I Agree With Malkin

What the fuck is this?  How the hell do the Minuteman founders sell out like this?  This is gonna suck, we've got to start knocking down Huckabee now, this guy will be a disaster.  I can't believe the Minutemen sold out.  Unfuckingbelievable.  I got nothing, I'm just dumbfounded, I'm nearly speechless.

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Sorry For My Absence

My apologies to all four of my readers, I was having tech issues.  So...I'll make an update at some point today.

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Just Horrible

Remember all those stories about college kids dressing in blackface during parties last year?  Students at Penn State just went way beyond that.  Pictures have surfaced of students dressed as victims of the VTech massacre.  They were wearing shirts with VTech logos and mock bullet holes in the shirts, and what the article is calling "elaborate makeup", which I'm guessing is a polite way of saying blood and gore.  So, what kind of people would do this crap?  Have a sample,

In an interview with Roanoke's WSLS-TV, one of the students in the pictures called the costumes "crazy controversial" and said they were trying "to push the envelope just for shock value."

"The thing is, everybody's making a big stink about Virginia Tech. Virginia Tech was 32 deaths out of the 26,000 that happen in America every day," he said.

"That's the problem with college students," he continued. "They all live in an ivory tower of privilege. They don't understand, when it all boils down to it, it's someone wearing a costume."

No, the problem is you being a being a sick bastard.  And yet, the idiot isn't done, after word got out to Facebook, and people started railing against what this tool and his buddies did...

"This is a group of college students who now think it's trendy to be upset about their friends being killed," the student in the photos told WSLS-TV.

I'm gonna let that speak for itself.

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Fred on Charlie Rose

And, as has been his pattern, he says all the right things.  Cuffy's got a good post up, go take a look.  Fred's my candidate, I was wishy-washy for a while, but it has to be Fred, he's the best we have, the rest of the field may have style, but Fred's got the substance.

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Atheist PR Nightmare Michael Newdow Back in Federal Court

Newdow's case got thrown out by the Supreme Court last time because he was arguing on the behalf of his daughter who he had no custody over.  A technicality.  Well, he scrounged up three sets of parents to join him on his douchebaggy quest and immediately filed suit again.  He's gonna be arguing his case in front of the 9th Circuit again, and undoubtedly, because its the Ninth Circuit, they'll run in his favor.  I'll be curious to see what the Supreme Court does, they punted last time, I wonder if they can BS out of it this time.

Newdow's just being a tool, and everyone knows it.  As overwrought a reaction as some religious had about the whole thing, Newdow and his supporters are bitching for bitching sake, and everyone knows it.  If nothing else, people ought to unite around the fact that Michael Newdow is a complete and utter douchebag.  Maddox's takedown of this tool during the first time around kicks ass, so go read that.

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Rush Unofficially Endorses Fred As The Only Conservative

Ace had this up, and I think it needs to be seen, so I'm putting it up.



Rush is Right, Fred is the only true conservative in the field.

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Pretty Thorough Takedown of The Audacity From Hope

Conservative Belle puts together a good broad layout of all the problems Mike Huckabee poses to the conservative movement.  I suggest you read through and click all those links, its a handy resource for all things Huckabee.  It goes into more detail on his policy and offers more than I did yesterday.

I echo many when I say I think this guy could be a disaster and cause permanent damage to the conservative coalition, he needs to be stopped.

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Fred Pwns Health Nazi Nanny Staters

Damn right Fred! Good answer to a good question.  Fred was making a campaign stop at a southern kitchen type restaurant, and got asked about what he thought about Nanny State efforts to control what people ate.  He said,

"I'm telling you, I don’t think that it’s the primary responsibility of the federal government to tell you what to eat," Thompson said to applause when asked if his health care plan included any details on preventative care, a priority for Democratic candidates.

"The fact of the matter is we got an awful lot of knowledge,” said the former Tennesse senator. “Sometimes we don’t have a whole lot of will power, and I don’t know of any government program that's going to instill that."

Thompson, ever a fan of small government, said healthy living should be the responsibilities of families first.

"We shouldn’t be looking at the federal government in Washington first and working our way down, it ought to be just the other way around. With that, or whether you're talking about education, there's some things the federal government can't do,"

Perfect, my only quibble is with the writer of the piece, its not just Democrats that favor this brand of Nannying, Huckabee does too.  Fred wasn't just talking to liberals there.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 08:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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A New York RINO, The Audacity From Hope, And A Seasick Coalition

The conservative movement seems to be in a boat on rough seas, and I have to say, it is beginning to make me seasick, as I'm sure many others are beginning to get that way as well.  For months, we saw Rudy Giuliani dominate the polls, Rudy is of course noted for his socially liberal positions, and his favorable view of gun control.  It chafed a lot of social conservatives, pro-Second Amendment people and activists within those groups in a big way, particularly among evangelicals and Southerners.  I don't feel the need to go over Rudy's record in detail, because everyone knows it already.

There was serious feelings of alienation from these groups, rightly or wrongly, many felt as if the elite of the GOP were about to try and redefine conservatism again, as they had tried unsuccessfully to do with the Amnesty Proposal this summer.  As we've talked about before, this has put the entire conservative movement on edge. 

We saw how damaging the Amnesty fight was to the conservative coalition, and Bush isn't that much of a fighter, Rudy is all fight, he always has been, and always will be.  He probably could have BS'd and nuanced his way through that political minefield in any other year, but he's not gonna get away with it in 2008.  Not now, after the amnesty debacle.  Nobody in the conservative movement is in the mood for major compromise.

As a result, I believe the conservative coalition is on shaky ground, no one is happy with the direction the GOP is going. There have been threats flying from all sides from activists and voters threatening to stay home in 2008, and I think that if we don't find a good consensus candidate, threat of mutiny has been on the tip of many tongues, and those threats may turn into action.

However, there's been some recent changes in the campaign season, Rudy no longer appears to be the Chosen One for the GOP, and I'll explain why I think he's losing ground.  I believe Rudy has had to rely on the spectre of Hillary to keep him on the top of the GOP primary polls.  He's undoubtedly the fighter of the GOP field, and it will take a fighter to take on the Clinton machinery.  As long as Hillary maintained her aura of inevitability in the Democrat primary, Rudy would ultimately be safe. 

With all of Hillary's recent mistakes, most notably her support of Eliot Spitzer's failed plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, her aura of inevitability is damaged.  With that, the Obamassiah campaign has risen from the dead, and he now poses a bit of a challenge. 

With this opening, conservatives feel less need to compromise on principle, particularly social conservatives, and after months of feeling stuck with a candidate that they didn't like at all, now have an opportunity to pick their own candidate.  They've picked a silver-tongued, good humored self-deprecating Baptist minister named Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee is pretty much everything Rudy isn't.  He's the anti-Rudy.  Strongly pro-life, and strongly against gay marriage, he says he favors the Human Life Amendment and the Federal Marriage Amendment.  He's also got a good record on Second Amendment issues.  He seems more friendly compared to Rudy. 

Huckabee is probably most famous for his lifestyle change, where he lost over 100 pounds and got in good shape during his time as Arkansas governor, he's basically the political world's Jared from Subway.  Which leads us to the other side of Huckabee, which people have not been getting the chance to see. 

He's big on lifestyle changes, whether you want to be subjected to them or not.  I recommend you watch that clip from the Club for Growth, and the other videos they and articles they have out about Huckabee.  Huckabee is a big government Nanny Stater, and we all know Nanny Staters ultimately live to suck the joy out of your life. 

Huckabee wants to use the power of government to get people to quit smoking and get in shape, he notes that these sorts of things lead to chronic health problems and increased health care costs.  Which may be true, but do you want Big Brother dictating your behavior to you?  I don't, it might be appealing to use the gov't this way, but rest assured, it will come back to bite you, and you end up as miserable as the guy you screwed with your preferred Nanny legislation.  While this seems benign on its face, as the man does himself, when taken with his record of wanting to impose big bans on smoking, it makes you take a step back and realize that its not so benign. 

He's also a big government guy, and he raises taxes, as Rich Lowry notes here, the Club For Growth, a free market advocacy and thinktank group, has been keeping a record of Huckabee's record, and it isn't good.  Huck's big on taxes, and big on government growth.  He's worse than Bush, twice the government bloat, and none of the tax relief. 

Lastly, he's very pro-illegal, if you look at some of his rhetoric as governor of Arkansas, he makes George Bush sound like Michelle Malkin.  When a tough bill against illegal immigration was proposed in Arkansas, Huckabee's take on the bill?

Gov. Mike Huckabee Thursday denounced a bill by Sen. Jim Holt that would deny state benefits to illegal immigrants as un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible and anti-life.

"Un-Christian, un-American, irresponsible, and anti-Life."  Because the people of Arkansas don't want to pay for benefits to people who broke their laws, they get declared Un-Christian by St. Huckabee? 

If Huckabee wants to forgive illegals for breaking the law, fine, don't do it with the people's government and their funds, start his own mission, he's a minister, he knows how to do that.  And there's plenty more than that on his open borders/amnesty advocacy, but I thought I'd give you a taste, and let you do your own homework from there.  As you can see, he's got a sweet demeanor in public, but he's got a nasty side too.

I do this not to pick on Mike Huckabee, but because many people are jumping on the Huck bandwagon because they've finally got a candidate that looks strong and is more in line with some of their key domestic issues, and in their excitement haven't looked at his record.

Huckabee will alienate a lot of voters, much the same way that Rudy has, but in the opposite direction.  A lot of conservatives don't like compassionate conservatism, and has been stated by many, like Jonah Goldberg here, Huckabee is "compassionate conservatism on steroids."  I've said it at blogs I've commented at, Huckabee is basically a Democrat with a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other.  He views the government as one giant-ass mission church.

Besides Amnesty, one of my biggest problems with Huckabee comes from his dishonest rhetoric with regard to the Human Life Amendment, the FMA, and his FairTax proposal.  Its all shameless pandering, as Rich Lowry says in the piece I link above, the FairTax and dismantling of the IRS are never going to happen.  Lowry doesn't tackle these, but I'd also add the Human Life Amendment and FMA in there too.  They aren't going to happen, they just aren't, not in your lifetime, and probably not in mine either.

The three campaign promises Huck makes above are like phone sex hotlines for social and fiscal conservatives, the talk is titillating, but everyone knows that its not really a horny, nubile and attractive coed who wants to get freaky with you on the other end of that line.  Its fantasy, and chances are you aren't gonna like the bill that comes with it afterword.

So, where do we go from here, you ask?  No, not Ron Paul, shaddup!  Honestly, I don't know, and I wish I did.  The only thing I can think is to try and find someone who can offer some level of satisfaction to both sides, which would mean either Romney or Fred. 

Sadly, it looks like Mitt is gonna fail because people have hangups about Mormonism.  I'm not a Romney fan, but the fact that it looks like his religion is becoming such a problem is unfortunate. 

I'll admit, I like Fred the most out of the candidates, in particular, he's the only major candidate that strongly opposes amnesty, and he seems to favor more realistic approaches to issues like abortion and a decentralization of power, but his campaign has just been a disaster, and he hasn't shown the amount of energy that people want, he's doing a bit better, but I have my doubts.

As a movement we're in rough seas, and I don't know where we're going, or whether they'll get better.  Rush Limbaugh warned us after the losses in 2006 that things were going to get much worse before they got better.  This might be what he was talking about.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:54 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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New Immigrants Favoring GOP

You mean, people who went through the difficulties of the immigration process don't think people who came here illegally should get it by violating law?  Impossible!  Anyway, it shouldn't surprise anyone, these people get what it means to be American, probably more than many native-born Americans, and are a welcome addition to our nation. 

Legal immigration is a positive thing, I've never agreed with Tancredo, Buchanan or some of the other people who believe we should keep out legal immigrants too.  We should be welcoming to people who have gone through the difficult process to become American, and are ready to live by the principles that our nation was founded on.

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I Really Don't Want to Buy an XBOX360, But I Might Have To If This is Exclusive

Crimson Skies 2! I hope this is actually in development. The first one for XBOX was awesome.  Its an alternate history game set in the 1930's, where the United States has broken up into regional factions, airships and airplanes make up a large part of conflict in this era, whether its pirates, gangs, or militias from the different factions. 

Its really stylish, it takes liberties with 30's style, but not so much that it turns you off to it.  Its a fun game, not too complex like many flight simulators are, so its accessible, plus because they're older style aircraft, so there's lots of close dogfights.

I'm really, really hoping they put this out on all platforms.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 04:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Nanny Stater Fascists Continue Goosestepping on British Subjects

Man, you Brits should have never let your government ban guns.  Thankfully, we have a constitutional right to protect our rights to arm.  As is typical with the Nanny Staters, they've made a ban, which is soon to be followed up by another one.  Lauraw has a good demonstration of that principle here.  Seems after the Brits were banned from smoking in bars and pubs by the Health Nazi Nannies, they've been putting patio heaters outside so they can smoke without freezing.  And now they're about to be flanked by the Environmentalist Nannies.  Lauraw quoted this line from the article too, as well she should, it perfectly represents the Nanny State,

Environmentalists say the heaters must now be banned if Britain is to meet carbon dioxide emission targets.

Tony Juniper, of Friends of the Earth, said: "The impacts of the smoking ban are positive, but this should not cause more problems for the environment. Either smokers will have to give up smoking or simply put on a jumper."

At some point, Brits are going to have to say "How about no, does no work for you?" and be ready to fight to stop the Nanny State.  This is the type of bullshit we face if we let the Nanny Staters in America take over.  All of them.  I don't care if its,

The Morality Police, keeping you safe from enjoying nudie mags, sex, rap and Grand Theft Auto, or any other entertainment that they don't like.

The Anti-Gun Zealots, who want to protect you from your right and responsibility to defend yourself and others, and protect you from enjoying a hunt or going out to a range on weekends, particularly with scary lookin' rifles and ones featured in Hollywood movies. 

The Multicultural/Sensitivity Cult, who enforces politically correct speech and thought.

 The Health Nazis, who want to protect you from the joys of tasty food, booze, and tobacco.  

The Marxists, who want to protect you from financial success and owning cool stuff, because unless you have enough cool stuff for everyone, you can't have it for yourself. 

And the Environmentalists, who want to protect you from sweet vehicles, air conditioning, and anything that requires industrial capacity or electricity to use or produce.

All are Nanny Staters, and all are here, and threaten to suck all joy out of your life.

Again, if you felt a pang of guilt reading that, its time to do some soul-searching and see where the hell you went wrong.

This is not a strictly partisan issue, there are a lot of people strongly inclined toward Morality Policing on the Right, but the Left seems to have taken to Nanny Stating like a fish to water. 

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:36 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Weak, We Probably Got Beauchamp'd

Malkin has a good write-up.  Looks like an NRO milblogger made up bullshit during the recent Israel/Hezbollah conflict.  I hope National Review is more upfront and honest than The New Republic was.  This of course helps TNR immensely, and this will get top headlines in the MSM, while the Beauchamp story received virtually no coverage.

Goddammit.

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Don't You Know Who The Fuck We Are? We're The Dextrosphere, Bitch!!

That's right, we've bitchsmacked the embarrassing plagiarist and MN GOP Vice-Chair Michael Barrett, and now we've got an official retraction by TNR on the Scott Beauchamp stories.  ConfederateYankee and Michael Goldfarb @ Weekly Standard deserves special credit for staying on this story.

The dextrosphere can play a part in reshaping the narrative of the media.  In the broader scope, yeah, Beauchamp is a small story.  Barrett is even smaller.  But its just the beginning.   We get small victories here and there, even smaller blogs. 

I note  Conservative Belle, who exposed a shameless smear by reporter David Shuster.  Shuster apologized on-air soon after for his slimy smear.  One of the long-term goals of the dextrosphere, working with new media, has to be to counter the leftist dominated media.

*Oh, and I'll note, as Malkin says here, Ace has been vindicated.  He was heavily criticized for arguing that fact Beauchamp's wife worked at TNR was a serious conflict of interest, well, turns out, she was one of Beauchamp's factcheckers!  TNR states in its retraction that it was a clear conflict of interest.

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