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MA Special Election

With the unfortunate passing of Ted Kennedy, we find ourselves in the reality that there’s now a Senate seat to be filled by a special election in MA. This is a good chance to try and rebuild the GOP north of the Mason-Dixon, even if the circumstances that bring it about are sad. I say we go after this seat with the best foot we can put forward. That, to me at least, suggests tapping the last GOP candidate to win something big in MA, Mitt Romney. I think if we put him out there to run for the seat, we’ve got a shot at this one. Wouldn’t that be something to win back filibuster strength by taking a Massachusetts Senate seat?

Post Your Burning Saltires Here

In appreciation for Kenny MacAskill’s decision to free a mass murdering terrorist, I’ve decided to buy a Scottish flag, and take a nice little video of my burning it and stomping it out. I’ll post video when I go through with it. Please, if anyone else feels so inclined, post your own videos as well.

P.S. Make sure those flags aren’t themselves made in Scotland.

The Virtue of the Vicious

As if it weren’t bad enough that Obama has asked Americans to begin reporting disagreements with his health care agenda to flag@whitehouse.gov (can you imagine the outcry on the left if Bush had done this with respect to the Iraq War), now Nancy Pelosi thinks if you show up to a meeting to express your outrage and frustration that you are un-American. If the right went too far with tacit attacks on the patriotism of war dissenters, the left has now made itself no better with respect to the health care debate. It is now clear that the Democrats in Washington are intent on using patriotic rhetoric and Orwellian tactics to puch Amsoc down our throats whether we would have it or not, and woe unto he who would dare stand against it. Oscar Wilde made the eponymous assesment of patriotism, it merely took America 8 years to see that both sides could be equal opportunity offenders of this ugliness.

“Keep it up men, the veneer is starting to peel!”

For those of you who aren’t Futurama enthusiasts, the aforementioned line is taken from an episode where an angry mob of water aliens are trying to get through a thick wooden door by ramming themselves into it (with the predictable “sploosh” each time they hit). What an apt analogy for Republican opposition efforts in Congress right now, and indeed, the veneer is starting to peel. For the first time since taking office, Rasmussen’s daily tracking reports that Obama’s approval ratings have dipped below 50%, and his disapproval is now at 51%.

The Gotcha That Wasn’t

Sometime last week everyone in America heard a loud splatting sound. The sound, of course, was a certain joy that was produced (use your shameful imagination) by Democrats upon Leon Panetta’s admission that the previous administration had considered a secret on again off again program of some sort. Dems couldn’t contain themselves because it seemed to confirm that embattled Speaker Nancy Pelosi wasn’t a total lying shrew when she claimed that the CIA kept her in the dark on water boarding. Everyone carped all week long about this secret CIA program, which was reported to have limited success and which we were totally in the dark on. Indeed, we were kept in the dark on it for a whole week. What could it be? Were we being spied on? Was Dick Cheney rounding up newborns and draining them of blood in a failed attempt to transition from Dracula to human? Nope, turns out they were just trying to find a way to kill Bin Laden. The program centered around training paramilitary groups to infiltrate enemy territories undetected for targeted assassinations against high value targets. The “limited successes” were due to insurmountable logistical difficulties in the prgram. The program was ultimately rendered obsolete by the widespread use of predator drones in that role.

So thank you Nancy & Co. You’ve distracted us for a week from your bald-faced CYA lie with the shocking revelation that the CIA was trying to kill Osama bin Laden. What a pathetic crop of putzes that now occupy the majority in Congress.

Political Crystal Ball, Vol. 1

Nothing is more fun than making a prediction or two. So, I’m starting an ongoing series, early here, about some of my prognostications for the future. First one here pertains to the 2012 Democratic Ticket. Joe Biden gets dropped. I’d put money on it. It’s as simple as this: Biden was picked as Obama’s running mate in 2008 because he has a 30 year tenure in the Senate and Obama wanted to shore up his perceived lack of experience. Nobody really know what an absolute moron he was and what a colossal drag he would be on both the ticket and the administration. The man produces more gaffs that Dan Quayle ever did, and shows no sign of slowing.

There are also tactical considerations at play here. In 2016 Biden will be 74, and he has a history of aneurysms. There’s no way he’s the Democratic successor. That leaves the prospect of a wide open field in 2016. The Democrats will likely remember what became of 2008, a marathon contest of personalities that degenerated into a Democratic civil war between blue collar and upscale Democrats. They don’t want a repeat of that. Having a successor in place would avert that, and Obama, if he doesn’t already realize this, will be under pressure by those who do to get someone capable of being the party’s nominee on that ticket.

So, the question is, who to bring on? The successor has to be someone young enough to be president, preferably it is someone from a state Barack Obama will have to fight to carry, and it has to be someone with some sort of record upon which he or she could springboard to the presidency. Someone considered a bright prospect within the Democratic party would be key. As it happens, there is just such a person in the Democrat’s arsenal. In 2016, he will only be 62. He hails from a state that Obama will have to fight to carry. He’s served as both a governor and a senator, giving him a record upon which to run his own candidacy. He’s also widely respected and embraced by the Democrats. That man is Mark Warner of Virginia.

So, the summary of Crystal Ball, Vol. 1, in 2012 Obama will dump Biden and name Mark Warner of Virginia as running mate.

The Stimulus Has Failed

Mr. Obama came into office betting all his hopes on recovering the nation’s economy through a massive stimulus package. Well, that’s failed. The stimulus was supposed to make unemployment go down, not up. Now we’re deeper in debt, worse off for employment, and Mr. Obama owns it all now. Remember way back when, when this thing was going through the Senate. Only three of ours crossed over to vote for it, and one of them later became a Democrat. This is Mr. Obama’s economy now, and it’s lousy, and his falling approval ratings attest to this. Couple this with his dreadful handling of the Iran situation, and his decision to back the leftist dictators of Latin America in condemning the courts and congress of Honduras, and this administration looks more and more like Jimmy Carter’s every day. Stagflation and dictators beware, Mr. Obama is limiting his days in office.

Sanford Should Resign

Mark Sanford purports to be a conservative. Well, last I checked, family values are an important aspect of conservatism. Sanford has admitted to an affair, and while the decision on whether or not he stays married is the domain of his family, his state and his party deserve far better than a hypocrite. Sanford should resign as governor of South Carolina immediately, and if not the party should expel him from its ranks and mount a primary challenger for the next election.

Fate Removes Another Prospect

So, 2012 prospect Jon Huntsman is going on exile. . . .errr. . . appointment to an ambassadorial position in China. Of course, he wasn’t our only ace in the hole. Well, wasn’t. We had Mark Sanford, but, I guess he has a tendency to flake out and go run off into the woods for a week when things get tough. Oh yeah, I can see the 3 am call ad now, Obama waking up to take the call, an empty White House bedroom for Sanford. Then the scene turns into a guy off in the woods next to a camp fire eating a squirrel on a stick. Well, here’s to hoping we have a candidate by 2016.

UPDATE Nevermind, like so many of our supposed party leaders, he’s just cheating on his wife. *facepalm*

You Try, But You Just Can’t

I try to root for Mousavi and this young, freedom-loving mass of Iranians out there, I really do. Then, Mousavi opens his flap about how he’s ready to be a martyr, and I just can’t bring myself to do it. In all honesty I didn’t really ever think it mattered who won this election, but seeing that this same zeal for martyrdom that is so wrong in so much of the rest of the middle east is indeed a driving force in Mousavi as well, I think we might be better off with the devil we know over the devil we don’t.

Allah’s Tiananmen Moment

Were you all watching it!? I know I was! Just look at those demonstrators out there! They’re fed up! They’re fed up of the censorship, the control of their lives, the dictatorship. They’re fed up, and they’re demonstrating for change. Surely democracy is just around the corner in China!

Remember that? Remember how euphoric the world got over the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square? Everyone was convinced back then, too, that democracy was just around the corner in China. Unfortunately, brutal reality was about to rear its ugly head. Out went the cameras. In came the military. Gone into thin air were the protests. Democratic reform? Off the table. The communist party clamped down, hung on, and would some day be headed by a man who shut down opposition newspapers in Shanghai to keep demonstrations from spreading. Political prisoners are, well, still prisoners. Uighurs and Tibetans are still oppressed. Media is still censored. China is, well, still the China that it was in 1990, just with more economic opportunity.

So, before we wax poetic about the demonstrations in Iran, let’s put this all in perspective. The mullahs still control the military. In a day these pro-Mousavi demonstrations can be shut down in bloody fashion, and Iran can become another example of unjustified western euphoria over a movement of young people. Iran too can see the bold but powerless crushed like a buzzing fly, and proceed on to another unchallenged two decades of despotism.

Did he really win?

Recently the Iranians had themselves a little election of sorts. One has to add emphasis and italics when referring to anything the Iranians do in democratic terms. The winner of every election in Iran would be the clerical council. The chosen President in this election goes on to wield very little actual power. So, the great hubbub we now witness on the streets of Tehran is a bit like who’s going to win this argument over Sidney Crosby’s handshake snub; even if Kris Draper and Nick Lidstrom win, they still lost.

All the same, I can’t help but challenge the conventional thinking that this election was somehow rigged. Call it the contrarian in me (do it, you know you want to), but I went through the arguments in favor of this notion, and found it an irresistible exercise. So, my top 5 reasons why I think it’s fully plausible that Ahmedinejad really did win the Iranian elections:

1. The West is biased towards the reform: We all love to comfort ourselves with the notion that somehow, deep down, our enemies really are just good people who don’t want a fight with us. We delude ourselves into thinking they would lead us to the golden promised land of peace if they could just seize the reins of power from their horrible leaders. And I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Nothing has been a more formidable notion in this country that the “Iranian reform” movement is a large force that has been gaining steam. Meanwhile the reality over the past several years in Iran has been anything but. The mullahs have shut down independent newspapers, the social police have cracked down, and at the same time the Iranian people have lined up lock-step with the government over the nuclear issue. This has not stopped the west from looking on the reform as some vanguard of a free democratic Iran, but the truth is that’s not what Iran voted for in the last election and the passivity with which Iranians accepted everything else the government handed them in the ensuing years gives us no good cause to expect they would really make it an issue this time either.

2. Passion is not the same as popularity: We were all awestruck in recent weeks to see the passionate, energetic crowds flocking to demonstrate in the name of their reformer. Of course, anyone with more than a year’s worth of memory can tell you about the fanatically strong presence of Ron Paul supporters. Anyone with access to a good elections atlas can tell you of Mr. Paul’s enthusiasm and that of his supporters didn’t translate to a lot of votes. Instead he finished a dismal 4th, and only by virtue of the fact that he kept campaigning long after every last candidate dropped out. Can passion make you text votes or attend an online poll to say your guy won? Yup. Does it mean your guy stands a chance? No.

3. Iranian polling isn’t exactly Rasmussen: America is a polling obsessed nation with countless firms and great scientific samples on which to run polling based models. And. . . we still screw up, sometimes in grand fashion. Just ask the VNS about the reliability from cycle to cycle of sample districts for exit polling. And we do this a lot. As it stands, the US conducts more polls asking Americans about Iran than Iran conducts of its own citizens. So is it any wonder that some great deal of dissonance might exist between what their polls say and what reality is?

4. Who’s rigging the result: If the result is, indeed, rigged, it must have been by an idiot. The reported spread of support is supposedly uniform, and even Mousavi’s home town is reported to have voted for Ahmedinejad. If it were rigged, there’s one of two ways to do it. One of them is cynical, like Saddam’s 100% election. The other is to manipulate the reported turnout in believeable ways so you have a close, but believable, result. If the mullahs were trying to send a message, the result would have looked like one of those Soviet Era elections. If they wanted a believable result they would have made it closer. This just looks like the work of an idiot. . . or an astounding but very real outcome.

5. Who gains: Who really stands to gain anything by having Ahmedinejad in? The mullahs were in zero danger of seeing any real loss of their power by letting Mousavi in. In actuality, would we bomb a reformist Iran, even to stop a nuclear program? I bet you nobody has a problem bombing Ahmedinejad’s Iran. Furthermore, it was bound to precipitate a fight with reformists, whereas just letting them have their little powerless president would have shut them up in a way police and shut down newspapers never would have. And, given a few years and economic malaise later, the hardliners could ride the crest back in. Any way you slice it, the mullahs really didn’t have anything to gain by manipulating the result, whereas tampering with it could have cost them a lot.

In the end none of it will probably matter. Iran is steamrollering towards nukes, and they will do so with the consent of their public. The question is, do we have the resolve to stop them, the prudence to let the Israelis do it for us, or the foolishness to let Iran acquire nuclear weapons?

A Tale of Two Hate Speeches

Let me preface my remarks by saying this: James von Brunn is a vile racist murdering son of a bitch who should get his turn on the chair for what he did. Fifty James von Brunn’s aren’t worth one Stephen Johns, we are worse off without Johns, and will little miss Brunn when his small shriveled 88 year old heart finally gives out on him. That said, I already see the precursor for another tragedy developing. . . the tragedy of society’s double standards. Brunn left a note explaining that the motivation of his actions centers around this lovely passage right here: “The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America’s money. Jews control the mass media. The 1st Amendment is abrogated –henceforth.” Unfortunately this vile little man is getting tacked on to his very well deserved murder charge a hate crimes charge. I say unfortunately not because I don’t want Brunn to face justice to the hilt (I believe I prefaced this calling for his execution), but because hate crimes are not only a crude government instrument of thought control, they are also a sad vehicle for society’s double standards.

At the same time that this miserable excuse of a man was committing these heinous crimes, we were also being treated to a rant no less odious from the illustrious Jeremiah Wright. Wright too echoed Brunn’s paranoia about Jews, stating “Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me,”elaborating further “They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is.” Brunn’s hate speech is rightly regarded for what it is; vile, pernicious, hurtful, wrong. The problem is when it comes to Wright, the tune changes. Then we start hearing “free speech,” and “who cares, he’s not in office.” But what Wright said is so frightfully similar to what Brunn said. It illustrates a deep dysfunction on our social conceptions of hate that Wright’s is dismissed, while Brunn’s is to be prosecuted. Either the opinions of both men are criminal, or the right to free speech should confer, like most other rights, even when you do wrong. In fact, most of our rights exist to protect us when we are in the gears of justice. We have rights against unreasonable search and seizure, rights to protect us from bearing witness against ourselves, rights to face our accusers, rights to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and rights to due process. These are not suspended when we have committed crimes. It makes little sense, then, that one’s right to free speech and editorial freedom would cease to extend to the times when we break laws. After all, even a thief can sue you if he slips and falls on your sidewalk while robbing you. We are left with one of two notions, either Brunn’s right to speech precludes criminality of his opinions (we can still fry him for murder, and you bet I’d be the man to throw the switch), or the speech itself is fundamentally criminal, in which case we should prosecute Wright.

Capone Care Coming To You!

Al Capone once said “you can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.” Al Capone could have written the House Democrats new health care bill. The kind word? The government is going to offer you a somewhat cheaper competing healthcare plan to private insurers. The gun? None other than the overbearing force of the state telling you that you are required to have health insurance. They include an exceeption for hardship. Of course, hardship will be defined as the government sees it, not you as the individual empowered to make your own choices. So, are you a college student just getting started in a career and living with mom and dad till you save up enough money to make it on your own? Generally in good health? Too bad, the government says you get to buy health insurance. Are you a man in your 30s and 40s who ensures your child and not yourself because you can’t afford it? You’ll be happy to know you’ll now have plenty of insurance to pay for your gunshot wounds when you move into a failing neighborhood to save money to pay for the government’s mandate. And, of course, once the government starts covering people in the insurance realm, it won’t be long before they start to get even further into the business of lifestyle management, because then how you live becomes public domain as long as the government pays the health costs of it. Welcome to the nanny state.