To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
St. Louis prosecutors, Obama supporters, make their preparations to go after people who make false statements about Barack Obama.
Don’t forget I made a bumper sticker intimating he’s involved with the Communist Party:
It becomes less and less hyperbole every day, doesn’t it?
More on this story at Gateway Pundit and St. Louis Metropolitan Area Council of Conservative Citizens.
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
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You know, I wanted to take the high road this election cycle.
Nah.
Read about Obama’s Communist Party connections here.
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Well, not really, but the Sarah Palin thing has really affected the base. How do I know? VenomKate has gone all-Palin, all-the-time (I need room for one more link, so here it is).
Previously, she’d been down on the party and down on Bush, but now she’s onboard for Old Dude/Naughty Librarian 2008.
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A self-described anarchist/libertarian embraces government mandates when they improve his quality of life.
Once in a while we get real discussions here on MfBJN, and sometimes they don’t involve grief-stricken parents.
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Three sales tax increases are on the ballot this time around for St. Louis County.
Joseph Goeke, Republican director of the St. Louis County Election Board, said this would mark the first time that a county ballot included three such proposals.
“We went back through the records and couldn’t find another,” he said.
The three taxes, if passed, would apply countywide, not just in the unincorporated areas. Two of the taxes would affect every consumer; the third would affect only those who spend more than $2,000 on out-of-state purchases.
Notice that this would only prove to be a .75% increase to all sales in St. Louis County if these pass, not including sales taxes by your municipality or “community improvement district” (aka unaccountable unelected bureaucracy enrichment zones).
A couple more penny increases each season, and suddenly we’re talking real money, I suppose.
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I wish I could, just once, run into Nancy Pelosi on the street, just so I could approach her and ask, “Mrs. Reagan?”
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Perhaps Taylor Marsh is more qualified to be vice-president than Sarah Palin:
Sarah Palin and I have one thing in common. We both did the beauty queen circuit. I won, she didn’t…
Well, then, Marsh is arguing from authority when she says Palin is a poor choice, but a good choice ultimately since it will keep teh Rethuglicans from winning another presidency.
But I oversimplify.
(Link on Instapundit.)
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Broad-minded St. Louis Post-Dispatch blogger compares Obama Nation and Unfit Command to pornography, building a facile syllogism to support his metaphor.
No comment on McCain or Bush hatchet jobs, and the author says he doesn’t read the books because he doesn’t like peep shows, either.
Except that, of course, the books offer ideas instead of naked pictures. But the Post-Dispatch intelligentsia doesn’t need to actually read books to tut-tut the wrong thinking within them, doesn’t need to actually answer arguments when –hey! Look! Straw man!
I don’t care for the books myself because they tend to be facile and unconvincing. Kind of like Post-Dispatch analysis.
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My wife is tired of my all-purpose punchline/rejoinder If President Obama lets us..
If she’s tired of it now, just think how she will feel once it’s our (and everyone else’s) lifestyle.
Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to switch to If it makes Reid money in an obscure land deal or If its good for the Pelosi canneries.
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As some of you might be surprised to learn, I have crossed over from time to time when it comes to voting, particularly for state races. Actually, “crossing over” is a bit of a misnomer; I tend to vote for Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans based on a strange algorithm that only I understand.
This year, I cannot cross over to vote for Al Liese (Dem.) for state representative just so I can see which member of the family runs next time when Liese, who replaced his son using very similar signage for his run, gets term limited out. I thought it was a neat trick, but I was a neophyte in that scam even though I saw The Distinguished Gentleman. Now, though, I realize that Missouri politics is a full employment program for the Carnahan family as well as the other microdynasties-they-hope in the Blunt, Loudon, McNary, et al families.
Still, if Katherine Bruckner (her “blog”) somehow gets nominated for state rep, I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. I mean, she’s a Democrat proud she’s got her concealed carry license? That’s tougher than the Republicans vying for the spot on the ballot, word.
Additionally, I’m kicking around voting for Jay Nixon for governor if Kenny Hulshof is elected. I have a new motto: I trust a Missouri Democrat more than a Washington Republican. The difference, of course, lies in that anyone elected to or running for a national office is now a national servant, not the servant of the Missouri people. The money for the race comes from the outlying states, and suddenly the candidate espouses the national party’s opinions. It’s why I could have tolerated a Governor McCaskill but am not too pleased with Senator McCaskill.
Of course, once I start seeing the Jay Nixon ads and he starts making me sick of him, I might end up going Hulshof after all. Reluctantly.
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Godwin’s law states that As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.. A lesser known corollary, or maybe something I just made up, states that most disputes can be clarified by using a Picard versus Kirk clarifying analogy.
Therefore, I would posit for your reflection, that Obama is Picard and McCain is Kirk.
Obama lives in a moneyless world where the Federation rules all aspects of its citizens lives, and the military vessel he runs would only use its weapons to make pretty lights as it ferried ambassadors and vaccines all over the galaxy.
McCain, on the other hand, lives in a world where the Federation is an outpost of decency barely clinging on in a galaxy where others would conquer it and it wants to have adventures, dammit. McCain also sings “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” and he might be bluffing….but maybe not. You can see Kirk doing that, but not Picard. That’s my point.
So, friends and three of my four regular readers (excepting my sainted mother, who isn’t geek enough for this post), please, let me know in the comments whether the analogy holds up.
Also, please no obvious Obama is Sisko bits. One, I don’t know if I’ve ever watched a complete episode of Deep Space Nine in my life, and two, any Star Trek series with a number in its acronym is a sissy series (and I include ST:V in this assessment even though V is only a Roman number–however, Obama is Janeway comments might be acceptable.)
Get your geek on!
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Confronted by Obama nation voter registration creators drivers at the grocery store, my wife’s instinctive response, apparently:
Buy some McCain fries, whether we like them or not.
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They might have fooled everyone else, but they have not fooled Senator Obama:
“These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11,” the presumed nominee told reporters aboard his campaign plane.
Funny, I thought the guys who actually committed it died in the plane crashes with their victims. But if Senator Obama’s foreign policy comic book indicates that the people who actually committed 9/11 somehow escaped through evil science or magic, he’s right that the United States better ramp up on that technique, stat.
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You know, a lot of conservative sorts of political observers have had a lot of fun watching Obama make a series of gaffes and get caught up in ill-considered personal relationships.
However, as long as these things are coming out in the primaries, they’ll be old news by election time, and if Obama ends up the nominee, I think a long, bruising primary battle will have given him some inkling of what he’ll face in a real election, so he’ll be better equipped for the real election than if the Democrats had just crowned him early.
The bruising fight between Obama and Hillary might be fun for some conservatives to watch, but ultimately it might strengthen Obama just enough for November.
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This weekend, someone posted a bit about how Barack Obama should take note lessons from Hank William, Jr.,’s “A Country Boy Can Survive” to court the rural vote. As someone who listens to Hank Williams, Jr., for pleasure, I’d have to point out that Barack Obama could not actually adhere to the philosophy the song encompasses. Let’s do a line-by-line of the lyrics, shall we?
The preacher man says it’s the end of time
For starters, this line indicates going to church, and many of the Democrat leaders only appear in church around election time. Some of the most faithful Democratics I know in the urbanati are active, enthusiastic atheists. So this line and its millenial, evangelical preacher man don’t conform with many Democrat candidate leanings, much less Obama’s–who has preacher man problems of his own, as those who dwell amongst the blogs know.
And the Mississippi River she’s a goin’ dry
A good environmental millenialism. Democrats already tap into the global warming/environmental disaster meme, but so does McCain (sadly). So Obama has nothing to learn here.
The interest is up and the stock market’s down
Well, this economic malaise millenialism fits a Democrat theme, but it doesn’t hold terribly true according to current metrics. The interest rates are way down, and the stock market is a bit behind, but not far off. The song was originally recorded in 1981, and the economic malaise was inherited from Carter (D) with the conditions. Put that sweater on and shiver in it.
And you only get mugged
If you go downtown
Now, we have a bit of a disconnect. The fear of crime and a strong law-and-order impulse are mostly Republican weighted issues. City cores and the urban rulers and voters trend Democratic, so some suburban types (such as me) see the hellholes in cities and think they’re problems caused by Democratic policies until a Giuliani cleans them up. Banging a drum too loudly about how screwed up cities are might draw attention to how they got that way.
I live back in the woods, you see
A woman and the kids, and the dogs and me
A nuclear family. Sounds good. But who is it that mocks family values? Oh, yeah, the urbanati.
I got a shotgun, rifle, and a 4-wheel drive
Guns and a fuel-consuming sport utility vehicle (with dogs and kids, I’d picture a Chevy Blazer). Any urbanati Democrat candidate that espoused these would look foolish and somewhat hypocritical. Like Obama is doing now.
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
I don’t think this is what the urbanati care about. All they care is that the rural folks fail to outvote their urban voters, who will probably go Democrat anyway.
I can plow a field all day long
I can catch catfish from dusk till dawn
As Kerry and other urban Democrat candidates know, regaling voters with stories of harvesting grain or being lifelong hunters doesn’t work, since you’re likely to make a gaffe or slip into cornpone accents.
We make our own whiskey and our own smoke too
Ain’t too many things these ole boys can’t do
Whereas Obama might appreciate a good homemade smoke, Democrats aren’t terribly interested in unregulated craft manufacturing. None of our government officials are, really; if there’s a lobbying group that wants to keep upstarts out, the government leaders pass certification and licensing laws. Never mind that; what else are we talking about here? Ah, yes, smoking and drinking, the new anathemas to modern urbanati living, which must be banned in as many locations as possible. Which is “all” to some minds.
We grow good ole tomatoes and homemade wine
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
The song is an anthem to self-reliance. Growing your own food and making your own booze? But Democrat initiatives don’t expect that much of constituents. No, instead, here, have some free money and free cheese. Vote for me, and next time it’s more free money and maybe some chicken. Please don’t spend that money on seeds, or we’ll cut your benefit.
Because you can’t stomp us out
And you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotgun
Resilience and tenacity. Put some bombs bursting in air, and you’ve got “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
We say grace and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn
This is a libertarian impulse coupled with a traditional conservative respect for others and belief in God. Unfortunately, one does not get the sense that the Democrat party platform is about not giving a damn about other people’s business. Sadly, neither is the Republican party’s in many places. But I doubt Obama’s “Change” involves not freaking out about how tall your neighbor’s lawn is or whether Georgia allows this when Connecticut does not (What! Let’s pass a Federal statute to make it the same everywhere according to the prevailing busybody taste!)
We came from the West Virginia coal mines
And the Rocky Mountains and the western skies
No, the Democrat frontrunners come from the cities and other urbanati enclaves in academic environments. Saying you’re authentic or that you’ve worked for a living won’t make it so, so let’s not just drop a hard hat with a carbide lamp on you for a photo op, okay?
We can skin a buck; we can run a trot line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
Skinning Bambi? Catching fish? Hurting Mother Gaia’s more important children? Okay, I’m adding urbanati hysterics for fun here, but a lot of urbanati want to limit hunting in myriad ways. I don’t know Obama’s voting record on these issues, but I’d guess they’re either “Present” or not against the limitations.
I had a good friend in New York City
He never called me by my name, just hillbilly
That’s actually probably in line with urbanati conversation, although “redneck” has replaced hillbilly as the appellation for choice for those not fortunate enough to live amid the concrete warrens of the like-minded.
My grandpa taught me how to live off the land
And his taught him to be a businessman
He used to send me pictures of the Broadway nights
And I’d send him some homemade wine
An exchange of the “service economy” versus people who actually make stuff for a living. A photo for a product. To the urbanati, that’s a good exchange. Perhaps Obama has already tapped into this, offering style instead of substance.
But he was killed by a man with a switchblade knife
For 43 dollars my friend lost his life
Again, the crime in the city. The Ed Koch years. Remember the 1970s and 1980s and the New York City of that era? Yeah, to urbanati of a certain age, living there amid the crime and the crumbling gives them credibility. Unfortunately, Obama’s not that old. Banging the drum of street crime won’t endear him to the urban vote.
I’d love to spit some beechnut into that dude’s eyes
And shoot him with my old .45
Cause a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
What, with a handgun? Citizens cannot be trusted with handguns. Just lock yourself behind a hollow core closet door and call 911. Then your survivors can lose a lawsuit because police do not have a duty to protect any individual.
Cause you can’t stomp us out, and you can’t make us run
‘Cause we’re them old boys raised on shotgun.
We say grace, and we say Ma’am
And if you ain’t into that we don’t give a damn.
We’re from North California and south Alabam
And little towns all around this land
And we can skin a buck; we can run a trot line
And a country boy can survive
Country folks can survive
I don’t think there’s much in the song for Obama to embrace, authentically and sincerely. The Democratic Party encourages dependency, more than even the other party that encourages dependency upon its largess when in power. Strong libertarian messages coupled with a marked belief in traditional values won’t sound right coming from Obama’s mouth, not if he’s also professing to be the fount of all change and goodness and impending utopia.
(Links courtesy of Outside the Beltway and Instapundit.)
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Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, whom I have already noted (here and here) likes to put her own particular donkey stamp on what Missouri voters can and cannot vote on as the result of ballot initiatives, gets her work panned by the court:
A judge has rewritten the ballot language for a proposed constitutional amendment banning certain embryonic stem cell research.
Cole County Judge Patricia Joyce says the language written by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan was insufficient and unfair.
Carnahan had gone the old Soviets one better; it’s not who counts the votes, it’s who determines what the voters vote on.
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I voted this morning, about 9:30, about the 98th person at my polling place to use the scanned paper ballots instead of the touch-screen voting machines. I took the piece of paper because I’d planned to write in the name of my favored candidate, a man who has since left the race, Fred Thompson.
The current front runners of the party, Romney and McCain, are not my first choice. Nor my second choice. Nor, really, men I would choose at all if given any good field. Romney signed MassCare (Google asks, “Did you mean Massacre?”). Romney promised auto workers that he would save the auto industry. I mean, Romney isn’t what I’d call a conservative.
McCain, now, I liked him well enough in 2000, before I knew much about him. I even forgave him for earnestly supporting McCain-Feingold because I thought his heart was in the right place with his intentions, but I didn’t think the law would prove “Constitutional” (the difference between Constitutional and “Constitutional” lies in the difference between my opinion and that of the swing vote of the Supreme Court). However, it did, and ultimately the better I got to know McCain, the less I liked him.
I would have voted for somebody else, anyone else, when I got to the polling place. Instead, I hoped to write in the name of Fred Thompson to indicate my displeasure with the ruling mass of the Republican party that its calculus that weights “electability” (that is, how positively enamored the media coverage of a candidate is) over substance (that is, reason, individualism, and capitalism tempered with individually-motivated charity that make up the American psyche, or what I always hope is ultimately would prove to be the American psyche).
I wanted to let the Party and its new ruling locus back east understand that they weren’t speaking for me, that I would go outside the established paths they chose for me and would actually write in the name of a Federalist, a man laden with gravitas, and someone who I think exuded sincerity and down-to-earth belief in himself and the aforementioned tenets of American society.
Of course, between the two evils vying to be the lesser of the two evils on the ballot in November, the current leader McCain varies from all that I think is good in politics more than the other guy, and a vote for a who has no chance is really a vote for the front runner. That is, any vote for anyone other than the guy in second place is irrelevant. And I didn’t want McCain to win, did I?
Brother, that argument that my opinion is irrelevant doesn’t work if you’re trying to bring me to inflate your relevance. I know that I differ from the bulk of the party, and this primary offers me the opportunity to remind you just how much.
I was going to write in Fred Thompson, but his name was on the ballot. Good, that means that people who feel almost as fervent as I do but are lazy might take the opportunity to send the same message that I did. I filled in the circle and scanned it in, leaving a paper trail in case of voting irregularities or whatnot and a record that I stand apart from the direction this party is going, down the slippery slope into disconnection from me, if not its base.
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Rightroots has a lot of balls.
They’re like the McCain callers who hit me sometime in 2005, it seems, demanding my support or I’d get a Clinton presidency.
Now, this Rightroots band has started the F7 program, seeking pledges that Republicans will send money to whoever is the candidate on February 7, 2008. Or else I get Clinton or Obama.
Setting aside the fact that there won’t actually be a candidate until the convention this summer, but I don’t care about any of the remaining candidate for the candidacy.
This is the best our remaining candidates can offer the bulk of conservatives. That they’re not Clinton or Obama. To me, either one is as bad–or worse–on domestic policies and slightly better on foreign policies in that I don’t think they’ll gut the military. That’s what has me “sold” on one of these Republicans in the White House in 2008. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement or a call to action for me.
I won’t sit out the election, but I’m not going to jump on the Not Clinton or Not Obama bandwagon with any sort of fervor.
In 2000, I sent money and I volunteered for the candidate for president; in 2004, I sent money. But I have quite enough reservations about the remaining candidates. I am sure enough not going to waste my money or time in support of a candidate or a party with which I no longer agree.
The Rightroots and the Republicans better learn that its previous constituency was not composed of fall-in-line simpletons.
Here’s my pledge: Not on damn dollar or hour. Again.
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As you can tell by my sidebar, gentle reader, I support Fred Thompson’s bid for the presidency and probably will far after he’s either elected or withdrawn–I don’t update the sidebar much these days.
However, today I sent a check to the campaign for the first time, putting my money where my blog is.
It’s the first money I’ve sent since 2000, when I backed a candidate who was not nominated. I haven’t sent much to the Republican Party or its committees in recent years, no matter how much of a gold-card member they would like me to be. But I’ve sent money to Fred, and if/when I can scrape up any more extraneous cash, I will send more.
You can, too, using the sidebar or going to the Contribute page which has a credit card form and a poor PDF for mailing checks.
It’s more than this cross-dressing Klingon, apparently.
But let it be known my support has its threshold: I won’t work the phone banks for Fred or any campaign.
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First, he flirted with the Giuliani campaign, saying it was “highly recommended” and “it’s quite good”. Later, Reynolds described his experience with Giuliani by saying, “I liked it very much” and said of Guiliani’s speechwriter “He’s like Neal Stephenson’s more poetical cousin.”
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