Right Wing News

Today is Q&A Thursday #88 at RWN (It's on Thursday this time, instead of Friday).

So, if there's a subject you've been wanting me to tackle or an issue you want to hear my opinion on, just ask your question in the comments section. Your question can be about just about anything; politics, ideology, history, blogging, RWN, from a liberal, conservative, or libertarian perspective, movies, music, literature, or TV. Then later today, I'll select some of the more interesting questions and answer them.

Ask away!

Question: "Please enlighten me because I'm certainly no expert in these matters. Why is it that people say that the US is the lone superpower in the world? Why isn't China considered a superpower? Is a certain "superpower" criteria that they fail to meet? If they aren't a superpower, then why does everybody tip-toe around China in an effort to keep from upsetting them?" -- The_Muck_Man

Answer: The definition of the term superpower is a bit fuzzy, but there would be multiple reasons why they don't make the cut. The biggest is that they can't project their military power around the world the way we can. For example, they would simply be incapable of pulling off something like the invasion of Iraq.

Furthermore, although China does have a large economy, a large military, and quite a bit of soft power, they're considerably less potent than we are in all those areas. That being said, China is an influential nation and could fairly be called a great power. So, it does make sense to give them a certain amount of deference.

Question: "Do you do any writing other than political blogging? Your pedicure vignette was pretty funny and wonder if you have tried other types of writing like comedy?

And as a segue to that above question do you have a favorite comedian?" --libliever

The Saddam Hussein Fan Club

The RWN Real-Estate Sale

The Persistent Spammer (ICQ Prank)

The BKW Guide to Anti-Americanism

Canadian Man Mildly Offended That America Isn't Threatening To Invade Canada

The Canadian Menace

The Republican's Translation Guide: What Are Democrats Really Saying?

The RWN Idiot Test

If Planned Parenthood Wrote The Next Harry Potter Book...

Question: "What are top five favorite songs of Rev. Wright?" -- D-Vega

Answer: I can't know for sure, but I'm guessing:

3 Days Grace: I hate everything about you.
Smiths: Bigmouth strikes again
The Fray: Over my head
Public Enemy: Fear Of A Black Planet
Gnarls Barkley: Crazy

Bonus song: Eric Clapton: Cocaine -- Oh wait, wait. That song actually goes on the Barack Obama favorite song list, sorry.

To get elected, conservatives have to keep the mainstream media from distorting what they really believe while liberals need the help of the mainstream media to keep the American people from realizing what they really believe.

Question: "Mercilessly stolen from the previous such thread: what are some movies you hate but are ashamed to admit?

I'll start. The Godfather. All three. This happens, then that happens, then s**t happens, then some people die, and some quotable lines are said. These are supposed to be some of the best movies ever?" -- smelvertising

Answer: I was lukewarm on the Star Wars movies when they came out and now, they just seem really dated and tired. In fact, out of all 6 movies, the only one I'd barely give a thumbs up to today would be Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which unleashed that monstrosity Jar Jar Blinks upon the world.

Moreover, people are going to really disagree with this, but I just didn't like the characters all that much. Admittedly, Han Solo and Darth Vader are pretty cool, but...

Luke: Boring
Obi-Wan: Even more boring
Leia: Irritating
Chewbacca: Sasquatch
Yoda: He can master the force, but not sentence structure
C-3PO: Effeminate
R2D2: He's a chirping robot for God's sake
Ewoks and Jar Jar: included just to sell toys

Then there's the fact that the Jedis are this strange, arrogant, super powered quasi-religious order -- these were just not movies that strongly appealed to me.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Ann Coulter: Obama campaign gives up on finding 'Mr. Wright'

Cracked: 6 things you didn't know you could get addicted to

S. Weasel: A fantastic Obama/Wright photoshop

Telegraph: Top ten greatest experiments

UseMyComputer: Jessica Biel bikini pics from GQ

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Question: Suppose you were elected Temporary Supreme Dictator of America.

What are 10 laws you would pass/repeal or government programs you would create/tear down? (Assume that you are in office for however long it would take to do these five things and that any changes you make will remain in place after you leave office.)

My 10:

1. Abolish the federal income tax and replace it with a Fair Tax.

2. Pass a Constitutional Amendment that invalidates Roe v. Wade and puts control over abortion firmly in the hands of the state governments.

3. Either aggressively reform the Congressional election system to weed out gerrymandering as much as possible, or implement Congressional term limits.

4. Abolish all forms of federal welfare (and I include Medicare/Medicaid in the definition of welfare) except perhaps veteran's benefits.

5. Balanced Budget Amendment.

6. Pass a Constitutional Amendment requiring all state/local governments to implement a school voucher system.

7. Abolish the very concept of "hate-crime laws" and pass an Amendment making them utterly illegal nation-wide.

8. Pass an Amendment that (A) requires all states and US territories to adopt shall-issue concealed carry laws, (B) prohibiting any state or US territory from outlawing any "type" of firearm (that means no more assault weapon or handgun bans, libs), and (C) revokes all "duty to retreat" laws in the United States.

9. Pass an Amendment that greatly diminishes the power of the judicial branch to prevent them from judicial reviewing us into a socialist hellhole.

10. Rewrite the 10th Amendment to say "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people, and Jesus Christ we mean it this time!" -- B_Hussein_Obama

Answer: I can do this in 4 changes, no problem!

#1) Change the Constitution to just include an executive branch with a lifetime appointment to the job for the person currently holding the position.

#2) Abandon the White House and have a 20 billion dollar lair built inside of Mt. Rushmore.

#3) Spend half the budget working on a way to transfer brains from one body to another cloned body so that the people will never have to be without their Dear Leader!

#4) Laugh evilly -- like so; Bwahahahahahaahahahah!

Ok, let's do some real answers. I am going to keep this short, sweet, and pull all of these off the top of my head, rapid fire style...

#1) Some form of Balanced Budget Amendment.

#2) Replace the tax system with some sort of a flat tax, sales tax, or the fair tax.

#3) Require a 2/3 majority to raise taxes.

#4) Term limits for Congress. Two 6 year terms for Senators and four 2 year terms for members of the House.

#5) A federal marriage amendment to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.

#6) Declaring that a fetus is a human being and defining life as beginning at conception.

#7) Create a loser-pays legal system.

#8) Switching our school system over to a voucher system, nation wide.

#9) Preventing anyone caught in the United States illegally from ever becoming citizens, participating in a guest worker program, or even visiting the US again. The same bill would put an end to birthright citizenship for the children of non-American citizens born on American soil.

#10) A health care package that would include: tort reform, streamlining the regulations that make bringing a new drug to market so slow and expensive, health care savings accounts, giving tax credits for health care to individuals instead of companies so you don't lose your health care when you lose your job, and allowing health insurance companies from anywhere in America to compete for business in any state.

Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Cassy Fiano

Sister Toldjah

David All

Rachel Lucas

Karol Sheinin

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Political Radar: The top 10 surprising facts about Barack Obama

Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Men need to butch up again

Cracked: 25 rejected ideas from Grand Theft Auto IV

Egotastic!: Jennifer Anniston bikini pics

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

A couple of days ago, I had the misfortune of being on a BBC radio show with an American college professor who sounded like he had read one too many Noam Chomsky books.

Let me give you a short impression of the guy: "Blah, blah, blah, racists! Blah, blah, blah, of course Jeremiah Wright was right when he said...blah, blah, blah. No wonder people are angry at America!"

Not to disagree with Professor Crabby McCommiePuss, but there is no nation in the world that has more to be proud of and less to apologize for than the United States of America.

Of course, the standard liberal reply to that usually goes something like this: "So, you're saying 'we're perfect,' huh? Well, what about slavery and the Indians and dropping A-bombs in WWII and the other 497 things on my 'What I Hate About America' list?"

What about them?

Men have been enslaving other men for thousands of years. It's nothing new. What was new was a nation so disgusted by the practice that they fought a Civil War to put an end to it.

But, what about the Indians? Sure, we took their land and treated them brutally. However, my friend, that's just the history of the world. There probably is not a square yard of earth on the map that wasn't taken by force from one group of people by another group at one time or another.

As to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, given the fanatical tenacity with which the Japanese had been holding on, we probably saved hundreds of thousands of civilian lives by dropping those bombs rather than invading the mainland. Much more importantly, we saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers who had risked their lives to protect their country and free the world from the Nazi/Japanese vision of the future, which was as George Orwell described it, a "boot stamping on a human face - forever."

We could go on and on with these "The glass is half full! No, it isn't, it's half empty" examples, but why should we do that when we can consider all the good America has done in the world during it's historically short reign as a super power.

We've saved the free world from tyranny in the 20th century not once (WWI), not twice (WWII), but three times (the Cold War). We've done more to promote capitalism and democracy than any other 20 nations combined. We've gone to the moon, we've fed the world, and we've fought more tyrants, terrorists, and thugs than any comic book super-hero. Speaking of comic book super heroes, American gets the same sort of "Daily Bugle" treatment that Spider-Man did in the comics and the movies. We shed our blood and treasure by the bucket load to do good and the headlines in the paper read, "Out-of-Control Menace Terrorizes Populace!"

Probably the best example of this is the topsy-turvy world interpretation of the events that led up to 9/11. It goes all the way back to when the Soviets waged a war of conquest on Afghanistan. Of course, when the bad guys are kicking in your door, who ya gonna call? The United States, of course -- and we delivered. We gave billions of dollars' worth of aid and weaponry to the Mujahideen, which they used to drive the Soviets out of their country. Then, a little later on, when the Afghan people were starving, which country was supplying most of their food even though we weren't particularly friendly with their government or their pals Al-Qaeda? That's right, the United States. Sure, we could have pointed to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and said, "Afghanistan isn't friendly to us, so let them starve," but we didn't do that because we're a compassionate people. Then, the terrorists based in Afghanistan pull off 9/11 and what's the liberal/European reaction? "The chickens have come home to roost" or alternately, some variation of Amos Brown's comments,

"America, America. What did you do--either intentionally or unintentionally--in the world order, in Central America, in Africa where bombs are still blasting? America, what did you do in the global warming conference when you did not embrace the smaller nations? America, what did you do two weeks ago when I stood at the world conference on racism, when you wouldn't show up? Oh, America, what did you do?"

What did America do? America helped Afghanistan drive out the Soviet Union, we fed them; then they repaid the favor by bombing the WTC and Pentagon. After that, instead of walking in there and killing everything that moved, we responded by getting rid of the tyrants that ran their country, giving them billions in aid and installing a democracy which has been defended with the lives of American soldiers. Moreover, this is not an aberration; it's typical of American behavior since the start of the 20th century.

But, instead of thanks, we get grumbling, complaining, and snark not just from people who live in nations that are only free and prosperous because of our help, but from people who've managed to make wonderful lives for themselves in this country.

Yes, we live in a country where celebrities who've become rich and famous sneer at the country that gave them that opportunity, where college professors teach their students that the country that's given them an opportunity to get an education is evil, and where small patriotic gestures like saying the Pledge of Allegiance or wearing a flag pin are considered anathema by many people on the Left.

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm sick of it. As far as I'm concerned, America, along with capitalism and Christianity has been one of the greatest forces for good the world has seen in centuries. Moreover, Americans have no need to apologize because our ancestors did something we sneer at today in the civilized nation they helped bring about -- because we're prosperous or because some snobbish liberal or foreigner doesn't like us.

Quite frankly, if you think America is a terrible country or isn't an incredible force for good in the world, you're either stupid, ignorant, hoodwinked, blinded, crazy -- or liberal, which all too often turns out to be a combination of all five of those characteristics.

Who wants to hear someone bitch about his (or her) life? No one except a highly compensated professional who is getting something out of the exchange. Otherwise, after a certain point, no one gives a flip about your sad sack life. Everyone has his story. Everyone has one.

That is not to say that past grievances don't affect the present. They do. Our traumas and experiences shape who we are today, but they don't have to define who we are or who we become in a bad way. That is to say, just because someone wronged us, we are not excused for holding on to our victim status and victimizing others. We choose now how life goes.

Oh, wah! Yesterday, I ruffled some men feathers when I suggested that men need to toughen up, "butch" up, man up. However you want to say it. I like real men. I am all for men being men. And I am all for women letting men be men and not diminishing them for their manliness. How in Sam Hill did my post get turned into some paean to turning back the clock to another generation when men were men and "women knew their place"? The post wasn't about money. It wasn't about women going back to the kitchen. It wasn't about men being aggressive, abusive assholes and that's what makes a man. It wasn't about women being subservient haus fraus cranking out fifteen kids to prove their feminine worth. What the post was about is simply that I wondered if an unintended consequence of women in the work world was that men felt that their worth was diminished. I was posing a question, not saying that I believed that. And I do feel that men need to take pride in their career (and if, DJ, the career is staying home and caring for the kids and running the house, so be it). Have some self-respect, is all.

And let me make this plain: I recognize that women, and the feminist movement in particular, has made men wrong. From elementary school through to adult life, men are treated like stupid children. The aggressive, kick-butt nature of a man is diminished and mocked in our society. I don't watch sitcoms for that reason. They are frigging insulting to both men and women. But the men are made to look like utter fools. It's disrespectful.

Now, today, I was going to do a post going after the women who diminish men and feel entirely justified in doing so, but I think this issue transcends gender. These days, men and women, black and white, straight and gay, rich and poor seem to want to take on the mantle of victim status. So taking on the role of victim, the male commenters believe they would have great lives, if they weren't ruined by the evil woman. Here's the thing: It might well be true, but what purpose is served by becoming a cynical jackass who feels entitled to treat the next woman like all women are horrible. The complaining men don't realize they're proving my point about men needing to man up.

The Jeremiah Wright debacle has scraped the same victimhood scab off race relations. It is not enough now to have equal rights. Blacks are better. And yet, like the feminists, the preachers of hate, encourage the continued victim status while simultaneously aggrandizing themselves because being black or possessing ovaries is innately better.

And this is the point that GayPatriot was making and I agree:

Let me get this straight (excuse the insulting word, by the way). Gay activists are up in arms because NC Governor Mike Easley used the word "pansy."

Well, God help us all. If Gay Americans don't learn to get a tougher skin…their heads are going to be lopped off even easier than straight Americans when the Islamists are in power in Western Europe.

For all of the wailing from the Left over their claimed "non-issues" like flag-burning, wearing the flag on your chest, and supporting the troops -- Pansygate makes the Gay Left look even more ridiculous and irrelevant than ever.

If Gay American activists were constantly up in arms about the worldwide threat to our community by an organized group of murderous Islamists, I might have more sympathy to those "completely offended" by Gov. Easley's "pansy".

I am not. Grow up, and get over the victimization mentality, folks.

The victim is perpetually above criticism, reproof, comment. The victim deserves to be coddled, cared for and supported. The victim is at the helpless whims of the big evil bogeyman, bogeywoman, bogey society, bogey government. But the most important thing of all: the victim cannot possibly be expected to change or take charge of his or her own life. And by claiming and maintaining victimhood, the person is safe. His or her life will never change. How can it? The only person who can make a person's life better is himself. When he (or she) gives the power away to other people, the other gender, the government, etc. he gets the satisfaction of being able to blame ad infinutum someone else. That's some hollow satisfaction.

The sick thing is, I'm afraid way to0 many American citizens are more interested in externalizing the responsibility and being able to blame and being a victim than are interesting in seeing themselves as powerful and agents for change in their own lives. It's pathetic. And it's un-American.

Where is that independent, conquering spirit? Where is that noble virtue? Where is that common decency? THAT is the American way. This philosophy plays out personally. Damn skippy that the personal is the political. There are still many, many strong-minded, hard-working, independent Americans who embrace the freedom and the responsibility that comes with it to make their lives look the way they want them.

A nation of victims won't last long. And while wimpy Americans fuss and fight over their skin color, gonads and victim status, they ignore a true existential crisis. Maybe I shouldn't have said we need to "man up", maybe I should have kept it more general: We need to American up.

Cross-posted at Dr. Melissa Clouthier.

My post yesterday about how men need to man up ruffled a lot of feathers -- as I knew it would. But it wasn't the whiny liberals complaining this time around. Here, at Wizbang, and on Melissa's blog, the same theme was repeated over and over again: what are women doing to deserve real men?

And you know, it's a good question. Right now, for most women, the answer would be NOTHING.

As much as men may be missing out on what it means to be a real man, women have this problem a hundredfold worse. The state of women today is alarming, and a significant portion of the blame can be laid at the feet of modern feminism. Many women are walking stereotypes and hypocrites. They want a real man, a strong man, to take care of them -- but if he does, he's holding her down. They want to be strong, successful, and as respected in the boardroom as the male CEOs are -- yet they want special treatment to get there. They want to be lauded for their ability to birth children and for their mothering instincts -- but they don't want to be tied down at home, doing "all the work". They want their husband or boyfriend to respect them and make them feel appreciated -- but do nothing to make him feel loved, respected, and appreciated. They talk about being "empowered" -- yet still cry that women are victims.

They're walking, talking contradictions.

Here are some of the comments I got, and Melissa got, on this subject that resonated with me.

anonymous:

Manliness is really the willingness to sacrifice self for the benefit of others, particularly a man's children, wife, family, neighbors and country.

Most young men are willing to die for the respect, admiration and love of a worthy and chaste woman. The problem is that interaction with most women today leads them quickly to the conclusion that few women are worth dying for.

Some will question the need for chastity as a requirement. However, from the male perspective, sex is the greatest compliment that a woman can pay to a man. A woman who sleeps around devalues the compliment.

I am lucky that I found such a woman. As a result, my goals in life in order of priority are fairly simple: (1) provide for my children until they graduate from college, (2) provide for my wife for the rest of her life, (3)provide for myself for the rest of my life, (4) serve my community, and (5) spend as much time with her as I can enjoying life.

MB:

Doctor Melissa, what exactly do you bring to the table as consideration for the man acting according to your precise specifications (and also apparently earning all the money)?

Your vagina?

What if the man doesn't think you're worth it, does he still have to act within your precisely defined parameters?

What a spoiled, entitled brat.

lordsomber:

Re DuToit's rant, I wonder if there's a corresponding rant by a woman criticizing the lack of real women nowadays? Cos as much as guys *do* need to 'man up,' I see plenty of women who need to grow up as well. (Present company excluded, of course.)

Aries:

Gosh, little women really think SHAMING men still works? That stopped a while ago. Scream "Man-Up" from your OWN apartment. Men have seen women in action. Whiners, complainers, misandric and endlessly focused on themselves only. Women threw men away. They're just upset that men realized how much happier they were keeping their pitiful, abusives asses to themselves. Womens Groups lobbied for laws which destroyed the Nuclear Family/Marriage. I'm happy to let women sleep in the bed they made. I'm not lifting a damn finger. Women got us in this mess. When it gets bad enough they'll fight the feminist/the source of their problems. Then MEN will show up, Not before. I'm not fighting battles for women who never cared before. Its the chivalrous nature of men which allowed this to get this far. NO LONGER OUR PROBLEM! Women have built up a lot of contempt in men and they dont know how to put the ink back in the bottle. Oh well!

So SHAME AWAY. We no longer care. Your fault! You fix the problem!!! Men are now HAPPY. We adjust. Wwwhhhiinnnne away!

DJ Drummond:
The real men never left. The women stopped noticing us.

Sean:

What? The bed's been made and now you don't want to sleep in it? Please try to understand. If guys need to "man up", how is that going to happen, because a woman tells them to? T'aint likely. Y'all wanted abortion on demand(kill the children) the pill (sex means nothing) any job a man does (just tweak the standards a little, okay?) sevice acadamies (uh, coporal Sledge raped me) and pretty much anything and everything else. Ok, you got it. Now you want us to act more like men used to, even if it's a whole new ball game. It ain't that men don't want to BE men anymore, it's just that it doesn't MEAN anything anymore, and we just quit giving a shit. And maybe, just maybe, if women didn't behave and look like whores, drink like a Templar, and talk like a sailor, there might be a point to having respect for them. But this is what women wanted, to be more like men, so welcome to club, and when you dilute the standards and race for the bottom, don't be shocked when you wake up in the gutter. I never stopped being a man, and I never needed some woman to tell me how to do it.You got questions? You don't know what happened? You want things to change for the better? Go look in the mirror. I got things to do, I'm a busy man.

While men are more and more emasculated in our society, there's no argument against the fact that it is because of women. Women insisted that men change. Women insisted that they show their emotions more and be less stoic; they insisted that men let themselves be more vulnerable. They try to train boys from infancy to be more feminine so that women can be more masculine.

And now what do we have? "Strong" women with an entitlement attitude and a victim mentality, while men meekly let themselves be walked all over, disrespected, and parodied left and right? Is this how anyone wants it to be?

While men have become emasculated sissy boys, women have become selfish, whiny bitches.

I think anonymous' comment summed it up the best, particularly this part:

Most young men are willing to die for the respect, admiration and love of a worthy and chaste woman. The problem is that interaction with most women today leads them quickly to the conclusion that few women are worth dying for.

So what makes a women worthy of a real man? What does she need to do? I think a large part of the problem deals with the fact that too many women have zero respect and/or appreciation for the men in their lives and the sacrifices that they (the man) are making for them (the woman). How many TV shows today show a smart, strong father figure with a smart, strong wife? When I think of an ideal relationship, that's what I envision. I don't think a real man would ever want some meek, beta female to do everything he wanted. I think he would want a real woman, someone who was his equal, who he could not only love and cherish, but respect and admire.

Anyways, the point was that you can often look to television and pop culture to see what the prevailing attitude of the day is. And too often you see a stupid, lazy husband who's probably not very good-looking and overweight, with a beautiful, brilliant wife who is clearly above him and doesn't appreciate him in the least. He does a lot of smiling meekly and saying, "Yes, dear", while she castigates him in front of her girlfriends.

Why should this guy bother being a better man for her, when she so obviously has no respect for him.

Women today were raised being told that they could have everything. You can have the high-powered career with a six-figure salary, a great husband, two adorable kids, and the house with the white picket fence. No one ever told them that this bears zero resemblance to reality. Therefore, too many women are never satisfied. Nothing their man does is ever good enough; they're never happy in their job; they're always disappointed. They couldn't open their eyes and appreciate what's in front of them if their lives depended on it. Well, that's bad (duh). You couple that with a lack of willingness to make sacrifices (because these kinds of women expect everything handed to them on a silver platter), and you have big trouble.

They expect their man to waste his entire life sacrificing to make her happy, yet she is unwilling to even lift a finger to help, or even acknowledge the sacrifice he's making -- for her. Because in her mind, she deserves all these things anyways, so it's automatically expected. It's not her man going above and beyond to prove his love for her, to provide for her -- it's him doing what's expected of him. The entitlement attitude rears its ugly head, and leaves her disappointed and him bitter.

And then you have to add in the masculinization of women. Feminism seems to view equality as "being exactly like a man". It doesn't allow for the fact that men and women are, indeed, different. So in order for women to be equal, they have to act just like men do -- drink like men, sleep around like men, cuss like men, etc. And while I'm sure it's momentarily thrilling, I somehow doubt that any man wants the drunk chick he saw making out with another girl at a party in the middle of a circle of cheering guys as the mother of his children, as someone he can respect. How is a man supposed to respect a woman who he knows has slept with a hundred different men without blinking an eye? With the advent of abortion on demand, birth control, and feminists cheering slutty behavior on, women have been "liberated" to... sleep around? And this strengthens and empowers women... how?

So what do we have? We have women who expect the world to be given to them, and when it isn't, demand special treatment and affirmative action to get it. They want a man who will do everything she asks of him and more, without ever showing appreciation or gratitude for him. They want to act like men, but be treated like women. They want everything, but are unwilling to do what it takes to get it.

They spent twenty years emasculating men, and eventually realized that it isn't what they want at all. And when they figured out that they wanted real men, many of them had disappeared or weren't interested.

Women need to take a step back -- a big step -- and do a lot of introspection. While yes, this is America, you can't have everything. You can accomplish anything you want, but it always comes with a price. And if women want a real man, then they're going to have to find it in themselves to be able to respect him, to appreciate all he does, and to work as hard as he does at their life, whether inside or outside of the home. I think most men are willing to do just about anything for their wives, if they knew that she was grateful and appreciative. Is it too much to ask to take our egos down a few pegs?

If women want real men to re-emerge, then they need to make themselves worthy of them.

You can read more from Cassy at her blog. She also writes at Wizbang.

The latest:

----- Maybe Rev. Wright won't hurt him as much here after all: new Zogby poll numbers are showing BO with a 16 point advantage over Hillary Clinton just four days before the NC primary. That same poll shows a tie in Indiana. However ...

------ A TeleResearch Corp. poll has Hillary up by 10 poins over Obama in IN. I think she'll win in IN, but I don't think it will be a decisive one like OH and PA. However, it will help her in the popular vote count argument, which she'll use with the superdelegates when push comes to shove.

----- And while on the subject of the Indiana primary, the Indianapolis Star has endorsed La Clinton.

----- Tom Maguire has the details of a former Joe Biden campaign office manager turned Barack Obama supporter who asked John McCain at a townhall meeting yesterday in Des Moines, IA whether it was true he called his wife the "c" word back in 1992. An excited HuffPo has the video. Nothing like returning to the "issues" after that awful ABC News Clinton v. Obama debate, eh? Jules Crittenden weighs on this story here.

----- The Politico reports this morning that the Nutroots are outraged that the "nation's top Democrats" have suddenly decided to appear on Fox News again. Don't these clueless wonders realize that in the end, the desire to appeal to every last voter you can trumps "principle"?

----- Also from The Politico: Even though the Clinton and Obama are raising record numbers of campaign cash, the DNC itself hasn't been so lucky:

In an election year marked by jaw-dropping Democratic fundraising, one key political player isn't so flush: The Democratic National Committee.

Despite record hauls by Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, the DNC has raised less than half the amount taken in by the Republican National Committee.

Glad to hear it, but I wonder how much of this we'll read/hear about in mainstream media outlets like the NYT, WaPo, etc?

----- Today's must-read: Charles Krauthammer revisits Obama's Philadelphia speech on race.

----- The AP has a cool story up about a Republican blogger in Minnesota who has been following closely the candidacy of Democrat candidate for Senate Al Franken. The blogger, Michael Brodkorb, is responsible for getting the word out about Franken's recently discovered "bookkeeping problems," which led to Franken having to pay some $70K in back taxes and penalties. Ah, the power of citizen journalism ...

----- Here are dueling opinons on McCain's just-released healthcare plan: Conservative Senator Jim DeMint (SC) writes that McCain's plan gives "power to the people", but the National Journal's Clive Cook sees big problems with it. I report, you decide.

Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog.

Last month, I wrote about a group of unhinged peace thugs who attacked an Iraq war veteran, his wife, and his fourteen-year-old son, the Swartout family. The video of the attack is now released.

Brace yourself. It's not easy viewing. The attack happens near the end, and you'll see four of the peace thugs jump onto Carrie Swartout, hitting and kicking her. She ultimately suffered a concussion from a kick to the head. You'll see the peace thugs are the ones who pushed the conflict, who escalated the tension, who resorted to physical violence. It's disturbing.

The leader of the unhinged peace thugs seems to be the girl in the white dress and boots -- keep an eye on her.

More video at Erietube.

How is it that no arrests were made? This video makes it pretty clear that an assault had taken place.

This family did nothing to provoke this kind of attack. As they pointed out to the irate peace thugs over and over again, both groups were in a public place. The only unhinged and out-of-control people there were the peace thugs.

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

You can read more from Cassy at her blog. She also writes at Wizbang.

Rather notably, the de facto general of the conservative movement's 2008 battle strategy, Rush Limbaugh, called for a one day operational pause in Operation Chaos, his plan to make the Democratic slugfest between Obama and Clinton as long and as bloody as possible.

Why the operational pause? Limbaugh said it was because of damage that Jeremiah Wright's jeremiads and the aftermath had done to Barack Obama's campaign,

My first gut reaction, my instinct, in listening to the audio sound bites of Obama today throwing Jeremiah Wright off the planet, he didn't throw him under the bus, he put him in the space shuttle and he sent him to the space station so he can pal around with the Russians that are up there. Then I watched during the bottom-of-the-hour break here, I decided to watch the Drive-By Media coverage of this, because it became obvious to me -- see, I read the stitches on the fastball; I can read between the lines, and I know that most of the Drive-Bys are in the tank for Obama.

What I think I saw an indication of, I watched Chris Matthews and Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, discussing this, and Matthews was full of praise, and he accepted every theme Obama brought up, and he said Obama was dead right. "Why do we have to have this preacher inserting himself in the presidential campaign for the last three days? Obama rightly said he's not talking to him any more, may talk to him later, but Obama was dead right on, on this." Matthews is missing the whole point. Obama coulda done this in church the first time he heard the guy. We all now with common sense realize here that Obama did this out of political expediency today to save a dwindling and plunging campaign.

[Thanks John for letting me guest post at RWN, now on with the show...]

On Tuesday, I was one of the many bloggers and members of the media on a conference call with two of Team McCain's top advisers, senior policy advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. (Unrelated to health care but you can click here to see my video interview with Carly a few weeks ago.)

A thorough overview of McCain's health care plan can be viewed by clicking here.

As a single male at the age of 29 with little real need for health care, as a technology enthusiast and a small businessman, two particular nuggets jumped out at me worth fleshing out. I'll also note by way of disclosure that one of my clients operates in the health care space so I understand the issue from all sides.

Use of Technology to Provide Better Health Care

The first item of interest is that one of the pillars of McCain's health care plan is the smarter embrace of technology to help provide more helpful information to consumers. As a free-market health care enthusiast, this makes perfect sense.

As Carly noted on Tuesday, our doctors should be posting their prices, rates, and customer ratings on the Internet. After all, as someone who seldom uses health care but pays for it through my HSA (Health Savings Account), I'm interested in finding the best quality of health care for the lowest price. That's just commonsense.

But naturally, I wanted to dig in more on this point about how technology could add value to our health care delivery system.

In an exclusive follow-up interview today with Carly, I asked her to elaborate:

"One of the things that McCain will push for is to use technology to require hospitals and doctors to post prices, results, and what I'll call ‘customer feedback' on the Internet.

"In full spirit of disclosure, I serve on the Board for Revolution Health.

"Rating services already exist today that effectively rate health care providers and doctors. But what doesn't exist is the requirement to do it.

"People deserve to see how health care providers perform with regard to effectiveness and efficiency. Health care providers need to treat patients like customers."

Treating patients like customers – novel idea.

I followed-up with Carly and asked her what, if any, opposition she expects to see from McCain's requirement:

"Opposition? Absolutely. But it takes someone with strong leadership and the will to do this. People have been talking about changing health care for a long time but there hasn't been the leadership to actually do it.

"Look, anytime you try and change something there are a host of vested interests that rise up to keep the status quo. Some health care providers will resist. They will resist because they may feel like they will not stack up well. They will resist because customers will become more demanding. But, that's the point of doing this – giving patients more information to make informed decisions and the ability to choose.

"Health care is priced by procedure/test so the more you have the more it costs. It's one of the reasons why McCain would push for tort reform. It is also why he'd begin to focus on the outcomes of treatment. For example, if a diabetic patient goes in for treatment, you'd look at the outcome of the treatment a year or so later. That effect is what would be paid for."

Regarding opposition to transparency and openness in health care, I don't think McCain will meet it with Docs. In fact, the American Medical Association has already started moving forward on this issue by implementing efforts "to enhancing quality of care and patient safety by taking the lead in the development, testing, and maintenance of evidence-based clinical performance measures and measurement resources for physicians."

As free-marketers, we should continue to encourage both John McCain and the health care community to better embrace the Internet to give us as much information as possible.

Indeed, John McCain may be a few years wiser than me, but he (and the team he surrounds himself with) clearly understand the importance of utilizing the Internet to help facilitate choice for consumers with regard to their health care. Wise indeed.

Farewell Employer-Sponsored Health Care?

The other item which jumped out at me is the proposed transition away from the system which allows employers to provide health care benefits for their employees tax-free to a system that offers employees a $5,000 per family tax break to pay for the family's health care (independent of the employer).

On the conference call, both Carly and Doug responded to multiple questions about this point by noting that employers will continue to provide health care benefits because it's a benefit that's attractive to a skilled workforce. They continued by saying that the goal of this transition is the need to expand health care beyond the employer-based system.

But from where I sit as a small businessman and an employer who pays 100% of my employees' health care benefits, this raised my eyebrows. As they were talking about it, I thought to myself whether or not I'd continue to provide health care benefits for my employees.

In a recent study released by the non-partisan Commonwealth Fund which took on the task of dissecting the health care proposals offered by all of the candidates (including some of those who are no longer in the race), on this point regarding the future of employer-sponsored health care under McCain's plan (and other Republicans) it found:

Most of the Republican candidates have proposed eliminating or changing this special tax treatment and replacing it with a new standard income tax deduction that would apply to anyone with private insurance, either employer-based or individual market. This change has the potential to weaken the incentive of some employers, particularly small employers, to continue providing health coverage to their employees if they knew their employees could gain an equivalent tax deduction if they purchased coverage in the individual market. The Republican candidates have not addressed how they would replace any lost employer financing.

So as a small business owner who intends to grow and hire more employees in the immediate future, how does this affect my decision to continue providing health care coverage to my employees?

I asked Carly today how McCain's plan would keep me in the system of providing benefits to my employees and she said:

"Employers can continue to offer health care to their employees. And if they do so they will continue to receive a tax-credit. But the individual will have the choice. Either the employer can provide the health care benefit and get the tax benefit or the individual can decide to not opt-in to health care coverage and would benefit from the tax credit. Similarly, John McCain proposed a Flat Tax system where he said there will be a choice – we will leave the current system in place or an individual can opt-in to the new system."

While I generally support every other bullet point on McCain's health care plan (especially over the government-run health care proposals offered by the liberals) I still have questions about the above point.

I'm all for choice – who isn't? But critics of this point in McCain's plan point out that while employers would still receive a tax-incentive to provide health care benefits, the employee (who often pays the other 50% or so of the premium) would not receive a tax benefit UNLESS they leave the employer-based system.

This could be troubling and could jeopardize the employer-based system.

I sent my contact with Carly a follow-up note and they said, "McCain's plan puts power and choice in the hands of the employee. The employee can evaluate and make their choice based on their needs."

Sadly, this doesn't really answer the question. We'll have to continue to look into this point.

Perhaps there are others in the small business community, like me, who have similar concerns? Weigh in on the comments of this thread let us know what you think.

David All is the co-founder of Slatecard.com, a Republican counter to ActBlue which was called a "Facebook for Republican campaign donors" by Wired, is the founder of TechRepublican.com and is the President of the David All Group.

**Sharpton Announces Plan To Shut Down NYC To Protest Court Decision. If Al Sharpton's not outraged, you're not paying attention.

**For Europe's Middle-Class, Stagnant Wages Stunt Lifestyle. I keep hearing how the dollar is tanking and the Euro is so strong, and yet I don't see stories about the American middle class being unable to afford bread.

**On YOUR Dime: Congressmen Lease Luxury Cars. Congressman Rangel thinks his constituents are in favor of his driving a Cadillac paid for by them. Sure, a place where the median income is $18,642 completely understands, nay encourages, their Congressman to spend more than half that, per year, for his car.

**Andrew Sullivan's Constant Double Standard. Andrew Sullivan criticizes Hillary for her choice of beverage, then gets mad when Obama is criticized for his.

Al Sharpton is mad, Europeans are poor, Congressmen overspend your money and Andrew Sullivan is hypocritical in his agitation for his candidate of choice. It's almost comforting how everything stays just the same.

--
Karol Sheinin blogs political at Alarming News, blogs poker at I Had Outs and keeps a calendar of right-leaning events happening in New York at Right Events.

Here's the Right Wing News guest blogger line-up this week-end.

Saturday
--------
Cassy Fiano
Kathy Shaidle Five Feet Of Fury
Gina Cobb
John Stephenson from Stop The ACLU

Sunday
-------
Ron Coleman from Likelihood of Success
Sister Toldjah
William Teach from Pirate's Cove
Michael Illions from Polipundit
MCQ from QandO
Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Make sure to give all of them a warm welcome and check out their blogs!

"In my five weeks of absence from this space, I was saddened to learn that the assault on free speech and press in Canada has been escalated. In addition to the very ugly cases that have been brought before various so-called 'human rights commissions,' to silence such 'politically incorrect' Canadian writers as Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn, frivolous lawsuits have now been brought against several prominent journalists and bloggers for their efforts in exposing how the human rights commissions work, and for their audacity in mocking ludicrous behaviour by members of the HRC's 'Anti-Hate Teams.'

(...)

"I have been referring only to headline cases -- those of which the better-informed general public will be aware, already. But many others are currently defending themselves against Kafkaesque prosecutions that require them to raise far more money for lawyers and other legal expenses than they could ever afford, against plaintiffs whose costs are paid by the taxpayer.

"The notion that 'freedom of speech is an American concept' -- I am quoting Dean Steacy, principal 'mediator' (i.e. thought-crime investigator) for the Canadian Human Rights Commission -- is proving sadly true in the limited sense that most of the money donated to the various legal defence funds has come, via Internet, from outraged citizens of the U.S...."

(And for that, we thank you all again! Kathy Shaidle blogs, rants and gets her butt sued off at FiveFeetOfFury.com)

Is Barack Obama trying to lay low and run out the clock? Carl Leubsdorf at RealClearPolitics:

Barack Obama looks like the quarterback of a football team intent on running out the clock to preserve its lead in a championship game.

By spurning future debates, he seeks to prevent giving rival Hillary Clinton a way to change the course of the game. He is playing it safe to avoid a mistake that could erase the small but firm margin he built through the first three quarters.

As football fans can attest, that's often risky strategy. It has left him on the defensive, trying to contain the recurring flap over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and fend off rivals' attempts to make political hay over high gasoline prices.

It also makes Mr. Obama look as if he's trying to avoid an opponent's tough criticism. But he agreed to a one-hour interview Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that should enable him to answer those questions without giving Mrs. Clinton a chance to benefit.

Mr. Obama counts on the fact that, all things being equal, his lead in the Democratic presidential primary will hold up and he will win most of the main group still up for grabs, the nearly 300 undecided superdelegates. And there are good reasons to believe this will happen:

•Senior Democrats are reluctant to deny the nomination of the first African-American candidate with a serious chance of being elected president, in a party whose most loyal voters are African-Americans. To do that, barring a major misstep or sign of electoral weakness, could hurt turnout among black and younger voters.

Though race is clearly an issue, Mr. Obama has run not as a black candidate – but as a candidate who just happens to be black. Besides dominating support from African-American primary voters, he has shown considerable crossover appeal to whites.

His sharp response Tuesday to the latest inflammatory comments from his former pastor, Dr. Wright, was a bid to maintain that balance.

•Despite the Clintons' prominence, it's a mistake to assume that the Democratic Party is a "Clinton party." Many Democratic office-holders blame them for the party's election losses during Bill Clinton's presidency. They view his return – as his wife's main surrogate, strategist and adviser – with distinctly mixed feelings.

•Mr. Obama almost certainly will end the primary campaign with the most pledged delegates. He also is likely to have the most popular votes, though those totals from the Democrats' mixed primary and caucus system are not as precise a measure of strength.

And while Mr. Obama has lost most large states, party leaders believe that any Democrat would be favored in most of them in the fall. Besides, they believe that his strength in so-called purple states – Colorado, Iowa and Virginia, for instance – shows he can broaden the party's base.

Still, playing it safe carries risk.

In energy, drive and adeptness on the issues, Mr. Obama is being out-campaigned. Mrs. Clinton's enthusiasm and aggressive stances are reflected in her support from late-deciders in recent primaries. That could pose another problem for Mr. Obama in Indiana's closely fought primary Tuesday.

Outwardly similar to Ohio and Pennsylvania – where she scored recent notable wins – Indiana's electorate is younger and less Catholic and includes Republicans and independents. A Clinton win there would be a further warning sign about Mr. Obama's appeal beyond his base of liberals and minorities.

In this circumstance, Mrs. Clinton's requests for debates in Indiana and North Carolina may find a receptive audience. While most pundits suggest that the public is sick of debates and believes the issues have been discussed thoroughly, that makes the mistake of viewing this more as a six-month national campaign than a series of one- or two-week races.

What do you think? Is Obama just biding time now? Will it work? And will Rev. Jeremiah Wright throw more sand in the wheels for Obama? Discuss among yourselves.

Its a first for the organization, and some fear it will damage their already scarred reputation in South Carolina. The question that lingers over their heads....were they singled out because of their criticism of the national organization?

"I believe this will truly be harmful to the A.C.L.U. and how it is perceived in the state by both our friends and our enemies," Mr. Caesar said.

The South Carolina affiliate has been troubled for the last decade, struggling financially, unable to find and retain an executive director, and overseen by a fractious board. Its last executive director embezzled from it. It has relied heavily on financial support from the national organization and has had little to show for its efforts until recently.

Those problems are not unique to the South Carolina affiliate, however, and Mr. Caesar and others contended that it was singled out for its criticism of the national organization. Its representative on the national board, David F. Kennison, had tangled with Anthony D. Romero, the national organization's executive director, and the South Carolina affiliate was the only A.C.L.U. affiliate to sign onto a Web site, created in September 2006, that criticized the national group's leadership.

After the South Carolina affiliate signed onto the site, the national office sought an agreement to place it under voluntary national supervision. The A.C.L.U. later moved to put the affiliate under receivership.

I will assume that the website they signed onto was Save the ACLU. What does this website criticize the ACLU for? Stiffling free speech, and the destruction of the ACLU from within via hypocrisy. They want to save the organization from itself.

Here is a list of their complaints.

1. Failure to disclose and comply with a legal decree; 2.Secret approvals of agreements limiting speech and association in order to obtain funding; 3. Silencing dissent on the ACLU board; 4. Silencing and spying on the ACLU Staff.

More details are at the website.

If this is the website the South Carolina branch signed onto, then it wouldn't be surprising that this is an attempt to silence the state branch of its criticism. After all, I wouldn't put it past the hypocritical organization known for silencing the speech of its own board members when they disagree.

Crossposted at Stop the ACLU

From Ben Smith's Politico:

A colleague emails:

Don't know if you watched the Derby, but the horse Hillary wanted came in second, collapsed and was killed on the spot.

It's true.  Hillary was rooting for the filly, no doubt on grounds of gender:

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Big Brown backed up his trainer's boasts with an explosive finishing kick and won the Kentucky Derby on Saturday, a commanding victory turned somber by the fatal breakdown of the filly Eight Belles on horse racing's biggest day.

The cheers for the winner's 4 3/4-length victory were cut short when Eight Belles, the runner-up, collapsed while galloping out near the second turn. She broke her two front ankles and was euthanized on the track minutes later.

"When we passed the wire I stood up. She started galloping funny. I tried to pull her up. That's when she went down," said her distraught jockey, Gabriel Saez.

Eight Belles was attempting to become the fourth filly to win the Derby.

The backstory:

INDIANAPOLIS -- Hillary Clinton's pick to win the Kentucky Derby this year came in second, but was later euthanized on the track. The tragic moment at Churchill Downs cast an eerie spell over the campaign and the candidate who recently compared herself and her candidacy to the only female horse running in the race, Eight Belles.

At a campaign in event recently in Jeffersonville, just north of Louisville, Kentucky, Clinton encouraged her supporters to put their money on the 20-1 long shot. "I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me," she said. "I won't be able to be there this year, my daughter is going to be there and so she has strict instructions to bet on Eight Belles."

Earlier that day Clinton visited her Kentucky headquarters where a sign on the wall said "Bet on the filly." A filly is a young female horse, and no doubt Clinton saw a comparison to the horses' race and her own political race.

OK, Hillary, you've got your comparison.

Cross-posted at GINA COBB

Progressive Columnist from the Miami-Herald was "disappointed" to learn during an interview with McCain, that a path to citizenship for the 12million illegals, (actually it's closer to 20million), is only 3rd in a 3 part plan, my question is why is in the plan at all?:

When I interviewed likely Republican candidate Sen. John McCain last week, I was left with the distinct impression that he is moving steadily backward from his once progressive stand on immigration.

In a 15-minute telephone interview during his April 28 visit to Florida, I asked McCain whether, if elected, he would launch a new immigration reform plan providing for an earned path to legalization to many of the 12 million undocumented workers who could prove they have paid taxes and would be willing to learn English.

McCain indicated he would propose that only at the end of a three-step process.

''I would first of all make sure that our borders are secure,'' he said. ``That's the lesson that we got from this last campaign, that Americans want secure borders. We can do that in a relatively short period of time.''

''I would have the border state governors certify that the borders are secure, and then I would move on with a temporary worker program that has biometric, tamper-proof documents,'' McCain went on. ``And then, I would address the issue of the 12 million people who are in this country illegally.''

Did John McCain say that the borders could be secured "in a relatively short period of time"? What is he basing that on? We have had 2 years on inactivity on a PASSED bill that called for the building of double barrier fencing this month. And only 12 miles of 700+ has actually been done.

And why is this number still 12million? It has been years since this number has been cited, even if that number was correct then, which I don't think it was, it has to be higher now, regardless.

Can John McCain be trusted to follow through with the Secure Fence Act of 2006 an his own proposal to secure the borders or can we expect him to go right back to his McCain-Kennedy legislation and push comprehensive immigration reform amnesty to the illegal immigrants here?

All of us on the right new it already, have known it for decades. The Liberal/Progressive/Surrender Monkey way of life is the same as that of animals. Hopefully prey animals

(NY Times) As they traveled across Indiana and North Carolina over the last few days, trading charges and countercharges about the wisdom of suspending the federal gas tax for the summer, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama were really having a larger fight.

They were arguing over who had better economic instincts.

Then we have lemmings, which will follow each other off a cliff. Or, Thomson's Gazelle, who follow each other into the Mara river at a certain time and place, and many become crocodile chow. That is a bad instinct.

The last thing I want is to listen to the instincts of Democrats, who think taking money away from productive members of society and giving it to parasites is a good idea. Who feel we should seriously destroy the economy to save us from global warming. Who's instincts lead them to believe that raising taxes will stimulate the economy, rather then allowing people to spend their own hard earned money.

I'd prefer a politician who thought about an issue more then trusted their gut feelings. People who weren't equating themselves to animals, and instead to, well, people.

Cross posted at Pirate's Cove and McCain Blogs

Lexington Green:

[P]utting aside the bogus and irresponsible notion of "unipolarity", I suppose it is fair to say, in a taxonomic rather than invidious way, that America is the global hegemon. It is the primary provider of security, it is the primary determiner of the rules of the international game, etc.

So let's be charitable to Mr. Haass and say that he is really talking about the displacement of the USA as the global hegemon. He does mix up his terms and also refers to the end of U.S. "primacy" – a word he uses incorrectly as if were synonymous with "unipolarity".

The last global hegemon, Britain, was superseded by a much bigger entity, the good old USA. That transition process was ugly. It involved two world wars and a global depression.

I see no entity that can fill the role of global hegemon in the place of the USA.

The EU cannot do it. China cannot yet do it.

Many players have a stake in the US-led world order, and whatever irritation American primacy may cause, they will prefer the devil they know and will not like to see the uncertainly and risk of a new one replacing it.

• Notwithstanding the serious flaws in our democracy and our constitutional order -- mainly too much of the former, mainly as it affects fiscal matters, and two little respect for the latter -- it is not too much to say that no previous hegemonic power has been premised on a fundamentally free social and political order. The result is a level of internal social and political dynamism that would seem to militate against the sort of long run "internal rot" phenomenon experienced by the Roman and Ottoman empires, for example, or the somewhat different process of ossification, leading to self-doubt and moral cowardice experienced by the British Empire.


• Related, but not necessarily guaranteed as a twin of the foregoing, is America's fundamental commitment to the free market in economics. The supposed imperial project here, while surely interested in and committed to protection of its economic interests (i.e., petroleum and other supplies) by use of military and other strong projections of power, is not -- unlike the mercantilism of the British Empire or the socialist fantasy / coercive reality of the Soviet empire -- axiomatically, or even actually, driven by economic need. (This is true notwithstanding what the exact opposite assertion your Marxist professors teach you in college.) To the contrary, the free market is extraordinarily forgiving of foreign policy externalities that are predicted to have this or that catastrophic effect -- when it is given half a chance actually to operate.


• The American social order, the Shining City on the Hill, is historically premised on sincere religious belief premised on wide-eyed religious idealism. It does not always live up to the ideals of that belief, but the strain of idealism that animates "Americanism" cannot be found in Anglicanism, a church whose roots were essentially in realpolitik, nor in the cynical metropolitan paganism of Rome. The Ottoman empire also was founded on a profound religious faith, true -- but as history seems to demonstrate, Christianity is probably a better foundation for building a healthy political and economic system, especially under modern and modernizing conditions, than Islam.


• America is not an empire. The modern conception of hegemony allows for more shifts, realignments and tactical withdrawals than the traditional institution of empire could. This means America can, as a practical matter, control less in its sphere of domination than the Soviet or Roman emperors could in their time. But it probably also means it can, ultimate, control more that it needs to in order to maintain the level of dominance that suits its interests.

Cross-posted on Likelihood of Success.

Rachel Lucas wrote a post in response to my post about manly men. As always, she made eminently sensible points and I encourage you to go read the whole thing--every last little word. She brings forth the idea that women don't have a code like men do and that we all know a good man when we see one. She says:

So there's really not a lot of mystery about what everyone agrees a "real" man is. We all know "real" men are:

Mentally, emotionally, and intellectually strong, even if not physically (crippled and elderly men can still be "real" men). Hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems. And so on.

What I started wanting to know when I was about 16 was just how in the hell any of those things were (or should be) exclusive to men. I realized even then that in fact, they are not. All adults should have every one of those personality and character traits as a matter of course.

So then I started wondering why anyone bothered with the phrase "real man" at all. Don't they just mean "real adult"? As a young girl, shouldn't I strive to be exactly the kind of person I kept hearing a "real man" would be? I thought so, and I still do. Maybe that's why you never hear me whining about how my butt looks in these jeans or crying that no one pays enough attention to me. Who gives a crap? I don't need any reassurances about silly shit because apparently, I am a "real man", secure in my own "manliness". Even though I'm a woman.

Now, what the fuck? Why can't I just say I'm a "real woman"? Because no one ever talks about that. Except in the context of how "real women" have curves and "real women" don't look like Heidi Klum. Of course, of course it always comes back to looks and sex when you're talking about women.

(By the way, I think this is the core behind the phenomenon of some women (like me) who much prefer the company of men over that of other women. We say it's because men are funnier, more reasonable, less complicated, whatever. But when you get right down to it, the real point is that women like me identify with men more because we strive to be the kind of person who, if we were male, would be called a "REAL man". We appreciate their code because as women, we have no code of our own, at least not one that has any meaning or worth.)

And many people aren't going to like this, but dang if Proverbs 31 didn't rattle around in my brain a bit when thinking about a virtuous woman. Basically, she cares for her family and works hard and is well-known and makes money, too. She also seems to have a flair for real estate. But the overall point seems to be that she is good by serving her spouse, serving her children, working and being dedicated to her job, and she cares for the less fortunate.

Maybe part of the problem with coming up with a Woman's Code is that part of what is essentially female, motherhood, is diminished today. I understand women choosing to forgo motherhood. But there is, in a good woman's character, the ability to mother, to care for others. Now, sometimes this nurturing ability is overstated or misused or a woman just ain't the motherly type. But a loving mother is a beautiful thing to behold, I feel. To see a woman changed and mature into this giving role is as inspiring to me as seeing a person in uniform. The underlying character is the same--giving and selflessly serving another. The thing is, just like manly men have been devalued, so have mothers.

Oh hell, since I'm wading into shark-infested waters again, I might as well go all the way. There are many selfish, bitchy women who just don't want the burden of caring for their husbands or their children or, really, anyone, besides themselves. Mind you, the unmanly man and the unwomanly woman share one trait: selfishness. For women, there is an expectation of caring and kindness in their communication and action. I don't know that men have that expectation. There is an expectation that she'll be sexy enough to marry but not slutty. Like the Usher song says, "We like a lady on the street and a freak in the bed." I don't think men have that expectation, either. There is an expectation (sometimes) that she'd be willing to sacrifice career advancement to birth and mother. So, women have the character expectations of a good man, but because they have a different physical role, they possess a uterus, there are also mothering and womanly expectations. I don't think that's so wrong, really. If a woman chooses to become a mother, I don't think it's too much to ask for her to be a character-filled, serving one. (And this list of what makes a good mother could fill many books, and over the years, has. Holy crap! Good luck measuring up these days. The bar is high.)

A guy commenting on a post some time ago said he wanted a woman like this: companionable, available, and agreeable. So in the relationship role, a man wants a friend, a lover and someone who isn't too difficult. That sounds reasonable enough. Is that much of a code? It certainly isn't a set of rules or anything. But isn't it just like a good man? You know a good woman when you see one.

Rachel is right about being a good, solid, grown up adult. A good man or woman possesses the same character traits even if the roles change and morph due to need or circumstance or desire. I suggest reading all the comments. A couple men made a list of what a good woman looks like and they are all worthwhile thoughts.

Cross posted at Dr. Melissa Clouthier.

A couple of years ago, I started a series of posts I called "Project Hero" over at QandO to honor some of the heroes who I thought weren't getting the mainstream recognition they deserved in the media. It has been a labor of love and an honor to do. Some of the stories are mindboggling when you consider what these men and women have endured and done. And there are few that leave you dry-eyed. Today, for a change, instead of politics, I'd like to share one of those stories with you. It features Special Forces MSG Brendan O'Connor, ODA 765, of the 7th Special Forces Group. But I think he'd be the first to tell you that the results of this action were truly a team effort. And you'll realize why they call the Green Berets, "the quiet professionals". The story comes from a variety of sources.

The story of O'Connor's heroism begins in June 2006, when Capt. Sheffield Ford III led his 8 Special Forces soldiers, 8 other Americans and 48 members of the Afghan national army into the villages near Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the Taliban movement was born. They called it Operation Kaika. Like so many of the battles in the war for Afghanistan, it took place in obscurity.

Ford's team of Special Forces soldiers had been hearing reports that the resurgent Taliban was forcing Afghans out of their villages. So the Americans and their Afghan allies moved in with the plan of killing or capturing as many enemy fighters as they could find.

The country around Kandahar is forbidding: Huge, dusty fields cut by irrigation ditches. The team's vehicles couldn't get through, so the men pushed on on foot.

When they reached a compound they believed belonged to a local Taliban commander, they seized it and set up a base.

The Taliban attacked at nightfall. Scores of enemy fighters hit from three sides with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. There were hundreds of them.

"And it's like all hell breaks loose. Literally, all hell breaks loose," remembers CPT Ford. "The enemy is firing at all directions at us. And soldiers are trying to identify the positions and return fire. They had completely surrounded us and were firing at us with multiple systems."

American forces were accustomed to quick hit and run attacks by the Taliban, but Ford and Master Sergeant Brendan O'Connor say they were shocked by the sustained, organized assault in the village.

"We had not seen this disciplined execution of infantry tactics," Sgt. O'Connor explained.

But Ford and his team were able to beat back the attack.

The next day, the team located the compound from which the Taliban were staging their assault on the American-Afghan force.

Master Sgt. Thom Maholic -- the Special Forces team sergeant -- volunteered to clear out the compound with 20 Afghan soldiers. He split his men into two groups and dispatched Staff Sgt. Matthew Binney to set up a machine gun to cover the assault.

Binney took Staff Sgt. Joseph F. Fuerst III, a Florida National Guard infantryman attached to the Special Forces Operational Detachment Alpha 765 and nine Afghan soldiers with him and set up the machine gun. Maholic quickly routed the enemy force in the compound, but the Taliban counterattacked in force. As hundreds of enemy fighters poured in, Maholic's men and the small group with Binney were surrounded. At the same time, the Taliban hit Ford's base.

Binney and his team were under intense fire. Moving through a hole in a mud wall, they stumbled into a group of Taliban fighters. Both groups were surprised, but Binney and the Americans reacted first with furious fire and hand grenades at close range and kept from being overrun. They were close enough to the Taliban to hear them yelling insults and threats.

Then Binney went down, hit with a bullet in the back of the head.

The bullet fractured Binney's skull. "I didn't hear anything. It was just the loudest buzzing I'd ever heard out of both ears. Any my vision was real blurred as well," he remembers.

Dazed and briefly blind and deaf, Binney still managed to organize an attack on a Taliban position, but a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into Staff Sgt. Fuerst's leg.

Despite his injuries, Binney, who was the team medic, got up and kept fighting. "That's when I was hit the second time. Went through my shoulder," Binney says.

Binney had no shoulder left. "It wasn't connected structurally anymore," he explains.

The Taliban managed to get within shouting distance of the two wounded Americans and started taunting their Afghan translator.

"A lot of the things that the Taliban were yelling at them while they were shooting at each other was that, 'Hey, you're a fellow Muslim, we can forgive you, just put your weapons down and walk away. We want the Americans alive,'" Ford remembers.

"The things they would have done to me if they had caught me alive - you can only imagine what they would have done," Binney says. "The kind of propaganda they would have been able to have made - it would have been real bad."

Over the radio, the translator, named Jacob, told Ford the situation was so dire that he was prepared to kill the two wounded Americans and himself just so they wouldn't be taken hostage.

"He said that he was willing to make sure that both of them were killed. And that he would kill himself so that nobody would be taken alive by the Taliban. Because he understood what would happen if they were to capture 'em," Ford says.

Asked what he said to that, Ford said, "I told him not to. I said, 'We've got people coming.'"

Sergeant First Class Abram Hernandez was teetering on top of a ladder he had climbed at the corner of a building to get a clear shot at the Taliban fighters trying to take Matthew Binney and Joe Fuerst prisoner.

"Seeing Hernandez propped up at that ridiculous angle was absolutely inspiring," says O'Connor. "You could see the tracer rounds actually flail the wall in front of him. And he'd duck down and then pop back up and tracer rounds were coming, they were whizzing right by our heads."

O'Connor volunteered to lead an effort to get to the besieged assault force. He fought his way to Maholic with eight Afghan soldiers, an interpreter and another Special Forces soldier. Maholic told O'Connor and his relief force to go after the wounded.

O'Connor led his men along a wall that provided cover from Taliban machine-gun fire and rocket-propelled grenades. When he got to the end of the wall, O'Connor realized that the wounded soldiers were 200 feet away, across an open field. The field was covered by three Taliban machine guns.

While Hernandez was firing from the ladder and his own Afghan gunners providing machine-gun fire to cover him, , O'Connor started crawling toward Binney and Fuerst. Some of the Afghan soldiers tried to follow, but they were turned back by the volume of Taliban fire.

With bullets smacking into the dirt and cutting the grass, O'Connor realized that he couldn't get low enough unless he took off his body armor. So he shed his protection and crawled on. Inch by inch, he stayed below the hundreds of Taliban machine-gun rounds.

"I actually pulled back to cover, to a covered position and removed my body armor," O'Connor remembers.

CPT Ford said everyone watching O'Connor crawl 90 yards across the open field without his bullet-proof vest couldn't believe what he was doing.

"They described to me watching the machine gun fire go right over his body, seein' it hit grass that he was crawlin' through and seein' it mow some of that down, the fires were so heavy it was literally cutting some of the grass in different spots," Ford explains.

It took an hour and a half for O'Connor to reach Fuerst and Binney. From a rooftop, Master Sergeant Thom Maholic was single-handedly holding down a group of advancing Taliban who were threatening the rescue operation.

"They were coming to take that compound that Thom was holding. And he would stop them by killing them or wounding them. And eventually they gave up their assault," Ford explains.

Across the field, O'Connor reached a mud wall and hopped over it. The two wounded men were holed up among grapevines. Fuerst was in bad shape, with a gaping wound in his left leg. O'Connor tied it off and looked for a safer place to move the two men.

With Taliban fighters closing in, O'Connor picked up Fuerst and ran toward a pump house on the edge of the grapevines. He stashed Fuerst in a shaded area and scouted out the pump house, hoping enemy fighters weren't waiting.

Nearby was a 6-foot wall bordering a dirt lane. Friendly forces had made their way there, so O'Connor got Fuerst and Binney over.

Once everyone was in the lane, O'Connor started to tend to the wounded. Breaking out his medical gear, he realized that the heat -- it was about 120 degrees -- had melted the glue that kept his IVs together. His gear was a mess, but he did his best to help Fuerst and Binney.

After nightfall, O'Connor led the relief force back to Maholic's perimeter. When he got to the compound, he found out that Maholic had been killed, shot by a Taliban fighter he had spotted moving in on the compound. O'Connor took over the defense of the compound.

"They needed that leadership. Up until that point, they were in a disarray, just trying to hide and survive," Ford said. "When he showed back up with the wounded, he provided that. He provided that leadership that was needed."

They evacuated the wounded by helicopter as Ford called in airstrikes. After nightfall, O'Connor led the remaining defenders back to the main base.

After nearly two days of fighting, two men lost and one seriously wounded, the Green Berets were almost out of ammunition.

Apache gunships were continuing to hammer Taliban positions, but Special Forces soldiers were still surrounded. To get them out, they asked one of the pilots flying overhead to lay down an infrared beam that they used to guide them through the dark back to their patrol base. The plane fired at anything moving outside that infrared beam.

Ford says the beam could be seen on night vision, but not by the naked eye.

They were able to move a critical 600 meters using that method, a method they'd never used before.

Seventeen hours after the battle started, Ford and O'Connor led the team out of the district, leaving more than 100 Taliban fighters dead.

Despite O'Connor's efforts to save him, the team lost Fuerst as well as their team sergeant, MSG Tom Maholic .

For their action that day, 4 members of the team, to include MSG Maholic, were awarded the Silver Star. MSG Brendan O'Connor, who had discarded his body armor and crawled for a torturous hour and half in an attempt to save two of his wounded comrades, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation's 2nd higest award for valor.

In a propaganda video, the Taliban showed off Matthew Binney's body armor as a war trophy and claimed victory, even though they lost an estimated 120 men in the fighting. That's all they had to show because Binney's comrades had made sure, at the risk of their own lives that Sgt's Binney and Fuerst weren't left behind.

Since North Carolina has become a battleground primary state for the two Democrat candidates for president, they've both been canvassing the state personally and in some cases sent surrogates. The last two days I've had the opportunity to attend rallies for both, because I wanted to mingle with the people at the two events, see the candidates in person, and to snag some pictures and video along the way.

My recap Friday night's Barack Obama rally at Cricket Arena in Charlotte is here, and includes links to the photos I took as well as a link to the short video I took of yet another fainter at an Obama rally.

Here's the recap of yesterday's Hillary Clinton rally in Gastonia. Had a better time at that one, for reasons noted in the post. Photo links are posted in that one as well, along with about a one minute video of Hillary talking about foreclosures and healthcare (I was experimenting with the video feature on my digital camera).

I read via AP that Bill Clinton's ego was stroked today as two people fainted at two different rallies he spoke at today:

After one person fell during an event in Lenoir, Clinton joked: "Somebody faints at nearly every one of these things now. At my age, I didn't think I could make anybody faint anymore."

The primary is Tuesday - the polls are up and down in terms of how much Obama leads Hillary by in NC, but it may actually end up being closer than people think it will be.

Stay tuned ...

First, thanks to the following guest bloggers for helping out at RWN on Friday of last week,

Dr. Melissa Clouthier
Cassy Fiano
Sister Toldjah
David All
Karol Sheinin

Now, thanks to the following bloggers who posted at RWN last week-end,

MCQ from QandO
Dr. Melissa Clouthier
Sister Toldjah
Ron Coleman from Likelihood of Success
William Teach from Pirate's Cove
Michael Illions from Polipundit
Kathy Shaidle Five Feet Of Fury
Gina Cobb
John Stephenson from Stop The ACLU

Feel free to check out their blogs!

In case you're wondering how the dog is doing, he's yippy-skippy. Here are some pics I took of him at the beach this Saturday.

Here's Patton getting jazzed up about hitting the sand.

You, too, can now envision what it looks like to walk Patton on the beach.

PS: Here's a bonus shot and, yes, I do live in a beautiful area,

The website of the day is Blatherings.

Here's a little context about the number of active duty soldiers we're losing each year that you're probably not going to see on the evening news tonight.

Actually, less soldiers are being killed each year during the Bush Administration, during a war on terrorism, than we were losing during the Reagan or Bush Administration,

Ronald Reagan (1981-1988): 17,201 (2,150 avg per year)
George Bush Sr. (1989-1992): 6,223 (1556 avg per year)
Bill Clinton (1993-2000): 7500 (938 avg per year)
George W. Bush (2001-2006): 8792 (1465 avg per year)

If we're losing less soldiers per year than we were during the Reagan or Bush 1 administrations, when people didn't seem to think it was a crisis, are our losses really "unsustainable" or "breaking the military?" Although it's always tragic when any American soldier doesn't come home to his family, by any historical standard, the answer to that question would seem to be "no."

PS: If you're wondering why we're losing less soldiers per year now than we did under the Reagan or Bush 1 administrations, it's primarily because the military was significantly bigger back then and because a lot more of our troops were dying via accidents.

One of the reasons that many people have such an intense distrust of polling data is the little games that the mainstream media plays with them.

For example, take the latest poll from CBS, which is titled, "CBS Poll: Support For Obama Rebounds. In Wake Of Controversy Over Former Pastor, Illinois Senator Builds Lead Over McCain, Clinton."

Here are the nuts and bolts of what the poll shows,

On one key measure, Obama has seen a big reversal since his denunciation of Wright's remarks on Tuesday. He now leads presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in the hypothetical fall contest by eleven points, 51 percent to 40 percent. That compares to a tied match-up in a CBS News/New York Times poll that was released last Wednesday.

Positive assessments of how Obama has handled the situation with Wright are also reflected by a continued lead over fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton in his battle for their party's nomination. Among Democratic primary voters (those who have voted or plan to vote in a Democratic primary) Obama's lead over Clinton has increased -- he now leads Clinton by twelve points, 50 percent to 38 percent. That's up from his eight point lead in the poll released just a few days ago.

So, Obama is dominating, destroying both McCain and Hillary, right? That's certainly what the article is saying and the story is being seen all over the place. It's even at the top of the Drudge Report. Does that mean the race is over and Obama has it in the bag?

Ehr...not so fast.

Let's go over to Real Clear Politics and compare the numbers from the NYT/CBS poll to some other polling numbers.

First off, the CBS News/NY Times ran from 5/01 to 5/03. Gallup has a poll that ran from 4/29-5/03 and Rasmussen has one that ran from 4/30 to 5/03. Both Rasmussen and Gallup have significantly larger sample sizes and personally, I'd say both of them have proven to be better, more reliable pollsters than the CBS News/NY Times combo.

So, how do the numbers break down? In an Obama vs. McCain match-up,

CBS News/NY Times: Obama +11
Gallup: McCain +5
Rasmussen: McCain +3

What about in an Obama vs. Hillary match-up?

CBS News/NY Times: Obama +12
Gallup: Obama +4
Rasmussen: Tie

So, what does that mean?

Well, it's possible that the CBS News/NY Times is the first poll to catch on to a trend, but it's more likely that the poll is just an outlier that's just plain old wrong. That does happen.

Well, if that's the case, then why did the mainstream media latch on to this poll? The MSM tends to like polls that show results that are very different than what the perceived political situation is because those polls draw eyeballs. Moreover, the MSM REALLY LOVES polls of the sort that confirm their pre-existing biases. Since they adore Obama, want him to win, and want Hillary to quit, this poll is right down their alley and was guaranteed to get huge play.

The MSM does this all the time and it's a big part of the reason why people don't have a lot of trust in polls or, for that matter, the mainstream media.

Ben Stein has been getting flogged mercilessly, on the left and right, for saying this,

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that's where science -- in my opinion, this is just an opinion -- that's where science leads you.

Crouch: That's right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Stein didn't phrase that very eloquently, but the point he seems to be trying to make is that science divorced from religious ethics can become a monstrous thing indeed.

That is hardly a controversial notion.

In fact, you've probably seen more than a few horror/sci-fi movies that have this as their central premise. For example, just to name a few there's Equilibrium, Resident Evil, Alien, Re-Animator, and Frankenstein.

If you want real life examples of what happens when science is untethered from morality, there are plenty of those, too, including the Nazi experiments that Stein mentioned (More examples here).

A world where people sit around all day singing Kumbaya in a cave would be a terrible place to live. However, a world where science is unencumbered by religious ethics would likely be just as horrible.

I believe that was the point Stein was trying to get across.

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the story.

Frank Rich's (Corrected) latest column futilely tries to make a case that the netroots has been making for weeks,

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for "John Hagee Roman Church Hitler," and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

What you'll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is "the Great Whore," Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking "the blood of the Jewish people." That's because the Great Whore represents "the Roman Church," which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.

Mr. Hagee is not a fringe kook but the pastor of a Texas megachurch. On Feb. 27, he stood with John McCain and endorsed him over the religious conservatives' favorite, Mike Huckabee, who was then still in the race.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee's views? This particular YouTube video -- far from the only one -- was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

Since then, Mr. McCain has been shocked to learn that his clerical ally has made many other outrageous statements. Mr. Hagee, it's true, did not blame the American government for concocting AIDS. But he did say that God created Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for its sins, particularly a scheduled "homosexual parade there on the Monday that Katrina came."

Mr. Hagee didn't make that claim in obscure circumstances, either. He broadcast it on one of America's most widely heard radio programs, "Fresh Air" on NPR, back in September 2006. He reaffirmed it in a radio interview less than two weeks ago. Only after a reporter asked Mr. McCain about this Katrina homily on April 24 did the candidate brand it as "nonsense" and the preacher retract it.

Mr. McCain says he does not endorse any of Mr. Hagee's calumnies, any more than Barack Obama endorses Mr. Wright's. But those who try to give Mr. McCain a pass for his embrace of a problematic preacher have a thin case. It boils down to this: Mr. McCain was not a parishioner for 20 years at Mr. Hagee's church.

We could have a little debate over whose offensive remarks are more offensive, Wright's or Hagee's, but that's a "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" argument.

So, what is relevant? How about this...

* Is McCain a member of Hagee's church? No.

* Has McCain attended Hagee's church for 20 years? No.

* Did McCain take his children to Hagee's church? Again, no.

* Did Hagee baptize McCain's children? No.

* Did Hagee marry McCain and his wife? No

* Did McCain title a book after one of Hagee's sermons? No.

* Did McCain compare Hagee to his uncle? No.

* Did McCain call Hagee his "sounding board?" No.

* Was McCain's relationship with Hagee so close that he said he could no more disown him than he could disown his own grandmother? No.

But, has McCain criticized Hagee's offensive remarks in a way that Obama has never done for, say Jesse Jackson's "Hymietown" comment or Al Sharpton's Tawana Brawley escapades? Yes, he has done that.

The primary difference here, which seems obvious to everyone but liberals like Rich (corrected), is that Obama has been so closely associated with Jeremiah Wright for so long, that it is extremely difficult to believe that he doesn't share a lot of the man's views.

You can't go to Klan meetings for 20 years, pal around with the guy running the whole kit and kaboodle, and then pretend to be shocked when he says something racist. "Why, I never knew the Grand Exalted Cyclops had a racist bone in his body! I certainly never heard that when I was at one of those Klan meetings!"

But that's exactly what Obama's trying to do. He went to an anti-white "Christian" church and spent 20 years buddying up with a vile, virulently racist, anti-American conspiracy kook and now he's trying to convince people that not only does he not share any of Wright's views, he didn't even have any idea that he held them in the first place.

That's the difference between McCain/Hagee and Obama/Wright.

"If (Hillary) gave (Obama) one of her cojones, they'd both have two." -- James Carville

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Mark Steyn: To Obama, 'we' means 'me'

Rachel Lucas: We need a "REAL WOMAN" manifesto.

The New York Post: Barack's Rev stole a wife. Ex-hubby: He counseled us, then wed her.

Cracked: The 10 most sexually unappealing Craigslist postings

Popoholic: Josie Maran bikini shots

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Just when you think that Europe's far Left is almost beyond parody, they somehow manage to kick it up yet another notch,

You just knew it was coming: At the request of the Swiss government, an ethics panel has weighed in on the "dignity" of plants and opined that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong. This is no hoax. The concept of what could be called "plant rights" is being seriously debated.

A few years ago the Swiss added to their national constitution a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms." No one knew exactly what it meant, so they asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to figure it out. The resulting report, "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants," is enough to short circuit the brain.

A "clear majority" of the panel adopted what it called a "biocentric" moral view, meaning that "living organisms should be considered morally for their own sake because they are alive." Thus, the panel determined that we cannot claim "absolute ownership" over plants and, moreover, that "individual plants have an inherent worth." This means that "we may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

The committee offered this illustration: A farmer mows his field (apparently an acceptable action, perhaps because the hay is intended to feed the farmer's herd--the report doesn't say). But then, while walking home, he casually "decapitates" some wildflowers with his scythe. The panel
decries this act as immoral, though its members can't agree why.

Plants have "dignity?" It's immoral to "decapitate..." wildflowers? Plant rights?

Seriously?

...I know I should bust out some dazzling argument about plants and consciousness, but the word "seriously" is pretty much all I've got, folks. Some ideas are just so utterly and obviously ridiculous that you don't even need to make any real counter-arguments. I mean, if these people were arguing that Barbie Dolls or rocks had to be treated with "dignity," I wouldn't see much of a need to take them seriously either.

PS #1: I skimmed the report and here are a few quotes from it that particularly caught my eye,

"The great majority of the ECNH members holds the opinion that prima facie we do not possess unrestricted power over plants. We may not use them just as we please, even if the plant community is not in danger, or if our actions do not endanger the species, or if we are not acting arbitrarily."

The majority of the committee members at least do not rule out the possibility that plants are sentient, and that this is morally relevant.

The Committee members unanimously consider an arbitrary harm caused to plants to be morally impermissible. This kind of treatment would include, e.g. decapitation of wild flowers at the roadside without rational reason.

For the majority here too, plants – as a collective, as a species, or as individuals – are excluded for moral reasons from absolute ownership. By this interpretation no one may handle plants entirely according to his/her own desires. A minority concludes that no limits apply to handling plants insofar as they are property.

PS #2: The people who put this report together epitomize the sentiment behind the quote, "Some things are so foolish that only intellectuals will believe them."

Hat tip to Michelle Malkin for the story.

"Birds of a feather flock together." -- Anonymous

Hat tip to The Jawa Report for the pic.

The website of the day is Betsy's Page.

Daily Kos diarist schennessy wrote this,

"I am one of those crazy chicks who sums up parts of your life with a song. But also, songs fire me up, make me cry, and get me inspired. Obviously, "City of Blinding Lights" is an automatic Obama song, but what other songs remind you of him?"

Why yes, there are a few songs that remind me of Obama including,

I Love You -- Barney the Dinosaur
Cocaine -- ZZ Top
Everything to Everyone -- Everclear
I See Your True Colors -- Cyndi Lauper
The Cult of Personality -- Living Colour

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to include them in the comments section.

Here's Stephen King on the troops, which he would no doubt tell you that he supports,

"I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that."

Now, this is essentially just a rephrase of John Kerry's notorious gaffe,

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq. ..."

Of course, this isn't true. As the Heritage Foundation noted back then,

In summary, the additional years of recruit data (2004–2005) sup­port the previous finding that U.S. military recruits are more similar than dissimilar to the American youth population. The slight dif­ferences are that wartime U.S. mil­itary enlistees are better educated, wealthier, and more rural on aver­age than their civilian peers.

Recruits have a higher percent­age of high school graduates and representation from Southern and rural areas.

...The previous study noted the significant differ­ence between the national recruit high school grad­uation rate of 98 percent and the national youth graduation rate of 75 percent. This strong distinc­tion continues among the 2004 and 2005 recruits when compared to the national educational attain­ment levels reported by the Census 2004 American Community Survey (ACS).[4]

Given the nature of the military rank structure, most enlisted recruits do not have a college edu­cation or degree. Members of the armed forces with higher education are more often commis­sioned officers (lieutenant and above). In 2004, 92.1 percent of active-duty officer accessions held baccalaureate degrees or higher.[5] From 2000 to 2005, between 10 percent and 17 percent of active-duty officer accessions held advanced degrees, and between 35 percent and 45 percent of the active-duty officer corps held advanced degrees.[6] This indicates that officers continued their educa­tion during the course of their mili­tary service.

...The policy regarding high school graduation status (or the equivalent) remains stringent across all four branches of the military. At least 90 per­cent of recruits must be high school diploma graduates (which does not include equivalency). Recruit accessions from the first three quarters of fiscal year 2006 are above this guideline in all branches except the Army. As of May 2006, 83.1 percent of accepted Army recruits met this requirement, which is still a greater percentage than the national graduation rate including equiv­alency.

So King, like Kerry, is wrong on the facts.

However, there is a subtext here that you often see on the Left; many, but not all, liberals look at our troops as dumb, thuggish, violence prone, deranged, immoral brutes.

Will they admit that? A few of them are honest enough to do so, but most aren't. Still, there's a reason why you see liberal after liberal going back to certain themes when their masks slip. It's because it's what most of them secretly believe.

As I was taking my daily stroll through the electronic corridors of the HuffPo, I ran across a post by Anita Sarah Jackson called "Maternal Profiling -- People Are Talking About It."

My first thought was, "Hey, I can relate to that," because "maternal profiling" has happened to me. My first job after college, in a horrible job market, was as a Wal-Mart Photo Studio manager.

There's nothing quite like having a two hour wait to take pics at Christmas when everyone waiting has a small child, dressed in itchy, uncomfortable clothes. Worse yet, there are the newborn babies who #1) Aren't even capable of smiling yet #2) Sleep 20 hours a day -- and the moms who wanted to try to wake them up and get a shot of them smiling.

Long story short, it was a miserable job! Wait, how does this tie into anything?

Oh, right, "Maternal Profiling." The portrait studio jobs were not traveling jobs, but every so often they would send us on a week-long road trip out of the blue when one of their traveling people couldn't make it. This was a horrific experience because they gave you minimal notice that you'd be gone for a week and a tiny hotel/food allowance that meant you had to stay in an awful hotel room and try to get by on a couple of meals consisting of whatever was on the dollar menu at the local fast food restaurant. I literally, I kid you not, stayed in hotel rooms with holes in the wall when I had that job because dives like that were the only thing I could afford on what they were paying out.

Well, I complained to the District Manager that he was sending me out on these trips more than the other people in the district and his reply was, "Well, you're not married and don't have any kids, so I'd prefer to send you than some of the other people." So, even though we were all doing the exact same job, I got sent off for a week at a time on unpleasant photo shoots because I was single? Naturally, I raised hell and almost got fired, but that's a whole other story.

Now, back to the HuffPo post about "Maternal Profiling." Essentially, the author's idea of profiling, of discriminating against married women, is to treat them exactly like the people who aren't married. In other words, she's demanding special privileges,

When ABC did their story on maternal profiling, I was really glad about it. Not, of course, about maternal profiling, but the fact that a mainstream media outlet was picking up on this issue. Many of us talk about suspected maternal profiling (discrimination in the workplace due to parental status) with our trusted friends and family, but outside a couple of New York Times articles mentioning it (like this great one about a real mom in PA), there didn't seem to be much light shed on this publicly.

So, it was refreshing to know that the facts and real people's stories got airtime. Many of us have experienced discrimination in hiring because we're mothers, or family caregivers, or just have some regular responsibilities that mean we simply cannot be chained to our workplaces at any hour of the day or night.

... So many of the comments following the stories are from moms who have been there. One pointed out that kids today are tomorrow's leaders, and even people without kids are going to be relying on them for services in the years to come. I really appreciated that-- it took the cliche that "children are our future" and made it concrete. Who will be our doctors, teachers, laborers, office workers in five, ten, twenty years? Yep, the current crop of 13 year olds and younger are going to hit adulthood sooner than we think. The time to parent them is NOW.

And let's be clear: no parent is asking for the moon here from their employers. No one is expecting special treatment. Heck, almost every other country in the world manages to provide family-friendly benefits like paid family leave, and the world economy isn't on the brink of collapse (well, not due to that!). So it's not impossible. We just need a shift in corporate culture and in the laws of the land (that's all!). A shift that recognizes that society does not rest solely on the fourth quarter earnings of a corporation. And let's recognize that employees don't come from nowhere-- we were all born to someone, raised by someone. Maybe come home to someone who shares our life. Those someones are our family.

Bottom line: We cannot expect society to keep rolling along as usual if we don't acknowledge the reality of the time and effort of child-rearing.

Translation: I want to have the freedom of a stay-at-home mom and climb the corporate ladder without penalty at the same time. And if I don't get it, it's discrimination.

That's just horsecrap.

Life is about making choices. When women spend all day in an office instead of at home, their kids, at least in certain ways, are going to suffer for it. If women spend more time at home instead of working, they're not going to be able to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Sure, there are people who do both, but as a general rule, they don't climb as high or as far as people who don't have kids because those people are able to put more effort into it.

Put another way, what we're really talking about here is Congress tanking the economy by deliberately driving down productivity, so that people like Anita Sarah Jackson can compete with the men and single women who are lapping them on the job because they put in more hours. Oh, and lots more mandated vacation time! Wheeeee!

Here's a better idea: if your job doesn't give you enough flexibility to deal with your kids, then either,

#1) Stay at home with your kids.
#2) Accept that you are going to spend less time with your kids than you'd like.
#3) Find another job that better enables you to do both.

That's how families have been handling this situation from time immemorial to the present and trying to have the government "fix" the whole situation would only create an entirely new and much worse set of problems.

So yesterday, I head out to the shooting range to fire off a few rounds. The range I like to go to is about 25 minutes away in a desolate small town that I wouldn't live in even if you gave me a dump truck full of money and replaced the entire town's female population with super models....Ok, that's a wee bit of an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

Anyway, I buy some rounds, a few targets, yada, yada, yada and shoot for awhile. It was lots of fun. Then, I head out front to pay and...the guy doesn't take credit/ATM cards -- which is bizarre in this day and age. Why doesn't he take cards? My best guess is that he's trying to cheat the government on taxes. You know, "We earned $4,722 dollars this year total. Oh, you think it was more than that? Well, it was all paid in cash, so prove it!"

The problem was that I didn't have enough cash to pay the bill and didn't have any checks in the car, so I asked him where the nearest ATM machine was, thinking that even here in the middle of HeeHawland, there had to be a machine pretty close by.

Little did I know.

So, the guy gives me some directions that consisted of going "out yonder," turning and "going a ways," and "passing the dead cow," or something like that and naturally, I got the directions hosed up and promptly headed off in the wrong direction towards well, it turned out, pretty much nothing but houses and trees.

Then I drove back, past the houses and trees, and got going in the right direction, where I saw....more houses and trees. Some of the houses looked nice, some of them were a bit ramshackle, but I was starting to get kind of a weird Children of the Corn vibe about the whole area. I mean, I grew up in a one stoplight town, Stoneville, N.C., population 1000, yee-ha, -- and this place made it seem like Chi-Town. There were almost no businesses, churches, beautiful scenery or any other conceivable reason for people to live in this area. Isn't that how a lot of horror films start? The innocent victims are driving, need to stop, and they find a quaint little town in a place where it has no business being? So, what exactly are these people doing out here? Secret government experiments, sacrificing virgins to Cthulhu, or maybe they were just one giant, inbred family of Cletuses who like to live outside of the city, where people frown on that sort of thing.

Suddenly, I got slightly nervous about leaving my driver's License with the shooting range guy, to prove that I would come back. Couldn't you just see it? Some local cop pulls me over, tells me he'll have to impound my car for the night, but he tells me that I can stay in creepy old Widow Thompson's boarding house for the night while we get the whole thing straightened out. Next thing you know, they're basing the next Scooby Doo movie on my "real life story."

Just then, I finally passed a sign for a church -- not that I could see the church, mind you. There was a hand-painted sign for a church that pointed down a dirt road. It just kept getting creepier and creepier. Thank God it wasn't dark.

But then, happily, I ran across the country store that the gun guy had directed me towards. I walked in, went up to the ATM machine, stuck in my card, and it promptly spat out a message telling me it was out of cash.

!@##$#-@%$$#@ out of cash? How often does that happen?

So, I asked where the nearest ATM machine was and I was once again, off even deeper into the heart of nowhere. At this point, I realize that it's after 5 PM and that I don't know what time the shooting range closes. For all I know, the owner had probably already gone home to let one of the virgins out of his cellar to be sacrificed to the "Old Ones" -- or maybe he was going to watch Mayberry R.F.D. reruns; who's to say? But, I figured I might as well play it out.

After going another 10 miles or so, and technically crossing into some other town that might as well have been imagined by a bunch of South hating Yankees in Hollywood, I finally found a cash machine, got some money, and headed back in the right direction.

Happily, once I got there, the shooting range was still open, I paid my bill, grabbed my driver's license, and headed back towards the homefront, after only wasting an hour or so driving around some of North Carolina's less charming backroads.

PS: I've tried a number of different shooting stances: the Isosceles Stance, the Weaver Stance, the Modified Weaver stance -- and I have never liked any of them. So, yesterday, I just turned sideways and did some point shooting. It was faster, felt much more natural, and I was about as accurate as I was in the other stances, although I wasn't shooting really long range.

Given that I like to shoot, but am not a gun junky who's going to be hitting the range every week, is there any reason for me not to just stick with point shooting? Granted, it's supposed to be inaccurate for long range shots, but given that I am probably not going to be practicing enough with the other stances to become a top notch shooter anyway, does it matter?

I know I have a lot of people who love to shoot reading RWN; so I'd love to hear some opinions on stances.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Hubpages: Top beer myths of the world busted!

Nerve: The 50 greatest commercial parodies of all-time

Thomas Sowell: The best way to lift people out of poverty

Idontlikeyouinthatway: Jennifer Anniston is in a bikini again

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

It has been a while since I've read Les Giblin's very short classic on people skills, "Skill With People," and this time around, I decided to post a few of the best quotes from the book to RWN. Enjoy!

"People are primarily interested in themselves, not you. Putting this same thought another way -- the other person is ten thousand times more interested in himself than he is you." -- P.1

"So -- would you be skillful in human relations, be sure to make people feel important. Remember that the more important you make people feel, the more they will respond to you." -- P.5

"As long as you live, never forget that any fool can disagree with people and that it takes a wise man, a shrewd man, a big man to agree -- particularly when the other person is wrong." -- P.7

"The more listening you do, the smarter you will become, the better you will be liked, and the better conversationalist you will be. A good listener always winds up far ahead of a good talker in the affections of people. This is because a good listener always allows people to hear their favorite speakers, themselves." -- P.9

"Then you can move them by telling them what they want to hear. You simply show them how they can get what they want by doing what you want them to do." --P.11

"Be generous with your praise. Look for somebody and something to praise and then do it. But -- the praise must be sincere. Praise the act, not the person." -- P.21

"Preface criticism with a kind word or compliment...Make the criticism impersonal -- criticise the act, not the person...one criticism to an offense." -- P.23-24

"If you are grateful to people, if you let those people know you are grateful, almost always they will give you more the next time. If you don't show your gratitude (even if you are grateful) chances are that there won't be a next time or that you will end up with less." -- P.25

"Be proud of yourself (but not conceited), of who you are, of what you do, of where you work. Don't apologize for your station in life or for yourself. You are what you are -- so handle yourself with pride and respect." -- P.27

"People have a strong tendency to balk at any action which they feel you are 'red hot' for them doing. Their instinct will be to get suspicious or to drive a harder bargain." -- P.28

Just as a little change of pace, I thought I'd post my current 40 favorite songs. If I had to cut the number of songs on my MP3 player down to 40 for the next week, these are the ones that would get the nod,

Asian Dub Foundation: Fortress Europe
Ben Folds: B*tches Ain't Sh*t
Brooks & Dunn: Hillbilly Deluxe
Chris Brown: Wall to Wall
Disturbed: Down With the Sickness
DMX: Bring Your Whole Crew
Dynamite Hack: Boyz in the Hood
Dynamite Hack: Gin and Juice
Evanescence: Wake Me Up Inside
Gin Blossoms: Hey Jealousy
Gnarls Barkley: Crazy
Hinder: Lips Of An Angel
Hurricane: Ay Bay Bay
John Cena: Bad Bad Man
Kill Hannah: Lips Like Morphine
Kayne West: Stronger
Lil Wayne: Stunting Like My Daddy
Lily Allen: Oh My God
Ludacris: Stand Up
Lupe Fiasco: Superstar
Mims: This is Why I'm Hot
Nickelback: I Wanna Be A Rockstar
Nickelback: If Everyone Cared
Pink: Who Knew
Plain White T's: Hey There Delilah
P.O.D.: Boom
Rammstein: Reise Reise
Regina Spektor: Fidelity
Rob Zombie: Dragula
Rodney Adkins: If You're Going Through Hell
Saliva: Click Click Boom
Saliva: Ladies and Gentlemen
Seether: Out of My Way
Snow Patrol: Chasing Cars
Snow Patrol: Chocolate
The Last Goodnight: Pictures of You
The White Stripes: You Don't Know What Love Is
The White Stripes: Icky Thump
Yael Naim: New Soul
Zacariah: Worst Dressed

"We get in this kind of a circular firing squad on immigration reform in the Congress of the United States and the lesson I learned from it is we've got to have comprehensive immigration reform." -- John McCain

Despite the fact that John McCain has spent months saying that he learned his lesson from the immigration debacle, absolutely nobody seems to believe him when he says that he's going to secure the border before pursuing an amnesty.

So, when he says something like the above quote, which I expect to see frantic "clarifying" press releases from his campaign on later today, it just reinforces the impression that everyone already has: you can't believe what he has to say about immigration.

PS: Could this be McCain floating a trial balloon? Could he be getting ready to openly switch back to a pro-comprehensive immigration position? That's possible because I think that's what McCain really wants to do in his heart of hearts, but I doubt if he'll go through with it. I mean, even George Bush, Sr. didn't break his "Read My Lips, No New Taxes" pledge until AFTER he got elected. If McCain were to support any sort of comprehensive immigration bill at this point, after spending months on the campaign trail saying we need security before a path-to-citizenship, it would torpedo his presidential run -- and deservedly so.

Also see,

John McCain On Having A Path To Citizenship Before The Border Is Secured

Yesterday, Hillary won a squeaker in Indiana while Obama blew her out in North Carolina.

What does that mean?

It is being spun by Obama's supporters in the mainstream media as a huge "Game Over" moment, but the truth is that the situation essentially remains unchanged unless Hillary shocks everyone and decides to drop out of the race or a large number of superdelegates use this as an excuse to come out en masse for Obama.

Put another way, Obama's "egg heads and African-Americans" coalition is still turning out for him, but he's not making significant inroads with the voters he'll need to win the election and the Democrats are getting ever more divided. The exit polls tell the tale,

Clinton received the support of 60 percent of white voters in both states, while Obama got 40 percent of the white vote in Indiana and 36 percent in North Carolina. Obama won the overwhelming majority of black voters: 92 percent in Indiana and 91 percent in North Carolina.

...Looking ahead to the general election, CBS News exit polling showed that the majority of voters said that they would not be satisfied if the Democratic candidate they did not support were to become the nominee. Only 35 percent of Clinton voters in Indiana and 34 percent in North Carolina said they would be satisfied with Obama. Forty percent of Obama voters in Indiana and 45 percent in North Carolina would be satisfied if Clinton becomes the Democratic nominee.

So, once again, it's Hillary's supporters, not Obama's, that are more likely to sit at home or vote for McCain in November if their candidate doesn't get the nod. Moreover, Obama is still losing the white vote by a landslide and since, unlike the black vote, white voters are actually up for grabs in November, that's a big deal.

Those are very troubling trends for the Democrats indeed, if, as expected, Obama ends up as their nominee.

"Asked how she feels about Bill Clinton's use of the phrase "fairytale" to describe her husband's characterization of his position on the Iraq war, (Michelle Obama) first responded: "No."

But, after a few seconds of contemplation, and gesturing with her fingernails, she told the reporter: "I want to rip his eyes out!"

Noticing an aide giving her a nervous look, she added: "Kidding! See, this is what gets me into trouble." -- WorldNetDaily

The Left loves to attack Wal-Mart because...

Fake Reasons

1) They don't pay their employees enough.
2) Their health care plans are insufficiently generous.
3) They drive inefficient small shops out of business.

Real Reasons

1) They despise successful people and corporations.
2) Wal-Mart refuses to ruin their business by knuckling in to the unions.

However, the truth is that Wal-Mart has been an enormous boon to poor Americans because it has saved them so much money.

Take drug prices, for example. Look at how much of a difference Wal-Mart has made in that area,

Wal-Mart Stores said Monday it will offer 90-day prescriptions of some generics for $10, add several women's medications at a discount and lower the prices of more than 1,000 over-the-counter medications to $4 or less.

The move marks the third phase of $4 prescription program, which began in 2006 and has saved customers more than $1 billion, Wal-Mart said.

With the expansion, the company began filling prescriptions Monday for up to 350 generic medications at $10 for a 90-day supply at Wal-Mart, Neighborhood Market and Sam's Club pharmacies in the U.S.

In addition, the company will add several women's medications to its list of prescriptions available for $9, including drugs to treat breast cancer and hormone deficiency.

For instance, alendronate, the generic version of osteoporosis medication Fosamax, will be added to the list. Company pharmacies will fill 30-day prescriptions of alendronate for $9 and a 90-day supply for $24 at a comparison of $54 and $102, respectively, that women previously paid for the same amounts, the company said.

Wal-Mart also will lower the prices of more than 1,000 over-the-counter medications to $4 or less in its pharmacies, company officials said. The over-the-counter medication price rollbacks represent about one-third of the retailer's over-the-counter medicines. Included in the program are generic versions of versions of Zantac, Pepcid and Claritin.

I shop at Wal-Mart about once a week on average and I've bought everything from groceries, to the TV in my office, to my vacuum cleaner there. Over the course of my lifetime, I've had thousands of dollars extra to spend because Wal-Mart's prices are so much lower than those of their competitors. I have also gotten to take advantage of their drug program.

Early last year, I had to buy some antibiotics. Online? They cost $50. At the local pharmacy? Roughly $30. At Wal-Mart? $4. Moreover, my doctor recently wrote me a precription for drugs that just a few months ago would have cost -- I kid you not -- $600 out of pocket. But now, thanks to Wal-Mart, I will be buying those exact same drugs for $18.

If the Left really cared about the poor, as opposed to seeing them as living, breathing vanity projects that exist primarily so that liberals can pump up their own self-esteem by handing them other people's money, then libs would be the biggest supporters Wal-Mart could ever hope to have.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

John Stossel: The left is wrong

Neatorama: 10 insulting words you should know

Best Week Ever: The top 10 most questionable stars on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame

Popoholic: Elisha Cuthbert's bikini pics

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Liberals have been beating the "they're going to round us up and stick us in camps" bongo drum, on and off, since back in the sixties -- at least.

Well, over at the Democratic Underground, the paranoia seems to be running wild again because of a story about ICE prepping what looks to be a detention facility for captured illegals,

Federal officials have imposed a news blackout at the National Cattle Congress fairgrounds in Waterloo, where they have leased almost the entire property through May 25.

Tim Counts, a Midwest spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, declined to say Monday whether an immigration raid is pending that would use the fairgrounds as a detention center.
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"ICE never talks about our investigative activity or possible future enforcement actions," Counts said. "Regarding the exercise in Waterloo, there is currently no publicly releasable information about that, so we aren't releasing any."

Personally, I'd be thrilled if ICE actually did their job and rounded up and detained enough illegals to fill up the entire fairgrounds, but the reaction at the DU was, let us see, just a touch different.

Here are some of the comments from the thread,

DU9598: Detention Camp being set up in Iowa? - LBN?...

zonmoy: They are more likely to cause a false flag attack to blame either on iran or on the anti war movement so they can declare martial law and round up all dissenters.

smoogatz: Immigration may just be the cover. Looks more and more like Cheney's preparing to impose martial law.

nichomachus: But they didn't have the resources to help the people of New Orleans

This just shows that they can do this sort of thing when they want to, telling us that in New Orleans they just didn't want to.

It also shows how quickly they can move to set up detention centers if they want to impose some kind of martial law.

Wiley50: Prison planet is one thing, but the DesMoines Register is something else entirely

Any rumors of anything like this going on elsewhere in the country?

It could be immigration

But, then again

It could be prep for possible riots if we attack Iran

or

Maybe they plan some obviously stolen primaries to fix the nomination.

They sure seem like they really want to run against Hil and, considering who they're running, they may even want her to win in November

Strange Days Indeed!

TwoSparkles: Just my gut feeling...?

Our government is slowly getting us used to the "rounding up" of people and also the detention of people in camps.

First, they start with "illegals" that they have worked so diligently to dehumanize and incite hate against.

They figure, if we see these people as less-than-human--we won't care so much when they are rounded up and put in closed-off camps.

Then, when our brains are accustomed to this happening--others will be rounded up--dissenters, anti-war activists, etc.

Are people in this country, really so slovenly and ignorant? Do they not realize what is happening? After what happened with the Jewish people and the detention camps there---no country should ever be allowed to
create circumstances that are similar. No groups of people should be "rounded up." No groups of people should be detained in camps, in situations where they are closed off from the public.

That's just sick.

Why would our government even want to behave in this inhumane way?

These actions are the precursors to a concentration-camp-type situation. This shouldn't be happening.

Does anyone trust that the thugs in charge now...are doing nothing wrong and that this is all very innocent?

warren pease: What makes you think the Bushies have any intention of leaving next January...

...peacefully and on schedule just because the 22nd amendment says they have to? Which other parts of the Constitution have they obeyed to the letter? The part about how it's OK to use signing statements in place of the usual legislative process? The part that specifies that rule by executive fiat is the ultimate form of egalitarian government? The part prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment?...

...Do you get the faintest hint that they're really not f*cking around anymore? Or is this all just one big bizarre coincidence and there's really no sinister pattern at all. There nothing to indicate that the legal and physical infrastructures necessary to implement a full blown national security state are all in place and just waiting for the Bushies to flip the switch.

On the one hand, this stuff is so pathetic and out of touch with reality that you almost want to go, "Are you people out of your minds? Do you really think Bush is going to try to stay in power and throw people in camps for disagreeing with him? How in the would could you believe that is going to happen?"

On the other hand, it's not unusual to see liberals on the net that want to see Bush, Rove, Cheney, and their other political enemies actually thrown in jail for disagreeing with them. So, at least a few of these people probably think Bush will implement martial law and start throwing people in camps because it's what they would do if they were in his place. That puts some of this wackiness into a slightly different perspective.

This ad, which makes fun of Obama's "Yes We Can" video, is the best political parody I have ever seen and it's hella funny.

Update #1: Just in case you haven't seen the famous "Yes We Can" video this is parodying, here it is,

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Ann Coulter: One down, two to go

Mark Ambinder: 7 reasons why Clinton should stay in the race

Cassy Fiano: Hollywood insults Christianity... again

Popoholic: More Elisha Cuthbert bikini goodness

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Some people believe that liberals and conservatives are just flip sides of the same coin when it comes to the judiciary, but that's not so. Conservatives believe judges should adhere to the original intent of the Constitution and not try to usurp the role of the legislature. On the other hand most liberals care little about the Constitution and view judges as just another way to advance left-wing policies.

Quotes like the following, from the New York Times, help give the game away,

"Mr. McCain predictably criticized liberal judges, vowed strict adherence to the Founders' views and promised to appoint more judges in the mold of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. That is just what the country does not need." -- The New York Times via Newsbusters

So, among other things, judges with "strict adherence to the Founders' views" are "just what the country does not need?" That's like saying, "Umpires who impartially do their job, without favor to either team, are just what this sport doesn't need."

Over at USA Today, Don Campbell wrote a pretty good column called the "Wright story: What took so long?" Well, it was good except for one thing -- the author didn't answer his own question,

Barring some really strange math or a lot of second thoughts, the Democrats seem poised to nominate for president a man with the fewest credentials and least familiarity to the American people of anyone in modern history. It's just one more way that Barack Obama is breaking the mold, and barring a major shift, he should give some of the credit to the news media.

...The record shows that publications such as the Chicago Tribune newspaper and Rolling Stone magazine had detected the controversial nature of Obama's church about the time he entered the presidential race, in early 2007. Soon after the announcement speech, moreover, Wright himself volunteered to The New York Times that he had been disinvited to give the invocation at Obama's presidential launch because of the baggage he would bring to the podium. That set off conservative bloggers and talkers, but little or no follow-up in the regular or so-called mainstream news media.

More than a year passed before ABC News' Brian Ross had the clever idea to purchase videos of Wright's sermons to review them. The most incendiary clips quickly landed on YouTube, and the rest is history. The news media were dragged into the controversy holding their noses, but by then Obama had the goal line in sight.

...Speculation aside, Obama has been ill-served by a press corps that seemingly was mesmerized by the large, frenzied crowds who turn out to see the Democratic rock star. Crowds can be deceiving: McGovern, nobody's idea of a rock star, attracted huge and exuberant crowds throughout the fall of 1972 -- on his way to losing 49 states to Richard Nixon.

...More than two years ago, at a Gridiron Club news media dinner in Washington, Obama poked fun at his meager accomplishments when he told his audience: "I want to thank you for all the generous advance coverage you've given me in anticipation of a successful career. When I actually do something, we'll let you know."

But the joke was on the journalists then, and now that Obama is about to actually do something, it still is.

See? There are a lot of great lines in there, but no answer to the very obvious question: "What took so long?"

Well, we could just as easily ask, "What took the press so long to cover the allegations by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth back in 2004?"

After all, the Swifties formed before Kerry captured the nomination and his anti-war protesting wasn't exactly a secret. Moreover, the Swift Boat Vets were veterans, many of them had served with Kerry, they were credible -- moreso than Kerry himself -- and they actually blew huge holes in some of Kerry's stories.

Yet, despite the fact that they were getting enormous coverage on talk radio and in the blogosphere, the mainstream media almost completely ignored them until Kerry responded to them publicly and then they simply aped the Democratic line, "Their allegations have been disproven," without ever giving their arguments a serious looksie.

Another clue that may help answer Don Campbell's question was the huge outcry on the Left after the ABC debate, where Obama bombed when he had to actually answer some tough questions about Jeremiah Wright, his refusal to wear a flag pin, and his connections to terrorist William Ayers.

So, why didn't the media hit Obama on Wright earlier? Why didn't they cover the Swift Boat Vets for Truth earlier? Why was there such a protest over Barack Obama being asked tough questions in a debate?

It's the same answer to every question: the mainstream media is mostly comprised of liberals, they do what they can to try to help their candidate win, and they generally think it helps to give Democrats a pass on tough issues. Are they right? I'm not sure that they are, especially in an age where the new media makes sure that these issues eventually come to people's attention.

Republicans are used to tough vetting and being treated unfairly by the media, so when the hammer drops -- and eventually, it almost always does even for liberals -- GOP candidates are usually well prepared. That's often not the case for liberals. They often have weaknesses exposed late in the game and do a poor job of handling it because they're simply not used to getting really tough questions from the press.

When the Republicans were picking a candidate, I was happy to see Mitt's Mormonism, McCain's age, Huckabee's sermons, and Rudy's marital trysts getting attention -- because you can be sure that all of those things would be discussed ad nauseum during a long campaign.

Had the Wright story broken earlier in the game, Hillary, who is the stronger candidate of the two, would probably now be in the catbird's seat instead of Barack. Maybe that won't make a difference in a year where the Democrats have a wind at their back, but if Obama gets the nomination and goes down to defeat, the MSM's aborted attempt to protect him for so long will have a lot to do with it.

The website of the day is Instapundit.

Over at the HuffPo, Jeffrey Feldman is actually accusing Rush Limbaugh of trying to incite violence with Operation Chaos,

For weeks, now, Rush Limbaugh has been trying to incite political violence by giving on-air military-sounding orders, effectively 'commanding' his listeners to wage war against the U.S. electoral system.

The right-wing pundit's 'orders' to his Republican listeners have been clear: vote in the Democratic primaries as a coordinated tactic for sewing division in the opposition party. The goal of such 'chaos,' Limbaugh has stated explicitly, is to foment hatred between different parts of the Democratic Party leading, ultimately, to street riots during the Denver convention.

...Most Americans would agree that using radio to incite political violence is not only wrong, but the attempt itself represents a massive failure in our democracy. How Limbaugh's broadcasts differ from, say, radio broadcasts that incited violence in Rwanda and Kenya, for example, can help us to understand exactly what Limbaugh was doing and the exact danger it poses.

...The violence in Limbaugh's broadcasts, in other words, is not just the attempt to incite riots, but also a way of defining the Left as destructive murderers of children--as a violent threat to the American people.

In Rwanda, the radio broadcasts did not just invoke Hutu to kill Tutsi's, but did so by claiming falsely that Tutsi's had killed large numbers of Hutu and that, therefore, Hutu must form self-defense groups to prevent Tutsi from killing again. Defining Tutsi as murderers, in other words, was a crucial part of violent Hutu broadcasts that led to the genocide of Tutsi.

So, encouraging Republicans to vote with an eye towards extending the Democratic primary is the equivalent of Hutus encouraging other Hutus to go into the street and butcher Tutsis with machetes.

That's an intriguing argument, especially given the sort of regular arguments that are made by liberals in these days and times. If you read liberal blogs and forums, you will regularly come across posts:

* Accusing conservatives of being Nazis.
* Accusing Bush of being worse than Hitler.
* Accusing Bush of going to war just to enrich his oil buddies.
* Accusing conservatives of being fascists.
* Accusing conservatives of wanting to round up liberals and put them in camps.
* Accusing conservatives of wanting to replace the government with a theocracy.
* Accusing Bush of being behind 9/11.
* Cheering the deaths of conservatives.

Now, ask yourself: would it be morally wrong to kill someone who's "worse than Hitler?" How about killing the person behind the WTC attacks, Osama Bin Laden? Would you be morally OK with putting a gun to his head and shooting him? What if someone were going to round you up and take you to a death camp based on your political beliefs? Would it be immoral to murder him? Point being, standard liberal rhetoric that you hear every day would logically lead towards violence if they believed their own BS.

So, for Feldman to make this convoluted argument that Limbaugh is actually encouraging violence by encouraging conservatives to help keep the Democratic race going is amazingly hypocritical when you have liberals declaring that Bush is behind 9/11 and worse than Hitler every day.

It has long been noted that conservatives are happier people than liberals and here's the latest "scientific" explanation of why that is,

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

...The results support and further explain a Pew Research Center survey from 2006, in which 47 percent of conservative Republicans in the U.S. described themselves as "very happy," while only 28 percent of liberal Democrats indicated such cheer.

The same rationalizing phenomena could apply to personal situations as well.

"There is no reason to think that the effects we have identified here are unique to economic forms of inequality," the researchers write. "Research suggests that highly egalitarian women are less happy in their marriages compared with their more traditional counterparts, apparently because they are more troubled by disparities in domestic labor."

The current study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

It's not called "rationalization," it's called a belief in personal responsibility, and it's the biggest, but not the only factor in being a happy person.

People who take responsibility for their own lives and believe that other people need to do the same tend to be much happier people.

Why? Because if you have a problem, you don't wait for someone else to fix it for you, you take care of it yourself. Similarly, if someone else has a problem, you may try to help him out because you're a decent person, but ultimately, you feel like it's his responsibility.

Not only is taking responsibility empowering, it's much more in line with how the world really works. That's because the government is slow, stupid, and inefficient while other people and countries are much more interested in themselves than you.

So, if you blame other people for how your life is turning out or wait for other people to solve your problems, you're disempowering yourself and setting yourself up to have an unhappy life.

PS: This may be a bit unintuitive to some people, but it's also people who believe in personal responsibility who tend to do more good in the world and give more to charity (Yes, studies show that conservatives are not just happier, they give more). Why is that? Because if you take personal responsibility and get your own life together, you are in a position to contribute to others if you so desire, you feel like it's your personal responsibility to help, and you have more compassion for people who are struggling because you have done it yourself to succeed.

If you want to know why Barack Obama didn't hold his hand over his heart while the National Anthem was playing or why he made such a big deal out of not wearing a flag pin, it was so he could appeal to the sort of people who read the Daily Kos.

Is that a stretch? Well, read this excerpt from a post by Daily Kos diarist Tsukasa Buddha,

Am I supposed to love America? I mean, I think it is rather silly when politicians say it is the greatest country in the world.

...Now, of course I realize that politicians are merely engaging in fluffy, feel good hyperbole, but it is just a pet peeve of mine.

...But I don't understand how you are expected to love your country. It really just doesn't make any sense to me; it is like dividing by zero.

Patriotism also seems largely irrational to me.

...I am not quite sure why it would be a bad thing that a person did not love America, or was not proud of it (Of course, pride is another matter entirely, but I disagree with it in general).

And then there is the whole "sharing American values", that both sides use, which I just completely don't get.

Is that a common sentiment at the Daily Kos? Indeed, it is and there's a poll up at the Daily Kos that confirms it. There aren't a lot of responses yet, but so far 67% of the Kossacks when asked, "Do you love America (If not American, use your own country)?" say either, "I am annoyed by America, but I'll stick with it," or, "I want to plan to pack my bags and leave."

My friend, there is a reason why liberals get accused of being unpatriotic -- it's because so many of them are unpatriotic. There's also a reason why conservatives are generally considered to be more patriotic than liberals -- it's because we are.

Do you know who this guest on Hannity and Colmes last night is?

Answer below the fold.

The website of the day is Likelihood Of Success.

If you want to see a great example of why Gitmo is absolutely necessary and why it would be a disaster to feed the terrorists we capture through our justice system, this story is it,

An extremist Muslim cleric regarded as "Osama bin Laden's spiritual ambassador in Europe" must be released on bail, a judge ruled today.

Abu Qatada, 48, who won his legal fight against deportation to Jordan last month, will be freed from prison under strict bail conditions amounting to 22-hour house arrest despite the fact that he is still deemed to be a threat to national security.

The cleric applied to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) for bail on the grounds that it was inhumane to detain him indefinitely if there was no prospect of his being deported.

The order to release him is the latest in a series of judicial decisions which undermine the Government's stance on terrorism.

In the past year, the courts have effectively rewritten sections of terrorism legislation and ruled that financial sanctions on terror suspects were absurd and unlawful.

The earlier judgment on Abu Qatada's deportation wrecked the policy of drawing up "memoranda of understanding" for the return of suspects to Middle East countries with poor human rights records.

Further embarrassments are likely to follow. The Times understands that the head of an Algerian terrorist network which plotted bomb attacks in Europe and north America is also seeking to be released because the courts have thwarted attempts to deport him.

Get ready, folks, because whether we end up with McCain, Obama, or Hillary in the White House, this is probably what our future looks like.

I found this quote from Democratic strategist Donna Brazile to be deliciously ironic,

"Paul, baby, we need to not divide and polarize the Democratic Party. . . . So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups, Paul, because you and I know . . . how Democrats win, and to simply suggest that Hillary's coalition is better than Obama's, Obama's is better than Hillary's -- no. We have a big party, Paul." And: "Just don't divide me and tell me I cannot stand in Hillary's camp because I'm black, and I can't stand in Obama's camp because I'm female. Because I'm both. . . . Don't start with me, baby." Finally: "It's our party, Paul. Don't say my party. It's our party. Because it's time that we bring the party back together, Paul."

"So stop the divisions. Stop trying to split us into these groups..." -- you've got to be kidding me. The Democratic Party is all about identity politics and so splitting people into groups is at the core of what the Democratic Party does.

It's black vs. white, women vs. men, North vs. South, atheists vs. Christians, successful people vs. unsuccessful people, the poor vs. businesses, on and on and on. Heck, both of their candidates? Barack Obama wouldn't be a contender is he wasn't black and Hillary Clinton wouldn't be a contender if she wasn't a woman.

So, of course they're dividing and splitting each other into groups; promoting envy, jealousy, and hatred between different groups of Americans is the bread and butter of the Democratic Party.

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Esquire has a list of the The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master. Although it's a fun list, they left out a few essentials and went heavy on the fluff. Here's the RWN list of the 19 things every man should be able to do,

1) Shoot a gun.
2) Catch a fish.
3) Throw a punch.
4) Take a punch.
5) Know how to deal with a dog that is acting aggressively.
6) Know what to do if a tornado or hurricane hits.
7) Cook a steak and a baked potato.
8) Jump-start a car.
9) Change a tire.
10) Drive a stick shift.
11) Give a firm handshake.
12) Read a map.
13) Handle a budget.
14) Swim.
15) Tie a tie.
16) Give a 5 minute speech.
17) Comfort someone who has just had a loved one die.
18) Negotiate a raise or a price on something he's going to buy.
19) Tell a pushy salesman "no."

It goes without saying that the GOP is taking a dreadful thrashing right now. Conservatives are unmotivated, Democrats are obliterating Republicans in the fundraising arena, and the GOP's poll numbers have dropped off a cliff.

George Bush, the face of the Republican Party, has an approval rating of 30% and according to Rasmussen Reports, one of the best polling agencies in the business, 41.4% of Americans consider themselves to be Democrats while only 31.4% say they are Republicans. Worse yet, voters trust the Democrats more than Republicans on the economy, government ethics, the war in Iraq, health care, Social Security, education, immigration, and abortion. Yes, the GOP still has an edge on taxes and national security, but how are Republicans going to compete in 2008 if they cede all those other issues to the Dems?

That's something Republicans in Congress are just going to have to figure out. How do you win elections when your supporters are unenthusiastic, people are sick of your political party, and money is in short supply? Unfortunately, in 2006, the answer was, "You don't."

In 2006, Republicans lost 6 seats in the Senate and 30 seats in the House. Although it's far too early to say for sure, judging by the direction the political winds are blowing, it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if the GOP loses another 4-6 seats in the Senate and an additional 10-15 House seats this time around.

So, why does the GOP seem to be trapped in this recurring political nightmare?

There are a plethora of different reasons for it: the war in Iraq, gas prices, a soft economy, George Bush's lack of communication skills, corruption scandals, the illegal immigration brouhaha, nominee John McCain, out-of-control spending -- you can go on and on.

However, there is one overriding problem that dwarfs all the others, a problem that few people in the leadership of the Republican Party seem to have come to grips with. That problem is that conservatives, who are the heart and soul of the Republican Party, no longer believe that the GOP has their best interests at heart.

That's not to say that there's no difference between the two parties -- because there is. That's not to say that the country would be better off if John McCain loses; it most certainly wouldn't be. That's not to say that the Republican Party isn't more conservative than the Democratic Party; without question, it is.

That being said, does the Republican Party adequately represent conservative interests? No. Do George Bush and John McCain's values and beliefs match up well with those of the average conservative in the Party? No, they do not. Does the machinery of the Republican Party -- the RNC, the NRCC, NSCC -- treat conservatives fairly and do a good job of representing conservative interests? Not at all.

In other words, to many conservatives, the Republican Party has ceased to be an organization that serves their interests and has become merely an allied organization that shares many, but not all, of the same critical goals.

That may seem like a small distinction, but it's an important one. Conservatives will stay up late volunteering for a campaign, give until it hurts, and crawl over broken glass to put candidates in Washington who're "on their side."
However, it's a totally different ball game when we're talking about mere allies. Why give money and spend precious time volunteering on the campaigns of people who are going to turn right around and cut you off at the knees on spending and illegal immigration once they get to DC?

In other words, the attitude towards the GOP has become, "He may be a son-of-a-b*tch, but he's my son-of-a-b*tch." That's what today's Republican Party is to most conservatives: our sons-of-b*tches.

........Which brings us, as conversations of this sort usually do, back to Reagan. Why did conservatives love Reagan? Certainly, he was a great President, but he departed from the conservative orthodoxy on more than a few occasions. Reagan signed an abortion bill when he was governor of California, the debt exploded under his watch, he raised taxes, he signed an amnesty bill, and Iran-Contra was certainly a big scandal. Yet conservatives, who were just as serious about their principles back then as they are today, supported him ferociously when he was in office and revere the man's memory.

Why?

Simple: because there was never the slightest doubt in the minds of conservatives that Ronald Reagan shared their values and was doing everything within his power to use conservative principles to make our country a better place. So, when Reagan did something that conservatives disagreed with, they figured he was just doing what he had to do for the sake of politics and didn't hold it against him.

Republicans today don't have that luxury because the assumptions that conservatives made about Reagan have been reversed. If a Republican does something that pleases conservatives, they often assume that it is being done for political purposes while deviations from the conservative norm represent what Republicans really want to do.

Until the Republicans can repair that breach of faith and convince conservatives that the GOP has the same goals as conservatives do on issues like spending, the size of government, and illegal immigration, the Party may win some battles, but it's going to slowly, but surely lose the war for the future of our country.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Cassy Fiano: "God, you're a whale. ROFL. Hate to break it to you, hunny, but liberals don't WANT to date you." (W/ hot pic)

Cracked: The 6 creepiest comic book characters of all time

Rittenhouse: The worst Honeymoon story evah!

Rachel Lucas: How about 8 things he hates about you?

Hollywood Tuna: Marisa Miller bikini pictures

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

Right Wing News emailed more than 235 right-of-center bloggers and asked them to send us a list of whom they considered to be the most influential people on the right. Representatives from the following 54 blogs responded...

Aaron's CC, David All Group, All American Blogger, Atlas Shrugs, Baldilocks, The Baseball Crank, Betsy's Page, BitsBlog, BizzyBlog, Blonde Sagacity, Bookworm Room, Cassy Fiano, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Conservative Grapevine, Argghhhh!, Ed Driscoll, Election Projection, Cara Ellison, Eternity Road, Exurban League, Elocutio, Euphoric Reality, Fetching Jen, Five Feet Of Fury, Fraters Libertas, Jeff Gannon - A Voice of the New Media, GayPatriot, Ghost of a Flea, (Doug) GraniteGrok, Guardian Watchblog, Hickpolitics, Freeman Hunt, Hick Politics, IMAO, Inside Larry's Head, Liberty Pundit, Mainstream Libertarian, Midnight Blue, Moonbattery, mountaineer musings, Newsbeat1, No Oil For Pacifists, Noisy Room, The Nose On Your Face (Potfry), The Nose On Your Face (Buckley), Pal2pal, Pirate's Cove, Professor Bainbridge, Don Singleton, Sister Toldjah, Solomonia, Stop The ACLU, Trying To Grok, Vox Popoli,

All bloggers were allowed to make anywhere from 1-12 unranked selections and were allowed to choose anybody on the right or generally perceived to be on the right that they liked: Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, politician, preacher, blogger, columnist, radio host, you name it!

Without further ado, here are their selections with the number of votes beside of each selection:

#25: Mark Levin: 6
#21) Hugh Hewitt: 7
#21) George Will: 7
#21) John Roberts: 7
#21) Ronald Reagan: 7
#20) Victor Davis Hanson: 8
#19) Antonin Scalia: 9
#18) John McCain: 10
#14) Glenn Beck: 11
#14) George W. Bush: 11
#14) Glenn Reynolds: 11
#14) Matt Drudge: 11
#13) Bill Kristol: 12
#10) Charles Krauthammer: 13
#10) Thomas Sowell: 13
#10) Laura Ingraham: 13
#9) Karl Rove: 14
#8) Jonah Goldberg: 15
#7) Bill O'Reilly: 17
#5) Newt Gingrich: 21
#5) Ann Coulter: 21
#3) Mark Steyn: 23
#3) Sean Hannity: 23
#2) Michelle Malkin: 24
#1) Rush Limbaugh: 49

Here's the Right Wing News guest blogger line-up this week-end.

Saturday
--------
Cassy Fiano
Kathy Shaidle Five Feet Of Fury
Gina Cobb
John Stephenson from Stop The ACLU
Van Helsing from Moonbattery

Sunday
-------
Ron Coleman from Likelihood of Success
Sister Toldjah
William Teach from Pirate's Cove
Michael Illions from Polipundit
MCQ from QandO
Dr. Melissa Clouthier

Make sure to give all of them a warm welcome and check out their blogs!

All 57 states.

Links to reaction at Instapundit.

Funniest remark so far: "Somebody should ask him to name all 114 US Senators."

Cross-posted at GINA COBB

Un-freakin-believable.

Here's the Head Huffpo herself being a REAL class act on the Colbert Report:

And apparently, McCain is no longer an American hero, simply because he's adopted a few more conservative values in her book.

Attention soldiers, veterans, and former POWs: you're only considered an American hero if your politics are strictly aligned with the left. Otherwise, your heroic service means nil.

What a freakin' fruitcake.

Hat Tip: Hot Air

Cross-posted from Cassy's blog. Stop by for more original writing.

Is anyone surprised? From the Wall Street Journal:

Sen. Barack Obama won the endorsement of the Teamsters earlier this year after privately telling the union he supported ending the strict federal oversight imposed to root out corruption, according to officials from the union and the Obama campaign.

It's an unusual stance for a presidential candidate. Policy makers have largely treated monitoring of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters as a legal matter left to the Justice Department since an independent review board was set up in 1992 to eliminate mob influence in the union.

Besides, he's a politician. Who cares about what's good for the people when he could screw them over to get a few extra votes?

Cross-posted from Cassy's blog. Stop by for more original writing.

OK, that's not saying too much, since the previous "greatest hour" was, by general consensus, The Trailer Park Boy's Christmas Special...

In less than a month, a quasi-judicial tribunal may order Canada's oldest national newsweekly to run 5 pages of Islamist propoganda, because the magazine once printed an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone.

(Can you say "Fairness Doctrine"?)

This week, Steyn was here in Toronto, launching the Canadian paperback version of the book.

As part of the media tour, he actually faced his "accusers" for the first time -- on a live TV show called The Agenda.

(Actually, Steyn faced the "boy band" pretending to be his accusers, hired to give the case a more attractive public face; the actual name on all the court documents, Mohammed Elmasry, once declared on national television that all Israeli civilians over the age of 18 are legitimate targets for death and dismemberment. And no: he wasn't charged with anything for saying that.)

A friend of mine called Steyn's appearance on TVO's The Agenda "the greatest hour in Canadian television history."

For an entertaining and highly educational couple of hours, you could do far worse than to grap a coffee and tune in to Steyn's live take down of these hapless "sock puppets" -- and his much calmer, and still witty, informative and engaging, interviews elsewhere.

It's Mark Steyn like you've literally never seen him before.

PS: if you're keen on following the Mark Steyn/Ezra Levant "hate speech" cases, remember to visit FreeMarkSteyn.com, for daily updates on their travails plus free speech/anti-Islamist commentary from around the globe.

(Now celebrating her eighth year online, Kathy Shaidle blogs, rants -- and gets sued by "human rights watchdogs" -- at FiveFeetOfFury.)

Professional racist Al Sharpton ruined careers with the Tawana Brawley hoax, got Yankel Rosenbaum killed by inciting riots in Crown Heights, and provoked the murder of seven people at a "white interloper's" store in Harlem. Just this week, he shut down New York City's bridges and tunnels with yet another of his self-serving publicity stunts. Rather than the contempt and derision he deserves, Sharpton has been rewarded with a position of great prominence in the Democrat Party, and treated with absurdly inappropriate respect by the media.

But there may be one sin for which he will be called to account: he's $1.5 million behind in his taxes.

Naturally Sharpton is spinning expectations that he pay his taxes like everyone else as another example of the white man's oppression. We'll see if this strategy also works with his National Action Network's failure to properly maintain workers compensation and unemployment insurance.

An incorrigible lowlife, Sharpton has been sued for not paying his bills many times before. But now he's under federal investigation by the FBI and IRS, and ten of his associates have received grand jury subpoenas. However, Sharpton has managed to beat the rap for tax fraud in the past by pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges.

At least this might be enough to derail a Supreme Court nomination if by some tragedy the MSM is able to install his identity politics colleague Barack Obama in the White House.

On tips from Wiggins and conservativeteen. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Even Cindy Sheehan concedes this would be too tacky...but the Westboro Cult has never let something small like tact get in the way. I'm not sure how these attention whores twist a heterosexual marriage into an appropriate place to protest homosexuality, but then I don't see how they twist any of the funerals they protest at as appropriate settings either. Anything that will make a headline, I guess.

The crowd from the Crawford Texas Peace House may be sitting this one out, but the sanctity of President Bush's daughter's wedding Saturday won't necessarily stop anti-homosexual protesters from the Westboro Baptist Church from trying to crash the blessed event.

Shirley Phelps Roper, daughter of the leader of the Topeka, Kan., church whose members picket at locations where they believe homosexuality is being encouraged, said eight church members will picket near Jenna Bush's wedding Saturday night.

The protesters will set up at Prairie Chapel Road and Farm-to-Market Road 185 from 6 to 7:30 p.m., Roper said.

Meanwhile, peace activist Kay Lucas, caretaker of the Crawford Texas Peace House, says the organization plans no protests of its own Saturday but will staff its headquarters at 9142 Fifth St. in Crawford, several miles east of the president's 1,600-acre ranch.

"We just felt that she (Jenna) doesn't have anything to do with her father and his policies," Lucas said. "And this is a woman's one-time dream of a wedding day. Protesting would just be tacky."

It's a rare concession by the peace activists, who have mounted local protests of President Bush's war policies since 2003.

They were pivotally involved in Cindy Sheehan's massive anti-war protest near the president's ranch in August 2005.

Roper's group, however, trailed the president last week as he toured tornado-ravaged areas of Kansas, she said.

Hat tip: Jammie Wearing Fool

Crossposted from STACLU where we've got a lot of great writers lined up. Make us a daily read.

I had no intention of writing another "liberals seethe" post regarding Jenna Bush's nuptials. Been there, done that. Yet, this one caught my eye. Why? Because it was not the DU, Kosbat, HuffPost, or any of the usual suspects.

Here is the winning comment for Most Compassionate Liberal

A gross filthy little *** who eats our food, drinks our water, and vomits in our faces.

These Bushes are like a VD infection, some kind of gross bacteria parasites, wasting our substance with their drunken parties and immoral filthy behavior. They do no work, they contribute nothing to this nation, and they live the high life of absolute indolent waste on their little "ranches" in OUR state of Texas, why must we continue to tolerate these gross indolent thieves?

Other pleasant responses

• Do you think maybe this was a shotgun wedding? It appeared to me that Dubya might be a proud grandpa in about months!!


• I wonder how many of their weddings presents were paid for with some of the billions in blood money her father''s war profiteer friends have made?


• Her father has murdered more then 4,000 of our brave young troops. More then 4,000 young men and women that will never have families or at least never be part of their lives. And then there are the tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians the he has slaughtered. And for what? Only for the profit of the already rich. Nothing more. They all died so his friends could get richer. That''s it. That''s the sickening truth. They died for money and greed! they all died in vain. And I''m supposed to be happy that the daughter of a mass murdering war criminal got married? Fu*ck ''em!


• Ten bucks says it''s over within the year. Any takers?


• I hope she someday comes to realize that she is the spawn of hell and turns on her father for the murders and war crimes he has committed. I hope she comes to a place where she hates him forever.


• Tough sh*it. this is no different then announcing the marriage of Hitler''s daughter. Why should I be happy with all of the blood her father has dripping from his hands? he is a war criminal and a mass-murderer. He is scum. He is what maggots puke up. It doesn''t matter if she "seems decent", she is the child of a demon who deserves to DIE!


• I hope their marriage goes as well as W''s term! You live by the sword......


• The coward daughter of a coward father weds a coward dickless son-in-law.


• Aw gee, isn''t that nice. That warms my heart almost as much as watching a tramp blow chunks in a sewer. Have a nice honeymoon brat and brat-ess.


• A match cursed in hell.


• I hope they''ve both been sterilized so as not to spawn any more GOP scum.

Oh, the source of said comments? That would be CBS News on the web. Screenshot of the first comment here.

Cross posted at Pirate's Cove

Early evening update: Half of the comments, including the main excerpted one, have been wacked. Apparently, someone is actually awake at CBS News. You can still see the screen shot above, though.

My mom birthed me, therefore I am. Thanks mom!

Wait is it 10:41 CST? Why, yes it is. I rolled my old bones out of bed an hour ago, secure in the knowledge that I got to sleep in today. Sleeping is just better when you know someone else is responsible for the urchins. A breakfast spread (not in bed--that mode of eating is overrated--crumbs, spilled stuff, it's better in theory) sat on the table. My little cherubs were there. The youngest one sans clothes. He's happier that way these days.

I got a present. Try to not be jealous. It's going to be hard because they're so freakin' cool!

The earphones, made by Etymotic Research specially for my iPhone, cancel noise, so I'm not blasting my eardrums now turning the music up so dang loud to cancel external noise. They fit into my wee ear canal comfortably. My Apple earphones hurt my ear and were falling apart after daily use since December. I endured the pain because 1) I'm cheap and 2) my options sucked for so long. The benefits of the old Apple earphones still outweighed the other two choices. With the Apple earphones, you could use the phone and I really, really like the feature of uninterrupted music. That is, I could receive a phone call or make one, and the song I was listening to would fade out and then back in right where it was. The other headphones were either headphones or wireless blue tooth phone, but not both phone and headphones.

Not now. The Etymotic HF2's do everything the old Apple earphones do, they just do it oh so much better. The sound is astonishingly good. Rich and full, nice bass, mid-tones good, treble decent. Sounds a bit tinny right now but I'm listening to an old Roy Orbison recording of You Got It so it might be that. Now, I'm listening to Prince's I Would Die For You. Sounds the same. It's the earphones. But I'm quibbling. They are fantastic.

I accepted one phone call and experimented with going outside. A complaint about the Apple headphones was that the microphone picked up every little sound. Thus, a breezy day negated talking on the phone outdoors with the headphones on a walk say, requiring me to pull them out, hold the headphones in one hand (no clip--the new ones have a clip) and gab on the phone. I know. I suffer. We'll see if it's the same deal with the new ones. I don't know. During my one test run, the caller could hear the birds chirping in the background, so we'll see.

If I was a good mother, I'd be waxing elephant about the inherent joys of motherhood first before telling you yahoos about the rocking headphones. But I never claimed to be a good mother. No award winning, heroic deeds of self-sacrifice (this morning yet, anyway) to distinguish me from any other mother who does her loving duty day in and day out. I just love my kids.

Cross-posted at Dr. Melissa Clouthier

First off, I want to wish all the moms out there a very happy Mother's Day. If you want to keep it happy, I'd advise you not watch the following video clip of females in Obama's travelling press corps swooning over and oogling a jeans-clad Barack Obama on a plane:

Is it just me or early on in the video did he perform a model-like twirl around one time for no apparent reason?

Look, I'll be the first one to say that he looks good in jeans. But then again, I'm not a member of the mainstream media, a group of people who are supposed to be reporting on the presidential race objectively. I personally find the whole incident appalling and believe it should be added to the mountains of evidence regarding the MSM's dereliction of duty (the Chi Tribune's John Kass writes more about that here) when it comes to fairly covering the candidacy of Barack Obama.

Michelle Malkin says the video made her throw up a little bit in her mouth. It's come pretty close to making me want to skip out on eating Mother's Day lunch.

Related: Several bloggers have caught the the Obama campaign and the NYT trying to rewrite history as it relates to his promise last summer that he would be willing to meet unconditionally with some of the world's most notorious despots, including Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Columnist Jacky Kelly ripped Obama over this in a column a few days ago about The Chosen One's repeating this promise on the campaign trail - most recently at his victory speech in North Carolina:

In defending his stated intent to meet with America's enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: "I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did."

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.

I assume the Roosevelt to whom Sen. Obama referred is Franklin D. Roosevelt. Our enemies in World War II were Nazi Germany, headed by Adolf Hitler; fascist Italy, headed by Benito Mussolini, and militarist Japan, headed by Hideki Tojo. FDR talked directly with none of them before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.

FDR died before victory was achieved, and was succeeded by Harry Truman. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender. He ended that war not with negotiation, but with the atomic bomb.

Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman's response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.

Perhaps Sen. Obama is thinking of the meeting FDR and Churchill had with Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in Tehran in December, 1943, and the meetings Truman and Roosevelt had with Stalin at Yalta and Potsdam in February and July, 1945. But Stalin was then a U.S. ally, though one of whom we should have been more wary than FDR and Truman were. Few historians think the agreements reached at Yalta and Potsdam, which in effect consigned Eastern Europe to slavery, are diplomatic models we ought to follow. Even fewer Eastern Europeans think so.

When Stalin's designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman's response wasn't to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.

Sen. Obama is on both sounder and softer ground with regard to John F. Kennedy. The new president held a summit meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev in Vienna in June, 1961.

Elie Abel, who wrote a history of the Cuban missile crisis (The Missiles of October), said the crisis had its genesis in that summit.

"There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure in June 1961 and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions," Mr. Abel wrote. "There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America's power. He questioned only the president's readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost, he came to believe that Americans are 'too liberal to fight.'"

That view was supported by New York Times columnist James Reston, who traveled to Vienna with President Kennedy: "Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs," Mr. Reston wrote. "He would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him, but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed."

It's worth noting that Kennedy then was vastly more experienced than Sen. Obama is now. A combat veteran of World War II, Jack Kennedy served 14 years in Congress before becoming president. Sen. Obama has no military and little work experience, and has been in Congress for less than four years.

[...]

History is an elective few liberals choose to take these days, noted a poster on the Web log "Hot Air." The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it's dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:

"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

'Nuff said.

Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog.

Michael Young at Reason Magazine is shocked, shocked at all that "strange new respect" being directed to Hezbollah by "the writer and academic Norman Finkelstein." (Via Goldberg, via Instapundit.)

"Writer and academic"? Yeah, wasn't Joseph Goebbels one of those, too?

Then, as a topper -- Noam Chomsky! Sympathetic to Arab mass murderers, those guys? Really? Who knew. Good thing about these Internets is you get the news and stuff fast!

Cross-posted at Likelihood of Success.

Three political goals - less pollution, less dependence of foreign oil, develop incentives for alternative fuels.

Today's Reality - gas prices are sharply up.

Probable Result - less miles driven, thus less pollution, less dependence on foreign oil and more of an incentive to develop alternative fuels. More citizens using mass transit.

Today's election year "reality" - claim to feel pinched citizen's pain, demand oil companies reduce price of fuel, promises of windfall taxes, flooding of the market with oil from the Strategic Petroleum reserve and suspending federal gas tax to lessen the price of gas.

Probable Result - enables more miles driven, thus more pollution, more dependence on foreign oil, less incentive to develop alternative fuels.

Market? What's a market?

Brilliant.
_________

First published at QandO.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Mark Steyn: Israel's doom would be bad news for Europe

Egotastic!: Heidi Klum bikini pics

Cassy Fiano: Pics from the gun range

Cracked: The 5 most needlessly complex terror plots in film history

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

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Romesh Ratnesar takes to the pages of TIME to ask, in apparent seriousness, "Is It Time to Invade Burma?"

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

So what is the world doing about it? Not much. The military regime that runs Burma initially signaled it would accept outside relief, but has imposed so many conditions on those who would actually deliver it that barely a trickle has made it through. Aid workers have been held at airports. U.N. food shipments have been seized. U.S. naval ships packed with food and medicine idle in the Gulf of Thailand, waiting for an all-clear that may never come.

[…]

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma. Some observers, including former USAID director Andrew Natsios, have called on the U.S. to unilaterally begin air drops to the Burmese people regardless of what the junta says. The Bush Administration has so far rejected the idea -- "I can't imagine us going in without the permission of the Myanmar government," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday -- but it's not without precedent: as Natsios pointed out to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S. has facilitated the delivery of humanitarian aid without the host government's consent in places like Bosnia and Sudan.

Let me just go on the record: Hell no, it's not time to invade Burma. Are you friggin' kidding me?

Frankly, I don't care what the junta in Burma wants. The international community doesn't recognize them as legitimate. If the people who do these things for a living decide that ignoring the junta and dropping relief supplies will do more good than harm, I don't have any problems with it.

But coercive humanitarian intervention? No, thanks.

This post was used with the permission of Outside the Betlway.

"None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. The depth of opposition is particularly striking considering that Mingo County is one of the most Democratic places in West Virginia, having cast about 85 per cent of its votes for the party in the 2006 midterm elections. If Mr Obama cannot win there in November, he has little chance of carrying the state." -- Financial Times

Bonus Quote:

"Since the Civil War, no Democrat has ever been elected without carrying West Virginia..." -- Patrick Reddy

The WAPO has done a piece that is supposed to be a damning indictment of the type of care captured illegals get before they're deported. Personally, I think it reads better as a preview of what would happen if the Democrats got their way and socialized medicine came to pass.

Just take a look at what happens when the government, an organization with the compassion of the IRS, the efficiency of the DMV, and the raw, steely confidence of FEMA takes charge of people's health care,

Near midnight on a California spring night, armed guards escorted Yusif Osman into an immigration prison ringed by concertina wire at the end of a winding, isolated road.

During the intake screening, a part-time nurse began a computerized medical file on Osman, a routine procedure for any person entering the vast prison network the government has built for foreign detainees across the country. But the nurse pushed a button and mistakenly closed file #077-987-986 and marked it "completed" -- even though it had no medical information in it.

Three months later, at 2 in the morning on June 27, 2006, the native of Ghana collapsed in Cell 206 at the Otay Mesa immigrant detention center outside San Diego. His cellmate hit the intercom button, yelling to guards that Osman was on the floor suffering from chest pains. A guard peered through the window into the dim cell and saw the detainee on the ground, but did not go in. Instead, he called a clinic nurse to find out whether Osman had any medical problems.

When the nurse opened the file and found it blank, she decided there was no emergency and said Osman needed to fill out a sick call request. The guard went on a lunch break.

The cellmate yelled again. Another guard came by, looked in and called the nurse. This time she wanted Osman brought to the clinic. Forty minutes passed before guards brought a wheelchair to his cell. By then it was too late: Osman was barely alive when paramedics reached him. He soon died.

His body, clothed only in dark pants and socks, was left on a breezeway for two hours, an airway tube sticking out of his mouth. Osman was 34.

The next day, an autopsy determined that he had died because his heart had suddenly stopped, confidential medical records show. Two physicians who reviewed his case for The Washington Post said he might have lived had he received timely treatment, perhaps as basic as an aspirin.

...Osman's death is a single tragedy in a larger story of life, death and often shabby medical care within an unseen network of special prisons for foreign detainees across the country. Some 33,000 people are crammed into these overcrowded compounds on a given day, waiting to be deported or for a judge to let them stay here.

...The most vulnerable detainees, the physically sick and the mentally ill, are sometimes denied the proper treatment to which they are entitled by law and regulation. They are locked in a world of slow care, poor care and no care, with panic and coverups among employees watching it happen, according to a Post investigation.

The investigation found a hidden world of flawed medical judgments, faulty administrative practices, neglectful guards, ill-trained technicians, sloppy record-keeping, lost medical files and dangerous staff shortages. It is also a world increasingly run by high-priced private contractors. There is evidence that infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and chicken pox, are spreading inside the centers.

...Some 83 detainees have died in, or soon after, custody during the past five years. The deaths are the loudest alarms about a system teetering on collapse. Actions taken -- or not taken -- by medical staff members may have contributed to 30 of those deaths, according to confidential internal reviews and the opinions of medical experts who reviewed some death files for The Post.

...Nurses who work on the front lines see the problems up close. "Dogs get better care in the dog pound," said Catherine Rouse, a contract nurse at an Arizona detention center who quit after two months last year because she saw what she regarded as "scary medicine" in the prison: patients taken off medications they needed and nurses doing tasks they were not qualified to do. "You don't treat people like that. There has to be some kind of moral fiber," Rouse said.

So what happens when the government takes over YOUR CARE and "Dogs get better care in the dog pound?" What happens when all of us, except the richest people who can go elsewhere, are stuck in a "system teetering on collapse."

Liberals can promise anything that they want, but what you just read is the reality of what happens when you put an organization as incompetent as the federal government in charge of health care.

I'm working on a column called "A Man's Responsibilities," and I'd like you to suggest any responsibilities that you think a man has by virtue of being a man, below in the comments section. The piece is just starting to take shape and I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

On the one hand, the more liberals (and who else would buy into something this stupid) who get on board with this group, the better,

"May we live long and die out" is the unofficial motto of a new movement that seeks to improve the Earth's ecosystem by ensuring that the human species does not survive.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT, consists of volunteers who have made active life decisions to remain childless for the benefit of the Earth, thereby preventing the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals.

...While no one person takes credit for being the founder, Les U. Knight created its name and is the spokesperson for the movement.

"We've already exceeded Earth's carrying capacity for humans by quite a bit," Knight told WND. "We are using up our resources. The best way to stop it is by not breeding. It's really the best way because the people we don't create don't exist, and so there's no impact on them."

VHEMT activists believe a smaller population will benefit the Earth by reducing human and environmental catastrophe.

..."It's an idea, and it's not transferred genetically," he said. "We aren't born knowing we should go extinct; we have to learn it. We don't need to create new humans in order to indoctrinate them from birth. All of us come from breeding couples, and yet we've decided not to breed."

The concern I have with lunatics like this is not that they want to remain childless. That's Darwinism at its finest and we're better off if these losers voluntarily choose not to breed. That just means there will be less little hippies voting for Chelsea Clinton when she runs for President in 18 years.

But, the scary thing is that these loons will find some way to murder millions or maybe even billions of people one day in an effort to depopulate the earth. In other words, it's not the dumb libs who don't want to have kids we have to worry about; it's the dumb lib who works in a biological weapons lab, making super bugs, who decides to try to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale because he has been influenced by these hippies.

PS: There is no point to the existence of earth without humans. If human beings ceased to exist, it would make little difference at all whether the earth continued to exist or not.

"It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France." -- Mitch McConnell

So, I'm walking through the super market and I see the newest copy of the Globe, which has, among other things, this, on the cover,

Now, after seeing that, you're probably wondering what it's all about. You're probably thinking, "Has Obama been murdering gay people in his spare time?" or alternately, "I knew that guy murdered gay people!"

That's why I stepped up to the plate, bought the latest copy of the Globe, and perused the story so I could tell you what it was really all about -- because after all, if this man is going to be our next President and he's going to be getting involved in gay murder scandals, I think the American people have a right to know that.

Long story short, the choir director, Donald Young, at Barack's anti-white hate church, Trinity United, was apparently gay and murdered.

Moreover, according to an anonymous "private investigator," "Donald Young was silenced because of something he knew about Obama." Moreover, Larry Sinclair, the gay guy who says he did drugs with Obama right before they had sex, says that he was also connected to Donald Young and gave the police "shocking new evidence" linking Obama to the murder. Sinclair, who failed a lie detector test about having sex with Obama, says that Young had "personal and intimate involvement" with B.O.

Now granted, this is the Globe and as such, I wouldn't give Larry Sinclair and their anonymous "private investigator" any more credence than I'd give say, the anonymous sources for a Seymour Hersh story, but still, I thought you should be aware of this story just in case you are ever discussing Barack Obama and the gay murder he isn't -- well probably isn't -- involved with.

The Wall Street Journal reports reports on a bill that looks like it will soon pass through Congress with enough votes to withstand a Bush veto.

Unions keep losing membership as a share of the national workforce, which explains why organized labor's main political focus is changing the rules to force more workers into unions. Witness a bill that Senate Democrats are pushing this week to require that hundreds of thousands of local police and firemen submit to collective bargaining.

Under current law, every state has the ability to set policies that govern its public workforce. In some states, police, firefighters and paramedics belong to unions that collectively bargain for their contracts. In others, unions representing public-security workers can bargain over pay, but not over benefits or work rules. And in some others, these workers can choose not to belong to a union.

Democrats want to change this for the entire country. A bill that passed the House last year would make the top officials at local unions the exclusive bargaining agents for public safety officers in every town or city with more than 5,000 people. They would also have the authority to bargain for everything -- pay, benefits and work rules. The goal is to give labor the whip hand with local governments, and further coerce nonunion members to join the dues-paying ranks.

Workers have a guaranteed right to join a union if they want. Now Congress wants to take away their choice and force them to join unions that they haven't already joined. This is quite a powerful unfunded mandate and would place a big burden on local communities. With quite a few Republicans going along with this bill, it is likely to pass with something approaching a veto-proof majority.

Local officials nationwide are fighting the bill, and the Bush Administration has promised a veto. But the House passed it 314-97, and it may be veto proof. That leaves the Senate, where the bill has 11 Republican co-sponsors, most of whom are up for re-election this fall. Oregon's Gordon Smith and Minnesota's Norm Coleman seem to believe that the unions will go easier on them in November if they throw them this concession. Right. If Republicans can't even oppose monopoly unionization, who needs Republicans?

That would leave the Supreme Court as the last hope to stop this imposition of unionization. I learned after the Court upheld McCain-Feingold not to place my hopes in the Supreme Court.

Put this bill together with the proposal to prevent workers from having a secret ballot when they vote on whether or not to join a union and you can see how politicians, particularly the Democrats, are fulfilling the wishes of their union masters.

This content was used with the permission of Betsy's Page.

It's really, really early, but just for the heck of it, here are my first election projections for the White House in November.

The political environment is still heavily tilted against the GOP. It may even be as bad as it was back in 2006. Additionally, having a President as unpopular as George Bush and an unpopular war occurring is going to be an enormous drag on McCain.

Moreover, although McCain seems to be doing as well as could be hoped in drawing conservative voters, the energy level on the right is practically a flat line. McCain is raising very little money, the new media on the right has been a bit lethargic in defending him, and while there is an enormous dislike of Barack Obama on the Right, there's also very little enthusiasm for a McCain Presidency.

On the other hand, a lot of real damage has been done in the Democratic primary fight. There's genuine bad blood on both sides and a guy like McCain, who's an honest-to-goodness moderate, could stand to benefit.

Furthermore, despite the fact that the most likely nominee, Obama, is raising a lot of money, he does not match up well to McCain and he has some serious demographic issues that could be crippling in a general election. Paul Begala described Obama's supporters as "eggheads and African Americans" and unfortunately for the Democrats, those two groups go Democratic anyway.

When you look at the groups that are truly up for grabs, middle-class white voters, female voters, older voters, etc., Obama is not doing very well with those groups. On top of that, not only is Obama way too inexperienced to be President, he is exactly the sort of candidate that Republicans defeat in election after election: an effete, northern ultra-liberal masquerading as a moderate.

In an even-steven year, where both Republicans and Democrats were relatively evenly matched, McCain probably wouldn't have much trouble dispatching Obama.

However, this is not an even-steven year. The political battlefield is heavily titled towards the Democrats because of Bush, the war in Iraq, McCain's unpopularity with the conservative press, and the lack of energy on the Right.

Still, the American people have never shown much inclination to put unrepentant liberals in office, they're not fond of losing wars, and Obama is probably going to have long-term difficulty winning over white voters because of his long association with Jeremiah Wright and his anti-white church.

With that in mind: my first way, way too early estimate would be: McCain: 60% chance of getting elected. Obama: 40% chance.

PS: If Clinton were the nominee, I'd put her odds of beating McCain at 75%.

The New York Times put together a piece called "‘Mad Pride' Fights a Stigma."

Part of the article focuses on people working to de-stigmatize mental illness -- which is fine as far as it goes. The world is full of mentally ill people who aren't dangerous and who lead full, productive lives. Just as an example, I've known a couple of people with bipolar disorder that are really creative and fascinating individuals -- although they sometimes had issues they had to work out. Still, some of these people who have mental problems control their problems with medication, some of them pull it off with therapy, and some just scrape by without either -- and they don't deserve to be looked down upon just because they have a problem.

That much, I can go along with.

However, I do have a big problem with some of the people on the extremes of this movement,

Members of the mad pride movement do not always agree on their aims and intentions. For some, the objective is to continue the destigmatization of mental illness. A vocal, controversial wing rejects the need to treat mental afflictions with psychotropic drugs and seeks alternatives to the shifting, often inconsistent care offered by the medical establishment. Many members of the movement say they are publicly discussing their own struggles to help those with similar conditions and to inform the general public.

...Some Icarus Project members argue that their conditions are not illnesses, but rather, "dangerous gifts" that require attention, care and vigilance to contain. "I take drugs to control my superpowers," Mr. DuBrul said.

While psychiatrists generally support the mad pride movement's desire to speak openly, some have cautioned that a "pro choice" attitude toward medicine can have dire consequences.

"Would you be pro-choice with someone who has another brain disease, Alzheimer's, who wants to walk outside in the snow without their shoes and socks?" said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, executive director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute in Chevy Chase, Md.

Being seriously mentally ill is not a "superpower," it's not a "gift," and, yes, one way or another, it does need to be treated. You want to see people who aren't treating their mental illness? Go to any big city and start meeting the homeless. You'll find plenty of people with "superpowers" there -- and the sad thing is that a lot of those people, if their conditions were being treated, could be living fairly normal lives instead of sleeping on sewer grates and eating out of garbage cans.

This whole issue is a pet peeve of mine because it plays into the liberal tendency to treat destructive personal behavior as simply another lifestyle choice. Oh, you're a man who "feels" like a woman? Great, have surgery and try to pass as female. Oh, you're 15 years old and you think it would be fun to start banging every guy that moves? Well, here's a condom, so now you're protected! Oh, so you think your schizophrenia doesn't need to be treated? Well, who are we to tell you otherwise? Have fun!

People, even people with the common sense to know better, get so caught up in the idea of being "tolerant" that they just stand by and watch other people do really stupid and destructive things with their lives. It may be too late for some of the folks who buy into these wacky philosophies, but it works the same way as conspiracy theories do: if you don't challenge these horrible ideas, if you cede the debate to the wackos, you lose by default and a lot of decent people end up getting suckered by horrible ideas as a result.

Over at the Daily Kos, diarist nepos libertas veered all the way from the standard liberal sympathy towards Palestinian terrorists, to anti-Zionism, to wacko conspiracy theories and flat out anti-semitism. Here are some excerpts from his post,

Eulogy before the Inevitability of Self-Destruction: The Decline and Death of Israel

...Before the covetous Zionist movement multiply like cancer cells, there was a degree of harmony between the Palestinian Arab and the Semite Jew of Israelite origin who share ethnic heritage in common as the descendants of Abraham. This peace and positive relationship has been rendered moot by the Zionists hell-bent on uprooting Palestine by chipping away every parcel of existing land, by force and violence, for large-scale thievery, not much different from the Spainards who subjugated the Caribbean and Mesoamerica native populations to genocide by termination, slavery and cruelty soon after the "exalted" arrival of Columbus.

...It is a matter of Israeli policy to engage in militaristic war cry of ultra-nationalistic morale, deception, cruelty, thievery, subversion, assassination, sabotage and warfare by belligerence to achieve its objectives for supreme rule.

...It thus emerged as a major power and a formidable challenger of existing Arabic powers that will decide the fate of the world, beginning with November 22, 1963 coup d'etat in CIA-MOSSAD coordinated assassination of President Kennedy which unnaturally led to the hasty re-evaluation of American foreign policy for adjustion that align with the interests of Israeli state for total compatibility in irreversibly entangled alliance.

...During the Six-Day War of 1967, on June 8th, U.S.S. Liberty, the U.S. Navy intelligence ship, sailed in international waters approximately 14 miles off Sinai Peninsula...Israel Air Force encircled the ship for a while while some crew members on the ship waved in greeting to the pilots flying overhead. Suddenly IAF and IDF commenced the attack on the ship with strafing bullets, missiles and torpedoes, costing 34 American lives and maiming 175. The U.S. government, including President Lyndon Johnson, Secretary of State Robert McNamara and Admiral John McCain Senior (father of Arizona senator and presumptive Republican presidential nominee), colluded with Israel to cover up the war crime that would be called an act of war had it been done by the designated enemy.

...And Israeli war crimes continue unabated arising from its belligerent nationalism in Zionistic lust for war to subservience by the foreign powers as allies that look the other way while atrocities pile on...

...Israel embody the vessel of boiling blood of horror and perfidy in demonic vileness for its pattern of terrorism and murder in the name of Zionist ideology.

...After the murder of JFK, Israel has extended its Zionistic tentacle to grasp the United States by the neck to leech on to that manifest the radical foreign policy about-face to morally and materially support State of Israel in no uncertain (and unconditional) terms.

...This is the bidding of a farewell formed in the extension of a middle finger by the militantly atheistic Luciferian Ashkenazic Jewish sect that - resolved they be - believe in - by genetic predisposition and/or indoctrination from birth - supremacism of the Master Race, because they have accomplished the goal of procreating State of Israel to dominate in hegemony by the art of seduction, after centuries of persecution and expulsion on charge of treason by subversion of host nations, blood rituals in human sacrifice of Gentile children, corruption and ravishing of women, conspiracy to injure and murder esteemed officers & rulers and usurious & fraudulent deed in union with the spiritual descendants of the wicked Jews of the extinct Sadducee sect, the persecutor and abetted executioner of Jesus Christ, propagating fruition of the species as the "Chosen One" and bringing the world to its knees without mercy for subservience and obedience by slavery (brainwash) and tyranny.

...Israel's fate is uncertain, but I am positively certain it will, to paraphrase Ayatollah Khomeini, "vanish from the page of time". Its eventual destruction will be effectuated by its own hands -- the checkmate action that fit the personas of a maddeningly ambitious, ferocious, delusional and suicidal psychopath.

If the lunatics in Iran ever get their way and fire off nuclear missiles at Israel, anti-semites like this guy at the Daily Kos will be dancing in the streets or alternately, in the State Department, if Obama becomes President and Jimmy Carteresque liberals of this sort actually get their hands on the levers of power again.

Obama's 57 states screw-up really caught my eye and I'll tell you why: not only did he miss how many states we have, he missed it really badly and didn't catch his own error after he said it. That means that it wasn't just a slip of the tongue and I have trouble believing that Obama is so ignorant that he simply didn't know how many states we have. So, what explains his mistake?

Honestly, my first thought was that he was so coked up that he lost track of how many states we have. Is that implausible? Not at all. This is a guy who admits that he has used cocaine and was headed towards being a junkie at one point. Could he be back at it during a stressful campaign? Sure, he could. When was the last time the guy took a drug test? Has he ever taken one?

Let's just hope that if he gets into the White House, he isn't using and on a coke bender if one of those 3 AM crisis calls comes in...

Since liberals have already gotten even more hypersensitive than normal about any sort of criticism aimed at Barack Obama, I thought it would be fun to make a 30 second video that would really p*ss them off.

Plus, let's face it, Hopey Hussein McChangeunity is a huge pansy, especially compared to John McCain. Heck, even most Democrats will admit that in a race between Hillary and Barack, the candidate that needs to "man-up" the most isn't Hillary...

Original post: At 4:00 PM EST, I'm going to be on the Jaz McKay show.

Click on Stickam in the left corner to listen to the show.

Make sure to check out Conservative Grapevine today, where you'll find links like:

Peggy Shapiro: Obamas flip-flops are the only change we can really believe in

The Sisyphus Files: Take a look at these Time covers from 2007 and 2008 and you'll see how the mag turned into the DNC's personal b*tch

Michelle Malkin: Worst prom dress of 2008 nominee

Egotastic!: Tara Reid bikini pics

You can check out all those links and more by clicking here. Don't forget to bookmark RWN's companion page, CG! Remember, if you're not reading RWN and CG every day, you're not getting the full story!

PS: If you'd like to submit articles to be linked to Conservative Grapevine, register at CG, and then shoot me an email.

The website of the day is Althouse.

Jim Geraghty on the big win for Hillary Clinton in West Virginia. He makes one valuable point for the Democratic echo chamber:

You'll see the press, and Obama's surrogates (perhaps I repeat myself) insist that tonight's result means nothing, and indeed, in the delegate count, the effect is marginal. But superdelegates ought to be sweating. White working-class voters, and various overlapping demographics - the elderly, Catholics, Jews - just aren't warming up to Obama, and they've been the backbone for the party for generations. Liberal bloggers (and Saturday Night Live, and arguably the Washington Post) are responding by suggesting Hillary's supporters are racist; these people may not be so eager to vote for Obama in November as the pundits insist. Once you insult a voter by calling them racist, they may not be eager to meekly repent by doing as their moral betters in the pundit class demand.

The shameful way that some in the Democratic Party are treating their own voters is shocking. The same sort of political smears usually reserved for Republicans are being used against their own. What will the Democratic message for West Virginia voters be in the fall? "Vote for us, you racist hick morons"? That's hardly a compelling message for the Democrats.

The Obama coalition of wealthy white urbanites and black voters is not enough to win. The Democrats cannot win when they abandon the working-class voters that make up a critical portion of their base. Yet those are exactly the groups that Obama can't seem to win.

Their are, of course, good reasons to want to be rid of Hillary Clinton, but her being unelectable is not one of them--certainly not as she keeps defying all the political odds. The Democrats have a choice, go with their heart or go with their brain. I shall leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine what course the Democrats are taking.

This content was used with the permission of Jay Reding.

Question: "Not sure if you have mentioned this on RightWingNews, but there are rumors out there that Huckabee is at the top of McCain's short list of VP picks.

Can you comment, please?

Huckabee Tops McCain VP List" -- ToddonCapeCod

Answer: The veepstakes rumor mill has been spinning fast and furious of late and a different name seems to pop out every time. There were rumors McCain was looking hard at Condi Rice, then Mitt Romney, and now Huck.

Now, unlike a lot of other bloggers, I was a Huck fan. He was my #3 choice in the primary, behind Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson. Granted, he was way behind Duncan and Fred in my book, but still, I wasn't someone who was hostile to Huck.

I tell you that because I don't think he would be a particularly good choice as the Veep and I want you to understand that's not just anti-Huck venom.

That's not to say that Huck doesn't have any strengths. He's extremely charismatic, is strong with social conservatives, and would help McCain in the South.

However, once you get past Huck's charisma, it's hard to see how any of those other traits would be particularly helpful.

Sure, Huck is strong with social conservatives, but as a general rule, the same conservatives who don't like McCain, don't like Huck either. So anything McCain gained with social conservatives would probably be lost with conservatives in general by adding Huck to the ticket.

Moreover, although Huck would help in the South, McCain isn't weak in the South. Although there are certainly no guarantees in what is shaping up to be another tough year for Republicans, McCain probably has at least a 50/50 shot of winning every Southern state against Obama.

So, from there, we're left with Huck's charisma, which is certainly formidable, but probably isn't enough to make up for the malaise Huck would cause with conservatives who're not fond of McCain in the first place and would be even less so if he added someone they believe is a big government squish to the ticket.

PS: What I'd like to see Huck do is spend the next four years burnishing his conservative credentials, particularly on small government and foreign policy issues, and then he could step back into the ring and run again in 2012. I think Huck has the potential to be a real asset to the Republican Party and the conservative movement, but I'm just not sure that being McCain's Vice-President would be the best way for him to do that.

Not only is the GOP losing special elections, it's managing to lose elections in districts where its candidates should be winning by 10 points without even campaigning,

Democrat Travis Childers won Tuesday's Mississippi special election runoff for Sen. Roger Wicker's (R) former House seat, handing Democrats the biggest of their three special election takeovers this cycle and sending a listless GOP further into a state of disarray.

Childers led GOP candidate Greg Davis 53-47 with more than 90 percent of precincts reporting. Turnout increased substantially over the 67,000 voters who cast ballots in the April 22 open special election, with more than 100,000 voting in the runoff.

Childers, who beat Davis 49-46 three weeks ago but came up just shy of a race-ending majority, joins new Democratic Reps. Bill Foster (Ill.) and Don Cazayoux (La.) to give Democrats a trifecta of upsets in conservative House districts over the last two months.

The loss could send shockwaves through the Republican Party, where murmurs about a leadership shakeup have become more and more audible.

Democrats are backing up the assertion that they remain on the offensive in the cycle following a 30-seat gain, which has historically not been the case after a "wave" election.

Wicker's former district voted 62 percent for President Bush in 2004 and, by that measure, is one of the most conservative seats Democrats have taken from the GOP over the last 18 months, including the 2006 election.

The GOP got massacred at the ballot box in 2006 and if this year isn't quite as awful, it's only going to be because the Democrats plucked so much low hanging fruit in 2006 that they're going to have to keep picking up strong Republican districts to add seats.

Let me add that it's too bad that the Republican leadership in the House may end up on the chopping block over these losses because from what I've seen, they're pretty much the only "Republican leaders" in DC who can find their own *sses with both hands. Yet, even when they do a good job, it seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the screw-ups of Bush / McCain / the Senate / the RNC, etc.

PS: What you're seeing is the result of the Republican Party's "leadership," such as it is, becoming arrogant, complacent, and coming to believe that they're so smart that they don't need to listen to the people who put them in office to begin with.

You've GOTTA watch this, if only because of this Clinton loving pastor's incredibly bizarre allegations that Obama and Wright have had a long gay affair and that Oprah Winfrey wants to be Secretary of State. Where did he even come up with this stuff?

Hat tip to Drudge for the video.

"Like many tired old pop stars with nothing better to do, Paul McCartney has ostentatiously embraced the phony environmentalism craze. Like the rest of them, his "carbon footprint" remains many times larger than those of us peasants, especially after his new $164,000 hybrid Lexus limousine was delivered by jet, creating 100 times more of the carbon emissions moonbats fret about than if it had been shipped.

The point of the car is that it will supposedly reduce these same harmless emissions. How emblematic of the entire pointless fad." -- Van Helsing at Moonbattery

"I do not think the President of the United States should be a liar, and believe that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens agree with me." -- Jimmy Carter

Now, from my interview with Robert Novak,

John Hawkins: In your book, you really go out of your way to emphasize how often Jimmy Carter lied about things...

Robert Novak: (Laughs)

John Hawkins: Do you think that Carter's frequent lying and the fact that he seemed to get away with it, helped influence Bill Clinton to lie so often when he was President?

Robert Novak: Well, I think Bill Clinton was a minor league liar compared to Jimmy Carter. Carter would just lie for the sake of lying. He was absolutely incredible.

I put a lot of the cases in the book -- I couldn't put all of them in -- but my two favorite cases are in the book. I had written a column detailing nine separate lies by Carter and he told another reporter that I had apologized to him for it. That was just an absolute lie.

Then many years after his presidency, my late partner, Rowly Evans and I had a party celebrating the 25th anniversary of our column and we invited all the Presidents and ex-Presidents to send letters. Nixon didn't like us much, but he sent a nice letter. But, Carter told an aide that the last thing he would do was send any kind of greeting to those guys.

That year, in 1988, at the Democratic National Convention, there was a reception at the Carter Center in Atlanta and as my partner was going through the line -- I told my partner not to do it -- ...(and he said to Carter), "Mr. President, how come you didn't send us a message for our 25th anniversary?" He said, "Well Rowly, if I had known, I certainly would have sent it. It must have gotten lost in the mail."

"Clearly, some sizable portion of the Republican base is less than thrilled with McCain as their nominee. Ironically, in this context, they face this choice partly because the social conservative vote was split among many candidates, most prominently Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, allowing the "moderate" McCain to win.

Regardless, however, only McCain and Obama are plausible winners in November. Barring tragic circumstances, one of them will be our next president. It's therefore irrelevant if one would actually prefer some third alternative.

The only way it makes sense, then, to vote for a Bob Barr or Alan Keyes or Ralph Nader or some other person who will not be our next president is if you honestly have no preference whatsoever as to whether McCain or Obama prevails. Otherwise, even if it's a 1 percent, hold-your-nose difference, you should vote for that guy." -- James Joyner

The website of the day is Tigerhawk.

Back in late March, I mentioned that my buddy Skye from Midnight Blue was gratuitously assaulted by a "peace" protester.

"More chillingly, last weekend a man attending a Chester County Peace Movement (CCPM) peace vigil in West Chester, Pennsylvania, assaulted a citizen journalist and blogger. At 12:10 PM, blogger "Skye" was videotaping an exchange between opposing groups. As the conversation gets both animated and heated, she shifts her filming position to capture all parties involved. The shot is abruptly cut when a fist flies at her face, she is slapped and the camera is jammed into her face. Not satisfied by the first blow, he strikes her a second time.

Nearby police intervened and the party involved was quickly pointed out by the victim and witnesses. The officer requested the suspect's cooperation in the investigation. During his "refusal", this lover of peace took his physical abuse past shoving a woman and shoved the officer. He was rewarded with handcuffs and removal."

Here's the video again -- try not to throw anything at the screen when the liberal thug attacks Skye.

Well, last night Skye IM'd me to let me know that charges have been filed in the case,

Meicht, 62, of West Chester, was charged with Simple Assault, Resisting Arrest, REAP, Disorderly Conduct, and Harassment. A prelim in his case is scheduled for Friday at 15-1-04 (15-1-04, CR-0000101-08). It's not entirely clear as to why both cases were filed in different courts, though at least Meicht will be in front of a judge who is probably sympathetic to his cause...

Personally, I'm rooting for the guy to go to the slammer, but the "judge who is probably sympathetic to his cause" part doesn't give me a lot of confidence that justice will prevail.

As I've said time and time again, one of biggest mistakes that the RINOs in DC make is that they buy, hook line and sinker, into the whole, "Who else are they going to vote for?" fallacy.

In other words, they believe that they don't have to work to keep their base happy. Instead, they can toss a few scraps to conservatives and spend the bulk of their time reaching out to independents and still win elections.

If you want to see how flawed that line of reasoning really is, just take a look at the turnout from the special election in Mississippi's First Congressional District.

What you'll note is that there was no surge in the number of Democratic voters. To the contrary, the GOP lost that election because the bottom fell out on the Republican side. The voters are still there; they're just so dispirited by the lousy performance of the GOP that they couldn't rouse themselves to go to the polls.

This is where the Republican Party is killing itself. The top political priority of Republicans should be keeping conservatives happy and then, once that's done, they can try to reach out to independents in ways that won't aggravate their biggest supporters.

It's because they've put the cart before the horse by focusing on independents while paying scant attention to what conservatives want that the GOP is in so much trouble.