Red Linen

Reality Check

2008-05-16T08:28:00.000-07:00

I want all the True Conservatives(TM) who are still whinging about McCain's having won the primary, and get angry at every conservative leader who turns around and endorses McCain to understand the following:

You are complete hypocrites if you take any sort of amusement at the Democrats' current dilemma. Mostly because the only way to have kept McCain from winning the primaries would be for the GOP to have the same proportional representation and superdelegate primary system the Democrats have. Yes, the very same system that is currently causing the upcoming floor fight in Denver. Somebody is going to walk away from Denver mad, and with partisan identification numbers hovering in the 50-50 range, the Democrats can't afford that in the general election. Is this what you want for the GOP in the future?

Besides, I think it is much more fun to snicker at the Democrats from a position of the GOP having followed its own rules. So you might not be happy with the results? Given the list of candidates who actually ran, I doubt anybody would have made you happy, truly. If it wasn't McCain's amnesty bill, it would have been Rudy's gun-grabbing, Huckabee's, well, being Huckabee, Romney's past in MA, or Thompson's past. And Ron Paul? Fuggedaboutit!

Let's also forget about people who didn't run, or who dropped out before Florida. They either chose not to run for very good reasons, or dropped out due to this little complication called very poor poll numbers. You can't take nostalgia and sympathy to the bank and it produces no delegates come convention time. And if a candidate can't get delegates to the GOP primary, what makes you think they would win in the general election?

As for the True Conservative (TM) vote having been split, please add up the numbers for all those candidates, except Romney, who you could have lived with (Romney was a last-second decision and a marriage of convenience and you know it. If your favorite were doing better you wouldn't have given Romney the time of day). How many delegates would that mythical conglomeration of True Conservative(TM) have gotten at the convention? Oh, he still wouldn't have won, would he?

This is not due to some conspiracy by Rockefeller Republicans against the poor little True Conservatives(TM). Santorum? You have nobody to blame but yourselves, guys. Another major factor in the candidate list in 2008 was the deliberate targeting of electable conservatives by the Democrats and their Shadow Party. Shekar Narasimhan, the co-chair of the DNC's Indo-American Council? That was his son following George Allen around with a video camera, waiting to get his "macaca" moment. Also look at the relentless attacks on Jean Schmidt. And digging up the cats Bill Frist dissected in medical school? You gotta have a lot of money or a publicity machine bought on credit to find that stuff.

What's the way out of this situation? If Democrats start losing elections into which big donors put lots and lots of money and publicists put lots and lots of credit, eventually the money and credit will stop coming. If there is another Reagan out there, he or she can emerge from the safe Red State coccoon in which s/he is hiding, trying to protect what dignity s/he has from the Democrat attack machine. The Dems made their first mistake by making McCain inevitable as the GOP nominee. They have further screwed up by stabbing the Clintons in the back. Losing in 2008? That's strike three.

The only way forward is to deal with the situation with which you are presented, and move on from there. McCain is the nominee, and you will have to deal with it, or be no better than the "selected, not elected" fools after the 2000 election. If you want another Reagan, vote for McCain and get the attack machine out of his or her way, or you will have to settle for the moderate-but-scandal-proof slate of candidates for the foreseeable future.

Is America Ready To Vote for...?

2008-04-24T10:14:00.000-07:00

If liberalism is the cure for America's social ills, why would anyone vote against it? We are talking "free" money here, and sticking it to a bunch of top-hat-wearing opera-going snobs in the process. Who doesn't want that? Except....where does the "free" money come from? Does anybody even wear top hats anymore? Isn't some smug jerk at Whole Foods a bigger snob than your average opera lover?

It cannot enter liberals' consciousness that Wal-Mart has done more to alleviate poverty than LBJ's War on Poverty, that minorities are entering the middle class, or that women value motherhood about as much as they value achievement. So if "the people" vote against the party who most loudly bruits the name of "the people," how can this be, other than "the people" somehow being deceived into voting "against their interests?" If not deceived, then the darker natures of the American people must have been invoked. All that racism and sexism in every cross-eyed glance must have been rallied in those rednecks in order to get them to ignore the lure of liberalism's righteousness.

So if Hillary Clinton gets the nomination somehow, and then loses, it couldn't be because the Clintons somehow lost their magic, or that her campaign managed to alienate African-Americans, or that Hillary reminds white male voters of their ex-wives. It must be because America was not ready to elect a woman as President. By the same token, if Barak Obama gets the nomination and loses the general election, it couldn't be due to his inexperience, his offending of the Reagan Democrats and alienating the feminists. It must be because America is just not ready to elect a Black person as President.

Given the intramural bloodletting of the Democrat Party, and the flaws it has brought out in both Clinton and Obama, it is likely that both candidates may be too weakened to face McCain in November. So now is the time to get the narrative ready.

Unintended Consequences and the Pill Dispenser

2008-04-03T06:11:00.000-07:00

Every action you take or fail to take has consequences, and most consequences, intended or not, are logically foreseeable. Nobody wants people to suffer, the land to get polluted, or people to remain poor. When conservatives raise objections to government action for its remedy, it is usually out of dislike for the unintended but logically foreseeable consequences.

Welfare was meant to get poor and unemployable people out of poverty. Nobody who originally proposed the idea of welfare was intending to crowd out charities, break up families, or lure poor people away from their jobs. However, this is exactly what ended up happening. So now we talk about government proposals to remedy the lack of charitable help, fatherlessness, and multigenerational economic immobility of those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder, which the government caused in the first place.

Worse yet, many of the intended government remedies get overwhelmed by their negative consequences and plain don't work. When I was younger, there were fewer handicapped spots, but they were mostly left alone by the able-bodied populace. Then someone got the idea that more handicapped parking at public places would help even more disabled citizens particiapate in society. Now you can have swaths of the closest parking spaces at any given place be marked with the little blue wheelchair, while the able-bodied can hardly find a place. So now there have been many more instances of people parking illegally in these spots, or using a hang-tag issued to an absent relative, making it just about as hard for honestly disabled people to find a place to park as it was before. So now there is an increased cost of enforcing restrictions on handicapped parking spots, more money spent on educating the public to save these spots, and my aunt with her bad knees still has to luck out to get a spot when she goes Christmas shopping.

Ideas and actions can also have unintended consequences nobody even dreamed of when the idea was first proposed. In the early to mid 90's, all the talk was about "redlining" of minorities. What ended up happening was the formation of the subprime mortgage market. What was logically foreseeable were a lot of defaults, as people often have bad credit for very good reasons. What was not foreseeable were the real estate speculators using the subprime market in order to obtain mortgages on houses in order to rapidly resell them. And now we are all talking about how the government is supposed to save us from the consequences of the government creating the subprime market. So when would we need a remedy from that remedy?

My grandparents took a lot of medications. How one gets from a reasonably healthy middle-aged person who might take a vitamin or two a day to living by the alarm clock and pill dispenser is quite easy. It starts with a prescription for something that starts to slip in old age, such as calcium, cholesterol, sciatica, etc. The side effects of the medication, say, cause insomnia. So now, along with the first prescription, you get a second for insomnia. But that insomnia medication increases your likelihood of getting migraines, so you get yet another prescription for migraines, which can cause ulcers, and in turn....well, you get the picture.

Many older Americans nowadays are starting to find a different approach, where they question the need for that first prescription, and try not to get caught in that cycle in the first place. The conservative approach to government action on social issues is very much the same thing---If we don't do x in the first place, we won't need to do y and z some time down the road to "correct" the effects of x.

Understanding the Wright/Obama backlash

2008-03-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. That was 54 years ago this coming May. By the time any kids born after May 1954 were in kindergarten, Cooper v Aaron had established federal court enforcement of desegregation. So right now, anybody under the age of 53 never lived in a time when segregated schools were legal. We can tack on about four years to that number to account for kids between birth and kindergarten. So, anybody born after May 1950 never went to school when segregation was legal. At least by the mid 1960s, it became clear that those who intended to desegregate the schools meant business. In the meantime, rulings like Boynton v Virginia (1960) and Heart of Atlanta Motel v United States(1964) also outlawed segregation in public accommodations. Jim Crow in all of its forms was completely and utterly illegal by 1964.

So that makes it that people under the age of 44 have never lived under Jim Crow. Furthermore, if your memories of childhood only go back to about 3 years of age, people under the age of 47 would have no memory of Jim Crow in any form at all.

But let's give 44 as the oldest people who have ever lived under Jim Crow, even if in diapers. 44-year-olds are anything but inexperienced kids. They are middle and upper-middle management, and the guys likely to be making the hiring decisions in 2008. The kids born after Brown but not before Heart of Atlanta? They are upper management, planning their childrens' weddings, and welcoming their first grandchildren. Yes, people who never went to segregated public schools are now becoming grandparents. In about 15-18 years, there will be families with three generations of voters who never knew segregated schools, and Jim Crow will start to pass out of living memory.

Let's look at the attitudes of these44/50/55 and younger White voters who never availed themselves of a "Whites Only" accommodation, who themselves cringed a bit when Mom or Grandma may have used a rude term to refer to other races, and who themselves made efforts not to be racist. They, or should I say, "we," my being one of them, sat in the same schools with Black kids like Barak Obama (born 1961). We sat in the same classrooms with the same teachers that doubtless some Trinity churchgoer is now denouncing as denying him educational opportunities.

We also participated in the therapeutic culture of the 70s and onward. Part and parcel of that culture involved separating ones self and ones own needs from those of others, and feeling no guilt about saying "no" to excessive and abusive demands. Heck, we've even been saying "no" to quite reasonable demands.

So when we Post-Boomers hear the ravings of Jeremiah Wright, and see a few of our old classmates among those cheering when he said , "God Damn America," and denouncing America as a hopelessly racist society, this was a shot across our bows. What we heard was a declaration of, "I refuse to accept any attempt you might make to reconcile with me. I have declared you are hopeless." The last time someone whose approval we would like to have declared to us that we were completely hopeless, and that nothing we could do was good enough, divorce papers were served within the week. At our request. Evocation of guilt has diminishing returns with a generation programmed not to respond to it.

One of the biggest appeals of Barak Obama to post-Boomer voters up until now has been the hope of moving on to a discussion on race that did not involve impossible expectations and eternal grievance. We liked our Black classmates. We like our Black coworkers. We really like our Black friends and neighbors. We like our kids' Black friends. And for some of us, if we didn't love our Black spouses, we had no business marrying them. And if our relatives have Black spouses, that means we have Black relatives. And we love them too, or about as much as we love anybody our brother or sister marries. We would love to have some kind of reconciliation with our past, and a way to move into the future with these people we honestly care about.

Unfortunately, his association with Rev. Wright seems to show that Barak Obama is as tied to the old ways of evoking eternal guilt through endless and eternal grievance as any Boomer who actually lived under segregation. Good luck with that.

The Picture Becomes Clearer

2008-03-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

For all the moaning in certain quarters about moderates and independents supposedly nominating McCain instead of "real Republicans," nobody seems to have mentioned a big reason those moderates and independents might have crossed party lines.

Is there a single conservative in the primaries who does not find Hillary Clinton completely odious? Is there some secret affection between conservatives and the Clintons? Of course not. So how is this anything like moderates and Democrats voting for a candidate whose character and patriotism (if not some of his political decisions) is unquestionable, whom many regard as moderate and willing to reach across the aisle? Believe me, some candidate who was, as the drill sergeant in An Officer and A Gentleman put it, "...at an orgy...listening to Mick Jagger music and bad-mouthing your country..." during McCain's stay in the Hanoi Hilton isn't going to look all that good on stage at the first debate.

So why on Earth would these moderates and Democrats do this? As the infighting among Democrats intensifies, the picture becomes clear: Significant contingents of moderates, independents, and weak Democrats are not so happy with the Democrat Party's slate of candidates this year. Perhaps going to the polls for McCain was an indicator that many of these guys wanted to be sure the GOP candidate was not going to be someone they couldn't vote for should the Dems nominate someone they don't like? Get a look at the two leading Dems' negatives lately?

It's happened before. After all, we used to call these line-crossing moderates, independents, and weak Democrats the Reagan Democrats. Maybe 2008 won't be such a bad year for the GOP after all.

In Comoedia Veritas Est

2008-02-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

I admit, I haven't watched much Saturday Night Live since the days of Wayne's World and the Church Lady. But the flap over the actor playing Obama illustrates one thing for me: The best comedy always contains an element of the truth.

As the article points out, this is not the first time they have gotten a white actor to play a black public figure. So why is there a flap now? Isn't Obama actually only half black, with the other half being white? Wasn't Fred Armisen cast mostly because of his mastery of Obama's mannerisms?

I think this tempest in a teapot is more about a rather nasty truth that Armisen's portrayal brings out:

If Barak Hussein Obama were a fully white guy named Barry Herbert Owens, given the same record otherwise-----would the Democrats have lifted him to this height? Or isn't it far more likely he would have gotten the same lecture one should give any first-term Senator thinking of a White House run who has never faced a serious opposing party's challenger not pre-weakened by scandal?

I think what troubles the Obama supporters is the answer to that question. It points also to why Rush Limbaugh often refers to Obama as "Barry." Would Barak voters vote for "Barry", or would they get a bit more fearful about Barry's liberal voting record (what there is of it), the fact it took a scandal to get him in the Senate in the first place (would a lack of scandal in the next election doom his chances?), and his never having been in the hot seat of being targeted by a GOP that cared to fight for the seat he wanted?

Seeing Obama portrayed without his blackness may remind voters of Barry, when the Obama campaign is counting on them voting for Barak.

If the Democrats fracture....

2008-02-19T10:54:00.000-08:00

Instead of scaring y'all, how about a little hope?

What if McCain wins, or more importantly, what if the Democrats lose?

Consider everything the Left has bet on this election, consider the fractures that are already appearing in their coalition, and think about what happens if they lose. Even if it means McCain wins.

When Fidel dies, or rather, when the Cuban government can't hide his death anymore---this is likely to either happen this year or the next. If at all possible, the Cuban government would like to hold off this reckoning until after the inauguration of a Democrat President----so what happens if the Democrat is not inaugurated? What happens if the Administration in 2009 is not loaded with people who need to cover theirs and their donors' butts with regard to Castro? What happens when the DGI files are released, and the Counterintelligence files on Americans who worked on behalf of the Castro regime can be declassified?

What happens in Latin America should DGI files and their corresponding counterintelligence files get declassified with regard to corrupted politicians and terrorist movements that have stymied progress in that area for so long? What happens to illegal immigration then, should the economic situation in Latin America improve?

What happens in Iraq if the same party as the guy who has been hammering on them for six years gets another four years at being the party of the the CINC? Can any solution the jihadis have come up with to tide them over until the election last another four years?

What happens in Iran if Ahmadiniejad doesn't get his invitation to Obama's Middle Eastern conference, and has another four years at the very least to have to match wits with someone determined to stop his nuke program? The same question I also ask about North Korea.

What happens to George Soros, after he has invested so much in buying a party, if that party doesn't win after eight years of very expensive hammering? What happens to the likes of Kos, Amanda Marcotte, and the like if it becomes patently obvious they can't pick their noses, much less a winner? Whither the Clintons?

I don't pretend to know these answers, but I certainly think finding them out is worth holding ones nose in the phone booth if necessary.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

2008-02-16T09:48:00.000-08:00

In all likelihood, Hillary Clinton was originally planning her Presidential run in 2004. Prior to 9/11 it seemed George W Bush was destined to be a one-term President, and the Shadow Party was well in place to keep a steady drumbeat of attacks on Bush's competence, effectiveness, and even his mere existence. Then Hillary, after four years of pounding on Bush through proxies, was to ride in like a good memory of the Clinton years (after the short memories of the public had time to overwrite those inconvenient bad memories of the Clinton years).

However, 9/11 got in the way. And in 2004, the Clintons decided it was far too likely that the American people would be hesitant to "change horses" in the middle of a fight that was only about 2 years old at that point. Also, the strategy of relentless attack through proxies the Clintons were relying on in peacetime had a good chance of blowing up in the Clintons' faces in the middle of a war. So Hillary decided not to run in 2004, figuring she could control Kerry if he actually won, and that if Bush won (which he did), she'd have a better chance at an ultimate victory after another four years of pounding on the GOP some more through proxies. She gave up a possible victory now for a hoped-for victory in 2008.

Let's see how that's turning out:

A lot happened in those four years. Quite a bit happened with regard to the public perception of the Clintons, such as The Path to 9/11 and the Clintons' high-handed attempt to censor it. The Democrat win in 2006 didn't bring with it everything the Democrats promised, leading to a bit more jaded view of Democrat promises. More has come out about the bad part of the Clinton years as time has passed and loyalties have softened.

Hence, instead of ultimate victory, Hillary may be facing either defeat by some empty-suit nobody, or losing the Presidency due to divisions in her party she has played a large part in creating. She gave up a very possible victory in 2004 for an ultimate victory in 2008 that may not happen--which would mean she gave up 2004 for nothing.

I'm not asking anybody to be happy with the GOP's choice, or even its rather limited set of choices for the Presidential run this year. I am simply questioning what seems to be the Sooper Sekrit Plan for Ultimate TRUE CONSERVATIVE Victory Forever and Ever:

1. Stay home this year to punish the GOP and (maybe) make them Lose Big
2. Somebody Makes A Mistake Somewhere
3. TRUE CONSERVATISM (tm) after the GOP and the rest of the country comes back to Real Conservatives (tm) hat in hand and begging on their knees in 2012

The biggest thing these folks seem to be relying on are mistakes that would be made either by the McCain campaign or by Hillary/Obama when in office. Unless you are the direct cause of the mistake, don't count on some other guy's mistake causing your ultimate victory. Because if they decide not to screw up, or events intervene, you have simply given up a very possible victory now for absolutely nothing later.

Think about it.

A "RINO" has to ask....

2008-02-14T21:43:00.000-08:00

I want all you "true conservatives" to tell me something: Where did the idea come from that the 2008 GOP primary was supposed to be the Second Coming of Reagan? Did I miss some Bible verse or something? There are a lot of upset people on the Right right now because we ended up with what they would call a RINO as the GOP nominee. Umm, as opposed to whom?

The flip-flopper (Romney)?
The *GASP* gun-grabbing pro-choice guy who wasn't apologetic about it (Giuliani)?
The former abortion lobbyist (Thompson)?
The guy who alternates between being William Jennings Bryan and John Edwards (Huckabee)?...

Right. Okay. Whatever.

So, where was this Reagan supposed to come from? Was the GOP supposed to be complete morons, pluck some good-looking well-spoken unknown from Bugtussle, and throw him naked and screaming into the clutches of Hillary Clinton and her pet smear machine?

Oh, here we go---they were supposed to draft Newt Gingrich. After all, the public (and Newt) just can't get enough retellings of how he left his cancer-stricken wife at her bedside, can they?

And how about Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo? After all they got so many conservative votes in the primary....oh wait, no they didn't! But how they'd win, oh yessirree! So let's all hold our breath collectively, that is such a sure way of getting what you want, right?

Take some Beano guys, because it's not your mouths making all that noise.

I thought part of the fun of being right was amusement at watching Lefties' twists, turns and perversions of logic. Then I see half of Townhall berate Michael Reagan and try and tell him that he wouldn't know what his own father would have wanted. I think I found that following a link sandwiched between blog postings calling for a brokered GOP convention when one guy is within 200 delegates of securing the nomination just before Ohio and Texas vote.

I thought only idiot lefties paid more attention to a candidate's platitudes than his actual record. Then I saw Romney made out to be The Conservative Candidate (despite only having his Road to Damascus moment on the road to his run for the White House). I thought only lefties threw themselves at some pointless and ill-thought-out plan, and then I watch some kind of plan where you don't vote for someone, they win anyway and they are somehow supposed to still need your vote enough to pander to your every little whim.

1) Refuse to vote for the GOP candidate
2) ???
3) True Conservatism (tm)

I just don't get it. Our troops are out there while the voters who are supposed to support them are busy sounding like the Underpants Gnomes. Start making some sense, folks!

Let's Ruin Their Credit.

2008-02-12T07:26:00.000-08:00

Have you ever looked at older homes, especially the ones built before home loans became widely available? Note how small they were and how few features they had. Then notice a home built a few years later after essentially buying a home on credit became the norm. Notice a huge difference in included features and size? The same goes for cars, computers, and ...publicity machines. You can buy on credit something much nicer than you can get by paying for it with what you have on hand.

Denizens of the Hollywood closet and other celebrities with something to hide have spent some of the millions they have been paid in order to hire publicists, lawyers, and handlers who have been meticulously trained to hide from the public things about a public person the public person doesn't want the public to know. If they could hide Jodie Foster's gay lover and make people believe Britney Spears was a virgin until about the time she released her second album.....they can hide the excessive monetary demands, alcoholism, and compulsive shopping of any Republican candidate's ex-wife, if her story's good enough and she wants to re-fight her divorce in the media. But these guys aren't cheap.

All the setting up of 527s, all the research, all the following candidates around with a video camera waiting for them to say "macaca," is not something people do out of the goodness of their hearts or belief in "the cause." It is so much more than your average political campaign can afford using their own coffers. Either there has been the largest convergence between otherwise hard-nosed businesspeople to throw the resources of their entire businesses towards some seriously anti-business candidates out of some 1960s nostalgia.... or the Democrats have bought their media machine on credit. How far would a promise of White House access go towards paying the publicists' bills?

This whole network, the whole Shadow Party was brought together under the Clintons in order to usher in a Clinton Restoration. The deals with investors and media were struck with the Clintons, not the Obamas. This is why I believe that barring a complete turnaround in the primaries, Hillary Clinton will end up being the nominee. The various elements of the media machine cannot trust Obama to hold to the same promises in 2009 that the Clintons might have given them in 2005, and the credit of the Democrat Party with its media wing could be at stake if Hillary Clinton is not the nominee.

The Achilles heel here is that all of those publicists, lawyers, researchers, and even investors like George Soros are going to want a return on this investment, i.e. access to the highest levels of government, and scoring the ultimate client at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

So what happens if the GOP unites behind their candidate and wins? Those businesspeople would have spent a whole lot of resources for no return. The Democrat Party would finally become a bad credit risk, and would have to pay cash up front in order to do business with the same publicity and research firms in 2010 or 2012 that in 2008 are working on credit and a promise. This puts the fight between Republicans and Democrats on a much more even level, and allows good conservative candidates to stop hiding on the back bench in fear of a billion-dollar smear machine. So let's hold our noses this year and ruin the Democrats' credit, so they will actually have to pay for their good press and opponents' bad press like any other respectable politicians. Can we agree on that?

What's at Stake, Part 2

2008-01-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

But even now there is hope left. I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be. But this I will say to you: your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true

------Galadriel in Lord of the Rings

Hundreds of years from now, what will people make of these times? Will this be seen as the beginning of an age of prosperity and peace, or when we threw that potential away? Can we see far enough ahead, and far enough away?

Right in front of our noses, right now, we see record prices for gasoline. Far away, can we see the sons and daughters of dirt farmers in Asia filling up their own new cars, bought with money from jobs earned by, not given to the Third World? Can you see them becoming a prosperous middle-class polity peeling away economic, and eventually political, power from their nations' power-and-ancient-pissing-contest-obsessed political elites?

Right in front of our noses, we see the slow passing of a fifty-year-old regime we do not see causing us that many headaches since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and only see some folks in southern Florida who care. Can you see reformers across Latin America, and even perhaps Africa, no longer having to fear foreigner-funded "peoples' movements" scaring away foreign investors and screwing up reforms? Latin America and Africa have not been as able to take advantage of the growth in the global economy. They were also the sphere of influence during the Cold War of Fidel Castro. This is not a coincidence.

Right in front of our noses, we see a war in the Middle East that seems to have no end, and seems to expand every day. Can we see the hopelessness of trusting the future of the Middle East to a moribund order that has even corrupted religion for its purposes, that has painted itself into a corner, having created the Frankenstein's Monster of terrorism and lost control of it? Can we see in the wake of this old order's fall the rise of average, bourgeois Middle Easterners more concerned with making money than making trouble? And on that day we finally find an acceptable substitute for the petroleum that had so far propped up the old order in the Middle East, would we rather see spasms of terrorism in its wake or a massive shrugging of shoulders across a Middle East with a more diversified economy?

What needs to happen in November is that we need people in charge in the United States prepared to take advantage of all this. Prepared to support the aspirations of regular people worldwide who long for freedom and prosperity, that there will be peace. Prepared to ensure the fall and discrediting of all those things that have held back freedom and prosperity. Prepared to hold the line in the Middle East. We cannot afford to fall to shortsighted populism and isolationism, or the false moral comfort of "noninterventionism."

At the Johnson Space Center in Houston, the final rocket of the Apollo program rots in the view of all. We decided foolishly that every dollar used on a lunar mission was better spent in foolish efforts to "cure" poverty that only perpetuated itself in the wake of government subsidy. Do we even remember how we used to believe we would be living on other planets in the early days of the twenty-first century? How quaint it all seems now.

Next to the rotting corpse of our aspirations to go into space, do we lay the dreams of reformers around the world we fail to directly or indirectly aid, our chances to actually make the world a better place, in view of equally shortsighted goals? If that is your choice, then you can make it without my assent.

Of Invading Armies and Flying Saucers

2007-12-14T11:20:00.000-08:00

I have seen much made in recent days of the supposedly "principled" stand that the only moral use of an army is in defense of ones homeland against invading armies.

In the Nuclear Age, if another country were to actually get an army and navy together to attempt a landing on our shores what is likely to happen? Either those boats would be recalled tout de suite, or the world gets a a new radioactive parking lot where the invading country's capital city used to be. The United States has too many nuclear weapons in too many locations for any army to be able to seize both them and our leadership before we could retaliate.

In short, those invading armies ain't coming, and really haven't been coming since about 1945. Making war upon the United States must be accomplished by other means: espionage, subversion, and terrorism. But those are subjects for another time.

So what is one to think about someone who says they support the military only insofar as they defend our nation from invading armies? Much as one who says they support our military only insofar as they defend our nation from invading flying saucers. One suspects they merely wish to disguise their holding a more unpopular negative view of our armed services.

Some Simple Principles

2007-12-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

Make the best possible choices. Sometimes in life there are not so much good choices as less bad choices. Don't hold your breath waiting for the perfect option to come along, and be understanding of those who have made different decisions in the same circumstance.

What you don't know is as important as what you do know, if not more so. Know as much as possible when making a decision what you do not know. It is what you do not know you do not know that can bite you in the ass.

Anything can look good on paper. Reality is messier.

It can always be worse, no matter how bad it is. Contemplate this before blindly throwing away what you have for the unknown.

If what someone is doing does not seem to make sense, ponder it some more while being as fair as possible. You may get your answer.

You are not as clever as you think you are. Not by half. Clever people are so much fun to outwit because they get so mad at how simple it was to do so.

Sometimes things are not what they seem. Then again, sometimes things are exactly as they seem. Don't be thrown off.

In pursuit of complexity do not neglect the simple. This is the failing of so-called clever people.

True change in a free society must come from the bottom up. Changes imposed from the top will be resisted, be they changes in the direction of socialism or even in the direction of freedom.

The means of pruning bureaucracy are much like the management of herbivores with a high rate of reproduction. You must either reintroduce its natural predators or issue hunting licenses. Either way, Bambi dies. Deal with it.

For an Empire, We SUCK

2007-11-27T07:35:00.000-08:00

Let's face it. To call America an empire can't happen without dumbing down the term "empire" into meaninglessness. Jonah Goldberg thinks so, too:

...But unlike the Romans or even the British, our garrisons can be ejected without firing a shot. We left the Philippines when asked. We may split from South Korea in the next few years under similar circumstances. Poland wants our military bases; Germany is grumpy about losing them. When Turkey, a U.S. ally and member of NATO, refused to let American troops invade Iraq from its territory, the U.S. government said "fine." We didn't invade Iraq for oil (all we needed to do to buy it was lift the embargo), and we've made it clear that we'll leave Iraq if the Iraqis ask.

What? Oh, come on, now! Gandhi was forced into organizing the Indian people because the Indian government under British rule was little more than errand-boys for the Brits, and America leaves when politely asked to by the Philippines?

South Korea is all huffy about our presence, and our biggest concern is not about a bunch of uppity Asians, but whether North Korea is behind the movement in South Korea? We destroyed the government of Japan and set up from scratch a new Japanese government.....and we just left once we were sure the Japanese were handling things OK?

And let's just look at our most recent awful hegemonic actions, now. After an unprovoked attack on our soil, we simply took out a pair of hostile governments in hopes of establishing a pair of less-hostile governments, and are working to knock out some trans-national movement that fueled the attacks in the first place. So where are the toadies? Where is the guy in the pith helmet who wants to be called "bwana?"

America sucks at the empire business.

Back to the salt mines!

2007-11-26T07:48:00.000-08:00

I hope anybody who reads my blog has had a wonderful Thanksgiving. But sadly, it's now balls-to-the-wall until Christmas (and about 90 days thereafter for me).

Anyway, I would like to draw your attention to this article. In fact, the author has a very interesting series on Ron Paul and his.....interesting supporters .

My big disagreement here is that the hanging of conspiracy theorists around the GOP's neck is really only supposed to last through the primary. Antiwar voters are the biggest threat to Hillary Clinton in the Democrat primary. If they had mobilized behind Dennis Kucinich or some other staunch antiwar Democrat against "I-Was-For-It-Before-I-Was-Against-It Part Two," Hillary would have to punk-slap a guy really popular with the base off the nomination, earning a lot of ill will in the general election (well, more than she already has).

With Ron Paul in play, and with no chance in Hades of winning the GOP nomination, people who would otherwise work within their natural constituencies within the Democrats to get them to drop Hillary and take a stronger antiwar stand can go waste their votes in the GOP primary on Ron Paul. Oh, and by the way, if these guys voted in the GOP primary, most states will exclude them from voting in the Democrat primary---oh darn!

When Ron Paul does not get the nomination (NOTE: I said WHEN, oh yes I did), it's not like these guys were planning to vote GOP anyway. They will, come the general election, either go polish their tinfoil hats some more, or hold their noses and vote for Hillary. Take it to the bank.

It might be interesting to see what would happen if Ron Paul ran independently, but I think that the Democrats have a contingency for that, too: Remember all that money from Stormfront, the KKK banners, etc? A friend of mine has a bet going, one that I am far too smart to take him up on: The moment Ron Paul actually becomes a threat to the Democrats, all of a sudden, the SPLC or some other "anti-racism" Democrat lapdog with good media connections will strike at Ron Paul for these connections to hate groups.

You really want to know what the pisser is? Domestically, I agree with much of what Ron Paul says. We do look to the state to solve our problems far too often. A lot of what the government does can be done by the private sector more effectively and efficiently, so long as the actual enforcement of laws is not involved. We do have far too many government agencies and way too much regulation. I'd love to get rid of it all. The important distinction is, I don't think Ron Paul can do it.

BULID THE WALL BUILD THE----oops

2007-11-19T08:22:00.000-08:00

I am probably going to say something unpopular, but anybody who knows me knows I am used to being unpopular.

Our current situation is that millions of Mexican citizens sneak into our country in order to earn a better living than they could otherwise get in a corrupt Third-World quasi-republic. With the monies these illegal immigrants send home, the corrupt semi-republic is enabled to stay in power and not do a damn thing about its poor other than hand them swim fins and a map to the border. This is bad.

Believe it or not, it could be worse.

As corrupt, venal, and parasitic as the current Mexican government is, the alternative, which could come about with the USA cutting the umbilical cord to Mexico, is much worse.

The latest ploys of Chavez and Castro have been to fund leftist political candidates for Presidential elections throughout Latin America---which in some cases (such as Bolivia) became "one man, one vote, one time." Chavez's money in 2006 was on Andrés Manuel López Obrador. This was not a situation that breeds trust in his commitment to the rule of law at the Latin America desk at Langley (completely forgetting his behavior after the election). This is not to say that Andrés Manuel López Obrador would have ended up being some kind of dictator had he won in 2006, only that he may have ended up beholden to the forces that would have brought him to power. And those forces are far from kindly inclined towards American interests. If they couldn't have gotten AMLO to cancel elections, perhaps they would have gotten his cooperation on some other means of giving the USA a headache.

And what if he did cancel elections and close newspapers? Imagine if an avowed dictator took power in Mexico, and newspapers and television channels started being shut down, dissidents started getting arrested in the night, and protestors got shot. Moreover, in all likelihood, the Mexican dictatorship would have been a product of Cuban and Venezuelan meddling, and thus swear fealty to Castro and Chavez. All of a sudden, those illegals would suddenly become putative refugees. Short of a deal along the lines of "Wet Foot, Dry Foot" (which the US struck in order to be able to maintain a presence in the Straits of Florida), there is no way we are sending a single Mexican back under those circumstances. And we would pretty much have to welcome everyone who can smuggle themselves out.

In short, AMLO needed to lose in 2006. And if it weren't for illegal immigration, he might just have won. I've done the math.

What if The Wall were in place in October 2001, as some have suggested, and the illegals were in Mexico for the 2006 elections? I did some math and Wikipedia-ing, and dug up my memories of Statistics and Research Design for Psychology majors:

The statistics were as follows:
About 399,000 Mexican illegals/ year per Pew Legal (this may be a conservative estimate)

Only 32,000 of eligible legal residents of other nations voted in the Mexican elections of 2006

Turnout was 58.90%

The final vote tally of the top two candidates was Calderón 35.89% (15,000,284 votes), López Obrador 35.31% (14,756,350 votes), a difference of 243,934 (or 0.58%) votes.

And Obrador still contested the election, though not successfully. He might have had more success with a lower margin of loss.

Now for my assumptions, based on statistics:
399,000 a year from October 2001 to July 2006 comes to about 1,596,000 Mexicans who would have been kept in Mexico. 58.90% of that number (the turnout) would be about 940,044.
Given the heavy usage of the United States's social safety net by many illegals, I guessed they would kind of like to have some free money in Mexico, and thus would be more likely to vote for Obrador. Given the multi-candidate race, I assumed that Calderón would get 80 percent of the non-Obrador vote.

At this point, I forgot my statistics class, and did it longhand.

80-20 split (80 Calderón 20 others)---Obrador wins
O: 14,756,350 + 752035 = 15,508,385
C: 15,000,284 + 150407 = 15,150, 691

75-25 split---Obrador wins
O: 14,756,350 + 705033 = 15,461,383
C: 15,000,284 + 188009= 15,188,293

70-30 split-----Obrador wins
O: 14,756,350 +658030= 15,414,380
C: 15,000,284 +225610= 15,263,496

65-35 split-----Obrador wins
O: 14,756,350 +611029= 15,367,379
C: 15,000,284 +263212= 15,263,496

60-40 split----Obrador wins
O: 14,756,350 +564026= 15,320,376
C: 15,000,284 +300814= 15,301,098

55-45 split---Calderón wins by only 582066
O: 14,756,350 +517024= 15,273,374
C: 15,000,284 +338416= 15,338,700

50-50 split---Calderón wins by only 149,930
O: 14,756,350 +470022= 15,226,372
C: 15,000,284 +376018= 15,376,302

So as you can see, it would not take a very large majority of the illegals to have voted for Obrador had they stayed in Mexico to vote in order to either put him over the top or bring the margin of Calderón's victory close enough that his attempted challenge of the results might have had more success. Even were Tom Tancredo to win the White House somehow, he would have had to deal with this reality. Sanity in American immigration policy cannot come at the expense of vital foreign objectives, such as keeping Fidel Castro's rotting zombie paws off Mexico and her oil. Because as you see, he's come close. Damn close.

Very Interesting

2007-11-16T09:23:00.000-08:00

"There are no secrets, there are only deferred disclosures."

If true, this means everybody was wrong and everybody was right about WMDs in Iraq. In any case, keep in mind that the release of translated documentation is often done to illustrate what intelligence had actually known at the time.

In my opinion, actual stockpiles or no, Saddam had to be stopped from doing whatever he was actually doing.

One of the more interesting parts is where the bribery through the Oil-For-Food program was being discussed. I am sure we were more than aware of who was on the take at the time. Do you often believe the word of someone you know to be on the take, or is this just "cherry-picking" intelligence again?

Sorry about the infrequency

2007-11-13T06:28:00.000-08:00

You can blame a certain spotted cat for that. Ah, well, the money is good, and will make my children happy.

Anyway, the thought that has been bubbling through my mind is this: People often think we are choosing between war and peace. When that truly is your choice, peace is the better option. However, in most cases we choose between the war now or the war later. Given the unknowable things that are future events, you know under what conditions you fight the war now. The war later, who knows?

What's the Frequency, Kenneth? Part 2

2007-11-05T07:13:00.000-08:00

Well, Blogger won't let me fix that little font snafu, so howabout I cease trying to be clever with font sizes in the future?

Anyway, back to my point: How can otherwise rational people, who would know better than to believe the CIA has any interest in some guy living in a box in an alleyway, unquestioningly enable blood libel and hatred?

The answer, I am afraid, is postmodernism, and specifically its focus on alterity. The more Other someone is, the more one seems to be obligated to take their perspective. This seems to have removed the critical faculty needed to judge between the stories of those who tell the truth and fabulators. I use the term "fabulators" instead of "liars" because lying implies an intent to deceive. A fabulator may honestly believe Jews created the AIDS virus---but they are still wrong.

Pair alterity with the intellectual vanity so encouraged by liberal arts faculty that a liberal education gives students the tools to become experts in anything to which they put their minds, and you have people poised to take any fool at his or her word, as long as they are exotic and different. Now to the mix of alterity and intellectual vanity, let's add the typical wealth of First World intellectuals, specifically their disposable income.

Now, if you are a member of some exotic group wanting to raise money for a cause, you have a gold mine in a bunch of people who don't understand you and your situation, but think they do, who will open their wallets for you. All they need is a story that conforms to their expectations. Just point out how you are oppressed, how those guys you hate are oppressing you, throw in some Rousseau/socialist nonsense about the way your people lived before Those Other Guys came along, wear some exotic native costume while doing so, and turn up your accent a bit. Bingo, your cause is rolling in the dough, and you can now go shopping for weapons.

Suckers.

What's the Frequency, Kenneth? Part 1

2007-11-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

"What's the frequency, Kenneth?" is your Benzedrine, uh-huh
I was brain-dead, locked out, numb, not up to speed
I thought I'd pegged you an idiot's dream
Tunnel vision from the outsider's screen
I never understood the frequency, uh-huh
You wore our expectations like an armored suit, uh-huh...."

---From the REM song

For those of you unfamiliar with the song, or the incident that inspired it, Read up!

No, this is not really about Dan Rather, though he's an interesting case in and of himself. This is about the man who attacked him, William Tager. According to the Wikipedia article referenced above,

Tager later claimed that he had come from a parallel universe some 200 years in the future. He also claimed that because everyone in the future had a double in the past, he had mistaken Rather for his future double, Vice President Kenneth Burroughs, and that he attacked Rather in an attempt to recover the information needed to stop the television signals being sent to his brain and return to his own time

Wow.
Just....wow.

Imagine if psychology were still in the days of Sigmund Freud, and some shrink had to sit there and untangle that mess. What, exactly, led him to believe that he came from the future? Who is Kenneth Burroughs, and why does he think Dan Rather of all people would be this Kenneth Burroughs? How would television signals in your brain prevent time travel? Why would he choose the "signals beamed into my brain" delusion over other such popular delusions as being Napoleon? How did potty training go?

Screw that. What likely happened to Tager was that he showed all the signs of one or more psychiatric disorders, was locked up and put on medication, and any talk about Tager's mother, potty training, or Tager's mother's potty training was done on the back end. Well, yeah---isn't that the way stuff like this gets handled?

Sure it is, so why do people try to minutely dissect the delusions of the "Arab Street" and the motivations of terrorists?

More to come when I've had some sleep.

What's At Stake

2007-10-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

2008 is an historic opportunity, and this time, it is vital for both parties that the Republicans win at least the White House, if not control of at least one part of Congress. Why would this be good for both parties, you may ask? Because if Hillary loses, and the Dems lose seats in Congress, this will be a repudiation of the divisive game the Democrats have played these past seven years, and it gives Democrats an opportunity to kick George Soros, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and the Clintons to the curb. Maybe Democrats will come back with serious answers to the questions of our times, and they can act, as they should, in constructive criticism of GOP policies---something they have failed to do.

Think of the organizations on the Left causing the most trouble in American politics right now, such as Media Matters, MoveOn, and the like. If you want a good reference, check out Discover the Networks some time, and then let's play a game: Six Degrees of Hillary Clinton. You will likely not get that far out.

Now, let's compare the organization on the Left with its parallel on the Right-- for example, Media Matters on the Left and the Media Research Center on the Right. One very noticeable difference is that the org on the Right swears no allegiance to a particular conservative candidate, and acts as a resource for the entire movement. Its history can often be traced to the GOP re-org after Goldwater's defeat, and it grew organically as part of the conservative movement.

The same cannot be said for the organization on the Left. The Clintons built for themselves a network of organizations meant to parallel and counter similar organizations on the Right. This is an advantage in that the Leftist organizations can coordinate their message, and make the Clintons' favor indispensable for career advancement. However, the disadvantage is that the whole farm has been bet on winning in 2008, and the fate of these organizations is uncertain should she lose.

So, what happens if Hillary loses?

2008 is Hillary Clinton's last chance. She wouldn't have a prayer in 2012. In 2012, the youngest people to have remembered the Clinton years before people got disillusioned with them in the late '90s would be hitting their late 20's and early 30's, which some who study astrology call the Saturn Return. Whether or not you believe in astrology, you have to admit a lot of your life changes between the ages of 28 and 32. One of the bigger changes you are likely to see is a moderating of your politics as experience has often counteracted theory. Those young liberals the Clintons counted on in 2008 would be married suburbanites getting somewhere in their careers in 2012. Also, it's going to be harder to keep any screwups of the Bill Clinton Administration classified through November of 2012, when you consider that 2012 would be 20 years since Bill Clinton was first elected.

George Soros and his ilk? Well, I am one of the ones who ascribes pecuniary motives for Soros's actions. He made a killing bringing down the Pound Sterling, and I think he wishes to do the same with the US Dollar. So far, this seems to be costing him a lot more than he bargained for. A defeat in 2008 may finally get him to cash in his chips before he loses his shirt.

There's a whole house of cards stacked atop one thing: Hillary Clinton winning the Presidency in 2008. Pull her card, and the whole thing comes crashing down. In its place, a revitalized, serious, adult, patriotic progressive movement might finally have a chance, and American voters may again have a choice between two parties who may have ideological differences, but who will stand up for this country all the same.

Blood for Oil

2007-10-28T21:54:00.000-07:00

I believe that the real reason the United States invaded Iraq is not something mentioned on a regular basis, the rationale dates before 9-11, and oil has a whole lot to do with it.

The story actually begins in the Summer of 2000. June 10, to be exact. Bill Clinton was still in office, and Mohammed Atta had been in the United States a whole week, after having secured a place for flight lessons. The GOP Convention where George W Bush was first nominated was not to be for another month and a half.

June 10, 2000 was the day Hafez Al-Assad died. Given that both Hafez Assad and Saddam Hussein were part of Ba'athist movements that had ultimately seized power in their respective nations, and had both ruled their nations for a very long time, it would not be unreasonable to watch what happened with Syria as an illustration for what would happen were Saddam Hussein to die while in office.

The succession of Bashar Assad to Syria's "presidency" was, by all accounts a very smooth transition. Thirty years of absolute rule was long enough for Hafez Assad to clear away all threats to his successor. Much was made of his past as an opthamologist who had a liberal education. Then he, to no surprise, turned out to be much like his dad.

Camp David negotiations broke of a month and 15 days later, and the Palestinians were again armed for a fight. On September 27-28, the fighting started again. Considering the number of Palestinian leaders hiding in Syria, can one imagine finding a new source of funding may have pulled Arafat from the negotiation table. Guess who was suddenly finding themselves freer to act?

Now, applying the lessons of Syria to Iraq, it could be surmised that without intervention, upon Saddam's death, one of his sons would rise to power, and very likely start doing those things Papa couldn't get away with. On top of that, Iraq was an OPEC nation, and was actively bribing various nations with oil rights using Oil-For-Food. So it looked like sanctions on Iraq would likely die with Saddam. On September 10, 2001 this was a moderate threat, and kind of an annoyance, but what could you do?

In the wake of the next day's events, and the subsequent War On Terror, the question of Iraqi succession was no longer annoying and inconvenient. We could no longer afford to lose sanctions on Iraq and wait for Uday or Qusay to fornicate upwards enough to re-merit the sanctions. Given all the bribes given out by Saddam, that would be a fatally dangerous wait.

And so, we invaded.

YAWN

2007-10-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

After a late night's work, I have one working brain cell. And it's demanding a shift differential plus overtime. And I totally sympathize.

Any questions on Cuba?

2007-10-26T11:47:00.000-07:00

"I'll check back with you after two years. If you've done as I ask...... I'll take out that neural block. Then you can deal with Bester....."

Lyta to Garibaldi in Babylon 5: "The Wheel of Fire"

Why do they parade an increasingly incoherent Fidel Castro in front of the cameras in Cuba? Isn't Cuba yesterday's news? Isn't the Cuban-American vote the only interest the USA has in Cuba?

If you even have to ask these questions, you would be amazed at the answers.

Read up sometime on some of the business deals the Castros have made with various state-owned businesses in places like Europe. Then remember those resources Cuba would need to move offshore to participate in these ventures, as well as its other reasons for moving money offshore (funding intelligence operations, buying frills for the elite, etc.). Look at the lack of success and the debt to these other governments Cuba has accumulated. So what do you think happens when Fidel finally dies? Can we say......probate?

Ever since August of 2006, I would hazard a guess that many nations that possess both Cuban debt and Cuban assets have been doing their level best to keep the assets from leaving their countries, in anticipation of seizing them as personal assets of a deceased Fidel Castro. I would also hazard a guess that George W is doing his damnedest to keep these same nations advised to the best of his ability as to what US Intelligence knows about Fidel's health.

Speaking of what US Intelligence knows about Fidel's health, it is an open secret that some kind of deal was struck to keep the United States from harming a hair on Fidel Castro's widdle punkin head in order to end the Cuban Missile Crisis. Given the nature of dictatorships, in that dictators like to ensure their own physical survival, it is very likely that the terms of this deal expire on Fidel Castro's death. So it has been very much in our interests to know everything we can about the current state of Fidel Castro's health. I sure hope you don't think it was a coincidence that George Bush had breakfast at Versailles in Miami the morning before the announcement of Fidel's stepping down?

Given the USA's quick recognition of Fidel Castro's government in 1959, it seems we were ignorant of Castro's true agenda and employer in the KGB. For all the allegations those on the Right make about alleged KGB ties with the Vietnam-era antiwar movement, especially its most violent side, why have we seen little published proof of this? Could it be that since at least 1959 or 1960, KGB activities in the Americas went through Cuba, which is still under the same government, and still hostile to American interests, and for whom US Counterintelligence files are still classified?

Very likely.

If so, doesn't this funding of subversive activity and making our nation chase its agents around our country kinda go beyond the stated reasons for the embargo (uncompensated expropriation of American resources--which is also true) and make the long continuation of the embargo a little more justifiable?

And as for Cuba's continuing significance, remember what happened when VENONA was declassified, and the world finally could see the guilt of many people whose innocence in the 1950s during the Rosenberg prosecution and the Army-McCarthy hearings was bandied about by the Left? Just think what being able to declassify Counterintel files on Cuban agents and their contacts, the pay stubs in Havana for supposedly "independent" thinkers, and the purchase orders for the weapons of violent activity are free for the entire world to read and document?

Given George W's problems with some of these guys, don't you think he's just dying to let the world know?

Well, I'm glad I could answer your questions today. Now on to work with me!

SPLITTERS!

2007-10-25T07:32:00.000-07:00

From the movie, "Life of Brian:"
REG:: Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the f**king Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.:: Yeah...
JUDITH:: Splitters.
P.F.J.:: Splitters...
FRANCIS:: And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.:: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA:: And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.:: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
REG:: What?
LORETTA:: The People's Front of Judea. Splitters.
REG:: We're the People's Front of Judea!
LORETTA:: Oh. I thought we were the Popular Front.

I was talking to my mother last night. My mom, and anybody who knows me would be shocked, actually supports the same candidate I do, namely Rudy. She is very worried about the threats made by much of the Religious Right to bolt the GOP if Rudy is the nominee. And Mom has always been Miss Christian, quite dismayed at her Pagan daughter.

I think she doesn't have anything to worry about, as long as everybody remembers who and what the GOP is facing in 2008, and keeps their eyes on the prize.

Religious Right types? I want you to close your eyes and visualize your perfect 2008 candidate. Now visualize the Clintons' bought-and-paid-for smear machine getting ahold of him. They will find anything they can on your guy and flog it all over the news.

And what they don't find, they will try and make up. The only reason the TANG documents were revealed to be fakes in time for the 2004 election was because the forger used a blatantly anachronistic font. If our forger had enough clue to switch to Courier (yes I know the spacing would still be wrong, but that's a much harder case to make), John Kerry would be President.

Never bet the farm on your opponent's stupidity, as reliable as it may seem. Your ideal candidate may be squeaky clean, but one deliberate misquote, one really good Photoshopping session, one really good document forgery, and he's toast.

So the GOP got a clue: If your candidate is gay-friendly, there's no point in "outing" his campaign manager. If your candidate has owned up to past or current pro-choice views, there's no point in digging up a past speech espousing those views. If he publishes his own embarassing photos, he puts the Photoshoppers out of a job.

Fortunately, it seems most folks on the right, religious or no, have gotten that clue.

Look at the folks who go all over the Dextrosphere claiming otherwise. Then check their post count and post history. And don't forget the mobys are out there. This is not saying there aren't legitimate conservatives with a beef against Rudy, just that I think some of this alleged dissent is overblown.

Okay

2007-10-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

I think I am understanding Blogger now. Anyway, welcome to the blog.