Pigstickin'

Republicans and conservatives, as you might expect, reacted negatively to Obama's comment that, "You know, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig." Now I don't know if he was trying to make a subtle, or not so subtle, dig at Sarah Palin. To be honest, I don't really care. No, what struck me was that it sounded like an attempt to sound all folksy and rural and it fell flat. He followed up the comment with, "You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it's still going to stink after eight years."

It doesn't come across on the screen but, if you listen to audio of his remarks, it's clear he's struggling with the metaphors. He's from Chicago, he's from an urban environment and culture. It sounds to me like he was trying to come off as something he isn't. And it didn't work.

Quote of the day

Remember: Standards are good. Double standards are twice as good.

Ignore this man

After all, he's just a dumb soldier who didn't have any other option, or who was duped into it by a duplicitous recruiter.

Memo to Chris Gregoire

You're running against Dino Rossi, not George Bush. Just thought you'd like to know....

The non-existent bit-bucket

Mike tips us off to a post at LGF documenting continued efforts to hide the fact that the Democrats' staunchest supporters include raving lunatics of the type mentioned in my previous post. It seems the Kostards haven't figured out that once something's on the Web, it's forever. All we have to do is pay out the rope, folks. Then, once they've tied the knot and slipped the noose around their collective neck, just pull the lever, sit back, and watch them dance.

Oh, by the way, the reference to hanging in the previous paragraph should not be taken as a racist comment referring to the practice of lynching. But I'm sure it will anyway. I'm white, after all, and can't help myself.

Freedom for me, but not for thee

We hear all the time from the outraged Left about how Bush and the Republicans are stifling dissent and squelching free speech, all the while proving that their allegations are factually false because they're still talking.

Well now freedom of speech really is under attack, but it's not a Republican that's threatening it:

You can expect hardball in a presidential campaign, especially one in a country as divided as ours seems to be. But the kind of hardballs being pitched is an indication of the people and policies that an incoming administration will be employing.

That is why it’s particularly troubling that the Obama campaign has filed a criminal complaint against the people behind an ad being run that links Obama to avowed terrorist William Ayers.

The link in the excerpt is to Ben Smith's Blog where he notes that it isn't just Republicans and conservatives who have come under attack. Obama's general counsel, Bob Bauer is an equal opportunity assaulter:

It's worth noting that this isn't the first time Bauer has called for criminal investigations and prosecutions into the donors to independent groups critical of Obama, including one supporting John Edwards and another supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton. His words did have the effect of scaring their donors and consultants, but haven't yet appeared to result in any prosecution.

Chilling, and a foreshadowing of what's to come under an Obama administration. Additional commentary can be found at The DC Examiner. Hat tip to Mike at Cold Fury for bringing this to my attention.

Democrats have long held themselves up as the champions of free speech and all the other rights and freedoms (with one exception, of course) enumerated in the Constitution or elsewhere. While many, if not most Democrats really do support these rights, that support isn't universal among the Left. I've brought up the Fairness Doctrine before and my fear that it will be revived even worse than before under an Obama administration. This just confirms that my fears are justified. John Hinderaker at Powerline is equally concerned:

Obama's suggestion that it is illegal for a 501(c)(4) entity to fund issue ads that are negative toward him appears ludicrous. Here's the real question, though: if Obama is elected President, will he appoint an Attorney General who will carry out politically-motivated prosecutions like the one he is now demanding? I suppose we can't know for sure, but why wouldn't he? If he demands criminal prosecution of free speech that opposes his political interests when he's a candidate, why wouldn't he order it as President?

Answer: No reason at all.

Funny money

I live in Snohomish County, Washington. One of the larger local fairs is happening now and somebody thought it would be funny to sell fake 3$ bills "depicting Barack Obama wearing Arab headgear and featuring a camel" at the booth for the Snohomish County Republican Party.

Naturally, Obama supporters are all up in arms about this despite, as noted in the article:

"I don't think it's funny," said [Snohomish County Republican chairwoman Geri] Modrell, who said she ordered the bills removed as soon as she learned about them. "They were offensive. The volunteers are being told very clearly they must not do these sorts of things."

Now I personally don't condone these fake bills either. It reflects poorly on the Republican party and distracts from the real issues that I have with Obama, namely that he's a full-blown socialist. Even so, the reaction of some people is overblown:

Susan Ronken, a volunteer at the nearby Democratic Party booth at the fair, also saw the bills, which were present at the booth for at least two days this week.

"It was an absolute hate crime," said Ronken, who lives in Stanwood.

Give me a break. Satire yes, slander at worst, but a hate crime? Yet another example of someone claiming victim status in order to obtain power over those she disagrees with and shut them up.

Something else that piqued my interest was this:

The bills offended some passers-by at the fair, including Ronnie Thibault, a Monroe woman who said Republicans at the booth threatened to call security on her after she complained.

"My first reaction was, 'Are you kidding me? Really?' " said Thibault. "Even if a person is a Muslim, so what, but he [Obama] is not."

Thibault, who describes herself as a "hard-core Democrat," said she would have been just as offended if the Democratic booth at the fair had sold offensive depictions of Republican John McCain, who is expected to be nominated as the GOP presidential candidate next week in St. Paul, Minn.

This is pure speculation on my part but I suspect she did more than just complain which is what prompted the people manning the booth to consider calling security. She is, in her own words, a "hard-core Democrat" which implies that she is, shall we say, passionate about her views and her opinions of those who oppose them. As far as her claim that she'd be equally offended by an offensive description of John McCain, well I'll go ahead and give her the benefit of the doubt on that one, though it wouldn't surprise me if she expressed her offense somewhat less vehemently.

Because we're not a Communist Dictatorship, that's why!

In a speech yesterday, Barack Obama had this to say:

Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you're starting to think, "Beijing looks like a pretty good option." Why aren't we doing the same thing?

Yeah, Beijing looks pretty good. But only from certain angles.

Hugh Hewitt in this bit at Townhall sums it up nicely:

I suppose so. Provided you don't mind de minimus pollution controls, employing people under Chinese labor conditions, and you don't mind construction standards in the countryside that allow the collapse of thousands of buildings including schools when the earthquake hits, killing tens of thousands.

Obama has said a lot of stupid things recently, but the idea that totalitarian eye-candy engineering proves Beijing is the better than America is near the top of the list.

To be honest, I'm amazed that world records are falling the way they are at the Olympics in swimming and track given the pollution in the air. The swimming venue is indoors so I'm assuming its air is filtered. But the track and field venue (the "Birds Nest") is open air. Still it wouldn't surprise me if they expended the effort to install air filtration systems that provide relatively clean air at the level of the field and lower seating, not to mention the power it takes to run them.

It's the shoes

Isabel Wilkinson over at the Huffington Post has noted the following about John McCain's choice in footwear:

This summer John McCain is traveling in style. He has worn a pair of $520 black leather Ferragamo shoes on every recent campaign stop — from a news conference with the Dalai Lama to a supermarket visit in Bethlehem, PA. The Calfskin loafers, with silver-tone "Gancini" buckles, are imported from Italy.

Really, with all of the issues that the candidates will face during this election, you concentrate on McCain's shoes? Is that all you got? Besides, what kind of shoes does Obama wear? What about Hillary? Wanna bet they're not cheap either?

The thing is, it looks like he's wearing the same pair of shoes in all of the pictures. Yeah, they may be expensive Italian leather, but they're obviously comfortable and durable. For a man who spends as much time as he does on his feet, that's of paramount importance. I'd say he's getting his money's worth.

The double standard

There's something that's been on my mind lately. During the 2004 Presidential election, much was made by the Left of the fact that John Kerry had served in the regular Navy - and had served in Vietnam, don't forget - while George W. Bush had served in the Texas Air National Guard without seeing any combat. Despite the evidence presented by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth about the quality of Kerry's service, there is no denying that he actually did serve and actually was in Vietnam. During the election, Kerry's supporters repeatedly pressed the argument that Kerry's wartime service made him more fit to serve as Commander in Chief than George W. Bush.

Now the situation is reversed and the differences between the candidates is even more extreme. John McCain served in the Navy as a pilot and was shot down over Vietnam. He spent five and a half years in a POW camp where he was tortured. And, unlike waterboarding, there is no dispute that what he experienced was truly torture. His opponent, Barack Obama, never served in the military in any way.

Naturally, Obama's supporters are not saying that McCain's military service makes him in any way better suited to serve as CinC. In fact, unsurprisingly to me at any rate, quite the opposite is occurring:

One aspect of McCain's presidency that I have not seen addressed is the precise form of his military experience. We have had good presidents with military experience - Eisenhower and Carter come to mind - as well as good ones without it - FDR and Clinton, to name two.

But military experience is not all equal. Slogging through the mud is not the same as calibrating a nuclear submarine. And of all the possible military experiences, that of bomber pilot to me is most suspect.

The update to the original post is a particularly splendid example of spin and rationalization:

Update: several folks have pointed out that George McGovern was a bomber pilot, or shared experiences from ones who took their actions with great seriousness. Perhaps being a bomber pilot is one of those intense experiences that reveals underlying character, rather than forming it.

The hypocrisy is palpable. John Hawkins at Right Wing News shares my view.

Inherent in the system

Click here for Hillary Clinton's letter to the Superdelegates. Read it and then come back. Didja read it? Good.

So Clinton is making the point that she's more likely to defeat John McCain in the general election than Barack Obama is.

One of the arguments she makes to support that assertion is that, "nearly all independent analyses show that I am in a stronger position to win the Electoral College, primarily because I lead Senator McCain in Florida and Ohio." This does not mean that she thinks she'll win the popular vote, but the all-important Electoral College vote. Even though Democrats stated that Bush really lost the 2000 election because he lost the popular vote, should Clinton, or Obama, repeat that achievement, expect the Democrats and the media to be curiously silent about it.

Another argument she makes is that more people voted for her in the primaries than for Obama, indeed more than for any Democrat candidate in the past. In her words, "I expect to lead in the popular vote and in delegates earned through primaries."

First of all, if I'm interpreting it correctly, she's completely ignoring the delegates earned through the caucuses in those states which held them, including my home state of Washington.

Second of all she doubtless includes the votes in Michigan and Florida, the former of which didn't even have Obama on the ballot since he obeyed the DNC's ruling regarding Florida holding its primary too early and withdrew his name.

For the sake of argument, though, let's concede that her argument is correct and that she has a better chance of defeating McCain than Obama does. Let's also assume that enough superdelegates agree to make the difference and hand the nomination to Clinton if they vote for her. Will they?

Before I attempt to answer that, let's take a look at the superdelegate system and the reason I, at least, think that it was put in place. Quite simply, the superdelegates exist to override the will of Democrat voters (and caucus attendees) if the party elite decides that the people made the wrong choice. After all, the people can't be trusted to make such an important decision correctly all the time, right?

So given that, and given the assumptions above, will the superdelegates give the nomination to Hillary when all is said and done? I think it's unlikely. The reasons? There are two: The 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, especially the former where Gore did actually win the popular vote. During and after those elections, and especially after the Florida debacle in 2000, the Democrats made such a big deal about how so many voters were disenfranchised (most if not all allegations of which were not supported by the evidence) that they don't dare give the impression that they're doing the same thing even though the superdelegate system is designed to do exactly that. They're stuck between a rock and a hard place on this and they're trying their damnedest to navigate these tricky waters successfully. I think this is why the remaining uncommitted superdelegates are biding their time waiting to see the final results of all the primaries. And even now there are superdelegates announcing support for Clinton.

But Clinton obviously doesn't care. She's willing to say and do anything to win the nomination and then the general election. Even if it means truly disenfranchising the majority of Democrat voters and caucus attendees. And she either thinks she can pull it off, or she is trying to damage Obama sufficiently that he'll lose the election and thus give her another shot in 2012.

Flouting the rules=disenfranchisement?

Facing strong opposition, Florida Democrats abandoned plans to hold a do-over presidential primary with a mail-in vote and threw the delegate dispute into the lap of the national party.

(But wait a minute; why is there an issue here? The DNP already settled this question, before the primary!!)

Of course, is anybody surprised it's coming down to this? I know Hillary Clinton isn't. (Come to think of it, she probably is surprised, and steaming mad, that the whole primary hasn't been settled in her favor already.)
It's also no surprise that now when things become important, suddenly the democrats shouldn't have to follow the rules, not even their own!
According to the rules of the Democratic National Party, if Florida held their primary before a certain date, the DNP would not recognize it as a valid primary, and would not be counted toward choosing which candidate the democrats would put up for President. Florida, and Florida's democrat voters *knew* this. They defied the party anyway, and the DNC enforced their rules. Well, so far anyway...

So of course, what happens when things start getting a little rough in Democrat-Land? Here comes that word:

Michael Steinberg, a lawyer for Victor DiMaio, a Democratic Party activist from Tampa, said Florida's Democratic voters are being disenfranchised by not being permitted to have their say in choosing their party's nominee. The action violates DiMaio's constitutional right to equal protection, he argued.

So check me on this; The primary is a way for a certain group of voters to decide who they're going to back for office in a general election. This is a procedural vote for members of a subset of the american voting public. No office is being filled here. Where's the disenfranchisement? Not to mention, where were the state's democrats when the state decided to forge ahead with this defiance? Where were their voices then? (Same question to Florida Republicans actually).

Question: When a vote is called, and you flagrantly violate the procedures for how your vote is cast, are you disenfranchised? I say no. I say you played yourself. In fact, Florida knew this going into the vote. They didn't agree with the rules, didn't follow the rules, and did it hoping that something just such as this would occur. So arguably, Florida is getting exactly what it wants, at the expense of it's representation within the Democrat party.

Pardon me if I giggle. Would the word 'schadenfreude' be appropriate here? It is probably one of my very favorite words of all, and I very rarely get to use it (much less experience it). So permit me my moment... ah. Go Florida!!

In a very rare case for me, I find myself agreeing with the DNP:

"The citizens of the state of Florida are not being treated equally," Steinberg told the judges. But Joe Sandler, a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, said the party has the right to set its own ... rules and not seat delegates who refuse to follow them.

Actually Michael Steinberg, I daresay the (democrat voting) citizens are being treated exactly equal. Equal to any set of members within the DNP who violate the procedures of the party. Just ask Michigan. Hehe. (of course, we can already predict what's going to happen next in Michigan, can't we?) And, oddly enough, ask the members of the Republican Party in Florida and Michigan. Their primaries violated their party procedures as well, and they also are being treated according to their party's rules. Of course, on the Republican primary side, the question is settled already, without FL or MI.

(Of course, to a Democrat, equal means "I get it my way." Again, this time it's being used against other Democrats. Schadenfreude? Me? Hehe.)

Fred Thompson's problems

Paul Ibrahim compares and contrasts the Republican candidates. He begins:

Mitt Romney said it best in last week’s debate: “We're not going to get the White House nor strengthen America unless we can pull together the coalition of conservatives and conservative thought that has made us successful as a party. And that's social conservatives. It's also economic conservatives. And foreign policy and defense conservatives.”

After going through the issues he has with all of the others, he comes to Fred:

This leaves us with Fred Thompson, who, ironically, is the candidate best described by Romney’s words about the Republican tripod. In short, Thompson holds the same conservative positions of all the other candidates combined, and has none of their flaws. In fact, any close observer of the campaign season would tell you that Thompson has been on the receiving end of barely any substantive attacks on policy issues. This is no coincidence. And it is the reason he has had to bear the brunt of shallow attacks about his demeanor, campaigning style, and laziness (whatever that means).

Of course, Fred isn't without his issues either:

You know a candidate is solid when his biggest problem is his unwillingness to follow the pack on campaigning styles. You know you can trust a candidate when, unlike his opponents, he is regularly unmentioned by accuracy watchdogs like FactCheck.org following debates. And you know what you’re getting in a candidate whose campaign rhetoric so closely matches his legislative record.

I'm sure there are a lot of people in the media that are scared witless by the prospect of President Fred Thompson. So when you read opinions about how he's "lazy" or "doesn't seem to care" about his campaign, keep in mind the source. And then read the updates at Fred08, see just how busy he actually is, and note where he's making his appearances. From the reports it's clear that he's taking his message to the people where they live and work, eschewing such events as fancy campaign dinners at a thousand bucks a plate. Leave that to the Democrats.