Tag: politics

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Shooting for South Carolina.

I believe Fred Thompson’s campaign strategy hinges on a good finish in South Carolina. If you really want to see Thompson on the 2008 ballot, he needs your support. I’d never donated to a campaign before, but I threw him $100 about a week before the Iowa Caucus. He’s trying to raise $540k by January 11 for the Jan. 19 South Carolina primary. Christmas bills are rolling in, and I am, somehow or another, going to the Second Amendment Blog Bash in May, but I’m going to chip in another $50. As of now he has about $270k.

By my count there are 135 bloggers who have announced that they support Fred Thompson listed at Flopping Aces. If we average $50 each, that’s another $6,750.

Representative democracy works for those that show up.

Show up.

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Yes, That Would Explain Part of His Appeal…

This week’s edition of Time has an interesting op-ed, Why They Really Run, by Michael Kinsley. An excerpt:

There are presidential candidates for virtually every taste, yet citizens find the menu inadequate. They tell pollsters they are discontented with the selection and generally sick of politics and politicians. In part, they are just being polite. The notion that people hate politics and that politicians are all phonies is so ingrained that to tell a pollster that, yeah, politicians are O.K. and the system is not so bad would almost be a violation of democratic etiquette.

Yet voters are also right to feel that something is phony about democratic politics and that it’s getting worse. Even a candidate who agrees with you on all important issues and always has—no dreaded flip-flops—is forced by the conventions of politics to be disingenuous about at least one core issue: why he or she is running.

Ladies and gentlemen, they are running because they are ambitious. No, really, they are. You probably suspected as much. And yet you would abandon any candidate who dared to admit this, or at least they all believe that you would. We all are told at our high school graduations to be ambitious, then for the rest of our lives it becomes a shameful secret. Ambition can take many forms. Four decades ago, Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary, created a sensation with a book called Making It that revealed how even intellectuals are ambitious. But the purest form of ambition is political ambition, because it represents a desire to rule over other people.

When you hear the presidential candidates carrying on about democracy and freedom, do you ever wonder what they would be saying if they had been born into societies with different values? What if Mitt Romney had come to adulthood in Nazi Germany? What if Hillary Clinton had gone to Moscow State University and married a promising young apparatchik? What if Barack Obama had been born in Kenya, like his father, where even now people are slaughtering one another over a crooked election? Which of them would be the courageous dissidents, risking their lives for the values they talk about freely—in every sense—on the campaign trail? And which would be playing the universal human power game under the local rules, whatever they happened to be?

Without naming names, I believe that most of them would be playing the game. What motivates most politicians, especially those running for President, is closer to your classic will-to-power than to a deep desire to reform the health-care system. Alpha males are alpha males (and alpha females, ditto): it’s true among apes, and it’s true among humans.

Compare and contrast (from just prior to the Iowa Caucus):

I left government and I and my family have made sacrifices to be sitting here today. I haven’t had any income for a long time because I figured to be clean, you’ve got to cut everything off. I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a TV show. I had a contract with ABC radio…and so forth. A man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing if he didn’t want to do it.

I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president they can have.

When this talk first originated from people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up and of course, you always look better from a distance.

But most of those people are still there. I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage really has to be talked into the marriage, it probably ain’t going to be a good deal. But if you mutually decide it’s going to be a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then we have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.

I’m offering myself up. I’m saying that I have the background, the capability and concern to do this and do it for the right reasons. I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.

Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.

I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly. I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I’ve been as successful as I’ve been in everything that I’ve done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins in a state that bill Clinton carried twice. I’ve never had an acting lesson. I guess that’s obvious by people who’ve watched me…

When I did it, I did it. Wasn’t just a lark. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. But I’ve always been a little more laid back than most. I’m only consumed by very, very few things. Politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.

If people really want in their president super type-A personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they win the presidency of the United States, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and didn’t talk you out of anything. I honestly want – I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances [than] achieving the Presidency of the United States under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself.

Fred Thompson doesn’t sound phoney to me. And he also doesn’t sound like someone with an overactive will-to-power and a deep-seated need to rule over the rest of the population. I hope he can hang in long enough to overcome the media resistance to his campaign, and build momentum. He’s already got a pretty good following in the blogosphere.

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Dr. Helen on Obama

When I listen to people talk about Obama, I hear nothing but vague ideals mentioned such as “change, new ideas, something different than the mainstream, fresh voices,” yada yada yada. But one thing I don’t hear a lot about are his views on policy.

Interesting. And so is the link to a Dick Meyers CBS piece describing Obama as “a Rorschach test”.

CNN: The Most Trusted Name in News

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If they say it, it must be true, no?

Hillary Clinton
Voted for a 10-year extension of the assault weapons ban. Voted for requiring extensive background checks at gun shows. Supports licensing and registration of handguns, mandatory trigger locks for handguns, holding adults responsible for their children’s use of guns, raising the youth handgun ban from age 18 to 21, limiting gun sales to one per month and allowing the Consumer Products Safety Commission (to) regulate guns.

—

John Edwards
Voted for a 10-year extension of the assault weapons ban. Voted for requiring extensive background checks at gun shows.

—

Barack Obama
Supports extending the assault weapons ban. Supports national law against carrying concealed weapons, with exceptions for retired police and military personnel. Supports limiting gun sales to one per month.

—

Bill Richardson
Opposed the 1994 assault weapons ban, but voted for the crime bill that included it. Later voted to repeal the assault weapons ban. As governor, signed law allowing adults 21 and older who pass background checks and take a gun safety class to carry a concealed weapon. Has a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Says he has had a gun in the house during his adult lifetime. Has an A rating from the NRA.

—

Rudy Giuliani
Has supported gun control measures as New York City mayor, but says a person’s individual right to bear arms should only be limited for strict Constitutional reasons. As a Senate candidate, supported licensing and registration of handguns and extended background checks at gun shows. As mayor, signed legislation requiring trigger locks for all gun sales. Banned sale of toy guns that resemble real guns. Supported the federal assault weapons ban.

—

Mike Huckabee
Opposes reauthorization of the assault weapons ban. Opposes mandatory trigger locks for handguns. Opposes waiting periods for gun purchases. Owns a variety of firearms. NRA member. Has a concealed carry permit.

—

John McCain
Sponsored legislation requiring background checks at gun shows. Voted against a 10-year extension of the assault weapons ban. Opposed legislation requiring trigger locks for handguns. Opposed 1994 crime bill, which contained the assault weapons ban. Has a C+ rating from the NRA.

—

Mitt Romney
As governor, signed into law a permanent ban on assault weapons. Supported the 1994 federal assault weapons ban. Supported the Brady Bill requiring waiting periods for handgun purchases, but says it is no longer needed due to instantaneous background checks. Joined the NRA as a lifetime member in 2006.

—

Fred Thompson
Opposed the 1994 federal assault weapons ban and opposes a 10-year extension of the ban. Opposed 3-day gun show background check requirement in favor of a 24-hour check. Opposes mandatory trigger locks for handguns. Says gun-control measures do not reduce crime.

Obama supports a federal law prohibiting concealed carry? I did not know that. One more reason to oppose him.

KevinLeave a comment

The 2007 TSM Year In Review:.

In a rehash of last year’s first post of the year, I again offer a month-by-month retrospective of posts for those of you suffering recovering from the evening’s festivities. Nothing to overstress your gray matter.

January of 2006 brought the conclusion of another of my exchanges with the forces of evil anti-gun “experts” who seem to have no problem getting column space in the local (and sometimes national) press. This time it was John D. Kelly IV, a physician in Philadelphia who places the blame for Philly’s skyrocketing homicide problem on (as always) the easy target – guns. The concluding piece of this three-parter was I’m Finished with THIS Particular Windmill…

February brought us The Great Zumbo Incident of 2007, and much sound and fury ensued across the blogosphere and into the real world. My post of choice for this month is The Sport of Kings. It was a difficult call, but this one gets the nod.

March brought the D.C. Federal Court of Appeals Parker v D.C. decision, and this time the choice was simple: Light a Seegar, it’s the Best Birthday Present EVER! The reaction of our opponents was swift and predictable, so I got some fisks in that month, too.

April was another story. That month brought the Virginia Tech massacre. But instead of bolstering the gun-control side I think it made a lot more people understand the realities of life, so again the choice was simple – The Right to Feel Safe. There isn’t one. You can choose to address your safety, or ignore it, but signs saying “Gun Free Zone” only disarm the people you don’t need to worry about.

May was a more normal month, but AlGore published a new book about how stupid we all are, and Time published an excerpt, so I fisked it in Al Gore’s Internet.

In June I was busy and didn’t post much, but there were a couple that I think deserve re-reading. The first was about a defensive shooting in which we got a little more background information than normal – An Update on the Cape Coral Defensive Shooting. And another on someone who finally decided that feeling safe was their own responsibility – Ignorance = Fear. Education is the Key.

In July a Connecticut family found out that their safe, quiet neighborhood, wasn’t, and a popular and respected physician lost his family in about the most horrible way possible. I wrote about it, and the community reaction, in Awakenings.

In not-so-related news, I bought my first firearm of the year in July. My apologies for slacking, but I did change jobs in April.

August brought a reminder of why I will never license nor register my firearms. I also discovered that my new (to me) pistol didn’t work, but that was OK, because I won her sister.

In September I did a rather long and detailed post on introductory handloading that has proven quite popular – probably more because of the cost of factory ammunition than my writing skills.

October brought us the Second Annual Gunblogger’s Rendezvous which I enjoyed very much, but if comments are any judge, my post The Mystery of Government was more popular.

November brought my third gun for the year (I want to buy one-gun-a-month, but my income won’t support that!) but the most popular post (by commentary) was a remarkably short one, for me: Why the Left Believes the Media is “Right-Wing” I blame credit commenter Markadelphia for the really long comment threads over the last few months. I gigged him over a post of his from the Great Zumbo Incident and he followed me home!

December brought another überpost, this one inspired by a film recommended by Markadelphia – Why We Fight. It’s probably the longest thing I’ve written here in one piece, but I’ve gotten good feedback on it.

And, to end the year, I received an Instalanche! (OK, so it was a YouTube video I found elsewhere, but Glenn linked to me! Hahahahah! 2,000+ hits in one day! I realize this is nothing for big-time bloggers, but for lil’ old me, it’s a lot!)

My best wishes to you all for a happy, healthy, and prosperous new year. Remember, it’s going to be nothing but politics until November, so buy aspirin, Pepto Bismol, waders, gloves, and ear and nose plugs. It’s going to get thick and deep.

KevinLeave a comment

Fred Thompson As Himself.

Q: (Courtesy ABC News) My only problem with you and why I haven’t thrown all my support behind you is that I don’t know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?

That is a very good question, not because its difficult to answer, but I’m gonna answer it in a little different way than what you might expect.

In the first place, I got into the race about the time people normally get into… get into it. The fact of the matter is people get into it a lot earlier than they used to. For some of them, they were juniors in high school.

The first place, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. I wouldn’t be doing this. I grew up in very modest circumstances. I left government and I and my family have made sacrifices to be sitting here today. I haven’t had any income for a long time because I figured to be clean, you’ve got to cut everything off. I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a TV show. I had a contract with ABC radio…and so forth. A man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing if he didn’t want to do it.

I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don’t do it. I want the people to have the best president they can have.

When this talk first originated from people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up and of course, you always look better from a distance.

But most of those people are still there. I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage really has to be talked into the marriage, it probably ain’t going to be a good deal. But if you mutually decide it’s going to be a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then we have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.

I’m offering myself up. I’m saying that I have the background, the capability and concern to do this and do it for the right reasons. I’m not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I’d make a good president.

Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.

I don’t know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don’t know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it’s all about fire in the belly. I’m not sure in the world we live in today it’s a good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I’ve been as successful as I’ve been in everything that I’ve done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins in a state that bill Clinton carried twice. I’ve never had an acting lesson. I guess that’s obvious by people who’ve watched me…

When I did it, I did it. Wasn’t just a lark. Anything that’s worth doing is worth doing well. But I’ve always been a little more laid back than most. I’m only consumed by very, very few things. Politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.

If people really want in their president super type-A personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they win the presidency of the United States, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain’t that guy. So I hope I’ve discussed that and didn’t talk you out of anything. I honestly want – I can’t imagine a worse set of circumstances [than] achieving the Presidency of the United States under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself.

(Via Redstate)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VblJq4j0_SE&rel=1&w=425&h=355]

(Via Instapundit)

No wonder the media powers-that-be fear him.

KevinLeave a comment

Bloggers: The New Watchdogs.

We may not be the Gatekeepers (we tore the gates down), but we’re the watchdogs of both old and new media. Three examples:

Earlier this week Roger Simon of The Politico wrote a very negative piece on a campaign stop by Fred Thompson. The Riehl World View examined his story, and the CBS video, and called foul. Instapundit picked it up, and that, as they say, was that. (UPDATE: It ain’t over yet.)

Congress passes a gun bill, HR 2640. Nobody much hears about it except us gunnies. It’s a compete oddity – supported by the Brady Campaign and the NRA. So, of course the (only gun) Violence (counts) Policy Center opines in opposition, as does the Gun Owners of America, and the Brady Center for the Prevention of Gun Ownership claims that the law does a lot of things it doesn’t. Who do you hear about this from? Not the legacy media. You hear about it from gunbloggers – people who, you know, actually understand the topic on which they write. Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell disassembles the GOA argument, and Say Uncle counters both the VPC and Paul Helmke.

If you want to know this stuff, the New York Times isn’t going to tell you.

Third one: While Dennis Kucinich has about as good a shot at the Oval Office as I do, he is still a sitting Congressman. It’s good to know what our elected officials really think and do.

It would seem that someone doesn’t want us to know some interesting things about Mr. Kucinich, according to David Drake, and he’s got the screenshots to prove it.

The old saying is true: the internet treats censorship as damage and simply routes around it. And, as Tam recently said, “The internet, much like Soylent Green, is people.” People with voices we never had before.

No wonder governments fear the Internet.

KevinLeave a comment

South Park on the Mormon Religion.

As I mentioned below in Everything I Needed to Know About Mormons I Learned on South Park, Matt and Trey did a fairly accurate recollection of the history of Joseph Smith and the creation of the Book of Mormon in a South Park episode. Apparently search engines work, because I received this commercial email from the marketing firm 360i a couple of days later:

Hello,

I noticed your post from a few days ago about the Romney Mormon speech and how everything you needed know about Mormonism you learned from South Park. I definitely have to say that’s true for me too 🙂

I know you’re out of town right now, but I wanted to let you know that the folks over at Comedy Central’s Indecision 2008 blog thought that, in light of today’s big speech, they’d resurrect the classic episode.

Check out these (historically accurate, I swear) South Park clips:
http://www.indecision2008.com/blog.jhtml?c=v&m=93189

Feel free to share with your readers, and let me know what you think!

Cheers,
Orli Sharaby
360i on behalf of Comedy Central

Sure enough, there are three short clips, so if anyone’s interested, please enjoy.

But bear in mind Gary’s admonition.

KevinLeave a comment

Everything I Needed to Know About Mormons.I Learned on South Park

I listen to the Hugh Hewitt show on my 45-50 minute drive home every afternoon. My options are Mark Levin, Hugh, or Michael Savage, unless I want to listen to music. Occasionally I do listen to music, but I find talk radio more interesting. Generally. (Mark Levin’s voice is fingernails on a chalkboard to me, and I’d rather bathe vigorously with sulfuric acid and stainless steel wool than listen to Savage.)

Hugh is fully in the tank for Mitt Romney for President, so he spends a lot of time talking about his guy. Apparently Romney is going to give a speech later this week which is going to be on the topic of his religion as it relates to his candidacy. I guess it’s a point of dispute with some since Romney’s a Mormon. Anyway, Hugh, outraged, played a sound-bite of CNN’s Jack Cafferty sounding off about the upcoming speech. There’s a clip of it up at RadioBlogger. Let’s see if I can transcribe it:

The Mormon Church is shrouded in a certain amount of mystery, and, and secrecy – if you’re not a Mormon you can’t go into the temples – If he doesn’t address the Mormon aspect in this speech then he might as well not give it. We’ve, we’ve got a poll that shows about one-fifth of prospective voters that say they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is a Mormon than they would for a candidate who isn’t. It’s the Mormon in Mitt Romney that matters to America’s voters, and if he’s not going to lift some of the veil and explain away some of the mystery that surrounds his religion, which as Gloria points out is a very small percentage of the population of this country – it’s not like he’s a Catholic or a Protestant or a Lutheran or a Methodist or a Baptist – there aren’t that many Mormons and there’s a lot of questions surrounding that church. He needs to address that or this speech is a waste of time.

Wow. There’s a lot of… idiocy there. For one thing, Jack, Lutherans, Methodists, and Baptists are all Protestants. Second, there aren’t that many Jews in this country either. Did Joe Lieberman need to make a speech explaining Judaism to America? You know, about baking the blood of Gentile babies into bread and such? Insofar as I am aware, if you are not a Muslim, you’re not supposed to enter a Mosque (though I could be wrong on that one.)

But in point of fact, the Mormon religion is not shrouded in mystery, nor is it all that secret. You see, everything you need to know about Mormonism has been (rather accurately, from what I’ve been able to determine) explained in a single half-hour television show – South Park. In fact, you can still download the 2003 episode and watch it on your computer if you’d like!

The episode spends about 90% of its airtime reciting and ridiculing the history and beliefs of the Church of Latter Day Saints, with quite good effect I must add.

But it is the ending of that episode that I was reminded of when I heard Jack Cafferty’s idiocy. During the episode, Mormon beliefs and history are explained to the character Stan, who is visiting the family of the new kid at school, Gary. After listening and ridiculing “The Story of Joseph Smith” as related by Gary’s father, Gary explains patiently to Stan:

Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life. and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don’t care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that’s stupid, I still choose to believe in it. All I ever did was try to be your friend, Stan, but you’re so high and mighty you couldn’t look past my religion and just be my friend back. You’ve got a lot of growing up to do, buddy.

Now I am an atheist, as I’ve made plain on more than a couple of occasions. To some extent this whole thing is, to me, an argument over who has the better imaginary friend. But I do recognize that I am a member of a very small group as well. I won’t be voting for Mitt, but not because he’s a Mormon. I won’t be voting for Huckabee, but not because he’s a Baptist minister. (Actually, I can’t vote for either of them since I’m registered as a Democrat in Arizona.) The fact that these men believe in an invisible friend – however devoutly – is not really germane to me, though.

But Jack Cafferty? He’s got a lot of growing up to do, too.