"Townhall meeting by townhall meeting, bus ride by bus ride, and endless phone calls to local talk show hosts, are what have put McCain back on the map in New Hampshire," says David Carney, a GOP political strategist not affiliated with any campaign.
Much as I'd like to attribute it to factors within the campaign, I doubt that would have been sufficient if the party in general had not started coming back to McCain. He was right on the biggest issue of 2007, the surge in Iraq, and he was right early. If that had not worked, no amount of bus rides and phone calls to local talk show hosts would have turned the campaign around.
Drudge is reporting today that the national numbers for Rasmussen show that McCain has pulled into the lead overall. It's effectively a dead heat, according to Matt (I can't find backup on Rasmussen's site):
It's a little early, but he is certainly in more trouble than anybody anticipated a month ago.
From August 26 to November 27, Romney led in 26 straight polls in Iowa, sometimes by as much as 23 points. In New Hampshire, Romney saw his advantage grow to 15 points in mid-December.
Since those halcyon days, however, Romney has fallen into second place in Iowa, running roughly four points behind former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. In New Hampshire, Romney's double digit lead has steadily eroded, while John McCain, who was trailing by 11 to 18 points at the start of December, has surged to within 3.5 percentage points.
In the middle of an unexceptional tribute to the late liberal blogger Steven Gilliard, Matt Bai manages to slip in a few digs:
Black conservatives like Steele infuriated Gilliard, who couldn’t understand how any African-American could support a party that exploited racial prejudice.
And:
They must have been confused when Gilly’s online pals, sickened by the way some right-wing bloggers were gloating over his death, advised them not to disclose where he was buried, out of fear that someone might deface the site.
Anybody remember any right-wing bloggers "gloating" over Gilliard's death? I know a lot of people were ticked off at his "Sambo" picture of Michael Steele, but I can't imagine a significant righty blogger who would have done anything other than express sympathy for his friends and family at his passing.
Obviously it's a bit callous, but there's little doubt it focuses people's attention on international affairs, at least until the next good-looking blonde goes missing.
Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated in Pakistan and the political conversation in America had changed.
Which means at least for a little while Republicans here were not thinking about which presidential candidate was tougher on immigration or which had the best Christian conservative credentials.
I have to say that it's going to be a shame when the Ron Paul circus finally folds up its tent and slinks out of town. Here's a hilarious OpEd claiming that Ron is going to win Iowa and sweep to the White House:
But the last factor trumps all. Most political commentators are in agreement that Ron Paul supporters are engaged, organized, computer literate, and on fire with zeal. Volunteers across the nation are donating a week of their vacations to walk the streets and roads of Iowa to canvas votes for Dr. Paul.
Yep, and Howard Dean had the same kind of support in Iowa in 2004:
I know that these Jews will continue to conduct their hate campaigns with impunity as well as self-righteousness, because the people in charge of this site regard them as friends, but they are false, treacherous friends, willing to destroy the site that has befriended them.
And these same persons, these Jews, have not only continued their malicious attacks on me, but others, also Jews, have joined their Hate Squad, solely on the grounds that they are Jews and have been offended by someone, and thus arrogate to themselves the right to hate and insult a person who has done them no harm and no offense.
And the consequence is this: I now find myself, for the first time in my life, hating Jews. I find myself hating the Jews on this site, both the Jews who have conducted their malicious campaign against me for so long and the Jews who have stood by in silent solidarity with them, never saying a word against their vile attacks, their cruelty and ugliness.
Count this Irish Catholic as one of those profoundly offended by this anti-semitic tirade.
And after a year of comparing Romney to McCain, of sizing up the two in person and in the media, Granite Staters are turning back to McCain. The former Navy pilot, once written off by the national media establishment, is now in a statistical dead heat with Romney here.
How could that be? Romney has all the advantages: money, organization, geographic proximity, statesman-like hair, etc.
But he lacks something John McCain has in spades: conviction.
Granite Staters want a candidate who will look them in the eye and tell them the truth. John McCain has done that day in and day out, never wavering, never faltering, never pandering.
I know that my fellow conservatives are leery of McCain on the basis of several issues where he's gone off the reservation. But he's done so on the basis of his own experience, from campaign finance reform to torture. Would any of us bloggers like to claim we know more than John McCain does about either of those issues?
The Gang of 14? Yes, it made me angry at the time, but it turned out that McCain was right when he said that someday the Democrats would be back in the majority and that we might regret using the nuclear option. Sure turned out right on this issue.
In the Globe's new poll, one finding caught my eye. When asked which candidate they thought "most trustworthy," 30 percent of likely Republican voters chose McCain - the highest tally of any candidate, Republican or Democrat. Among Republicans, only Romney, at 23 percent, comes anywhere near McCain's rating on trustworthiness. But the two men's numbers have been moving in opposite directions. The more voters get to know the candidates, the less they trust Romney and the more they trust McCain.
I'm not surprised. Not because I imagine that McCain walks on water. He is plainly a flawed human being with a skeleton or two in his closet. But he strives to heed the better angels of his nature - and he lets us see the striving. A politician who can publicly berate himself for being "dishonest" and "a coward" is a politician voters are more apt to trust. A once and future presidential hopeful who owns up to his own moral lapses and can write, with sincerity, "All my heroes . . . would have been ashamed of me," is no ordinary candidate.
With the first primary contests less than two weeks away, Senator John McCain has gained a six-point lead over Senator Hillary Clinton in the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey.
A month ago, McCain had a two-point edge over the former First Lady. However, before that, Clinton edged out McCain by at least a point or two in six consecutive surveys of the match-up (see trend history).
That line is, of course, moving in the right direction.
Just in case you wondered what the few remaining communists in America are getting for their children:
On the other hand, the historic San Francisco doll I'm planning to create was a lifelong radical. She grew up in North Beach, and came of age during the labor tumult of the mid-20th century. She was a union leader and a member of the Communist Party who was then called before the House Un-American Activities Commission in San Francisco in 1957. In case you hadn't guessed, she is based on someone I know: My great aunt Angela Ward.
My daughter can have a new doll, get to know a long-dead relative, and learn all about the Communist witch hunts. Plus, I think her Un-American Girl will come with those key accessories for any plaything under subpoena: A copy of the Fifth Amendment (free) and a good lawyer (prices vary).
What a brilliant idea, and the line can clearly be expanded over time. There's the Squeaky Fromme doll, that comes in a red riding hood, with a swastika carved in her forehead, and a tiny pistol that doesn't quite fire. Or the Karen Silkwood doll, which glows in the dark. Or the Erin Brockovich doll which promptly sues you the moment you buy it.
Were the Christian Conservatives in Iowa a good match for the technocrat?
Romney's advisers bristle at the notion that he could have run his campaign differently. They are particularly sensitive to charges that the former governor changed his positions on abortion, immigration and gay rights to be more in tune with Republican voters, particularly in Iowa. They say his conservative credentials are genuine.
"Welcome to Mitt Romney's bizzaro world, where everyone is guilty of his sins," Salter said in a statement. ". . . Give it a rest. It's Christmas."
At an "Ask Mitt Anything" forum Friday night in Rochester, the candidate was questioned about whether his position on the Bush tax cuts had shifted. In 2003, the Boston Globe reported that he had told Massachusetts lawmakers he would neither support or oppose the Bush tax cuts.
Meanwhile, Giuliani's waste of resources in the Granite State is becoming apparent:
A $3 million investment in radio and television advertising in New Hampshire, a belated effort to become competitive in this state, is now viewed by the campaign as a largely wasted expenditure.
Campaigns have a certain rhythm to them, almost like a symphony. This one is nearing the crescendo.
Our longtime buddy John Hawkins does a superb job with these interviews, and I recommend this one strongly:
I agree with you. Now, let me ask you a question you've probably heard 500 times: you have been called a trophy wife quite a bit during this campaign. Do you find that insulting given what you've accomplished in your life?
You know, your perspective changes as things in your life change. At first, it was kind of a strange experience to go through, but now, after being on the bus with the boys, and being 41 years old with two kids under 4, I am thinking that's not such a bad thing to be said about me.
She comes off as a very intelligent and caring woman. As you folks know, I'm supporting John McCain for President. But one thing I've learned in the last couple of weeks is that all of the top Republican contenders have terrific qualities. We're going to be well-represented next November no matter who gets the nomination.
Well, here's an interesting foray into politics by Nixon's former Secretary of State.
"I tremendously admire his service to the nation," Mr. Kissinger said. "I believe that he's the best candidate to serve our nation in an extremely difficult and complicated period." He added that he was "doing something that I am not comfortable with" in making an endorsement, but that Mr. McCain and the nation deserved it."I tremendously admire his service to the nation," Mr. Kissinger said. "I believe that he's the best candidate to serve our nation in an extremely difficult and complicated period." He added that he was "doing something that I am not comfortable with" in making an endorsement, but that Mr. McCain and the nation deserved it.
In other news, McCain has pulled into a tie with Mitt Romney in New Hampshire, making up a 25 percentage point deficit in only one month.
Update: John Ruberry notes that the "other" paper in Boston, the Boston Herald, has also endorsed McCain.
Rasmussen: McCain Within Striking Distance in New Hampshire
Rasmussen shows that John McCain has now pulled up to within four percentage points of Mitt Romney.
The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of the state shows Romney with 31% support, McCain at 27% and no one else close. Rudy Giuliani attracts 13% and Huckabee barely reaches double digits at 11%. This is the first time any candidate has been within single digits of Romney in several months. It remains to be seen whether this is a temporary bounce or a lasting change.
Before the latest endorsements, it was Romney 33% and McCain 18%. In late-November, Romney led by nineteen points. Earlier in November he was up by fifteen.
No Ordinary Time. No Ordinary Election. No Ordinary Man.
Okay, I don't usually get swept up in irrational enthusiasm. But I'm really, really hopeful again that the Republicans are going to nominate John McCain in 2008 and avoid disaster.
Or so says this blogger, who then proceeds in a lunatic frenzy to tear Christmas apart.
I had an epiphany in my local Target store the other day that I f*cking HATE Christmas. It's not really Christmas itself that I hate but I loathe what it has become under the same 'suck out the marrow' form of looter capitalism that has like a starving leech devoured the very soul of this country and turned it's inhabitants into mindless consumerist zombies. Laissez faire, tooth fang and nail, f*ck you capitalism has done to Christmas exactly what it has done to every thing else that it has touched. It has destroyed, debauched, devalued and dehumanized every bit of normal life to the point where it is every bit as vile and rotten as the proverbial triple-decker toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce.
And those are the milder parts. As usual with the cuckoo left, despite all the claims about their love for the common people, the actual feeling is loathing:
The store's aisles were filled by poorly dressed, shuffling mainly corpulent creatures who were babbling incessantly into their cell phones and filling their bright red plastic shopping carts to overflowing with Chinese made junk.
They're poorly dressed? How about a little "liberal eye for the blue collar guy"?
The metaphorical War on Christmas appeals to the same type of low grade, knuckle dragging white trash that would drive around a beater with a bumper sticker affixed that says "At least I can still smoke in my car" the plaintive wail of a clueless peckerwood who cares not one iota that he can be dragged away by private paramilitary thugs, held for life in a dark little cell and tortured until he has the mental capacity of a piece of furniture.
They drive around in a beater? Horrors! Thank goodness we have liberals who can simultaneously decry rampant commercialism while tooling around in a late-model Mercedes!
Only in this sad nation populated by knuckle dragging miscreants, raptureheads, singing pigs, boiling frogs, philistines and fatsos where the collective intelligence and knowledge of the average American could be rolled up into a little ball to the point where it could fit neatly inside of Brittney Spears' navel could something as preposterous as this be happening.
It almost reads like a parody of an effete liberal, doesn't it?
Paramedics found Aqsa with a faint pulse and rushed her to hospital. She was later transferred to a Toronto hospital and placed on life support.
Peel police said this morning that she died overnight.
Friends at the victim’s school said she feared her father and had argued over her desire to shun the hijab, a traditional shoulder-length head scarf worn by females in devout Muslim families.
"The reality is, as it's been for many, many months is that the [Republican] candidates all have weaknesses and at the end of the day John McCain is hoping that Republican voters take a deep breath, reassess the candidate and say it's not about a specific position on immigration or campaign finance reform, it's about strength and leadership and toughness in standing up in the war against terror," said Stuart Rothenberg of the Rothenberg Political Report.
He's pitching the endorsement of my favorite baseball player, Curt Schilling:
He spent most of the last week in New Hampshire and is now running a television commercial (on New England sports channels) featuring Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling pitching McCain as "a man of principle who sticks to his guns."
Probably the single-most iconic image in baseball in the last 50 years; only Fisk waving the ball fair compares.
Over at Power Line, John Hinderacker wonders whether Huckabee may be the Howard Dean of 2008. Ultimately he comes down against it, but I think Huckabee's got some Dean-ish qualities. No, he doesn't have the legion of online supporters, or the fund-raising prowess.
Remember the old bumper snicker from 2004: Dated Dean, Married Kerry? That's what's going on here, and you can see it in Fred Thompson as well. The Republicans are doing everything they can to avoid marrying the logical candidate, John McCain. They want to be swept off their feet, and so they swoon at the new face. Fred, of course, has turned out to not be the man of their dreams and so they're flirting with the next beau. But inevitably Huck turns out to have feet of clay as well.
I'm not saying that the rise of Huck is good for McCain. It certainly indicates that even at this late date, the Republicans are looking around for dessert rather than eating their peas. But it's even worse news for guys like Thompson and Romney. Huckabee's not going to be the nominee, but he could help trim the field a little.
Note: When the Democrats finally turned to Kerry, it was because he was the "electable" guy. Now, I thought that was a little odd, since when have liberal senators from Massachusetts been electable nationally? But McCain is genuinely electable; all the polls have shown that.
How the Swiftees, POWs and other Vietnam veterans circumvented the media and reached out to the public is a story that has profound implications for future political campaigns and news reporting….
…Honor, Loyalty and Patriotism…These values were able to rouse hundreds of Swifties and millions of other veterans from their deep political sleep of 35 years. The blindness of our opponents can be accounted for only because such values are rare and often considered laughable among Kerry’s operatives and media allies. These values are neither rare nor a subject of amusement among most Americans. In 2004, they changed the course of history.
I am looking forward to this one; as part of the blogging team that originally broke the Christmas in Cambodia story, we were thrilled when the Swiftees publicizing that issue resulted in a paralyzed John Kerry campaign for a full two weeks after the DNC. We know that the Swiftees will always be "discredited" to the media, but those who followed things closely know that it was Le Fraude who was discredited, not the SBVfTs!
A Missouri mother says she will do "whatever it takes" to stop former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee from becoming president, because he freed the man who went on to rape and murder her daughter, Carol Sue Shields (pictured).
"I can't imagine anybody wanting somebody like that running the country," Lois Davidson of Adrian, Mo., told the Blotter on ABCNews.com.
Wayne Dumond was initially sentenced to life plus 25 years for raping a 17-year-old Arkansas high school cheerleader. In 1999, a parole board voted to free Dumond, after then-Gov. Mike Huckabee announced his desire to see him released.
John Hawkins does his second annual "Ten Worst Quotes from Daily Kos". One that I vividly remember:
8) "I know I’m a Jewish lesbian and (Ahmadinejad would) probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon...
Okay, I admit it. Part of it is that he just looks cuddly. Possibly cuddly enough to turn me straight. I think he kind of looks like Kermit the Frog. Sort of. With smaller eyes. But that’s not all...
I want to be very clear. There are certainly many things about Ahmadinejad that I abhor — locking up dissidents, executing of gay folks, denying the fact of the Holocaust, potentially adding another dangerous nuclear power to the world and, in general, stifling democracy. Even still, I can’t help but be turned on by his frank rhetoric calling out the horrors of the Bush Administration and, for that matter, generations of US foreign policy preceding." -- sallykohn
The Manchester Union-Leader, the most important paper in the state, puts its weight behind the Senator from Arizona:
We don't agree with him on every issue. We disagree with him strongly on campaign finance reform. What is most compelling about McCain, however, is that his record, his character, and his courage show him to be the most trustworthy, competent, and conservative of all those seeking the nomination. Simply put, McCain can be trusted to make informed decisions based on the best interests of his country, come hell or high water.
Amen. Meanwhile, in Iowa, a surge by Mike Huckabee has topped Mitt Romney in the polls. Huckabee's peculiar brand of compassionate conservatism seems unlikely to travel well, as others have noted.
Huckabee is the opposite of a libertarian. As governor, he hiked taxes repeatedly and oversaw an explosion in state spending. He's explicitly running as a "different kind of Republican," positioning himself as the heir to President Bush's compassionate conservatism (a.k.a. big-government conservatism). His populist economic message includes expanding farm and alternative-energy subsidies and curbing free trade (to insulate us from the global economy).
Juan Cole checks in with a hyperventilating bit on John McCain's performance last night:
In a new low of despicable looniness, at the Republican debate in St. Petersburg, John McCain equated those Americans who want to stop militarily occupying Iraq with Hitler-enablers. He actually said that, saying that it was 'isolationism' of a sort that allowed Hitler to come to power.
It gives a person a certain amount of faith in one's fellow Americans that McCain was booed by the Republican crowd for this piece of calumny. Comparisons to Hitler should be automatic grounds for a candidate to be disqualified from being president.
Of course, the real reason the crowd was unhappy with the comment was that it was packed with Ron Paul maniacs, as the Weekly Standard points out:
What a depressing debate. CNN's long slide into mediocrity accelerates. Is this what running for president of the greatest democracy in the world has become? Standing in front of CNN's corporate logo in a hall full of yowling Ron Paul loons and enduring clumsy webcam questions from Unabomber look-a-likes in murky basements?
Cole engages in the misinformed and slightly racist commentary about Al Qaeda that we are used to hearing from the 9-11 "Truthers":
Al-Qaeda is a few thousand scruffy guys afraid to come out of their caves, who don't even have good sleeping bags much less a government to their name.Al-Qaeda is a few thousand scruffy guys afraid to come out of their caves, who don't even have good sleeping bags much less a government to their name.
Yep, just a bunch of jokers in caves who could never even dream of killing thousands and causing billions of dollars of damage.
Reid Wilson of RCP checks in with an article that raises the argument I have harped on since election day 2006: If Republicans want their best chance of winning in 2008, they'd better nominate McCain.
But it is John McCain whose electability argument rings truest. And, in fact, McCain's point is the simplest to make to Republican primary voters: In poll after poll, he runs closer to Clinton than any GOP contender other than Giuliani, with whom he is approximately tied. The latest RCP Averages show Clinton leading McCain by 2.8 points, about the same as Giuliani's 2.5 point deficit. Thompson trails by 8.1 points, while Romney is 11 points back.
Pollsters say that is no accident, and if Republicans who head to the polls really do make electability a priority, then swallowing doubts about the maverick would give them the best shot at winning the White House.
What is interesting about the poll results is that again, they show that it is not the Iraq War that is hurting the Republicans. McCain has been the most steadfast supporter of the war, and he's doing very well in polling. I don't really consider McCain a centrist; he's a conservative with some centrist positions, but from what I can see, it appears that the center is the place the Republicans need to be in 2008 if they want to compete.
“It’s because of stupidity in Massachusetts that my daughter is dead,” said Darrel Slater, 55, who is preparing to bury his daughter, Beverly Mauck, 28, and her husband Brian Mauck, 30.
The couple was executed in their home in rural Graham, Wash., Saturday after an alleged argument with Daniel Tavares Jr., 41, who in 1991 pleaded guilty to hacking his mother to death with a carving knife in their Somerset home in served 16 years for that crime.
Sixteen years? Well, I'm sure he repented his crime and was a model prisoner, right?
Tavares finished his sentence on June 14, but was immediately re-arrested on a warrant charging him with two counts of assaulting Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center prison guards during his troubled stint behind bars, Department of Correction officials said.
Bail was set at $50,000 per count. But that seemed harsh to a second judge, who released him on his own recognizance. And, you guessed who appointed that second judge:
Reached last night at her Andover home, Tuttman, who was appointed to the bench by former Gov. Mitt Romney, said, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to comment on this.” When informed what the slain woman’s father had said, she repeated, “I’m sorry, I’m not able to comment about this.”
Well, if you want to know what kind of judges Mitt Romney will appoint to the federal bench and the Supreme Court, you have your answer.
Update: Mrs M notes one irony of the situation; the Democrats won't be able to use it against Romney because of their soft on crime attitudes. I'm not sure that Hillary can't use it, however. She can say that while she supports lenience towards reformed criminals, this guy was clearly not reformed:
Correction officer Michael Kasprzak was allegedly punched in the head as he removed restraints from Tavares in December 2005. Two months later, the con allegedly spat on correction officer Matthew Atter and screeched, “I’m going to kill you (expletive) . . . I’ll break your (expletive) arms off!” according to court records.
You know, the other amazing thing is that this guy killed his MOTHER and served only 16 years, obviously not with time off for good behavior. Only in Massachusetts indeed.
News broke Thursday that voters in New Hampshire and Iowa had received phone calls from pollsters raising questions about aspects of Republican Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith. Who made the calls? Although the Romney campaign denies involvement, evidence points in its general direction.
With very rare exceptions. The winners of the first ten Super Bowls (Starr, Starr, Namath, Dawson, Unitas, Staubach, Griese, Griese, Bradshaw, Bradshaw) are all in the Hall of Fame. Kenny Stabler is not in, but he's appeared on the finalist ballot a couple of times, then we get Staubach, Bradshaw, Bradshaw before hitting Jim Plunkett. Plunkett's a better candidate than most folks realize, with an 8-1 record as a postseason QB and two Super Bowl wins as a starter. Then we hit Montana's first SB win.
Joe Theismann is the first QB who won a Super Bowl who does not have much of a case as a Hall of Famer. Then we get Plunkett and Montana again. Jim McMahon was a fine player and certainly a star, but not quite HOF caliber. Ditto with Phil Simms and Doug Williams. Then it's Montana, Montana, then Jeff Hostetler who certainly appears to rank among the least likely SB winners. Mark Rypien was a fine player for several years and an amazing player for one, but like the other Redskin QBs nobody at his house is waiting by the phone for the call from Canton.
Then we get back into a long line of HOF-QBs: Aikman, Aikman, Young, Aikman, Favre, Elway, Elway. Kurt Warner's probably not going to get inducted, but he's had a hell of a career. Nobody thinks Trent Dilfer's going to be immortalized. Brady follows and then Brad Johnson for the "Huh?" crowd. Then Brady, Brady, Roethlisberger, and Manning.
Even among the guys who aren't going to Canton, most of them were highly anticipated players. Jim Plunkett won a Heismann at Stanford and was the #1 pick in the draft; Trent Dilfer and Doug Williams were first rounders for Tampa Bay, while Simms was a top draft pick of the Giants. Jim McMahon held all the NCAA records when he left college.
Now I am being a little unfair; some of these guys were completely unheralded until they started winning championships. Bart Starr was something like a 17th round draft pick, Len Dawson was cut by the Browns in 1958 and would have been nowhere without the AFL. Joe Montana, although a household name for his college football heroics, was a third-rounder. Nobody thought Tom Brady would develop into the player he has.
What's particularly reprehensible about all of this is that so much of the Republican Party spent years mauling Bill Clinton for avoiding service in a war that he opposed. But for years, Romney emphatically supported the Vietnam War, yet actively avoided service and never enlisted:
This is, of course, the tiresome "chickenhawk" label that the Left routinely uses to dismiss anybody who supports a war but doesn't go to fight. Well, if you hate chickenhawks, you must love John McCain, then, right, Glenn? Of course, I don't really expect Greenwald to endorse McCain; the chickenhawk thing is just an argument of convenience. How about if we just let the military people vote, since they're the ones with something at stake? Isn't that a logical extension of the "thought" process being used here?
Other Republicans used to accuse him of kissing up to the news media. But when the Iraq war was at its worst, and other candidates were hiding in the grass waiting to see how things would turn out, McCain championed the surge, which the major Republican candidates now celebrate.
He did it knowing that it would cost him his media-darling status and probably the presidency. But for years he had hated the way the war was being fought. And when the opportunity to change it came, the only honorable course was to try.
And now he pushes ahead, building momentum, but desperately needing a miracle win in New Hampshire. Everyone will make their own political choices, and you might plausibly argue that the qualities John McCain possesses are not the ones the country now requires. But character is destiny, and you will never persuade me that he is not among the finest of men.
Sam Brownback, a Kansas conservative and favorite of evangelical Christians, will endorse his former Republican presidential rival John McCain, GOP officials said Wednesday.
The nod could provide a much-needed boost, particularly in Iowa, for the Arizona senator and one-time presumed GOP front-runner whose bid faltered and is now looking for a comeback.
Pat Robertson, one of the most influential figures in the social conservative movement, announced his support for Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid this morning at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. [Watch the video below]
While the press will undoubtedly play it as "Rudy enough of a bible-thumper to impress Robertson", I agree with the take at Power Line:
Once we get past the strangeness of this, it's a good development. I doubt that Robertson will persuade many anti-abortion voters to prefer Giuliani in the primaries. But maybe he can help persuade some of them not to stay home or vote for a third party candidate in the event that Rudy is the nominee.
If Giuliani gets the nomination. I know I'm virtually alone in feeling this way, but I have an inkling that events are working out well for John McCain. Fred Thompson seems to be struggling; the other day he had to beg for applause for one of his speeches. If the race boils down to Giuliani and McCain, I like John's chances.
John Kerry said Monday there might be a next time for his presidential aspirations, and if there is, the 63-year-old U.S. senator from Massachusetts says he’ll be ready for the political torpedoes that helped sink his 2004 White House bid.
Kerry, whose service as a U.S. Navy Swift boat skipper during the Vietnam War came under attack in his race against President Bush, said he has compiled a dossier on his war record critics that he wishes he had as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Note in particular that Kerry does not claim to have a dossier that shows him being in Cambodia. He claims to have some dirt on the Swift Boat Vets; who cares? They aren't running for President.
So delusional that they may manage to keep the Democrats from winning in 2008.
Why am I so pissed at Democrats lately? Simply put, it feels like many Democrats are taking something that does not belong to them--their excellent 2006 and 2008 electoral advantages--and then thoroughly ruining it.
Well, if the excellent electoral advantages do not belong to the Democrats, to whom do they belong? Answer: the Nutroots.
While Democrats were capitulating on the Iraq war and badly losing the 2002 elections anyway, it was the netroots who were forcing the removal of Trent Lott as new majority leader before the new Congress even started. While Democrats were praising Bush's invasion, it was the netroots who were re-invigorating small donors and on the ground progressive activists with anti-war messaging and candidates like Howard Dean. Blogs and organizations like MoveOn.org are the reason why Democrats closed the fundraising and activism gap on Republicans in 2004 and 2006, While Democrats were capitulating on the Iraq war and badly losing the 2002 elections anyway, it was the netroots who were forcing the removal of Trent Lott as new majority leader before the new Congress even started. While Democrats were praising Bush's invasion, it was the netroots who were re-invigorating small donors and on the ground progressive activists with anti-war messaging and candidates like Howard Dean. Blogs and organizations like MoveOn.org are the reason why Democrats closed the fundraising and activism gap on Republicans in 2004 and 2006...
In fact, the reason why the Democrats are doing so well now is nothing that they have done, or that the Nutroots have done. It's what the Republicans have done, and what they have failed to do. We joked about how the Democrats ran in 2004 on the platform that "We're not Republicans"; that failed (but still ended up much closer than anybody had a right to expect) in 2004, but it succeeded in 2006 and 2008 looks very much like more of the same.
They came up with this video, which claims that a Wired article about possible illegal support for Ron Paul's campaign was bought and paid for by the Giuliani campaign.
Of course, the "evidence" they present is laughably flimsy; someone registered at the Giuliani forum under the writer's name, mentioned that the "fake" article had been published, and asked for a check. Then of course they trumpeted this "discovery" in the comments on the Wired article. It's laughably inept, although I'm sure these folks are considered serious intellects among the Ron Paul nuts.
This poll is a little dated (middle of the month), but it highlights a trend we've seen often in the past, with John McCain outperforming the rest of his Republican rivals against Hillary Clinton.
The latest Rasmussen Reports survey shows Clinton with just a single point edge over McCain, 44% to 43%.
McCain also trailed Clinton by just one percentage point in September and by two points in August. Those consistent results put McCain in a more competitive position at this time than any other Republican hopeful.
The new survey shows Clinton with a 47% to 41% lead over former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Clinton has led Romney every time we’ve polled this match-up. In September, she had a nine-point advantage.
Clinton currently leads former NYC mayor and Republican frontrunner Rudy Giuliani by seven and former Senator Fred Thompson by 15. Her lead has been growing steadily over these two in recent months.
But of course, some Republicans don't care about beating Hillary; they'd rather lose gloriously.
It's easy to forget in the heat of the blogging battle that Beauchamp is just a young man who made a mistake. Fortunately the military has plenty of experience with those fellows:
Beauchamp is young; under pressure he made a dumb mistake. In fact, he has not always been an ideal soldier. But to his credit, the young soldier decided to stay, and he is serving tonight in a dangerous part of Baghdad. He might well be seriously injured or killed here, and he knows it. He could have quit, but he did not. He faced his peers. I can only imagine the cold shoulders, and worse, he must have gotten. He could have left the unit, but LTC Glaze told me that Beauchamp wanted to stay and make it right. Whatever price he has to pay, he is paying it.
Of course, a young man who made a mistake does not apply to Franklin Foer and the editorial team at the New Republic.
Drudge has put up the transcript of a phone call between Scott Beauchamp, TNR editor Franklin Foer, and Peter Scoblic, the executive editor of TNR. The transcript is devastating and raises not only questions about the original stories, but about Foer's efforts to stonewall any investigation, resorting to veiled threats about Beauchamp's wife's continued employment at TNR. Consider these segments:
Foer: Ellie (Beachamp's wife) sent me an email to tell you it's the most important thing in the world for her that you say that you didn't recant... You're obviously in a very uncomfortable position in that your wife's involved in this and I wish she wasn't involved because I, I... trust her, I care for here, I don't want her to get hurt in all of this.
Note what's missing here is that Ellie does not say that it's the most important thing in the world to her that he tell the truth; it's that he does not recant.
And Scoblic notes that Beauchamp will not be able to pursue his supposed desire to become a writer:
Scoblic: What are you going to do after this job? Are you staying in the Army?
Beauchamp: Um, I don't know what I want to do. Um I haven't made up my mind yet what I want to do.
Scoblic: Ah... you're not going to be able to write anymore after this... you know that, right?
It's hard to judge whether this is damning or not. On August 10, the Army was stonewalling TNR. They didn't get to talk to Beauchamp until nearly a month later. And the fact that after a month of browbeating from his chain of command Beauchamp "just want[ed] it to end" is hardly surprising either. We still don't know whether Beauchamp was telling the truth the first time around when he wrote his pieces for TNR or the second time around when he recanted under pressure from the Army.
He also claims that Drudge did not include the source material; in an update he notes that Drudge did in fact link to the transcripts, but does not revise his "hard to judge" stance.
Murphy, Luttrell and two other SEALs were searching for a terrorist in the Afghan mountains on June 28, 2005, when their mission was compromised after they were spotted by locals, who presumably alerted the Taliban to their presence.
An intense gun battle ensued, with more than 50 anti-coalition fighters swarming around the outnumbered SEALs.
Although wounded, Murphy is credited with risking his own life by moving into the open for a better position to transmit a call for help.
Still under fire, Murphy provided his unit's location and the size of the enemy force. At one point he was shot in the back, causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in.
He then returned to his cover position with his men and continued the battle. A U.S. helicopter sent to rescue the men was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, killing all 16 aboard.
By the end of the two-hour gunfight, Murphy and two of his comrades were also dead. An estimated 35 Taliban were also killed. Luttrell was blown over a ridge and knocked unconscious. He escaped, and was protected by local villagers for several days before he was rescued.
Just not outside that Irish pub where she was downing Ketel Ones on an empty stomach. NewsHounds opines:
Sometimes it's just the little things like this that prove beyond a reasonable doubt the bias rampant in this so-called "fair and balanced news" network. That they couldn't just cleanly report the incident, wish her well, and move on just exposes their hate and agenda-driven drivel for what it is. They don't even pretend on this show to be even-handed - their's are three voices speaking as one.
We wish Ms. Rhodes a speedy and full recovery, and when she feels up to it, maybe she'll look into this deliberate and unfounded attack.
Heheh; it only took a couple of days before the story became not the phony claim she'd been assaulted by right-wingers.
Nearly 4,000 prisoners of war, most of them German scientists and submariners, were brought in for questioning for days, even weeks, before their presence was reported to the Red Cross, a process that did not comply with the Geneva Conventions. Many of the interrogators were refugees from the Third Reich.
Oh, no, wait, these guys are denouncing the Bush Administration, so they're heroes:
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
One thing that always annoys me about the anti-"torture" people is that they try to have their cake and eat it too. Not only is torture inhumane, they say, but it doesn't work. Stick with the humane argument; you are not going to convince me that playing a little Ping-Pong with Khalid Sheikh Muhammed is more effective than waterboarding.
This is a terrific article on a young man who was inspired by Hitchens' writing to sign up for the military, and who died in Iraq. Keep the Kleenex handy!
I had already guessed that this was no gung-ho Orange County Republican clan. It was pretty clear that they could have done without the war, and would have been happier if their son had not gone anywhere near Iraq. (Mr. Daily told me that as a young man he had wondered about going to Canada if the Vietnam draft ever caught up with him.) But they had been amazed by the warmth of their neighbors' response, and by the solidarity of his former brothers-in-arms—1,600 people had turned out for Mark's memorial service in Irvine. A sergeant's wife had written a letter to Linda and posted it on Janet's MySpace site on Mother's Day, to tell her that her husband had been in the vehicle with which Mark had insisted on changing places. She had seven children who would have lost their father if it had gone the other way, and she felt both awfully guilty and humbly grateful that her husband had been spared by Mark's heroism. Imagine yourself in that position, if you can, and you will perhaps get a hint of the world in which the Dailys now live: a world that alternates very sharply and steeply between grief and pride.
"Sen. John McCain attended what was more of a block party than a house party in Hollis Sunday. Dr. Jim and Jan Squires hosted the presidential hopeful and close to 300 people at their Pepperell Road home, wrapping up a busy two days in New Hampshire for McCain." (Joseph G. Cote, "McCain Makes Quick Stop At Hollis Party," Nashua Telegraph, 10/1/07)
New Hampshire Presidential Watch Blog: "McCain Draws Big Crowds At Saturday Events," Including "Standing Room Only" Town Hall In Epping. "I've been told that today McCain was able to draw some big crowds to his events. At an Exeter house party McCain drew about 250 people. While at the American Legion Hall in Epping it was standing room only." (Cosmo, "McCain Draws Big Crowds At Saturday Events," New Hampshire Presidential Watch Blog, 9/29/07)
Note as well that pollsters are starting to pick up McCain's surge, with the latest American Research Group poll showing him tied in New Hampshire with Rudy Giuliani, and only four points behind Mitt Romney (who led McCain by 15 points only last month).
Carol Ann Gotbaum was arrested at the airport Friday for alleged disorderly conduct, said Phoenix Police Department spokesman Sgt. Andy Hill.
Police handcuffed Gotbaum with her hands behind her back and took her a holding cell, where she was later found dead, said Hill.
Police "found her with the handcuffs up by her neck area," Hill said. Gotbaum was unconscious and police and firefighters tried to revive her by CPR and other means, Hill said. "They could not revive her and tragically, she died."
I know, I know, you're wondering how this could have happened. A commenter at Lucianne suggested that she probably managed to get the handcuffs around the front by sliding them down past her rump, and then slipping her legs through. Then she may have put her hands behind her neck to get leverage to try to slip one hand out of the cuffs, but by doing so put pressure on her neck, cutting off the flow of blood to the brain. Sounds odd, I know, but certainly less odd than the alternative, which is that one of the police strangled her.
BTW, I'm going out on a limb here to guess that she was flying US Airways (fka America West), which is consistently and infuriatingly late, to the point where I won't fly them if there is any other option. And, looking later in the story:
A US Airways spokesman told the New York Daily News that Gotbaum's flight to Tucson, Arizona, was preparing to leave when she arrived at the gate.
Traveling alone, Gotbaum rebooked on a following flight, but "she became extremely irate, apparently running up and down the gate area," airline spokesman Derek Hanna told the Daily News.
I'm a little late to this party, but there's still some punch in the bowl. The Media Mutters crowd are trying to raise a stink over a Limbaugh comment on yesterday's show:
CALLER 2: No, it’s not, and what’s really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they’re willing to sacrifice for their country.
You can guess the take; "Rush is saying that if you don't support the war, you're a phony soldier."
Except that's not what he's saying. Read the exchange again, and see what Rush was responding to:
...they never talk to real soldiers.
(Italics added).
Well, if they're not talking to "real" soldiers, who are they talking to? Well, fake soldiers, and Rush goes on to elucidate:
Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse Macbeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse Macbeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse Macbeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."
So Rush even brings up an example of a phony soldier. But of course the Left isn't really interested in what Rush meant; this is just a convenient club for the folks who want to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine.
Rush was not criticizing soldiers who are against the war. He's criticizing phony soldiers who are against the war and the media who accept their claims uncritically.
Sadly, a couple otherwise sane people seem to agree with the cranks on this one.
John McCain has released two new ads in New Hampshire, Live Free and One Man. I highly recommend them both, but keep some Kleenex handy as the emotions are strong, especially at the beginning of "One Man".
Krugman: Yes, Southern Whites Are Bigots, But Only the Rich Ones
That's what I get out of the combination of his column today combined with the blog. Starting from the column:
And yes, Southern white exceptionalism is about race, much more than it is about moral values, religion, support for the military or other explanations sometimes offered. There’s a large statistical literature on the subject, whose conclusion is summed up by the political scientist Thomas F. Schaller in his book “Whistling Past Dixie”: “Despite the best efforts of Republican spinmeisters to depict American conservatism as a nonracial phenomenon, the partisan impact of racial attitudes in the South is stronger today than in the past.”
In fact, if you look at voting behavior, low-income whites in the South are not very different from low-income whites in the rest of the country. You can see this both in Larry Bartels’s “What’s the matter with What’s the Matter With Kansas?” (pdf), Figure 3, and in a comprehensive study of red state-blue state differences by Gelman et al (pdf). It’s relatively high-income Southern whites who are very, very Republican. Can I get away with saying that rich white trash are the problem?
Of course you can, Paul. God only knows how Krugman manages to keep so many contrary thoughts in his head at one time. Democratic voters are smarter than Republicans, but poorer than Republicans and less likely to be racists. Got it?
This post over at the Daily Kos has gone around the blogosphere quite quickly.
Why I Have A Little Crush on Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
I know I'm a Jewish lesbian and he'd probably have me killed. But still, the guy speaks some blunt truths about the Bush Administration that make me swoon...
That sort of thinking is seldom admitted to as frankly as in this statement by the Columbia Coalition Against the War.
As Columbia only very recently announced, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be speaking in Roone Arledge auditorium this Monday. A number of students and student organizations have already announced plans for a protest rally the same day. We are not among them. We do not endorse Ahmadinejad or his views, many of which are inexcusable. However, as opponents of a US military strike against Iran, we have serious concerns with the content of some of the hostility that has been expressed to his presence, and specifically with the planned protest.
We fear the demonization of Ahmadinejad, because we think this demonization contributes to the likelihood of war. In the current climate, with many on the political right in the U.S. and Israel pushing for air strikes, a campaign against Ahmadinejad is dangerous, regardless of the intentions of most involved. A call to action, unless it prominently rules out war, implies military action.
It's a tough balancing act that "progressives" must face: how to maintain some credibility as human rights campaigners, while avoiding the endorsement of any action to improve the human rights situation in Iran.
The Rocky Mountain Collegian published an editorial on page 4 of the paper Friday which read "Taser this ... F*** Bush."
The expletive was spelled out.
The last two words were in bold type, larger than most headlines. A caption below said, "this column represents the views of the Collegian's Editorial Board."
Because, you know, they're standing up for Andrew Meyer's freedom of speech.
The editorial comes fresh on the heels of freedom of speech issues that arose from the Tasering of a Florida student at a Sen. John Kerry speech.
Collegian Editor David McSwane said a group of seven student editors discussed the statement for several hours before agreeing to publish it.
Apparently they missed the fact that the Tasering came at an event featuring a Democrat. As Ace of Spades put it at the time, it was pink on pink.
Of course, McSwane has discovered that free speech is not without consequences:
McSwane told 7NEWS that ads from the CSU Bookstore were pulled from the paper in response to the editorial. Bookstore managers declined to comment.
Suddenly, a young woman in a t-shirt reading "Troops Home Now" waded into the middle of the gun rights group, shouting "Bring the troops home!" and forcing McCain to stop speaking while she addressed the television cameras.
After a few seconds of camera time, a woman got up from her table at the NRA breakfast, wrapped the protester in an embrace and pushed her out of the limelight. A second protester was also lead out first by NRA members and then by security guards.
As the protesters left the room, McCain leaned into the microphone for the most emphatic thing he said all morning.
"Well, my friends, we beat you yesterday," he said. "We'll beat you today . . . And we'll beat you tomorrow!"
The crowd rose in an enthusiastic standing ovation, setting aside for the moment any past differences they may be holding against McCain.
An MIT student with a fake bomb strapped to her chest was arrested at gunpoint Friday at Logan International Airport and later claimed it was artwork, officials said.
She nearly became a Darwin award winner:
Simpson was "extremely lucky she followed the instructions or deadly force would have been used," Pare said. "She's lucky to be in a cell as opposed to the morgue."
Too bad that Andrew Meyer wasn't wearing a circuit board.
Well, as predicted long ago, the New York Times' effort to get people to pay to read Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman has come to an end.
Krugman kicks off a new blog called "The Conscience of a Liberal" today with an article on income inequality. Krugman claims:
The great divergence: Since the late 1970s the America I knew has unraveled. We’re no longer a middle-class society, in which the benefits of economic growth are widely shared: between 1979 and 2005 the real income of the median household rose only 13 percent, but the income of the richest 0.1% of Americans rose 296 percent.
And yet, if you look at the graph he provides, it does not show this:
As you can see, it certainly appears that the great divergence he harps on appears to start after 1987, which is inconvenient as heck for Krugman, since you know damn well that he wants to blame it on Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. Indeed, it is quite apparent that a large part of the rise in inequality that he bemoans comes during the Clinton era.
Krugman also does his usual peak to non-peak comparison; no surprise there as we have seen him do this often in the past.
Eventually they start to believe kooky things like that John Kerry won the 2004 election, and they become irrational, and eventually have to be tased. He's a typical crank, getting into the "Skull & Bones" thing before being dragged off. Huge entertainment value!
This is what Al-Qaeda was responding to that day, revolting against the United States policies which have plagued the Asian continent for far too long, in particular in proliferating the Afghanistan civil war from 1979-1989 against the Soviets by funding the Mujahideen, drawing the Soviets offsides into the war. Our government is constantly meddling in the affairs of the Saudis and Pakistanis, which have real world ramifications on the lives of the neighboring Afghanis, and they were responding to this too. And it's all for oil and new markets to exploit, destabilizing other regions to ensure our own stability. That is what 9/11 was about, Al-Qaeda striking back against those waging economically inspired wars. What options have we left them? Our economy is devastating the globe, forcing poverty and instability onto the weaker nations of the world, with our government murdering to protect it's precious capital.
So much nonsense in that one paragraph that it's hard to know where to start. Al Qaeda certainly did not object to our "proliferating" the Afghan struggle against the Soviets, since we were backing the Muslims. The Soviets weren't drawn offsides, and we don't do enough meddling in the affairs of the Saudis and the Pakistanis.
He shows basic ignorance of the facts; for example consider his claim of Dick Cheney having a conflict of interest:
What about Vice President Dick Cheney's conflicting ties with Halliburton, a company which has received billions of dollars in lucrative no-bid government contracts during the wars we are waging in the middle east, which Dick Cheney used to be Vice President of, who is holding 100,000 shares of unexercised Halliburton stock?
Let's see, Cheney used to be CEO (not vice president) of Halliburton, and he does not have any personal financial stake in the company. Although Cheney does some unexercised stock options, he has pledged any proceeds from those to charity. He was owed deferred compensation from Halliburton, but they handled that by purchasing an insurance annuity, so that if Halliburton were to go bankrupt tomorrow, he'd still get paid.
Considering that she made her name by joking about anal sex, it seems a bit much to see her hyperventilating over John McCain's comment that MoveOn should be "thrown out of the country." One would think he was a judge sentencing MoveOn to become another "Man Without a Country". Let's see if we can get MooOn to demand an apology from Senator McCain.
According to Abbe Serphos, director of public relations for the Times, "the open rate for an ad of that size and type is $181,692."
A spokesman for MoveOn.org confirmed to The Post that the liberal activist group had paid only $65,000 for the ad - a reduction of more than $116,000 from the stated rate.
You know how it is; the Times should be free to charge whatever it wants for a full-page ad; that's not the issue. But this does mean that they can't turn around and claim that they're just running the ad, that they have nothing to do with the content. One is forced to conclude that they subsidized this particular ad because it fits their editorial policy.
Senator McCain began by reiterating his call for Democratic candidates to denounce the MoveOn.org advertisement which shamefully referred to General Petraeus as General "Betray Us".
Most of the calls this week, were not surprisingly on General Petraeus' presentation of the current status in Iraq. There is no doubt that Senator McCain sounded more upbeat and positive about the war and (no coincidence) his own political campaign, which is starting to benefit. Polls have been showing McCain in a strong rebound since the summer.
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that Giuliani's support has eroded ten percentage points since July, to 28 percent. In February, Giuliani enjoyed the support of 53 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents.
Trailing Giuliani is former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee, who officially launched his campaign last week. He had 19 percent support, nearly double what he had in April, when he began to seriously consider a White House bid.
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, whose campaign has been beset by fund-raising difficulties, showed 18 percent support. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has 10 percent, which is about the level of GOP support he has had since April.
Thompson is getting a brief political honeymoon; we'll see how he looks after the next debate in Charleston. But for McCain to be back within 10 points of Guiliani is quite a Lazarus routine. Indeed, the real question is how long Romney can continue with such miniscule polling support.
Crackpot Corsi Claims NAU Drivers' Licenses in North Carolina
This NAU nonsense is the conservative equivalent of "Trutherism" among the Left.
Corsi did a fine job for the Republicans in 2004, with his co-authorship of Unfit for Command. But he's a thorough fruitcake with this North American Union nonsense. Let's grant him for a moment that the logo for the SPP is somewhat similar to the globe shown on the NC licenses. Why does the New World Order feel the need to put it on drivers' licenses? Wouldn't it be a whole lot smarter to just slap it on after the union is achieved?
This is typical of conspiracy nutbars. They think the evil people behind the scenes, while brilliant and (mwahahahaha) eeeeeeevil, always give the game away, but in ways that only the conspiracy kooks can see.
If you want to know why I support John McCain for President, and worked so hard against John Fraude Kerry, just watch this video. Keep a box of Kleenex handy when you do though, because it's highly emotional. I love his mom, she's an absolute pip!
Like Mr. Prescott, Mr. Ball is incensed that high-profile people like Al Gore — or environmental groups with deeper pockets than his — have not stepped up to the plate.
Hmmm, you can accuse Al of many things, but failing to step up to the (dinner) plate doesn't seem to be one of them:
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll have a hamburger!
The Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 44% of Likely Voters would definitely vote against Romney if he’s on the ballot in 2008. That’s a point higher than the 43% who would definitely vote against Clinton. Only one other possible candidate surpassed Clinton in this category all year (former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who is not considered a candidate at this time).
Frank DeMartini is often cited by the 9-11 Deniers as an example of someone who believed that the Twin Towers could not have been brought down by airplanes, including the dolts who designed the "Patriots Question 9-11" site. DeMartini said what is attributed to him, but it is despicable to include him on that website, when he is not around to defend himself from the lies of the Islamofascist apologists that make up the 9-11 "Truth" movement.
DeMartini is one of the true heroes of 9-11, as the book 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Stay Alive Inside the Twin Towers makes clear. Quoting from pages 164-165:
There was no further word or sightings of Pete Negron, thirty-four, father of two, or of Carlos DaCosta, forty-one, father of two; or of Pablo Ortiz, forty-nine, father of two; or of Frank DeMartini, forty-nine, father of two--four men who worked anonymously for a faceless government bureaucracy. On the morning of September 11, 2001, they tore open walls with crowbars and shined flashlights and pried apart elevator doors on the 90th, 89th, 88th, 86th, and 78th floors, saving the lives of at least seventy people in the north tower. When last heard from, they were on their way to try to free more, no doubt believing that the building they were in would last long beyond their old age.
Obviously these girls have been way overexposed, but I found this documentary on them quite interesting. The girls themselves come off reasonably well, although their mother is obviously a psycho. Note in particular the speaker phone call where the old white supremacist talks about his sexual attraction to the young teens. There has always seemed to me to be more than just a touch of pedophilia to the media's fascination with the twins.
It's also striking that the method used to sell the White Power message is very similar to the way the "Truthers" spread their poison. Note particularly the scene in the film in the bar, where the mother keeps saying "Just listen to the CD," in the same way that the "Truthers" say, "Just watch the CD."
There’s a weird sort of respect for the Paulites in some corners of the event. One brand of thinking was that Paul’s support was all online vapor, strange mutants from the Internet who couldn’t muster a crowd. But Paul’s crowd is enormous.
“That’s the only story so far,” one reporter told me during the dull-ish candidate speeches. “The presence of the Ron Paul people.”
And then he asked me: “Have you met any of them from Iowa?”
And that is the reason Paul’s people were able to generate so much light and heat and yet enter the poll with such pessimism. Volunteer after volunteer was from outside Iowa. And only Iowans could cast a vote in the poll. Campaign staff estimated that only half of the people milling around their tent were eligible voters and that 1000 votes would be a decent haul. Not winning, but decent.
Not decent, but fifth place. The real story of Iowa is that in a race with no McCain, no Giuliani and no Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney still couldn't get 1/3rd of the voters to select him.
I make the local arts & entertainment weekly in a terrific article by Stephen Lemons about my battle with James Bennett of the Chief Brief and Mark Roberts (and many, many others) against the 9-11 "Truthers".
The Phoenix New Times is comparable to the Village Voice in New York. I would classify it as liberal, but sane liberal, and it features some of the best journalism in the state--their writers regularly win the Virg Hill Award, considered the highest honor in Arizona newspaper writing. Steve's a terrific writer, as this passage will attest:
Curley patrols a veritable Mos Eisley cantina of conspiracy mavens, kooky celebs, Holocaust deniers, nutty academics, anti-Semites, aged hippies, delusional twentysomethings, and cynical, Elmer Gantry-like opportunists.
Is the name of the new book by Senator John McCain with Mark Salter. I've been reading the book for the last few days, and find it fascinating. I don't think there's any doubt that it will be compared to Profiles in Courage, especially considering the subtitle, "Hard Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them".
The book is broken down into sections on Awareness, Foresight, Timing, Confidence, Humility and Inspiration, with 3-4 biographies illustrating each trait. The bios are well-chosen for their purpose and the writing is superb, indeed soaring at times.
Much of this is familiar ground for me; the opening segment on Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey, and a later one on Winston Churchill are related to longtime passions of mine, so I did not expect to learn much from them, and yet I did.
And when it came to Marshall Field and King Gillette, it was stuff that I had heard about in general but never read. The book talks not solely about their genius but about how they were the right men for the time in a way that hits on so many things that have interested me.
For example, with Gillette, they point out the parsimony of the generations before he'd come along. I'm old enough to remember a sewing machine being a feature in every house; I'd suspect it's hard to find one these days. I remember when people would return their milk bottles to the store for a nickel, or the Coke bottles for two cents. The idea that something could be disposable and yet cheaper than the alternative was alien to America in the 19th century.
The section on Reagan and the collapse of the Soviet Union is particularly highly recommended. Nobody but Ronaldus Maximus could have predicted that the Evil Empire would fail. It's actually staggering now to think that the last man shot crossing the Berlin Wall died only 18 years ago.
I recommend the book highly, particularly for its inspirational message to youngsters that diligence and observation are the keys to getting ahead in life in today's America just as they were when these people were getting their start.
Romney: ...”Did you notice in Lebanon, what Hezbollah did? Lebanon became a democracy some time ago and while their government was getting underway, Hezbollah went into southern Lebanon and provided health clinics to some of the people there, and schools. And they built their support there by having done so. That kind of diplomacy is something that would help America become stronger around the world and help people understand that our interest is an interest towards modernity and goodness and freedom for all people in the world. And so, I want to see America carry out that kind of health diplomacy...”
Sounds quite a bit like Patty Murray's dipstick comments about Osama and his support for daycare centers.
Romney responds by saying that he's consistently denounced Hezbollah, but note that he does not deny make the statement above.
We now know that, at the very least, the New Republic's Scott Beauchamp lied about the timing and location of the ridiculing of a disfigured woman in a U.S. mess hall--the incident, if it happened, took place in Kuwait, Beauchamp now says, before he had the opportunity to experience the "morally distorting" effects of war.
But like OJ's glove, this doesn't fit the theme, which is that Beauchamp was made callous by his experiences in Iraq.
Debra Holland fronted for one heck of a band called Animal Logic. The bass guitarist was Stanley Clarke, considered by many to be the finest ever to pick up a four-string. The drummer was Andy Summers, formerly of the Police. They put out a couple of terrific albums that got some modest airplay. Here's the first song off their debut album:
As you can hear, Debra's a fine singer when warming up, but when she starts belting it out she moves up into the stratosphere.
The conference call started with two comments by the senator. First, the Ethics/Earmarking bill came to a vote. He is not happy with the bill because the Senate Majority leader can determine whether a provision.
Murdock purchase of WSJ? Senator McCain disagrees with the media consolidation issue, points out that media is diversifying with the advent of new media like the blogs.
He railed against the refusal of Senator Leahy to allow Judge Southwick's nomination to come to the floor. He stated that while he supports the use of ethanol, he remains adamantly opposed to ethanol subsidies (and pointed out that they are hardly necessary with gas prices where they are).
He noted that the immigration issue is where he took a big hit politically, and acknowledged that securing the border is the first step, but insisted as well that other aspects of immigration reform must be accomplished as well.
I got to ask a question about the earmarks/ethics reform bill, which the senator denounced as a sham and voted against. He agreed that banning earmarks is effectively impossible given Congress' power of the purse, but he's pushing for greater transparency and to get them out of conference reports.
He also had a somewhat surprising response to Barack Obama's assertion that we attack Pakistan if we have actionable intelligence on the location of Al Qaeda members. He pointed out that we have ways of doing things stealthily. Obama also apparently ruled out the use of nuclear weapons. McCain said that nukes are a weapon of last resort, but he would never rule out their use since it amounts to unilateral disarmament.
I've kind of been covering the kooky impeachment crowd on an ad-hoc basis, but I'm going to cover it more extensively in the next couple of weeks here.
As many of you are aware, Cindy Sheehan has been pushing impeachment for the last several month. In fact, its the whole basis for her run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi. But somebody should tell her that even if she wins, she'll be too late; Bush will leave office just as she's entering it.
Cindy has also recently aligned herself with the 9-11 "Truth" Movement.
Scott Ritter (yes, that Scott Ritter) wrote an article recently decrying the "Impeach Now" crowd and using a very good analogy.
The “impeach now” crowd reminds me of a football coach, late in a season which has produced only loss after loss, imploring his team to throw a “Hail Mary” pass over and over again, all the while suffering sack after sack of its quarterback as the offensive line fails to effectively block and the receivers fail to get open. The season is lost, and instead of pursuing futile and ineffective tactics designed to produce a meaningless score, the coach would be better off seeking to return to the basics so that his team might perform better next season. Only when the basics of blocking, tackling, running and ball handling are mastered can one expect to mount a campaign designed to produce a winning season.
Of course, aligning yourself with the "Truthers" is the ultimate Hail Mary pass. "We can't get the Democrats to impeach on anything else, so let's try using this crackpot theory that the Bush administration pulled off 9-11. It won't work, but we've got nothing to lose by trying!"
