The Crab notes with glee the defeat of the treacherous Richard Lugar in the Republican primary in Indiana.  He is a TV hound, who would do any pandering necessary to get his Silly Putty face before the cameras.  From 2nd Amendment restrictions to open borders to votes to confirm Sonia Somediocre and Rosa Luxembourg Kagan to his tireless and brainless advocacy of the Law of the Sea Treaty, Lugar was wrong on virtually every issue.  For the first time in 36 years, Indianans have a Republican candidate to fill this seat.  Did somebody say the Tea Party was dead.

Good luck to him with his upcoming TV show on MSNBC.  He deserves no better.

I haven't watched the suddenly-infamous Julia cartoon on BO's campaign website (one of them, anyway) -- I'm in the stage of life that Pink Floyd described.  Every year is getting shorter, and frighteningly so.  However, I read a description of the Julia animation that was terrifying.  Supposedly "Julia" reaps her first reward from President BO's leadership at the age of three.  In her teens BO's benedictions are still coming.  Even at 67, BO is still brightening her now-declining years.

You don't suppose the Egotist in Chief is planning on staying in the White House for 64 years, do you? 

I think I need a drink. Right after I write to Libertarian Tony...

The"race-hustling poverty pimps" (great quote to remember J.C. Watts for) like Jesse Jackson, the even more repulsive Al Sharpton, and the wooden idiot herself, Maxine Waters, have really sunk their teeth into the Trayvon Martin death.  They say that the death of the young, hoodie-wearing black man was caused by the racial profiling by the gun-toting George Zimmerman.

Lets follow their thought processes.  If you're an intelligent person, a few stiff drinks should help you lower your intelligence to the needed nadir.

The dead man is black (good), a teenager (better), and at least used to be an angelic looking boy.  Jackpot!

The shooter is white (whitish, anyway) and has a Third Reich sounding last name (Zimmerman).  Not perfect, but we can make him the Grand Dragon of the KKK in the eyes of the lefty media (useful idiots that they are), and thus we can gull enough people into believing that Zimmerman killed Martin for being black in his neighborhood.

The facts didn't matter to the RHPPs.  The races, real or perceived, of those involved was what really mattered.

If what these bitter clingers to an outdated racial narrative did to this sad incident can't be called "racial profiling", then words have lost all meaning.

Well, imagine that.  The should-be-famous blind anti-forced-abortion Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has been "persuaded" to return to the loving arms of the Chinese government, which has been keeping him under house arrest without justification and giving him frequent beatings.  (Is there any greater or more contemptible coward than a thug who beats up a blind man?)  The Red Queen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, announced that he would be returning to the nation that he took such appalling risks to criticize, and within which he suffered such revolting injustice.  

In what Rush Limbaugh often calls "a random act of journalism", the Los Angeles Times blog has a fine entry on this sad situation here.  Better go read it fast, before BO or the Red Queen order it taken down.

Poor Chen.  If only he had led to the embassy of a country that doesn't have communists in charge of its foreign policy...

Painting the Nation Red

If the Occupy movement members want to avoid being labeled for the socialist/Maoists they are, scheduling a great raft of activities on "World Worker's Day", a day known throughout the world as a communist holiday, was probably poor strategy.

Am I the only person who would be tempted to contribute to the legal defense of any driver who should decide that the best way to get past bridge-blocking protesters is over them?

Memory Bank Withdrawal

I made a large withdrawal from the memory bank, and would like to share the printable ones with you:

The first one is a bit personal.  When Hillary Rosen declared that Ann Romney had "never worked a day of her life" because she "stayed home and raised five children", I thought of my Mom, who also raised five children (not to be confused with five angels, which we were not).  I want Hillary Rosen to tell my mother that to her face.  I also want my younger brother to tape the confrontation.  Mom just turned 86, and I'll bet Mom will still flatten her nose for her.

GI Barack is Just Like GI Joe -- a Plastic Lightweight Toy

President Narcissus is traveling the country (i.e. campaigning at taxpayer expense) bragging about the sending of Osama Bin Liner back to his master in Hell.  (Oh, gee.  Am I being judgmental?  Tough.  God gave us brains to make judgments with, and this is an easy one.)  He's even sending squads of lackeys to the TV news shows to brag for him.  At a time when we should have been celebrating the great achievements of our military and intelligence heroes, we have to deal with a self-idolizing windbag taking the credit for achievements accomplished by hundreds if not thousands of brave, resourceful over the course of ten long and no doubt often frustrating years.  You can bet that classy Presidents like Lincoln, Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, and both Presidents Bush would never have behaved so crassly.   A few points and reminders:

Contrary to what the braggart-in-chief says now, it was reported that it took baby Barry 16 hours to make the decision.  The people who had found and reported OBL's location sweated those hours out, afraid that Public Enemy Number 1 would "get out of Dodge" before they could deliver the justice he deserved.  Heaven knows what BO was doing for those 16 hours.  Now BO tries to make himself out to have been the firm, decisive commander-in-chief.  

We don't need to imagine what a decisive CIC would have done.  We have the example of Ronald Reagan.  When the Egyptian government, led by "our SOB", Hosni Mubarek, agreed to let the terrorists who had hijacked the Achille Lauro and murdered wheelchair-bound American Leon Klinghoffer out of his country, superb intelligence work (sound familiar?) discovered that the Egyptians were preparing a commercial EgyptAir flight for them.  A daring mission to intercept the flight, force it down, and take the terrorists off the plane was quickly drawn up.  It would be, in Civil War slang "a risky mission but a buster."  However, any attempt of that nature had to be directly approved by the President.  

Then-National Security Agency operative Oliver North tells us in his book Under Fire and in interviews that President Reagan never hesitated.  When told of the planned intercept, he gave instant approval.  According to one account I read, when he was told that we had a shot at the terrorists ("Palestinians", it should be remembered), President Reagan replied, "What are you waiting for?  Go get them."  When the written order was placed on his desk, he signed it --- instantly.  No focus group testing.  No inner-circle conference.

No 16 hours.

Narcissus also would like you to forget that he was pulled off the golf course to be in that photo that we can't seem to avoid for the last week.  Looking at BO's clothes and posture, I can't help thinking he's about to ask someone to pass the popcorn.

I'm afraid the sack dance is just beginning, and it will last, with variations in frequency and intensity, until at least November.  Victor Lasky reminded us in his book Jimmy Carter: the Myth and the Man that "...wherever he went that fall (1978), the President managed to get in references to 'the remarkable results of Camp David", that "remarkable" 13-day triumph of diplomacy that persuaded Sadat of Egypt and Begin of Israel to hold further negotiations somewhere free of big-toothed buttinski Georgians.  (I had forgotten this, but Lasky also reminds us that  "After doing 'some of his own bragging,' as John Osborne put it in The New Republic, he let some of his own minions -- Vance, Brzezinski, Jordan, Powell, and several midlevel officials -- tell the story of how 'a tireless President, frustrated at times and ... (ellipses in original) close to giving up' managed to get those two ... to agree to what was billed as 'a framework for peace'."  Who could have guessed that someday we'd have a President who'd be a cross between Carter and Alger Hiss?)

Aren't we all so tired of leftists always glorifying everything they do as "gutsy" and "courageous"?  Not only that, but they so frequently call their actions the most courageous act since their heroes overthrew the Kerensky government in Russia in 1917.  Seriously, how much courage does it take to give the order to snuff the world's most wanted terrorist, the man who led the conspiracy that murdered roughly 3,000 Americans in just a few hours of horror on 9/11?  Other than a "distracted" Billy Jeff Clinton, "mentoring" an intern in that special way he had, that is.    This sort of liberal faux-fanfare goes back at least to John Kennedy.  When liberal hagiographers write of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they always try to show it as a magnificent display of iron nerves and bold action.  Actually, Kennedy was forced into action by New York Senator Kenneth Keating, and not only was guilty of much irresolute vacillating, but he was also guilty of botching the endgame and giving the communists everything they wanted -- removal of NATO missiles from Turkey and a guarantee that the United States would not try to overthrow poor suffering Cuba's criminal regime.  Old Profile in Courage also abandoned a battalion of brave, CIA-trained Cuban freedom fighters on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs, not even providing them the air cover he had promised them.  In a ghastly foreshadowing of Viet Nam, he approved the operation, but did not commit to what it would take to make possible its success.  The result was brave men needlessly massacred, and both allies and enemies concluding that the young President was more profile than courage.

American liberal courage is more often the type displayed by the "courageous" Sandra Fluke (she bewilderingly pronounces it "Fluck").  She dauntlessly ran the risk of making statements before a phony committee meeting held by House Democrats that would make her the hero of the chattering classes, and even risked being given awards for courage by media, feminist, and other left-wing groups.  Just like hitting the beach at Normandy, wasn't it?  (Ann Coulter dealt hilariously with this topic in her March 14, 2012 column.)

Democrat Burlesque

From the Federation for American Immigration Reform's Website:

In an attempt to discredit Arizona's immigration enforcement law the day before the U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to hear oral arguments on it, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) convened a hearing of the Senate Judiciary's Immigration Subcommittee to examine the "constitutionality and prudence" of state and local immigration enforcement laws. (See Sen. Schumer Letter, Feb. 23, 2012) 

Sen. Schumer, who chairs the Subcommittee, wasted no time before speaking out against the Arizona legislation, SB 1070. Calling it "counterproductive and unconstitutional," he threatened to introduce a bill that would prohibit state and local police from enforcing immigration laws unless they are doing so pursuant to an explicit agreement with the federal government and are trained and supervised by federal officials. (Bloomberg Government Transcript, Apr. 24, 2012) Current law specifically provides that an agreement is not required for state and local officers to assist in the identification, apprehension, detention, or removal of illegal aliens. (INA § 287(g)(10); 8 U.S.C. 1357(g)(10))

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the only other Member of the Subcommittee to attend the hearing, echoed Schumer's opposition to the law, and used the hearing as a platform for his failed DREAM Act.

Is it any wonder that many of us want the Republicans to take over the Senate so that at least these capering clowns will go back to being mere clowns instead of dangerous clowns?

My dear nephew,

Rather against my will, our relatives keep sending me what you write about politics on Facebook, that invaluable aid for finding the self-obsessed, the venomous, and the ignorant.  I am concerned that you are unknowingly destroying your own reputation, and you should be concerned, also.  If you continue to write in this way (meaning both content and tone), you may find yourself stuck with labels that a lifetime will not enable you to shake.  I have been assured more than once that it is pointless to try to reach you with logic, as you're mind has made up by your self-perception.  However, as a courtesy due to a relative, I will give it one try, and I promise to be far more polite than you have been in your published remarks.  Make no mistake, anything posted to Facebook has been published, and there is no way to erase it.

I have been informed that one of our family members gave you very sound advice, and it was "Don't be a jerk about politics."  Very sound advice and very clearly completely ignored.

If you are going to be a success at political mud slinging, you are going to have to improve in a few areas.  I have had considerable success in this field, so please consider my advice carefully.  Otherwise, you will wear that deadly label "crank".

If you are going to insult the intelligence of Republicans (like your grandparents), you need to spell and capitalize correctly.  Publishing phrases like "brain-dead republicants" will lead unkind people (some related to you) to postulate that the last brain-dead person you saw was in your mirror.

(I add here as an aside that you should give thanks every day that you never tried to debate your late grandfather on politics.  He would have done to you (speaking metaphorically) what a high-explosive bomb does to a daffodil.)

More recently, I am told that you referred to presumptive Republican (note spelling and capitalization) presidential nominee Mitt Romney as a "robot".  This is juvenile name-calling, without point or punch.  Does being neat and clean and having a ready smile make you a robot?  Readers may end up wondering about your hygienic habits, or lack of same.  Name-calling is seldom effective; it hurts your reputation more than your target's.

In your more recent posts, you accused Romney of the usual, tired litany of supposed heartless policy goals -- meaning to end Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, ad nauseum.  Are you aware that your preferred candidate, Barack Obama, cuts $600 billion (that is to say, $600,000,000,000) from Medicare as part of his Obamacare program?  Can you produce one statement during the last decade by any Republican leader saying that they intend to cut the benefits of any of the three programs I mentioned earlier this paragraph?  Please note that pledging to make the programs financially sustainable or pledging to eliminate fraud and waste in the program(s) is not "cutting".  All three of these programs are going bankrupt, and will take the country with them if something is not done quickly.  It could have been done relatively easily a decade or two ago, but now the holes are so deep that the task has grown greatly difficult.  One of the parties has consistently blocked all attempts to make the programs financially stable and self-supporting.  It wasn't the Republicans.

Returning to an older post, you seemed amused by the fact that 65% of Republicans who participated in a survey in (I believe) January said they would vote for the Republican nominee no matter who it was.  Why should that surprise you?  If you were to ask registered Democrats if they are going to vote for Obama no matter whom the Republicans nominate, I predict that you would get a percentage closer to 95% than 65%.  I am depressed that only 65% of my party (if the poll is accurate, which experience tells me is not to be assumed) is unconditionally committed to voting against the most disastrous president in American history, and the first president who can be credibly accused of being a disaster for the county deliberately.

What I find most frustrating is that you proclaim your intention to vote for Obama even as you proclaim that you are pro-life.  If you were not my nephew, I would perhaps content myself with wishing you all happiness in Jews for Hitler.  Because of our family bond, I will address the subject more politely.  Hard as I try to give you the benefit of the doubt on this matter, several disquieting theories present themselves.

The most obvious and perhaps the ugliest possibility is that you are acting from supreme selfishness.  You somehow see yourself getting something from the re-election of Obama that is worth more than thousands, perhaps millions of dead babies worldwide.  Are you aware of the fact that the Obama administration spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money (at a time when inconceivably bad economic policies have already pushed our budget deficits to world-record-shattering levels) to persuade Kenya to pass a pro-abortion constitution?  At this point in his term, it seems pointless to point out that the expenditure was illegal, but I will all the same.  

The above is just one item in a frightening CV when it comes to abortion.  Keep in mind that as an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama was the only speaker against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which extended legal protection to babies who had survived an abortion attempt and were now completely outside the mother’s body.  By all precedent, that baby would not only be considered legally a person, but indeed would be a citizen of the United States, with all of the legal protections that come with citizenship.  Even radical pro-abortion groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America (who changed their name from the National Abortion Rights Action League when they discovered that that name was too honest) didn’t dare publicly oppose this act.  Barack Obama didn’t just oppose it, he stood up and spoke AGAINST extending life-saving treatment to innocent American citizen babies, gasping for breath and struggling for life.

Since that day when he voted against the BAIPA, Obama has been trying to come up with some reason for his vote that sounds at least believable.  His attempts (or ten of them, anyway) are available at http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2008/01/top-10-reasons.html.

Similarly, he opposed the national Partial-Birth Abortion bill, because he claimed that the bill did not include an exemption for the mother’s “health“.  That’s “health” instead of health, because they are not referring to physical health.  Pro-aborts like Obama want the “health” exemption included because experience shows that including such a clause in effect nullifies the law, since a pro-abort judge can always be found to grant the exemption regardless of the health effect alleged.  Certain judges (well-known to the pro-abortion groups) will vote to take a babies life if the mother (or her lawyer) says she’ll be depressed by the weight gain that comes with a full-term pregnancy.  

Now we have the $1 abortion surcharge mandate under Obamacare.  As Steven Ertelt explained in Lifenews.com on March 12th:

“Nestled within the “individual mandate” in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government — approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an “abortion premium mandate.” This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion.  As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.”  (Complete article at http://www.lifenews.com/2012/03/12/obama-admin-finalizes-rules-1-abortions-in-obamacare/)

In ancient Rome, the conspirators who slew Julius Caesar all bathed their hands in his blood” so that they would all share in the guilt of the crime.  Similarly, Nazi (the radical leftist National Socialist German Workers Party) SS Chief Heinrich Himmler gave a surprise speech to his fellow Nazi leaders telling them about the Holocaust, the horrible industrialized slaughter of Europe’s Jewish population.  He did this to deprive every attendee of the “I didn’t know” alibi.  Although it never proved of any value to Himmler, the speech led to deadly consequences when the National Socialist regime collapsed and it came time for guilt to be assigned and punishments to be meted out to surviving Nazis.

What the Obama-ites are attempting is arguably worse, as they, with the $1 abortion mandate and the contraceptive mandates (which includes drugs that can cause early abortions) attempt to force all Americans to share in the financing of abortion, and thus share in the guilt for this tremendous, horrendous crime crying out to Heaven.  The Roman conspirators joined the murder conspiracy willingly, and the attendees to Himmler’s speech had joined the Nazi Party leadership.  Today, the vast majority of pro-life Americans are fighting determinedly to avoid having guilt for the abortion nightmare assigned to them.  

Since the infamous Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 (I assume you’ve heard of it), over 53,000,000 babies have been slain in this country.  (If you want to know why Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going bankrupt today, you might consider this massacre of 53 million future wage earners and taxpayers.)  

What could you possibly gain from BO’s re-election that could possibly be worth more than the lives of all of those babies?  

A relative opines aloud (many others I’m sure opine silently) that your support for Obama is dictated by your sexual orientation.  I personally have never been able to understand why so many of those of your SO (to save typing) see every issue through that prism, and often see things darkly.  (I have some theories, which I will keep to myself because my purpose in writing is not to offend you.)  If our relative is right, those of your SO are a remarkable subset of the American population.  Consider:

They must not need jobs.  The bizarre actions of BO and his merry band of Keynesians have given us a situation unknown in our history -- a recovery that features higher unemployment than that in the recession from which we have supposedly “recovered” from.

They must not drive gasoline-powered vehicles.  When Barack Obama was inaugurated, the price of gasoline was under $1.90/gallon.  It is now at or over $4.00/gallon, and fixing to go higher, largely because BO and his environmentally radical administration has done everything they can to strangle domestic gasoline production.  From the Gulf Oil Drilling moratorium, which the administration has persisted with despite two court rulings that held that the President does not have the authority to unilaterally stop drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  The EPA, headed by Obama-appointed radical environmentalist Lisa Jackson, pulled a filthy trick on Sunoco by allowing them to spend $2 million dollars on an off-shore oil drilling project well off the Alaska coast, and then stopping Sunoco from proceeding for a stomach-turningly spurious reason -- they claimed that Sunoco’s Environmental Impact Statement was inadequate because they had not considered the possible health impacts of a possibly necessary icebreaker on an Alaskan village 400 MILES AWAY!  They also refused to allow construction of the Keystone Oil Pipeline from our friendly neighbor Canada, supposedly for safety concerns, despite the fact that the EPA has done a risk assessment on the project and declared it safe -- SIX TIMES!

How is it safer to ship our oil from the Persian Gulf from hostile nations in tankers?  Have you ever known a pipeline to sink, run aground, or be hijacked by pirates?

Every time you put $40 in your gas tank, you are robbed of over $20.  I resent it.  Every American should.

They must not need to buy any products, be they food, clothes, or anything else.  When fuel prices go up, transport prices go up, and inevitably retail prices go up.  The administration so far, with the assistance of a (to put it mildly) friendly media, has managed to conceal the resulting inflation by omitting food and fuel from the official inflation rate calculation.  The rest of America has been rather less successful in omitting food and fuel from their budgets.

They must not need affordable energy.  The Obama administration is clearly attempting to destroy the domestic coal industry by imposing impossible and useless standards on emissions.  Even those pushing these industry-destroying regulations can point to no benefits from the stricter standards.

The EPA is now trying to satisfy the watermelon environmentalists (who will help bankroll BO’s re-election campaign) by finding some spurious reason to oppose the rapidly expanding, wealth-creating, energy-price-dropping natural gas industry.  Hydro-fracking has been used safely for over 6 decades worldwide, but now suddenly anti-fracking zealots are trying to claim that the process is dangerous.  In fact they are transparently trying to cripple the American economy by crippling the American energy industry.  

There are words that describe the people who are attempting the crippling.  “Reasonable”, “honest”, and “Patriotic” are not among them.

Just this month, the Interior Department (headed by Obama-appointed environmental radical Ken Salazar) announced that they are “locking up” 100 million acres of land in Arizona.  This land contains the richest uranium deposits in the country.  Having crippled the domestic oil industry, the administration now appear to be “focused like a laser beam” on the domestic nuclear power industry.

When Obama made that declaration that his energy policy is “all of the above”, apparently he forgot to add “...except the ones that work.”

Most important for you, in my opinion, is Obamacare’s orientation toward the elderly, the disabled, and the brain-damaged or otherwise disabled.  Obama’s appointees have included zealots like Ezekiel Emanuel and Donald Berwick, who believe that doctors should only provide medical care to their patients if it is also good for “the system”.  While Emanuel and Berwick have left their government posts (Berwick because his views and past statements were so extreme that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid informed Obama that Berwick could not win a Senate confirmation vote), their spirit lives on in the Health and Human Services, headed by Obama radical appointee Kathleen Sebelius, who recently publicly stated that the Obamacare health care regime (implication intended) will start saving money once the population starts declining.  How cold-blooded do you have to be to see population decline as a financial goal?

Now that we know that the Obama HHS wants population to decline, we need to consider where they will try to cut what their ideological predecessors the Nazis called “useless feeders’.  The obvious targets will be the unborn, the disabled, and the elderly.  To these dehumanizers, each of these groups uses medical resources without adequately benefiting “the system”.  To the continued massacre of the babies, we will add the massacre of the disabled (like our cousin Todd), and the elderly.

So I guess those of your SO don’t have grandmothers, either, do they, nephew?

Please consider carefully what I have written.  At lot is at stake in the election in November -- both for the country and for you personally.

This would be a bad time to be wrong.

Quite sincerely,

Your Uncle

PS I can back up every assertion I made here with evidence.  Can you do the same with your assertions?

I wrote the below two years ago, during the 2010 campaign season, and then somehow I forgot to post it.  Some of it is therefore dated, but a good amount of it still applies today.  I hope you find it worth reading.



The Republicans Need to Show Some Class (on Both Sides)

The primaries are over, barring a recount or two.  Opportunity beckons the Republicans, the conservatives, and patriotic, intelligent independents who want to save our country from becoming the Fragmented States of Obamamerica.  

Will they blow it?

The signs so far are disquieting to someone like me, who started watching nation elections 42 years ago.  We’re watching the sad spectacle of appointed-by-her-daddy Senator Lisa Murkowski trying to find someone, anyone to back her for re-election after she was defeated by Tea Party candidate Joe Miller.  There has been more rancor in this Republican primary season than I have ever seen in a mid-term election before.  The Democratic media is pitching in with their trouble-making, trying to foment the discord that may be the only chance the Democrats have to hold their power, or at least one house of Congress.  Tea Party conservatives have crowed loudly over their victories, and spoke bitterly and resentfully about their defeats.  Rush Limbaugh as I write this is engaged in a diatribe claiming that “establishment” Republicans don’t care about the country; they only care about power.  Actually, his monologue at the bottom of the second hour today was perhaps the most disgraceful I’ve ever heard from him, and I’ve been listening for about 20 years.  

I see two great obstacles in the path of national salvation via the defeat of Obamaism.  One is that no-one on the right seems to remember what a political party is for, and the other is that too many on our side seem unable to distinguish the difference between a rival and an enemy.

To those who know history, the great worry is a repetition of 1912.  Then, a bitter split between Republican incumbent President William Howard Taft and the man he succeeded, flamboyant and self-centered Progressive Republican Theodore Roosevelt enabled Democrat candidate Woodrow Wilson to sneak though to the Presidency, where he would do incalculable harm to the republic that both Republicans had wanted so badly to lead.  Ever since that year, patriotic Republicans have feared another pestilential factional quarrel that would split the party faithful and cause them to lose vital elections that they could win.  For the most part, they've avoided these disasters in the past, with the exceptions of 1964, 1992, ... and 2008.

In 2008, moderate Republican Senator John McCain took advantage of the failure of the conservative Republicans to unite on a candidate (combined with the winner-take-all nature of many state primaries) to win the Republican nomination for President.  He won fairly, with no allegations of cheating like the ones surrounding the Democratic nominee, radical leftist Senator Barack Obama. He entered the race with a career American Conservative Union rating of 82%, and a 2008 rating of 63%.  Obama's corresponding ACU ratings were 10% and 4%.

Horribly, all too many conservatives refused to support McCain, because he wasn't conservative enough for them.  My friend Achilles (aka Libertarian Tony) was among them.  I don't care how bumptious and irritating you think John McCain is, a 59 point spread is enough to overcome it -- as long as your goal is to benefit your country, and not just to "punish" Republicans somewhat to the left of you.  Moral preening is seldom pretty and never appropriate, especially when the future of your country is at stake.

Having withheld their votes from McCain then, many conservatives are now demanding that the more moderate members of their party support the more conservative candidates that have been nominated in several states just two years later.  To put it another way, having failed to behave as party members in 2008, they are demanding that their rivals behave as loyal party members this year.  Speaking as both a life-long conservative and a Republican, those conservatives who refused to vote for McCain in 2008 have no right to expect the moderate Republicans to do this.  They can and must ask for it, but they do not have the right to demand or expect it.

I'll come back to this subject soon, since otherwise this post may grow long and unruly as ivy in a Chicago ballpark.  For now, may I just remind all that political parties exist to advance the similar interests of people who do not necessarily agree on all subjects, but who have essentially compatible agendas.  One cannot establish too many "litmus tests", or you will render your party toosmall to accomplish anything.  The greatest leaders in American history were great harmonizers and conciliators.  It's often forgotten that the very first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, was a brilliant politician, who managed to lead a party that was only 6 years old when he was elected in 1860.  During the Civil War, there were times when the party nearly split into radical and conservative (by 1860s terms) wings.  Lincoln handled these occasions with deft brilliance, and kept his party together under circumstances rarely equaled for complexity.  

The moderate Republicans of today are the conservative Republicans of 1860.  They are our rivals.  The Obama/Pelosi/Reid Democrats are our enemies.  We must defeat them, or our constitutional democratic republic may disappear forever.

Never forget that.

Department of Fog

I was reading an unintentionally hilarious article written by one Joan Biskupic, and published at the Reuters blog.  It is a classic of Tiger Beat reporting, as the author is clearly infatuated with her subject.  (Go ahead and make the joke.  I probably would, too.)  The article tried to persuade the reader that Supreme Court Associate Justice Elena Kagan is an intellectual giant, easily capable of besting Stephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln on the same day.  Quotes like "... she can also match wits with Chief Justice John Roberts and Antonin Scalia..." and the opening sentence, "During three days of arguments ... Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan put on a display of rhetorical firepower, reinforcing predictions that the newest liberal justice is best equipped to take on the conservative, five-man majority controlling the bench." had me desperately suppressing my laughter, as I did not want to awaken my sleeping wife.  Then I was brought to a full stop when I read this:

Marshall ... was, with the late Justice William Brennan, a standard bearer for a liberalism that has all but disappeared from the federal bench.  (I wish. -- HC)  They ... favored broad-scale solutions for past racial discrimination."

When you read "broad-scaled solutions" in the above sentence, you should read it for its true meaning -- rewarding those who suffered no harm by punishing those who did no wrong.

James Taranto of WSJ has a recurring feature in his Best of the Web Today columns called Shortest Books ever written.  I found  an article on the American Thinker website called The Ethics of Eric Holder that would qualify.  Boy, if you printed that book the pages would be as blank as Joe Biden's brain scan.

Dear Rose,   I have a small request. (It would be my Christmas present.)  The next time Michelle "the Fridge" Obama is quoted giving her proposals concerning nutrition in general or children's nutrition in particular, could you remind your audience that Mrs. BO holds no elective or appointive office in any level of government, and thus has no more right to have her ideas and proposals taken seriously than any other rich middle-aged spendthrift wife who sends her kids to private schools?   Do you suppose she wants the rest of us to lay off the dainties and treats so that there will be enough for her?   Love the show,   David Williams Hilton, NY