I’ve asked this question before, and I guess I’ll have to ask it again….

HAVEN’T THESE PEOPLE SEEN THE TERMINATOR SERIES?

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound is lucky if he presses 200 pounds—that is, until he steps into an “exoskeleton” of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.  With the outfit’s claw-like metal hand extensions, he gripped a weight set’s bar at a recent demonstration and knocked off hundreds of repetitions.  Once, he did 500.

“Everyone gets bored much more quickly than I get tired,” Jameson said.

Jameson—who works for robotics firm Sarcos Inc. in Salt Lake City,which is under contract with the U.S. Army —is helping assess the 150-pound suit’s viability for the soldiers of tomorrow. The suit works by sensing every movement the wearer makes and almost instantly amplifying it.

The Army believes soldiers may someday wear the suits in combat, but it’s focusing for now on applications such as loading cargo or repairing heavy equipment. Sarcos is developing the technology under a two-year contract worth up to $10 million, and the Army plans initial field tests next year.

But the technology already offers evidence that robotics can amplify human muscle power in reality—not just in the realm of comic books and movies like the recently debuted “Iron Man,” about a wealthy weapons designer who builds a high-tech suit to battle bad guys.

Or… to kill all of the good guys.  CALLING SARAH CONNOR! PICK UP THE PHONE PLEASE!

*sigh*

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

One of the things about blogging is that if, for whatever reason, you take a few days off from posting and then return, wanting to comment on something that happened in that time period, you find that when you do chime in, somebody else (or a number of somebody elses) has pretty much said anything you might have to say on the topic.

Such is the case with Hillary’s reference in South Dakota to the assassination of Robert of Kennedy. Asked why she was not dropping out of the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, the former First Lady said:

My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. You know I just, I don’t understand it

My first thought was what a bone-headed comment. My second was somewhat sympathetic, understanding what she was trying to say and realizing that it came out differently than she had intended (wanting to point out that the 1968 contest for the Democratic nomination was still ongoing at the time of the California primary that year). My third thought was that the inartful remark would destroy the little remaining chance the former First Lady had to win her party’s presidential nod.

And this largely because of her family’s history, the rumors swirling about it, coupled with the pro-Obama blog and media machine, eager to cast anything she says in the worst possible light.

Click on more to read comments I found particularly insightful and the conclusion I draw from them. (more…)

Running for the president in his mid-forties, Barack Obama has a lot in common with the last Democrat to win the White House, Bill Clinton. Both are smart, charismatic men who graduated from top law schools and have wowed their party faithful with their eloquence and visions of hope. Both men assembled crack political teams for their campaigns and drew favorable coverage from the media. Heck, they even have the same star sign, Leo, both born in August (Obama on the 4th, Clinton the 19th).

And it seems these two men have something else in common, a quality they share with another recent Democratic nominee, Al Gore. They both love to invent stories about their past (or that of their family) to better able to appeal to the audience they are addressing. The likely Democratic nominee “told a Selma [Alabama] audience that the 1965 March on Selma resulted in his conception.” This guy really is amazing, being conceived three-and-one-half years after he was born.

Yesterday, he did it again:

I had an uncle who was one of the — who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was is that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months.

Problem is that the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. There’s more on the story here.

Guess with Hillary’s campaign fading, the Democrats still want a candidate with access to that old Clinton magic which includes an ability to rewrite one’s past to fit the current campaign narrative.

UPDATE: Roger Simon reports that the Obama campaign has backtracked to say that the candidate meant Buchenwald, not Auschwitz.

American politics are really weird sometimes. The changing of positions is enough to give me whiplash. Up is down, down is the new up. White is black, black is the new white. Um…thanks Bob, I guess.

Oh I just can’t keep up…

– John (Average Gay Joe)

As I begin serious work (but a bit too sporadically of late) on my dissertation on the goddess Athena, I intend to consult the iconoclastic columnist and scholar Camille Paglia as she makes frequent reference to the gray-eyed Greek deity in her seminal study, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.

While Paglia has little in common with the columnist I have dubbed “My Athena,” (well, they are both smart women who write about politics, but other than that . . . ), neither seems to care much for the Former First Lady who currently hopes (against ever increasing odds) to turn her husband into the first First Laddie.

Within twenty-four hours last week, each woman in her own unique style got at Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses as her presidential campaign slowly implodes. Finding Mrs. Clinton in “Godzilla mode,” Camille contends that people who assume the New York Senator will “withdraw gracefully in a few weeks are living in cloud cuckoo land. The Clintons are ruthless scrappers who will lock their bulldog teeth in any bloody towel.”

This scholar of gender and culture wonders about the politician’s feminist credentials, noting how her husband has “masterminded” her bids for public office:

Hillary has tried to have it both ways: to batten on her husband’s nostalgic popularity while simultaneously claiming to be a victim of sexism.

Well, which is it? Are men convenient sugar daddies or condescending oppressors?

These are not the qualities of the woman who should serve as our nation’s first female chief executive who, in Camille’s view, “must have a consistent character and steady demeanour.” In similar vein, Peggy compares the former First Lady to three great female leaders, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher, contrasting their failure to blame their setbacks on sexism with Hillary’s regular complaints that “that sexism has been a major dynamic in her unsuccessful bid for political dominance:”

Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse.

As with anything by these two ladies, you’d do better to read their works in the original than to read my poor attempts to capture their eloquence and insight. So just check out Camille here and Peggy here!

Dear Gay Patriot readers:

As you may recall, just about one year ago, we awarded Dan Rather the first James Earl Carter Bitter Old Man Award, an honor bestowed on those “men over 70 who, in their dotage, by the very bitterness of their manner, follow in the footsteps of the nation’s worst president.”

In several statements in the past few days, Carter has demonstrated the very bitterness which defines the award. Having long since forgotten the tradition of U.S. presidents never criticizing their successors while abroad, this unhappy octogenarian faulted the incumbent administration for drafting a Middle East policy which has become “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth” as he suggests the current president is a “war criminal.” And even after being rejected overwhelmingly by the American people, he has tried to engage in diplomacy on behalf of the United States.

And we haven’t even gotten to his criticism of the Administration’s Iraq policy, offering such criticisms Memorial Day weekend.

Just moments ago, I received an e-mail from a reader, alerting me to a post highlighting the former president’s follies. But, he wasn’t referencing the comments I made above. This time, Carter was musing about Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb:

I’m not sure that is going to happen, but if it does, what do we do? They are rational people like all of us in this room. Do they want to commit suicide? I would guess not. So what we have to do is talk with them now and say to them we want to be their friends . . .

Um, Jimmy, do you recall what happened in those dark days when you were president and the Iranian mullahs violated international law and took our allowed our diplomats to be taken hostage? Do you want to be friends with those people?

Calling them rational!?!?!? Guessing that they don’t want to commit suicide!?!?!? Have you been paying any attention to Islamofascism over the past quarter-century or so? These are not rational people. They believe in committing suicide to advance their goals. Not just believe in it, practice and promote it — and train for it.

So, the question is, is this an example of Jimmy’s bitterness? Or just his stupidity or his support of anything which opposes the interests of the country he once led?

If stupidity, then we probably can’t offer him his own award. If bitterness, then the question is, should he be awarded an eponymous honor?

Please use the comments section to share your thoughts.

Sincerely,

B. Daniel Blatt
(AKA GayPatriotWest)

I finally had the chance to get through this book, via the unabridged audio verson.  It’s a rather interesting work, though more along the lines of religious apologetics in my view than useful political commentary.  As an apologetics piece and even an unabashedly biased view of history, Robert Spencer’s work is quite powerful.  Christianity and Islam have fundamental differences and while co-existence is needed for mainly temporal reasons these shouldn’t be glossed over.  Yet take this book for what it is:  a Christian look at Muhammad and Islam and it certainly articulated many of the reasons I myself do not follow the latter.  It would be foolish to rely solely upon this book for information about Muhammad and Islam for it is only one look at these subjects.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed it and will probably seek more on these topics.

Where Spencer fails in my view is the first and last chapters, wherein he attempts to turn a religious apologetics piece into contemporary political commentary.  He is correct that Islamofascists, Muslim radicals or whatever term one wishes to employ about those Muslims who use violence to further their goals, are inspired by the violent beginnings of Islam.  Any religion can be exploited as an ideology to be wielded in the temporal realm.  I’m not quite sure what Spencer is asking for in these chapters.  While Spencer himself is a fellow Catholic, this appears to be a dubious flirtation with the medieval notion of Christendom that one sees among many  American Protestants today. It’s a rather curious flirtation at that because on the one hand they wish to maintain the American ideals of democracy and freedom, but only seen through the lens of their brand of Christianity. Nor are they consistent even in this as most would reject stripping ‘heretics’ or atheists of their rights under the Constitution. Yet if we look back on what Christendom meant to the medievals, then matters which cause harm in the spiritual realm are all also matters of State concern. The lines between Church & State are very tenuous, if not non-existent in many cases. Under this scheme, atheism and heresy are just as bad as murder. Indeed, one could reasonably argue that they are worse since it’s not just the body that is killed but the eternal soul and society as a whole suffers from the confusion these sow by obscuring the Truth. I’ve yet to see how their dubious flirtation with this notion resolves the inconsistencies in their reasoning, let alone a full understanding on their part of how adoption of this idea would kill the “American experiment”.  The “fiction” the secular West maintains about Islam being a “religion of peace” is a useful and necessary one.  Granted, we shouldn’t be blinded by such rhetoric, and such is ripe for parody and dry moments of irony, but unless we are willing to reinstate Christendom, take up the Cross and eradicate Islam once and for all, Spencer’s commentary here isn’t very applicable in resolving modern conflicts.  Understanding one’s enemy is one thing, adopting an antiquated worldview in combating them is quite another.

UPDATE: It appears that this post elicited comments from Mr. Spencer and caused a bit of a stir at his site as well as on this blog. Instead of creating a new posting about this, I thought it more prudent to respond there. You can find Mr. Spencer’s comments and my reply here. Please note that as this is the first time I’ve posted there it may take a few hours for my response to appear as comments there are moderated.

– John (Average Gay Joe)

Today on Memorial Day, we honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, those brave men and women of our armed forces who died fighting for the United States of America.

Even as Congress has prevented gay and lesbian Americans from serving openly in the military, many have continued to serve — and many have died for — our nation. A reader alerted me to Sharon Alexander’s touching tribute to her friend Army Major Alan Rogers, killed in Iraq by and IED earlier this year

In dying, he became a hero, shielding two others from the blast, saving their lives.

Today we honor all those who made the ultimate sacrifice. When we look at the life of just one individual who gave all for his country, we realize what that “all” represents. Ordained a minister at age 18, Rogers “served as Treasurer of the Washington, D.C. chapter of the American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER)” and worked with Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), an organization committed to repealing the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) policy which prevented him (and other gay men and lesbians) from serving openly.

Alan Rogers is one of a great many who died for our freedom. And one of many who happened to be gay.

On this day, let us remember Alan Rogers, one face of the hundreds of thousands of fallen heroes we honor day.

What began as a little housecleaning noted in a previous post has evolved into a major project, indeed, the first major reorganization of my apartment since I moved here back at the end of the last century.

As I created more space by moving some furniture around, I started sorting through piles, both to reduce the clutter and to collect any and all notes I had written for my dissertation. In the meanwhile, I have discovered countless other notes, some related to movie scripts, others to my long-dormant fantasy epic as well as myriad ideas for blog posts.

I was delighted to discover a remarkable consistency to my thoughts on gay marriage, with ideas for posts in 2004 relevant to the current debate, a suspicion of courts deciding the issue and a concern that the debate focuses more on the “right” to marry than the meaning of the institution.

Given that I have written an average of three posts a day for the past two months, perhaps I needed this time off from blogging, so as to take a step back, gather my thoughts (as I’ve been gathering my notes) and let the ideas stew a bit before blogging at a pace similar to that of this spring.

I’ll segue from that thought to one (undated) note I discovered as it reminded me of something I had read Friday in the New Republic. A while ago, I had written:

[The] Left doesn’t even see their (sic) [own] hate even as many define their relation to the current president in such terms.

Writing about the HBO movie Recount, Jonathan Chait observes:

Yet the Democrats still believed in the power of the establishment and its ideals. This is a major theme of Recount. Al Gore and his lieutenants agonized about their reputation, their duty, and winning the approval of The New York Times, while Republicans saw the episode as a pure street fight. The Republicans were teeming with rage and paranoia, well-captured in the movie by the “Brooks Brothers Riot” and the bitter commentaries of GOP recount lawyer Ben Ginsburg. This was the political culture of the moment. Liberal editorial pages studiously urged both sides to fight fair, while conservative organs like the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard printed deranged conspiracy theories and urged Bush to do whatever it took to win.

Sounds like the movie’s theme is at odds with the facts. After all, it was Gore and his “lieutenants” who pressed for additional recounts when the first two did not yield the results they wanted.

What struck me most of all was not learning about the bias of the film (which given Hollywood is to be expected), but reading the article’s author, Jonathan Chait musing about the GOP engaging in a “pure street fight” while contending conservative editorials were “deranged.” This from the guy who, in September 2003, had written how much he hated President Bush.

This man doesn’t even see his own hatred. And it reflects even in his current commentary on a movie whose producers delight in demonizing the Republican players in the 2000 election controversy.

I guess it was for the best then that I chose to watch The Americanization of Emily on DVD last night instead of tuning in HBO. If I wanted left-wing conspiracy theories, I could just check out a few blogs, perhaps even a post or two by the self-profession Bush-hater Jonathan Chait.

UPDATE: According to Brent Baker of Newsbusters, despite the film’s implication “that the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an accurate vote count,” it did deliver “some anti-Democratic points rarely heard in the news media.“

As Arte Johnson would say….. “Verrrrry interesting.”  (h/t - Instapundit)

Kanjorski says Dems were insincere about ending war - The Hill

Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-Pa.) is seen in a video that has surfaced on the Web saying that Democrats “sort of stretched the facts” in the 2006 elections about their ability to end the Iraq war.

In a video posted to YouTube on Thursday, Kanjorski reflects on the Democrats’ approach to the war in 2006 and said they pushed the rhetoric “as far as we can to the end of the fleet — didn’t say it, but we implied it — that if we won the congressional elections, we could stop the war.”

“Now, anybody who’s a good student of government would know it wasn’t true,” he said. “But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress — we sort of stretched the facts.”
 
The video was dated Aug. 28, 2007, by the person who posted it. The remarks are not placed in a larger context.

Republicans reacted Friday by calling for Kanjorski to apologize.

“For Paul Kanjorski to admit that Democrats campaigned in ’06 on a fraudulent agenda to end the war not only exposes his own calculated efforts to fool the voters of his district, but it also raises the question of whether this was a coordinated effort by the Democratic Party as a whole,” said a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, Ken Spain.

“Paul Kanjorski should be ashamed of himself for using our troops in harm’s way as political pawns for his own partisan agenda.”

Now come on, really.   Is anyone REALLY surprised that the Democrats would use the lives of our soldiers as a bargaining chip with the American public in order to gain political power?  Some would call that orchestrated effort…. well, treason.

As Amy & Seth would say….. REALLY, Congressman Kanjorski, REALLY?  (I’m full of NBC allusions today…..)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The Queen City, or “Crown Town” as PatriotPartner would say, has an infux of visitors this weekend for the big one:  The Coca-Cola 600 tomorrow at Lowes Motor Speedway.   Concord will become the third largest city in North Carolina for a few hours tomorrow.   Cool, huh?

Anyway, to all of you visiting the crown jewel of the South — welcome!   We have great restaurants, awesome attractions, and the friendliest people this side of Sydney Australia.

As for tomorrow — GO JUNIOR.   We will be at the race, pit passes in hand, and I’ll have some photos and videos later this weekend.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’ve been doing a little housecleaning today and came across this note from 09/29/07, so I thought I’d share it with you:

For Republicans, the world changed on 9/11.  For the Democrats, it began on 9/12.

Well, you just KNOW I salivated at this story on the California Gay Marriage issue in the LA Weekly!

California GOP:  The Queer Enablers of Gay Marriage – Patrick Range McDonald & Michael Fleischer

For two weeks [October 1991], queer Angelenos rebelled against a Republican governor [Pete Wilson] they believed had double-crossed them. But two months earlier, on July 29, 1991, Wilson made a crucial decision for the historic advancement of gay rights, something no one could have foreseen: He appointed Judge Ronald M. George to the California State Supreme Court. Nearly 17 years later, the moderate Republican jurist would become a national gay hero.

Last Thursday, it was George’s carefully written majority opinion that legalized same-sex marriage in California. By nightfall, at the same West Hollywood intersection where a dummy of Pete Wilson went up in flames, gay activists stood on a stage and publicly lauded the judge as “courageous.” Speaker after speaker also praised another Republican, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for promising to “fight” against a November ballot measure that could still outlaw gay marriage in the Golden State.

<….>

Powerful Republicans, through happenstance and well-orchestrated public policy, were leading the charge for the legalization and defense of same-sex marriage in California. It was something state Democrats, the seemingly natural allies of the gay-rights movement, could never completely pull off.

You KNOW you want to read the whole thing now, don’t you!   Read it, READ IT! 

Bottom line for those popping champagne at the California court decision — in order to be true to reality, you must clink your glasses in honor of two Republican Governors — Wilson and Schwarzenegger.

Delicious, no?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

 

Folks, there ain’t nuthin I can argue about Sean Hannity’s “Top 10 Items for Victory”.   Well, except the title… (Items?)

Anyway, ask your candidate for Congress if they have signed onto this pledge for America’s future.

1) To be the Candidate of National security:
a) Victory in Iraq
b) Fully support NSA, Patriot act, tough interrogations, keeping Gitmo open
c) A Candidate that pledges to NOT demean our military while they are fighting for their Country. eg Harry Reid: “the surge has failed”, “the war is lost”
d) Candidate that promises to ensure that our veterans can live out their lives in dignity.

2) The Candidate who pledges to oppose Appeasement:
a) The Candidate will oppose any and all efforts to negotiate with dictators of the world in places like Iran, Syria, N.Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela without “pre-conditions”

3) The Candidate Pledges to support Tax CUTS, and fiscal responsibility:
a) The American people are NOT under taxed, Government Spends too much
b) The Candidate who Pledges to ELIMINATE and VOTE AGAINST ALL Earmarks
c) The Candidate pledges to BALANCE the budget

4) The Candidate Pledges to be a supporter of “Energy Independence”
a) supports Immediate drilling in ANWR and the 48 states
b) Building new refineries
c) Begin building and using Nuclear Facilities
d) expand coal mining
e) realistic steward of the environment
While simultaneously working with private industry to develop the new energy technologies for the future, with the goal being that America becomes completely energy independent within the next 15 years.

5) The Candidate pledges to secure our borders completely within 12 months:
a) build all necessary fences
b) use all available technology to help and support agents at the border
c) train and hire agents as needed

6) Healthcare:
The Candidate will look for Free-Market solutions to the problems facing the Healthcare industry, and will vigorously oppose any efforts to “nationalize healthcare”.
a) The Candidate will fight for Individual health savings accounts, that includes “catastrophic insurance” for every American, so people can control their own healthcare choices.

7) Education:
a) The Candidate pledges to “save” American children from the failing educational system
b) The Candidate will fight to break the unholy alliance of the Democratic party and teachers unions, which at best has institutionalized mediocrity, and has failed children across the country
c) fight for “CHOICE” in education and let parents decide
d) fight for vouchers for parents

8.) Social Security and Medicare:
a) The Candidate will “save” social security and medicare from bankruptcy.
b) Options will include “private retirement” funds so people can “control” their own destiny.

9) Judges
a) The Candidate vows to support ONLY judges who recognize that their job is to interpret the Constitution, and NOT legislate from the bench.

10) American Dream:
The Candidate accepts as their duty and responsibility to educate, inform, and remind people that with the blessings of Freedom comes a Great responsibility. That Government’s primary goal is to preserve, protect and defend our God given gift of freedom.

That Government’s do not have the ability to solve all of our problems, and to take away all of our fears and concerns. We need their pledge that we will be the candidate that promotes Individual liberty, Capitalism, a strong national defense and will support policies that encourage such…

It is our fundamental belief that limited Government, and Greater individual responsibility will insure the continued prosperity and success for future generations.

We the people who believe in the words of Ronald Reagan, that we are “the best last hope for man on this earth,” “a shining city on a hill,” and that our best days are before us if our Government will simply trust the American people.

What’s not to support here?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

It seems Democrats and their allies in the MSM will do anything to diminish the relationship between their likely presidential nominee, Barack Obama, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his demagogic pastor of twenty years. Liberal bloggers and MSM reporters act as if they’re breaking some earth-shattering news every time they uncover some crazy statement by a socially conservative pastor who has endorsed his rival this fall, Republican John McCain

This morning when I followed the link on Yahoo!’s front page to this ABC News article, McCain Pastor: Islam Is a ‘Conspiracy of Spiritual Evil’, I thought I’d be reading a piece about a recent statement by the pastor of a church the Arizona Senator had attended for many years. Instead, the network was only reporting on some anti-Islamic comments made by Pastor Rod Parsley who had endorsement McCain’s White House bid and whom the candidate praised.

The article provided no evidence the Senator had even attended the pastor’s church, much less heard any of his sermons.

These comments led former CIA intelligence officer John Kiriakou to claim, “If there is a McCain presidency, he will start with a serious handicap in the Arab world . . . the handicap is that it is already assumed in Muslim countries that they will not get a fair shake from a McCain administration.” Um, it only becomes a handicap if the media suggests, as does this article, that the next President of the United States had a close association with this pastor.

To be sure, McCain had praised Parsley, but his campaign “said the senator ‘obviously strongly rejects such statements. . . . . Just because someone endorses John McCain doesn’t mean he endorses all of their views.”

While Yahoo! headlined this ABC article earlier in the day, by the end of the day, it would lead with a headline referencing another pastor who had endorsed the Arizona Senator, reporting that the presumptive Republican nominee had rejected another evangelical leader over Nazi remarks.

Soon after learning that John Hagee “believed the Nazis did God’s will by chasing Jews from Europe,” the presumptive GOP nominee said, “Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them . . . . I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee’s endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well.”

(more…)

A number of bloggers and pundits have compared Barack Obama’s rise this year to that of Jimmy Carter in 1976 Hugh Hewitt did so today, Glenn did so yesterday, I mentioned it last month building on Rich Lowry’s National Review cover story in December.

The rise of an obscure, inexperienced politician pushing change, hope and a new brand of politics is not the only similarity this year’s presidential campaign has with that of 1976. Back then, one party saw its contest for the presidential nomination continue through its convention, with the popular vote nearly evenly divided between the two candidates.

With a similarly close vote this time and Hillary’s recent threat to carry this all this way to the Democratic convention in Denver, it’s no wonder at least a number of bloggers, pundits and journalists are comparing the Democratic race in 2008 to the Republican contest in 1976.

After losing the battle for the GOP nomination in 1976 to then-President Ford, Ronald Reagan, once he had won the Republican primary in New Hampshire four years later, advanced pretty effortlessly to GOP nomination, then defeated in a landslide Jimmy Carter, the man who had narrowly bested his erstwhile Republican rival. Should John McCain defeat Obama this fall, would Hillary be able to come back in 2012, arguing in part that she could have prevented four additional years of Republican rule had she been the Democratic nominee?

I wonder.

While she certainly does have a solid base of support in her party as he did in his, she is, in many ways, the opposite of Ronald Reagan. Where he excelled at speaking to large crowds, she is at her worst there, seeming wooden and forced. She has become better in one-on-one exchanges (see e.g., her recent O’Reilly interview), a format where he was relatively weak. Where he was a man of vision and ideas, she is a master of policy and details.

(more…)

As Jonah Goldberg observed in his book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, we conservatives are often subject to the epithets, “Nazi” or “fascist,” merely for expressing our political point of view. Rarely do the labels even come close to representing our ideology or opinions, indeed are usually at odds with our commitment to freedom and opposition to government programs, serving primarily as a mean for those who so label us to dismiss our ideas.

Well, earlier this week, I read a column by a man who calls himself a conservative, while the ideas he expresses there makes one wonder if Pat Buchanan is, as some have described him, a Nazi sympathizer. Buchanan has long since abandoned the principles which have defined American conservatism (if he ever supported them).

As I’ve noted before, he showed so little regard for the leader of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan, that he chose to speak for far longer than the time allotted him at the 1992 Republican National Convention, bumping the Gipper’s subsequent speech out of prime time.

No one who would show such disrespect for the Gipper should consider himself a conservative. And no paper which seeks to promote serious conservatism would print (or offer pixels to) his columns.

This ex-conservative now claims that President Bush “made a hash of history” when he referenced the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 as an example of the danger of appeasement.

Actually, it’s Buchanan who’s making a hash of history, as he’s pretty much made a hash of every serious idea he’s tried to consider for the past sixteen years or so. He contends that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s September 1938 Munich “deal with Hitler averted a European war — at the expense of the Czech nation.” Well, at least he acknowledges the abandonment of the Czechs.

“German tanks,” Buchanan observes “did not roll into Poland until a year later, Sept. 1, 1939.” And why? Oh, not because they thought the West was weak, having offered up Czechoslovakia to the Nazis, but because Poland “refused to negotiate over Danzig,” then an ethnically German city under Polish sovereignty (but officially a “free city” administered by the League of Nations).

“Hitler,” Buchanan claims, “had not wanted war with Poland.” He did try to negotiate. But, the meanies in the Polish government forced his hand because they were intransigent. The Nazis, you see, just had to invade. They were forced into it because how else could the Nazis include this German-speaking territory in their pan-Germanic Reich?

Does he really believe that Hitler would not have sought to dominate Europe had Poland sat down to negotiate the status of Danzig?

Buchanan takes it as a given the the Nazi idea of uniting all German territories under one regime is a good thing. That he was only driven to evil because the West prevented him from achieving this goal.

(more…)

It is nice that sometimes I get to experience this beautiful country we live in at ground level, instead of always at 35,000 feet.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Watching Hillary Clinton declare victory tonight in Kentucky, I was struck by how stilted she looked, as if she were happy by the margin of her victory, but resented having to give a speech declaring as much. Gone was the gloat that seemed to accompany similar addresses. It was clear she was reading from a text.

Obama, as I sort of noted before, had almost the opposite problem, he spoke with great fluency. Maybe he was reading from a prepared text, but he made it seem he was talking off the cuff. But, still the content seemed banal, as if he were merely repeating his talking points. At times, he did seem delighted with his own ability to come up with a clever turn of phrase on the stump to add some spice to his his speech.

He also came across as angry, as if he were somehow unhappy with the evening’s results. He just didn’t seem pleased he had reached the milestone he claimed when he declared he had won “a majority of delegates elected by the American people.” Um, Senator, do you only consider Democrats to be Americans, given that you only won a majority of your party’s delegates?

Maybe he was unhappy because while he split the primaries with Mrs. Clinton, him taking Oregon, she Kentucky, she won by a much wider margin in the Bluegrass State than his current margin in the Beaver State. By my projections (based on 75% of the Oregon vote counted as I write this), she should win about 135,000 won 141,396 more votes than he did tonight. And the media and many party leaders have written her off as a has-been in this year’s contest.

Even as the media has all but declared Obama the nominee, his rival, the apparent loser, has declared yet again that she’s “winning the popular vote.” But, the MSM seems to ignore her hefty vote total tonight, with Yahoo! leading with a story declaring him on the “brink of nomination.” (The article said her Kentucky victory had “scant political value” as if copying from an Obama media advisory.)

(more…)

Watching Obama’s “victory” speech in Iowa tonight, just after my workout, as I had watched Mrs. Clinton’s speech just before it and have this thought. He seems angrier than usual in such addresses, less of an uplifting, inspirational tone than we’re accustomed to. Still, his delivery is far better than that of the former First Lady while her address had more meat to it.

He’s going on and on and on and on about change, without saying how he is going to go about offering that, well, except by defeating John McCain whose campaign he repeatedly misrepresents.

Well, they both went on too long.  Way too long.