Republican brand craters
Wall Street Journal:
Only 27% of voters have positive views of Republicans, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, the lowest level for either party in the survey’s nearly two-decade history.
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April 30, 2008
Bush erupts at dimwitted questioning
The reporter doesn’t seem to understand that progress is not a synonym for finality. Exasperated, the president unloads:
April 29, 2008
Obama: After knowing Rev. Wright for 20 years, I am shocked to learn of his views
Barack Obama thinks you’re a fiddle.
When Donald becomes Denise, is he still married?
If you’re a married man who has his twig and berries pruned, does that make you a lesbian? And if so, are you still married to your wife? Also, do cases of gender reassignment really demonstrate, as NYT suggests, that “the nation’s dizzying patchwork of marriage laws … may be out of step with people’s lives”?
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: a gift to McCain
George F. Will:
Because John McCain and other legislators worry that they are easily corrupted, there are legal limits to the monetary contributions that anyone can make to political candidates. There are, however, no limits to the rhetorical contributions that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright can make to McCain’s campaign.
And those contributions — the most recent ones, anyway — came via Team Hillary. We have to go now, John. But before we leave, here’s a little sumptin’, sumptin’ for ya! Enjoy!
April 28, 2008
Given the right incentives, illegals will self-deport
Prince William County proves it:
Hundreds of foreign-born families have pulled their children from Prince William County public schools and enrolled them in nearby Fairfax County, Arlington County and Alexandria since the start of the school year, imposing a new financial burden on those inner suburbs in a time of lean budgets.
The school-to-school migration within Northern Virginia started just as Prince William began implementing rules to deny some services to illegal immigrants and require police to check the immigration status of crime suspects thought to be in the country illegally.
Justice Scalia on 60 Minutes, Part 1
Justice Scalia on 60 Minutes, Part 2
April 27, 2008
Arianna Huffington: I tell you what. You just do as I say and not as I do, umm k?
She and Al Gore et al. don’t have to get around on a bicycle or live by candle light. But if they’re going to preach global warming, they could at least eschew private jets, no?
I have neither the inclination nor the scientific expertise to evaluate the claims of the global warming advocates. Instead, I rely upon people whose judgment I trust, and they’re not buying it. I look also to the behavior of the advocates themselves. And their behavior suggests they don’t believe their own rhetoric. If it isn’t imperative for you to get out of your mansion, it’s not imperative that I get out of my SUV.
Why can't McCain close the deal?
With the intramural warfare among Democrats intensifying, conventional wisdom has McCain sittin’ pretty. But in addition to a lack of money and volunteers, McCain has one other significant problem — recalcitrant Republicans:
… But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain. Though ignored by every channel I surfed, there actually was a G.O.P. primary on Tuesday, open only to registered Republicans. And while it was superfluous in determining that party’s nominee, 220,000 Pennsylvania Republicans (out of their total turnout of 807,000) were moved to cast ballots for Mike Huckabee or, more numerously, Ron Paul. That’s more voters than the margin (215,000) that separated Hillary Clinton and Mr. Obama.
Reports of the Democrats’ demise are greatly exaggerated.
April 25, 2008
Scalia: Bush v. Gore? Get over it already!
Justice Scalia is correct. His Court has nothing to apologize for. Article 2, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution provides that a state’s presidential electors shall be appointed “in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct …” The Florida Supreme Court departed from the legislatively mandated scheme for selecting electors, and therefore had to be reversed. End of case.
This Sunday, Justice Scalia will be on 60 Minutes, which airs at 6 p.m. CT. Here’s a clip:
"As people begin to learn about this just-arrived pretender, the magic dissipates"
Barack Obama is like a pair of shoes from Prada. He looks good until you scuff him:
He spent six weeks in Pennsylvania. Outspent Hillary more than 2 to 1. Ran close to 10,000 television ads — spending more than anyone in any race in the history of the state — and lost by 10 points.
And not because he insufficiently demagogued NAFTA or the other “issues.” It was because of those “distractions” — i.e., the things that most reveal character and core beliefs.
April 24, 2008
Democrats in Congress: You do know that Clinton and Obama are full of it, yes?
Candor:
Congressional Democrats are backing away from healthcare reform promises made by their two presidential candidates, saying that even if their party controls the White House and Congress, sweeping change will be difficult.
It is still seven months before Election Day, but already senior Democrats are maneuvering to lower public expectations on the key policy issue.
[…]
“We all know there is not enough money to do all this stuff,” said Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a Finance Committee member and an Obama supporter, referring to the presidential candidates’ healthcare plans. “What they are doing is … laying out their ambitions.”
"Democrats: Pick one!"
Political commentary as only Jackie and Dunlap can provide. Not safe for work or children.
April 23, 2008
Reason 1,067 not to take political advice from the NYT
Pro-Obama propeller heads, vacuous and desperately bashing Hillary:
The Pennsylvania campaign, which produced yet another inconclusive result on Tuesday, was even meaner, more vacuous, more desperate, and more filled with pandering than the mean, vacuous, desperate, pander-filled contests that preceded it.
Voters are getting tired of it; it is demeaning the political process; and it does not work.
The hell it doesn’t. It worked by ten points. Read your own paper, guys.
If Mrs. Clinton was pounding a Republican the way she’s pounding Obama, The Times would find her tactics unobjectionable. The Times’ true complaint is that Mrs. Clinton is tenderizing Obama, making him savory for McCain.
April 22, 2008
Stayin' alive: Clinton wins Pennsylvania by ten
Whew! Our gal put on a bomber jacket and some knee-high boots and pulled off a corkscrew landing under sniper fire. Let’s jam:
And now, from behind cover, she’s firing back.
Added. If you count Florida and Michigan, Clinton now leads narrowly in the popular vote.
April 20, 2008
Why do so many public school officials make aggressively stupid decisions?
It’s a fair question:
Adams School District 50 is defending its decision to punish a third grader for sniffing a Sharpie marker.
Eight-year-old Eathan Harris was originally suspended from Harris Park Elementary School for three days. Principal Chris Benisch reduced the suspension to one day after complaints from Harris’ parents.
Harris used a black Sharpie marker to color a small area on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. A teacher sent him to the principal when she noticed him smelling the marker and his clothing.
Eathan Harris, 8: “It smelled good. They told me that’s wrong.”
[…]
Benisch stands by his decision to suspend Harris, saying it sends a clear message about substance abuse.
“This is really, really, seriously dangerous,” Benisch said.
In his letter suspending the child, Benisch wrote that smelling the marker fumes could cause the boy to “become intoxicated.”
A toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center says that claim is nearly impossible.
Dr. Eric Lavonas says non-toxic markers like Sharpies, while pungent-smelling, cannot be used to get high.
[…]
Despite the medical evidence, Benisch promised to draw an even clearer line on markers.
“We’ve purged every permanent marker there is in this building,” he said.
You and I would like to think that Mr. Benisch is alone in his manic purges. But we know he is not:
Have you ever heard of a case like this where school officials apologized and admitted they overreacted? Instead they circle the wagons and insist that their actions, no matter how objectively idiotic, were perfectly justified in the circumstances, what with the grave danger that [fill in the blank] poses to the youth of America.
[Edited to correct syntax error in headline. — Ed.]
April 18, 2008
Hillary: Just between us, latte liberals make me hurl
Mama throws up a little bit in her mouth.
"... the regular Republican organization across the country is demoralized, demobilized, and eviscerated"
Sure, he’s sitting pretty now. But John McCain might get booed and catcalled at his own convention. Find out why.
The day the Internet stood still
Oh gawd. Click the screen cap to watch.
"He doesn't know how old he is, but he thinks he's 7"
April 17, 2008
Clinton and Obama: Genocide will be fine
Asked whether they would rapidly withdraw our forces from Iraq regardless of the consequences to the Iraqi people and the region, both gave the same answer: You betcha.
Clinton says, correctly, that “there are many different scenarios” that might play out following our abrupt withdrawal. What she doesn’t say is that most of them involve regional war, a resurgent al-Qaeda, or mass killing.†
†Link requires registration, but you can avoid it by selecting guest log-in.
April 16, 2008
Good news: 3 grams of sodium thiopental constitutional
“The Supreme Court today upheld the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection in Kentucky, rejecting claims that the procedure amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and clearing the way for a resumption of executions in states that were awaiting the court’s decision,” the Washington Post reported.
By a 7-2 vote in the case, Baze v. Rees, the court ruled that the three-drug combination used by Kentucky and most other states to execute prisoners does not violate the Eighth Amendment. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. announced the judgment and delivered one of several opinions. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter dissented.
[…]
Lethal injection is used by the federal government and 36 states to carry out capital punishment. At least 30 states, including Kentucky, use the same combination of three drugs to execute prisoners: sodium thiopental, which induces unconsciousness; pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the muscles; and potassium chloride, which causes cardiac arrest.
As a registered nurse, I can confirm that the expert testimony is correct. A lively monkey could reconstitute powdered medication.
Neither the legality of the death penalty itself nor the proper administration of the three-drug cocktail were at issue. Rather, as Roberts explains in his plurality opinion, the question was whether there exists a “significant risk” that the proper procedures won’t be followed, “in particular, that the sodium thiopental will not be properly administered to achieve its intended effect — resulting in severe pain when the other chemicals are administered.” (PDF at 15.)
Petitioners contend that there is a risk of improper administration of thiopental because the doses are difficult to mix into solution form and load into syringes; because the protocol fails to establish a rate of injection, which could lead to a failure of the IV; because it is possible that the IV catheters will infiltrate into surrounding tissue, causing an inadequate dose to be delivered to the vein; because of inadequate facilities and training; and because Kentucky has no reliable means of monitoring the anesthetic depth of the prisoner after the sodium thiopental has been administered. (PDF at 20.)
Among other things, Roberts relies upon the transcript from trial to dispense with these objections. He notes expert testimony “describing the task of reconstituting powder sodium thiopental into solution form as ‘[n]ot difficult at all:’”
“You take a liquid, you inject it into a vial with the powder, then you shake it up until the powder dissolves and, you’re done. The instructions are on the package insert.” (PDF at 21, quoting expert testimony at trial.)
As a registered nurse, I can confirm that the expert testimony is correct. A lively monkey could reconstitute powdered medication.
Although the constitutionality of the death penalty was not at issue, Justice Stevens nevertheless took the opportunity to announce that, in his view, the death penalty in any form is inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment:
… I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents “the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purposes. A penalty with such negligible returns to the State [is] patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.” (PDF at 55; citation omitted.)
Justice Scalia let him have it:
Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat. In the face of Justice Stevens’ experience, the experience of all others is, it appears, of little consequence. The experience of the state legislatures and the Congress — who retain the death penalty as a form of punishment — is dismissed as “the product of habit and inattention rather than an acceptable deliberative process.” The experience of social scientists whose studies indicate that the death penalty deters crime is relegated to a footnote. The experience of fellow citizens who support the death penalty is described, with only the most thinly veiled condemnation, as stemming from a “thirst for vengeance.” It is Justice Stevens’ experience that reigns over all.
I take no position on the desirability of the death penalty, except to say that its value is eminently debatable and the subject of deeply, indeed passionately, held views — which means, to me, that it is preeminently not a matter to be resolved here. And especially not when it is explicitly permitted by the Constitution. (PDF at 63-64; citations omitted.)
Indeed. See, for example, the Fifth Amendment, which expressly contemplates the death penalty: “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury … nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law …” (Italics added.)
It’s not that Justice Stevens wants to end the death penalty. It is, instead, the man’s hubris that ought to alarm a free and self-governing people. Despite the text of the Constitution and the weight of the nation’s history, he would substitute the policy views of Congress and thirty-six state legislatures with his own. That’s not the legal judgment of a lawyer; it’s the political will of an overlord.
McCain on Mama's drinking: Uh ... whatever makes her happy
As both her drinking buddy and the beneficiary of her Annie Wilkes skill set, he must tread lightly.
The question comes from Peter Doocy, a junior at Villanova and the son of Fox News anchor Steve Doocy.
April 15, 2008
Video: no mortgage bailout
Federal budget: where does the money go?
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
All told, the federal government spent a bit more than $2.7 trillion in fiscal year 2007, representing about one-fifth of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or slightly less than the historical average for the last three decades. Of that $2.7 trillion in expenditures, more than $2.5 trillion was financed by federal tax revenues. The remaining $162 billion was financed by borrowing and, hence, will ultimately be paid for by future taxpayers.
Cornyn comfortably ahead in money race
 |
Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX |
Come November, the Democrats will pick up Senate seats, perhaps as many as five or six. But their pick ups won’t include Texas:
Freshman Republican U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has a nearly $9 million stash, a whopping edge as he vies with Democrat Rick Noriega this fall.
Cornyn’s latest campaign finance report, released today, shows he has raised $1.6 million since Feb. 14, the cutoff for federal candidates before the March 4 primary. His cumulative total for the first three months of the year was $2.15 million.
Cornyn has raised roughly $13.5 million this cycle. By contrast, Noriega has raised less than $1.5 million. Cornyn’s lifetime ACU rating is 94.3.
April 14, 2008
Condi on VP rumors: Get off it already
I have long believed that she does not want to be asked, as surely she would be as a major party’s vice presidential nominee, why she never married. In any event, she declines.
Can Andrew Sullivan have Obama's baby?
Not yet, but soon.
"If libertarian voters cost McCain the presidency, that will be condign punishment"
Ah, poetic justice — or at least the prospect of it.
On taxes, two Americas
Although preferable to the alternatives, democracy is not without its limitations. People can, and do, vote to help themselves to your money:
Tuesday is the deadline for filing federal income taxes. Half of American taxpayers will pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes the government will collect for 2008, according to IRS data. The other half will pay little or nothing, yet receive billions in benefits in the form of cash, subsidies, “free” services and other benefits, and loans. There are indeed “Two Americas,” but the two aren’t the rich and poor, but taxpayers and tax consumers.
Democrats in Congress are planning to kill the Bush tax cuts. If they succeed, “it will mean a minimum tax hike for every American taxpayer of about $3,000 annually.”
April 13, 2008
"During presidential elections, when candidates postulate this or that 'crisis' for which each is the indispensable and sufficient cure, economic hypochondria is encouraged ..."
Perspective:
Subprime mortgages are a small minority of mortgages, and only a minority of subprime borrowers are not making their payments. Casting this minority of a minority as victims of “predatory” lending fits the liberal narrative that most Americans are victims of this or that sinister elite or impersonal force, and are not competent to cope with life’s complexities without government supervision.
Why Hillary won't quit
Hillary doesn’t fight on for selfish reasons, says Politico; she fights on to save the Democrats from themselves:
Why, ask many Democrats and media commentators, won’t Hillary Rodham Clinton see the long odds against her, put her own ambitions aside, and gracefully embrace Barack Obama as the inevitable Democratic nominee?
Here is why: She and Bill Clinton both devoutly believe that Obama’s likely victory is a disaster-in-waiting. Naive Democrats just don’t see it. And a timid, pro-Obama press corps, in their view, won’t tell the story.
Tom Maguire thinks Hillary is right:
… as with Kerry, the effort to depict Obama as an out-of-touch urban lib will be like pushing water downhill; it is so much easier when reality is on your side. In a nut shell, the Dems have six more months of trying to stay in costume at the masquerade ball; Republicans have six more months to strip away Obama’s mask. Who ya gonna bet on?
Meanwhile, Mama’s still enjoying herself. She’s knocking back a whiskey shot with one hand and a beer with the other. But she says she’s not driving or packing heat today, so don’t worry about it:
Yes, she’s a conniving, lying, cynical, manipulative, underhanded gas bag. But you still like her, don’t you? I do. Anybody who can drink with both fists is alright.
She asked a cop one question: Why?
And for that, she was arrested.
"Strange how the Clinton approach to strengthening the Democratic Party is remarkably similar to the GOP's approach to strengthening the Democratic Party"
Team Hillary is throwin’ down.
April 12, 2008
Is Obama's candidacy in trouble?
The overall delegate count still favors him, but that could change if the uncommitted superdelegates get spooked:
A Clinton comeback was looking far-fetched. But operatives in both parties were buzzing about that possibility Saturday following the revelation that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) told wealthy San Franciscans that small-town Pennsylvanians and Midwesterners “cling to guns or religion” because they are “bitter” about their economic status.
"And pundits keep wondering why Hillary won't give up?"
Historian Victor Davis Hanson takes the measure of Obama’s mouth and predicts the “most disastrous chapter in recent Democratic history:”
“They cling to guns or religion.” This is revealing for two reasons: one, Obama has been trying to finesse his position on guns to appeal precisely to gun owners and thus we start to see that his repositioning is cynical to the core; two, “cling to religion?” No rural Pennsylvanian clings to religion more than Obama himself, who for 20 years sat silent in the pews, while a hate-spewing minister damned his country and most everyone else. The question is not why Pennsylvanians “cling to their religion,” but why do the Obamas still cling to the Trinity Church that seems far more extreme than anything I’ve seen in rural America.
[…]
… here we have the essential Obama, a walking paradox between the postmodern hip-Ivy-Leaguer who sneers at middle-class America’s supposed prejudices and parochialism, while at the same time courting an anti-Enlightenment, prejudicial demagogue like Jeremiah Wright. For free trade or anti-free trade? For 2nd-amendment rights or not? Post-religious or pious and fundamentalist? For public campaign financing or not? A uniter of various groups or someone who sees America in terms of “they”? Straight-talking or someone who evokes “context” to explain away the inexplicable?
Added. Fire in the hole:
Hillary chief strategist Geoffrey Garin dramatically raised the stakes in the battle over Barack Obama’s comments about small-town America, saying in an interview that they would be “damaging” to him in a general election, could set back the Democratic Party’s efforts to reach heartland voters, and should be something that super-delegates consider when deciding whom to support.
Obama: Have I mentioned that you people are a bunch of rubes? -- Multiple updates
Oh, the Messiah is going to lose his halo for this:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
McCain is on it, and so is Mama:
“Pennsylvanians don’t need a president who looks down on them. They need a president who stands up for them, who fights for them, who works hard for your futures, your jobs, and your families,” she said, implicitly casting Obama as an elitist.
Obama can go on now and talk trash to the small town folk in Montana, cause Mama done bought some boots:
In a sign that she is planning to stay in the presidential nomination fight until the bitter end, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) has dispatched a top aide to Montana to manage her campaign in that state’s June 3 primary.
Matt McKenna, who has served as former President Bill Clinton’s traveling press spokesman since December, is returning to his home state in an attempt to guide the New York senator to a surprise victory in Montana.
Added. Obama’s condescending remarks have Mama heartbroken. True, his campaign may have just exploded. But Mama’s not celebrating. She’s hurt:
She saw this in the media because her campaign took the original reporting at Huffington Post and fed it to the media. But that’s fair, and it restates a lesson that all politicians in the Internet age should have learned by now: Just because you don’t see somebody from ABC or Fox News or the New York Times in the audience, that doesn’t mean a reporter isn’t there.
Added. Michael Young nails it:
… Obama’s approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.
Added: That was fast. Mama got over her hurt feelings, and now she’s mad. She’s told Obama to get her a switch to beat him with. (Seriously, Hillary’s not only red hot with the politics here, she’s actually making a case. Watch the whole thing. She’s on; she connecting.)
April 11, 2008
We're not going to "bomb, bomb, bomb" Iran
Charles Krauthammer calls for a “Holocaust Declaration,” to wit:
“It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.”
This should be followed with a simple explanation: “As a beacon of tolerance and as leader of the free world, the United States will not permit a second Holocaust to be perpetrated upon the Jewish people.”
This policy — the Holocaust Declaration — would not be tested during the current administration, because Iran is not going to go nuclear before January 2009. But it would establish a firm benchmark that would outlive this administration.
• Krauthammer is correct when he says that the “Bush administration’s attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear program has failed.” Barring a preemptive military strike, which the U.S. is unlikely to take, and which Israel is probably unable to take, Iran will not be stopped from getting the bomb, or from developing the ballistic missiles capable of delivering it.
• But if Iran launches a nuclear attack against Israel, how believable is it that the United States would kill millions, or even hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iranians in retaliation, as Krauthammer urges? John McCain or Barack Obama will be our next president. Both of these men are averse even to the waterboarding of terrorists. Is it plausible that either man would unleash nuclear hell on the many to punish the few?
• Since we would not act on a “Holocaust Declaration,” we should not issue one. Empty threats damage our credibility, and in turn undermine our security interests.
• Even if credible, would the threat of nuclear retaliation deter Iran’s mullahs, some of whom are, as Kruthammer puts it, “apocalyptic and messianic”? By their nature, aren’t the apocalyptic and messianic undeterrable?
• “It is, of course, hardly certain that deterrence would work on the likes of Ahmadinejad and other jihadists,” Krauthammer writes. “But deterrence would concentrate the minds of rational Iranian actors, of whom there are many, to restrain or even depose leaders such as Ahmadinejad …” Perhaps. But if Ahmadinejad and his ilk remain in power and it comes to pass that our bluff is called, then what? We should not play chicken when our credibility is at stake.
• Finally, even though most of Israel’s nuclear arsenal is land-based, as Krauthammer notes, and therefore vulnerable to a first strike, it’s not all land-based. And it is the Israelis, and not us, to whom the vengeance would belong.
Grand jury indicts man for threatening Justice Thomas
David Tuason’s threats against Justice Thomas weren’t the only threats he’d ever made against a black person, but they were presumably the ones that got the government’s attention. After all, Tuason has been reportedly threatening blacks for 20 years.
The indictment alleges that Tuason sent a letter to the U.S. Supreme Court in which he wrote: “Any negro with a white girl is sick like child molestation or incest. We don’t touch negroes’ women … Monkeys at the zoo look better than negro men. If this doesn’t stop the blackie will be castrated, shot, or set on fire… We will use detectives to find you … I will blow up the Supreme Court Building … I want him killed.”
Justice Thomas’ wife, Virginia, is white.
After reading Tuason’s rant, you have to wonder: Is he criminally racist or just crazy? In either case, you can understand why he’s been indicted.
Meanwhile, Justice Scalia, who’s promoting his new book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges, is scheduled to appear on “60 Minutes” on April 27. Recently he spoke to students from Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, Virginia. C-SPAN has video of his remarks. (Link requires RealPlayer.)
Wisconsin students to Westboro nuts: Oh, but no
You’re familiar with the Westboro crackpots, yes? They’re the homophobic psychopaths who picket the funerals of our fallen servicemen. (Major premise: God hates fags. Minor premise: America tolerates fags. Conclusion: Therefore, God kills our soldiers in Iraq. Follow that? No, of course not. You’re sane.)
Watch as students at the University of Wisconsin drive these crackpots off their campus. The First Amendment does indeed entitle you to express your views. But it does not require others to give their assent, nor does it prevent them from hollering at you.
The diction in this video is not safe for work or children.
April 9, 2008
Hillary: You know what? I think I'll party on
Mama’s having a good time. She’s got the gay boys in the house and they’ve got the music cranked up. And maybe her speech is a little slurred, but it’s not like she’s on the floor behind the sofa: “What I want you to know is I’m still standing.”
Obama: On second thought, cash will be fine
You can’t blame him. In the race for money, he’s beating McCain like a teenage girl. But Obama’s apparent decision to forgo public financing is a broken promise, and a reminder that hope can be not only audacious, but also misplaced.
McCain will accept public financing. (How else could he get $85 million?) This gives rise to a fascinating juxtaposition. The Democratic candidate, a full-on liberal, will support his campaign by relying on the market. The Republican candidate, a putative conservative, will support his campaign by relying on the state.
Anti-war Democrats selling "short-term relief in exchange for long-term pain"
In every war we’ve fought, including the Revolutionary War, some have said America could not win. More often than not, these naysayers were wrong. This doesn’t necessarily mean that present-day naysayers are wrong about the prospect of an American victory in Iraq. But it does mean that we should critically examine their claims.
April 8, 2008
Even in dogs, left is bad
How to tell if a dog is friendly.
Obama's lead is both small and insurmountable
Jonathan Chait needs a dictionary:
The spin now is that Obama’s delegate lead is “small but almost insurmountable”… These beliefs reflect the mathematical illiteracy that has allowed the press corps to be routinely duped by economic flim-flammery. A lead that’s insurmountable is, by definition, not small.
Wrong. Insurmountable means “incapable of being surmounted, passed over, or overcome.” It is not an antonym for small, or a synonym for big.
Allow me to illustrate. If you argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court and five of the justices are agin you, the obstacle to your victory is insurmountable, even though five justices make for a bare majority of the court. Sometimes a small obstacle — in this example, a single vote — is also an insurmountable one.
Homoerotic rendering of Last Supper ignites a row
Since it was hanging in a Catholic museum, the church ordered it removed. Luckily for the museum’s director, the pope is not a Muslim:
“I don’t see any blasphemy here,” he said, gesturing at a Crucifixion picture showing a soldier simultaneously beating Jesus and holding his genitals. “People can imagine what they want to.”
Boehler says that picture drew particular criticism from some visitors, along with a sculpture of Jesus on the cross without a face or loincloth that some Christians found offensive.
But the most disputed work was ‘Leonardo’s Last Supper, restored by Pier Paolo Pasolini’ which showed cavorting Apostles sprawling over the dining table and masturbating each other.
“Such bold transgressionist art!,” writes a commenter at Ace of Spades. “It takes real guts to insult Christians these days, what with their pained expressions and letters to the editor.” Indeed. Don’t wait for a comparable rendering of Mohammad and his adherents.
April 7, 2008
"What I am not for is having the same position as George Bush and then demonizing him, which is what Democrats have done for nearly 8 years now"
Don Surber compares Barack Obama’s stance on civil unions to George Bush’s and finds a similarity.
1,052,415
That’s the number of immigrants who became legal permanent residents of the United States in 2007. (Link opens pdf.)
Court invalidates "pole tax"
This is Texas, where you cannot hinder a man’s view of gyrating women.
April 6, 2008
Video: When is it constitutionally permissible to strip search a child?
Backstory:
In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn’t know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse’s supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl’s mother.
So when the talking heads in the video refer to “prescription” medications, they’re referring to two non-prescription medications: ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve), both of which you’ll find on the shelf at Walgreens. And even these pills Savana did not have.
The superintendent claims that, in addition to ferreting out over-the-counter remedies, strip searches of children are justified by the need to keep guns out of school. But that’s true only if he expected to find a Glock in the folds of the labia.
Bob Barr forms presidential exploratory committee
He’s neither charismatic nor attractive. In fact, he’s crusty. And his comments are platitudinous. But he has the right ideas, and I hope he runs.
He can’t win, of course, and he knows it. But winning isn’t the point:
Former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr eased into presidential politics Saturday with an announcement that he has formed an exploratory committee to gauge voter interest in his candidacy as a Libertarian.
If there are “sufficient numbers” of people behind a Bob Barr presidential race, he’s running, the former Republican said.
[…]
“We are at a tipping point,” Barr said, “in terms of the willingness of voters, in significant numbers, to consider alternatives to the major [political] parties.”
Barr conceded it was unlikely he could win, but he said his potential candidacy would be an opportunity to preach the Libertarian philosophy.
I’m not a Libertarian, but I am a libertarian, and that’s close enough.
Added. “The Libertarians will choose their nominee at their late May convention in Denver. And while a Barr candidacy would thwart [former Democrat Mike] Gravel’s second attempt at a nomination, it could also hurt Senator John McCain by pulling votes from disaffected conservatives.”
April 5, 2008
Articles worth reading ...
• School officials to 13-year-old girl: Let’s have a look at that crotch. “There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it’s perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona …”
• Meanwhile, a 14-year-old boy has been charged with a felony for bringing a disposable camera to school. Makes you glad you got out before the schools went bat shit crazy, doesn’t it?
• The perils of expanding NATO: “I have three sons myself, and I can’t spare any of them to die defending one pissant Balkan dump against another pissant Balkan dump.”
• Sigh: “Palestinians capture rare, endangered giant sea turtle; promptly slit its throat”
• Court says parents not liable in AIDS case: “A Chicago woman who sued her fiance’s parents for allegedly covering up that he was dying of AIDS is not entitled to a $2 million jury award she received in 2004, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday.” According to the judge who wrote the opinion, the unidentified woman “ignored each and every fact that pointed to the truth, which was that Albert had a very serious health problem …”
• Improve your diction: Exploring the subtle difference between misfeasance and malfeasance.
• You can make quality healthcare available to most, or you can make mediocre care available to all. But you cannot avoid the rationing of health care.
Worst case "elephant man" to get surgery
April 4, 2008
Yeah, up yours too, buddy ...
Listen to this condescending hair hole. John McCain is notable for nothing if not moral certitude.
Why didn’t he join the Democrats when he had the chance?
Bank on it: In a general election debate, he’ll talk down to Obama as well, and that’ll be the end of it.
"I'm beginning to think the wrong McCain is running"
I don’t know if Cindy McCain should be president. But I do know that she’s a multi-millionaire who had her husband sign a pre-nup, which suggests that even she doesn’t trust him. And when a smart businesswoman doesn’t trust you, that’s a sign — especially if she’s your wife.
In election 2008, these are the ten states to watch
Worth 112 electoral votes, these state will decide whether we have a President McCain or a President Obama:
• Colorado
• Iowa
• Michigan
• Missouri
• Nevada
• New Mexico
• New Hampshire
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Virginia
The other forty are more or less pledged.
Jesus loves you, but I'm taking you to court: anti-Christian remarks get teacher sued
True, the teacher’s logic reeks. But ask yourself: What would you think about a Muslim student suing for anti-Islam remarks?
As for the offended student, his “argument” is unpersuasive:
“It was very hard for me because it’s like basically telling me all this stuff that I’ve believed my whole entire life — it’s just basically trying to throw it out the window,” Farnan told FOX News.
First of all, child, you’re sixteen. So you can drop the “whole entire life” bit. Secondly, you believe only what your parents have told you to believe, and a lot of what they’ve told you is indefensible mysticism. And that needs to be challenged, though admittedly by someone smarter and more thoughtful than the teacher you’re suing.
Guess what? Globe cooling
This surely comes as good news to Al Gore, even if he was going to fly that private jet no matter what. But now the rest of us can use more than a single square of toilet paper without feeling bad:
Average global temperatures in 2008 are forecast to be lower than in previous years, thanks to the cooling effect of the ocean current in the Pacific, U.N. meteorologists say.
The World Meteorological Organisation’s secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, said it was likely that La Nina, an abnormal cooling of sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, would continue into the summer.
If the forecast holds true, global temperatures will not have risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
April 3, 2008
Run, Bob, run!
And if he does, I’ll vote for him.
Good news: distressed homeowners eligible for counseling
Rarely does a single story so perfectly illustrate the corruption that now pervades the American body politic:
Senate Democratic and Republican leaders rushing to address the nation’s housing crisis reached agreement yesterday on a package that would provide billions of dollars in tax rebates to the slumping home-building industry while offering little to homeowners threatened with foreclosure.
[…]
… lawmakers settled on a sharply scaled-back array of measures that would provide $4 billion in grants for cities to buy foreclosed properties, temporary tax breaks worth up to $7,000 for home buyers who purchase foreclosed properties, and new tax deductions for almost every American who owns a home. The package, which would cost about $15 billion over the next 10 years, also would jump-start stalled legislation to streamline the Federal Housing Administration, one of the top priorities of the Bush administration.
Families who cannot afford to repay their home loans — the group at the heart of the mortgage meltdown — would benefit mainly from $100 million to expand foreclosure counseling services and greater latitude for local housing authorities to use tax-exempt bonds in refinancing subprime loans.
Home builders and other businesses suffering losses in the flagging economy, meanwhile, would get the lion’s share of federal spending in the bill: $6 billion in tax rebates. [Emphasis added.]
In other words, the government isn’t going to bail out people who failed to read the fine print of their mortgage contracts, or who bought more home than they could afford. And that’s fine. If we subsidize inappropriate risk-taking, we’ll get more inappropriate risk-taking. But to pony up billions for home builders and local governments and pass that off as a solution to the “housing crisis” is a disgrace.
Also, note the bipartisan nature of this indecency. I’m not a Democrat. But more and more, I think I’m not a Republican either.
April 1, 2008
McCain girl strikes back
Her “McCain Girls” video, the video she’s referring to here, is quite horrid. But she’s got a spunky response to the criticism.
Pat Condell on Fitna, Islam and civilizationphobia: "Islam without violence is like an egg-free omelet"
The guy is awesomely awesome: