Month: October 2008

The Republican Party is a pawn of Joe the Plumber

When I wrote an earlier post about the phony “race card” McCain is alleged to have “played” because unknown voices screamed things, I was assuming that the “Kill him!” allegation was at least factually correct. Surely (so I thought) no reporter would make up such a story. Wrong! It was either made up, or a…

America’s great friend of the working man Joe Biden has attacked Joe the Plumber for — guess what? — making too much money! To anyone who understands the way Biden’s sleazy little mind works, this should surprise no one. Yes, I think it is “sleazy” and “little” (with all respect to short people *) to…

We are all against child pornography, right? Society deems people who send or receive [or possess] kiddie porn to be so evil and beneath contempt that we have laws punishing them with long prison terms, regardless of circumstances. The statutory scheme imposes (here in Michigan and in many other places) strict criminal liability for possession…

If I didn’t know better I’d say some one was trying to steal an election in Ohio. Jennifer Brunner is the Secretary of State of Ohio. She is a Democrat. She is not interested in finding out if every one registered is actually eligible to vote. The court’s 9-6 opinion, written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton,…

The above video shows the encounter of Plumber Joe Wurzelbacher with Senator Obama on the campaign trail. Joe is not a happy camper. He wants to buy a business. The business makes too much money, over $250,000, and Joe knows his taxes are going up under Obama. Now here is where it gets tricky: Obama…

I didn’t live-blogging tonight’s debate, but I noticed the 25 year age gap as never before. I’m worried that current economic problems favor youth, for reasons that are neither fully understood, nor rational. The conventional wisdom is that it hurts McCain: Many see the 25-year age gap as McCain’s greatest vulnerability. It’s what Obama is…

Watch the above video if you want to learn a little about Joe the Plumber who was a feature of tonight’s debate. I think he is going to be a cult figure. I wonder if he is going to come out with a line of pants and male undergarments? And if you want to refresh…

In an earlier email discussing McCain’s prospects, M. Simon said, “Maybe lower gasoline prices will have some effect.” I replied with a quote that I attributed to Frank J. at IMAO: McCain only needs to threaten to drill — and prices go down! I can’t find the exact link (Frank might as well have said…

Jeff Jacoby takes issue with the claim that calling attention to Barack Obama’s close working relationship with Bill Ayers constitutes unfair guilt by association: …Obama’s defenders have been insisting that to call attention to these deplorable associations is to engage in ridiculous and unfair “guilt by association.” But it isn’t ridiculous to question the values…

And although I realize that on matters of taste there can be no dispute, I’m not sure I have the stomach for recipes that challenge the wisdom of my repugnance.

While it still worries me, the Republican intraparty civil war I discussed in the last post isn’t the civil war I’m most worried about. Because of some of the heated rhetoric (as well as the heated rhetoric over heated rhetoric) lately, I sometimes worry about the possibility of things getting ugly after the election. Which…

Another civil war? Must we? I don’t know, but I couldn’t resist clicking the above to read Patrick Ruffini’s analysis (in a post tiled “Hands Off Palin”) of Ross Douthat’s warning to certain conservatives. Noting the negative reactions of the latter to the negative reactions to Sarah Palin by certain Big Media conservative intellectuals, Douthat…

Intrigued by an editorial titled “McCain plays the race card,” I read the piece looking for details. The evidence for the “race card” consists not of anything McCain said or did, but of comments allegedly yelled by unknown individuals in crowds: At a Florida rally this week, according to The Washington Post, the crowd got…

Sound familiar? It does to me, and I don’t think there’s any escape from it. Not from “the depravity and cursedness of Western civilization,” mind you, but from the scoldings heaped upon those of us who’d prefer to be allowed to enjoy Western civilization in peace. The above came from a 2005 Columbus Day retrospective…

In such an eliptical manner that I amost missed it, M. Simon has announced his 64th birthday! It’s not every day I feel like a kid. My congratulations!

In a comment to yesterday’s post about Chris Buckley’s “defection” (if it is that), Sissy Willis quoted in part from a comment left by Gerard van der Leun at Roger Kimball’s PJM post on the subject: “Friends such as Roger will criticize him ‘more in sorrow than in anger,’ but he will still be welcome…

Meet Sarah Obama, Barack Obama’s step-grandmother. She lives in a rural Kenyan village, and in this video she says nothing about being present at the birth of her step-grandson in Kenya, even though she’s very proud of the fact that he’s running for president In a longer interview broadcast on Al Jazeera television, she also…

In a discussion of the bizarre new rules of engagement (that all criticism of Obama is racist) Ruth Ann Dailey sees little hope for racial absolution: When Republicans finally started paying serious attention to the man who was poised to pluck the crown right out of Hillary Clinton’s hands, Mr. Obama had already been running…

When I read last week that Christopher Buckley had decided to support Barack Obama, my reaction was a relatively minor shrug. Not even worth a passing mention here, much less a blog post. I realize the man is the son of William F. Buckley, the late, great, titan of conservatism, but so what? It isn’t…