9 "Just as ^(A)the Father has loved Me, I have also loved you; abide in My love.

10 "^(B)If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as ^(C)I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.

11 "^(D)These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your ^(E)joy may be made full.

12 "This is ^(F)My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.

13 "^(G)Greater love has no one than this, that one ^(H)lay down his life for his friends.

14 "You are My ^(I)friends if ^(J)you do what I command you.

15 "No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for ^(K)all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.

-John 15:9-15

21 "^(A)You have heard that the ancients were told, '^(B)You shall not commit murder' and 'Whoever commits murder shall be ^[a]liable to ^(C)the court.'

22 "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before ^(D)the court; and whoever says to his brother, '^[b]You good-for-nothing,' shall be guilty before ^[c](E)the supreme court; and whoever says, 'You fool,' shall be guilty enough to go into the ^[d](F)fiery hell.

23 "Therefore if you are ^(G)presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your offering there before the altar and go; first be ^(H)reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.

25 "^(I)Make friends quickly with your opponent at law while you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the officer, and you be thrown into prison.

26 "Truly I say to you, ^(J)you will not come out of there until you have paid up the last ^[e]cent.

-Matthew 5:21-26

A couple from our church (who shall remain anonymous) embarked on a missionary trip to the West African nation of Cameroon last month.  Following are a pair of live reports of some rather hair-raising goings-on there of late.

~  ~  ~

As I write this we have heard about forty shots of tear gas released on crowds within the past forty minutes, here in Bamenda. In fact, we are watching, across the short valley.

About 10:30 a.m. about sixty to eighty people ran down Two Mile Road, shouting. They were immediately followed by about three dozen troops. Then the tear gas began, which wafts down their hill, across a short valley and up our valley. We smell and see the white smoke, about a mile to a mile and a half away.

Some shots are huge booms, which sound like cannons. But vendors James and Basi say it's all tear gas.

Now there's black smoke, which means burning tires has begun.

We'd hoped things might be settled by noon, and who knows, they still may.

Please pray for people's safety.  Please pray the conflict over increased food and gas is resolved and ends.  Ask your friends to pray, since this is affecting all Cameroon cities....

William F. Buckley, the Neo and Morpheus of modern conservatism, passes away at the age of eighty-three.

Okay, Ronald Reagan was more like Neo, but let's not lose ourselves in the Matrix metaphor.

Coverage here, here, here, and of course, here.

I'll add my thoughts today as my accursedly small time interludes permit.

UPDATE: So much for even small time interludes.

But even had I had any time to think and compose and articulate, it would only have served to expose the fact that I am not very good at tributes, much less eulogies.  Take a gander at my attempt to eulogize President Reagan if you don't believe me.

Not that I can't write them to the satisfaction of others, necessarily, it's that I can't seem to do so to my own satisfaction.  No matter what I come up with, it never seems adequate to the task.

So how do I eulogize William F. Buckley, a man I've never met?  Well, the Morpheus reference is a good place to start.  In Greek mythology Morpheus was the god of dreams.  And WFB certainly did have a dream: of an America restored to the original intent of the Founding Fathers, dug out from under the massive un- and extra-constitutional federal government that was crushing the liberty and life out of it.  He was the catalyst of America's political immune system, attacking the foreign organism that was the New Deal and modern liberalism.  He birthed its counterpart, its nemesis, the contemporary conservative movement.  Without William F. Buckley there'd have been no Goldwater insurgency in 1964 that reclaimed the Republican Party from the RINOs, without which there could been no Reagan ascendancy in 1980 at the time of national nadir and crisis, without which the Cold War would not have been won and America, at least as we have known it, might no longer exist.  And, of course, without Ronald Reagan there'd have been no Gingrich revolution and, in 2000, no unified GOP governance.

All of it traceable by direct lineage to the cultured, debonnaire courage of the man who stood astride history with his hand extended, bellowing "STOP!"

In order for Neo to end the war with the machines and save his people, Morpheus had to find him first.  Without Bill Buckley, there'd have never been a conservative movement and a WFB legacy for today's GOP to piss away in the space of three years.

It's almost a shame that he had to live to see that.

But I suspect he wasn't entirely surprised.

It was the Gipper, after all, who added "sunniness" to the right-wing stew.

UPDATE II: I read about this WFB encounter with the insufferable Gore Vidal, but watching it is even better:

If any Republican had had this level of partisan spirit and ideological commitment over the past seven years, maybe the conservative movement wouldn't be disintegrating today as we speak.

1"Ho! Every one who ^(A)thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have ^(B)no money come, buy and eat; come, buy ^(C)wine and milk ^(D)without money and without cost. 

2 "Why do you spend money for what is ^(E)not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy?  Listen carefully to Me, and ^(F)eat what is good, and ^(G)delight yourself in abundance. 

3 "^(H)Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, that you may ^(I)live; and I will make ^(J)an everlasting covenant with you, according to the ^(K)faithful mercies shown to David. 

4 "Behold, I have made ^(L)him a witness to the peoples, a ^(M)leader and commander for the peoples. 

5 "Behold, you will call a ^(N)nation you do not know, and a nation which knows you not will ^(O)run to you, because of the LORD your God, even the Holy One of Israel; for He has ^(P)glorified you."

-Isaiah 55:1-5

Well, this is disappointing command decision - at least to me:

Today brings exciting news and an end to a time in my life that has proven far more successful than I ever dreamed. Beginning on March 1, I will begin working for Michelle Malkin, a friend, mentor, and writer I have long admired. She has offered me a position as writer at Hot Air, and my blogging will appear exclusively there.

That means that I will close out Captain’s Quarters sometime in March.

Nothing against Hot Air or Double-M, both of which I peruse on a regular basis and of which my fandom is avid and perpetual.  I'm sure that Ed Morrissey will make a fine addition to the Hot Air staff, and one can hardly blame him for jumping at a chance to add a full-time paying writing gig to his Blog Talk Radio job.  That is what is generally known as hitting it even bigger, and given how very few people get to combine hobby and livelihood, well, let's just say Ed has truly earned his blessings.

Still, I share Strata's and Sister Toldjah's well-meaning dismay at the Admiral's decision to shut down CQ.  I have to conclude that doing so was a condition of the Hot Air deal, but I don't understand why Michelle Malkin would impose such an exclusivity stipulation.  After all, she still has her blog, and I don't see why Ed couldn't write material for Hot Air as well as CQ.

One of the primary appeals about blogging for me has always been the self-expression aspect; the shingle you hang out in the blogosphere is uniquely your own, and the look as well as the content can be tailored to your specifications and even the occasional whim.  It's not unlike running your own business for years and then abandoning (or selling, perhaps?) it and going back to work for somebody else.  After all that time calling your own shots (and being wildly successful at it), becoming an employee again doesn't seem like a natural decision, and would be difficult for me to undertake - no matter how worth my while Double-M made it.

I don't have any worries that Ed will be forced to toe an editorial line and submerge his particular views that don't line up with Malkin's and Allahpundit's.  He'll doubtless continue to offer the same candid, mostly center-right commentary that he has for the past five years at CQ - why else would Hot Air have tried to land him?  But given that, why give up CQ?  Why not do both?

I guess that speaks to Ed's not having let his success go to his head.  A pity that that success will now belong to somebody else.

UPDATE: Not that this is any big deal, or any of my business for that matter, and I'd never ask Ed about any of this, but a day later this move of his to close down CQ concurrent with his move to Hot Air is even more puzzling.

I thought about it thusly: If Michelle Malkin were to come to me with an offer to write for Hot Air as an unpaid volunteer, much less as a paid staff writer, under the same "You must close down your own blog" conditions, I'd be an idiot not to jump at the chance.  Why?  Exposure.  I'd go from pixeling in obscurity to my maunderings appearing before one of the highest trafficked center-right sites in the blogosphere.  It'd be a chance to make a name for myself in something I thoroughly enjoy doing, perhaps even make an honest-to-God second career out of it, and maybe even ultimately parlay it into a reopening of Hard Starboard with a, well, CQ-sized audience.  It would make perfect sense.  It'd be a no-brainer.

But in Ed's case, he's already got exposure, or he wouldn't presumeably have gotten the offer from Hot Air.  CQ is a top-ten site, with substantially greater traffic even than Hot Air does.  The Admiral is already a blogospheric star via CQ and Heading Right Radio.  Closing down his site and moving to HA is a step down for him, it seems to me.  He goes from being The Man on his own top-ten site to joining a stable of writers at a top-hundred one.  I just don't get it.

Ed's case isn't like Dean Barnett's, for example.  DB was plugging away in the dark at his humble Blogger site when Hugh Hewitt discovered him and offered him a co-blogging gig at his blog, which DB turned into a stepping stone to a professional writing gig at the Weekly Standard.  I think it's safe to say that dropping SoxBlog like it was on fire was as easy a choice for Dean as putting HS on hiatus would be for me in similar circumstances.  But again, the Admiral made his own success, and now appears to be deep-sixing it in favor of....something.  Hence my speculation about the deal's monetary aspects.

My "getting it" isn't required, of course, and I certainly do wish Ed all the best at Hot Air.  'Tis a pity that there isn't a way to auction off segments of his reflected notoriety.  With what he must have commanded in exchange for putting CQ into dry dock, those commodities would have come at a substantial discount.

Read this quote and identify what's wrong within it:

Republican John McCain quickly denounced the comments of a radio talk show host who while warming up a campaign crowd referred repeatedly to Barack Hussein Obama and called the Democrat a "hack, Chicago-style" politician.

Hussein is Obama's middle name, but talk show host Bill Cunningham used it three times as he addressed the crowd before the likely Republican nominee's appearance.

"Now we have a hack, Chicago-style Daley politician who is picturing himself as change. When he gets done with you, all you're going to have in your pocket is change," Cunningham said as the audience roared.

The time will come, Cunningham added, when the media will "peel the bark off Barack Hussein Obama" and tell the truth about his relationship with indicted fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko and how Obama got "sweetheart deals" in Chicago.

McCain wasn't on stage nor in the building when Cunningham made the comments, but he quickly distanced himself from them and the talk show host after finishing his speech. McCain spoke to a couple hundred people at Memorial Hall in downtown Cincinnati.

"I apologize for it," McCain told reporters, addressing the issue before they had a chance to ask the Arizona senator about Cunningham's comments.

"I did not know about these remarks but I take responsibility for them. I repudiate them," he said. "My entire campaign I have treated Senator Obama and Senator (Hillary Rodham) Clinton with respect. I will continue to do that throughout this campaign.

McCain called both Democrats "honorable Americans" and said "I want to dissociate myself with any disparaging remarks that may have been said about them."

Okay, there are TWO things wrong with it.  The first is Mr. Cunningham actually suggesting that the same Enemy Media that is laying palm fronds in front of B.O. wherever he goes will turn on him in a rising tide of scandalmongering.  Sorry, Mr. C, but Barack-a-lack-a-ding-dong is a Democrat, and the newest flavor of Democrat at that.  He could show up at campaign appearances in a Jerry Falwell costume and not draw a discouraging press word.  Just look at "journalists"' hypocritical denunciations of Cunningham's remarks which differ not at all from what Senator Hillary Clinton has offered up over the past few months via various avenues.

The second, and primary, problem is, of course, Senator McCain's reflexive apology and instinctive and effusive praise for Senator Obama (and Hillary as well - talk about your RINO blue plate special).  Bill Cunningham was warming up a partisan Republican audience at a partisan Republican campaign event; the Democrats do the exact same thing, and I think it's safe to say they say a whole lot worse things about us (remember Bush Derangement Syndrome???), and don't use proxies to do it, either.  There are never any media denunciations of THAT, or demands for a Hillary or an Obama to apologize for it.  That's simply politics, as it's always been.

Yet out comes Darth Queeg on his knees, begging for his opponents' (and the media's) forgiveness, like some elderly and really weird hybrid of a battered wife and a trained seal.

And this man expects conservatives to get behind him without so much as a single smidgen of "red meat"?  He expects to energize and fire up a GOP base he's been rooking for years by running a "bipartisan" presidential campaign?  He's going to get to the White House by "taking the politics out of politics"?

You want to have a chance of fooling us, Lord Queeg?  Next time, just say "Bill Cunningham is a great American".  Or even say nothing at all.

At least that would be better for my blood pressure.

1 He ^(A)entered Jericho and was passing through.

2 And there was a man called by the name of Zaccheus; he was a chief tax collector and he was rich.

3 Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was, and was unable because of the crowd, for he was small in stature.

4 So he ran on ahead and climbed up into a ^(B)sycamore tree in order to see Him, for He was about to pass through that way.

5 When Jesus came to the place, He looked up and said to him, "Zaccheus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house."

6 And he hurried and came down and received Him gladly.

7 When they saw it, they all began to grumble, saying, "He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner."

8 Zaccheus stopped and said to ^(C)the LORD, "Behold, LORD, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have ^(D)defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back ^(E)four times as much."

9 And Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he, too, is ^(F)a son of Abraham."

-Luke 19:1-9

1 If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4 Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

5 Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in very nature^[a] God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, 7 but made Himself nothing, taking the very nature^[b] of a servant, being made in human likeness. 

8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!

-Philippians 2:1-8

Take a gander at this and tell me if you don't think this is a glimpse of the real Hillary Clinton:

Hmmm.  Aside from the absence of profanity and throwing hard, blunt objects, this is the Hillary Clinton we've heard and read about for years but somehow have never seen over the past seven years in the U.S. Senate and the past year of this presidential campaign: a caustic, sarcastic bitch.

Now is this an indication of desperation on the Empress' part, her raging frustration finally overpowering her Nixonian iron self-discipline; or could it be the calculation of a candidate with little left to lose that ridiculing her opponent's aura of idolatrous veneration might be the most effective means of poking holes in it, and possibly deflating his mounting momentum?

The strategy is earning praise of a sort from some of her enemies, to wit, that at the very least this is something neither Clinton has heretofore ever publicly displayed - genuine authenticity:

Being mean to Obama in this particular way stands at least some chance of helping her. Leaving aside the twaddle about "special interests," the rest of what she says comes off as sincere — or at least as sincere as Hillary has been able to be since the age of, I dunno, twelve. This kind of meanness is different from the lame, calculated meanness about "change you can Xerox." Surely she really does hold the Obama-as-Messiah routine in contempt. As surely she should.

I think the woman is mean and vindictive. I dislike her; I really, really dislike her. But when she's being forthrightly mean and vindictive and is making a valid criticism, I find that a good bit more appealing (and infinitely less nauseous) than the "poor me" Hillary or the clap-and-nod Hillary or the socialist-den-mother Hillary. If she attacks Our Savior in Tuesday's debate, she will of course get booed by the faithful, but it might not be a bad idea to acknowledge the boos, face up to them, and continue to press the attack. It would draw attention to the one virtue, outside of intelligence, that even her critics grant her. She's tough.

No, she's a ball-busting cunt.  If she were really tough, there never would have been a "poor me" Hillary or the clap & nod Hillary or the socialist-den-mother Hillary.  She wouldn't have taken a gimme Senate seat eight years ago but would have challenged then-incumbent Republican New York Governor George Pataki in 2002, won, and added some bona fide executive experience to her resume, and the accountability that comes with it.  She would have taken on George W. Bush in 2004 and sent him home to dig postholes in Crawford, Texas.

Or not.  But she would have tried.  She would have taken on tough challenges with sky-high stakes instead of the easy route and a 2008 coronation that, to my everlasting surprise, hasn't materialized.

Hillary Clinton is the antithesis of tough; she's a pantywaist.  But she's also a bitch, and if she can harness her bitchiness with substantive grist that can make an issue of Barack Obama's gaseous evasiveness and force him to get more specific than just amorphous bloviating about "hope" and "change," she has a chance to snap the Donk base out of B.O.'s spell and get them to take another look at her.

Which, given the identicalness of her issue platform, and similar lack of congressional experience and utter absence of executive experience, plus being grating and abrasive and really, really, really hateable, and the evident inability of the Arkansas Mafia to compensate for all her weaknesses via corruption and intimidation, is dramatically less than an unmixed blessing.  But it's the best shot she has left.

How ironic that the presumed heir to one originally messiahnic presidency should fall before the onset of the next one.  I'm not convinced that will be the outcome, not yet; but a more fitting end to Hillary Clinton's lifelong dreams of absolute power and world domination I cannot imagine.

I think this is another entry into the category of "Endorsements Barack Hussein Obama Probably Didn't Need":

In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better.

The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of twenty thousand people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator....

In other words, he endorsed him. 

..."This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."

"Black and brown and red and yellow," but not white?  I know Ayatollah Farrakhan is an anti-Caucasion racist, but wouldn't you think he'd acknowledge the need for Our Mr. Hussein to capture white voters too?  As well as his success at same?

Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.

"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he told the crowd of mostly followers. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."

Remember when "former" Ku Klux Klansman David Duke was running for Governor of Louisiana as a Republican back in the early nineties?  Remember how GOPers all the way up to then-President Bush (41) stampeded to the nearest available press microphone to stentorianly denounce Duke and disavow any connection between him and the Republican Party?  And remember how the media gleefully hung Duke around GOP necks anyway?  Does anybody believe that B.O. will trample innocent bystanders to repudiate Calypso Louis, or that the media will go out of its way connect these two dots?

Cue the crickets....

The rude awakenings keep piling on for Republican presidential nominee John McCain.  His attempts to swindle conservatives into supporting him took a hit this morning with the announcement that he will attempt to use Governor Girlyman as his general campaign template - in California, anyway.  Though if memory serves, Ah-nuld wasn't in Starship Troopers, and I have a bit 'o difficulty seeing an old man standing for the notion that you have to have served in the military before you can be a full-fledged "citizen" getting over in a state as hard-left as Gollyfornia.  Particularly when pitted against La Clinton Nostra or the Obama Ascendancy.

Meanwhile, another of his self-inflicted wounds flared hotter, as his "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle followed the lead of the New York Times from last week:

The national Democratic party wants campaign finance regulators to investigate whether Senator John McCain would violate money-in-politics laws by withdrawing from the primary election's public finance system.

McCain, who had been entitled to $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary, has decided to bypass the system so he can avoid spending limits between now and the GOP's national convention in September.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason notified McCain last week that he can only withdraw from public financing if he answers questions about a campaign loan and obtains approval from four members of the six-member commission. Such approval is doubtful in the short term because the commission has four vacancies and cannot convene a quorum.

"John McCain poses as a reformer but seems to think reforms apply to everyone but him," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Sunday.

Oh, how sharper than a serpent's tooth is the betrayal of a brother!  How could Dr. Demented DO this to Darth Queeg, after all the Sith master has done for the Democrat Party?  It's almost as if the Donks never considered John McCain to be one of them after all.  How's that for loyalty?

If you think I'm not enjoying these comeuppances immensely, my sacrcastic irony must be even better than I think it is.  Especially the fact that it is McCain himself who had a large hand in depopulating the FEC to such an extent that it cannot even cobble together a quorum to pull his fundraising bacon out of the fire now - even if it had been inclined to do so.  Which would also be per his design.  The adage, "Do as I say, not as I do" comes whimsically to mind.

Just wait until the phalanx of left-wing 527 organizations gets through with him.  That will NOT be pretty.

And yet there are, and evidently will continue to be, Republicans and even conservatives who insist that we have to close ranks behind this man.  Even if I was inclined to forgive, forget, and drink the McCainiac Kool-Aid, why would I want to take on the thankless task of spending the next eight months trying to defend him from an endless fusillade of Donk attacks the grist for which "Sailor" himself gleefully stockpiled on their behalf?  At least when we tried to smear campaign lipstick on the Bob Dole pig back in 1996, the only insuperable obstacle was his ideological and political erectile dysfunction; we didn't have to wade through a PR minefield to do it.

And still the effort failed miserably, as it was doomed to from the start.  How much more the Benedict Arnold of the GOP?

Sorry, that's a "mission impossible" even Tom Cruise wouldn't touch.

UPDATE: Here's a (possible) general election sneak preview:

Senator Barack Obama said Saturday that the Republican presidential nominee in waiting, Senator John McCain, has lobbyists as top aides and "many of them have been running their business on the campaign bus while they've been helping him."

The Democratic presidential hopeful also said McCain's health care plans reflect "the agenda of the drug and insurance lobbyists, who back his campaign and use money and influence to block real health care reform."

This would be standard, unremarkable, dismissible left-wing campaign boilerplate but for the fact that Sailor has spent the past decade building his national political persona as The Ultimate Reformer.  Now with his plummet from his campaign finance reform moral hobby horse, and his long-term lobbyist hypocrisy coming into Donk crosshairs, and with the McCain campaign stubbornly insisting that it will highlight his "record of change" in the fall campaign, well....

You know what they say: "reform" politicians are oftentimes the biggest crooks of all.  Compared to that, a Marxian True Believer like Our Mr. Hussein will appear a breath of fresh, Camelotian air.

UPDATE II: Gotta like the take of Brad Smith (the former FEC commissioner and free speech advocate with whom Senator McCain long feuded and who was treated like a criminal by the "Arizona maverick") on this (via CS):

Regardless of all the legal maneuvering, the bottom line is that Senator McCain is going to blow through the spending limits and take his chances with the FEC down the road.  To do otherwise would be to limit himself to less than $5 million in spending between now and September, which would be electoral suicide.  The spending caps killed Bob Dole in 1996, and Dole at least was able to have his campaign supported by the Republican Party in the interim.  However, because of the McCain-Feingold (oh what wonderful twists there are to this plot) the Republican Party cannot do for McCain what it did for Dole – support his campaign with soft-money funded issue ads.  No, the only option for McCain is to spend, and let the legal chips fall where they may. 

The major penalty for violating the spending cap after agreeing to take the public subsidy is that you have to repay the government money.  This is a big deal if you've already spent it, but in McCain's case, he hasn't spent any government money.  Beyond that, the penalties include up to a $25,000 fine and five years in jail for a knowing and willful violation.  No one thinks for a moment that John McCain will or should go to jail for this.  Even the signers of the loan – McCain campaign manager Rick Davis and fundraiser Carla Eudy – aren’t really in danger of seeing a prison cell.  And a $25,000 fine?  Chicken feed. 

But McCain cannot just blow off the FEC.  While the FEC may lack a quorum now, some day, presumably, it may again have one.  At that point, it will be able to vote to issue subpoenas to obtain copies of McCain’s loan documents, internal bank memoranda, McCain campaign memoranda and more.  It may take the depositions of the Eudy, Davis, ubiquitous McCain aide Mark Salter, and anyone else who might have evidence – even Senator McCain.  It won’t be pretty.  So this may be much more a PR problem than anything else for the McCain campaign.  That McCain has made his reputation as a “reformer” makes it all the more a PR problem.  But it’s a risk that simply has to be run.  There is no other choice. [emphases added]

Translation: Lord Queeg is going to be derided by his erstwhile media buddies and "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle as a corrupt phony each and every day for the next eight months.  And if by some miracle Senator McCain were to make it to the White House, he would start under a cloud of scandal and Donk congressional investigations before he was even inaugurated.

And to think all this unpleasantness could have been avoided by nominating Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani instead.  Who then would have been torpedoed by a Hillary-electing McCain "independent" third (or, with Michael Bloomberg and Ralph Nader running, fifth) candidacy in the fall, of course.  But that at least would have been a clarifying, RINO-discrediting event, instead of the "We're screwed no matter how it turns out" plight that actually does face us.

Here's another question for the "drafted McCainiacs" like Hugh Hewitt: Is a pol whose credibility and reputation is already going up in smoke really the guy you want out there pretending to talk up the need to win the war?

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"

2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.' "

4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

-Genesis 3:1-7

I swear, if I have to listen to tone-deaf flacks like Hugh Hewitt spend the next eight months thumping the tub for a man (Senator John McCain) whose Republican nomination Double-H himself spent months correctly proclaiming to be a disaster in the making, well, I might just be driven to start a blog.  Or maybe something even more drastic.

This past week he was at it again, both on his blog and his syndicated column.  Let's take 'em in chronological order.

On Tuesday Hugh made the old college try with this:

What is going on within the center-right now is a legitmate, idea-driven argument that involves sorting through a great number of issues.  If the most important issue in your life was the confirmation of one of the judges who did not get confirmed in the course of the judicial nomination wars of 2001 through 2006, you might never get around to supporting McCain, or it might take you longer.

Actually, this argument has nothing to do with sorting through issues.  It has to do with the temptation to forget the past seven years of betrayals, screwings, and back-stabbings of the GOP and its agenda engineered, masterminded, and carried out by Senator McCain and pretend that he's a conservative and worthy of our trust.  Particularly in the negative sense of being "better than the alternative".

Now I'll admit that the specter of some combination of Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama is more than a little hair-raising, particularly given that the Fourth World War still rages across the world, and could get very hot very soon.  But if averting that nightmare was our objective, elevating Darth Queeg was the worst imaginable choice for it.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Other hosts and conservative activists have other sets of issues. For  me, though, the number one issue is pursuing victory in the war, and that has been issue #1 since 9/11....If you believe the country is threatened by a jihadist network backed by rogue states like Iran and that Iran's nuclear ambitions present a crisis of the first order, you simply cannot sit out the race or do other than work for Senator McCain and indeed contribute to his campaign.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's bullbleep.  Show me the evidence that "Mr. Bipartisanship" will take on a partisan war against the huge, filibuster- and perhaps veto-proof Democrat congressional majority that will emerge from the 2008 election that will be even more determined to surrender Iraq and Afghanistan to al Qaeda and Iran/Syria.  Show me the evidence that "Senator Comity" has EVER challenged the Democrats on ANYTHING over the past decade.  I can show you all kinds of examples of the Dark Lord of the Sith partnering with "good, close, personal friends" like Russ Feingold, Ted Kennedy, and Joe Lieberman.  And "Sailor" contemplating becoming John Kerry's 2004 running mate.  And the "Arizona maverick"'s stubborn, profane obsession with gutting any and all attempts at bolstering homeland security via his open-borders campaign and his "anti-torture" crusade.  He also echoes many aspects of Donk foreign policy, particularly the tiresome lefty mantra of "rebuilding our image in the world," as though national security was a popularity contest.

The evidence is beyond preponderant.  A President McCain would take his orders from "Crazy Nancy" Pelosi and "Dirty Harry" Reid.  They'll have the numbers to pass binding legislation requiring a full-scale retreat from the Middle East, and he would not challenge them.  Period.

Consequently, the lone reed on which McCainiacs and their "Stockholm Syndromists" like Praetor Hewitt are precariously leaning - "Conservatives have to back McCain because of the war" - is functional wet spaghetti.  Congressional Democrats will force our defeat starting next year, or perhaps even sooner.  The only difference between McCain, Rodham, and Obama is that the latter two will lead the charge, while the former will passively submit to it - at best.

That clearly isn't what once and current McCainiacs like Joseph Timothy Cook - whose pro-McCain rant Hugh quotes in its entirety - want to hear.  Cook even goes so far as to question the patriotism of those of us who refuse to be suckered again by Darth Queeg and claim that we're not really standing on principle but merely indulging in puerile petulance, even as he acknowledges chapter and verse all of McCain's heresies and double-crosses which make up the core of why he cannot be trusted.

That, and not Senator McCain "not being conservative enough", is the fulcrum issue: trust.  I will freely admit that while I could tolerate a Lincoln Chafee or Jim Jeffords in the U.S. Senate, I could never have supported such flagrant RINOs for president had they ever managed to slither into the GOP nomination.  But I don't think that such men would ever have pretended to be conservatives; they'd have run as "moderates".  I'd add that that is part and parcel of why they'd never have captured the nomination, but for the fact that John McCain succeeded, while having an even bigger impediment to overcome.

It's true that McCain isn't conservative; it's also true that he's gone out of his way to trumpet that fact, to become the Enemy Media's favorite Republican precisely because of all his betrayals, to do everything short of formally changing his party affiliation and walking across the aisle to join the Democrats.  He has done more to sabotage and damage the Republican Party in this decade than the entire Democrat caucus in both houses put together.  He was single-handedly responsible for costing the GOP its Senate majority in 2006 with his "Gang of 14"/ "memo of understanding" caper.  If he isn't a Donk mole in the Republican Party's highest echelons, he might as well be.

John McCain is a RINO belatedly pretending to be a conservative in order to hornswaggle the 70% of the base that didn't vote to nominate him.  He cannot be trusted on the economy, or shrinking government, or lowering taxes, or cutting federal spending, or reclaiming the federal judiciary from the left-wing oligarchists.  The only thing he can be trusted to do if elected is run and join the other side on issue after issue.  Why, in light of all of the above, would the war be any different?

Rhetorical question - it wouldn't be.  Cook is wrong when he says, "Neither [Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama] will fight the war. John McCain will."  No, he won't; he'll cut and run to the Democrats' appeasnik/defeatist position, because that's what he's done on every other issue ever since he developed presidential ambitions.  That's the only thing John McCain can be trusted to do.  Whether you like it or not - and I certainly don't - that's the truth.

The reality conservatives have to understand is that there will be two Democrat tickets on the ballot in November - one with a "D" after the name and one with an "R".  Two tax-raising tickets, two judicial imperializing tickets, two government-growing tickets, and two retreat & defeat tickets.  I will not delude myself into contributing my vote to either of them, and neither should Hugh Hewitt, Joseph Timothy Cook, or any other conservative.

Not that the right-wing pretenders, or Darth Queeg himself, will make it easy for us.  Indeed, in part of his Thursday column, Double-H does speak the truth:

John McCain will talk about the wide war and the dangers our enemies pose. He will do so every day all day, and every headline from the world that underscores the plans and attacks of the jihadists will be an exhibit in his appeal for support.

McCain will talk about the war because he will spend the next eight months trying to fool the Right into believing he's the lesser of two evils.  He can't talk about anything else because his Senate record differs little, if at all, from that of Senators Rodham or Obama.

Hillary and/or B.O. will talk about health care and the economy and all things domestic because those are the issues that voters care about this cycle.  The 2006 midterms confirmed that in the minds of most Americans, the war is over, and 9/11 is ancient history.  Barring another major attack here at home (or Iran launching an all-out WMD attack against Israel and our forces in Iraq) between now and November, McCain obsessing on the war will only succeed in making him more unpopular (and more easily tied to President Bush), seem more "out of touch" and less relevant, erode his "mythical middle" core of support, without making up any significant ground amongst the Republican base that would, with any other GOP candidate, be his bread & butter.

Figure in "Sailor's" campaign finance woes and the growing likelihood that he'll be extremely strapped for cash between now and the Republican convention in September while the ebony JFK has raked in ninety million dollars in the first two months of 2008, and it won't matter how he tries to package, or re-package himself, or how much or little he emphasizes the war: liberals and independents will flock to the Democrat banner, and conservatives - those who keep both feet anchored in reality, anyway - will avoid him like flesh-eating bacteria.  The result will be an electoral disaster - just as Hugh Hewitt predicted right up until Mitt Romney quit the race and endorsed McCain.

That's the biggest irony of all.  This intra-right-wing "argument" is more academic than practical.  Conservatives switching off their brains and taking Hugh's hackish, foolhardy advice will only limit the magnitude of the landslide, not turn its tsunami-eque tide.  That was going to be the case no matter which poor bastard the GOP offered up for ballot box butchering.

I've always subscribed to the adage that if you're going to go down, it's best to go down fighting with everything you've got.  Leave everything on the field of battle.  At least that way you know you've done your best, and are losing with no excuses or regrets.

Instead, the Republican Party is going to go down, from top to bottom, with not just its absolute worst, but with a man at the top of the ticket who hasn't been a bona fide Republican in this century.

There's a business expression for that sort of thing: "hostile takeover".

Double-H characterizes the Rodham/Obama vs. McCain race as "hope versus reality".  The reality that he is ducking, though, is that conservatives have no hope - and no choice, but to sit out a presidential election that, to borrow a Spockian aphorism, "makes no difference because there IS no difference."

From "The Pastor's Pen" in the November 2007 Voice of the Valley, the monthly newsletter of Valley Bible Church, by the Reverend Frank C. Emrich. Re-posted here with permission.

~  ~  ~

Twenty-five years ago a small church in Beaverton, Oregon sent a much-younger-than-now family to Sumner, Washington to be the pastor of another small and struggling church.  Of course, that sending church was Faith Bible Church and the family was mine.

Now we have the opportunity to return the favor by sending a young family - Dan & Sarah Cagle - to Beaverton, Oregon to pastor a brand new church plant.  This is thrilling for me personally, and a wonderful opportunity for our church family to be involved in what God is doing through the planting and establishment of churches in the Pacific Northwest.

The Cagles are part of an outreach ministry called Outreach Oregon.  Many of you heard about it when Eric Nyborg spoke at our church this past December.  For those of you not familiar, the following information will be helpfuf.

The vision of Outreach Oregon:

To develop - through evangelism, discipleship, and church-planting - a network of aggressively evangelistic and biblically-grounded churches in the growing suburban, urban, and rural communities of the state of Oregon.

The first church plant will be in Beaverton/Hillsboro, the fastest growing area in Oregon.  Bible studies have begun and a September 2008 launch date for Sunday services is projected.

Following the pattern of Acts 13, the elders of Valley Bible Church, in partnership with Northwest Independent Church Extention and Outreach Oregon, have made the decision to send out the Cagles to pastor this brand new church.  Dan and Sara are in the process of application to become missionaries with NICE and have already begun making the trip to Beaverton each Saturday to be involved in a Bible study with a small group of people.  Their involvement will greatly increase during the next few months and eventually they will move to Beaverton.

It is important tokeep in mind that this is part of a greater mission.  That mission is to begin many, many Bible-saturated churches in the Pacific Northwest, where there is a great need. 

In fifty years NICE has planted or established two hundred eleven churches, one hundred eighty-nine of which, to the best of our knowledge, still exist.

We have only one church planted/established for every eighty-three thousand people in our area of ministry.

We have only one church planted/established for every forty-eight thousand five hundred increase in population in this region over the past half century.

Valley Bible Church has always been committed to missions, both home and overseas.  What a wonderful opportunity this is for us to be on the front lines!

I am asking that we all commit ourselves to praying daily for the Cagles, the Beaverton church plant (to be known as Antioch Bible Church), and the ministry of Outreach Oregon.  In addition to that, Dan & Sara are going to need our financial support as well.

These are exciting times, beloved!  Let's praise God together for what He is doing!

Dave and Dianne were ministering in Singapore via New Tribes Mission recruiting nationals for the Asian mission fields,  Dave was also able to teach several classes at Singapore Bible College, as well as plan conferences.

That time of ministry has come to a close, and as of March 2007 they resumed their role as government representative ministry in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

14 ^(A)But thanks be to God, Who always ^(B)leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the ^(C)sweet aroma of the ^(D)knowledge of Him in every place.

15 For we are a ^(E)fragrance of Christ to God among ^(F)those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; 16 ^(G)to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life and who is ^(H)adequate for these things?

17 For we are not like many, ^[a](I)peddling the word of God, but ^(J)as from sincerity, but as from God, we speak in Christ ^(K)in the sight of God.

-2 Corinthians 2:14-17

Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the two de facto finalists for the honor of being the next president of the United States, had a debate the other night.  I can't say as to exactly why.  Their number of on-stage encounters must be in the two-dozen range by now.  I don't know what either of them could have said by now that they hadn't said numerous times before.  It's difficult to believe that the Rubicon of public disinterest and tuning out amongst even the most rabid fever swamper hasn't been crossed months ago.

Or maybe the novelty is having just the two of them together, without all the extraneous riffraff to get in the way.  If so, more's the pity for the Empress.

I've maintained ever since Mr. Bill waddled off to Harlem seven years ago that his overbearing Bolshevik barracuda of a wife will be the next president of the United States.  I was moderately surprised that she didn't run in 2004, as I think with the Clinton Machine's corrupt resources, and the absence of John Kerry's bumbling incompetence and endlessly lampoonable hauteur, the rabidity of the BDS-crazed Donk base would have been enough to send George W. Bush into one-term retirement right alongside Pappy.  But if there's one thing we've learned about Mrs. Clinton, it's that she only likes sure things.  She was, in essence, handed the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan's New York senate seat on a gift-wrapped platter.  And given the pathetic array of losers, boors, and palookas arrayed against her as the 2008 cycle fired up, there was absolutely no reason to suppose that the Democrat presidential nomination, and the presidency itself, would be any different.

For the record, I still believe Mrs. Clinton will be the Donk nominee.  It will be a no-DQ wrestling match rather than a coronation, but her Machine's iron-fisted grip on the Party apparatus will prove the decisive factor.

For her sake, it had better be, because if left to her own devices, you get debacles like this one:

Leave aside the gaping charisma gap for a moment, and ponder the trademark Clintonoid hypocrisy of Madame Hillary taking ANYBODY else to task for employing a remotely questionable campaign tactic.  Compared to some of the capers her campaign has pulled this cycle (from going after something to do with Obama's kindergarten years - I can't even remember what it was, now - to suing a union in Nevada to try and suppress the black vote in that state's Donk caucuses), quoting speech passages from one of his own campaign co-chairs at the urging of that co-chair doesn't seem all that skullduggerous.

But that's just ordinary single-level hypocrisy.  What makes it truly worthy of a Clinton is the fact, as Admiral Ed points out, that there's nothing, um, original about her candidacy's premise, either:

It's a good line, but she's the wrong messenger. Hillary has spent the last year campaigning as the re-run of the Clinton administration, claiming all of the experience from those eight years while taking none of the responsibility for its failures. If anyone is the Xerox candidate, it's Hillary.

It's one thing to "plaigerize" with permission; it's quite another to lift an entire presidency and claim it as your own, even if you were the power behind the big, green curtain.

If the Clinton card, as it were, has finally been played out, then Obama will be as big a walk-over for the Donk nomination as he will be in November.  Game, set, match.

That is a problem.  Because, you see, there are quite a few similarities between Our Mr. Hussein and the last Democrat president, Bill Clinton.  Both had a ton of charisma.  Both used soaring, uplifting rhetoric to champion authoritarian, destructive, despicable policies.  Both made women swoon.  Both had that peculiar effect on their audiences of somehow deactivating the part of listeners' brains that hosts critical thinking capability.

And both have evil spousal alter egos that provide harrowing insight into the nefarious plans their husbands have for the country.

Michelle Obama may or may not have presidential ambitions of her own and may or may not seek to ride B.O. to get to them.  But in a recent speech at UCLA, she painted a very candid, and disquieting, picture of the sort of "mission" the Dalai Obama plans to bring to the White House:

In 2008, we are still a nation that is too divided. We live in isolation, and because of that isolation, we fear one another. We don't know our neighbors, we don't talk, we believe our pain is our own. We don't realize that the struggles and challenges of all of us are the same. We are too isolated. And we are still a nation that is still too cynical. We look at it as "them" and "they" as opposed to "us". We don't engage because we are still too cynical. ...

Actually, we've been a "nation-divided" for going on 232 years, if by "divided" one means "not everybody agrees."  Our republican (small "r") system exists to work out those differences politically and peacefully rather than through endless revolutions and "insurgencies", which lead to autocracies and dictatorships rather than democracy.  Perhaps Mrs. Obama needs to take a remedial American history course and pay particular attention to the section on the Civil War.  THAT was TRUE "division."  That of 2008 is just politics. 

Americans are not in debt because they live frivolously but because someone got sick. Even with insurance, the deductibles and the premiums are so high that people are still putting medications and treatments on credit cards. And they can't get out from under. I could go on and on, but this is how we're living, people, in 2008.

And things have gotten progressively worse throughout my lifetime, through Democratic and Republican administrations, it hasn't gotten better for regular folks. ....

Standard dishonest left-wing boilerplate.  One could argue that Senator Obama is plaigerizing Opie Edwards by proxy.  In reality Americans' standard of living at every level has gone relentlessly upward, and if the spiraling cost of health care is attributable to anything, it is the massive government interventions in the health care delivery system that have been imposed already.  In any market, once price is no longer the arbiter between supply and demand - and that is precisely the effect of "third-party payment," whether through insurance carriers or government diktat - demand skyrockets beyond any possibility of providers to meet it, and the cost soars right along with it.

But I don't get the impression that Mrs. Obama is a staunch supporter of Medicare privatization or medical savings accounts, do you?

Or even what used to be called "Americanism":

We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done. That is why I am here, because Barack Obama is the only person in this who understands that. That before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.

Mrs. Obama confuses "democracy" with "communitarianism" - or its condensed form....communism.  And, indeed, in Marxist theory a communist state is a perfect "democracy" in which everybody is provided for (by the state) according to their need (as defined by the state) and everybody is utilized (by the state - i.e. "good jobs at good wages") according to their abilities (as defined by the state).  The only thing missing from her depiction of Obaman America is the phrase, "or else".

The soul-fixing reference is the tip off.  It is perfectly in the Leninist tradition for proselytizers of an atheistic dogma to employ metaphysical terminology in its promulgation.  That Michelle Obama - and, implicitly, her husband - do not understand a, well, blessed thing about spirituality is established by the political context in which in which she proclaims "Barack's" intention to tinker with our metaphorical hearts.  Behold, Barack Hussein Obama, what Jesus Christ should have been, come to clean up the mess He and His Republican/Christian Right flunkies left behind - whether we want it or not.

Lest you get the idea that is interpretory hyperbole, let's get to Mrs. Obama's peroration:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed. [emphases added]

B.O. will FORCE us to work?  Doesn't that sound like the Democrats' depiction of welfare reform?  Or, to my historically-educated ears, collectivization?  Do we get a choice in what work we pursue?  Or where we pursue it?

He will DEMAND submission to and conformity with his policies?  And NEVER ALLOW us to dissent or disagree?  Who the hell does Michelle Obama think her husband is?  Hillary Clinton?

Both Admiral Morrissey and J-Ger call this rhetoric "creepy".  The latter goes on to, quite reasonably, ask:

Isn't this describing an authoritarian presidency way beyond anything George W. Bush has done or proposed?  Do the powers of the presidency really encompass everything Michelle says Obama wants and plans to do? Based on this rhetoric, isn't he actually running for messiah?

Actually, no, he isn't.  It may sound like it, but that's just the artifice.  What Obama really seeks, if his wife's indiscrete flacking is any indication, is precisely what Hillary Clinton seeks: a Hugh Chavez/Fidel Castro-style Marxist-Leninist state in place of the Constitutional Federal Republic America has been since its founding.  Or as close as politically possible to it.

And Barack Obama will be its "president-for-life".  Or "general secretary" or "premier" or whatever the hell title he comes up with for himself once firmly entrenched in power beyond the ability of anything short of a....revolution to get rid of him.

That highlights the one apparent difference between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama: the former was a leftist, but when it came down to the cause versus looking out for #1, Sick Willie chose the latter.  B.O. is a true believer.  And the most frightening aspect of all is that American voters appear ready to accept him, and the dark vision his spousal ideologist proclaims.

Hyperbole?  I'm just reading what she said.  That's one aspect of "silly season" Our Mr. Hussein can't chuckle his way out of.

1 ^(A)Bel has bowed down, Nebo stoops over; their images are consigned to the beasts and the cattle.  The things that you carry are burdensome, a load for the weary beast. 

2 They stooped over, they have bowed down together; they could not rescue the burden, but have themselves ^(B)gone into captivity. 

3 "^(C)Listen to Me, O house of Jacob, and all ^(D)the remnant of the house of Israel, you who have been ^(E)borne by Me from birth and have been carried from the womb; 4 even to your old age ^(F)I will be the same, and even to your ^(G)graying years I will bear you!  I have done it, and I will carry you; and I will bear you and I will deliver you. 

5 "^(H)To whom would you liken Me and make Me equal and compare Me, that we would be alike? 

6 "Those who ^(I)lavish gold from the purse and weigh silver on the scale hire a goldsmith, and he makes it into a god; they ^(J)bow down, indeed they worship it. 

7 "They ^(K)lift it upon the shoulder and carry it; they set it in its place and it stands there ^(L)it does not move from its place though one may cry to it, it ^(M)cannot answer; it ^(N)cannot deliver him from his distress. 

8 "^(O)Remember this, and be assured; ^(P)recall it to mind, you ^(Q)transgressors. 

9 "Remember the ^(R)former things long past, for I am God, and there is ^(S)no other; I am God, and there is ^(T)no one like Me, 10 declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not been done, saying, '^(U)My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure'; 11 calling a ^(V)bird of prey from the ^(W)east, the man of My purpose from a far country truly I have ^(X)spoken; truly I will bring it to pass.  I have planned it, surely I will do it.

-Isaiah 46:1-11

Even as global warming orthodoxy reaches the level of blanket, hardline dogma, and conservatives are told to sit down, shut up, and surrender to Al Gore's hysterical hoax or face political extinction, evidence continues to pile up that all this "climate change" chicken-little-ism is just a load of hot - or should I say "cold" - air:

Are the world's ice caps melting because of climate change, or are the reports just a lot of scare mongering by the advocates of the global warming theory?

Scare mongering appears to be the case, according to reports from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that reveal that almost all the allegedly “lost” ice has come back. A NOAA report shows that ice levels which had shrunk from 5 million square miles in January 2007 to just 1.5 million square miles in October, are almost back to their original levels.

Moreover, a February 18 report in the London Daily Express showed that there is nearly a third more ice in Antarctica than usual, challenging the global warming crusaders and buttressing arguments of skeptics who deny that the world is undergoing global warming.

It also seems that this is the coldest, snowiest winter in forty-two years - and not just in the places you would expect:

Around the world, vast areas have been buried under some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades. Central and southern [Red] China, the United States, and Canada were hit hard by snowstorms. In [Red] China, snowfall was so heavy that over 100,000 houses collapsed under the weight of snow.

Jerusalem, Damascus, Amman, and northern Saudi Arabia report the heaviest falls in years and below-zero temperatures. In Afghanistan, snow and freezing weather killed 120 people. Even Baghdad had a snowstorm, the first in the memory of most residents....

An ongoing record-long spell of cold weather in Vietnam's northern region, which started on January 14, has killed nearly 60,000 cattle, mainly bull and buffalo calves, local press reported Monday. By February 17, the spell had killed a total of 59,962 cattle in the region, including 7,349 in the Ha Giang province, 6,400 in Lao Cai, and 5,571 in Bac Can province, said Hoang Kim Giao, director of the Animal Husbandry Department under the Vietnamese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, according to the Pioneer newspaper. [emphases added]

Of course, short-term anecdotal evidence such as the aforequoted isn't necessarily any more conclusive than eco-zealots seizing upon summer heat waves to argue the reverse.  That's why legitimate climatologists are zeroing in on the real driver of our planet's climate:

Not every scientist is part of Al Gore's mythical "consensus." Scientists worried about a new ice age seek funding to better observe something bigger than your SUV — the sun.

Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better "eyes" with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earth's climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And they're worried about global cooling, not warming.

According to Kenneth Tapping, a solar researcher and project director for Canada's National Research Council, climate change long predates the Industrial Age, is tied to solar fluctuations, and has a correlational track record that is indisputable.  And that history may be about to repeat itself:

Solar activity fluctuates in an 11-year cycle. But so far in this cycle, the sun has been disturbingly quiet. The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century.

Such an event occurred in the 17th century. The observation of sunspots showed extraordinarily low levels of magnetism on the sun, with little or no 11-year cycle.

This solar hibernation corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715. Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe.

Tapping reports no change in the sun's magnetic field so far this cycle and warns that if the sun remains quiet for another year or two, it may indicate a repeat of that period of drastic cooling of Earth, bringing massive snowfall and severe weather to the Northern Hemisphere.

Historically, global cooling has been a lot more "havocous" than global warming.  The possible onset of another "Maunder Minimum" suggests that, to the miniscule extent that human-based activities can add to atmospheric greenhouse gases, we should be pumping out as much CO2 as we possibly can.

Tapping's colleagues agree:

R. Timothy Patterson, professor of geology and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Center of Canada's Carleton University, says that "CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales."

Rather, he says, "I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of energy on this planet."

Patterson, sharing Tapping's concern, says: "Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth."

"Solar activity has overpowered any effect that CO2 has had before, and it most likely will again," Patterson says. "If we were to have even a medium-sized solar minimum, we could be looking at a lot more bad effects than 'global warming' would have had." 

Those are the scientific facts, assembled by real scientists without a Marxist-Leninist ax to grind.  But global warming orthodoxy is not about facts, but about blind faith.  To the Gorebot, human activity - hell, human existence - is the sole cause of global warming, everything - hot weather, cold weather, winter, summer, snow, rain, fog, haze, sleet, and whatever else a postal courier isn't supposed to allow to get in the way of his/her appointed rounds - is evidence of global warming, and global warming is the cause of any and every real and potential meteorological and climatological catastrophe.  Even the super-freeze-death-ray-shooting "hypercane" from The Day After Tomorrow.  And we must do everything possible, make every sacrifice, up to, including, and especially marching backwards economically and technologically into voluntary embrace of disease-ridden primitivism at the behest of rank pagan superstition, all under the benevolent reign of a crypto-communist dictatorship, in order to avoid the "disasters" Fat Albert insists are inevitable if we don't submit to his dark vision.

In a way, I suppose that gives the ex-vice president something in common with Neo.  In the Matrix the "messiah" of the human remnant battling the machines that destroyed their civilization adopts the catch phrase, "There is no spoon".  Al Gore's motto could be, "There is no sun."

If he did, he'd be a lot closer to the real "inconvenient truth" than he is now.

The lingering question ever since Arizona RINO Senator John McCain effectively clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination has been how his long-time admirers in the Enemy Media would cover his candidacy going forward.  Would they continue to promote him, futher estranging him from the majority of the GOP base that didn't vote to nominate him but perhaps enabling him to pull the ultimate end-around and eke his way to the White House on the strength of the mythical "middle" - thus laying the foundation for the permanent disintegration of the GOP itself - or would the press, having finally succeeded in hanging the Republican base's arch enemy around the party's neck as its nominee, immediately turn on "Sailor" and begin the campaign for his personal and political eradication?

I guess we have our answer:

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.

This piece is being generally described as a "smear".  That may well be, but to me it comes across as a really, really, really old smear that would have been a lot more relevant for the Times to publicize eight years ago if they truly wanted to take McCain out.  But then, eight years ago the Dark Lord of the Sith was locked in a doomed struggle for the 2000 GOP nomination against the feared, hated, and loathed George W. Bush, and there was no chance that one of the flagships of the American Left was going to do anything to impede the only man that had a prayer of stopping Dubya.  And besides, this avenue of attack was discredited even then.  Now, of course, they've successfully inflicted McCain on the Republican Party, so that veneer of obsequiously obtained "journalistic" protection is null & void.

The next question, at least to my mind, is whether this is all the "dirt" the Times could dig up, or if this is just the first salvo.  After all, this is only late February; eight and a half long months remain between now and Election Day.  Not that Senators Clinton and/or Obama need the help - even pushing McCain over the top on the GOP side could be described not unfairly as running up the score - but even if he were a threat to Donk hegemony in November, it seems awfully early for his erstwhile fawning admirers to be opening fire in earnest.  And if this is all they've got, why run with it now?  Why not let McCain stew in Bob Dole-like obscurity, trying futiley to bilk the Right into backing him, while the real 2008 presidential election is played out on the Democratic side, and then present his/her inevitability as a fait accompli?

Given the vehemence and uncategorical nature of "Sailor"'s denial, he'd better be certain there aren't any genuine skeletons rattling around in his closet, or that denial will be ironically trumpeted for the rest of the year.

On the other hand, it could always be that the Times is working a reverse-psychology angle with this hit piece on their favorite RINO.  Look at the reaction it's prompting in the starboard media:

Conservative commentators, including some who previously chastised McCain for not hewing closely to their principles, leaped to the candidate's defense.

Radio personality Laura Ingraham, like other critics, noted that the newspaper had been researching the story for several months and accused the Times of delaying publication to do maximum damage.

"You wait until it's pretty much beyond a doubt that he's going to be the Republican nominee," Ingraham said on her morning radio program, "and then you let it drop -- drop some acid in the pool, contaminate the whole pool. That's what the New York Times thinks."

The most popular host in talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, described the story as standard fare for the paper he accuses of coddling the left.

"You're surprised that Page Six-type gossip is on the front page of the New York Times?" said Limbaugh in reference to the gossip column of the tabloid New York Post. Limbaugh, who previously has ripped McCain as a fake conservative, said: "Where have you been? How in the world can anybody be surprised?"

Again, I don't think the Times waited to run this weak-assed lunge; I think it's just their opening salvo.  But neither do I consider Laura Ingraham's or Rush Limbaugh's responses to be defenses of McCain, but rather the withering denunciations of the NYT that their listeners would have expected.

For my disinterested take, I think the whole thing is funny as hell from pretty much every conceivable angle.  The "paper of record" has plumbed the depths of incompetent tabloidism (right below "Boy trapped in refridgerator eats own foot") and Senator McCain is not just surprised by it, but so outraged that he contemplated suing the Times for libel before cooler McCainiacal heads prevailed.  Indeed, I look forward to sitting back with a frosty beverage and throughly enjoying this lovers' quarrel that, in form and substance, could just as easily take place on one of those daytime trash talk shows, where security and the bleep button have to be kept on hot standby.

What conservatives should NOT do is succumb to the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" instinct and think that because Darth Queeg is now under assault by his Enemy Media buddies, that obligates us to make common cause with the betraying SOB.  That, in fact, was the context of Limbaugh's aforequoted comments.  We let the press choose our nominee, now we're stuck with him, and his daintily coifed, carefully cultivated "good, close, personal friends" have officially inaugurated "maverick season".  What else, indeed, should anybody have expected?

As far as I'm concerned, and as far as the Right ought to be concerned, John McCain should be abandoned to toss and turn in the bed he himself short-sheeted.  A case of justice most poetic, even if its source isn't worth a journalistic damn.

UPDATE: Might this be "fire two"?:

The government's top campaign finance regulator says John McCain can't drop out of the primary election's public financing system until he answers questions about a loan he obtained to kickstart his once faltering presidential campaign.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain this week, said the all-but-certain Republican nominee needs to assure the commission that he did not use the promise of public money to help secure a $4 million line of credit he obtained in November.

Ooh.  OOOOH.  Can you say, "CORRUPTION!!!!!"?  Can you say "HYPOCRISY!!!!!"?  Can you resist the orgasmic satisfaction of seeing Darth Queeg hoisted on his two favorite petards at the same time?

And the denials!:

McCain's lawyer, Trevor Potter, said Wednesday evening that McCain has withdrawn from the system and that the FEC can't stop him. Potter said the campaign did not encumber the public funds in any way.

"Well, it was done before in another campaign. ... We think it's perfectly legal. One of our advisers is a former chairman of the FEC, and we are confident that it was an appropriate thing to do," McCain told a news conference Thursday.

Again with the name-dropping.  Doesn't this man know ANYTHING himself?  And actually saying, in so many words, "Well, it's okay, because everybody does it"?  My, but the fall is a long one from a moral high horse that high.

It's not difficult to see why "Sailor" wants to duck out of the public finance system now that it's expedient to do so:

By accepting the public money, McCain would be limited to spending about $54 million for the primaries, a ceiling his campaign is near. That would significantly hinder his ability to finance his campaign between now and the Republican National Convention in September.

Complicating the dispute is the FEC's current lack of a quorum. The six-member commission has four vacancies and Senate Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over how to fill them.

In his letter, Mason told McCain he would need the votes of four commissioners to accept his withdrawal from the system.

"The commission will consider your request at such a time as it has a quorum," Mason wrote.

Without action by the Senate, McCain could be waiting indefinitely.

Looks like the choice for Lord Queeg is clear: remain "morally pure," abide by the smothering campaign finance regulatory system he has championed for years, functionally shut down his campaign for six months while the Rodham-Obama parade sucks up all the media oxygen and campaign cash ($60 million for B.O. in February alone), and be fifty points behind by convention time, or reveal himself as just another corrupt, money-grubbing pol and bury himself even further with a GOP base most of which will never reconcile themselves to his candidacy and have almost as strong an interest in his crushing November defeat as the Dems do, not to mention the "independents" that actually take that "get money out of politics" nonsense seriously.

The best part of all?  Conservatives don't need to leave fingerprints on John McCain's political corpse, because it'll have expired of its own self-inflicted wounds.  And we've got front-row seats.

Not what I was hoping for when this interminable presidential election cycle started (years and years ago), but with sixteen years of Hillarynista harangues and Obaman happy-face Bolshevism looming on the near horizon, it's the best spectacle available for a looooong time to come.

....is the rumor currently emerging of the possible result of a brokered Democrat convention this summer (via Newsmax):

Don’t count Al Gore completely out of the presidential picture just yet.

That’s the view from across the pond at the Telegraph in Britain, which outlines a scenario that could put the avowed non-candidate at the head of the Democratic ticket.

Saying the momentum has shifted to Barack Obama after a string of primary and caucus victories, Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod told the Telegraph, “We closed a twenty-point gap in the national polls in the last two weeks. The more people are exposed to his message, the better he does.”

Good thing B.O.'s "message" rarely if ever bears a faint hint of policy specificity, then.  Leaves all kind of room for the kind of gauzy, gaseous "hope" shinola that has his audiences swooning like healees at a Benny Hinn crusade.

Kinda makes Our Mr. Hussein the counterpoint to Fat Albert, doesn't it?  Until you start requiring policy specificity, that is.

But [Axelrod] added: “We are up against the Clinton machine. We are the perpetual underdog and will be throughout this process. We’re ready to go all the way to the convention.”

The Clinton camp reportedly believes that if Obama doesn’t deliver a knock-out blow before the March 4 primaries in Texas and Ohio, Hillary could win those races and regain the momentum, with many superdelegates uniting behind her to preserve party unity.

Hillary will win Texas and Ohio.  She's leading in the former by three and the latter by ten.  The Empress is also up eight in Rhode Island and fourteen in Pennsylvania.  Combine those delegate margins with the couple dozen she'll net from forcing the seating of the Michigan and Florida delegations in Denver this August and the small lead the Dalai Obama has built up recently will melt right back to stalemate.

Admittedly, it isn't the Rodham walkover I was expecting, but can you really picture the Pepsi Center being the ground zero for this?:

That could lead to bitter battles at the Democratic convention in August, “which could even end with Al Gore, the former vice president, emerging as a compromise candidate,” according to the Telegraph.

A Clinton source told the paper: “There’s a 5% chance of that happening, but that’s 5% too high.”

Gentlebeings, there's not a minus-five percent chance of that happening.  I don't know what it would take for the Democrats to manage to lose this election, but if there's any way it could happen, screwing over the Clintons AND the ebony JFK in favor of recycling the Tennessee 2x4 could be it.

But it begs the question: who in the Democrat Party has the stroke, much less the deathwish, to screw the Clintons?  Hell, I can see Mrs. Clinton forcing her way onto the veep spot on an Obama ticket and then arranging for his subsequent assassination (blamed, of course, on the "vast right-wing conspiracy") so that she can ascend to her rightful pinnacle before I'd buy the notion of Gore-Anybody II.

Sounds like emptyheaded, hero-worshipping speculation worthy of the Guardian, if you ask me.

You think that's hyperbole, don't you?  Try this story on for size:

Mohammad Mohaddessin, a representative of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran...claimed that, for the first time, Tehran had established a command and control center to work on a nuclear bomb and that southeast of the capital it was also setting up a center to produce warheads....

Four years ago, the group disclosed information about two hidden nuclear sites that helped uncover nearly two decades of covert Iranian atomic activity. But much of the information it has presented since then to back up claims that Iran has a secret weapons program has not been publicly verified.  

Public verification of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program.  My, but the good folks at Haaretz are dim of bulb.  Unless, I suppose, they have more confidence in NCRI's covert intelligence-gathering capabilities than that of the vaunted U.S. "intelligence" community, which is trying like the devil to pretend that the mullahgarchy is as nuclearphobic as Jane Fonda and just waiting to be our good, close, personal friends if we'll only fill the air with enough diplovomit and make enough concessions.  Almost like the CIA and like agencies have become wholly owned subsidiaries of Foggy Bottom - which they have.  Rest assured, if our so-called spooks do have proof of what is already patently obvious, they will dig a hole to the planet's core in order to bury the "verification" of Tehran's atomic treachery where nobody will EVER find it.  We can't go publicly embarrassing our aspiring good, close, personal friends, after all.

Our bosom buddy Adolph Ahmadinejad had some more kind words for his beloved neighbors down the Middle East block yesterday:

In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a "filthy bacteria" whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region.

"The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast," the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.

"[Israel] won support [from the other nations] which created it as a scarecrow, so as to keep the people of this area under control," Ahmadinejad said.

Oh, yeah, it's just words, hot air from a buffoon, right?  Sure; so was Mein Kampf.

The Geico caveman lookalike wasn't the only Iranian stooge to send the Jews his best regards:

Last week, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported that Commander-General Muhammad Ali Jafari of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps wrote in a letter to Hizbullah head Hassan Nasrallah that he was convinced "that Hizbullah's might is increasing with every passing day, and that in the near future, we will witness the disappearance of this cancerous growth called Israel."

Later that day, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Iran, Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi, said in his own letter to Nasrallah that "the hero-breeding land of Lebanon... [would] nurture hundreds and thousands of such heroes... and that combatants of the Lebanese and Palestinian Islamic resistance [would] continue the struggle until the complete destruction of the Zionist regime and liberation of the entire Islamic land of Palestine."

Maybe it would just be impotent spittle if the mullahs didn't possess a growing arsenal of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles, and weren't within as little as six months of turning out their first home-made nuclear warhead.  I also can't help noticing ol' Mahmoud's inclusion of "the world powers" - a not very subtle reference to the West in general and the United States in particular - as being responsible for Israel's continued stubborn existence.  As once and future (God willing) Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stressed, Israel is just the appetizer; once the mullahs are finished finishing the Holocaust, we're "next".

Some Jews, at least, are not blind to the history that is repeating itself:

I am worried. Last year I did some historical research on the shifts in discourse within British, Japanese, and South African official elites prior to their use of biological weapons. In all these cases, including the deliberate distribution of small pox-infected blankets by the British in North America, the use of bubonic plague by the Japanese in China, and the use of anthrax by the South Africans in what was then Rhodesia, use of biological agents was preceded by an escalation of rhetorical campaigns to demonize and dehumanize the targeted enemy.

Amazing that they didn't mention the Nazis.  Maybe to the folks at Harvard's Olin Institute's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs that goes without saying.  I wish, though, that they'd say it anyway, as nobody else in this country seems to understand it - not even on the Right.

So I must say it again, no matter how small a voice I project: war with Iran is inevitable.  We can either undertake the mission to "disarm" that country now, assuming they don't already have nukes purchased from their North Korean allies or loosely controlled post-Soviet inventories, and prosecute the conflict on our terms; or we can continue to piss away whatever window of time we have left until the Iranians provide "public verification" of their nuclear weapons program by incinerating Tel Aviv, or Paris, or New York.  But either way, there will be war, and it will not matter whether or not we're "ready" for it.  We'll have it, whether we like it or not.

Personally, I'd rather fight it without absorbing hundreds of thousands or millions of civilian casualties first.  But that just does not seem to be the way of democracies.  I had hoped that the Bush Doctrine might, just might, change that.  Guess I can round-file that pipedream right alongside the conviction that the American electorate wouldn't forget we're at war and put the party of the pacifistic Fifth Column back in unified power.  Somehow I don't think the next "Pearl Harbor" will be nearly as relatively inexpensive yet nationally galvanizing as its two predecessors.

But what else can you expect from spreaders of "filthy bacteria" - right?

8 By faith ^(A)Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to ^(B)receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going.

9 By faith he lived as an alien in ^(C)the land of promise, as in a foreign land, ^(D)dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, ^(E)fellow heirs of the same promise; 10 for he was looking for ^(F)the city which has ^(G)foundations, ^(H)whose architect and builder is God.

11 By faith even ^(I)Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him ^(J)faithful who had promised.

12 Therefore there was born even of one man, and ^(K)him as good as dead at that, as many descendants ^(L)as the stars of heaven in number, and innumerable as the sand which is by the seashore.

13 ^(M)All these died in faith, ^(N)without receiving the promises, but ^(O)having seen them and having welcomed them from a distance, and ^(P)having confessed that they were strangers and exiles on Earth.

14 For those who say such things make it clear that they are seeking a country of their own.

15 And indeed if they had been thinking of that country from which they went out, ^(Q)they would have had opportunity to return.

16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a ^(R)heavenly one Therefore ^(S)God is not ashamed to be ^(T)called their God; for ^(U)He has prepared a city for them.

-Hebrews 11:8-16

Sorry for the inactivity, folks.  Part of it is a lack of motivation since I, as a conservative, have been essentially disenfranchised at the presidential level nine months before Election Day.  More pertinent is that we've had a death in our family this week and thus other matters have taken precedence.

I think that should be sufficient alibi for missing immediate commentary on this:

Fidel Castro the Marxist revolutionary and nemesis of [eight out of] ten U.S. presidents, resigned as Cuba's [communist dictator] Tuesday after dominating the island's politics and society for nearly five decades....

Oh, don't mind me, I'm just doing the remedial editing the WaPo incompetently omitted.

His resignation brought a measure of uncertainty to a political system that has changed little since Castro, now eighty-one and ailing, swept into Cuba's capital at the head of a guerrilla army. But in Havana, Cuba's seaside capital, and across the Straits of Florida in Miami, the resignation stirred only slight reaction, underscoring a sense among many Cubans and embittered exiles that the political transition was unfolding precisely as Castro planned.

Well, duh.  Could it be any more obvious?

Castro, who has not appeared in public for nineteen months since undergoing multiple intestinal surgeries, cleared a path for his seventy-six-year-old brother, Raúl, to be named president Sunday when Cuba's National Assembly meets. But that succession remained unclear because Castro did not mention it in his 1,076-word "Message from the Commander in Chief" -- his resignation announcement that filled the front page of Tuesday's Granma, the Communist Party newspaper.

"It would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer," Castro wrote. "This I say devoid of all drama."

[snort]

For some reason I picture that line from a scene in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? after Roger has been squashed beneath a ton of bricks.  He's stumbling around the set in a daze with little stars circling his head and then exclaims, "Ready when you are, Raoul...."

The rest of the WaPo "story" is Castro hero worship, and there's little point in hacking that down.  This is, in point of fact, not much of a story.  Of course Raúl Castro will be crowned the next Marxist-Leninist king of Cuba.  Fidel certainly appears to still be in charge of things down there, and probably doesn't trust anybody else to succeed him.  The only factor that would be of interest to me is his kid-brother's age; passing the crown from an eighty-one-year-old geezer to a seventy-six-year-old geezer doesn't exactly secure the Castro dynasty in any long-term sense.  I'm not familiar with his progeny, but I would have thought that Fidel would have groomed a son or protege to take his place.  If Raúl is the best he can do, there may still be hope for Cuban exiles and those of us who thought that when Bill Clinton sought a military adventure in the Carribean, he should have invaded Cuba to topple a communist dictator rather than Haiti to restore one.

But for now, there is indeed no drama.  Other, perhaps, than that the American electorate may be about to send Castro's "nemesis" down the same road he took Cuba half a century ago.

32 "Indeed, ^(A)ask now concerning the former days which were before you, since the ^(B)day that God created man on Earth, and inquire ^(C)from one end of the heavens to the other ^(D)Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it?

33 "^(E)Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived?

34 "^(F)Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation ^(G)by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and ^(H)by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?

35 "To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; ^(I)there is no other besides Him.

36 "^(J)Out of the heavens He let you hear His voice ^(K)to discipline you; and on Earth He let you see His great fire, and you heard His words from the midst of the fire.

37 "^(L)Because He loved your fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them and He ^(M)personally brought you from Egypt by His great power, 38 driving out from before you nations greater and mightier than you, to bring you in and ^(N)to give you their land for an inheritance, as it is today.

39 "Know therefore today, and take it to your heart, that ^(O)the LORD, He is God in heaven above and on Earth below; there is no other.

40 "^(P)So you shall keep His statutes and His commandments which I am giving you today, that ^(Q)it may go well with you and with your children after you, and ^(R)that you may live long on the land which the LORD your God is giving you for all time."

-Deuteronomy 4:32-40

Where, oh where have we heard this before?

Republican John McCain says there will be no new taxes during his administration if he is elected president.

"No new taxes," the likely GOP presidential nominee said during a taped interview broadcast Sunday.

McCain told ABC's This Week that under no circumstances would he increase taxes, and added that he could "see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates, and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates," as well as giving people the ability to write off depreciation and eliminating the alternative minimum tax.

Does this really require any elaboration?  "No new taxes" is what every RINO presidential candidate in the post-Reagan age apparently feels compelled to say to "calm down" skeptical conservatives and batten down his/her right flank.  Then, if s/he makes it to the White House as something more than just a tourist, the promise gets forgotten in lieu of subsequent Beltway insider, behind-closed-doors, smoked-filled-room, tax-increasing budget-deal-making with his/her "good, close, personal friends" on the other side of the aisle.

Trust me, the crushingly Democrat Congress that emerges from this election cycle is going to jack tax rates through the stratosphere, either over the top of a President McCain or with his hearty approval and cooperation.  Which do you think he's really going to choose when that moment arrives?:

McCain's "no new taxes" statement marked a turnaround. Last September, he was forced to defend his refusal to sign a no-new tax pledge offered by the conservative Americans for Tax Reform.

"I stand on my record," he said during a televised debate in Durham, N.H. "I don't have to sign pledges."

Somehow the ill-tempered Dark Lord of the Sith captured the GOP nomination anyway.  But that simply dooms him to a catastrophic wipeout defeat in November unless he can somehow bamboozle the Right into buying the rank fiction that he's one of them, or at least will make concessions to them that he will honor once in office.  Concessions like "seeing the argument" for more tax cuts, which is really no concession at all, since "seeing the argument" is a far hue & cry from advocacy of same.

If there is such a thing as a Rightie with ADD, perhaps Darth Queeg can pull it off.  Otherwise the rest of us recognize Bush41 gimmick-infringement when we see it, and our wrists will remain crossed, and our backs turned, even as his erstwhile Enemy Media buddies start sharpening their d'k tahgs for the bloodletting to come.

6 For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh ^(A)the gift of God which is in you through ^(B)the laying on of my hands.

7 For God has not given us a ^(C)spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.

8 Therefore ^(D)do not be ashamed of the ^(E)testimony of our LORD or of me ^(F)His prisoner, but join with me in ^(G)suffering for the ^(H)gospel according to the power of God, 9 Who has ^(I)saved us and ^(J)called us with a holy ^(K)calling, ^(L)not according to our works, but according to His own ^(M)purpose and grace which was granted us in ^(N)Christ Jesus from ^(O)all eternity, 10 but ^(P)now has been revealed by the ^(Q)appearing of our Savior ^(R)Christ Jesus, Who ^(S)abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, 11 ^(T)for which I was appointed a preacher and an apostle and a teacher.

12 For this reason I also suffer these things, but ^(U)I am not ashamed; for I know ^(V)Whom I have believed and I am convinced that He is able to ^(W)guard what I have entrusted to Him until ^(X)that day.

-2 Timothy 1:6-12

13 And behold, ^(A)two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was ^[a]about seven miles from Jerusalem.

14 And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place.

15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them.

16 But ^(B)their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.

17 And He said to them, "What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?" And they stood still, looking sad.

18 One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to Him, "Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?"

19 And He said to them, "What things?" And they said to Him, "The things about ^(C)Jesus the Nazarene, Who was a ^(D)prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people, 20 and how the chief priests and our ^(E)rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him.

21 "But we were hoping that it was He who was going to ^(F)redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened.

22 "But also some women among us amazed us. ^(G)When they were at the tomb early in the morning, 23 and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive.

24 "Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see."

25 And He said to them, "O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that ^(H)the prophets have spoken!

26 "^(I)Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?"

27 Then beginning with ^(J)Moses and with all the ^(K)prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

-Luke 24:13-27

1 I will ^(A)sing of the lovingkindness of the LORD forever; to all generations I will ^(B)make known Your ^(C)faithfulness with my mouth. 

2 For I have said, "^(D)Lovingkindness will be built up forever; in the heavens You will establish Your ^(E)faithfulness." 

3 "I have made a covenant with ^(F)My chosen; I have ^(G)sworn to David My servant, 4 I will establish your ^(H)seed forever and build up your ^(I)throne to all generations."

5 The ^(J)heavens will praise Your wonders, O LORD; Your faithfulness also ^(K)in the assembly of the ^(L)holy ones. 

6 For ^(M)who in the skies is comparable to the LORD?  Who among the ^(N)sons of the mighty is like the LORD, 7 A God ^(O)greatly feared in the council of the ^(P)holy ones, and ^(Q)awesome above all those who are around Him? 

8 O LORD God of hosts, ^(R)who is like You, O mighty LORD?  Your faithfulness also surrounds You.

-Psalm 89:1-8

Marty is president of BCM International, and gives oversight to seven hundred missionaries in fifty countries around the planet.  The mission focuses on discipleship, evangelism, church-planting and leadership training.  They publish Bible curriculum and teaching materials, as well as provide Bible Clubs and camping.

Jeanette is a gifted author, and has published books in both English and Spanish.  She speaks at seminars and conferences.

1 Therefore I, ^(A)the prisoner of the LORD, ^(B)implore you to ^(C)walk in a manner worthy of the ^(D)calling with which you have been ^(E)called, 2 with all ^(F)humility and gentleness, with patience, showing tolerance for one another ^(G)in love, 3 being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the ^(H)bond of peace.

4 There is ^(I)one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one ^(J)hope of your calling; 5 ^(K)one LORD, one faith, one baptism, 6 one God and Father of all ^(L)Who is over all and through all and in all.

-Ephesians 4:1-6

By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (reposted with permission)

Recently the war in Iraq seems to have dropped out of the news while the status of the US Economy has suddenly become the main focus even in the Presidential caucuses and primaries. Associated Press articles last week characterized a 306 point drop in the stock market, as a "plunge" that underscored "deepening concern about the country's economic health." What happened last week was not a plunge. It was a small adjustment.

Since I was born in 1929, basically at a time when the Stock Exchange was at its highest point, and grew up in the Great Depression, the ups and downs of the economy have always fascinated me. Some years ago in researching the subject I noticed that there had been 10 times during the previous 100 years when the stock market suddenly lost 35% to 86% of value.

It is interesting to note that when the presidential race of 2000 was beginning, the media was praising Bill Clinton for the great state of the economy, when the market closed the first week of March at 9796.03. During and since the 2000 presidential race, the media has seemed determine to drum up a "Bush recession." In fact, I wrote a couple of articles on this in 2003 when the Democrats were predicting a disaster ahead as President Bush signed his tax cut, job growth bill in May and again, in December of 2003, after the Democrats had announced that President Bush would have the worst economic record "since Herbert Hoover."

For 8 years, as the media has proclaimed repeatedly that the economy was failing under George W. Bush, the stock market has moved steadily upward, reaching a record 14,000 several times in July and October 2007.

In 2000, Clinton's last year in office as the presidential campaigning was taking place, the market was going down. In July of 1999 the stock market had hit 11,313, but by March 7, 2000 it had dropped to 9796.03. That's a 13% drop in the Clinton administration - which no one in the media ever characterized as even a sharp drop, much less a "plunge."

When the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacked in September 2001, after Bush had been in office less than 9 months, the market dropped to 8247.56 but gained nearly 6000 points by October 9, 2007 when it reached 14,164.53. During these up and down fluctuations, employment has remained at record high numbers. A 306 point drop is an adjustment, not a plunge. In fact, it was an adjustment of about 2.5%. A 25% drop in the market, which would be a drop of more than 3000 for the current stock market, could be called a "plunge." Last week's 2.5% drop was a small adjustment.

Few today seem to really know what happened in 1929. On September 3, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached a record high of 381.2. On Thursday, October 24, 1929 the market had dropped 21% to 299.5. By 1932, which was a presidential election year, the market had dropped almost 90% and unemployment was over 30%. The Democrat candidate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, blamed the economic condition facing the nation entirely on his Republican opponent, Herbert Hoover and America's system of free enterprise capitalism. In his inaugural address of March 4, 1932, which is remembered for him saying "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," FDR outlined his plans to reverse the depression primarily by doing away with free enterprise capitalism and introducing socialism. He announced that the "restoration" of the economy "lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit." Those "social values" were mostly socialism.

He announced his plan for the federal government to engage "on a national scale in a redistribution endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best outfitted for the land," along with "national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character" and "a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money." New jobs, FDR announced, would not come from the private sector but would "be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources." The government would become the major employer of the nation, with government programs such as WPA, not private enterprise.

At a time when people were losing their homes and farms, Roosevelt chose to shut down the banks and move the economy away from free enterprise capitalism. He told the American people that they must "move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife."

My mother and most of her generation obediently did as she was told, totally believing every word the persuasive FDR said. During those Depression years I remember huddling around the radio, which was plugged into the only electric outlet in our house, as my mother listened intently to her hero, FDR.

My mother did not live long enough to see the stock market ever rise to the level it was when I was born. It took 25 years, the Second World War and the election of Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower before the stock market finally again rose to 382. Not only did most of my mother's generation, but also most of my own generation, were convinced that it was Roosevelt's socialist response to the Stock Market crash that saved the nation. Yet, what FDR did was to make it impossible for entrepreneurs or home owners get credit to open a business or buy a home.

In his book The Age of Turbulence, Allen Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, observes, from his many years as an economist who watched the disintegration of the Soviet Union and other socialist economies, that creating wealth requires both the right to own property and risk taking - and freedom. Socialism is designed to reduce or eliminate the right to own property, risk taking and freedom, which is probably why during my formative years the stock market remained stagnant and home ownership was very difficult to accomplish.

The Great Depression lasted for over two decades because Roosevelt and the Democrats very effectively scared the voters into following their lead into socialism. People who did have money, were afraid to spend it or put it into a bank, where it could circulate. Instead, they hid what little money they had and saved every penny. We even saved string and straightened nails, rather than buying new string or nails. While that may traditionally be considered admirable traits, it does not lead to inventiveness, risk taking, new technology and consumer spending - all of which are necessary to improve the standard of living of the poor, according to Greenspan.

It appears to me that we are again being frightened into a recession by the media and the Democrats. However, I am hoping that the effort will be thwarted by young voters. Today's young people don't usually read the newspapers and when they do, they don't believe what they read, as their grandparents did. Furthermore, few of them seem to have any difficulty in finding a job. Unemployment nationwide is still only 5%, which, only a few years ago, was considered dangerously low and a cause of inflation. In my state, unemployment is only 2%. By 1932 unemployment was over 30% and generally only the father was in the workforce.

This does not look to me like a recession. It looks like someone is trying to manipulate the public into thinking there is a recession, for political purposes. Hopefully, the younger generation will continue to ignore the media, the economic doomsayers, and their grandparents warnings about the "coming recession." If they do, I think the year 2008 will be a good year for the economy, especially if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent and we don't elect a socialist president and congress in the November election.

JASmius adds: Fat chance.  Who are the "younger generation" clamoring after?  Barack Obama.

65 You have dealt well with Your servant, O LORD, according to Your word. 

66 Teach me good ^(A)discernment and knowledge, for I believe in Your commandments. 

67 ^(B)Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. 

68 You are ^(C)good and ^(D)do good; ^(E)teach me Your statutes. 

69 The arrogant ^[a]have ^(F)forged a lie against me; with all my heart I will ^(G)observe Your precepts. 

70 Their heart is ^(H)covered with fat, but I ^(I)delight in Your law. 

71 It is ^(J)good for me that I was afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. 

72 The ^(K)law of Your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.

73 ^(L)Your hands made me and ^[b]fashioned me; ^(M)give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments. 

74 May those who fear You ^(N)see me and be glad, because I ^(O)wait for Your word. 

75 I know, O LORD, that Your judgments are ^(P)righteous, and that ^(Q)in faithfulness You have afflicted me. 

76 O may Your lovingkindness comfort me, according to Your word to Your servant. 

77 May ^(R)Your compassion come to me that I may live, for Your law is my ^(S)delight. 

78 May ^(T)the arrogant be ashamed, for they subvert me ^(U)with a lie; but I shall ^(V)meditate on Your precepts. 

79 May those who fear You turn to me, even those who know Your testimonies. 

80 May my heart be ^(W)blameless in Your statutes, so that I will not ^(X)be ashamed.

-Psalm 119:65-80

Double-H is a lot more slack-jawed at Crazy Nancy's latest death-wish antics than I am:

The House broke for a week’s recess Thursday without renewing terrorist surveillance authority demanded by President Bush, leading him to warn of risky intelligence gaps while Democrats accused him of reckless fear mongering.

The refusal of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, to schedule a vote on a surveillance measure approved Tuesday by the Senate touched off an intense partisan conflict over the national security questions that have colored federal elections since 2002 and are likely to play a significant role again in November.

Hugh's radio show producer has more details:

Nancy Pelosi and Co. had one simple task today - pass the FISA law permanently.  FISA is already in effect to make sure the country stays protected.  It has led to the breakup of terrorist cells, and it's prevented attacks on American soil.  And it expires tomorrow, meaning as of Saturday, our national intelligence agencies legally can't intercept phone calls outside the country between two parties planning attacks here or in the countries of our allies.  

The Senate passed a clean version of the FISA bill Tuesday in a bipartisan manner.  The President has already said he's willing to sign the Senate version....all that had to happen was for Nancy Pelosi to stop playing games with our country's defense and bring up the Senate version for a vote.  But...[i]nstead of putting the country ahead of partisan politics, she substituted another twenty-one day extension of the existing law as a stop-gap.  That was rejected immediately by House Republicans, the President, and even the hard left members of the House Democrats, who have their collective heads so far in the sand that they see no foreign threats.  They want the bill to go away period.

First off, "the sand" is not where House Donk heads are impacted.  Secondly, Crazy Nancy proposed the additional three-week extension knowing damn well that it would be shot down in a murderous bipartisan cross-fire.  It's her fig-leaf behind which she can hide her national security game-playing.  And third, "tomorrow" is now today.  As of right now and going forward until a permanent FISA revision is enacted, the United States of America is completely open to mass-casualty terrorist attack, and the government is, for all intents and purposes, forbidden by law from doing anything to stop it. 

But most to the point, the very fact that congressional Democrats continue to play these "games" with American civilian lives after getting their heads handed to them repeatedly by the Bush White House on war-related issues in 2007 speaks volumes about how they perceive the direction of their political fortunes.  They obviously believe that the proverbial "wind" is at their backs, and at hurricane-force velocities.  And they're not wrong think so; all the "experts" forecast moderate to massive Donk gains in both houses this November as well as Senators Clinton and/or Obama as prohibitive favorites to re-take the presidency.  Indeed, they retook Congress in 2006 on the heels of six years of loud, bellicose seditions and treason.  Why, then, would they become more circumspect about their Ameriphobic pacifism now, much less tack away from the neoBolshevik fringe and back towards sanity?  The logic of the current political climate argues for their becoming even more radical and nationally suicidal.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but who cares if minority House Republicans walked out in protest?  In Donk minds, they're like the dinosaurs - their day is done.  They're irrelevant, along with everything they may still stand for.  Americans have finally "gotten it," and are about to restore unified control of the federal government to the Democrats.  They've repudiated Bush, the GOP, conservatism, the "illegal" war, the Reagan legacy, the whole nine yards.  Hell, Republicans have even nominated a de facto Democrat to be their 2008 presidential dive-taker.  If that doesn't prove the ascendancy of the hard Left, what else could?

This, in turn, speaks to the foolish wishful thinking of those 'Pubbies urging ranks-closing behind Darth Queeg.  They simply have to ignore too much contrary evidence, even on national security.

Here's the tactical approach, per Mr. Patterson:

Today is another reason why those of you upset with the specter of a John McCain candidacy need to realize why this election in November does matter so much.  Obama and Clinton don't view FISA as important enough to even vote on.  In fact, Obama was there and voted for amendments to weaken the overall bill that eventually failed.  But when the final passage vote came up, Obama walked away and didn't cast a vote.  John McCain was there, and McCain voted to pass it.

1) McCain was there because he's all but clinched the GOP nomination; otherwise he'd have been on the primary campaign trail and not present to vote;

2) I'm not particularly surprised that Sailor voted for the "bipartisan" Senate version of the FISA reform bill, since it was largely gutted in order to purchase passage - in essence, it's the intelligence equivalent of the one-eyed man being king of the blind (which would be the House version).  One can only speculate where McCain would have landed if the Senate bill hadn't been gutted and had led to a partisan showdown instead.  Though I know where my betting money would lie.  As it is, his vote can be dismissed as politically motivated at zero cost to his White House ambitions or his raucously cultivated "maverick" reputation.

Ex-Romneylan Preator Hewitt takes the strategic route:

Chris Cillizza assesses some of the reasons behind yesterday's news, as well as some interesting details of how [the Romney endorsement of McCain] came to occur.

But he and many other commentators skip over the most important explanation - the one that will gather even the Arizona senator's toughest critics into his camp over time: The need for a president committed to pursuing victory in the war across each of its many fronts trumps every other difference, no matter how many or how deep.  It is that simple.  If you believe Senators Obama and Clinton, they fundamentally fail to understand the consequences of withdrawal in Iraq or the contours of the menace in Iran.  Neither appears to grasp the jihadist threat.  Senator McCain does.  Because Mitt Romney cares deeply about the safety and security of the country, he was certain to endorse Senator McCain.  That he did so quickly is a testament to the starkness of the choice facing America, McCain's complete commitment to victory, and Romney's understanding of the stakes.

Romney's understanding of the stakes for his 2012 presidential bid, you mean.  Plasticman endorsed McCain for the same reason he quit the race: he doesn't want to bury himself in preclusion of a future comeback attempt.  It's that simple.

As to McCain's "complete commitment to victory," that's...well, maybe not complete BS, but mostly so.  The facts - which Hugh himself was flogging like a wildman just a few weeks ago - are that Senator McCain is functionally AWOL on homeland security, being stridenly opposed as he is to interrogation of captured jihadis, in favor of lavishing them with constitutional rights, and bitterly against border control and for another blanket immigration amnesty, all of which would be a "complete" allah-send to al Qaeda.  There's also not inconsiderable doubt, given his Rumsfeldphobia, as to whether a President McCain would have pulled the trigger on Operation Iraqi Freedom.  And remember in the reference to his flip-flop from initial foe of Balkans intervention to wild-eyed interventionist that that was precisely the time - the mid-to-late 1990s - when McCain was devolving from a true "footsoldier in the Reagan Revolution" to the nefarious, lefty-embracing Darth Queeg.  He underwent that devolution in support of a left-wing Democrat president.

John McCain, in short, is not committed to victory.  He will say that he is, because it is evidently dawning on him how tough a general election sell his nomination will be to most conservatives who, Double-H's party hackery swatted aside, know better than to believe an ostensibly partisan word that comes out of his mouth.  But once he was elected, his pandering to the Right would end, and he'd litter the Executive Branch with center-left advisors who would produce policy indistinguishable from that of a Rodham/Obama administration.

That's why congressional Democrats are so gleefully and openly running interference for Osama bin Laden, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, et al: they know that even if they're wrong about a majority of the country supporting their defeatist stance on the war (or any other issue), there won't be any political consequences for it.  Their majorites are destined to expand, and even if the Republicans miraculously manage to hold onto the White House, it will be in name only.

You want to know what's truly astonishing and unbelievable?  The only hope for the longer-term survival of America as we have known it - by which I mean returning the Congress to GOP control, as the presidency is gone either way - may be another 9/11 before Election Day as a direct result of Crazy Nancy's game-playing on FISA reform.

Which is why she'll probably allow a vote on the bill next week.  Late on Friday or Saturday night when press attention will be minimal.

That's just the way the game is played.

Here's an endorsement I'd wager Barack Obama DIDN'T want:

President Daniel Ortega, who led the 1979 [communist] revolution in Nicaragua, says Barack Obama's presidential bid is a "revolutionary" phenomenon in the United States.

"It's not to say that there is already a revolution under way in the U.S. ... but yes, they are laying the foundations for a revolutionary change," the Sandinista leader said Wednesday night as he accepted an honorary doctorate from an engineering university.

Ortega led a Soviet-backed government that battled U.S.-supported Contra rebels before he lost power in a 1990 election. He returned to office last year via the ballot box....

Ortega also called Obama a spokesman for the millions of Central American and Mexican citizens who migrate to the U.S. in search of work, though polls indicate most Latino voters so far have favored Clinton over Obama.

Sounds pretty damning, doesn't it?  Or does it?  The American Left has had a boner for Latin American pinkos going all the way back to Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba in the late 1950s.  They still love Castro, and their rock-star-groupie-like fondness for Ortega is scarcely any less, especially since he can now hide behind the fig-leaf of "democracy".  Libs will see that as proof positive of the ease with which a President Obama can "rebuild America's standing in the world".  And probably a lot of "independents" along with them.

Almost makes me wonder whether El Presidente has had anything to say about Senorita Rodham.  It's not like her Marxist credentials aren't in good standing, and have been since B.O. was in diapers.  Maybe seniority doesn't matter as much in lefty circles.  Either that or they still have a patriarchy problem.

I also can't help but notice that the Sandanista dictator misidentifies the principal American spokesperson for "the millions of Central American and Mexican citizens who migrate to the U.S. in search of work."  That individual is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Maybe Ortega is saving that endorsement for next week....

Imagine for a moment that the polarity of the following two stories was reversed, and what the reaction of the Left would be....

~  ~  ~

From the Family Research Council:

1 See ^(A)how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called ^(B)children of God; and such we are For this reason the world does not know us, because ^(C)it did not know Him.

2 ^(D)Beloved, now we are ^(E)children of God, and ^(F)it has not appeared as yet what we will be We know that when He ^(G)appears, we will be ^(H)like Him, because we will ^(I)see Him just as He is.

3 And everyone who has this ^(J)hope fixed on Him ^(K)purifies himself, just as He is pure.

-1 John 3:1-3 

8 Make me to hear ^(A)joy and gladness, let the ^(B)bones which You have broken rejoice. 

9 ^(C)Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities. 

10 ^(D)Create in me a ^(E)clean heart, O God, and renew a ^(F)steadfast spirit within me. 

11 ^(G)Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your ^(H)Holy Spirit from me. 

12 Restore to me the ^(I)joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a ^(J)willing spirit. 

13 Then I will ^(K)teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners will ^[a]be ^(L)converted to You.

-Psalm 51:8-13

25 ^(A)Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and ^(B)gave Himself up for her, 26 ^(C)so that He might sanctify her, having ^(D)cleansed her by the ^(E)washing of water with ^(F)the Word, 27 that He might ^(G)present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be ^(H)holy and blameless.

28 So husbands ought also to ^(I)love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; 29 for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are ^(J)members of His ^(K)body.

31 ^(L)For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

32 This mystery is great; but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

33 Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to ^(M)love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she ^(N)respects her husband.

-Ephesians 5:25-33

1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."

5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."

7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man! This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. 8 I gave your master's house to you, and your master's wives into your arms. I gave you the house of Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. 9 Why did you despise the Word of the LORD by doing what is evil in His eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 10 Now, therefore, the sword will never depart from your house, because you despised Me and took the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your own.'

11 "This is what the LORD says: 'Out of your own household I am going to bring calamity upon you. Before your very eyes I will take your wives and give them to one who is close to you, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight. 12 You did it in secret, but I will do this thing in broad daylight before all Israel.' "

13 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD."  Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die."

-2 Samuel 12:1-13

We're a tad late to the party on this one, but even a week later the novelty of a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee smackdown of the hyper-left-wing "intelligence community" over its pro-Iranian interference-running is sufficiently jaw-dropping that it merits a mention even this belated:

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell took careful steps to reconsider key portions of a controversial National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program on Tuesday under sharp questions from members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

McConnell was grilled on the NIE’s disputed conclusion that Iran had shut down its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure by both Democrats and Republicans.

Senator Bond, the ranking Republican on the committee, chided McConnell for allowing the NIE to be used as a “political football,” and pointed out that the real revelation of the NIE was just the opposite of how it has been portrayed in news accounts at home and abroad.

“The main news of the NIE was the confirmation that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, not that it had halted it temporarily,” he said.

Even the presumed, temporary halt was open to question, Bond added. “The French defense minister said publicly that he believes the program has restarted. Now if our government comes to that assessment, then we have set ourselves up to release another NIE or leak intelligence, because this last one has given us a false sense of security.”

"Have," Senator Bond, not "had".  The difference is that the mullahgarchy conceals its nuclear weapons development under the fig-leaf of its program being "dual use," having civilian applications as well as military.  But the openly beastial nature of the Islamic regime and its open crowing of its plans to annihilate Israel and bring the United States to its knees makes as much of a mockery of its smirking protestations that its nuke program is {wink-wink} "peaceful" as the so-called intelligence community made of the term "common sense" with its ridiculous pro-Iranian NIE.

If you're thinking that there's no way a Senate 'Pubbie could possibly get this fiesty without somebody sprinkling Spanish fly in his Metamucil, you catch on fast.  In this case, it was a heapin' helpin' of John Bolton:

John Bolton, the former undersecretary of state for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, blasted McConnell and the NIE on the morning of the hearing in a sharply-worded oped appearing in the Wall Street Journal.

“Few seriously doubt that the NIE gravely damaged the Bush administration’s diplomatic strategy,” Bolton wrote.

The NIE was driven by policy considerations, not actual intelligence, and put the community’s credibility and impartiality on the line, Bolton argued.

“Mr. McConnell should commit the intelligence community to stick to its knitting — intelligence — and return its policy enthusiasts to agencies where policy is made,” Bolton added. He called for the reassignment of the three State Department policy-makers who had authored the NIE.

Man, I wish Dubya had made Ambassador Bolton Secretary of State instead of Condi Rice.  His stubbornly bold stand for the "intelligence" community to exit the "reality-based community" and return to reality seemed to open quite a few Bushkin eyes as well - not that their belated shock covers them in glory:

Senior Bush Administration officials who have read the entire classified NIE have told Newsmax they were “appalled” at the thin sourcing and shoddy analysis.

A former career CIA analyst commented, “I have never seen an intelligence analysis this bad. It is misleading, politicized, and poorly written.”

In a column entitled “Stupid Intelligence on Iran,” the former defense secretary, James Schlesinger, wrote, “Clearly, the key judgments in the NIE were overstated . . . and thus incautiously phrased.”

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned (in a December 13, 2007 Op-Ed in the Washington Post) that the authors of the NIE saw themselves as “a kind of check on, instead of a part of, the executive branch,” and excoriated them for seeking to become “surrogate policy-makers and advocates.”

I could have sworn I said that two months ago when this mullahgarchic press released was, um, released.  Or maybe I was too buried beneath budget season in my day job.  But whoever made the point first (and I wouldn't be saying that if I had been the first), it's gratifying to see it made, and in relatively short order.  Which goes to show how howlingly risible that NIE was.

Pity the damage it did to "the national security interests of the country" in Donk Senator Evan Bayh's words can't be repaired as promptly.

Some righty bloggers are wishfully thinking so.

First, the particulars:

From this point, quick math shows that after Super Tuesday, only 1,428 pledged delegates will still be available. Now, here is where the problem shows up. According to current polling averages, the largest possible victory for either candidate on Super Tuesday will be Clinton 889 pledged delegates, to 799 pledged delegates for Obama. (In all likelihood, the winning margin will be lower than this, but using these numbers helps emphasize the seriousness of the situation.) As such, the largest possible pledged delegate margin Clinton can have after Super Tuesday is 937 to 862. (While it is possible Obama will lead in pledged delegates after Super Tuesday, it does not currently seem possible for Obama to have a larger lead than 75). That leaves Clinton 1,088 pledged delegates from clinching the nomination, with only 1,428 pledged delegates remaining. Thus, in order to win the nomination without the aid of super delegates, in her best-case scenario after Super Tuesday, Clinton would need to win 76.2% of all remaining pledged delegates. Given our proportional delegate system, there is simply no way that is going to happen unless Obama drops out.

The current Donk delegate tally is Rodham 1,148, Obama 1,121.  Needless to say, the quoted premise hasn't changed in the six days since it was posted.  The makes it all the more likely (astonishing as it is) that their party's nomination will still be up for grabs - mathematically, that is - at the Dem convention in Denver six months from now.  Assuming, of course, that (not to {*AHEM*} get ahead of myself) no deal is cut between now and then.

Pat Ruffini, whose politcal acuity has cratered since the Republicans committed political and ideological suicide a week ago, jumps to the conclusion that this means the Democrats are headed for "a train wreck"; one that could actually help elect....Darth Queeg:

Proportional representation makes it virtually impossible for a candidate winning in the national popular vote by five to ten points to secure the nomination with popularly selected delegates alone. In many cases, delegate allocation is even stricter than the popular vote share itself, with a three-point victory in a state resulting in a delegate tie (or Clinton’s six point win in Nevada resulting in more Obama delegates). In some California Congressional districts, the winning candidate must secure 62.5% of the vote to win more delegates. Bottom line: Democrats are about to get schooled in the consequences of “fairness” and “equality.”

This leaves a nomination decided by unelected superdelegates who may not reflect the wishes of primary voters. Or better still, a floor fight to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations (which the non-Clinton candidates withdrew from under false pretenses). The process may well result in an “illegitimate” nominee selected by a brawl over Florida’s votes.

The rest of the narrative (which turns out to be in a different post elsewhere the link for which I did not record for this posterity) is that the Clinton Machine - which, never forget, owns the Democrat Party lock, stock, and ChiComm barrel - will muscle through a motion to seat Hillary's Michigan and Florida delegates.  This puts the Empress over the top and hands her the nomination.  The Obama forces balk in enranged incredulity and walk out of the convention.  Livid black voters resolve to stay home en masse on Election Day, or even vote for McCain-Huckabee in protest of this "stolen nomination".  Tack on Senator Clinton's turning to Mr. Bill to be her running mate, which might or might not lead to a constitutional challenge before the SCOTUS, and you have more fun than a barrel of monkeys, even though the ultimate outcome is still a disaster for conservatives either way.

It also will not happen.  This is precisely why a deal will be cut before the Denver convention that brings B.O. aboard the ticket as Her Nib's running mate.  Perhaps she'll promise him to only serve one term, leaving the field wide open for him to run in 2012 as heir apparent; maybe he'll be dense enough to fall for it.  But either way, the Clinton Machine isn't going to leave so much to chance that this train wreck can ever take place and endanger the Queen-in-waiting's November coronation.  And if anybody believes for a solitary second that black voters won't turn out in their usual 95% droves for Hillary, regardless of what she does to the Generalissimo between now and then, you haven't been paying attention to the past forty years of political history.

Mark down the date of this post, and remember it when the Rodham-Obama ticket is standing hip-deep in multi-colored balloons at the Pepsi Center in six months, grinning broadly (to Denobulan magnitudes in Obama's case) and hands clasped in triumph.  Also remember this: the real "train wreck" of this campaign took place last Tuesday, on the Republican side of this charade.  We've haven't begun to see the casualties it will generate.

But we will.  We certainly will.

38 "^(A)You have heard that it was said, '^(B)An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'

39 "But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but ^(C)whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.

40 "If anyone wants to sue you and take your ^[a]shirt, let him have your ^[b]coat also.

41 "Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.

42 "^(D)Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.

43 "^(E)You have heard that it was said, '^(F)You shall love your neighbor ^(G)and hate your enemy.'

44 "But I say to you, ^(H)love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be ^(I)sons of your Father Who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

46 "For ^(J)if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

47 "If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

48 "Therefore ^(K)you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

-Matthew 5:38-48

16 ^(A)As He was going along by the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen.

17 And Jesus said to them, "Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men."

18 Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.

19 Going on a little farther, He saw James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who were also in the boat mending the nets.

20 Immediately He called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants, and went away to follow Him.

-Mark 1:16-20

Hugh Hewitt was a Romney guy from the beginning.  So much so that he even wrote a full-blown book in support of Mitt Romney's candidacy, A Mormon In The White House.  As Romney's presidential bid started falling apart in December and on through the debacles in Iowa, New Hampshire, Florida, and finally Super Duper Tuesday, conservatives increasingly distressed at the rise of John McCain (aka Darth Queeg) and Mike Huckabee (aka Darth Scudder) as the destined 2008 GOP ticket could always turn to Double H's site for a fix of reassurance and sound, sane argument, even though you knew it was pro-Romney shilling and it was falling on deaf ears.  Preator Hewitt went to great lengths to underscore how McCain-Huckabee will have no money compared to Rodham-Obama, no comparable base unity and energy, will look old, tired, and "odd" versus the contrived regality of Hillary and the personality cult of the ebony JFK.  McCain-Huckabee would be a reprise of Dole-Kemp '96, Hugh argued, a doomed candidacy that would pre-empt the entire general campaign, restore Mrs. Clinton's aura of inevitability, and lead to wipe-outs all the way down the GOP ticket in November.

And none of that even touched on the manifest unfitness of the Sith duo for the nomination(s) they have now captured.

But before Hugh Hewitt was the leader of the Romneylans, he was something else: a loyal party man.  Some might even say party hack, as I did repeatedly during the Harriet Miers Supreme Court odessey a few years back when Hugh waxed eloquent about President Bush's bald betrayal of his iron-clad pledge to appoint constitutionalists to the federal bench, much less Olympus, and baited-&-switched the base with this cronyistic mystery meat instead.

This is the "dark side" of elevating party loyalty above philosophical integrity, and the other day that side of Double-H rose to the surface once again, like a turd that won't flush:

There are seven reasons for anyone to support the eventual nominee no matter who it is:  The war and six Supreme Court justices over the age of 68.

Folks who want to take their ball and go home have to realize that even three SCOTUS appointments could revolutionize the way elections are handled in this country in a stroke, mandating the submission of redistricting lines to court scrutiny for "fairness."...

If Democrats control the White House and gain even one of the five seats held by the center-right majority of current justices, this and many other crucial issues are up for legal grabs.  When activist judges are more than willing to rewrite rules of long-standing, periods of exile should never be self-imposed "for the good of the party."  Exiles can go on a very long time indeed.  Ask the Whigs.

They can go on indefinitely when enforced by courts.

Three words, Hugh: Gang...of...fourteen.  If John McCain would not stand and fight alongside his GOP Senate colleagues and the Bush White House to remove Democrat obstructionism to reconstitutionalizing the federal judiciary when the window of opportunity to do so was open, what on Olympus itself is there to convince anybody that a President McCain will decide to pursue that objective against a Congress that will be 60%-65% Democrat?  And remember, he didn't just sit out the confrontation, he intervened on the Democrats' side.

A McCain White House will send up a desultory, moldy stream of David Souters - sorry, "consensus nominees" - at best.  Most likely, he'll just pick from the list that Pat Leahy, Chucky, and Uncle Teddy send him.

The GOP as well is the party committed to victory in Iraq and the wider war.  A four year time-out would be a disaster, a period of time in which al Qaeda and its jihadist off-shoots would regroup in some places and continue to spread in others.  Iran, even if punished in the months before November, would certainly continue and accelerate its plans under the soft pleadings of a President Obama or Clinton 2.0. 

These aren't the years to wish a pox on your primary opponents' heads beyond June.

A President McCain will leave us defenseless at home by reverting to treating jihadist terrorism as a law enforcement issue (emptying Gitmo, lavishing constitutional rights upon illegal enemy combatants) and realizing his cherished dream of a full amnesty for illegals and erasing our borders altogether.  All al Qaeda would have to do is relocate its HQ to northern Mexico and they'd have a safe haven.  Iraq would be rendered almost irrelevant.

As for Iran, there is no, zip, zero, nada inclination from ANY quarter of the American political landscape for doing ANYTHING to pre-empt the nuclear war that the mullahgarchy plans to unleash once they have the means to do so.  Perhaps a McCain administration would more likely to retaliate afterwards than a President Rodham or Obama - over-retaliate, even.  But by then it would, of course, be too late.

So there ye go.  Hugh Hewitt, ex-Romneylan Praetor and once again subservient GOP party hack, takes his best shot at making a case for a McCain presidency, and a pudgy guy in his pajamas a thousand miles up the Pacific coast with a fraction of the time for analyzing these things easily shoots it down like fish in a barrel.

Hugh's last gasp?:

It is very possible to play full contact politics without the threat of going home if your team loses.  The stakes in the fall are far too high for that.

My "team" was Fred Thompson.  He quit after South Carolina.  I didn't go home; I moved over to Romney.  I could have lived with Giuliani as well, until he dropped out after Florida.  But when Romney called it quits this week, I - we - were left with two candidates who stand for virtually none of the center-right agenda, and who look and sound indistinguishable from the Democrats they'll be facing in the fall.

Conservatives have been disenfranchised at the presidential level.  We have been presented with the choice of two Democrat tickets, and all the policy implications that entails.  Neither is, or ought to be, acceptable.  Recognition of that fact is not "taking your ball and going home"; it is acknowledgement of bitter reality.

~  ~  ~

Darth Queeg is certainly aware of it; why else did he go to CPAC on Thursday and try to snow conservatives into closing ranks?  Although from most indicators he only took a half-hearted stab at it, and his appeal only attained limited success.  Michelle Malkin wasn't convinced, and she sounds like she wanted to be.  Her bottom line: deeds matter more than words.

And, of course, that is precisely McCain's problem.  He's not a skilled or practiced liar, and even if he was in Bill Clinton's mendacity league he'd have at least seven years of treacherous deeds to overcome.  That would be a tall order for the Sickster himself; for the Sith master, with his uncontainable self-righteousness and equally indiscrete compulsion to gloat about it to those to whom he feels himself morally superior (i.e. conservatives), it simply is not possible.

This is the political equivalent of short-sheeting one's own bed.  The Supreme Chancellor cannot count on the Republican base like the Bushies mobilized it in 2000, 2002, and 2004.  He can't even count on it in the disgruntled, demoralized shape it was in in 2006.  He's simply done too much to alienate it.  So where does that leave him?  Well, contrary to the fabled "conventional wisdom," there isn't any "base" to be found in the political "center".  That is the epitome of, to borrow another metaphor, building your house on sand.  "Moderates" stand for nothing by definition; you can't rely upon the ungrounded to stick by you when things go wrong.  Will Sailor try to compete with Hillary (and/or Obama) for the Dem base?  Hey, they like McCain, but only when he's screwing us; they don't like him THAT much.

So what national strategy is left for Senator McCain?  Running negative.  Use the Right's fear and loathing of Hillary to stampede them into holding their noses and voting for him as the (slightly) lesser of two evils, with the underlying calculation being "Where else are they going to go?", pick Mike Huckabee as his running mate to turn out gullible evangelicals, while somehow trusting that "moderates" and "independents" will catch on that he's just pandering to those neocon knuckledraggers and is still REALLY a member in good standing of the "reality-based community".

It won't work, of course.  Whether it's Rodham-Obama or Obama-Whomever, the Donk base will shatter records for rabidity.  They'll get 150% turnout that'll vote as many times as it takes to get rid of us Nazi, fascist, intolerant, polluting, calllous, heartless, bigoted, warmongering, sexist, homophobic, nativist pond scum once and for all.  The "radical middle" wants a return of peace and quiet (no more "partisan squabbling"), and that means appeasing the partisan squabblers (i.e. the Dems).  And the Right?  Haven't you been paying attention?

It is, to put it gently, not a Republican year anyway.  I don't think any of the GOP hopefuls could have held onto the White House in 2008.  How much less so the man who has deliberately left himself without a party to call home?

Benedict Arnold, another solipsistic moral supremacist convinced of his unappreciated genius and that he was destined for, and entitled to, bigger things, betrayed the American revolution for fortune and ego-stroking.  The British took what he offered them - the "keys" to West Point, New York (their attempt to seize it from within failed) - and paid him handsomely.  But they never gave him the prominent command he sought, shunting him off to irrelevant hit & run raids far from the main battlefront.  Why?  Because they did not trust him.  A man who would turn heel on one side is apt to betray his new "good, close, personal friends" as well.

John McCain has never betrayed his country.  But he has betrayed his party.  Repeatedly.  Putting him in the White House would, ironically, betray the country (just as Hillary or Obama would) as well.  At some point that HAS to matter.

Doesn't it?

~  ~  ~

Just to ensure no confusion on the above point, there'll be no, zero, zip, nada difference between a McCain presidency and its Donk equivalents.  Six of one, half dozen of the other.  That's why tactical calculations like this are just so much mental masturbation.  What difference does it make if conservatives fall into line, tell Sailor to bleep off, or play "hard to get"?  With the first he'd take us for granted (and his contempt for us would only grow still larger); the second would have the virtue of honesty and acceptance of the reality of what the base has done to itself; the third would, at best, elicit phony promises that both he and we would know in advance would never be honored.  Since a President McCain would govern as a Democrat in any case, I'd prefer to dispense with the self-deluding sophistry and extend the middle fingers now - unless even some conservatives have a perverse, neurotic hunger for even bigger betrayals later.

If the saying goes, "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me," where does the shame go, and in what quantities, the fifth time?  Or the tenth?  Or the twentieth?  How many backstabbings does it take?  At what point is the singular obsession of avoiding President Hillary Rodham (or Barack Obama) finally outweighed by the spectre of the same things being done to the country by a man who just happens to have an "R" after his name?

It's the ultimate Hobson's choice.

So what are conservatives to do?  Double-M has a good suggestion:

Some on the Right advise their readers and listeners to vote Democrat or sit home. My advice is exactly the opposite: Get off the couch and walk the walk for conservative candidates and officeholders who need all the help they can get defending free markets, free minds, and secure borders—no matter who takes the White House in November.

Dissatisfied with the flawed crop of GOP candidates who lacked the energy, organizational skills, and ideological strength to carry the conservative banner and ignite your passions? Then pay attention to the next generation of Republican state legislators who do vote consistently to lower your taxes, uphold the sanctity of life, defend marriage, and cut government spending. Support their re-election bids. Reward them for standing with you instead of their Democrat opponents and the liberal media....

If you can’t stomach John McCain, channel your support and energies to Republicans who do represent your values and who have treated the conservative base as allies instead of enemies. There are a new generation of combat veterans running for office who haven’t made a career of trashing the base. Check out staunch economic, social, and national security conservative congressional candidates like Iraq/Afghanistan veteran Eric Egland in California’s fourth district. Check out the Vets for Freedom (vetsforfreedom.org) group for their endorsements.

Opposed to the amnesty bill? Republican Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and John Cornyn of Texas all fought the McCain-Kennedy-Graham-Martinez-Bush open-borders disaster. All of those Senators are up for re-election this year. Send them some money. Then send a few more bucks to the enforcement proponents on the House side as well.

There are races below the presidential level.  Senate and House and gubernatorial and state legislative contests in which Republicans were going to be at a big enough disadvantage without the anchor of a McCain-Huckabee ticket being tied around their necks.  They are going to need all the help they can get, if for no other reason than to prevent the GOP from becoming permanently RINOized and America from being reduced to a giant Venezuela.  As still another old saying goes, "If we're going to go down, better to go down fighting."  Shoring up the GOP's conservative foundation while Darth Queeg and Darth Scudder are demolishing the forty-year-old structure sitting upon it is the only way for us to fight for the foreseeable future.

~  ~  ~

Michelle offered this post-script:

Twenty-six years ago at the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Reagan rallied conservatives:

“We must ask ourselves tonight how we can forge and wield a popular majority from one end of this country to the other, a majority united on basic, positive goals with a platform broad enough and deep enough to endure long into the future, far beyond the lifespan of any single issue or personality.”

I would think not nominating John McCain would have ranked pretty high on that list.  Which goes to show just how much re-building work the conservative movement has in front of it.

20 My son, ^(A)give attention to my words; ^(B)incline your ear to my sayings. 

21 ^(C)Do not let them depart from your sight; ^(D)keep them in the midst of your heart. 

22 For they are ^(E)life to those who find them and ^(F)health to all their body. 

23 Watch over your heart with all diligence, for ^(G)from it flow the springs of life. 

24 Put away from you a ^(H)deceitful mouth and ^(I)put devious speech far from you. 

25 Let your eyes look directly ahead and let your gaze be fixed straight in front of you. 

26 ^(J)Watch the path of your feet and all your ^(K)ways will be established. 

27 ^(L)Do not turn to the right nor to the left; ^(M)turn your foot from evil.

-Proverbs 4:20-27

Wow, I thought Patrick Ruffini knew politics.  Where the frigg did he come up with THIS brain fart?:

I'm beginning to think Obama might be the easier candidate for McCain to beat. Why? Because there could be no clearer contrast on the Commander-in-Chief test. ...

he'll ask the question: Who would you trust as Commander-in-Chief? And it will be no contest. Voter discontent with Iraq (which has been abating of late) aside, people like a Commander-in-Chief who acts like a Commander-in-Chief, not one who will have tea with Hugo Chavez.

Hillary denies McCain this angle of attack to some extent. Obama leaves it wide open.

Check the issues surveys lately, Pat?  The war is way, way down the list.  Ditto "terrorism".  When the Iraqi campaign was perceived as going badly, people were open to Democrat demands that we run away; now that the "Surge" has turned things around, the Enemy Media is ignoring Iraq, and the issue has faded into obscurity.  Either way, which candidate would make the better commander-in-chief is a forgotten afterthought.  If Sailor were to bring it up - and I don't see why he would, since he'll never, EVER have a cross, much less partisan, word to utter against his good, close, personal friends Hillary and Barack, unlike that lying, robber-baron, Ken doll mother!#$%^& Romney - he'd just be denounced as a sexist or racist, respectively, for daring to suggest that a woman or an African-American isn't qualified to command the U.S. military.

And they'd be right, you know; the Empress and B.O. are perfectly capable of commanding the military - to shrink, or make big, naked man piles like the ones those perv prison guards did to captured jihadis at Abu Ghraib as official Pentagon policy (It'd give a whole new meaning to the slogan "Army strong"...), or revive the Clinton-era "meals on wheels"/nation-building/do-gooder fetish of sending U.S. forces into conflicts that don't involve any national security interest in order to squander the military resources (and lives) that they can't defund and demobilize.

Unless there's another 9/11 or worse between now and November, presidential command fitness is going to matter in this election less than a mechanic at a rental car lot.  People have forgotten we're at war; 9/11 is ancient history, as was amply demonstrated in the 2006 midterms.  As I have long suspected, what voters want more than anything else is an end to all the "controversy" and "partisan bickering" and "upheaval" of the Bush years.  They want the real world to go away, and the false quiet, false peace, and false prosperity of the Clinton years to return.  And that sentiment evidently permeates the GOP as well, as I can fathom no better explanation for how John f'ing McCain can possibly be the Republican nominee.

And he'll go down worse than Goldwater did, because he'll have no center-right base, and the center-left base he'll be counting on will stampede to Senator Clinton and/or Senator Obama.

Mitt Romney's failure shows yet again the bankruptcy of making the case against your opponent in lieu of making the case for yourself.  Conservatives were united against McCain, but could never unite behind one alternative.  In the same way, McCain will not be able to make an honest case for himself for the aforementioned reasons, and any attempt to go negative on Hillary will fall on deaf ears (and he'd never do that to his "good, close, personal friend" anyway).  Doing the same to Obama will just play right into the latter's "politics of hope" hands, and finally get Darth Queeg exposed and widely acknowledged for the insufferable bastard he really is.

Duane Patterson contrasted McCain and Obama in this video the other day:

His conclusion?

[N]otice the optics here.  John McCain, flanked by his mother, his wife, grey-haired Charlie Crist, and Democrat Joe Lieberman.  The cumulative age of all five in the shot is 332 years old.

Now go to the Barack shot.  There are thirteen people behind Barack.  Average mean age?  Twentysomething. If you add up the ages of all of them, it's still less than the five people in the John McCain shot. 

Our side looked like a 60th high school reunion, and their side looks like the Peace Corps. 

It's going to be a long nine months.

Remember the media's obsession with "gravitas" when Bush was the GOP standardbearer in 2000, and their insistance that Al Gore had it and Dubya didn't?  "Youth, vitality, virility, and charisma" will be the watchwords in 2008.  Gravitas, even if McCain had any, will be irrelevant.

Patterson was wrong about one thing, though; it's going to be a long five years - if we're lucky.  And the way that luck is going, you'll forgive me if I'm not rushing to place any futures bets, and invest instead in a well-stocked bunker in my back yard.

Heck, my grass looks like crap anyway....

A few days ago the conventional wisdom was that Mitt Romney would "fight on" after getting nipped by agonizingly thin margins in multiple contests (outside the New York City metro area, anyway), the worst being California, where he managed to carry a big, fat three congressional districts out of fifty-three, losing almost all the rest of them by one to three percentage points each.  Hugh Hewitt was, of course, enthusiastically flogging that line even though his guy's Golden State skunking had cost him the ability to prevent Darth Queeg from clinching the GOP nomination before the convention (Romney would have needed to sweep every remaining winner-take-all state plus win at least three-quarters of the vote in all other remaining states; suffice it to say, that wasn't gonna happen).  What point a traveling debate tour consisting largely of McCain pointing and laughing at doggedly nice-guy Romney while Huckabee serviced the Supreme Chancellor under his podium (figuratively speaking) was supposed to serve was never adequately communicated by the Romneylan preator, unless it was Hugh's reference to "talking up [a]center-right agenda" that is gleefully opposed by two of the three candidates in question.  If so, you can see how it was lost on me.

My take was much closer to Jim Geraghty's:

If the sense is that his campaign isn't being run to win, but being run to make a point, I think you'll see his support in subsequent states drop... I'm not sure the Romney campaign was built to be a protest candidacy...

Even if it had that capability, Mitt Romney is too nice a guy to try and do to McCain what McCain would have done to him in switched positions, and indeed tried to do to George W. Bush eight years ago.  Which, I suppose, goes to bolster the credibility of Romney's fundamental conservatism.  Our guys always do the mature thing, are never partisan, always lose gracefully, never try to "make a point" (which is a lot of why our guys lose), yet get relentlessly smeared as "extremists" and "sore losers" and the like.  Whereas a bona fide sore loser like McCain can spend a decade holding a grudge against his own party for denying him the "gold watch" he feels divinely entitled to, shiv, screw, and backstab his own core supporters at every opportunity for the raucous entertainment of the Enemy Media and his "good, close, personal friends" across the aisle, yet win his party's presidential nomination anyway - and it's his friendly fire victims who are supposed to sit down, shut up, and "reach out" to him like a supplicant kneeling before a throne.

I'd say that any Romney attempt to try and play spoiler would only deep-six his viability for trying again in 2012 and beyond, assuming he has any such future plans, except for McCain's utterly baffling success this go-'round.  But then Romney isn't in any position to infringe upon Sailor's turncoat gimmick.  Nor is he a petulant, disloyal, flip-flopping, megalomaniacal scoundrel with delusions of martyrhood.  A pity that those traits are evidently the new template for upward mobility in the GOP.

Still, whether or not Governor Romney recognized that dismal reality, I will let you in on the real reason he called it quits today: money.  Not that he's out of it, by any means.  Rather, being the successful businessman that he is, he recognized a failed venture when he saw one and the pointlessness of throwing good money after bad.  The man did not amass a fortune in the private sector by pursuing lost causes and indulging in self-delusion.  His goal was to win the GOP presidential nomination; until two days ago that was a viable proposition; after Super-Duper Tuesday, it no longer was.  End of venture.  Simple as that.

Better for Romney to fold his hand now, bide his time, let the "Bullbleep Express" totter and careen straight off the cliff in November and take the Rockefelleroids with it, all the while serving as loyal party man, campaigning for other 'Pubbies over the next few years, building up a stack of chits to be called in as 2012 approaches, polish up his conservative credentials, learn from his mistakes (whether that includes repudiating Mormonism is a question I'll leave to others to ponder), and enter the next cycle as THE presumptive frontrunner.  Or, in other words, what Dick Nixon did between 1964 and 1968, which included not only winning the White House, but also trouncing Mitt's father in the GOP primaries.

Hmmm; on second thought, maybe nice guys finishing last runs in the Romney family.

Double-H fans had better hope not, or their "new media" guru's party hackery will give him whiplash.

I'll get to the six billion and three reasons to fight McCain-Huckabee AND Rodham-Obama to the gates of hell tomorrow.

I promise.

Really.

1 ^[a](A)Vindicate me, O LORD, for I have ^(B)walked in my integrity, and I have ^(C)trusted in the LORD ^(D)without wavering. 

2 ^(E)Examine me, O LORD, and try me;^(F)test my ^[b]mind and my heart. 

3 For Your ^(G)lovingkindness is before my eyes, and I have ^(H)walked in Your truth. 

4 I do not ^(I)sit with ^[c]deceitful men, nor will I go with ^(J)pretenders [Ed. note: Why I'm anti-McCain, in a nutshell]. 

5 I ^(K)hate the assembly of evildoers, and I will not sit with the wicked [Ed. note: Advice that John McCain has never heeded]. 

6 I shall ^(L)wash my hands in innocence, and I will go about ^(M)Your altar, O LORD, 7 that I may proclaim with the voice of ^(N)thanksgiving and declare all Your wonders. 

8 O LORD, I ^(O)love the habitation of Your house and the place where Your ^(P)glory dwells. 

9 ^(Q)Do not take my soul away along with sinners, nor my life with ^(R)men of bloodshed, 10 in whose hands is a ^(S)wicked scheme, and whose right hand is full of ^(T)bribes. 

11 But as for me, I shall ^(U)walk in my integrity; ^(V)redeem me, and be gracious to me. 

12 ^(W)My foot stands on a ^(X)level place; in the ^(Y)congregations I shall bless the LORD.

-Psalm 26

A Minneapolis couple decided to go to Florida to thaw out during a particularly icy winter.  They planned to stay at the same hotel where they spent their honeymoon twenty years earlier.

Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida