The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
Last Meal in Austin, TX.
OK, the arrangements for tonight are:
Dinner, 7:00PM at the Iron Cactus on Stonelake Blvd.
The relatively late start will give everyone a chance to get there (I hope). Looks like there will be at least three besides me. Please RSVP in comments if you can. Hope to see you there.
Thursday Night Blogmeet.in Austin?
Reader KevinP suggested via email that we get together Thursday night for dinner and conversation, along with anybody else who’d like to attend. I think that’s a great idea. Please leave comments suggesting a location and an RSVP. We’re planning on meeting for dinner wherever about 6:30PM.
So what say you, Austinites?
No John McCain – Better Stated.
Bill Quick does a detailed fact-filled analysis of why John McCain should be the LAST choice for President in his post john mccain: the list of infamy (I don’t know why Bill is channeling ee cummings). I strongly suggest you read it if you haven’t.
Apparently Ann Coulter has.
Well This is Shaping Up Nicely…
Dinner tonight with Triggerfinger, and dinner and stargazing with Stickwick and her husband on Wednesday.
This blogging thing has great fringe benefits! Everywhere you go, you “know” somebody!
UPDATE: Just got back from a pleasant dinner with Triggerfinger. Now I know why I own a pickup truck instead of a ‘Vette – my ass slides straight onto the seat of the pickup. I have to climb down into the pavement to get into a ‘Vette.
Good food, good conversation. Beats the hell out of trying to read a book in insufficient light.
On the Road Again…
I’m in Austin, Texas through Thursday for some software training. First impressions: flat, warm, muggy. And it’s supposed to rain tomorrow. My hotel room was 83°F when I checked in. The A/C’s been running an hour now and it’s still 79°. Wait… 78°. Woohoo!
So, any bloggers/readers in the Austin area? What is there for a non-drinking, crowd-hating, unarmed gunblogger to do here in his off-hours? Any restaurant recommendations? I’ve got five nights to kill, and Showtime®™ looks like it’s going to wear very thin very fast. I brought two books, but I think I’ll have finished them by Wednesday.
Quote of the Day.
From House of Eratosthenes, where I need to spend some time perusing the archives:
Today’s Best Sentence I’ve Heard or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes to Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in the National Review Online, who writes about Caroline Kennedy’s Political Romanticism
She says that Obama could be a president like her father. I assume that means that he’ll be overrated, not that he’ll bring us to the brink of nuclear war.
I don’t know about that. Obama seems to have some curious ideas about how to deal with Pakistan….
Movie Gun Meme.
The day before yesterday The Munchkin Wrangler wrote about the best movie prop ever – the M41-A pulse rifle from Aliens. Yesterday, Jay G wrote about his personal movie prop, Judge Dredd’s “Lawgiver.” Today, Say Uncle linked to both of those, and threw in his personal favorite, the gun used by Robocop.
A long time ago I wrote about movie prop guns, too, and coincidentally one of them was from Aliens…
Plus, I was reminded by all of this of the piece I wrote about the making of Aliens about a year later.
UPDATE: Cryptic Suberranean votes for Decker’s “Chief’s Special” from Bladerunner.
Quote of the Day.
Well, from the 20th of January, but still good!
Twenty-Six Years Ago Today: Reagan Becomes President and Iran Blinks
Wonder what they’ll do next year when Hillary’s sworn in?
From Empire of Dirt. Even though he’s a McCain supporter, it’s a good quote.
If You Need ANOTHER Reason Not to Pull the Lever for McCain…
Read the transcript of Glenn Beck’s radio show from yesterday, or listen to all sixteen minutes of his interview of Michelle Malkin.
(h/t: Curmudgeonly & Skeptical)
Almost Exactly Right.
Instapundit linked to this Weekly Standard piece on the Thompson campaign that reads like something I wanted very much to write before he dropped out.
Good quotes:
In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he’s been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: “Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office.”
I’m a fan of that one myself, only I think it ought to apply to any federal-level elective office, and all state governorships.
(Thompson) was asked about it at a town hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, in late December.
“Nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly,” he said, with a touch of sarcasm. “I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a terribly good thing that a president has too much fire in his belly.”
—
“I’m not consumed by this process. I’m not consumed with the notion of being president. I’m simply saying I’m willing to do what’s necessary to achieve it, if I’m in synch with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. . . . I’m only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them.”
Those are good quotes, but the one that sealed the deal for me was his response to a question from a small-town newspaper reporter in Iowa:
What will you do for the farmers of Bremer County?
I would continue to enjoy the fruits of their labor. I’ve been looking all over Iowa for a bad steak and I can’t find it. Been trying my best. It’s not a matter of what I would do for the farmers. Farmers are not looking for a president to hand them something. Farmers want fair treatment and a chance to prosper in a free economy and that’s what I would help ensure. There’s a lot of programs we’ve got out there, some of which are good programs, some of which are not. And I think that we need to work our way through that and make sure we’re doing what’s good for the country, not just the farmers, not just the people of Iowa, not just the people of Tennessee. But good for the country. A sound policy that makes sense. I think there’s a lot more that we could do for the working farmer in terms of ecological programs and environmental programs – land conservation, soil conservation – that would be fair and it would be beneficial to the nation and to Iowa and to our country. We’re going to have to phase out the corporate welfare system we’ve got, however. There are extremely rich people living in skyscrapers in Manhattan that are receiving subsidy payments. I think that’s wrong. I’d put a stop to that if it was within my power. That still continues in this latest Farm Bill and it’s not right. There ought to be a cutoff at some level and it’s not right to have millionaires receiving farm subsidies.
That’s the opposite of pandering, and it’s a damned brave thing to say on a campaign trail.
Because it’s truth – something politicians usually have very little experience with.
Asked about education reform, he said: “It would be easy enough for someone running for president to say: I have a several-point plan to fix our education problem. It’s not going to happen. And it shouldn’t happen from the Oval Office.”
How often do you find honesty in a presidential campaign?
I recommend you read the whole piece. The only nit I have to pick is the repeating of the negative “silly hat” story that wasn’t, but the gist of the whole piece is that Fred Thompson was the best man for the job because he’s the only one qualified who ran and didn’t really want it.