Tonight's Music

A kick-ass song about quarks written by a hot redhead while she was drunk.

In what universe would I not love this.



The static from your arms, it is a catalyst
You're a chemical that burns, there is nothing like this
It's the purest element, but it's so volatile
An equation heaven sent, and you'll forever inject

Hydrogen in our veins, it cannot hold itself, my blood is boiling
And the pressure in our bodies, that echoes up above, it is exploding
And our particles that burn, it is all because they yearn for each other
And although we stick together, it seems that we are stranging one another

Feel it on me love, feel it on me love, feel it on me love
See it on me love, see it on me love, see it on me love

An atom to atom, oh can you feel it on me love
A pattern to pattern, oh can you see it on me love
Atom to atom oh, what's the matter with me love

Strangeness and Charm

What in the world is wrong with Ann?

Ann Coulter hearts Mitt Romney.

This is no surprise she endorsed him last time around too, choosing him over the far more conservative Fred Thompson even before it became obvious that Fred wasn't even really trying to win the nomination.

But this time around her crush on Mitt has taken on psycho-stalker overtones which have her twisting herself into intellectual pretzel shapes that extend into so many dimensions that she stands in imminent danger of collapsing into a quantum singularity.

I refer, of course, to her latest essay in which she stands up for her man by defending Romneycare.  W. James Antle takes Miss Ann to task for this on the American Spectator blog here and here.  Mr. Antle points out that Coulter is putting forward arguments which will be used by the left to argue against the repeal of ObamaCare, or ObamneyCare as it could be better termed since it is simply RomenyCare on a national scale.

The great Mark Levin also takes Miss Ann to the woodshed here (the embedded video is around 30 minutes long but well worth listening to).

Romney's supporters (I really should start calling them Romney Pod People since they are taking on the mind programed zombie aspects of Ron Paul supporters - but this is happening to Newt supporters as well) keep trying to defend Romney by pointing out that under the constitution states have the right to do things like health insurance mandates but the federal government does not.

This is true but largely irrelevant.  No one is questioning the fact that the state of Massachusetts has the legal right to enact RomneyCare.  We are simply pointing out two facts.  One is that not everything that one has the legal right to do is either good or wise.  Someone has the legal right to have "Heil Hitler" tattooed on his forehead but if he does he's an idiot.  In the same way a woman has the legal right to have five children by five different fathers, none of whom she ever bothers to marry, but if she does she is trash.

RomneyCare makes us question Rommey' judgement.  If he thought it was a good thing for Massachusetts he is a moron and most of us don't want a moron for our president.

The second fact that we want the public to consider is that it is going to be very hard for the man who is proud to this day of RomneyCare in his home state to convince an electorate that, for the most part, doesn't give a rat's ass about the concept of federalism that he is going to strive to totally repeal a national law which is little more than his own signature law expanded to a national scale.

If Ann Coulter thinks that Mitt Romney is the best man for the job then she has every right to say so.  But while she has a right to her own opinion she has no right to her own facts.  Whether you call it RomneyCare or ObamaCare it is a bad idea.  In one state or the entire nation it is a bad idea.

It doesn't matter if there was a time when some Me-Too-Republicans [1] once touted it as an alternative to Soviet style socialized medicine it was a bad idea.

Rick Santorum is correct.  We can not give this issue away by nominating the author of the state level monstrosity which was the basis for Obama's national monstrosity.  Nor can we afford to nominate Newt Gingrich who was supporting an ObamaCare style mandate up until halfway through 2011.

Ann Coulter should be ashamed of herself.  As things stand now denying Obama a second term may well require conservatives to sell out a bit of our integrity by voting for either Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich as we gave up some of it four years ago by voting for McCain.  But there is a difference between selling out and selling your very soul.

[1] A Me-Too-Republican is a Republican who hears the Democrats advocate some bit of liberal/progressive insanity and runs along behind them shouting "me too, me too - just not quite as much".

Let's turn the whole map green

fascinating animation of the progress
of concealed-carry~ source ~

I found this over on KisP and promptly ripped it off.

I note that the only out-and-out non carry state left in the union is Illinois which just happens to suffer under the most corrupt government of any state in the Union.

This is no accident.  Corrupt politicians fear an armed citizenry because an armed people is an empowered people.  It isn't that they fear than an armed mob is going to gun them down in the street.  Rather it is that politicians who regard themselves as wolves and the public as a great mass of sheep put on this earth to be preyed upon instinctively realize that people who are willing to take responsibility for their own safety from criminal predation will be far less likely to accept political predation.

Understand that by corruption I don't just mean the bribe and kickback cash under the table kind.  I also mean the steal your liberty and your money left-wing progressive kind.  This is why you will find Illinois' runner ups for next most corrupt are also the may issue-states

With friends like these. . .

Over at the American Spectator's blog John Tabin is calling Mitt Romney's joint appearence with Donald Trump to accept Trump's endorsement "Romney's Moronic Indulgence of Trump".

Phil Klein calls Mitt Romney's joint appearance with Donald Trump to accept the latter's endorsement "the biggest blunder of his candidacy." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it's certainly up there. Consider that last time the effect of a Trump endorsement was polled, by Fox News in Spetember, it came out as a net negative: 31% would be less likely to vote for a Trump endorsee, only 6% more likely.

Those who are working to re-elect Barack Obama are thrilled by the development, touting it on the @BarackObama Twitter account and in a blast email from the Democratic National Committee. Romney will most likely be the Republican nominee, and if Trump says something particularly incindiary, one can certainly imagine an attack ad using the footage of Trump and Romney. But even if this blows over and doesn't seriously hurt Romney, it's hard to see how it can possibly help.

 What Mr. Tabin and Mr. Klein miss is that Donald Trump is capable of doing considerable damage to anyone who angers him.  As LBJ famously explained his reluctance to sack J Edgar Hoover, "I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in", having a land mine somewhere ahead of you that you might or might not step on one day is better than having a guided missile locked on to you and homing in for the kill.

Trump is fully capable of - among other things - running a third party candidacy for no other reason than to deny the GOP candidate the election in exactly the same way that Ross Perot did to George H.W. Bush. 

Far better to have Trump on your side and feeling that he has a personal investment in getting you elected than hand him a perceived insult and have him dedicated to destroying you.

Sauce for the goose

From The Washington Times:

Texas Rep. Ron Paul's final full day of campaigning in New Hampshire got off to a bizarre start here Monday when he was met by a bullhorn-toting man with a rubber boot on his head who challenged him and President Obama to a "panty-wrestling match to decide it all."

The man, who goes by the name "Vermin Supreme" and is running for president, was waiting in the parking lot as the libertarian icon exited a local diner here and slowly inched his way through the media horde to his black SUV.

"Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul," Vermin purred into the bullhorn, playfully taunting the 12-term Texas congressman. "You are surrounded by the media. The media owns you now."

I mention this only because it is nice to see the shoe being placed on the other foot.  Usually it is Ron Paul's borderline sane pod-people followers harassing other candidates.

Time to take a side

As things now stand in the Republican primary Mitt Romney leads with a surging Rick Santorum trailing by a small margin and Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul fighting for third place.  Huntsman and Perry are lagging so far behind that neither of them is a serious factor.  Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann have withdrawn.

It is time now to take a stand for a candidate.  With Cain and Bachmann out of the race the only serious conservative is Santorum.  Yes, I know that Perry is conservative in many ways but the fact is that the only way you win statewide office in Texas is by pandering to Mexicans.

The issue of amnesty for illegal aliens (mostly Mexicans) is critically important to the survival of the United States as a free and prosperous nation.  I don't want to have to wage another gigantic battle over amnesty with a Republican president like we had to do with George W Bush.  So that simply disqualifies Perry from consideration.  The issue is just too important to take a chance on.

Gingrich might be conservative today, but he will not necessarily be one tomorrow.  If the wind blows right Newt will run to the right but if the wind blows to the left he will run to the left.  He whored himself out to Freddie Mac (and that is the only fair term for what he did), he swallowed the global warming hoax hook line and sinker when it seemed that was the wave of the future and he'll trash any fellow Republican from Rush Limbaugh to Ronald Reagan if he sees an advantage in doing so.  Newt is a preening narcissist of a magnitude that almost matches Barack Obama and he has an ego the size of Mt. Rushmore (upon whose side he believes his face belongs).  And before we leave the subject of Newt we should also take note of the fact that what we have seen of the current Mrs. Gingrich suggests that if she were to become the First Lady she would combine the worst aspects of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama.  While this alone would not disqualify Mr. Gingrich from consideration when taken with his other negatives it becomes clear that he is this season's turd in the GOP's punchbowl.

And Ron Paul?  Please, get serious.  No average American who shed a tear wile watching Schindler's List or reading The Diary of Ann Frank is going to vote for a candidate who favors throwing Israel under the bus (or under the treads of a Syrian T-80).  This goes double if that candidate also has no problem with lunatic Twelvers getting nuclear weapons to play with.

Mitt Romney is a liberal in every way other than fiscal policy.  Mitt will tell voters whatever they want to hear but when he holds office he will move to the left.  All we really need to know about him is that he is the choice of the RINO establishment.  A fact proven by John McCain's endorsement.

So there just isn't a conservative in the race now other than Rick Santorum.  Now I do realize that Santorum isn't perfect.  He is too enamored of George W Bush style "compassionate conservationism" for my tastes.  However that is about the only downside to him that I'm aware of.

Against that tendency to think that government ought to "help people" by throwing taxpayer money at them - different from the modern "progressive" idea that government ought to "help people" by throwing taxpayer money at them while micromanaging their lives in a way that Stalin could only dream of - there are Mr. Santorum's many strengths.

Chief among them his clear understanding of the civilizational struggle the West is engaged in against militant Islam.  Another of Santorum's strengths is his understanding of the fact that the foundation upon which both freedom and prosperity are built is morality.  Mr. Santorum understands, like the Founding Fathers, that we cannot  achieve and maintain either wealth or liberty unless we are a virtuous people.

Santorum has a proven ability to appeal to middle class voters even in areas which are not strongly supportive of the GOP and do it without adopting left-wing positions.  Unlike other Northeastern Republicans like Giuliani in New York, Christie in New Jersey and Romney in Massachusetts Mr. Santorum gets blue state votes while championing red state policies.  

Obama has handed the GOP a magnificent opportunity.  By his conduct in office he has given his opponent in the upcoming election the closest thing to a sure thing since the days of Nixon's Watergate and Carter's malaise.  Since we really don't have to worry all that much about "electability" this time around (53-56% of the American people are going to do exactly what I am going to do on election day - walk into the voting booth and pull the lever for whoever is running against Obama) we have the chance to pick the person who will be the best president, not just the best candidate. 

Given the people who have chosen to run this time around Rick Santorum is the man who would make the best president and conservatives should stop holding out hope that our dream candidate (whoever that happens to be) will come forward and take the nomination in a brokered convention.  Neither Sarah Palin nor Marco Rubio nor [insert name here] is going to emerge from the proverbial smoke filled room to become the next Ronald Reagan. 

Rick Santorum is a conservative and he absolutely can beat Barack Obama.  Republicans should unite behind him now or else we face a high probability that we will be saddled with John McCain II in the upcoming election.

Tonight's Music

Ron Paul is an ass clown

Don Feder writing about Ron Paul:

To "get" Ron Paul you have to understand libertarianism -- an ism every bit as delusional as Marxism. The National Libertarian Party, which first ran a presidential candidate in 1972, hasn't had many wins -- electing 4 state legislators in as many decades, as well as a planning commissioner here and an alderman there. Ron Paul is its greatest success. 

The Texas congressman is far and away the most prominent proponent of what I like to call rightwing utopianism. Libertarianism is to authentic conservatism what Barack Obama is to 19th century liberalism. 

Inspired by Ayn Rand (Ron named his son, the future senator, Rand Paul), Libertarianism was an outgrowth of 1960s campus conservatism. Like ideologues of the left, libertarians of the day were on a never-ending quest for ideological purity and the foolish consistency Emerson derided. (They still are.) Unlike traditional conservatives, libertarians came to oppose the Vietnam War and what they called "prohibitionist" drug policies. You must be consistent, libertarians lectured us. If you support economic liberty, then you must support "personal liberty" (legalized abortion, freedom to use soul-destroying drugs) and the libertarian principle applied to foreign policy -- isolationism. 

During the Cold War, economist Murray Rothbard (one of the foremost libertarian theorists) once observed that if we lost the rest of the world and the Soviets invaded America, we could always take to the hills and launch a guerrilla war, a la "Red Dawn." Libertarians have never been hampered by reality. 

Some libertarians drifted into anarchy, others organized the National Libertarian Party. Ron Paul was the party's 1988 standard-bearer. 

I understand libertarians because I was one, from roughly 1968 (when I read "Atlas Shrugged") to 1982. I was a vice chairman of the New York Libertarian Party in the early '70s. When I lived in the Seattle-area, later in the decade, I ran a libertarian supper club, which brought in a young Texas congressman as a speaker. My road to recovery began with "The Conservative Mind" by the great Russell Kirk and Whittaker Chambers' "Witness." 

Other than abortion, there is no particular on which Ron Paul differs with either libertarianism or the Libertarian Party. Like them, he would legalize hard drugs and abolish age of consent laws, which violate the rights of 24-year-olds to have sex with 14-year-olds. 

Like the average libertarian, Ron Paul is a dogmatic isolationist. 

Rothbard believed our involvement in the Second World War was a tragedy: 

"Our entry into World War II was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison state, an overweening military-industrial complex...." 

A former aide to the congressman, Eric Dondero says Paul told him the United States had no business being involved in World War II. "When pressed, he often brings up conspiracy theories like FDR knew about the attacks of Pearl Harbor weeks before hand. 

The 2010 platform of the National Libertarian Party sets forth a foreign policy difficult to distinguish from the lunacy of Michael Moore and Code Pink: The former provides: 

"Our foreign policy should emphasize defense against attack from abroad and enhance the likelihood of peace by avoiding foreign entanglements. We should end the current U.S. government policy of foreign intervention, including military and economic aid." 

In 1973, Rothbard observed: 

"The libertarian position, generally, is to minimize State power as much as possible, down to zero, and isolationism is the full expression (of that doctrine) in foreign affairs."

Not only does Paul march in lockstep with Rothbard and the L.P., he even believes the United States should have no opinion on foreign developments. Thus, Dr. Paul was the only member of the House of Representatives to vote against a 2005 resolution condemning Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map" and a 2009 resolution "expressing support" for Iranian pro-democracy demonstrators. 

And yes, Ron Paul has intimated, on more than one occasion, that the United States is to blame for the 9/11 massacre. He claims al-Qaeda slaughtered 3,000 U.S. civilians because America is "bombing them," because we have military bases in the sacred sand pit and because we support Israel over the dear Palestinians. Wonder who he blames for the Muslin conquest of Constantinople in 1453? The CIA wasn't around then, was it? Or for the Christmas bombings of Nigerian churches? 

In a 2003 speech, Paul said we should pay attention to bin Laden, when he explained his grievances against America.: 

"The U.S. defiles Islam with its bases ... its initiation of war against Iraq (notwithstanding Saddam's pacifism), with 12 years of persistent bombing, and weapons being used against the Palestinians, as the Palestinian territory shrinks and Israel's occupation expands." 

As you'd expect, Paul is insouciant about nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran's incinerate-the-Jews/establish-a-worldwide-caliphate regime . Why wouldn't they want nukes? "Internationally, they'd be given more respect." Besides, "they are surrounded." (If only Israel would stop threatening to push the Shiites into the sea.) What's Tehran going to do with one or two nuclear weapons, Paul asks? Why Israel has dozens. Hint: The Iranians crazy enough to use them. A nuclear war would be just the thing to usher in the 12th imam. 

On the Jewish state, Paul doesn't deviate one iota from L.P. party-line. Libertarians view Israel as the engine that drives what they call U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Israel is said to sap our resources, drag us into their wars and make the Muslims -- who are otherwise peace-loving and well-disposed to our way of life -- hate us. 

In his essay, "War Guilt in the Middle East," Rothbard excoriated Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," "confiscation of Arab lands" and its "refusal to let these refugees (Palestinians) return and return the property taken from them." He had nothing to say about the equal number of Jews driven from Arab lands by pogroms at the time of Israel's founding. 

Dondero says his ex-boss loathes Israel and "sides with the Palestinians and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs." While Dr. Paul hotly denies that he's anti-Israel (his campaign calls Dondero a "disgruntled" ex-aide) everything he's done or said about the Middle East seems to confirm the charge. 

Ayn Rand, who unintentionally provided the impetus for the movement, disdained libertarians, calling them "right-wing hippies.' She was unequivocal in her support for Israel, which she explained this way in a 1974 appearance: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are." 

Ron Paul may be delusional, but he is a consistent. Neither mass murder, terrorism, the advance of militant Islam, nor nuclear weapons in the hands of fanatical regimes will shake a libertarian's faith in his dogma: We have no foreign enemies. If certain states want to kill us, it's our fault. Nothing is worth fighting for -- unless it's abolishing the Federal Reserve System. 

I'd like to follow Ron Paul around to Republican gatherings, pointing at him and shouting "stranger, danger" Stranger this you cannot get. 

First, before I get to all the things I agree with Mr. Feder about I would point out that ending the "war on drugs" is not a position taken only by libertarian nut-jobs.  No less a conservative luminary than William F Buckley, Jr. championed ending the drug war because the damage caused by the attempt to criminalize drugs is worse than the damage done by the drugs themselves.

Now on to the modern-day libertarians.  Like Mr. Feder I was also once a card-carrying, dues paying member of the Libertarian Party.  I still agree with a great deal of what they believe regarding the need to limit the federal government to its constitutionally mandated areas of responsibility.

However what caused me to part ways with the LP was their failure to understand that sometimes"providing for the common defense" requires more than sitting within our borders and waiting for an enemy to attack and only then springing to the defense.

Sometimes, whenever possible in fact, the best way to defend the nation is to deal with the problem before it actually lands troops on your shores (or hijacks planes and flies them into your buildings).  For example if the US had maintained the kind of involvement with Europe at the end of WWI as it did at the end of WWII - forming a NATO-like defense alliance and integrating military operations and basing troops in Germany and other European nations it is very unlikely that there ever would have been a Third Reich or a Second World War.

I also parted company with the libertarians over the issue of Israel.  As Ayn Rand observed when savages and civilized men fight you reflexively side with the civilized men.  If you want an example of this consider the unfortunate nation of Zimbabwe.  Had the civilized nations of the world supported the admittedly flawed, but still civilized government of Rhodesia when it was under assault by Marxist savages (savages because they were Marxist) enormous suffering could have been averted.

The fact is that Israel is a civilized nation surrounded by savages.  The Muslim nations which are arrayed against Israel are a collection of totalitarian dictatorships and murderous Islamic theocracies who practice female genital mutilation, who allow fathers to murder their teenage daughters for bringing shame upon their families by "allowing" themselves to be raped and who stone to death anyone who attempts to renounce the evil seventh-century death cult in favor of any more enlightened humane (and less bat-shit crazy) religious philosophy.  In a fight like that you don't remain neutral and you don't side with the bunch holding the signs which say "behead those who say that Islam beheads its enemies".

I also part company with the libertarians on the issue of our borders.  The LP believes that people have a natural right to freedom of movement which means that it is nobody's business if the entire population of Mexico wants to move to the United States.  That the new Mexican citizens would vote with the progressive left to bring about the kind of oppressive socialist welfare state that the libertarians claim to hate seems lost on them.

In fact a great deal seems lost on them.  Libertarians think of themselves as rational secular people and they expect that all other people share that rational and secular outlook.  The fact that the mullahs of Iran might really truly believe that the Hidden Imam will return and bring Islamic paradise to the world if they nuke Israel is lost on them.

It is also lost on them that in WWII the Soviet Union the British Commonwealth, the Empire of Japan and the Third Reich were locked in a death struggle and the British did not have the power to carry the day by themselves.  Only the entrance of the United States into the war kept all of Asia from becoming a Japanese empire of blood and slavery and all of Europe and the Middle East from becoming a playground for either Adolph Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

In the real world the libertarian ideal of free trade with all and alliances with none becomes Swiss banks receiving deposits of gold pulled from the teeth of Holocaust victims while Swiss chemical companies sell the components of Zyklon B to the SS.

But this is all lost on Ron Paul and his pod people.  The reason that libertarians just don't "get it" is that not really a political movement but a utopian fantasy which attracts anti-American malcontents in exactly the same way that Marxism does.  If you are one kind of chronically unhappy basement dweller you go take a public shit in Zuccotti Park to stick it to all the Wall St. fat cats, or if you're the other kind (the kind with more than a passing acquaintance with soap) you hack online polls in order to make Ron Paul look like the popular choice of the nation.

Either way you are simply expressing an irrational dissatisfaction with the nation which gave you a higher standard of living and more opportunity than any citizen, subject or resident of any nation in the history of the entire freaking planet.

Cain survives

Robert Stacy McCain has an essay on The American Spectator website titled Campaign Crisis Tests Cain in which he speculates that the debate Wednesday night might have been a turning point for Mr. Cain.

When Wednesday's Republican presidential debate ended, CNBC switched to a post-debate panel featuring Larry Kudlow, who raved that Herman Cain had an "unbelievably good debate tonight" and said Cain's performance "blew me away."

The Atlanta businessman had help from a friendly audience at the debate, held at Michigan's Oakland University. When moderator Maria Bartiromo asked whether sexual harassment allegations against him raised "character issues," the crowd booed the question. And they loudly cheered Cain's answer: "The American people deserve better than someone being tried in the court of public opinion based on unfounded accusations." When Bartiromo's colleague John Harwood tried to get Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to address the accusations against Cain, the crowd again booed the question, and applauded when Romney refused to criticize Cain. People "can make their own assessment," Romney said, and that was the last time the topic was raised all night.

It is far too early to say that Cain has put the accusations behind him, but by the time Wednesday's debate ended, his successful performance had apparently changed the narrative of what seemed a potentially campaign-killing crisis just 48 hours earlier.

[. . .]

The boos and cheers from the audience at Wednesday's debate in Michigan seemed to indicate that Republicans are not ready to abandon Cain, and may be ready to rally behind him. Cain continues to lead the RealClearPolitics national poll average, as he has for the past three weeks. Sometimes the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, and any sense that Cain's campaign is in jeopardy was overshadowed during the debate by the blunder of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who found himself unable to name the third of three federal departments he proposed to eliminate. That prompted one top fundraiser to declare to a reporter that Perry's campaign is "over."

Ten days into the campaign crisis provoked by the accusations against him, Herman Cain is not yet out of the woods, but after Wednesday, he may be able to see sunshine breaking through the trees.

One thing I disagree with is that it is "far too early to say that Cain has put the accusations behind him".  I think that Mr. Cain has successfully moved past all the accusations that have been brought forward to this date.  The primary reason why I do not believe that the current imbroglio will damage Cain's standing before the GOP primary voters - or the national electorate next November, for that matter - is laid out in the afore mentioned Ann Coulter column:

Herman Cain has spent his life living and working all over the country -- Indiana, Georgia, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Washington, D.C. -- but never in Chicago. 

So it's curious that all the sexual harassment allegations against Cain emanate from Chicago: home of the Daley machine and Obama consigliere David Axelrod. 

Suspicions had already fallen on Sheila O'Grady, who is close with David Axelrod and went straight from being former Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley's chief of staff to president of the Illinois Restaurant Association (IRA), as being the person who dug up Herman Cain's personnel records from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). 

The Daley-controlled IRA works hand-in-glove with the NRA. And strangely enough, Cain's short, three-year tenure at the NRA is evidently the only period in his decades-long career during which he's alleged to have been a sexual predator. 

After O'Grady's name surfaced in connection with the miraculous appearance of Cain's personnel files from the NRA, she issued a Clintonesque denial of any involvement in producing them -- by vigorously denying that she knew Cain when he was at the NRA. (Duh.) 

And now, after a week of conservative eye-rolling over unspecified, anonymous accusations against Cain, we've suddenly got very specific sexual assault allegations from an all-new accuser out of ... Chicago. 

Herman Cain has never lived in Chicago. But you know who has? David Axelrod! And guess who lived in Axelrod's very building? Right again: Cain's latest accuser, Sharon Bialek. 

Bialek's accusations were certainly specific. But they also demonstrated why anonymous accusations are worthless. 

Within 24 hours of Bialek's press conference, friends and acquaintances of hers stepped forward to say that she's a "gold-digger," that she was constantly in financial trouble -- having filed for personal bankruptcy twice -- and, of course, that she had lived in Axelrod's apartment building at 505 North Lake Shore Drive, where, she admits, she knew the man The New York Times calls Obama's "hired muscle." 

Throw in some federal tax evasion, and she's Obama's next Cabinet pick.  

The reason all this is relevant is that both Axelrod and Daley have a history of smearing political opponents by digging up claims of sexual misconduct against them. 

John Brooks, Chicago's former fire commissioner, filed a lawsuit against Daley six months ago claiming Daley threatened to smear him with sexual harassment accusations if Brooks didn't resign. He resigned -- and the sexual harassment allegations were later found to be completely false. 

Meanwhile, as extensively detailed in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America," the only reason Obama became a U.S. senator -- allowing him to run for president -- is that David Axelrod pulled sealed divorce records out of a hat, first, against Obama's Democratic primary opponent, and then against Obama's Republican opponent. 

One month before the 2004 Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, Obama was way down in the polls, about to lose to Blair Hull, a multimillionaire securities trader. 

But then The Chicago Tribune -- where Axelrod used to work -- began publishing claims that Hull's second ex-wife, Brenda Sexton, had sought an order of protection against him during their 1998 divorce proceedings.
  

From then until Election Day, Hull was embroiled in fighting the allegation that he was a "wife beater." He and his ex-wife eventually agreed to release their sealed divorce records. His first ex-wife, daughters and nanny defended him at a press conference, swearing he was never violent. During a Democratic debate, Hull was forced to explain that his wife kicked him and he had merely kicked her back. 

Hull's substantial lead just a month before the primary collapsed with the nonstop media attention to his divorce records. Obama sailed to the front of the pack and won the primary. Hull finished third with 10 percent of the vote. [Given that this happened in Chicago we also have to consider that the accusations and controversy served to shield the effects of massive voter fraud as well.  No one would think to question the numbers so the Democrat machine was free to stuff the ballot boxes as much as they wanted to - LC]

Luckily for Axelrod, Obama's opponent in the general election had also been divorced. 

The Republican nominee was Jack Ryan, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard law and business schools, who had left his lucrative partnership at Goldman Sachs to teach at an inner-city school on the South Side of Chicago. 

But in a child custody dispute some years earlier, Ryan's ex-wife, Hollywood sex kitten Jeri Lynn Ryan, had alleged that, while the couple was married, Jack had taken her to swingers clubs in Paris and New York. 

Jack Ryan adamantly denied the allegations. In the interest of protecting their son, he also requested that the records be put permanently under seal. 

Axelrod's courthouse moles obtained the "sealed" records and, in no time, they were in the hands of every political operative in Chicago. Knowing perfectly well what was in the records, Chicago Tribune attorneys flew to California and requested that the court officially "unseal" them -- over the objections of both Jack and Jeri Ryan. 

Your honor, who knows what could be in these records! 

A California judge ordered them unsealed, which allowed newspapers to publish the salacious allegations, and four days later, Ryan dropped out of the race under pressure from idiot Republicans (who should be tracked down and shot). 

With a last-minute replacement of Alan Keyes as Obama's Republican opponent, Obama was able to set an all-time record in an Illinois Senate election, winning with a 43 percent margin.

And that's how Obama became a senator four years after losing a congressional race to Bobby Rush. (In a disastrous turn of events, Rush was not divorced.) 

Axelrod destroyed the only two men who stood between Obama and the Senate with illicitly obtained, lurid allegations from their pasts. 

In 2007, long after Obama was safely ensconced in the U.S. Senate, The New York Times reported: "The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece (on Hull's sealed divorce records) later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had 'worked aggressively behind the scenes' to push the story." 

Some had suggested, the Times article continued, that Axelrod had "an even more significant role -- that he leaked the initial story." 

This time, Obama's little helpers have not only thrown a bomb into the Republican primary, but are hoping to destroy the man who deprives the Democrats of their only argument in 2012: If you oppose Obama, you must be a racist. 

I have to disagree with Miss Ann on that last point.  In the fever swamps of liberal/progressive thought supporting Cain is absolute proof positive that one is a racist!  Because Cain is black and doesn't have his snout stuck down deep in the trough of of government entitlement that other black "leaders" feed upon.  Rather Cain had fled the liberal plantation and rejects the patronage of the Democrat party.


He is unwilling to sell out the nation and his fellow African-Americans for a place at the table of the current power structure.  He is unwilling to work for policies that keep black people ignorant and dependent upon the state.


This makes him a mortal enemy (as all conservatives are) to the political left, but because he is black he occupies a place of extraordinary vilification in that by his very existence, he disproves the left's narrative of American life.


Mr. Cain (like Clarence Thomas, another blood enemy of the left) achieved success without relying on the mechanisms of the state and so can serve as an example to other blacks that they do not need to either subsist on welfare, turn to crime or rely upon affirmative action to get and keep jobs for which they are not qualified.  Rather by rejecting the handouts of the left and applying themselves they can be excellent in their own right.  They can earn a place at the top by staying in school and working hard, by practicing self-discipline and believing that success is possible for those who toil to achieve it (in other words doing all the things that get black kids derided for "acting white").


This is to the Democrat party what sunlight is to a vampire.  If even 20% of black Americans voted Republican the Democrats would never win a presidential election and would win damn few congressional contests.


Democrats know this and they are desperate to keep blacks in their place.


It is also why they are so desperate to open America's borders and get amnesty for the millions of Mexicans illegally in this country.  They need a replacement minority that can be controlled in the event that the black population (or even a large minority of it) wises up and realizes that the white liberals they have been voting for are responsible for much of their misery and the black "leaders" they have been trusting have in fact sold them out.

This is the essence of the furor to destroy Herman Cain as it was the driving force behind the attempt to destroy Clarence Thomas.  It is why every black conservative who dares to step forward and declare him or herself is attacked is attacked and smeared.

This is why the Chicago machine bestirred itself to vomit out a small parade of women who were willing to falsely claim that Mr. Cain "harassed" them.  This is why Republicans have been unwilling to play along and boot him out of the race.  We know that they are trying to play us and we ain't going along.

Either learn from history or shut the frak up already

From Mercer Tyson writing on The American Thinker:

Bad-mouthing Romney is like saying Ronald Reagan was a failure because he didn't colonize China.  Romney is a conservative who will work well with a GOP Congress.  His flipflopedness is both on purpose and irrelevant.  Time to get off his back.

Previously I wrote an article on American Thinker promoting the ticket of Romney and Rubio, and boy, did Romney and I get soundly thumped by many of the AT readers.  I consider the attacks on Romney from conservatives to be unwarranted, incorrect, and self-destructive.

[. . .]

While I love Herman Cain, I fall into the group of those who are Cain skeptics; people who say they like Cain but don't think he can win. 

IF Mr. Tyson could point back to electoral victories by Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush in his reelection campaign, Bob Dole and John McCain then he would have a point.  He would have an even better point if he could speak of how Ronald Reagan (who was painted as an insane warmonger by the MSM) went down to a humiliating defeat against Jimmy Carter in 1980.  He would cement his point if he could point to the polls which showed John McCain ahead until choosing uber-conservative Sara Palin to be his running mate after which his campaign collapsed.

But he cannot do any of those things.  RINO moderates Ford, H.W. Bush, Dole and McCain lost (the elder Bush won when he was perceived as Reagan's third term but lost when he proved that he was no conservative).  George W Bush was also perceived to be a true conservative when running for his first term and won reelection because he was commander-in-chief during a war which still enjoyed broad public support in the aftermath of 9/11.

Ronald Reagan, a genuine conservative, was tarred as an evil warmonger, lacking in compassion and probably senile was elected in a landslide and won reelection in an even bigger landslide.

John McCain was behind in the polls and was considered to be a joke by most on both the left and right until he picked Sarah Palin.  At that point he started running nearly even with Obama and at one point even pulled ahead.  Only the collapse of the housing bubble and beginning of the Great Recession catapulted Obama into a decisive lead.

In other words every time since 1980 we try it Mr. Tyson's way we go down in flames and every time we back a true conservative (or someone who is thought to be a true conservative) we win.

They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over but expecting a different result.

A necessary corollary to that would be that sanity is defined as expecting things to work the same way in the future as they have worked in the past.

So let us be as sane as possible and nominate the most believably and consistently  conservative candidate we can find in the expectation that he (or she) will win.

Like the Klan with iPhones and the Internet

This is long, but very worthwhile.  I would also note that one of the most common targets of the inquisition were ethnically Jewish men who had converted to Christianity (or whose families had converted before they were even born) who had achieved success in business.  They were accused of secretly practicing Judaism by jealous business rivals and the Church/State authorities were eager to play along and torture "confessions" out of the accused because that would lead to the confiscation of all their assets (and the cancellation of outstanding loans).  It was a dandy racket.  The local lord or bishop would fatten his treasury and the less successful businessmen would rid themselves of a competitor.  

 We can see the same kind of thing happening here.  If Cain is removed from the race it will benefit Romney, the less successful competitor for the GOP nomination, and the rest of the Republican establishment as well as the Democrat/progressive complex of elected politicians, unions (especially public sector unions), the mainstream media and academics.  

 

Lincoln's "Living Dog"

By Jeffrey Lord on 11.1.11 @ 6:09AM

Herman Cain's a threat to both the left and the GOP Establishment. 

"A living dog is better than a dead lion." -- Abraham Lincoln on the choice between himself and Stephen A. Douglas

Well, well, well.

Or as Private Gomer Pyle used to exclaim: "Surrrrrrr-prize, surrrrrr-prize, surrrrrr-prize!"

You know why all this flapdoodle over Herman Cain and charges of sexual harassment, charges that Mr. Cain has flatly denied? (Here in this Fox News exclusive Herman Cain is what Abraham Lincoln called a "living dog.")

A living dog? Yes, and we'll come back to this in a moment because it bears directly on what's happening here. As Herman Cain the "living dog" comes under the inevitable attack from the left, if conservatives understand where they are, where they appear to be heading, where they've been, it becomes easier (although perhaps not easy) to understand what to do next -- and how and with whom to do it.

There are two parts to this disgraceful attack. Both must be examined to understand exactly what is going on with this story.

Part One? History. And this history has two parts within. 

So let's begin -- and let's be blunt.

Let's recall in some detail how this racial game -- and it is a racial game -- is played.

Liberals and the Democratic Party have a two centuries long vivid and extremely graphic history of racism. (Detailed previously here ). From the almost thirty -- thirty! -- party platforms that either supported slavery or segregation or chose to be silent on the subject, to an alliance with the Ku Klux Klan, electing Klan members to all manner of political offices federal, state and local, not to mention supporting everything from lynching to the racial quotas of today, racism has been the life blood of the left.

Part and parcel of all this has been the fine art of portraying black men as sexual predators. And dealing with these black men so accused in a terrifyingly horrific fashion: they would be lynched.

One could fill cyberspace with these stories, but perhaps one of the more famous is the story of Emmett Till. PBS once did a documentary on the Emmett Till case and as the crescendo rises from the liberal media lynch mob about Mr. Cain it is worth a look at what PBS notes on its website about this particular issue.

Said PBS, no outpost of conservatism:

Some whites espoused the idea that black men were sexual predators and wanted integration in order to be with white women…. Lynchings were frequently committed with the most flagrant public display. Like executions by guillotine in medieval times, lynchings were often advertised in newspapers and drew large crowds of white families. They were a kind of vigilantism where Southern white men saw themselves as protectors of their way of life and their white women. By the early twentieth century, the writer Mark Twain had a name for it: the United States of Lyncherdom…. Lynchings were covered in local newspapers with headlines spelling out the horrific details. Photos of victims, with exultant white observers posed next to them, were taken for distribution in newspapers or on postcards. Body parts, including genitalia, were sometimes distributed to spectators or put on public display. Most infractions were for petty crimes, like theft, but the biggest one of all was looking at or associating with white women. Many victims were black businessmen or black men who refused to back down from a fight. Headlines such as the following were not uncommon:
"Five White Men Take Negro Into Woods; Kill Him: Had Been Charged with Associating with White Women" went over The Associated Press wires about a lynching in Shreveport, Louisiana." 

Did you catch those two particular sentences above? These two:

Most infractions were for petty crimes, like theft, but the biggest one of all was looking at or associating with white women. Many victims were black businessmen or black men who refused to back down from a fight.

To restate. Black businessmen who refused to back down from a fight were lynched because they had been "looking at or associating with white women."

And who is Herman Cain? That's right. A prominent black businessman. A black man who is refusing to back down from a fight. A black man who, quite obviously from his business career in a largely white country, necessarily is "looking at or associating with white women."

Now, bearing this history in mind, let's recall the second part of this history -- the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky episode.

Several years after the term "high-tech" lynching exploded on the scene at the confirmation hearings of now-Justice Clarence Thomas -- Thomas, recall, is a conservative black man married to a white woman -- the American left had a mysterious change of heart. After furiously insisting that "women tell the truth" in matters of sexual harassment, and that the real story was that men didn't "get it" -- Bill Clinton came along and liberals did… shocking, I know… a 180.

As the damn broke on Clinton's sexual behavior -- including allegations of rape (from Juanita Broaddrick, a one-time supporter), groping in the Oval Office (Kathleen Willey, another supporter and White House volunteer), dropping his pants as governor and asking state employee Paula Jones to "kiss it" -- liberals suddenly had a whole different world view.

Did I mention that Bill Clinton is a white man and a liberal?

Sorry. Bill Clinton is a white man and a liberal.

So what exactly were the responses back then in the day? When the man in question was not a black conservative but a white liberal?

Clinton's critics, fumed liberals, were uptight, religious fanatics. A massive liberal campaign was launched -- directly from the Clinton White House -- to discredit every single woman or conservative who took issue with Clinton's womanizing. Clinton's critics, scorned James Carville, were determined "to wash all the sodomites and fornicators out of town."

Also from Carville the memorable gem "Drag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, you never know what you'll find." A reference, of course, to Paula Jones, who was quickly deemed to be an unsophisticated redneck rube.

Of a sudden, not all women told the truth.

Kathleen Willey was trashed. Juanita Broaddrick filed a lawsuit -- and was promptly audited by the Clinton-controlled IRS. Paula Jones was humiliated, mocked and smeared from one end of the country to the other for everything from her accent to her economic and educational status. Liberals were ruthless. Absolutely totally ruthless. And among other things, ironically established a consensus that sexual harassment is no big deal.

Let's move on from history to politics.

To begin, what was Lincoln talking about? Why does Herman Cain fit precisely Lincoln's "living dog" description? What do we need to understand here?

Lincoln borrowed his point from the Bible (Ecclesiastes 9:4: "For to him that is joined to all the living there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion.") in his fabled House Divided speech, using it to contrast himself with Stephen A. Douglas. Said candidate Lincoln: "A living dog is better than a dead lion." 

By which Lincoln meant that a man who cares nothing for the task at hand is what he termed a "caged and toothless" lion when it comes to doing the job that needs to be done. Lincoln was referring to Douglas's unwillingness to end slavery. In today's world Cain is effectively using the same sentiment to illustrate his differences with rival Mitt Romney and others -- President Obama included -- on everything from how to approach changing the tax code (Cain's 9/9/9 plan) to putting the brakes on the growth of government and, most tellingly, refusing to buy into the dime store New Deal mentality that has become a hallmark of Establishment moderate Republicans.

As the polls show, Mr. Cain is gaining fans because of his performance in the GOP debates. He is being perceived as a potential "living dog" in the White House -- all teeth and energy in tearing relentlessly into the problem. How, the question arises, can a President Romney possibly oppose the growth of government when he went out of his way as governor to increase it? Demonstrating he not only didn't oppose the idea of big government but that he now seems bent on convincing the public they shouldn't care that he doesn't care.

And how can the GOP Establishment in Washington be committed to the task when so many feed off of that very same government? Are not Romney and the larger GOP Establishment the very embodiment of Lincoln's "caged and toothless lion"? Is not Herman Cain -- his color quite aside -- a more serious political threat to both the GOP Establishment and the Liberal Establishment as opposed to just another political competitor?

We are in the midst of a tremendous popularity surge for Mr. Cain. Poll after poll is emerging both nationally and now in Iowa showing him at the front of the GOP pack. Like clockwork, and precision clockwork at that, now comes forth the allegation, an "exclusive" in the liberal media outlet Politico, of "inappropriate behavior" that was "sexually suggestive." Years ago.

Let's again be blunt. Mr. Cain is black. Were his female accusers white? Politico doesn't say. Certainly the Politico lists two white male reporters in the byline of the Cain story. One, Kenneth Vogel, is an ex-staffer for the far left George Soros funded Center for Public Integrity, as noted here.

And the tie between the left and lynching, as PBS notes, "black businessmen" who were "looking or associating with white women" and "who refused to back down from a fight" is historically airtight.

But whatever the color of Mr. Cain's accusers both the pattern of this attack as well as the reason for it is crystal clear.

You might call it The Meaning of the President 2012.

The presidential election of 2012 will mark the 48th year since the defeat at the 1964 Republican Convention of the then-dominant Republican moderates by conservatives. The avowed complaint then from infuriated moderates was that conservatism could not win elections, much less govern the country.

In practice, the loss of elections has since occurred when moderates (Ford, Bush 41, Dole, McCain) headed the ticket. Close election victories rather than landslides have resulted when the nominee campaigned as a moderate (the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush). And under the command of both Bushes, from the raising of taxes (in violation of 41's "read my lips" pledge) to Bush 43's embrace of such as a Medicare prescription drug program and education's No Child Left Behind -- the size and cost of government has increased.

It seems altogether obvious that the size and cost of government -- now with the country dangling precipitously over the canyon of a $15 trillion debt -- will not decrease with a Republican president until a flash point, a crisis, is reached within the Republican Party itself. Reached, resolved and passed.

To borrow from Abraham Lincoln: A party divided against itself cannot stand. A conservative party that is led by a moderate will eventually split asunder.

The GOP won't dissolve or disappear. But just as Lincoln predicted of America in the middle of the slavery controversy, the GOP will become all one thing or all the other. Either conservatives will continue the party's evolution back into the party of American conservatism it was at its founding, or moderates will make moderation -- the idea of the dime store New Deal -- palatable everywhere into the farthest reaches of the GOP.

Lest there be anyone who thinks the chances of the latter are unthinkable, it would be important to think of party history exactly in terms of these last 48 years since 1964. If one thinks of the federal government as, say, a governmental version of the popular movie franchise Transformers (described by Wikipedia as the story of: "alien robots who can disguise themselves by transforming into everyday machinery") a clearer picture of what has been happening to the GOP for those 48 years can be seen.

Some of the more visible "everyday machinery" that has been transforming the robotic federal government into even larger size with a costlier price tag has been welded on courtesy of the moderation impulse of various Republican presidents.

Contemplate that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now run amok in the Obama era was a creation of Richard Nixon. Or that Bush 43 dismissed the Reagan idea of getting rid of the growing bureaucracy that is the Department of Education as not "realistic' of leadership and instead decided in favor of launching an expansion of the federal government's role in education by launching No Child Left Behind -- with no less than the late "Liberal Lion" Senator Ted Kennedy as his partner. Not to mention the Bush signing of McCain-Feingold and Sarbanes-Oxley.

And so on… and on.

The first GOP platform after 1964 -- 1968 -- found the Republican Party that nominated Richard Nixon that year including a plank titled "The Individual and Government" which stated:

In recent years an increasingly impersonal national government has tended to submerge the individual. An entrenched, burgeoning bureaucracy has increasingly usurped powers, unauthorized by Congress. Decentralization of power, as well as strict Congressional oversight of administrative and regulatory agency compliance with the letter and spirit of the law, are urgently needed to preserve personal liberty, improve efficiency, and provide a swifter response to human problems.

But by July of 1970, a bare two years and four months later, the Nixon Administration created the EPA -- by executive order. There was not a single enabling piece of legislation from Congress involved. The Nixon executive order opened the door to a massive national intrusion of what the platform specifically said the GOP opposed -- "an increasingly impersonal national government (that) has tended to submerge the individual." Beginning operations in December of 1970, EPA is now a federal behemoth employing almost 18,000 full-time employees, daily injecting into everyday American life proposed rules and regulations on everything from global warming to commercial boilers to private property.

In one recent case cited by the Heritage Foundation, the problems with moderate Republican presidencies is vividly illustrated.

Alaska small businessman Krister Evertson, who had never had a run-in with the law in his life, was run off the road and jailed by a SWAT team armed with automatic weapons. Why? Because he had not used a properly approved EPA label he had never heard of for a small shipment of sodium. Evertson wound up doing two years in prison.

When did this happen?

That's right. In 2004 -- when the EPA was under the administration of one George W. Bush.

Thus the "dime store New Deal" of moderate Republicans -- in this case from Nixon to Bush -- at work in practice. (Here is Mr. Evertson's congressional testimony from 2009.)

This is now a considerably polished approach by GOP moderates. So run-of-the-mill routine that in his memoirs President George W. Bush apparently never thought his signing of the Sarbanes-Oxley "Corporate Responsibility" legislation was worth mentioning. The compliance costs for American business from this gem of Republican regulatory moderation were predicted to be $1.2 billion. In fact, they now hover in the stratosphere of $35 billion. And this from a president who ran on a platform with a plank promising -- no kidding -- "Common Sense in Regulation."

These few examples (and many more not mentioned here) show precisely where conservatives and the Republican Party are now -- and where they will continue to head unless serious change is at hand.

In effect the philosophical strategy or lack thereof that has guided the Nixon, Ford, and two Bush presidencies over the last 48 years since that return to basics that was the 1964 Convention has exactly built almost to specification a Republican Party which has a conservative political foundation supporting moderate if not liberal governments. Governments which in turn wind up creating regulatory nightmares like the EPA or Sarbanes-Oxley and the rest.

Which means conservatives watching the 2012 jockeying for the Republican presidential nomination face a considerable task to prevent the continuation of this trend. Plainly, Romney promises in so many words that a Romney presidency would re-channel the thinking of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and the father and son Bushes. He honestly pretends to nothing else.

Leaving conservatives across the country knowing what must be done. Yet struggling to understand how -- and importantly with whom -- to do it.

What they are actually doing is examining the field for Lincoln's "live dogs." Those who care strongly enough about the changes they are promising and plan to look back in their farewell address to the nation as they leave office with the satisfaction they sank serious teeth into the task -- with results to show for it.

Or, as Reagan himself put it in his farewell address to the nation in January of 1989: "My friends: We did it. We weren't just marking time. We made a difference."

Added into this mix, working hand in glove with the dime-store New Dealers, is the drive by this or that Republican consultant and lobbyist to convince conservatives they can't win independent votes and simply shouldn't care that the next Republican president would turn out like four of the last five.

That means something must be done to stop the popularity of Herman Cain.

Which in turn leaves a wide field of "suspects" for those who would seek to torpedo the Cain campaign. No one yet knows the source here, but in this day and age of the Internet it is difficult to believe they will escape unrevealed.

Was the source a GOP consultant/lobbyist with ties to a Cain rival?

Or was it a left-winger acting on the centuries' old and well proven animus of the left for the uppity black man -- a hatred that once summoned the noose of the lynchers? And now, if you are a conservative black man like Herman Cain or Clarence Thomas before him as opposed to a white liberal man like Bill Clinton -- makes you the target for exactly that same animus. Except this time it's a high tech lynching, fed to a couple of lefty white male reporters at Politico.

Either way, one thing is clear.

Abraham Lincoln would recognize Herman Cain instantly.

Why?

Because Herman Cain is exactly Abraham Lincoln's "living dog" incarnate. Which makes him one very big, double-barreled threat. To both the GOP Establishment, because of his outsider views. And the left wing, because he's a black man with conservative views.

What is this sexual harassment story really all about?

Somebody wants that damnable living dog Herman Cain rounded up.

And Politico is supplying the political rope.

About the Author

Jeffrey Lord is a former Reagan White House political director and author. He writes from Pennsylvania at jlpa1@aol.com.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/11/01/lincolns-living-dog

A little more than a year to go. Can we survive?

Some thoughts on The Walking Dead

This post was mostly eaten by blogger when I first put it up and this has been my first chance to fix it.

I caught the first (and now the second) episode of AMC's The Walking Dead and had a few thoughts.

1. This is left over from last season.  What's the deal about guns being so scarce that someone had to go back into the heart of zombie occupied Atlanta to retrieve a bag of firearms?  This is Georgia in the heart of the American Southeast.  If you want a gun just go into any house and chances overwhelmingly favor finding a few laying around. If you don't want to enter a private residence then go into any gun store, pawn shop, sporting goods store or any big box "mart-mart" and you'll find at least rifles and shotguns.  Also you can go into any sheriff's office, city police office or state highway patrol office or National Guard armory.  In the NG armory you just might find full auto weapons and explosives as well.

2. This season they are searching for the missing girl and hear church bells.  They find a church which is clearly identified as "Southern Baptist".  They find that the bells are recorded chimes (we will not ask where the electric power came from) and set about to exploring the building.  Upon entering they find a giant crucifix hanging behind the pulpit - just like one might find in a Roman Catholic church, but would not see in a Southern Baptist church.

3. What's with the ratty old camper?  They are in the Atlanta metropolitan area!  There are dozens of dealerships with brand new RV's, some nearly the size of Greyhound buses that they could help themselves to.  There are also plenty of dealerships full of new SUV's that they could expropriate.

4. And while we're on vehicles why have the redneck ride a chopped Harley with hangers when a good dirt bike would be far more practical?  After all he could go off road when necessary and maneuver through much tighter areas.  But why have a motorcycle riding point anyway since a biker would be much easier for the zombies to unseat and dine upon than someone enclosed in a car?  It would be better to tow the bike behind the camper and use it when needed.

5. They need to have a wrecker with winch and push-board to ride point so that it can clear obstructions.  An armed man can ride shotgun.

6. Disarming everyone is a spectacularly bad idea.  The theory is that only the two deputies are trained to use firearms however the alternative is to give everyone an edged weapon.  Ask yourself this, which is easier to use without training, a handgun or a sword?

It seems very obvious to me that the writers and directors of this show have never been south of Washington DC.

It's time to thin the herd

There have been enough debates by now for the public to have formed an impression of the candidates who are contesting for the GOP nomination and so it is time for those with no chance of being the party's standard bearer to step aside so that remaining debates can focus upon those the public had decided to take seriously.

Michelle Bachmann would make a very good president, but the impression she has made is not adequate to give her the victory and she should withdraw.  That she does not indicates that she is no longer running for president but for vice president or, and more likely, Speaker of the House.  There is nothing wrong with these ambitions, but continuing to advance them in this forum is destructive to the GOP and its chances of picking a thoroughly vetted candidate that can defeat Obama next year.

Much the same can be said of Rick Santorum.  He would make a wonderful president, but it won't be him.  At least not this time around.  I think he knows this.  In fact I think he has always known this.  His goal in entering the race was either to secure the VP slot or another cabinet position.  Or to increase his stature back home in Pennsylvania for another Senate run.

Newt Gingrich just might be narcissist enough to have thought he could have gotten the nomination and then won the White House.  But probably even he was not that delusional.  This is almost certainly a vanity run for Newt whose real purpose is to allow him to raise his speaking fees and get a new book deal or two.  Of course a cabinet post or even the vice presidency could also be in his sights.  Whatever his true agenda remaining in the race only harms the party and by extension the nation.  Newt is smart enough to understand this so if he chooses to remain in the race it will be because he has made the conscience choice to put his interests ahead of the country's. 

John Huntsman never had a chance but is probably too stupid to have realized it.  Remember when the White House leaked that Huntsman was the one Republican that Obama feared running against.  No?  Don't be embarrassed it was only in the news for about two days.  Democrats always do this.  They leak the name of some clueless liberal RINO that they know that they could beat in their sleep as the "one Republican that could defeat us" and hope that the GOP takes the bait.  Like we did in 2008.  The result is always the same.  When we bite we go down in flames. 

Ron Paul is the best guy in the race on domestic fiscal issues however his views on national security and the closely related field of foreign policy utterly disqualify him from serious consideration.  If you want to know what Paul's response to a threat from a foreign power would be just look at how The US and the Great Powers of Europe dealt with Hitler.  That is Paulism in a nutshell.  Except that when Germany invaded Poland Europe did, at last" go to war.  If Paul had been running things I doubt that even the Blitz would have stirred him to combat.  After all war is the health of the state.  Paul knows that he isn't going to be president.  This campaign is just a way for him to raise his stature for future book sales and speaking engagements.

Rick Perry might make a good president.  He has a good record as governor of Texas but his views on illegal immigration are deeply troubling.  If 10 plus million Mexicans suddenly gain the right to vote in US elections they will give the Democrats an unbeatable electoral majority for at least the next 50 years.  From that point forward every president and congressional majority will be like Obama/Pelosi on steroids.  If you want America to become Venezuela vote in a president and congressmen who favor amnesty.  Having said that it is still a fact that Perry is the popular governor of a large and very prosperous state so he must, for at least a little while longer, be taken seriously as a candidate in the primary process.  If he continues to implode over the next couple of months he should leave but for now he has a legitimate place in the race.

Herman Cain never expected to get this far but now he is the front runner.  While he has not thought out clear positions on all the issues that a president will have to deal with (especially foreign policy) he has good instincts and as a very successful CEO knows how to seek and follow good advice from legitimate experts.  As the frontrunner he absolutely has a place in the race.  In fact right now he is the candidate I'm backing.

Mitt Romney.  What can you say about Mitt?  He has been running for the presidency since 2007.  I supported him back in 2008 after the Thompson candidacy imploded as the only man who could keep John McCain's name off the top of the ticket but that was just a choice between the lesser of evils.  Romney should not be president but his place as the number 1 or 2 candidate in polls earns him a place one the stage.

As things now stand the debates are so crowded with also-rans in the race only for ego or to further other ambitions that it becomes impossible to examine the three serious candidates properly.  It is very important that they be encouraged to withdraw. 

The mainstream media will not put pressure on any RINO candidate to leave the race while they will restlessly hammer an conservative candidate.  It will be up to rank and file Republican voters to push the dead wood off the stage.  That means that those with a soft spot in their hearts for Bachmann or Santorum need to face reality and let their candidate know that it is time to leave and throw their support behind Perry or Cain (preferable Cain).

Ron Paul supporters are as hopeless as he is.  Libertarianism is a utopian cult which at its heart is as anti-American as the nihilist death-cult of progressive liberalism.  Ron Paul's pod-people supporters don't give a rats ass about the good of the nation as long as they get to run wild through the primary process spray painting their graffiti all over the walls and gaming the results of every electronic poll to make it look like Paul has the support of more than a handful of basement dwelling malcontents.

To sum up the campaign season started early this year so the time has already come to thin the ranks of the candidates.  Otherwise we will wind up with Mitt Romney running against Barack Obama.  Liberal-lite running against Liberal-extreme.

Not a good outcome for the nation no matter who wins.

Trying so hard to take them seriously

H/T: American Thinker