Carlisle, PA--After three highly unusual weeks of running to the west it appears as though I will be spending the remainder of this year running east. That’s a bit more normal for this truck line. Frankly, we’re experiencing a bit of a pre Christmas slowdown. I’m not worried. I’ve seen this before. From here, I will run to Schenectady, New York. And then from there, well, we’ll find out tomorrow.
- Tim Tebow: Yes, I know… His team lost yesterday, but that hardly matters to my point. Erikson tweets tweets:
[1]Regarding Tim Tebow, the last time this many people were interested in a white bronco was when OJ Simpson drove slowly down the road.Heh… yeah there is that. But let’s try a little experiment. Let’s imagine Tebow is Muslim. Does he still get the negative reaction he’s getting now from the usual suspects? Somehow, I think not. Just sayin’…
- Then from the other end… Hitch: Sorry to see him go…. But an interesting side snipe. Joyner tweets:
Hitchens to a waiter at an allegedly anti-Semitic country club: “This won’t do. I NEED THE KOSHER MENU!”
That [2] seems to me and interesting response, given that his calling card was his steadfast objections to organized religion. Forgive me, something seems a little out of kilter, here. Derek Hunter [3] adds to the story:
Later, I would invite him to a different event. He responded he wished he could go, but it was a Jewish holiday and he would be in Temple. He added “(I know, I know.)” This was, after all, at the same time his book, God Is Not Great, was on the bestseller list.
[4]Christopher Hitchens
This might seem like hypocrisy, but it wasn’t. Christopher’s wife, Carol Blue, or just “Blue,” is Jewish, and she wanted him go go with her. Christopher’s family was Jewish, though he didn’t know it growing up. So maybe it also was his way of nodding to his family. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. But that’s how he was. Accepting.
It’s my view the man claimed to be a devout atheist, but was in fact an agnostic. And no, I’m not going to take the time to explain the difference.
- Beck and Coulter: The only reason I can see why you’d back Romney is that the GOP establishment likes him and you want to be in their good graces.Perhaps it’s time, however, that you look at the polling that Romney’s been doing. He hasn’t managed to get beyond 30% many state he’s tried. Rank and file GOP voters now see Gingrich overwhelmingly as the most electable against Obama. [5]Does that give you any indication of how many of the GOP rank and file you have teed off? You’ve lost an awful lot of respect among your biggest supporters, because you were not smart enough to recognize that Romney has none. I will remind you that Romney lost to John McCain because bad as McCain was in terms of his leaning left at will, he still came down to the right of Romney. That record hasn’t changed.Certainly, Romney can Beat Obama…. Then again, anyone can. The question is if Romney selected what have conservatives won? We’ve won Obama Light… And most voters find that unacceptable. The only people that all this surprises are those that are backing Romney. Including, apparently, yourselves. Just shut up, the both of you. It’s the only way you’re going to minimize the damage both to yourself, and the country.
- Comparisons: I ask again…Why is Jon Corzine not in jail? For all the screaming about Bernie Madoff, one would think Corzine would make a similar target.
- IRAQ: OVER? No. I see much in the way of celebration going on as regards the supposedly end of the Iraq war. I’ve got a news flash for you, people . That war is far from over. It isn’t over anymore than the war in Vietnam was when we left there. It’s just that our leadership decided to walk away from it just in time for the election.
- Barry Bonds gets home confinement: Here. [6] Just about anybody else with god and jail time. As a miscarriage of justice if I’ve ever seen one. If that it was unexpected would be a flat out lie. And that, I think, is a measurement of how far we’ve gone down the wrong road.
- Role Reversals: One of the things that I’ve found fascinating about this primary season is the number of role reversals from what we’ve seen in previous years . A couple examples would be the Des Moines Register endorsing Mitt Romney and the New Hampshire Union Leaderendorsing Newt Gingrich.The Registerendorsing Romney is something of a laugher, because Romney has hardly campaigned in that state this year, having been basically laughed out of the state in the last primary.Where Romney has been spending all of his time, is in new Hampshire. Yet he fails to get the endorsement there. In looking at this, one wonders if the reason isn’t that the more exposure one gets to Romney, the more one dislikes the man.Then too, there is the traditional mistrust of the mainstream media by the GOP rank and file. And that mistrust, in my view, is well founded. On that basis, one wonders if the endorsements will have any effect whatsoever, other than perhaps in reverse.In any event, Romney is unquestionably the choice of the establishment GOP. The rank and file, on the other hand, seems to have other ideas. That Ron Paul and Rick Perry are still in the running, here, is suggestive to me of some serious questions among the GOP a rank and file about the establishments choice for the nomination. The establishment GOP doubts that anybody but a candidate who is willing to kiss the backsides of the Liberal intelligentsia will win the national election. Of course, such sentiments tend to ignore the party’s own history vis’ Ronald Reagan.I point out once again that Reagan was not tremendously popular among the GOP establishment back in the day, either… including Romney, himself. That seems to me very telling about the reason behind the establishments position this time around.
The big story this year, and it has been largely ignored, it is how unhappy the GOP voter is. The GOP lake and file. That on happiness, to my mind, is the biggest variable in this race. There’s no question to my mind that such voters are unhappy with Obama and his rampant socialism. The problem is they are apparently unconvinced that the GOP establishments choice is capable of doing anything about it. That doesn’t bode well for get out the vote efforts…. indeed, looks to me like Romney is McCain v2.0… where the GOP rank and file sat on it’s hands, giving us Obama as Presdient.
- OIL and it’s FUTURE..and ours: Billy Beck the other day [7], makes mention of predictions that oil is about to have a bonanza. He suggests that there’s a couple factors that will stop that happening.
In the case of energy, what’s “backwards” is that producers await permission from commissars. This is not how the original energy revolution took place, and there will not be another one as long as that is the political state of affairs.
[8]Quite correct. I read it as close to zero chance as possible that such a bonanza will happen under the current administration. At the same time, I read it has no better than 50/50 that such a bonanza will happen under what the GOP is offering. There again, the politics of the thing enters the issue. Billy goes on:What’s also backwards are public estimations of internal combustion vs. all other energies: there is still nothing available that even approaches the energy-density per-pound of gasoline. This is a fact (you know: physics & stuff), and it has enormous implications for an economy on the scale of ours: one that delivers what ours does. I keep asking people to look around the rooms they’re sitting in right now, and realize that almost nothing in them arrives without petro-fuels or petro-chemicals in one way or another. I keep waiting for the light to go on, when they understand that we simply cannot live anything like 21st-century lives without these materials, and that to condemn them in all the terms which are popular now goes quite beyond senseless: it’s madness.
New technologies and material discoveries (as well as discovery methods) have made all “resource conservation” arguments completely impertinent and irrelevant. We can burn oil for a long, long time, and one very important implication of this is that we have time for authentic geniuses to invent and refine new energies, instead of being force-driven in blind panics by politicians playing the future to pressure-group herds for peanuts.
What’s “backwards” is the belief that government has anything to do with production. It’s perfectly atavistic: it comes from a time before America demonstrated the actual material value of freedom for the first time in human history.
Exactly so. And that is also precisely why the left has been putting such emphasis on “green” initiatives. The history of the thing is that oil keeps being found at phenomenal rates, well beyond what the experts reportedly expect. (There’s that “unexpected” word again… how many times did we hear “unexpected” in relationship to how poorly the economy’s doing under liberal policies? One would almost thnk we were dealing with wishful thikning. ) So, the only control that such people can exert on the consumption of energy, and therefore the growth of America, is claims of air pollution.
Understand; I take is a given that any one of the candidates of the GOP is going to create at least a minor boom in energy production, and energy consumption, and thereby some degree of an economic recovery. That said, I also take it as a given that such a recovery will be stymied to the direct degree that we bend over backwards to kiss the backsides of the Liberal intelligentsia. There’s another thing the GOP establishment still hasn’t figured out. They really don’t need to. Given that Obama’s re-election chances stand right now at 43%, [9]one wonders why they are worried at all. Perhaps the GOP establishment has less disagreements with the socialist left, than the rank and file does, hmmmmm?
- Another Vacation? Apparently so. The Obama family is jetting off to Hawaii separately. [10]..at a cost of get this hundred thousand dollars to the taxpayer. Which ignores the millions this vacation will cost the taxpayers in total. Out of touch, maybe?
- Eric Holder: Mike Hashimoto has a great column up on the topic in the Dallas Morning News. [11]A taste:
Holder last week had another bob-and-weave session with a congressional committee, managing to reveal as little as possible. However, he did let us know that while Justice did dump hundreds of emails in response to a subpoena, none were addressed to him or had been sent by him. And that he has a personal email account, along with his government account. And that lying isn’t the same as not telling the truth, depending on one’s “state of mind.”
You’ve seen people who did it and didn’t in your life. Is this how an innocent person behaves? [12] Is it plausible that the attorney general of the United States had no idea what was going on in Arizona within his own shifting time parameters [13]?
Several dozen Republicans [14] in Congress [15] have called for his resignation. Others have demanded he hold Justice subordinates accountable. (And, no, shifting a few folks into no-work, no-speak jobs isn’t accountability.) Meanwhile, a Border Patrol agent is dead and his family still has no clarity on who is responsible.
At some point, one might think, Holder becomes more of a liability to the Obama [16] re-election campaign than a 50-50 incumbent can stand. At the very least, I can’t imagine congressional Republicans letting this drop, and the longer Holder stonewalls, the longer his name — and connection to his boss — stays in the news.
[17]I’m not sure about this. But it’s my guess that the Obama administration has figured out that Holder is going to be in the spotlight for the duration of the election regardless of whether he’s dismissed from office or not. IN fact, he’s figured out that Holder being dismissed would simply fanned the flames a little higher. Obama’s people are hoping, apparently, that the whole thing can get brushed under the rug. I will say it again; it’s time for this guy to be frog-marched from the White House. And let’s not forget who it was that was his boss, and likely set the whole thing in motion. Obama.Think I’m kidding about that? Consider this; Do you consider that the attack on our second amendment rights is going to go away if Holder does, and Obama doesn’t? I don’t.
- Ron Paul: Look, let’s just save ourselves some time in stipulate at the outset that Ron Paul is a nutbag [18], and go on from there, shall we?