Monday, February 11, 2008
No... no... she's not dead, she's, she's restin'!
Mrs Clinton looked chastened but defiant as she spoke... in Richmond, Virginia, as the results came in and omitted to congratulate the night's victor...
There were chants of "Obama, Obama" as she briefly mingled with the crowd before leaving as her victorious rival entered the room to an exultant welcome...
Classy!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Best of the December 2007 Posts
Actually, the left column has some of my favorite posts from December 2007. The right column has some older articles that are ready for the archives.
Hillary attempts to recapture the youth vote
With news that Barack Obama swept the weekend's political festivities, Hillary's back-office is undergoing some major renovation: Her campaign manager "quit".
Now Hillary needs to attract renewed attention on her campaign. The repeated crying jags have lost their effectiveness. But this might work.
Quick takes brought to you by Drunkenstein's
• Valiant Dozen To Retake Congress: Bruce Kesler has a plan to survive the idiocy. Bookmark Iraq Veterans for Congress and lend your support.
• A nuke for a nuke: what do you call an Israeli neocon? Someone who wants to survive.
• The secret truth about Barack Obama: his inexperience and socialist leanings aren't the secrets, however.
• Hillary Uncensored: factcheck.org publishes the response to "Crooked Claims about Clinton."
• Archbishop of Canterbury calls for Sharia law in Britain: "I, for one, welcome my new Islamic overlords." Melanie Phillips has additional detail.
• CAIR's Cheerleaders: you'll never guess.
• Memo to self: never apply for a liquor license using a prospective bar named "Drunkenstein's".
796
The Democratic nomination will likely come down to the votes of the 796 "superdelegates". These special delegates, created in '82 to give party insiders more influence in the nomination, are worth twice as much as the entire state of California. And the Clinton machine appears to have more business ties to the superdelegates than does Barack Obama.
...some party leaders worried that the situation could lend the appearance that the nominee will be selected by insiders rather than by rank-and-file voters... That appearance is not helped by the fact that so many superdelegates have clear allegiances. Bill Clinton, for instance, is a superdelegate by virtue of his tenure as president, as are Clinton campaign chairman Terence R. McAuliffe and longtime Clinton ally Harold Ickes...
I'm imagining what the Democratic Convention might look like...
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Pimping aside, am I allowed to say that the Clintons are playas?
The New York Post:
Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened yesterday to pull out of an upcoming debate hosted by MSNBC after one of its correspondents said on air that daughter Chelsea was being "pimped out" by the campaign to win votes... "I, at this point, can't envi sion a scenario where we could continue to engage in debates on that network, given the comments that were made," said Clinton's spokesman, Howard Wolfson, calling the comment "beneath contempt."
Speaking of which, legendary Clinton fundraiser Peter Paul asserts that the Clintons did precisely what David Schuster described in the run-up to Hillary's 2000 Senate campaign.
...Bill Clinton introduced Paul to Chelsea at a welcome reception Paul arranged for the Clinton family when they arrived at the Brentwood Ranch where Paul hired and supervised Grammy’s producer Gary Smith in producing the hard money fundraiser concert for Hillary that was a part of the Gala Hollywood Salute to President Clinton.
Paul even offered Chelsea a job, in tandem with the services her father promised to provide Paul and his company when he left the White House, as a roving reporter for the youth audience of Paul’s company’s global entertainment portal on the internet- stanlee.net.The White House requested that Chelsea be seated between President Clinton and Peter Paul at the Gala Salute to President Clinton. The introduction by Bill of Chelsea to Paul and her conversations about Paul’s family and his one year old daughter featured in the Gala Tribute Book, appeared to be intended to help Hillary establish a “family” rapport with Paul that would assure Paul’s continued financial support of Hillary’s Senate campaign...
I always said Bill Clinton was a playa...
Read all of Paul's post - he has some interesting photos and documents I hadn't seen before.
Linked by: The Anchoress. Thanks!
Al Qaeda issues Amber Alert for blubbery traitor Adam Gadahn
Have you seen this porky terrorist lately?
Al Qaeda appears nervous that Gadahn hasn't checked in for about a week:
...Jihadist sources on the Pakistan side of the border are telling local journalists they are worried. One who described himself as a “very close friend” of Gadahn said the 28-year-old California native had until recently been spending most of his time in the populated areas of South Waziristan, near the towns of Wana, Azam Warsak and Shahkai.
The same friend said Gadahn had left for North Waziristan a week before the Predator attack in Mir Ali, where he was supposed to attend “an important meeting”. The friend said that, after the Predator attack on January 31, they lost “all contact” with Gadahn.
“All our friends are worried about him but so far we could not make any contact with him. We had sent two of our friends to Mir Ali to locate him and provide us with details about him,” the supposed friend explained.
He added that other militants who traveled with Gadahn also were missing...
Gateway Pundit and Jawa have more.
Linked by: Dr. Sanity Thanks! Credits: "Amber Alert" line -- Larwyn
Heroin packaged as a book
Book Review - Robert Ferrigno's Sins of the Assassin
Seldom does an eagerly anticipated sequel meet the hype. Even less frequently does it exceed the original, especially when the latter received numerous awards and hit all of the bestseller lists. Such an anomaly is Robert Ferrigno's Sins of the Assassins, the second volume in the Assassin Trilogy.
In "Sins", another, darker day has arrived. The United States is more fragmented than ever as the Christian Bible Belt is racked by warring factions; the Islamic Republic has become increasingly radicalized as Sharia law spreads; and the Aztlan Empire (Mexico) and Canada are encroaching on the old southern and northern borders.
Worse, word of a legendary super-weapon buried in a remote mountain area -- a highly-classified DoD project in the old U.S. regime -- threatens to unravel the fragile truce that exists between the Islamic Republic and the Bible Belt. Epps is tagged for a secret mission by the president of the moderate Islamic Republic to retrieve the weapon. Any hope for a "re-United States" hangs in the balance as a variety of international players -- including China, the modern global superpower -- race to control the weapon.
Epps is one of the Islamic Republic's elite "shadow warriors," a tiny cadre of special operatives groomed for commando activity behind enemy lines and genetically enhanced for night vision, fighting skills and agility. Compounding Epps' troubles, however, he's ordered to bring Leo -- an unathletic, unworldly nineteen year-old scientific genius -- with him on his nerve-wracking mission into the Bible Belt. Leo's job will be to quickly interpret the weapon's technology and to perform other classified tasks to which even Epps is not privy.
Along the way, Epps grapples with his own religious beliefs. As the violence escalates, he becomes convinced that somehow, some way, the spirit of Darwin -- the ultimate assassin controlled by the Old One -- has entered his being. Epps struggles to maintain control over his own schizophrenic existence as he and Leo weave their way through the Bible Belt's fragmented terroritories of religious cults, militias and corrupt officials.
As Rakkim and Leo wend their way to the mountain and the weapon within, they face not only the combined forces of the Old One, but a formidable militia led by "the Colonel", a military legend in the Bible Belt. Foremost among the Colonel's troops is Gravenholtz, a mechanically enhanced super-soldier capable of unbelievable savagery.
If Hollywood hasn't optioned the Assassin series, it's high time some Porsche-driving, mousse-laden genius arranged a meeting with Ferrigno's representatives.
The only downside of the book? You'll need the literary equivalent of methadone to overcome withdrawal once the story ends. And you'll be marking the calendar for the final chapter of the triad.
Friday, February 08, 2008
The hysteria formerly known as global warming
Unremarked upon by the media -- especially as they are co-conspirators in the scam -- is the rebranding of global warming as Climate Change™.
I guess that's what's required as China, South America, central Asia and Antarctica are all experiencing record-setting deep freezes.
Meanwhile, the world's scientists are now turning their attention to the issue of global cooling. Anyone need a used copy of An Inconvenient Truth?
Update: Even NOAA reluctantly confirms it's getting colder.
Line o' the day: Joe Stalin breaks out in a grin
3 Wood, writing at Jammie Wearing Fool, wins our ultra-prestigious Line o' the Day Award.
Here's an indication of how Hillary looks at America:
"How Hillary's plan affects:
Look who is missing from that group. White males, of course.
- Women
- African-Americans
- Americans with Disabilities
- Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders
- Hispanics
- Seniors"
When you read through those sections, the class envy and special interest group pandering is enough to make you sick. These people see the country as a combination of special interest groups, all of whom are dependent upon handouts from Big Brother.
Somewhere, Joe Stalin is smiling.
Not to mention: Karl Marx and Trotsky have engaged in a sultry, erotic waltz.
Sorry Cadillac Tight, but we all owe an apology to Hugh Hewitt
Joe Tobacco at Cadillac Tight offers a nicely delivered argument that the standard conservative themes no longer resonate with most Americans, thus explaining the incipient McCain nomination (hat tip: Glenn Reynolds).
...The [conservative establishment (e.g., talk radio combined with National Review)] really think that there is nothing wrong with their ideas, their methods, or their scorn for their own voter base. Even after the 2006 “thumping” they took in Congress, they don’t see it. Rather than take a step back and consider that McCain may actually be closer to the base in terms of his policy preferences (they can, after all, always tell themselves these primaries were about “electability”, not policy), they intend to soldier on with their losing agenda, keeping a nice supply of brickbats ready to hurl at their own base when things don’t work out the way they expected them to.
At first blush, the story doesn't pass my smell test. Talk radio and the center-right blogosphere, for example, were able to instantly marshal their forces against the open-borders crowd and defeat the amnesty bill, despite every advantage possessed by the President, Ted Kennedy, John McCain and a host of other beltway insiders.
As for a "thumping" in 2006, were it not for the "macaca" kerfuffle (vastly inflated by the progressive media), it's entirely likely that the Senate would have remained in GOP hands.
And if we're going to buy into CT's argument, I'd like some metrics that can help confirm or deny the assertions.
The candidates and the campaign
The Intrade political futures market provides insight into the dynamics and trending of the race. Look closely at the market for each candidate over the hottest period of primary season (mid-2007).
Examined this way, conservatives had split between three viable candidates who combined for nearly 90% of the Republican sentiment in July of 2007! Later in the race, the GOP split even further. But why was the voting public so fragmented, so compartmentalized?
The mainstream media and the GOP race
Over the course of the Republican nomination process, the ultimate barometer of mainstream media sentiment -- the New York Times -- promoted candidates certain to be weakest against Democrats in the general election. To gauge this contention, let's examine the number of mentions in the Times over the past year for each candidate.
• John McCain: 97,400
• Mitt Romney: 87,400
• Mike Huckabee: 52,800
• Fred Thompson: 21,700
• Rudy Giuliani: 18,600
Consider that Huckabee, a man with no significant backing early in the cycle, was promoted by the Times nearly three times as much as New York's former mayor, a much more well-known and local figure. Or that John McCain was publicized (in the context of the GOP nomination) approximately five times as much as either Giuliani or Thompson.
Put simply, the mainstream media relentlessly marketed the comeback of John McCain and the viability of a no-name, no-money, no-chance candidate like Mike Huckabee simply to fragment and weaken the Republican fold for the inevitable Clinton/Obama onslaught.
An apology to Hugh Hewitt
In short, the center-right blogosphere (myself included, eighth-tier player though I may be) and talk radio both owe an aoplogy to Hugh Hewitt.
Hewitt had the right idea all along: back the man with the best executive track record, eloquence, squeaky clean background, solid (if imperfect) conservative credentials and, yes, presidential appearance as the single man who could unite the GOP.
Had Rush, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin followed Hewitt's lead earlier -- using their bully pulpits as blunt instruments, just as the mainstream media is fond of doing (only they do so in the form of analysis disguised as news) -- Romney would be the presumptive nominee.
Perhaps these are our lessons for the next go-round.
That said, many things can happen before the general election. One never knows what shenanigans the Clintons might pull with the super-delegates, for instance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
