Feb
03

Moonbat convergence!

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The best joke this “comedian” ever told.

They say truth is stranger than fiction.

Longtime actress Roseanne Barr is running for the Green Party’s presidential nomination — and according to reports, the comedienne says it’s no joke. To make matters all the more bizarre, anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan said on her blog that she would support a “Barr for President.”

Two peas in a pod.

Two lunatics in a rubber room, more like.

Update! Treacher: “Chins up, America!” He also proudly announces his endorsement of Barr–”until such time as it is no longer funny.” I can’t imagine that day ever coming, though.

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Feb
03

Unelectable? If only

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You think WE got problems?

It’s a crucial election year. As another global financial crisis looms and rogue states pursue nuclear weapons, the American people are desperately looking for a strong leader to show them the way to a brighter tomorrow.

So it’s unconscionable that the Democratic primaries have yet to produce a single serious candidate for president.

This election is a great opportunity for the Democrats. After the setbacks the party has suffered, the Tea Party is finally dying down, and people are getting fed up with the Republicans in Congress. If the Democrats could come up with a strong candidate for the White House, he or she would easily win the election.

Yet, for some reason, many of the most promising Democrats chose not to run in the primaries, and those who did run are not appealing candidates. Indeed, the front-runner who has swept the early primary states despite a lack of enthusiastic support, Barack Obama, is just not a viable candidate in the general election.

People were very excited about Obama when he first emerged on the scene in 2008, but as his campaign went on — and as he’s actually served as president — it’s become apparent to the general public that he’s simply not a serious candidate for the job.

Well, all that’s certainly true enough. But I’m afraid it’s a whole lot less than apparent to the electorate that it’s so. After all, they put the worthless nimrod in office once already.

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Backtalk

Feb
03

There’s no such thing as an anti-conservative “GOP establishment”

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Just keep telling yourself that.

Across America, state Republican parties and legislators are pursuing the opponents they most despise with renewed vigor.

You would think that the targets of these efforts are President Barack Obama and Democratic Party officeholders who are hell-bent on turning America into a financially broken, post-constitutional, Washington-controlled playground safe only for crony capitalists and regulators gone wild. You would be wrong.

In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Utah, to name just four, state GOP establishments are laboring mightily to marginalize the millions of constitutional conservatives whose activist energy (but not their outlook) dates back to the beginnings of the Tea Party movement three years ago. By their behavior, it’s clear that those who run many state parties and quite a few incumbent moderate Republican lawmakers are more threatened than pleased at the results of the 2010 elections, when the GOP took back the U.S. House and significantly improved its representation in statehouses and state legislatures. Oh, they’re happy with the majorities they have, and want to pick up control of the U.S. Senate this time around. They just don’t like many of the people who won the races which gave them those majorities, would rather not see any more interlopers come in and try to upset the status quo, and are targeting several newbies for political extinction.

The Republican Party as currently constituted is NOT a conservative party, and unless and until Tea Party types can take it over and remake it, is unworthy of any loyalty whatsoever from individuals who actually are.

(Via Insty)

Update! More establishment GOP skullduggery:

There are two minor parties on the Conservative side, the Libertarians and the Constitution Party. Like it or not, the Libertarians are tainted with the mixed message of being associated with the more outré statements of Ron Paul. So long as he is one of their leading lights, that condition will obtain.

The Constitution Party is irredeemably tainted, for me at least. Here in Colorado, we have a Democrat as governor, elected in 2010. A TEA Party supported candidate won the Republican nomination. This horrified the Republican Central Committee, and they demanded that he step down because he was “unsuitable”. The meeting with the Central Committee was…noteworthy. Also, unsatisfactory from the Central Committee’s point of view as the general tenor of our candidate’s response was FOAD.

So, the Republican Central Committee cut a deal with the Constitution Party. The Constitution Party replaced their already selected governor candidate with a RCC selected Republican who changed his registration temporarily [Tom Tancredo, a Republican again since a week after the election]. In return, the Republicans arranged to finance the Constitution Party’s campaign, and guaranteed them 5% of the vote. That last gave them Major Party status under Colorado law, and automatic ballot access without petitions statewide. With the Republicans pushing the Constitution Party and NOT supporting the TEA Party Republican, the Democrat won handily, which pleased them. The Republicans kept a TEA Party candidate from winning office; which for them was a worthwhile trade for the governorship. And the Constitution Party got major party status, which they never would have done electorally. The only ones who lost were the TEA Party Patriots.

They really are unprincipled hacks concerned with nothing at all besides power, folks. And they fear conservatives taking it from them far more than they do Democrat Socialists, their calculated bleating about the catastrophe of an Ogabe re-election notwithstanding.

Updated update! MM forcefully argues that the Colorado story ain’t necessarily so. Not being all that up on Colorado politics myself, and knowing MM to be a commenter here of long and good standing, I ain’t gonna try to dispute it. I do have some vague recollection of the controversy surrounding Maes at the time, I can say that much.

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Feb
03

Another roundup

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This one of the latest antics of the most moronic passel of blooming idiots in history:

Keeping the steps of City Hall clean is becoming a sore subject between the City of Austin and Occupy Austin protesters.

“Do we really need to do the power washing three times a week out here when things are basically kept up?” said Occupy Austin Food Management Coordinator Brian Harris…

Crews clean the area between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays — a time when business hours are over, foot traffic is down, and when Occupy demonstrations have turned in for the night. But the protesters complain they have to wake up, pack up their belongings, and move for the cleaning, then return to sleep on wet pavement, and that’s a health risk.

“Everything’s soaking wet so you know we’ve got to put the tarp down, and it’s, it’s really miserable,” said protester Puneet Kumar.

Yeah, camping out is pretty rough all right. Especially for a twee, spoiled-rotten, punk-ass bitch. As Treacher says: “And to think, some wingnuts try to paint Occupiers as delusional, ridiculously overprivileged crybabies.” But it gets even funnier:

Why go hungry when you can stay awake?

Yesterday, the Examiner’s Aubrey Whelan took note of two members of Occupy D.C. who, in a protest of the National Park Service’s recent decision to begin enforcing the ban on camping in McPherson Square—which includes a prohibition on slumbering in the park—decided to go on a “sleep strike.”

That’s right. Since about noon on Monday, when the enforcement regime officially went into effect, two demonstrators, Thomas Reges and Ricky Lehner decided that the best way to prove to NPS and U.S. Park Police that sleeping in public spaces is a vital and expressive part of the Occupy Wall Street movement was to forego sleep entirely.

I say the local authorities should help these dimwits out, by shining piercingly bright lights into their faces and playing the most obnoxious recorded music they can find as loud as they can possibly play it. But then they’d just start whining about torture, I guess.

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Feb
03

Get out now

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Ogabe will wind up doing the right thing just this once–for all the wrong reasons, naturally. Tim Lynch explains, starting with this vivid nugget of an opener:

I’ve been trying to come up with a post for over a month now but don’t have any good pictures because I’m back in America, sans super cool Nikon which got blown up in the Helmand, and without good pictures I don’t seem to be able to write. That camera cost over a thousand bucks and that money is now down the sewer, which is appropriate given the fact that on my last night in Kandahar the poo pond burst its seams and I had to wade through 3 feet of waste water to get to the freedom bird. I’m serious – here’s a picture of that shit, which I hesitate to say because using inappropriate language is (so I have learned) a sign of PTSD.

Uhh, Tim, looking at the pic, I’d say there’s nothing whatever inappropriate about your language there, buddy. Onwards:

But I don’t want to talk about shit, I want to talk about the alarming deterioration I see in this country and our nitwit President. That is proving hard to do, because every time I think I’ve crafted an astute observation or two I read a post by Victor Davis Hanson or Richard Fernandez who say what I was going to say, only they say it ten time better than I ever could. My agent keeps telling me I’m just 12 months of hard work away from a Hollywood blockbuster but I don’t believe a word he says except when he tells me I need to keep the blog going. Keeping the blog going is proving hard because I’m not in Afghanistan and the Afghans are screwed now anyway. I can sum up our ten years in Afghanistan in 3 pictures and then I’m moving on to the President’s new genius plan for the military and (this is going to freak you out) I agree with him. Not his reasoning mind you, he was, is, and will always be an absolute moron, but what he is doing by gutting the ground forces was inevitable. But hey, every once in a while even a blind squirrel will find a nut.

Ten years ago, Afghans were thrilled to see us and thought that finally they could live in peace and develop their country.

Five years ago they watched us flounder – we stayed on FOBs and shoveled cash by the billions into the hands of a corrupt central government that we insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, was a legitimate government – one that had to be supported at all costs. We raided their homes at night and shot up civilians who got too close to our convoys, we paid for roads that did not exist and, because of the “force protection” mentality, most Afghans thought our soldiers were cowards because they never came to the bazaar off duty and unarmored to buy stuff like the Russians did. In fact, every bite of food our soldiers consumed was flown into country at great expense, so in a land famous for its melons and grapes our troops ate crappy melon and tasteless grapes flown in by contractors from God knows where.

Now, they want to shoot us in the face. Except for the klepocratic elite who want us to give them billions more and then shoot us in the face.

There it is; Afghanistan is toast, and what the last 10 years has taught us is we cannot afford to deploy American ground forces. Two billion dollars a week (that’s billion with a B) has bought what? Every year we stay to “bring security to the people,” the security situation for the people gets worse and worse, deteriorating by orders of magnitude. Now the boy genius has announced a “new strategy”. A strategy that is identical to the “strategy” that resulted in a hollow ground force getting its ass kicked by North Korea in 1950; a mere five years after we had ascended to the most dominant military the world had ever known.

Was Iraq worth the blood and treasure spent by the United States? If it was, I’m not seeing it. Will the end state in Afghanistan be worth the blood and treasure we have spent and continue to spend? Not a chance in hell. The only lesson to be learned from the past ten years of constant war is that we cannot afford to go to war. At least not in the way we do it now which is, sort of, what I’ve been pointing out in this blog for years.

Tim has it right, I think. Herschel Smith concurs (and why both of these guys haven’t already taken up residence in Ye Olde Blogrolle until now, I surely don’t know):

Listen well. This is no anti-war cry. I have argued virtually non-stop for increasing troop levels, staying the course, and increased (and different) lines of logistics for support of our troops. But I have watched with dismay and even panic over the course of the last six years as we haven’t taken the campaign seriously, and good men have suffered and perished because of it.

Michael Yon applies the KISS principle:

This war is going to turn out badly. We are wasting lives and resources while the United States decays and other threats emerge. We led the horse to water.

Importantly, there is no value in pretending that Pakistan is an ally. We should wish the best of luck to the Afghans, and the many peaceful Pakistanis, and accelerate our withdrawal of our main battle force. The US never has been serious about Afghanistan. Under General Petraeus we were starting to gain ground, but the current trajectory will land us in the mud.

The enemies will never beat us in Afghanistan. Force on force, the Taliban are weak by comparison. Yet this is their home. There is only so much we can do at this extreme cost for the many good Afghan people. We must reduce our main effort and concentrate on other matters. Time to come home.

Again: agreed. The yammering of anti-American, anti-military pseudo-pacifists is not worth heeding. But when you have serious, patriotic, courageous Americans who have been there and seen the elephant up close and personal saying it, it absolutely must be considered carefully.

We started off on the right foot in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and then went off the rails. A nation that lacks the will to not just hold the enemy at bay or pick them off piecemeal from the sky but crush their very spirit and will to resist is not one that has any business going to war at all. That describes us all too well, and the only thing we’re accomplishing now is squandering the lives of our best and brightest, sapping the esprit and reducing the numbers of the kind of men and women we have all too few of to begin with, on a poorly-conceived fool’s errand. Time for that to end, and to rethink exactly what kind of country we have chosen to become, the limitations inherent in defining ourselves as we have, and whether we wish to continue along that dismal path.

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Feb
03

Operation Gunrunner roundup

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Hayward has it:

Holder continued his “incompetence defense” of insisting that he really doesn’t know anything that happens at the Justice Department, and can’t recall details about anything relating to Fast and Furious. He even claimed he never saw some of the subpoenas he’s been ignoring.

Rep. Buerkle noted the strange silence from our famously talkative President on the subject of Eric Holder and Operation Fast and Furious. Holder continued to insist he has never discussed Fast and Furious with either Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton…this despite hundreds of Mexican citizens being killed by Holder’s “botched gun walking operation.” Holder actually tried suggesting to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) that nobody else in the Administration wants to talk to him, because they’re afraid of getting dragged into the politically-motivated Fast and Furious investigation.

It’s easy to understand Rep. Burton’s surprised reaction to learning that Arizona U.S. Attorney’s Office Criminal Division Chief Patrick Cunningham quit just days after taking the Fifth Amendment to escape giving Fast and Furious testimony…or Rep. Darrell Issa’s incredulous response when Holder claimed there’s nothing fishy about Cunningham’s actions. Happily, Holder promised to continue reviewing Justice Department documents pertaining to Cunningham’s actions, and will hand over anything he decides Congress should see. Hopefully Issa and Burton know better than to hold their breath waiting for those new documents.

As for the contempt of Congress charges Issa has threatened Holder with, my prediction yesterday was proven true: Holder rejected the February 9th deadline laid out in Issa’s letter, and will evidently ignore the contempt charges.

Holder, echoed by Democrats on the Oversight Committee, also took the opportunity to renew their calls for more gun-control laws, which many suspect was the true purpose of Operation Fast and Furious all along.

As with any other dictatorship, the Ogabe junta is utterly lawless, corrupt, and arrogant, its various bureaucracies and satrapies wholly politicized. And Holder isn’t by any means the head of this rotting fish. He and his regime colleagues and co-conspirators have stood the entire concept of public “service” on its head.

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Backtalk

Feb
03

Own goal

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Jen Kuznicki with a good hockey metaphor:

The Republican Establishment Ann refuses to acknowledge is not interested in stopping the policies of statist Democrats, but strategically tipping the puck and finessing the outcome. But this short-sighted political expediency still puts the puck in the net.

We were wrong to think that Ann is a conservative author. She is a Republican cheerleader, blind to the fact that liberalism is the problem the nation must fight, and that liberalism resides in both parties.

The conservative electorate is through with being told that Republicans are conservatives merely by virtue of being Republican. They have risen up in 2010 to elect Republicans and many have seen very clearly that a lot of those Republicans have spent the last year giving the Democrats enough rope to hang us all.

This is no time to be the cheering section for the team whose claim to fame is the most assisted goals for the opposing team.

Wait, hockey teams have cheerleaders? Ah well, puck the Republican Statists anyway.

(Via The Great One)

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Feb
03

Commies in space!

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Okay, I admit it, I mostly just wanted to swipe that title.

Newt Gingrich’s moon colony proposal received a great deal of ridicule from the media and his fellow Republican contenders. In response to a question about Newt’s ideas, Mitt Romney stated that he’d “rather be rebuilding housing here in the U.S.” (Will the government under Romney begin constructing colonies for poor Americans?) Ron Paul, throwing a rock from his glass house, made a quip about sending politicians to live on the moon. Rick Santorum, who must always be contrary, accused Newt Gingrich of being irresponsible with American tax dollars during a time of severe debt. He stated that Newt was merely pandering to Floridians, and that the “idea that anybody’s going out and talking about brand new, very expensive schemes to spend more money at a time when we do not have our fiscal house in order in my opinion is playing crass politics and not being realistic with the people of this country[.]”

Newt Gingrich’s plan, however, calls for opening up the space race to private companies and entrepreneurs in a way never seen before. While one can certainly debate the feasibility of such a plan, Gingrich isn’t calling for dumping billions or trillions of dollars into the usual governmental black hole. Instead, Newt Gingrich envisions a new era of space exploration, starting with the establishment of a moon colony as early as 2020. If Nietzsche’s Last Man is defined by his inability to take aim at lofty targets, then Newt Gingrich is the Zarathustra of today’s political class. Is he dreaming? Perhaps, but he’s not the only one.

Other countries have their own plans to build moon bases within the next fifteen to thirty years. While friendly countries such as Japan and India both have this desire (and who would dare frown at their attempts?), also among them are the unfriendly Red Chinese. Unlike with the Japanese or Indians, a communist foothold on the moon would be dedicated purely to Chinese financial, technological, and military benefit. Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, expressed concerns that China would use a presence on the moon as a pretext to claim the most valuable mineral rights and locations. While there is an international treaty (to which America is not a signatory) forbidding such a claim, treaties to communists are like pie crusts — meant to be broken. The United States would be taking a backseat in space exploration as the communists of China revel in spoils we gave up without a fight.

A failure to act on our part would embolden the communists’ arrogance. After all, an America not involved in the space-race must be a country in decline.

And that truly is the root of the problem we face here: America is a country in decline, and this decline manifests in elected leaders who lack true vision and creativity.

Well, I can’t really argue with that.

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Backtalk

Feb
02

A masterpiece of doublespeak

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As the overworked mohel once said: is there no end to these pricks?

Sugar is so harmful to public health it should be controlled like alcohol and cigarettes, U.S. scientists claim.

Dr. Laura Schmidt, who was involved in the research, said, “We’re not talking prohibition. We’re not advocating a major imposition of the government into people’s lives.”

She added, “We’re talking about gentle ways to make sugar consumption slightly less convenient, thereby moving people away from the concentrated dose. What we want is to actually increase people’s choices by making foods that aren’t loaded with sugar comparatively easier and cheaper to get.”

Hey, thank goodness they’re not talking about any “major imposition of the government into people’s lives” or anything. So what are they talking about instead?

They recommended using taxation, controlling access to sugary products and tightening licensing requirements to sell sweet snacks and drinks in schools and workplaces.

Well, okay, then. I like the bit, too, about how they want to “actually increase people’s choices”–by making sugar more expensive, more difficult to obtain, and more highly regulated. That’s to make sure you stupid, lowing cattle will make the right choice, see.

GOD, but I hate these people.

(Via Darleen)

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Feb
02

Time to panic!

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Zombie is afraid–very afraid. And so should we all be.

I just finished reading a terrifying new book about climate change. I learned this:

  • Climate change is happening faster than we realize and it will have catastrophic consequences for mankind.

    • 


  • There’s very little we can do to stop it at this late stage, but we might be able to save ourselves if we immediately take these necessary and drastic steps:
    - Increase our reliance on alternative energy sources and stop using so much oil and other carbon-based fuels;
- Adopt energy-efficient practices in all aspects of our lives, however inconvenient;
- Impose punitive taxes on inefficient or polluting activities to discourage them;
- Funnel large sums of money from developed nations like the U.S. to Third World nations;
- In general embrace all environmental causes.

You of course recognize these as the solutions most often recommended to ameliorate the looming crisis of Global Warming. But there’s a little glitch in my narrative. Because although the book I read was indeed about climate change, it wasn’t about Global Warming at all; it was instead about “The Coming of the New Ice Age,” and it isn’t exactly “new” — it was published in 1977.

I myself just got around to reading Fallen Angels not too long ago, and it was a lot scarier than the usual hysteria promoted by the anti-civilization, anti-humanity Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly “the weather”) pimps. A lot more accurate in terms of both its predictive ability and the likelihood of its ever coming to pass, too, and more solidly grounded in actual science. But Z noticed something funny along the way:

The fact that the media and popular culture and academia have veered from one panic-inducing disaster scenario to another one which completely contradicts the first one is funny enough in its own right. But reading The Weather Conspiracy: The Coming of the New Ice Age opened my eyes to an even more significant aspect of this serial crisis-mongering:

The “solutions” prescribed to solve both Global Warming and the looming Ice Age are exactly the same.

In both cases, proponents of the theory-du-jour say that in order to stave off disaster, we must reverse the march of civilization, stop our profligate use of carbon-based fuels, cede power and money from the First World to the Third World, and wherever possible revert to a Luddite pre-industrial lifestyle.

I realized: The solution (commit civilizational suicide) always remains the same; all that differs are the wildly divergent purported “crises” proffered up to justify the imposition of the solution.

Seen from this angle, the entire Climate Change field should be more properly reframed thus:

In order to weaken and eventually destroy the existing industrialized nations, we must devise an ecological “crisis” so severe that only voluntary economic suicide can solve it; and if this first crisis doesn’t materialize as planned, then devise another, and another, even if they flatly contradict our previous claims.

I had long suspected that this is the most accurate characterization of Climate Changeology; but reading The New Ice Age clinched it for me. The true purpose of climate change disaster-mongering is to permanently cripple the First World, and to elevate the Third World, in order to create a planet with no economic inequality. The goal remains constant; the supposed imminent catastrophes justifying it come and go as needed.

Bingo. It was never about climate at all; it was, is, and will always be about promoting the usual worn-out Leftist ideology.

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Feb
02

The alternative

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I mentioned the other night that Gingrich’s post-primary speech was damned excellent, and it was. He made some perfect policy proposals, backing them with his pledge of his “life, fortune, and sacred honor” to see them implemented immediately in a new Contract With America. I have every confidence he’ll do just that. After all, he’s done it before:

Let’s talk briefly about the power of ideas. In 1980, I was very honored to be able to help put together the first Capitol steps. And at that point, Senate and House candidates came together with Governor Reagan. David Broder wrote about it in the Washington Post. It was a very courageous decision by Reagan because he didn’t have to run as part of a team. And he did something nobody had done before. And we won six U.S. Senate seats by a combined margin of 75,000 votes, and we picked up 33 House seats.

In 1994, building on that experience, we got 350 candidates to come and to be part of a Contract with America, to stand on the Capitol steps. We offered a positive program, and we had the largest one-party increase in American history in an off-year. Nine million additional Americans voted for a positive vision, and we kept our word, and every item in the contract was voted on in the first 93 days.

Now, that’s from one of the few transcripts of the speech I’ve been able to find, and the speech wasn’t given as this was written. Unsurprisingly, the coverage focused entirely on his “two-man race” statements, with scarcely a word being said about the specific proposals, which were stirring, encouraging, delivered with absolute seriousness and sincerity, and…well, just plain right. I finally did find a correct transcript (where else), and here’s the good stuff:

In the next few days, we’re going to develop the equivalent of the contract from 1994, except this is going to be a personal one between me and you, because I’m asking you to make me president and therefore, I have a personal responsibility. It’s going to come in two parts. Part one is conditional and requires your help. Part two, I can do if I win the election, without having to condition it.

Part one only works if you help me and we run a team campaign, which means, by the way, we have to replace Bill Nelson with a conservative.

But if you help us, and in addition to winning the presidency, we elect a Republican Senate and a Republican House, I will ask them on January 3rd to stay in office, and I will ask them to immediate pass the repeal of Obama-care.

I will ask them to immediately pass the repeal of the Dodd-Frank bill, which is killing housing, killing small business and killing independent banks.

And I will ask them to pass the repeal of Sarbanes- Oxley, which is crippling American businesses with no net profit.

And my goal is to have all three bills sitting there, waiting, so the minute I am sworn in, I can sign all three and we’re off to a pretty good opening morning.
(CROWD GOES NUTS–M)
Now those three promises are conditional. We have to win the Senate by a big enough margin to manage it and we have to increase our strength in the House. Help me do that, I’ll do those three.

Now let me tell you some things and we’re going to put this together in a way that you’ll be able to see in writing with my signature and you’ll be able to hold me accountable. There are a series of executive orders I can issue that the Congress can’t stop as long as they’re within the law. The very first executive order will abolish all of the White House czars as of that moment.

We will issue immediately an executive order on the same day. All of this is going to happen about two hours after the inaugural address.

OK? No point in hanging out and having fun. Before we get to go to the various balls that night, we’re going to have a work period. This is going to be a working presidency.

Now, I ask you: what’s not to like? And as I keep saying: unlike any of the other candidates out there, Newt has done this before. Against all odds, with the stiffest resistance the limp-dick Republican Statists and no-dick Democrat Socialists could muster. More details on the new Contract here, by the way. It’s good stuff, and the prospect of actually seeing it implemented–any of it, much less all of it–is electrifying, at least to me.

If Newt sticks with this positive, inspiring approach instead of getting into another shitfling with the lying dirtbag Romney, he will win the nomination. And unlike Romney, he will deserve to. And that leads us to another little problem for the Great Plastic Inevitable:

Last night, Brit Hume described the win appropriately: “He beat Newt Gingrich by bombing him back into the stone age” with negative ads.

Despite Romney’s apparently straight-faced yet completely false assertions that he tried to run a positive campaign and only went negative because Newt outspent him in South Carolina, Romney showed himself to be devoid of the ability to inspire the conservative base.  Tellingly, turnout in Florida was down significantly from 2008; by contrast, in South Carolina turnout was up significantly.

More (warning: PuffHo link):

Overall, turnout was down in the Florida Republican primary from 2008. In 2008, 1.95 million votes were cast in the Republican primary, compared to 1.67 million cast in 2012 (reported by the Florida State Board of Elections as of the morning of Feb. 1). A decline of 280,000 votes. What does it mean?

Mitt Romney needs only to look in the mirror — or better yet, the graph below — to see who is to blame for the decline in turnout. The fact is, they’re just not that into you, Mitt.

In the graph I’ve plotted by county the percent vote for Gingrich against the percent change in turnout from 2008 to 2012. The graph tells a clear story. In counties where Gingrich did better, Republican turnout was up over 2008. In counties where Romney dominated, turnout was lower.

Conservative turnout will be depressed in any election where there is no conservative to vote for and the base has been demoralized and is apathetic due to the incredible arrogance of the people who take their votes for granted and insist they stay on the plantation no matter what. “I’m not the other guy” is simply not good enough any more, and being sold a bill of goods by a power-mad charlatan pretending to be a conservative ain’t either. If nominated, Romney will not win. The “electability” argument is horseshit, of the purest ray serene. If the establishment RINOs and Coulters among us really want to advance conservative principles, they need to stop acting as if they’re too scary or offensive to the so-called “moderates” and “independents” and acting ashamed of them.

Which, by the way, it would seem that those “independents” aren’t nearly as numerous as some would have you believe, either. All in all, if Mitt gets the nomination it adds up to an electoral disaster of exactly the type and magnitude the Mittbots keep screaming at real conservatives about.

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Feb
02

A new low

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Wanna know another reason I won’t vote for Romney? Because I don’t want to have to tie myself in such absurd knots defending the indefensible, as Jen Rubin and several others have. And now…Coulter, in her “Three Cheers For Romneycare” self-beclownment.

No, you read that right: three cheers for Romneycare, which she calls “a massive triumph for conservative free-market principle.” And she doesn’t appear to be joking. Even though, as the Prof notes, she was saying something very, very different a few months ago. And then there’s this: “No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.”

And this: “There’s no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves with guns and a state forcing adults in today’s world to equip themselves with health insurance.”

My God. It’s so fucked up I don’t even know where to begin dismantling it. Thankfully, Levin handled that already. The crucial point: “Are we supposed to throw conservatism out the window to defend Mitt Romney?” Well, yes, Mark; it’s the only way it can be done, after all. Dan McLaughlin addressed this a while back in an excellent post I meant to mention here but didn’t get around to:

The other point I would make about integrity is that it goes close to the core of why a Romney nomination worries me so much: because we would all have to make so many compromises to defend him that at the end of the day we may not even recognize ourselves (emphasis mine, to highlight an irony so strongly acidic it actually, physically burns–M). Romney has, in a career in public office of just four years (plus about 8 years’ worth of campaigning), changed his position on just about every major issue you can think of, and his signature accomplishment in office was to be wrong on the largest policy issue of this campaign. Yes, Obama is bad, and Romney can be defended on the grounds that he can’t possibly be worse. Yes, Romney is personally a good man, a success in business, faith and family. But aside from his business biography, his primary campaign has been built entirely on arguments and strategies – about touting his own electability and dividing, coopting or delegitimizing other Republicans – none of which will be of any use in the general election. What, then, will we as politically active Republicans say about him? I was not a huge fan of John McCain’s record, but I was comfortable making honest points about the things McCain had been consistent on over the years – national security, free trade, nuclear power, public integrity, pork-barrel spending. There were spots of solid ground on which to plant ourselves with McCain, and he had a history of digging himself in on those and fighting for things he believed in. But Mitt Romney’s record is just one endless sheet of thin ice as far as the eye can see – there’s no way to have any kind of confidence that we can tell people he stands for something today without being made fools of tomorrow. We who have laughed along with Jim Geraghty’s prescient point that every Obama promise comes with an expiration date will be the ones laughed at, and worse yet we will know the critics are right. Every time I try to talk myself into thinking we can live with him, I run into this problem. It’s one that particularly bedeviled Republicans during the Nixon years – many partisan Republicans loved Nixon because he made the right enemies and fought them without cease or mercy, but the man’s actual policies compromised so many of our principles that the party was crippled in the process even before Watergate. We can stand for Romney, but we’ll find soon enough that that’s all we stand for.

This is where Romney, the establishment GOP, and their shared ambition and power-lust have taken us, folks. It’s beyond appalling.

I have regretfully concluded that in fact I would rather see Obama re-elected than have the sort of irretrievable tommyrot Coulter has descended to in this article continue to metastasize on our side. Better to fight a stand-up battle with a known enemy than endure repeated stabs in the back from a false friend–or see an erstwhile ally corrupted completely by utter derangement of this sort. I do believe we’d be one hell of a lot better off with Obama as president and conservatives–not (gag) Republican Statists–in control of Congress than we would be with Romney in the Oval Office, standing ready to enthusiastically rubber-stamp every Progressivist expansion of government the liberals in both parties can excrete.

With “defenders” like these, liberty and the Constitution need no more enemies. Like I said: appalling. And maddening. On the other hand, Jeff may have the explanation:

All I can say by way of explanation is, this kind of risible sophistry could just be the body’s natural reaction to having had Bill Maher’s dick in it at some point.

It’s a more, umm, palatable explanation than some I could think of. Almost comforting, in a revolting sort of way.

Update! Philip Klein: “Shameful.” It sure is. He takes Coulter apart nearly as thoroughly as Levin did. As KT said the other day, I hope he’s worth it to ya, Ann.

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Jan
31

“All of this I will do within two hours of the inauguration”

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“I may not get in as much golf as Obama, but I will get in a lot more job creation.” Newt shoulda given this speech a few days ago. Good stuff. Damned good.

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Jan
31

You broke it, you bought it

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The mayor of Oakland, that is.

OAKLAND (KCBS)— Oakland Mayor Jean Quan said she has had it with a small, violent fringe element within the Occupy Oakland protests and claimed it is using the city as a “playground.”

Quan spoke Monday in an interview following another chaotic round of street protests in which police units from surrounding areas were on hand to support the cash-strapped city’s police department.

“They’re taking away resources from my city and creating a situation where it’s making it more difficult for me to keep the city safer,” Quan said.

Gee, wonder where they might have gotten the idea that they could just do anydamnedthing they wanted in Oakland? I wonder, I wonder…

We support the goals of the Occupy Wall Street movement: we have high levels of unemployment and we have high levels of foreclosure that makes Oakland part of the 99% too. We are a progressive city and tolerant of many opinions. We may not always agree, but we all have a right to be heard.

I want to thank everyone for the peaceful demonstration at Frank Ogawa Park tonight, and thank the city employees who worked hard to clean up the plaza so that all activities can continue including Occupy Wall Street. We have decided to have a minimal police presence at the plaza for the short term and build a community effort to improve communications and dialogue with the demonstrators.

Most of us are part of the 99%, and understand the spirit of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. We are committed to honoring their free speech right.

In sum: you invited this, you stupid bint. Now you get to reap the whirlwind, and my sympathy for you and the rest of your misbegotten Leftist utopia is, shall we say…nonexistent. Enjoy your riots, your violence, your pestilential infestation of the useless, the ignorant, the parasitic, the criminal, and the insane. May they burn your cesspool to the ground when they’re done leeching off it. The last word:

Charles Pine, head of the Recall and Restore committee, said the mayor still doesn’t get it.

“This was not a playground. That’s the wrong word. This was a battlefield,” he said.

Yep. And thanks not only to idiots like Quan who don’t have the vaguest conception of what their job actually is but the people who elected her as well, civilization–what there ever was of it in Oakland–lost the war.

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Jan
31

ELECTABLE!

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Jeff pre-imagines the Mittrack Ogabney Presidential debates so we won’t have to watch the sickening spectacle ourselves:

Obama: “But Governor, you supported TARP. And stimulus. Just as I did. If it was the right thing to do then, why are you saying now that it was the wrong thing to do?”

Romney: “Well, isn’t it obvious? You got to direct the stimulus money. Rather than us. And that’s just bad for America. And us. In the GOP.”

and…

Obama: “But Governor, my health care plan is built in large part on the model you passed in your state –”

Romney: “Let me be clear: it’s bad policy, bad medicine, and if elected, I will repeal it.”

Obama: “Wait, are we talking about your government-run health care system or mine in this ‘repeal’ scenario.”

Romney: “Yours, of course. The people of Massachusetts like mine at a rate of 3 to 1.”

Obama: “Well, then what makes you think Americans as a whole won’t come to like my program, which draws on your very successful state program, at just such an overwhelming rate of approval?”

Romney: “It doesn’t matter whether the American people would prefer it or not — which, by the way, the people of Massachusetts did my program at a rate of 3 to 1, if I haven’t already mentioned that. Nevertheless, if elected, I have promised I will not allow them to have a plan that the people in my state, when I was governor, wanted — and it turns out prefer at a rate of 3 to 1, because it’s bad policy, bad medicine, and I will repeal it –”

Obama: “– But wait, why would you take away that opportunity, Governor? Surely you don’t want to provide such a well-received, well-liked plan to the people of Massachusetts alone –”

Romney: “– Let me finish. Because it’s bad policy, bad medicine, and I will repeal it.”

Obama: “Yours or mine? Sorry, I keep getting confused.”

So is everybody else who isn’t a business-as-usual blockhead cheerleading for the slightly slower expansion of the welfare state and angrily insisting that a vote for a conservative is a vote for Obama.

WINNING!

Update! From another link Jeff provides in his post:

“What is the point in becoming educated on candidates and politics, arguing with my friends, taking the time away from my family – to end up with the guy McCain can’t even look in the eye. Why bother?” Rebecca says. “Obviously the “establishment” has already decided it’s Romney’s turn, and to hell with what we want. I feel like I’m being patted on the head and told “Now go vote for Romney like a good little girl. We know what’s best.”…I don’t even do that to my 3-year-old. It’s insulting. It doesn’t make me want to campaign for him.”

“It honestly makes me want to skip the election, but Obama scares me too much to do that. I do think a Romney presidency will hurt the GOP brand though, and make it hard for a real conservative to have a shot,” Rebecca said. “I feel like this is so similar to our 2010 Senate race. Romney is the Crist candidate, loved by many and backed by the establishment. But we have no Rubio. Crist would have been an easy win. He was a liked governor. Without Rubio, he would have easily won the seat. Just because we don’t have a Rubio in this race doesn’t mean we need to settle for a Crist.”

Everyone knows that no politician is perfect, so you gotta do a little settling in every election; a lot of us, including this woman, are not supporting Gingrich because we think he’s the bee’s knees right down the line, after all. The question is where you draw the line. The GOP consistently draws it a lot further to the Left than I do.

Worse, they do it for all the wrong reasons, convincing themselves that the way to bring the country back from the Leftist brink is by being just a wee mite less Left than the other guys, instead of remaining staunchly dedicated to the principles the nation was founded on–their Party’s very platform, supposedly–and articulating them passionately, persuasively, and without apology or shame.

Because conservative principles are scary, see, and “moderate” “independents”–read: liberals–are likely to shy from them like a frightened mustang.

Pshaw, I say. Also, bah. And, pfft.

Doesn’t anybody here know how to play this game update! Speaking of Newt being imperfect…umm…well, uhh, yeah.

Newt Gingrich has unveiled another line of attack in Florida — accusing Mitt Romney of having deprived elderly Jewish Massachusetts residents of kosher food.

Unfortunately, as a blog post at Commentary points out, this is a blatant distortion of the facts. In 2003, amid a budget crisis and rapidly rising Medicare costs, several nursing homes in Massachusetts considered cutting costs by closing their kosher kitchens and instead providing catered or prepackaged kosher food. The state legislature proposed an additional $600,000 in spending to prevent this from happening, but Romney vetoed it, due to state budget constraints. The legislature, as was their wont, overrode him anyway, and the kitchens, let along the kosher food supply, were never cut. In no sense could Romney be said to have tried to “eliminate” kosher meals or their funding.

Sigh. Like I said, not perfect. In fact, about as far from it as I’m willing to put up with, honestly. You should probably read the rest of it, because it actually gets worse from here. Could be that, rather than deploying an outright lie here–a la Romney’s usual MO–Gingrich opened fire on this prematurely, without knowing all the facts. But that doesn’t speak all that well of him either.

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Jan
31

The Republican Statist Party: part of the problem–still

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And it is nothing whatever new. Because in truth, they always have been.

Yet still more mush from the wimps.

To borrow a famous Reagan phrase: “Well, there they go again.”

Somewhere an exasperated Gipper is doubtless shaking his head.

The war between conservatives and the Republican Establishment — and make no mistake, this is a war — is on once more.

The people who brought the GOP losing candidates from Dewey to Dole are at it again.

If Newt Gingrich disappeared from the planet today and in his place stood only Rick Santorum — or Sarah Palin herself or some other conservative — you can be certain the Establishment GOP would have their sights trained on that conservative, running some version of precisely the same multi-gazillion dollar campaign they are running against Newt Gingrich right now. As a matter of fact, they did exactly this to Governor Palin from the very moment she stepped on the national stage in 2008. If by chance Rick Santorum emerges as the sole conservative left in this race — look out Rick.

When one adds the Lowry eye-rolling comment about Gingrich to Rubin’s snarky from-her-house comment on Palin — not to mention Romney’s “You’re fired” comment about space exploration — one gets the pluperfect illustration of the Establishment mindset that launched Dewey and Ford and all manner of moderate-inspired political disasters.

Newt Gingrich’s old friend Jack Kemp — loyal Reagan lieutenants both — would breezily call this kind of thinking “elitist and patronizing.” Buckley, the founder of Lowry’s magazine, called this kind of attitude an example of “consistent intemperance, insularity and irascibility.” Add the absence of Romney’s conservative ideology to his thus far disturbing pride in his utter lack of vision and imagination and the same old dreary picture painted by Thomas E. Dewey and Gerald Ford comes clear yet again.

To wit: yet another losing presidential campaign or a disastrously weak “mortgage presidency”– filled with intellectual and programmatic mush staffed by wimps afraid of their political shadow.

AS NIGHT FOLLOWS DAY, if Romney is nominated the hard-edged bashing of Gingrich will vanish when the opponent becomes President Obama. Why? Because, Romney and the Establishment GOP will run the updated version of the Dewey-Ford mortgage driven campaign. After all. A presidential campaign, to quote Romney, isn’t talk radio. One can’t attack Barack Obama in this fashion. One can’t say the reason this presidency is an utter failure is because of an Alinsky-ite, far left philosophy. Nooooooooo. One must say simply and politely that Obama is, to quote Romney directly, just “over his head.” And at Romney’s side (aside from all those Washington lobbyists there now) will be mortgaged aides like ex-GOP Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. In the finest tradition of Establishment wimpiness assuring that Romney really doesn’t mean it when he talks about undoing Obamacare. Oh no.

Lots of good, if depressing, stuff crammed in between the segments I excerpted here; you really need to read all of it. You especially need to read it if you still harbor any illusions about the despicable Republican Statist Party being anything but hostile to real conservatism/classical liberalism/whatever. Because that is exactly what it is, despite their mealymouthed, disingenuous lip service to same.

They are no more to be trusted with the defense of our founding ideals than Romney himself is–or, for that matter, than Obama is. They might be made use of now and then–with the strict understanding that they need to be watched and ridden herd on as closely as a crackhead in a pharmacy–but they are entirely unworthy of the allegiance of anyone who still believes in Constitutional government. Some of us may not like hearing it, but all of us need to face up to it at long last.

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Jan
31

What do we have to do to put you in an electric car today?

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Whatever it takes.

California Issues Clown Car Mandate
Green Politics: Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. What can go wrong?

Plenty, for if we’ve learned anything in recent years, it’s that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want and find useful doesn’t work.

Only the marketplace can accurately pick winners and losers. The government, having no competition, usually picks losers.

We have also learned that climate change is an overhyped fantasy based on ideology rather than science.

Yet the fraudulent science behind it is used to distort the economy and misallocate resources toward green energy and green products that cannot compete on their own merits. Their use must be coerced, leading to industrial and economic stagnation.

Then coerced they shall be. That’s how it works when you live under a Progressivist tyranny like this one. The federal clown-car mandate will be coming soon, fret not. This self-fulfilling prophecy is particularly telling, being an admission of sorts, albeit unintentional:

“This is a historic new chapter in California history for the clean automobile,” CARB Chairwoman Mary Nichols said after the vote. “Although there may be some bumps in the road for individual vehicles, the steady drumbeat that is driving us to get off petroleum continues.”

Boy, does it ever. There would seem to be no stopping it–and reason, fact, liberty, and the now-defunct Constitution and its guarantee of any kind of self-determination be damned.

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Jan
31

The Glock story

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An interesting article all the way around, but this part kinda made me sit up straighter in my chair:

The rise of the man and his gun, as ably reported by Barrett, is a story of innovation, manufacturing, marketing, money, lawsuits, power, influence, politics and a little sex. Barrett does an admirable job of describing the Glock’s cultural and corporate ascendancy. He also explains how the company was able to remain profitable despite allegations of corruption, tax avoidance and malfeasance. A seasoned reporter and now assistant managing editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, Barrett originally covered the more disturbing allegations of Glock’s financial and managerial irregularities in a series of articles for the magazine.

As sales of the pistol took off, money flowed into Glock, lots of it, prompting one former employee who stole from the company to liken the cash to “Monopoly money.” When Charles Ewert, a former director of Glock and a corporate trustee, was about to be exposed for embezzling company funds in 1999, he hired a Belgian mercenary and professional wrestler to mash in Gaston Glock’s skull with a rubber mallet in a Luxembourg parking garage. Despite taking seven blows to the head, the 70-year-old Glock put up the fight of his life and managed to render his would-be assassin unconscious before the police arrived.

Jeez. Sounds like a book worth buying, eh? Years ago, I used to make fun of Glocks as “combat Tupperware”–until I actually shot one, and was quite impressed with it. Sounds like the guy who invented it is pretty impressive in his own right, at least in some ways.

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Jan
31

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

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Richard Miniter asks the question of the year:

In New Hampshire, Romney also spent heavily. More importantly, he was a “favorite son,” a familiar face and voice as a neighboring governor. And, of course, as he reminded voters in the Granite State repeatedly, he owned property in their state. Even so, he won with a less than commanding 39% of the vote.

So why does nearly every pundit and politician think that is the only “electable” candidate, the only one who can beat Obama?

The facts and evidence tell a different story.

Romney has never won a majority (50% or better) of Republican primary or caucus voters. And, two-thirds of the time, he has had to spend vast sums just to claim the number two spot.

Tomorrow’s GOP primary in Florida may change that—but it won’t settle the issue of Romney’s electability.  Romney enjoys leads in polls ranging from between five to 15 points. But he and his super-PACs had to spend more than $15 million in television advertising and millions more in radio spots and targeted mailings. If anything, Romney’s price per vote is rising—an unsustainable model given campaign-finance limits.

Meanwhile, Romney’s heavily negative advertising only drives Tea Party activists and other conservatives from one non-Romney candidate to another. Divide and conquer is a storied strategy; it may well work in Florida. But it doesn’t build votes for Romney. The non-Romney vote–despite millions of dollars, months of media coverage and dozens of debates—remains stubbornly north of 60% among Republican voters. If Romney is going to defeat Obama, he will have to unite the Grand Old Party behind him. So far, there is no evidence in any state that he can do just that.

There may be good reasons to vote for Romney. On the current evidence, electability is not one of them.

Romney needs to present some dramatic reform plans, starting with income-tax cuts and ending pointless government agencies. If he succeeds without these things, the “Reagan Revolution” is dead. That may be why so many Republicans oppose Romney’s candidacy in its current form. They are simply not ready to bury Reagan conservatism.

Fixed that last bit for ya, Richard.

Whether Romney wins the nomination or not, the GOP has already blown it. They’ve taken the energy and enthusiasm generated by the Tea Party movement’s having dragged theirstupid asses (the GOP establishment’s, that is–M) kicking and screaming into 2010′s inspiring win and not just squandered it, but pissed all over it. They’ll be on the other side of a shellacking come November–and they’ve earned it. But at least it’s going to be undeniably clear that Constitutional conservatives have no real home in the Republican Party, and the truly serious ones can finally get about the crucial business of building one for themselves.

We all need to admit at last that there’s just no reason any longer to stay on the plantation and continue tolerating GOP scorn, deception, presumption, and malfeasance. If there’s ever to be meaningful change in America, it won’t be coming from the GOP; in the long run, recognition of certain realities–no matter how unpleasant or difficult they may be–is always a good thing, no?

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Jan
30

The “Anybody but what we’ve already tried” vote

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As a perfect follow-up on a comment of Martin’s here, well, ummm…uuhhh…

Bingo.

Unfortunately, the GOP elite’s failure to understand exactly why Gingrich did so well portends the sad prospect that Republican leadership isn’t going to improve anytime soon. In election after election, and on issue after issue, the Republican base has felt increasingly frustrated and disappointed by their party’s leadership, who have consistently underperformed, buckled under media and opposition pressure, and squandered any mandate provided them by the American people.

With a candidate like Newt, who brings with him loads of personal and political baggage, such reactions as those seen in the debates reveal sentiments that run much deeper, and that have been building far longer than any one campaign season. The Republican rank and file have been sending messages to their party leaders for years, but without avail. The GOP has touted itself as the party of fiscal responsibility and smaller government, but for too many years, their supporters have seen government and spending continue to spiral out of control, even when they put Republicans in charge.

In 2006, Republicans were sent a resounding rebuke, losing both the Senate and the House after 12 years of controlling majorities. After defeating an uninspiring establishment GOP candidate in the 2008 election, President Obama promptly showed the disaffected Republican voters what real spending was like, making the ousted Republicans look downright miserly.

Realizing just how much worse things could be under liberal Democrat control, the American people rose up. The Tea Party was born. In 2010, frustrated Tea Partiers sent Republicans back to congress in an attempt to stop the profligate spending. The mandate could hardly have been clearer. Even Obama admitted to taking a shellacking.

While it is true Republicans control only one chamber of one branch of the federal government, the change the American people sent them to Washington to effect has not happened. The frustration that led Tea Partiers to demonstrate in public squares and dominate town halls around the country has not been alleviated. The debt limit battle was lost, the economy continues to stagnate, and the GOP establishment is once again pushing a candidate that fails to inspire hope that he can actually make real change happen in Washington.

Unlike many of the Occupy Wall Street movement protestors, the Tea Party conservatives had businesses to run, and jobs to return to, but the frustration and anger they felt is still very real. They are tired of sending people to Washington, Republicans claiming to be the party of fiscal responsibility, only to see things continue to get worse.

Romney lost big in South Carolina against split opposition support. However, Mitt shouldn’t take it personally. The “Anybody but Romney” vote, could well be renamed the “Anybody but What We’ve Already Tried” vote. The Republican voters have already tried the next-in-line, safe, establishment candidate, and lost–to Obama no less. As heroic as they have been in wars past, there are no more perfect examples of this kind of unexciting candidate as John McCain and Bob Dole, both of whom have now publicly endorsed Romney.

If they had a real understanding of why Newt surged, and why their preferred candidate has failed to connect with voters, they would have kept McCain and Dole as far from cameras and microphones as possible. To many, Romney is the best Republicans have in their current field of candidates, but to openly associate him with the same tired, uninspiring cast of characters of elections past is more than just bad political strategy. The tone-deafness of the Republican establishment could not be more astounding.

Or more depressing. Or more deadly to any hope of saving the nation from the sad, sorry fate that now looks all but inevitable.

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Jan
30

The trouble with transit

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Explained here:

WASHINGTON, DC–A study released Monday by the American Public Transportation Association reveals that 98 percent of Americans support the use of mass transit by others.

Traffic moves slowly near Seatte, WA, where a majority of drivers say they support other people using mass transit.

“With traffic congestion, pollution, and oil shortages all getting worse, now is the time to shift to affordable, efficient public transportation,” APTA director Howard Collier said. “Fortunately, as this report shows, Americans have finally recognized the need for everyone else to do exactly that.”

Of the study’s 5,200 participants, 44 percent cited faster commutes as the primary reason to expand public transportation, followed closely by shorter lines at the gas station. Environmental and energy concerns ranked a distant third and fourth, respectively.

Anaheim, CA, resident Lance Holland, who drives 80 miles a day to his job in downtown Los Angeles, was among the proponents of public transit.

“Expanding mass transit isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity,” Holland said. “My drive to work is unbelievable. I spend more than two hours stuck in 12 lanes of traffic. It’s about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road.”

Hey, it’s fake, but accurate.

Via Tim Cavanaugh, who discusses the matter with a bit more seriousness, although not nearly as hilariously.

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Jan
30

Oldies but goodies

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Maet’s ONT post closes with an important, if mystifying, question: “When did this…become hotter than this?” Hey, it ain’t just anorexia we’re defining down here, folks. All of which put me in mind of this old post of mine.

The times, they are a-changing, eh? And not for the better.

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Jan
30

From unlikeable to detestable

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Dan says it about Romney, but for my money it applies almost as well to the Republican Statist Party itself:

For Romney to attack every conservative from the Right, when he is so obviously and so far to the Left of them, demonstrates a complete lack of character and integrity. But slash and burn is all he has, as he has no core conservative principles and can’t articulate them in an authentic manner. As much as I hate Obama’s politics, as an individual, I have more respect for him today, than I do Mitt Romney. And I am far from alone. If the GOP doesn’t realize what that will cost in soft support, or no support at all in the Fall, they are delusional.

With the advent of new media, too many people are seeing, talking and connecting today. The GOP in Washington is not the party of Reagan, it is a party on its way to the political wilderness for a decade or more without serious reform. The clearest sign of that is the support a Ron Paul pulls. It is 2 – 4 times what it should be and is a telling sign of just how many people have written, or are in the process of writing off the GOP establishment.

From RNC head, to primaries, now the primary, the GOP establishment consistently uses all its power to stomp down any conservative. Conservatives are fast approaching a breaking point. The GOP believes it will be fine because it will be all Obama come November. They are wrong. Mitt Romney has gone from unlikeable, to detestable and some of us are not going to forget it simply because the GOP thinks it can blow dog whistles around Obama.

When the GOP nominee formulated and implemented the model for ObamaCare, there’s not enough distance between those two dogs to fight for much of anything come the general election. If nothing else, at least we can then finally be rid of Mitt Romney, who has been little more than a blight upon GOP presidential politics for two election cycles, now. The media structure enabling him may remain, but that too will be increasingly undersiege by grassroots-based new media. What we lack in money, we make up for in numbers. And we have the GOP’s number thanks to the primary season, as well as several previous recent events.

Yesterday was a despicable day in American politics given the Romney/GOP garbage dump on former Speaker Newt Gingrich – and he wasn’t even my guy. That the GOP sycophants and Team Romney will demonstrate absolutely no shame over it makes it abundantly clear that a GOP with Mitt Romney at the helm is unfit to govern America.

The choice would now seem to be just about narrowed down to one between an unprincipled hack with no integrity at all–one who is willing to use any lie at all in service of his gargantuan ego and ambition; hides behind the surrogates he uses to do his dirty work for him while he presents a smiling, friendly facade to the public; and is propped up by the machinery of a corrupt party apparat promoting business as usual–versus…Barrack Obama.

The bright spot (and it ain’t much) is that, after the coming crushing defeat next fall, the GOP will no longer be able to promote the sham that it is anything like a conservative party, and those of us who still care about Constitutionally-limited government can start getting serious about putting something together to supplant it entirely.

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Jan
30

You bought the ticket, so enjoy the ride

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A primary source of money and support for Progressivist tyranny in general and His Majesty specifically finally gets its turn to bend over and take it: “College presidents alarmed over Obama’s cost-control plan.” Welcome to the (socialist) party, pal. Glenn adds:

“At Washington, President Mike Young said Obama showed he did not understand how the budgets of public universities work.”

It’s not at all clear that Obama understands how budgets work in general.

UPDATE: Reader Kendall Gelner writes: “At some point, you are charging enough tuition.” Heh.

An addendum to Thatcher’s line about socialists running out of other people’s money should be: if you’re not bothered by who they target in the beginning, rest assured that eventually, they’ll get around to something you do care about.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of assholes, as far as I’m concerned, and the only howls of pain I look forward to more are the ones we’ll hear when His Exalted Majesty finally starts in on his adjunct propaganda department in Hollywood.

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Jan
29

These are not the independents they’re looking for

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Bill expands on a point I also made myself the other day:

And before anybody starts blubbering that I’m betraying the Republican Party, keep in mind that I’m not a Republican. I’m a registered Libertarian. I’m one of those independents the GOP Ruling Class keeps on raving that they have to nominate Mitt in order to attract. Except I’m the sort of independent who isn’t attracted by the likes of Mitt Romney, I’m repulsed.

As I’ve been telling you for years, if you GOP morons want my vote, nominate somebody I want to vote for.

They don’t care about your vote, Bill, or mine; they just assume they own those, thinking we have no place else to go. It’s the liberal “independents” they’re interested in, see. And they’re willing to toss any principle at all aside to woo ‘em and win ‘em. It’s what soulless whores do.

And while we’re at it, this is too priceless to let sit unremarked-upon:

I’m sorry but, on purely tactical grounds, what a bonehead move by the Romney campaign. Negative attacks, especially in a primary, have to be run on a careful cost-benefit analysis, and what exactly is the upside here? That at least Tom Brokaw isn’t Dan Rather?

Well, why not? The entire rationale for the Mittbots is that Romney isn’t Obama–another distinction without a meaningful difference. As long as you’re splitting hairs–and doubling down on a Lefty lie–well, what the heck, anything goes in the pursuit of power, right, Republicrats?

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