R.I.P. Bobby "Boris" Pickett

Via WizBang Pop. Very sad. "Monster Mash" is a fun song, and he did several others in his Karloff voice- "Monster's Holiday," "Monster Rap," "It's Alive."

McCain (Re)Launches Campaign!!!

Well, I commented about this at Ace's blog, and Slublog's got more on it too, so I may as well post about it.

...Okay, I was bluffing. I got nuthin'.

Just this marker, and I've held this view for a long time: Neither Sen. John McCain nor Sen. Hillary Clinton will be their party's Presidential nominee. Too many negatives among their respective bases, for starters.

Who will be the nominees, I really don't know. Right now, I'll guess it'll be Guiliani vs. Obama. Next week, I'll probably guess Romney vs. Edwards or Thompson vs. Gravel. (No, I don't know who Gravel is, either. And note I didn't say *which* Thompson.)

Wednesday Krauthammer!? (x4)

Catch-all catch-up. When I started this blog, I kinda thought I'd have more time and more material, and a regualr weekly feature would just be a small percentage of my postings. (I need a better word for "Whoops.")

Anyhoo. March 30th: He contends that the real War on Terror is being fought in Iraq, not Afghanistan, and he's very convincing.

Thought experiment: Bring in a completely neutral observer — a Martian — and point out to him that the United States is involved in two hot wars against radical Islamic insurgents. One is in Afghanistan, a geographically marginal backwater with no resources and no industrial or technological infrastructure.
The other is in Iraq, one of the three principal Arab states, with untold oil wealth, an educated population, an advanced military and technological infrastructure that, though suffering decay in the later years of Saddam Hussein's rule, could easily be revived if it falls into the right (i.e., wrong) hands.

He's got a lot more, too.

April 6: Iran's seizure of British sailors and Marines.

April 13: Thoughts on the Surge in Iraq.

April 20: The shootingat Virginia Tech, and its coverage.

I really don't have anything to add.

More about Russia

I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but Stratfor.com has a "weekly intelligence briefing" at Bill O'Reilly's website. Yeah, struck me as weird too.

Anyway, the current one is an analysis of Russia's historical cycles, and where it is now, and what's likely to come. Interesting stuff, methinks.

Breaking: Boris Yeltsin, R.I.P.

From MSNBC:

Former President Boris Yeltsin, who engineered the final collapse of the Soviet Union and pushed Russia to embrace democracy and a market economy, has died, a Kremlin official said Monday. He was 76.

Obviously, there's more there (apparently, heart failure). Considering his age, I guess it wasn't that unexpected.

Also, I have no real idea how to react to this. I mean, his record (at least from my [American] perspective) was pretty mixed.

Maybe I'll have more later, after it sinks in and I've caught up with what I meant to post yesteday. (I *may* have time later today, dunno. For this piece of breaking news, I made time.)

Update: Not getting a lot of traction in the blogosphere that I see; even with residual VTech and Blue Angels reporting, it's pretty slow news-wise today. Dunno. I mean, yeah, my reaction was kind of a shrug-- and I presume that that's many others' reaction as well-- but it should be at least noted, yes?

I Really Have No Idea What I'm Doing

Updates should be a-comin' by Sunday. Or maybe on Sunday.

Oh, and I need to install some kind of hit-count-o-matic.

(This is harder than it looks, folks. Also, I'm kinda lazy.)