One more...

...anti-McCain column, but this is the best one I've read. It's from Mark Levin at National Review Online. He hammers him for lots of things I have already written about, but here is the key paragraph for conservatives who like him for national security (hint: he's not as good as you think):

But what about his national security record? It’s a mixed bag. McCain is rightly credited with being an early voice for changing tactics in Iraq. He was a vocal supporter of the surge, even when many were not. But he does not have a record of being a vocal advocate for defense spending when Bill Clinton was slashing it. And he has been on the wrong side of the debate on homeland security. He supports closing Guantanamo Bay, which would result in granting an array of constitutional protections to al-Qaeda detainees, and limiting legitimate interrogation techniques that have, in fact, saved American lives. Combined with his (past) de-emphasis on border-security, I think it’s fair to say that McCain’s positions are more in line with the ACLU than most conservatives.

John McCain is a liar

Just flipped over to watch the debate tonight after an unremarkable movie (so unremarkable that I won't comment further). Seeing Ron Paul rant on about useless crap annoys me and adds NOTHING here.

We've also got Huckabee trying to help McCain. It's those two guys trying to gang up on and then run out the clock on Romney. Ugh.

Anyway, back to the title of this post. Romney said some perfectly reasonable stuff about the surge in Iraq in April 2007 (see under 9:01 in this link). McCain is completely lying about what Romney said then, saying Romney was for time tables for withdrawal. I'm not sure how anyone with any honesty can say that after reading it. McCain dropped this garbage in a commercial in Florida this weekend. Since nobody but dorks follows politics closely enough to know the truth, it no doubt had some effect.

So what does McCain say tonight? Let me paraphrase:

Back in April, Harry Reid was saying that we needed time tables for withdrawal, and that was the big buzzword back then. Romney was talking about time tables, while I was for the surge.

OK, I'm back. Now, this is extremely duplicitous. The time tables Romney was talking about were NOT AT ALL like those the Democrats were talking about. And while McCain was talking about this tonight, he had some shit-eating grin on his face the whole time, knowing he was lying.

Now he's spouting his usual talking points. It's nauseating. I spent a big chunk of my day today wondering what I would do if (or, more likely, when) he's the nominee. I was leaning toward sitting home. Now, I want to vote Democratic against him.

He's a patriot and a war hero, but he conducts politics like a lying, weasely piece of crap. I'd rather eat a bowl of broken glass than vote for him. Romney is a good, decent man who is debased having to get into the mud to defend himself from the Huckabee-McCain handicap match.

McCain gets worse and worse in these debates, and yet he continues to pile up cheap wins with under 40% of the vote. I have stopped being surprised by the way Republicans keep voting for him, but I hope voters are paying attention to this debate to see just how disgusting he is. Romney's fundamental decency that is coming through in this debate may be his saving grace on Tuesday.

UPDATE: A much stronger analysis by Paul Mirengoff at Powerline. Straight talk, my arse.

Stimulus welfare and illegal immigrants

I can't add much more to Mark Krikorian's commentary on the issue. I recommend reading it. The details aren't important; what is important is the general theme of how our federal government is completely unprepared to deal with the issue so they just want to throw amnesty at them:

To sum up — hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens are going to get checks from this ridiculous stimulus package. But it's hard to argue that trying to plug that specific hole will fix anything — the problem is that the IRS issues tax ID numbers to illegal aliens (numbers now widely accepted by banks, mortgage companies, etc.) and that the IRS, Social Security, and Homeland Security aren't authorized to cooperate in rooting out and apprehending illegal aliens. Not to mention that the Social Security Administration is actually barred by court order from informing employers that they have people on their payroll with fake or mismatched SSNs.

Birthday or something

I guess yesterday was someone's birthday. One of the benefits to being a single guy who people think is self-absorbed is that no one excoriates you for forgetting (or, more accurately, not knowing) people's birthdays. Kind of like Christmas cards.

Of course, the downside is that eventually fewer and fewer people care enough to wish you a happy birthday. It's kind of a double-edged sword, but it's the life I've chosen. Sort of like a ninja...

Patrick Ruffini on McCain vs. Romney

I have to excerpt a lot of this because I think it's so good. I will try to put other links regarding the race at the end as I find them:

While the answers will be different than those of a generation ago, the attitude needs to be the same: that we are reclaiming the Party for long-lost principles with strength and assertiveness, not retreating and simply becoming more like the left. McCain represents the later kind of change.

Mitt Romney gets that you don’t win by retreating. You win by winning. There will be no pale pastels on the Democratic ticket this fall — and I would not want to go up against them with the sense that we somehow had to trim our sails, to elevate our party’s most ardent internal critic, in order to remain in office but not in power. At best, this is a reprise of how Clinton hollowed out the Democratic Party (see how their hearts are with Obama), and what Bush and the Republican Congress did with respect to spending. McCain would reclaim the spending mantle, but would surrender on all other aspects of domestic policy.

Mitt Romney is a better candidate than he lets on. His business acumen has hardly been explored in this campaign, at least not early enough. He is, as they say in Boston, wicked smart. Of all the candidates running, it is hardest to see the colossal managerial failures of Katrina happening under his watch. His plan wasn’t perfect, but I like the fact that he’s a Republican who’s tackled the health care issue. He can communicate about matters of war and peace, and his instincts are sound. He could position himself as a clean break on the economy. Attributes he had to soft sell in the primary campaign would provide attractive contrasts to Hillary Clinton in a general election. And in Presidential elections, Governors beat Senators. Romney is our last chance of getting that historically winning combination.

UPDATE: More from Michael Graham over in The Corner. Many pundits are saying McCain should make some assurances to conservatives that he is one of them to try to get them in his camp come November. Graham is confident (and I agree) that he will do no such thing:

So it is over. Finished. In November, we'll be sending out our most liberal, least trustworthy candidate vs. to take on Hillary Clinton—perhaps not more liberal than Barack Obama, but certainly far less trustworthy.

And the worst part for the Right is that McCain will have won the nomination while ignoring, insulting and, as of this weekend, shamelessly lying about conservatives and conservatism.

You think he supported amnesty six months ago? You think he was squishy on tax cuts and judicial nominees before? Wait until he has the power to anger every conservative in America, and feel good about it.

Every day, he dreams of a world filled with happy Democrats and insulted Republicans. And he is, thanks to Florida, the presidential nominee of the Republican party.

McCain wins Florida - Pass the Hemlock

Ugh. I feel physically ill. The man who has made a career out of championing amnesty for illegals looks like he will be the Republican nominee. I don't see any way how I can vote for him in November. If he wins then, he will destroy the Republican party brand. I might even have to vote Democratic. If I didn't have to work tomorrow I'd start pounding whiskey.

I'm guess I just vote Mitt next week and hope for the best.

Oh no, now Florida Senator Mel Martinez (his amnesty buddy #1 in the Senate) is on Hannity and Colmes on FNC. I want to put a boot through my TV.

Einhorn and Finkel

Finkel and Einhorn:

Sean Young has entered rehabilitation for alcohol abuse following a weekend outburst in which she was heckling from the audience at the Directors Guild of America awards.

Electric roadster

I'm no environmentalist hippie, but this car is pretty cool. It has the potential to change the way automakers think about cars that use less (or no) gas.

Upon reflection, it's not surprising that a car like this would come from a small start-up as opposed to a large company. Think of the beauracracy a GM or Toyota would throw up in the way of the development of a car like this. This line especially stuck out to me as how quickly these guys could a move to make improvements:

At the time of the ride I took in Southern California, the car had a Blaupunkt radio with an extra screen hanging below for the navigation system. Customers weren't fond of that look so it has been replaced with a JVC unit with an integrated (although considerably smaller) screen. The Tesla interior crew is currently working on a revised dashboard that will support a double-din head unit with a larger screen.

Gaza, Egypt, and Israel

I don't normally post anything involving foreign affairs. The reason is that in my formative years of following current events, I found them to be dreadfully boring. My interests have since expanded, but I assume that people who don't get a kick out of our domestic political news would really hate anything about the rest of the world. So if you don't care, don't waste your time reading any more.

Since no one is left, here we go. There were some fascinating events in the Middle East last week. In the last few years, Israel has gotten tired of continual attacks on them by Palestinians living within their borders. In response, Israel basically gave them their own land to live in and rule as they choose (Gaza, from what I understand, though it's still technically part of Israel). Gaza is between Egypt and the rest of Israel, and it's sealed in between walls on both sides. The Egypt-Gaza wall was originally created by Israel for their own defense before they gave up the land. The Gaza-Greater Israel wall exists for obvious reasons.

Anyway, last week, after months of working on it, the Palestinians knocked down the wall to Egypt. The Egyptian government was completely surprised by this, and they have been unable to handle the effects of it. (Like most other Muslim Middle Eastern governments, they are completely incompetent in anything other than throwing oil money at fomenting terrorism around the world, except Egypt has no oil. Thus, they suck at pretty much everything.)

At first, I thought this was bad news for Israel, since the Palestinians could freely go back and forth into Egypt to get food, supplies, and weapons to strengthen their attacks on Israel. However, this column by Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal goes into much more depth than I've explained here. What I took from it is that Egypt and the rest of the Middle Eastern countries have much more to fear from it. If you have any interest in this stuff, I would recommend reading it.

Why don't I want McCain to win?

My thoughts summarized perfectly by a reader of The Corner:

I agree with what some of the conservative talk show hosts have been saying that McCain would destroy the Republican party. As president, he would make backroom deals with Democrats while the Republican minority in Congress would be obligated to back him for the most part. He may do almost as much damage to our nation as a Democratic president and he wouldn't have a vocal and active opposition. It could be a disaster to our nation and our party.

Will on the Clintons and McCain

George Will's column today starts off with a look at the Democratic presidential race. He then talks about Romney-McCain, and ends up with a very unfavorable comparison for McCain, at least in the minds of Republicans. It's an interesting read for all.

Post-mortem of the Thompson campaign

Andrew Fergusin has an excellent article in The Weekly Standard about the failure of Fred's campaign and what it means about the electorate and the political process:

If Thompson could plausibly avoid an overnight campaign trip, he did, preferring to return home to his wife and children in suburban Virginia. He spent an inordinate amount of time with his briefing books. And his response to the chore of raising money--the chief occupation of every office-seeker in this era of campaign finance reform, which was intended to reduce the role of money in politics--seemed nearly pathological. Fundraising events scheduled to last two or three hours often guttered out when the candidate departed after twenty minutes. High-end donors complained of being uncourted, unpampered, unloved--even unphoned. At one party in a private home last year, Thompson made the rounds of money-shakers, delivered brief remarks, and then slipped into a bedroom to watch a basketball game on TV by himself.

That seems like the kind of guy I'd like to be president. There's also an interesting history of presidential campaigning:

Political campaigns have always been boisterous affairs, but candidates themselves rarely took center stage till well into the 20th century. The first presidential candidate even to make an appearance on his own behalf was William Henry Harrison in 1840. When he showed up in Columbus, Ohio, to give a speech extolling his (exceedingly thin) record, the political world was scandalized. An opposition paper, the Democratic Globe, counted his uses of the pronoun "I"--there were 81 of them in his text--and pronounced the speech "a prodigy of garrulous egotism." The Cleveland Adviser, a nonpartisan paper, asked: "When was there ever before such a spectacle as a candidate for the Presidency, traversing the country advocating his own claims for that high and responsible station? Never!"

Meanwhile, I'll be spending my day hoping Romney can slay the McCain beast in Florida.

Victory Auto Wreckers

So everyone who grew up with Chicago TV knows this commercial. It was probably state-of-the-art when it came out in 1983 when I was watching Sanford And Son or whatever after school, but now it's just odd. Even the transplants (you know who you are) have seen it, I bet.

The best part is that it seems to have been narrated by Dean Richards, who has been at WGN for seemingly ever. Now he does movie reviews for their morning show. Perhaps my connection over at Tribune can verify.

Obama for the Democratic nomination

I know it's not my fight (as a conservative, and therefore a Republican), but I agree with this post on RedState. If you don't know, RedState is probably the biggest independent Republican website (as opposed to conservative website).

Anyway, here is the money quote:

The other reason I favor Obama is that I find Hillary Clinton and her political machine to be a detestable and diseased entity that has no business being near the White House. She is an unlikeable politician who uses slimeball tactics to get her way. If she is so willing to take the low road on the campaign trail against a fellow Democrat, there is plenty of reason to believe she would do the same against Republican opponents by orders of magnitude, and there is plenty of reason to believe she would do the same as president. I would rather not have another four or eight years of white-hot, gloves-off hyperpartisanship. We are a nation at war and we don't need that.

Movie Review - Death Proof

I'm staying in tonight and drinking beers since I am heading to Valpo tomorrow morning for the VU-Loyola game. In the meantime, I am watching the NBA League Pass free preview of the Hawks and Sonics. Boring, I know, but I just finished Grindhouse: Death Proof. It was pretty much awesome.

It was sort of like two movies jammed into one. With Kurt Russell as the antagonist, he's one of my favorite actors ever and that alone would make this movie good.

However, there were a few other things going for it. First, there is an extended scene of people hanging out at a bar and getting drunk. It looked pretty fun. Second, there were some great action scenes. Third, there was a tremendous collection of talent.

For example, there is the always effervescent Rose McGowan:

Then there is this girl, who I have seen before somewhere but can't place it. I don't remember where I saw her. She sort of looks like the Chino girlfriend that Ryan knocked up in The OC. Yep, she's giving the best lap dance ever in this scene:

Here is Cheryl Ladd's daughter:

Lucy McClane from Live Free or Die Hard is here, too, and wearing a cheerleader outfit the whole time. Of course, if Minnie Driver was in LFoDH I would probably think she was good-looking, too:

I always wax back and forth on how attractive Rosario Dawson is. She's not Hollywood hot, but she is regular life hot, so I'll give her a thumbs up:

This girl is basically just a stunt woman who was cast as herself (a stunt woman filming a movie) and also did her own stunts in this movie. And when you see it, you'll see that these stunts are freaking crazy. Anyway, she's a Kiwi:

Last and certainly not least is Sidney Poitier's daughter. I'm not going to write any more than she is the most attractive gal in the movie to me. She's also 5'11", so maybe that's part of why I like her. Her character's name is Jungle Julia, but I'm quite sure what that's supposed to mean:

Since this already the longest blog post of all time, here are some other cool pictures I found on Google Images:

Chamber of Commerce and illegal immigration

I always figured the US Chamber of Commerce's push for illegals was due to money. By that I mean that they wanted to both hire people more cheaply and also have more people to buy their goods.

Mark Krikorian, National Review's resident immigration expert, has a different take that I found interesting:

Obviously, the supporters of amnesty and loose borders and high immigration levels think (mistakenly, in my opinion) that it's good for the economy. But very few of the most vocal actors are driven mainly by those concerns. Even Tom Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is driven by a quasi-religious fervor for open immigration, in my experience with him, something that actually harms the strictly economic interests of those who pay his salary. For instance, after a presentation he and I, and a few others, took part in, I had lunch with the chairman of one of the nation's largest corporations, who asked rhetorically something to the effect of "Does amnesty and the rest really matter to us? [meaning the other Fortune 100 CEOs and chairmen at the event] We pay way above minimum wage and don't have many illegal aliens working for us." He's right of course, but they like Donohue, he's done a good job for them generally, so they defer to his crusade for amnesty and open borders, including hiring MALDEF's former national policy analyst as the Chamber's director of immigration policy.

Groping the women that Americans won't

I guess the men from this country are the ones who are just hardworking folks who we should legalize. No culture problems here:

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Groping and verbal harassment is an exasperating reality for women using public transportation in this sprawling capital, where 22 million passengers cram onto subways and buses each day.

Mrs. McCain speaks

Whenever someone questions John McCain's age as he runs for president (he's 71), he mentions his 95-year-old mother as evidence that he's not too old. The point is that his mom is still pretty sharp and spry.

(I'll add that despite all of the grief I give him, McCain's age doesn't bother me a bit. Reagan was 69, I think, when he was first elected and he did fine. In addition, McCain's mind is OK to me.)

Anyway, she does the occasional interview. Here's an excerpt of a recent one:

Q: How much support do you think he has among the base of the Republican Party?

Roberta McCain: “I don’t think he has any. I don’t know what the base of the Repub–maybe I don’t know enough about it, but I’ve not seen any help whatsoever.”

Yep, she still knows what she's talking about!

Check out the blog redesign

The L-Train has redesigned her blog, and I must say it looks very snappy. Kudos!

More welfare

So, it looks like the President and Congress have come up with some dopey plan to stimlate the economy. I'll play along that it actually do so (even though it won't do anything) and focus on the plan itself.

Here are the details:

Pelosi, D-Calif., agreed to drop increases in food stamp and unemployment benefits during a Wednesday meeting in exchange for gaining rebates of at least $300 for almost everyone earning a paycheck, including low-income earners who make too little to pay income taxes.

Families with children would receive an additional $300 per child, subject to an overall cap of perhaps $1,200, according to a senior House aide who outlined the deal on condition of anonymity in advance of formal adoption of the whole package. Rebates would go to people earning below a certain income cap, likely individuals earning $75,000 or less and couples with incomes of $150,000 or less.

First of all, I don't want to tell people how much I make, but let's just say I'm outside of the "almost everyone" group this unnamed reporter mentions. I don't make so much money that I couldn't use a few hundred dollars to blow at a bar or something.

Second, if it goes to people who don't pay income taxes, it's not a rebate. It's welfare. Let's stop calling it a rebate.

Third, if it increases linearly with every kid you have, it's not a rebate. It's welfare. There I go again!

Fourth (relating to my first point), if it's means-tested, it's not a rebate. It's welfare. See what these people are doing to me?

So it's all about showering poor people and their kids kids with money so they can blow it on lottery tickets or the craps table or whatnot. Great use of our tax money. Oops, I wasn't going to get into the issue of this actually helping the economy...

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin has made this one of her pet issues, and she has much more.