Some German guy named Gerhard Spörl, writing in Der Spiegel, was really impressed by Obama's speech in Berlin. Shockingly, he believes that for anyone who saw his non-campaign rally campaign rally, "it is hard to imagine that John McCain still has any chance." I suspect most of the Germans who showed up believed the same thing. I also suspect most Germans also believed the same thing about John Kerry in 2004, but I digress.

I mention this article because Gerhard says the following, later in his column...

George W. Bush is yesterday, the Texas version of the arrogant world power. Obama is all about today: the "everybody really just wants to be brothers and save the world" utopia.

Let's allow ourselves to be warmed today, by this man at the Victory Column.

Posted by: Sean M. at 04:51 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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Raymond Rodriguez, a retired educator and walking cliché from Long Beach, is alarmed by the 25% dropout rate here in California's high schools:

The dropout rate is staggering, and everyone is trying to rectify the problem, or so it appears from the rhetoric. But are we really serious? Obviously not. It all begins in the classroom, with the teacher. Compare what we spend in time, money and effort to train a teacher with what we invest in training a fighter pilot. One gives meaning to life; the other's job is to end life. Whom do we value the most? There is your answer to the problem.

Posted by: Sean M. at 02:10 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Well, that's what this guy seems to think, anyway.  And I think he takes it personally.

Posted by: Sean M. at 04:32 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Just War. That's it.

Instead of explaining my theory, I'll show it to you by describing what I would have done when confonted with this situation.

Samir Kantar, one of Lebanon's most notorious militants, has been freed by Israel as part of a controversial prisoner swap which saw the dead bodies of two kidnapped soldiers returned to the Jewish State this morning.

Kantar and four other Islamists crossed into Lebanon at around 5.30pm local time, hours after Hezbollah handed back two black coffins containing the remains of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, both Israeli reservists.

The soldiers' kidnapping at the hands of Hezbollah, in summer 2006, led to the second Lebanon War, which lasted a month and left 1,200 people dead. They will be buried on Thursday.

Kantar, meanwhile, had been held in an Israeli prison for almost 30 years for the 1979 murder of a father and his daughter, which has become etched onto the Israeli public consciousness.

In the first place, I would have never stopped hurting the people involved until I got my soldiers back alive.  I won't go into details because what I just wrote makes me look like a heartless monster.  Let's just say I don't believe, once a reasonable condition is established, anything is off the table.  Unresonable opponents deserve unreasonable(and in this case, terrifying) responses.

Now, they've given back 5 subhuman monsters including a man who by merely being alive proves the utter moral superiority of the Israelis.  They should have tortured that fucker to death. 

Know what the Moron Pundit Just War Theory demanded in this situation?  As soon as those fuckers crossed into Lebanon and we had our fallen warriors back, I'd have located that car and have every last one of the returned terrorists executed along with any person evil enough to be hanging out with them.

Then I'd drop a 2,000 lb bomb on Bashar Assad's favorite car as a warning.

Just war.  That's it.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 12:30 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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An open letter to the editors and staff at Townhall condemning their willingness to allow the anti-Semite dirtball Pat Buchanan's columns to appear there.  Where this reader argues Buchanan should be made to apologize, I don't, it'd never be sincere, Buchanan's anti-Semitism has been well known for ages. 

Buchanan should be purged from the conservative movement altogether, we allowed him back in a bit a few years after the WFB purge of Buchanan, and we never should have done that.  Buchanan should be driven out of any mainstream conservative publication, online or print, and left to his own to publicize his anti-Semitic garbage.

Moar: Buchanan's latest column at Townhall argues that Teh Joooooos are the cause of high oil prices. 

Like the Rott, I'll no longer be visiting or linking Townhall.com until Buchanan and all his "works" are purged from the site.  I'd encourage every other moronblogger who is opposed to Buchanan and his anti-Semitic filth voice their displeasure with Townhall and follow suit.  Any other site that hosts Buchanan's filth should be subjected to a similar embargo as well.  The only visit that should be made to Townhall is to the Townhall contact form to demand Buchanan be thrown off of Townhall.  Let's finish what Buckley started.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 03:13 PM | Comments (19) | Add Comment
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Conde Nast's Matt Cooper has three female GOP politicians who have been looked over for vice president because those silly conservatives consider them ideologically impure.  His train wreck of an article is worth a read, but his cheerleading for Sen. Olympia Snowe was my favorite part (emphasis mine):

The senior senator from Maine has been in the Senate for 14 years and served in the House before that. She's married to a former Republican governor of Maine. She has close ties to the Bush family, which, of course, has kept a residence in Kennebunkport. She sits on the Armed Services Committee and knows defense policy intricately. She's been overlooked because she's a moderate, pro-choice, and had the temerity to vote against the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

But while her nomination would surely annoy conservatives, I think the gain with centrists would be offset. She didn't support the Clinton tax hikes, although she didn't back the George W. Bush tax cuts, a position once held by McCain himself. Unless she's for raising taxes now, and she isn't, I don't see why she couldn't pass muster with the fiscal conservatives. Like McCain, she's a spending hawk. On choice, she just has to note that she's supported all of the conservative nominees that McCain has and that she will continue to support them, and while she's personally pro-choice, McCain is president and that's that. It'll be a ruckus, but McCain could stand some ruckus right now.

Independents don't donate.

Independents don't care about get-out-the-vote efforts. 

Independents are independent because they don't really have any deeply held philosophy of government, and therefore are not willing to fight to prevent an Obama presidenct.  After all, Sen. Snowe won't be solidly against that outcome.  Obama is against the Bush tax cuts and for abortion, just like she is.  The independents she would attract would feel the same way. 

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 12:46 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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I know I'm a freak but I like to actually read legislation before I rabidly denounce it. As with the Patriot Act, I feel completely baffled as to why people are so disturbed by the FISA amendment.

They say it violates the Fourth Amendment but I'm not sure how that can be true if it says this:

Limitations- An acquisition authorized under subsection (a)--

• `(1) may not intentionally target any person known at the time of acquisition to be located in the United States;
• `(2) may not intentionally target a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States if the purpose of such acquisition is to target a particular, known person reasonably believed to be in the United States;
• `(3) may not intentionally target a United States person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States;
• `(4) may not intentionally acquire any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States; and
• `(5) shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 01:48 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program is a voucher system that was signed into law by President Bush four years ago, and has been a very successful program in the DC area, with many students now able to escape the horrendous DC public school system to private and religious schools of their parents choosing.  Be sure to read that article, there are some very positive results already showing as a result of the program.  Unfortunately, there is a growing effort to dismantle the program by Democrats in Congress, and undoubtedly, the teacher unions are behind that effort.

The public school system needs their monopoly broken up.  Not only must this DC voucher program be defended but it should be implemented on a larger scale, even the liberal dunce of a mayor in DC is strongly supportive of this voucher system.  There is a large list of students hoping to get a voucher(over 7000!), and that list will undoubtedly continue to grow if the program is allowed to continue.

Competition would force our public schools to perform better, or maybe even replace public schools fully if the they could not compete.  Teacher unions, particularly the NEA don't want to compete, because they know it would lead to their weakening and possible demise, and will do whatever is necessary to shut down this fledgling program.  We can't let them succeed.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 02:25 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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While I agree with Ed Morrissey that this piece by the WaPo is an attempt to stir things up, the points the WaPo brings up are not to be dismissed, which is what Ed seems to be doing.  There could well be some nastiness at the Minnesota convention if McCain tries to change the Republican party platform to reflect his platform.  Ed doesn't seem worried, but he should be, says he,

How will McCain thread the needle?  Probably by allowing the activists to get what they want from the platform, while maintaining his own positions in the campaign.  It would be an easy way to allow conservatives to demonstrate their stewardship of the party, without binding McCain in any way for the general election.  A man with McCain’s military experience knows the value of a tactical retreat, allowing opponents to occupy essentially meaningless ground.

Methinks not, and I can point to McCain's repeated abandonment of his bogus "secure the borders first" rhetoric for starters.  We all know McCain's rhetoric when he does say he'll secure the borders is purely symbolic. 

Ed knows how important that symbolism alone is, McCain surely knows it too, and both know how charged this issue is and what a minefield it is for McCain. Yet McCain dares to abandon the "secure the borders first" rhetoric in regular intervals, even knowing that he may well lose the election as a result of angering people who demand immigration enforcement.  So the idea that McCain knows when to make a tactical retreat is ludicrous, approaching an insult to our intelligence.

Would anybody go to Vegas and bet their life savings on it?  I wouldn't bet more than $5 on it.  McCain is exactly the kind of arrogant, egomaniacal, intemperate twit who would go in and try and change up the GOP platform to suit his needs, and to presume otherwise just because common sense says he wouldn't shows a total lack of understanding of what  John McCain is.

I want to take a look at one other bit from Morrissey's post before I go on, so let's do that,

How many Republicans bother to read the party platform?  Most of the delegates won’t make the effort, mainly because it does nothing to bind candidates to the party positions.  Few if any voters of either party will even skim the party platforms, and even the media will use it only as a reference.  It’s a document meant for activists within the parties to stake out ground and for factions to demonstrate influence over the direction of the whole.

This is where Morrissey has it wrong, the McCainiacs have it wrong and the GOP or DIE brigades have it wrong.  This year, these things matter.  In the past decade, maybe two decades, any other year, Ed would be absolutely correct, the platform wouldn't mean a damned thing, and it would mean little more than a tiny core of activists and insiders jockeying for power.

This year is different, we've had a major shakeup in the GOP as a result of the collapse of Bush and the loss of the Congress in 2006, and it shook the party to the core.  We now have a er, Mexican standoff between the different factions of the GOP.  Everyone is feeling betrayed by the current leadership, and everyone is using the threat of walking away from the conservative coalition to try and get the out of control GOP leadership back in line.  Having any major faction in the broader coalition abandon the GOP would spell disaster for the GOP, and the nation at large, and anything could set any one of them off.

Beyond that, people like Mike Huckabee and McCain are actively encouraging this crackup of the coalition, as neither are conservatives and hope to create new coalitions by breaking apart the old order.  A major change to reflect the platform of John McCain would be a symbol to some factions within the GOP that indeed, McCain and non-conservative factions have succeeded in wresting control from them. 

That would spell electoral disaster for the GOP at large in 2008, much of the conservative base has already abandoned McCain as is, he isn't pulling in much money, he has little to no grassroots support, and has been largely abandoned by 527's.  Support for Republicans is weak already, alienating traditionally reliable supporters on the level McCain has already is a really big problem, and may have consequences downticket as well.   Even changing a symbolic measure like the otherwise ignored GOP platform could be the catalyst that shatters the already fragile coalition. 

So I have to ask, what will McCain's game be?  Does he see his candidacy primarily as the means to shatter the coalition with the hopes of creating a new one in his Mavericky image?  Or does McCain want to win the election, either by creating a new coalition or playing a careful game between being the moderate/independent while paying the bare minimum in political dues to the coalition?

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 11:16 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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That just about sums things up.

Stay-at-home-mom Heather Hammack grapples with tough decisions daily about how to spend her family's dwindling income in the face of rising food costs. One day, she priced strawberries at $1.75. The next day, they were $2.28.

"I could cry," she responds when asked how things are.

God, it's like The Grapes of Wrath all over again. Except with strawberries.

Posted by: Sean M. at 08:27 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Okay, we've probably all heard the story of the woman who sang Lift Every Voice & Sing at the Denver city council meeting instead of the Star-Spangled Banner by now.  I see Baldilocks trying to get people to relax and not have a visceral knee jerk reaction to the song itself, which seems to be having the opposite effect, so let me try my hand at it. 

Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing was a poem written by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, and was set to music by his brother John that same year.  Over time, the song became a subtle way to speak out against segregation, Jim Crow laws and racism in the early 20th century.  The NAACP of that era called it "The Negro National Anthem."

It faded in popularity in black culture, until it made a resurgence in the 60's and 70's, where it was sung after the Star-Spangled banner during many civil rights demonstrations and events, and it was often referred to as the Black National Anthem. 

From what I gather, to declare it a Leftist song, a Liberation(of the Rev. Wright variety) song or a "Black Power" song is a vast oversimplification, it has meant a number of things to a lot of different people with a lot of different ideologies over the 100+ years it has existed.  I think what Baldi is trying to explain to people is that they need to tread gingerly, because not having a grasp on what exactly you're attacking can lead to problems.  

Black Americans don't automatically associate Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing with the sort of radical, aggro ideology of a Rene Marie, note again, in the 60's and 70's Lift Ev'ry Voice & Sing was sung after the Star-Spangled Banner.  What she did was not the norm by any means.

Undoubtedly, many black Americans probably just associate it with the civil rights movement itself, or the fight to end segregation law in the early 20th century, not the ridiculous Black Power characters we see dragged onto cable TV shows for the hosts to feign outrage and kick around every once in a while. 

What I think Baldi is trying to do is to warn people to take a breather, do their homework, and to not deploy a carpet bombing when a surgical strike is the better approach, because the collateral damage from a carpet bombing is unnecessary and counterproductive.  By attacking or falsely characterizing Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing itself instead of just this singer, people open themselves to false charges of racism, but false charges that could be effective at sowing discord and causing unneeded and unwanted destructive racial tension in our nation.

Posted by: doubleplusundead at 05:01 PM | Comments (31) | Add Comment
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The President of the Log Cabin Republicans, Patrick Sammon, has offered a response to yesterday's op-ed by Gary Bauer, who insisted that the GOP should spend less time formulating policy and running on principle and more time scaring people about teh gheys!!! 

Both articles are worth reading, but I take issue with this analysis:

In 2006, the five Republicans who used marriage most prominently as a wedge issue all lost. Sens. Rick Santorum (Pa.) and George Allen (Va.), Reps. John Hostetler (Ind.) [sic] and Anne Northup (Ky.), and Ken Blackwell (in his race for Ohio governor) tried to win with anti-gay campaign tactics. They didn’t necessarily lose because of their tactics, but these tactics didn’t prevent them from losing, as they might have a decade ago.

Posted by: It's Vintage, Duh at 01:38 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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So says an aide to Robert "100% of the Vote" Mugabe:

A spokesman for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has rejected Western criticism of the country's disputed presidential run-off election.

At an African Union summit in Egypt, George Charamba said the West had no basis to speak about the situation - and can "go hang a thousand times".

Posted by: Moron Pundit at 08:11 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
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