after all these years and thrilling that our issues with the MSM have finally taken center stage in the national debate.

"The story begins with National Review's founding in 1955 and extends through five decades of steady, heavy and difficult work," continues Jonah:

Left-wing bloggers believe they are part of the same "revolution" as right-wing bloggers are. They're not. The conservative blogs are the shock troops of a decades-long battle to seize back the culture. Conservatives have always had to rely on "alternative media" - magazines, AM radio, blogs -- because the Mainstream Media barred the door to conservatives.

And, remember, the Internet was a big deal before the onset of the blogs as well. For good or for ill, Matt Drudge refused to treat the MSM as a sacred monastery, and in many respects he remains the ur-blogger.

The lefty blogs are something else entirely. They represent -- much like the still lame liberal talk radio and the new liberal think tanks -- an attempt to copycat conservative successes. Their fight is not with the monolithic mainstream media (or academia) but with the usurpers. Politics is not a battle of technology. It is a battle of ideas, and therein lies all the difference.

A terrif article that you must read in full.  The only sour note was Jonah's phrase -- we've heard it a lot from the left and always cringed -- "seize back the culture."  You know what?  It's not for any one group in this great nation to "seize back the culture."  Enter the national debate -- easier than ever with the new technologies -- and try to persuade with the power of your ideas.  It's the American way.

"Greed overtakes fear and the game begins again"

"I could be on the beach, but I can't wait to get to the office every day. Risk-taking is like a giant jigsaw puzzle," says billionaire Sam Zell, whose Forbes 400 bio notes "Parents escaped Poland weeks before Nazi invasion; Sam born in Chicago 4 months after family's arrival in America. Built real estate empire buying up cheap real estate throughout U.S. from distressed owners, kept buying when values recovered and boomed." A true American dreamer. (photo unattributed)

"The US economy will avoid recession as the housing market begins to recover this spring, according to billionaire investor Sam Zell," reports CNBC:

Speaking on "Squawk Box" this morning, Zell attributed much of the current economic troubles to fear-mongering and politicking by Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

"Obviously what we have going on is an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy," said Zell, chairman of Equity Investments Group and owner of the Chicago Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and other companies. "We have two Democratic candidates who are vying with each other to describe the economic situation worse."

"I believe Sam," says our imail correspondent, delighting us with her wit and wisdom:

She: It's the same old, same old. When the RATS have no more straws to grab, they ALWAYS fall back on their default position, "It's the economy, stupid."

We: As if the economy could be controlled by a president, anyway. It's the politicians and their fellow travelers in the MEDIA who distort it by their panicky talk when they think it will hurt Republicans. If only they taught Economics 101 in schools. Business cycles are unknown among the great unwashed.

She: Stupid 'Mercans, who "want theirs," fall for it again and again.

We: Charlie Brown and the football.

We love adored Zell's bottom line:

"I think Bernanke's reduction in interest rates has been spot-on, because basically we're going to fix the credit markets by creating a big enough spread between the risk-free cost of capital and what's available so that greed overtakes fear and the game begins again."

It may be the root of all evil, but the love of money is good for the business of America.

The Hillary "Yes You Can Diet"

We know, we know. The powers that be want us to lose weight and live forever. But have you noticed how Miss Hillary, thigh/cellulite challenged from day one, has porked up of late? That's the gal who's smarter than you and me and knows what's best for us. Like everything that's politically incorrect and dares not speak its name, excess political poundage in a female Democrat candidate is crying out for coverage. The Hillary "Yes You Can Diet" could be the next big thing.

Then there's Rachael Ray, even more influential in a deep, dark and delicious way than Oprah herself. Eat your heart, out, Hillary. What if Rache came out in support of some presidential wannabe? She would never, but -- like Emeril with his "Bam!" -- the divine Miss Ray has infiltrated our everyday experimental kitchen kitsch, lending an extra gig and giggle to our every culinary foray. You cook, girl.                   

When cats dress up

As we wrote in the comments at cat blogger Michico's Adan's Everyday, her fashion photo (right) of tuxedo cat Adan modeling a "blue luxury kimono" with golden knot called to mind Monet's life-size 1876 portrait of his wife Camille as "La Japonaise" (left), "a virtuoso display of brilliant color that is also a witty comment on the current Paris fad for all things Japanese," says the MFA Boston's website.

她說一定也很合適我。現在先穿上奢華的和服在艷陽下面，展現和服布料上面天然美麗的色彩。blogs wide-eyed, black-and-white tomcat Adan of Adan's Everyday -- a visually compelling Taiwan-based cat blog -- authored on behalf of the fashion-conscious feline by blogger Michico, whose camera's eye worships the object of her affection:

Now, My servant Michico bought a new LUXURY Kimono for me, she says it must very fit on me. Right now I am demonstrate this luxury kimono wearing under the sunlight, let everyone see the nature beautiful light on this luxury fabric!

Like any supermodel, Adan commands a high price for his services:

Today I am performing too good. Michico gives me 10 temptations, Oah YES!!!!!!

'Can't imagine Tiny or Baby consenting to the wearing of clothes, but Adan seems happy to oblige.

Update: "Re: cat in kimono," imails our sis:

It was cute, but, as you know, I don't care for dressing animals (Beadie* aside).

We know what she means, but Adan's body language tells us it's okay for this particular cat with his doting "servant" Michico. He was probably weaned on the practice, just as the Chelsea Grays were weaned on wearing their harnesses when they go outside in the yard. Tiny and Baby would never consent to a kimono but take it as a matter of course that slipping into the harnesses comes just before the door opens. They even close their eyes and pull down their ears to assist.

*Beadie was our longest-lived childhood feline, a tabby whose five-colored nose (!) was the pride of our little girlhood. She started out as Susie the Cat and later became known -- for reasons lost to history -- as Beadie. The family moved from the farm into town, we graduated from elementary and high school, went off to college and then left home to strike out on our own. All the while Beadie kept on keeping on, moving with the folks Down East to Camelot-by-the-Sea and living to the ripe old age of 21 under our mother's tender, loving care. She even held on long enough to meet the dashing suitor -- Mr. Tuck -- we would proudly bring home to meet the parents. The family joke was that Beadie -- by then known as the Venerable Bede -- was old enough to vote but never registered. As for her wearing of clothes, we used to dress the long-suffering feline in custom-made hats (with holes for the ears) and sweaters knitted for her by JuJu. Talk about cruelty to animals.

Update II: Blogdaughter Pat of Pat's Pond: Where I'm the little fish reports in the comments that it isn't just cats who read the signals:

"They even close their eyes and pull down their ears to assist." As does Ellie the HuggaMutt! Harness means going outdoors, and that's all there is to it.

What a good dog!

Update III: Lots more good cats -- and treats for Mini -- at Carnival of the Cats #206 now playing at House of the (Mostly) Black Cats.

Mysterious ways

Potatoes gotta do what they gotta do. We plucked off the buds and made 'em into a gorgeous potato meltdown.

'Reminded us of suddenly last summer, a Sundrops bud cluster of "four-eyed pod people schooling through the ether."

Update: Or how about a farrow of racing piglets? Above, "a group of eight-week-old pigs race to the finish line during the 'Sue Wee Pig Races' at Arlington County Fair in Arlington, VA." (AP photo)

We turned the image 90 degrees counterclockwise and found a flock of purple penguins.

Nature moves in mysterious ways.

"Since it was in the New York Times, I don't take it at face value"

After batting around a few superballs from her toy bowl early morning, Tiny catches up with kitchen counter play, breaking in a new "kitty cat catnip" toy from Stonewall Kitcen in York, Maine.

Quotation of the Year (John McCain at press conference responding to NYT story -- blogged here -- on an alleged relationship between the Senator and lobbyist Vicki Iseman:

Since it was in the New York Times, I don't take it at face value.

"The story is now going to shift from McCain to the NYT itself," reports David Lee Miller of Fox News:

Why did it decide to publish this story, based on unnamed sources, at this time?

Rumors of pressure from the The New Republic, who was working on a behind-the-scenes story of sausage making at the Times.

The growing hysteria over this warmed-over tale of politicians behaving like politicians makes us long for the relentless rehashings of Greta Van Susteren's maudlin missing-girl maunderings.

Update: Maggie's Farm links.

Update II: Mary Katharine Ham correctly identifies the Times's "skeezy" sandbagging as "The Quickest Way to Rally Conservatives 'Round McCain." One more reason for us to stop worrying and learn to love the senior senator from Arizona. Feel the love.

Update III: Meowza does a meowsterful job of hosting Carnival of the Cats #205 at Mind of Mog. Lots of furry and whiskered eye candy for your viewing pleasure.

Update IV: More fur and whiskers plus feathers, scales and other epidermal appendages at Modulator's Friday Ark #179.

Update V: More curiosities, this time of the Homo sapiens variety, at Dr. Sanity's Carnival of the Insanities.

"People are more interested in sex than they are in telecommunications lobbying"

A snapshot of the total lunar eclipse of the Full Snow Moon high in the eastern sky taken from the front porch at Chelsea-by-the-Sea just after 10 o'clock this evening (flanked by Saturn, left). According to MrEclipse.com, "while the moon remains completely within Earth's umbral shadow, indirect sunlight still manages to reach and illuminate it. However, this sunlight must first pass deep through the Earth's atmosphere, which filters out most of the blue colored light. The remaining light is a deep red or orange."

"It doesn't back up the insinuations," newsman Bill Sammon is telling Hannity & Colmes re the National Inquirer New York Times story that's eclipsed Michelle Obama's does-she-or-doesn't-she-love-this-country scandalette. "NOW THAT HE'S SECURED NOMINATION: NYT DOWNLOADS ON MCCAIN," screams the Drudge Report in red all caps. The London Times explains:

John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was last night [Feb 21 NYT front page] romantically linked to a 40-year-old female political lobbyist and accused of granting her clients political favours.

Mr McCain, 71, fiercely denied a report in the New York Times which stated that eight years ago, during his first run for the White House, his aides were so concerned about his relationship with Vicki Iseman that they blocked her access to him to "protect the candidate from himself".

Mr McCain and Ms Iseman both denied to the newspaper -- which has been sitting on the story for several weeks -- that they had ever had a romantic relationship. The story was first alluded to on the Drudge Report website just before the Iowa and New Hampshire nomination contests, but after frantic lobbying by Mr McCain and his aides at the time, the New York Times did not publish it then.

The Gray Lady's sources are identified only as "a former campaign adviser" and "a Senate aide" who spoke "on the condition of anonymity":

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

Convincing, huh? But when did the newspaper of record ever try to confuse us with the facts? An exasperated Robert Bennett -- the DC power lawyer hired by McCain to mount what Drudge describes as "a bold defense against charges of giving special treatment to a lobbyist!" -- was on Hannity & Colmes earlier this evening quoting Mark Twain's "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes," but columnist and senior editor of Newsweek Jonathan Alter on MSNBCs Countdown with Keith Olbermann [We never watch Olbermann at home!] says the story won't have legs:

Let's face it. People are more interested in sex than they are in telecommunications lobbying. You have to either have some kind of incriminating physical evidence or one of the parties coming forward and saying there was some kind of sexual contact. On the other hand the [being-in-bed-with lobbyists angle] may be helpful for Obama, who is working on a theme of John McCain as hypocritical.

So much heat, so little light.

Update: Megan McArdle subbing at Instapundit:

[Anderson Cooper] of CNN notes "This may end up being a story about the New York Times as much as about John McCain." One does kind of wonder why they're breaking an eight year-old story now.

Indeed.

Barack Obama: Making things grow

"MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grass-roots movement for change," declared Barack Obama -- apparently not recognizing crabgrass for the weed it is (above, invading our terrace last summer) -- in a statement issued a couple of weeks back in response to the Soros-seeded "progressive" organization's endorsement of his candidacy.

"Without a formidable Republican opponent in his U.S. Senate race, Barack Obama has little reason not to take money from billionaire liberal financier George Soros, a man other Democrats keep at a distance," wrote Robert S. Bluey in CNSNews back in July of 2004 on the eve of the emerging national leader's prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention:

Obama, however, is different from most Democrats because of his willingness to embrace the controversial Soros [blogged here early and often]. Shortly after Soros equated the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Obama joined him for a New York fund-raiser June 7.

The event, held at Soros' home, boosted Obama's campaign at a time he was still facing a challenge from Republican Jack Ryan. After news broke about information in Ryan's divorce records, the candidate was forced to drop out.

Fast forward to today's London Times, where the premier UK daily's Washington correspondent is taking Obama's deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand -- "the chief author of Barack Obama's grass-roots strategy" -- at his word, failing to cast a fair-and-balanced eye in the direction of the above-mentioned Burpee Soros seed money, not to mention the healthy dose of Scotts Oprah's Miracle-Gro that gave those "grass roots" a top-down steroidal edge from the get-go. We're reminded of the disingenuousness of the big man's own "bafflement," in the wake of Oprah's informal endorsement over a year ago in December of 2006, blogged back then in "Did Obama just call me a racist?":

“Are some voters not going to vote for me because I’m African-American? Those are the same voters who probably wouldn’t vote for me because of my politics,” Barack Obama told ecstatic New Hampshire voters yesterday. Being one of those voters who probably wouldn't vote for him because of his politics, we were naturally offended at his suggestion that people like us are racists. Swept up in the locals' devotional hysteria, however, the media didn't seem to notice. Folks hear what they want to hear . . . "Obviously, it is flattering to get a lot of attention, but I must say it is baffling, particularly to my wife," Obama quipped.

As we asked rhetorically at the time, "You don't suppose Oprah's endorsement might have had something to do with it?" Still, our hat is off to Hildebrand, the self-described "big fat goof" of a campaign mastermind who -- according to the Times account -- analyzed the Clinton approach and did the opposite:

While Hillary Clinton has won most of the key contests that she has made a priority, Mr Obama is leading the race for delegates because he has picked up most of the other states. “We have competed in large and small states -- primaries and caucuses -- and not let any state go by,” Mr Hildebrand explains in an interview with The Times. “It's beyond me why the Clinton campaign did not do the same.”

“I don't want to be like Karl Rove," the wide-eyed Karl Rove wannabe of the Obama campaign told the Times:

"One person in politics does not have that much influence on anything. Rove built an image for himself as the guy who got Bush elected twice. Sure -- and then they went forward to destroy this country.”

When Mr Obama's advisers started to consider a run for the White House in November 2006, it took a “big leap of faith” to put together an insurgent campaign “with no donor base up against the Clintons.”

Yes. A big leap of faith and a big steaming pile of Soros money and Oprah hype.

Update: Speaking of big leaps of faith and steaming piles, Barack's missus declares [via Michelle Malkin] "Our souls are broken in this nation," and "Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that." Saints preserve us!

Update II:  Captain Ed has the last word:

Government doesn't exist to save souls; it exists to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. If I feel my soul needs saving, the very last place I'd look (in the US) for a savior would be Washington DC or Capitol Hill. I'll trust God and Jesus Christ with my soul, and I'm not going to mistake Barack Obama for either one.

Amen.

Update: Maggie's Farm links.

Update II: "Yes indeedy -- fertilizer does make things grow," comments Elisson:

Presenting the Obama Mushroom Farm! Just add manure and keep everyone in the dark.

The man does have a way with words. Also with the catcam. Be sure to treat yourself to his Whistlerian Symphony in Beige No. 1, AKA The Beige Puddies.