Michael Bates: January 2008 Archives
Urban Review STL: Beware of the Sweetheart Dell?
Millions in incentives and a year's worth of work by Edmonton's economic development team have gone down the drain: Dell has closed its call center there after only three years of operation. Oklahoma City's Dell call center is losing between 200 and 300 as well.
Mark Rubin: Review of Texas-Czech, Bohemian, & Moravian Bands: Historic Recordings 1929-1959
"Texas music has always been music from someplace else that came here and got weird, be it German polkas and Mexican corridos turning into conjunto or Appalachian fiddle tunes and Tin Pan Alley rags mutating into western swing, just the same way as every one from Texas was originally from someplace else and came here and got weird. This latest CD is as fine example of Texas music as is available and belongs in any well rounded record collection."
Republicans Unite; Democrats Divide - Michael Barone (usnews.com)
"Every Republican candidate's strategy failed. Including John McCain's.... Every Democratic candidate's strategy has failed or is failing." A review of how the McCain campaign came back from the dead, and how we got where we are now.
The Campaign Spot on National Review Online: Looking Ahead to Super Tuesday
Jim Geraghty is running the numbers on next Tuesday's events and thinks at the end of the day McCain will wind up with about 500 delegates, Romney with 325, and Huckabee at 230. Click through for state-by-state analysis.
ScrappleFace: Rudy Giuliani's Defective Campaign Aborted Early
Satire: "Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani plans to abort his presidential campaign today after a preliminary test in Florida showed significant defects.... 'It was completely my choice to end it early in the primary cycle, the first trimester of 2008,' said Mr. Giuliani, 'because at this point it's a just cluster of cells with potential, and not yet recognizably organized.'"
Reminds me of that old Emo Phillips "man on a bridge" routine, named by Ship of Fools as the "funniest religious joke of all time."
Name That Theme Song Game - TelevisionTunes.com
How quickly can you identify American TV theme songs? 1494 is my best score for 30 rounds. (Via Mark Evanier.)
Weekly Standard: How Bush Decided on the Surge
Fred Barnes interviews the President and his top advisers to tell the story -- how the idea of the surge was developed and how Bush built consensus among military leaders to move forward with it.
JOLLYBLOGGER: On Identifying Spiritual Gifts
"As far as I am concerned there are three simple ways to understand how you are gifted." Some clear thinking on a confusing topic.
Weekly Standard: Dean Barnett: The Truth About Talk Radio
Dean Barnett on the power and limits of conservative talk radio: "[A]nyone who thinks talk radio leads public opinion also probably believes that trees push the wind.... We're factors in the conversation, but we don't lead it. The interests and concerns of the people lead the conversation. It's truly a bottom-up phenomenon." Via Hugh Hewitt, who adds, "[T]alk radio matters primarily because it brings information to the attention of the audience, information presented with good humor and great timing.... Listeners tune them in for information and entertainment, not for marching orders."
Barnett also writes: "What's more, every talk show host knows that if his show fails to entertain, it will also fail to find and keep an audience. Or at least every successful talk show host knows as much.
"There are some local guys who will spend three hours on a Saturday afternoon carrying on an endless monologue about secular humanism and then head home and angrily ask their wives, 'What's Sean Hannity got that I don't?'"
A very large PDF of the application and analysis for the Super Target development proposed for 101st & Memorial, which is the subject of some controversy with nearby residents.
Old Blue Bus: I Can't Get Enough of That Ah-Ha
Some old 78s of western swing, including Johnny Hicks and his Troubadours, "I Can't Get Enough of That Ah-Ha."
The Top 10 real life Star Trek inventions | NetworkWorld.com Community
Phasers, tractor beams, cloaking devices, maybe even hyperdrive to get us from Earth to Mars in three hours. (Via a set of odd links at NRO's Corner. Don't miss reading about the bionic contact lens.)
An NRO Symposium on Republicans in 2008 on National Review Online
John Hood, chairman and president of the John Locke Foundation, writes: "The conservative movement constitutes an alliance of those who accept unchangeable facts rather than trying to wish fantasy into reality, remake human nature, or avoid economic tradeoffs. Traditionalists embrace timeless morals, even when they deny one immediate gratification. Libertarians embrace the sovereignty of consumer demand and the sometimes-disorienting effects of technological change, even when the result isn't to one's personal liking. And hawks embrace the reality that America lives in a dangerous neighborhood, one full of bullies, pirates, and fanatics who respond to gestures of good will with contempt, larceny, and brutality."
Hood urges against settling for the "most electable" candidate: "To those tempted by these facts to endorse a GOP candidate who dislikes and alienates key elements of the conservative coalition, remember that there are worse things than losing an election. Given the odds, such a desperate gambit will probably still result in a November loss, but with lasting collateral damage to political alliances, institutional credibility, and personal integrity."
Townhall.com: Steve Chapman: The Growing Aversion to Abortion
Progress on the hearts and minds front: "In 2003, Gallup found, one of every three kids from age 13 to 17 said abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. More revealing yet is that 72 percent said abortion is 'morally wrong.'... The report on abortion rates from the Guttmacher Institute suggests that the evolution of attitudes has transformed behavior. Since 1990, the number of abortions has dropped from 1.61 million to 1.21 million. The abortion rate among women of childbearing age has declined by 29 percent.... In 1990, 30.4 percent of pregnancies ended in abortion. Last year, the figure was 22.4 percent."
Townhall.com: Bill Steigerwald: John Norquist and the Lessons of School Choice
Why a Democratic former mayor of Milwaukee and head of the Congress on the New Urbanism supports vouchers and school choice: "I was for vouchers before we established them in Milwaukee. The reason it appeals to me is that it's good for the city, the parents and the kids to have more choices available. Under the old system, before the vouchers, people would shop for school districts. If they had resources, they would tend to move to the school district that was most likely to have the best situation for their kid, which unfortunately often meant moving away from people that were low income.
"When I was mayor of Milwaukee, I wanted people to live in the city -- to want to be in the city -- so the city would be prosperous. I didn't want people to feel sorry for Milwaukee or to look at it as some sort of pathological social problem. I wanted them to look at it as a place where they could get what they wanted in life. So changing the schools was really important and just trying harder under the monopoly system didn't work."
The Wall Street Journal Online: Joel Kotkin: The Rise of Family-Friendly Cities
"Indeed, if you talk with recruiters and developers in the nation's fastest growing regions, you find that the critical ability to lure skilled workers, long term, lies not with bright lights and nightclubs, but with ample economic opportunities, affordable housing and family friendly communities not too distant from work....
"There is a basic truth about the geography of young, educated people. They may first migrate to cities like New York, Los Angeles, Boston or San Francisco. But they tend to flee when they enter their child-rearing years. Family-friendly metropolitan regions have seen the biggest net gains of professionals, largely because they not only attract workers, but they also retain them through their 30s and 40s.
"Advocates of the brew-latté-and-they-will-come approach often point to greater Portland, Ore., which has experienced consistent net gains of educated workers, including families. Yet most of that migration--as well as at least three quarters of the region's population and job growth--has been not to the increasingly childless city, but to the suburban periphery. This pattern holds true in virtually every major urban region."
Drivl.com | The Worst NCAA D-I College Mascots
The University of Tulsa's Cap'n Cane is second worst. "What the he** is this supposed to be?! A bee hive? A tornado? An adobe? A sixth grader's pottery class project? I just. Don't. Get. It. " (I thought his name was Huffy.) (Found on TulsaNow's forum.)
Townhall.com: Andrew Tallman: What Should We Do When We Receive Bad Christmas Gifts?::
"Bad gifts create a sort of crisis, and the relationship can't stay where it is. It must either become stronger or weaker, and ignoring the breach can only make it weaker. Confronting it runs the risk of total ruination, but it also runs the risk of deeper intimacy. So you have to ask yourself a very simple question: Would you rather keep such relationships forever trivial by protecting them from the stress that might break them, or would you rather risk losing them in the hope that you might gain real ones in exchange? Every meaningful relationship I have is so because it survived one or more crises of honesty. The only way to get respect and real love is to tell people the truth. So here's how to do so successfully."
Okie Campaigns: Oklahoma House Speaker Did Not File Income Tax Returns for Two Years
Republican State Reps. Lance Cargill and Don Armes and Democrats Rep. Ryan McMullen, Rep. Jabar Shumate and Sen. Connie Johnson have all been warned by the Oklahoma Tax Commission about failure to file returns. Shumate missed filing his state returns for five of the last nine years.
The Judge Report - Wake Me When It's Over
I feel his pain: "In the name of God, why would anyone vote for Mike Huckabee in a Republican primary? Oh, the democrats field guys like this all the time, political dwarves who are clueless about the great issues and philosophies of the day. Usually they'll win a primary or two and then fade away, as Huckabee surely will as well. But meanwhile his presence has managed to block any potential conservative candidate from saving the party from the RINOs, and probably driven a stake into the Thompson campaign."
Crunchy Con - Rod Dreher: Culture, character, and poverty
A must-read: "This is a sore point with me. What middle-class liberals see as 'liberation' from an oppressive code of sexual behavior amounts to a kind of enslavement of the poor. Middle-class people have greater means, materially and otherwise, to deal with the consequences of their promiscuity, and over time the abandonment of bourgeois values of self-restraint in favor of anarchic underclass values will impoverish the descendants of those who left those values behind. Don't get me wrong, it's still destructive of their soul and character, but for various reasons, the material consequences are mitigated. Not so for the poor, not usually."
"Abandoned tunnels are often the object of urban legend, but Cincinnati is in fact the site of the country's largest abandoned subway tunnel. But 'abandoned' is not quite the word, as construction slowed to a stop in 1925 before even half of the 16 mile line was completed. Seven miles between Cincinnati's central business district and the industrial suburb of Norwood were tunneled, bridged, or graded, but no track was laid and no subway cars were ordered. No passengers ever rode between the six stations that were built." (Via vanshnookenraggen.)
BadTransit: "It is a fairly predictable cycle"
Ridership on the Mass. Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) system dropped by 2.3% in a single year -- 8.7 million rides -- due to fare hikes. (Via vanshnookenraggen.)
Los Angeles Times: Super delegates may sink the Democrats
If no one has a majority of delegates going into the Democratic National Convention, the nominee may be decided by the super delegates, party leaders and elected officials who are not bound to support any candidate. Joshua Spivak says that may undermine the legitimacy of the nomination in the minds of the voting public.
MIT Admissions: Admissions Statistics
Ever wondered what it takes to get into MIT? Here is a statistical profile of last year's admission pool and entering class. Applicants with top scores on SAT and ACT tests still have only about a one in five chance of being offered admission.
Government renames Islamic terrorism as 'anti-Islamic activity' to woo Muslims | the Daily Mail
"Ministers have adopted a new language for declarations on Islamic terrorism. In future, fanatics will be referred to as pursuing 'anti-Islamic activity'." (Via JunkYardBlog.)
JunkYardBlog: How does Vice President Lindsey Graham Strike You?
Ugh. Fred better win Saturday. I have no second choice. "Once he gets the GOP nomination, McCain is done with the base. D-O-N-E. He's got us by the fleshy extremities, because he knows we're not going to defect to Hillary or Obama.... And at the risk of repeating myself, how does Secretary of State Richard Armitage grab you? That backstabbing creep jeopardized the war effort by giving the Left ammunition to go after Rove and Libby when he was the one who fingered Valerie Plame to the press all along. HE'S LEADING MCCAIN'S FOREIGN POLICY TEAM. Great personnel choice, McCain."
TPD Blog: The Devil Went Down to Tulsa...
Apprentice Tulsa police officer Amy Hoehner describes her pepper spray training day: "This was by FAR the worst day of the academy. There is nothing like rubbing cayenne peppers on your face and in your eyes. Oh, and then re-activating it when you get in the shower. Priceless."
Michigan Presidential Primary Facts and Statistics
The on-again, off-again legislative history of the Michigan primary, with past results and interesting trivia. Did you know that Henry Ford won the Republican primary in 1916 and the Democratic primary in 1924? Herbert Hoover finished fourth in the 1920 Republican primary, but won the Democratic primary that year. And Donald Trump won the 2000 Reform Party primary.
ToddSeavey.com: Thompson Unbracketed! (and a review and ranking of all the viable candidates)
Having written off Ron Paul, this libertarian writer considers his options. "...I have little patience for the view, which to me seems naive, that a vote is supposed to be some profound expression of exactly what I believe. Philosophy is a profound expression of exactly what I believe. Blogging is at least a shallow expression of what I believe. Voting is tactical -- I want (to the extent I am, in principle, setting an example for like-minded people) to foster the least-bad outcome, where 'outcome' means all the foreseeable fallout for the rest of time, not just the election itself."
Fact Checker: Huckabee's Cut-and-Paste Job
"Seven of the nine points in the Huckabee [immigration] plan were copied, in some cases almost verbatim, from a plan that [Mark] Krikorian outlined nearly three years ago in the National Review. Rather than hammer out its own immigration policy, the cash-starved Huckabee campaign simply lifted a ready-made one off the shelf.... In Huckabee's defense, it must be noted that his Web site credits Krikorian for some of his ideas on immigration. On Thursday night, however, he implied that it was his own plan, rather than a hasty cut-and-paste job. Authors usually put quotation marks around phrases they copy from other authors. If the governor had said that he had 'created' part of his plan, he would have been correct."
washingtonpost.com: Sebastian Mallaby - A Nobel Laureate's Primary
"Just like badly designed auctions, the primaries encourage 'strategic' behavior that conceals true preferences.... What elections ought to do is discover which candidate would beat each of the other candidates in head-to-head matchups. Eric Maskin, one of last year's Nobel laureates for mechanism design, will suggest how a better system could do that in a lecture Thursday at Georgetown University. Maskin's argument is that voters should list candidates in order of preference, so we wouldn't have to guess whether Clinton would have beaten Obama in a two-person contest."
Would a President Ron Paul be able to return us to constitutional limited government? "Written constitutions were an experiment. The data are in. The experiment has failed. If Dr. Paul would prefer USG to return to the Constitutional interpretation of 1789, or 1889, or 1926, or whenever, he of course is free to say so. And I agree. Certainly, compared to the USG we have today, the structure of 1789 strikes me as quite appealing. But why should we assume that, if Dr. Paul managed to return the US to the Constitution of 1789, it would stay that way? We once had a Constitution of 1789. Then stuff happened. And now we don't. Does this sound like a success to you?" At once thought-provoking and disheartening.
World On the Web: The Burger Kingization of Christianity
"I was having lunch with a friend whose relationship with his wife is incredibly strained. I told him that his wife seems to have a fantasy that he will be dragged off into the woods by a bunch of idealized Pilgrim men, who will proceed to make him into the man she really wants."
The American Spectator: Deroy Murdock: Mitt's Mythical "Mass. Miracle"
"One could take Romney seriously as an architect of economic redevelopment if he had displayed such skills as Massachusetts governor. Instead, his reign was a parade of economic stagnation and retreat. He even advocated an SUV-tax increase that would have hammered the very same domestic automotive industry he now says he champions.... While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years."
The Corner on National Review Online: Count Delegates [David Freddoso]
"While I'm at it, let me make a note about those Iowa delegates that people supposedly won. They did not win them. In fact, in the Republican caucuses (in contrast to the Democrats), there is no relationship between the vote count on caucus night and the allegiance of the precinct delegates who are sent to the March 15 county conventions. The vote count you saw from that night is totally non-binding and comes in a secret ballot. The delegates are elected afterward, when many of the caucus-goers have left."
Christianity Today: Raising Ebenezer
Why we shouldn't purge hymns of unfamiliar words: "This single word [Ebenezer] ushers the worshiper into both the biblical episode and the greater narrative of God's redemptive dealings with his people. It points us, also, to Robinson's dramatic conversion three years before he penned the hymn, inviting us to reflect upon our own stories and to remember God's faithful dealings with us. By removing the word from the hymn, we likely remove it from believers' vocabularies and from our treasury of spiritual resources." (Via JunkYardBlog.)
JunkYardBlog: Hymnblogging: You Learn Something New Every Sunday
What is an "Ebenezer" anyway? "Christianity has a history, just like it has a future. There's a lot of wisdom in the past and we need to try to understand and remember it. Those old hymns are, I think, one of the greatest treasures that the historic church has passed down to us. It's a shame to water them down to fit our current Top-40 sensibilities."
Townhall.com: Kevin McCullough: Justice, finally!
Kevin celebrates the advent of Oklahoma's law against driving slow in the left lane.
flightglobal.com: Quartz Mountain finishes first four aircraft, increases prices
"[Altus,] Oklahoma-based Quartz Mountain Aerospace, a start-up aircraft manufacturer that is building an updated, tricycle version of the 1940s-vintage Luscombe Sedan, has completed and flight tested four aircraft, with nine more aircraft on the assembly line." Global Aviation Partners, a company that leases aircraft to flight schools has purchased the first three years of production, about 500, of the new single-engine aircraft, which will sell for just under $200K.
Dalrymple argument against state subsidies for pop music radio includes this pithy aside: "[D]evelopment aid is the means by which poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries."
"Things you can learn from the music business (as it falls apart)": "Many musicians have understood that all they need to make a (very good) living is to have 10,000 fans. 10,000 people who look forward to the next record, who are willing to trek out to the next concert. Add 7 fans a day and you're done in 5 years. Set for life. A life making music for your fans, not finding fans for your music." (Via Asleep at the Wheel.)
Atomic Trousers: The Woman Who Changed the World
Details from a bitter divorce case opened the door for Barack Obama's rise to the U. S. Senate. "With Barack Obama's meteoric rise topping the news these days, many people have forgotten the bizarre series of events that paved the way to his stunning ascendance. It's especially interesting given that some personal and minor details, thought at the time to be insignificant, could now eventually shape the world we live in - given that Obama has a realistic chance to win the presidency. In retrospect, Obama's presidential run was the candidacy that almost never happened."
Election Data Services: 2007 reapportionment analysis
Which states will gain or lose seats in Congress after the 2010 census, based on 2007 population estimates and population trends? Arizona, Florida, and Texas are the big winners, along with Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah. Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are the losers, with Minnesota right on the edge of losing a seat to Texas or Washington. The report includes how an estimate of how much population each state would need to gain or lose in order to gain or lose its next seat. Oklahoma would need to gain 186,954 people to get its sixth congressional seat back. Increasing the U. S. House to 506 members would guarantee that no state loses as seat (and Oklahoma would get its sixth seat back). (Via Election Law Blog.)
James Lileks on the choice of a president
"In the end, I think of the person I'd like to see behind the big desk the night the President addresses the nation after the nutwads pull off something big. It's certainly not Ron Paul. He'd probably bitch us out for starting it all by enraging the Barbary Pirates."
internetmonk.com: The Temptation to Quit
Resignation as revenge: "Quitting looks good at times. It promises a jolt of power, self-determination and the ability to demonstrate to others the depths of grievance or upset....Quitting suddenly in ministry is very painful to those left behind in shock. It sends messages that are lasting and serious. 'You don't love us.' 'You told us to not give up, and now you've given up.' 'You left us alone, and took the exit out of our lives.' 'Did God tell you to do this? Why?'"
RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog: Is 1992 the model?
If Hillary Clinton loses New Hampshire and loses the aura of in-Evita!-bility, she might take comfort by the fact that Bill Clinton didn't win a primary until Georgia on Super Tuesday in 1992. But Jay Cost says this year's Republican race looks more like the Democrats in 1992, when early primaries were split between several candidates and no one emerged early on as an overwhelming favorite, allowing Clinton to prevail after several early losses.
Team Telegraph Day 2: Learn how to be your own best friend - Telegraph
I have this person who follows me about all day, hurling insults. "Idiot!" she exclaims when I delete the wrong email.... She certainly doesn't build up my confidence or make me feel good about myself in any way. And yet I find it very hard to shake her off.... I associate [my real best friends] with good times and bright visions, while this other person only ever reminds me of failures and broken dreams. The thing is, this other person is me. She is an agglomerate of all the negative judgments, midnight terrors and critical harshness that I have ever experienced. And the really mad thing is that she is the one I listen to."
Redstate: Duncan Hunter Cries Wolf, Beclowns Self
"Because really, the only announcement anyone is interested in hearing anymore from Duncan Hunter's campaign is the one that says the campaign is over. So, the press and pundits tuned in to see what Duncan had to say in closing. Instead, we got treated to video of some clown griping about being left out of the New Hampshire debates despite winning a delegate in Wyoming. It was an ugly, petulant, whining performance from a man clearly desperate for media attention. Sad, because we've come to expect better from a guy who we all thought was a serious guy focused on the issues."
"Sen. Thompson positioned himself as willing to serve, not for an enlarged ego, but out of a deep desire to serve his nation. He has desire to make our nation better for his children and grandchildren. Far from a slick Branson like presentation, he presented himself as a dedicated patriot willing to serve if we, the American people, were willing to have him do so."
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTU3YmRmNmM0OTM2MzE4MjE5NmVkMDY3ZjQ3ZGEzYzI=">The Corner on National Review Online: A Romney Supporter... [Rich Lowry]
Why Romney can lose New Hampshire and keep going, according to one of his supporters who e-mailed Rich Lowry: "When everyone said 'Romney has to win the first two states and catapult' it was at the time that Giuliani had 45-60% national numbers and the conventional wisdom was that the ONLY way for Romney to catch Giuliani was to win IA and NH.... Simply, the catapult meme means nothing now that Giuliani has been knocked down nationally."
The Corner on National Review Online: Thanks, Mitt [Byron York]
"Mitt Romney was [Des Moines radio station] WHO's second biggest advertiser in 2007. Second biggest - behind the number-one advertiser, Monsanto farm chemicals, and ahead of the number-three advertiser, Bayer farm chemicals. WHO is by far the biggest radio station in Iowa, and Romney pumped about $1 million into its bank account last year."
The GOP's Time for Choosing - WSJ.com
Would Huckabee take the Republican Party in the direction of the Christian Democratic parties in Europe? "The political debate for the last decade has been between a Democratic Party which essentially argues America should be more like Europe -- more statist, more secular, more pacifist -- and a Reagan-influenced GOP which argues America should be more like its historical self. The Mike Huckabee/Christian Democratic movement is an attempt to break this logjam by looking to a different European model, one that says we can be more statist without being more secular or pacifist. In deciding how to react to the Huckabee challenge, Reagan's GOP descendants now face their own time for choosing."
The Judge Report - The Judge Does Manchester
Robert N. Going visited New Hampshire to pick up a Fred '08 button and to attend a National Review symposium, featuring Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, and Rob Long. "Not since I saw The Producers on Broadway with the original cast have I laughed so hard over two hours." He also peeked in next door on the preliminaries to a Hillary! rally featuring Slick Willie: "This was an all-union event, with the crowd bussed in at union expense apparently for the sole purpose of cheering Bill for the cameras. We had arrived early and every once in a while we would hear all this hootin' and hollerin' outside in the hallway and when we checked it out, nothing was really happening except there were people teaching the crowd how to hoot and holler."
despair.com: Parody Motivator Generator
Do-It-Yourself demotivational posters.
New York Times: David Brooks: The Two Earthquakes
"Huckabee won because he tapped into realities that other Republicans have been slow to recognize. First, evangelicals have changed. Huckabee is the first ironic evangelical on the national stage. He's funny, campy (see his Chuck Norris fixation) and he's not at war with modern culture." Campy?
SMS gateway - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
How to use e-mail to send a text message (SMS) to a mobile phone, for a variety of mobile phone systems worldwide.
Meghan Cox Gurdon: Calm is out of style on the hustings - Examiner.com
"A little over 16 years ago, in the week before my wedding, I began to notice a certain gloom settling over my husband-to-be. It was disconcerting. Wasn't this supposed to be the giddiest time of our lives? If he couldn't be enthusiastic now, on the very threshold of married life, did he really want to cross it?
"My fiance sought to explain. He wanted the outcome, but hated the process. He wanted us to be married, not to get married.
"In political terms, he was an excellent candidate ideally suited to the office, who dreaded the public rigmarole required to secure the job -- and it showed. Had I been an Iowa Republican, rather than a bride, I might well have caucused with someone a bit more fervent -- and for me it would have been a mistake."
Hot Air: Video: Shooting stars, explained
An astronaut explains the connection between the space station waste elimination system and the bright streaks you might see in the night sky.
The American Spectator: Quin Hillyer: Angry Old Man
"Such regular muggings of conservatives [on campaign finance reform and judicial nominations] by McCain helps explain why so many in the conservative movement are unmoved by McCain's story of personal heroism, his stances against wasteful pork barrel spending, and his undeniable leadership on matters of defense.
"In contrast to McCain and Huckabee, the three other 'major' GOP candidates -- Giuliani, Romney, and Fred Thompson -- all actually governed very much as conservatives when they had the chance. And Thompson has a record of both talking and walking the solid conservative line that is almost entirely unblemished by any heresies against the most basic of conservative issue stances."
Tonight, Madison County, Iowa, Republicans will gather to hear speeches supporting each presidential candidate before breaking out into their precinct meetings. Here's the speech that a Fred Thompson supporter plans to deliver at that event.
Iowa caucus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Good overview of the process, history, and development of the significance of the caucus, with results for each party going back to 1972 for the Democrats.
Fred File - Question on Global Warming in Waterloo IA
Question to Fred Thompson: Will you have the spine to stand up to the global warming alarmists? Part of Fred's answer: "Whether or not this is a part of an era, we do not know the extent to which man has caused this. We do not know what the results would be for certain remedies that people have suggested. What we do know is that if we do things precipitously, before we have the answers to some of these questions, it could ruin our own economy while the entire world just kind of took a pass at it. So we can't have that and we are not going to have that."
Townhall.com: Andrew Tallman: What if Mormonism Was the Issue?
"When I go into a voting booth, I'm not picking a friend or a conversation partner. I'm picking a leader. I want leaders that I would trust my money and my children with ... since I sort of am. And that means that I consider a person's religious views. Because religion matters, and it matters to me. Why is that so wrong?... You seem to think that simply because it is illegal to require a religious test for office that it should also be illegal to consider a candidate's religion. Should it also be illegal to ask about it or for him to describe it to us?"
Bill Baker: CONSOLIDATION AND CLEAR CHANNEL AM RADIO STATIONS
Almost three years old, but interesting, with a list of clear-channel stations, their owners, and which major national talk shows are on which clear-channel stations: "This is an examination of the increasing concentration of control of the most important AM radio stations in the United States. Now the largest conglomerate owns 16 of the prime 58 high power AM stations in the United States, whereas in pre-consolidation days before the 1990s, the most owned was four.... An examination of the station websites indicates Rush Limbaugh, a conservative is now carried on 25 of the 58 U.S. clear channel stations. Conservative Sean Hannity is on 15."
Technology Review: "You Don't Understand Our Audience"
Former NBC Dateline reporter John Hockenberry, now with the MIT Media Lab, has a lengthy story about the shortsightedness of his former employer: "I knew it was pretty much over for television news when I discovered in 2003 that the heads of NBC's news division and entertainment division, the president of the network, and the chairman all owned TiVos, which enabled them to zap past the commercials that paid their salaries. 'It's such a great gadget. It changed my life,' one of them said at a corporate affair in the Saturday Night Live studio. It was neither the first nor the last time that a television executive mistook a fundamental technological change for a new gadget."
LIBERATION ARMY AGAINST FREEDOM
A series of fireworks safety ads in the Netherlands features this fake terrorist group that seeks "extermination of roots of freedoms worldwide with the aid of great fireworks" but mostly succeeds in blowing themselves up, Wile E. Coyote style. Those who make a living at being offended by such things are offended. (Via JunkYardBlog.)
The Corner on National Review Online: Rudy's Official Strategy [Lisa Schiffren]
Why Rudy Giuliani is writing off everything before Florida and isn't worried about his falling poll numbers everywhere.
Instapundit.com - FRED THOMPSON: Too sane to be President?
"Thompson is running the kind of campaign -- substantive, policy-laden, not based on gimmicks or sound-bites -- that pundits and journalists say they want, but he's getting no credit for it from the people who claim that's what they want. It's like in Tootsie when Dustin Hoffman tries doing the things he's heard women say they want from men, only to discover that they don't really want those things at all...."
The New Republic: Young and in Love
Eve Fairbanks spends time with volunteers for Ron Paul's Christmas Vacation in Iowa: "Actually, if the candidates were judged by the quality of their young supporters, I would now be voting for Ron Paul. Beyond just being polite, the Paul volunteers have an incredible passion for the technical mechanics of the American constitution and body of laws."
Ace of Spades HQ: Giuliani Cooked? & Other Campaign News
Russ from Winterset: "It's not about Huck or his personal attributes. Any candidate with evangelical cred would have taken off in Iowa this year. The party's pissed that the so-con candidate for governor in '06 lost in the primary to Jim Nussle, a RINO congressman who ran a lack-luster campaign. They feel (and I can't totally blame them for this, unfortunately) that they've been told to shut up and vote for people who don't support the so-con agenda on abortion & gay marriage enough times that a bunch of them are going off the reservation to support a candidate that meets their approval on these two issues. It doesn't help that a county judge in Polk County (where Des Moines, the State Capital is located) ruled this summer that Iowa's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and allowed one couple to marry before overturning his own decision & sending it up the chain to the appeals court."
DMR on 527s: "It should be beyond question that any individuals or groups should be able to spend their own money to support whatever cause or candidate they wish without having to get permission from the government. At the most, they should be required to declare the source of their funding. And the best way to respond to those who lie or distort in the exercise of free speech is with speech that corrects the record."
Ace of Spades HQ: Intriguing piece of information
Russ from Winterset, Ace's correspondent from Iowa, hears that the Madison County GOP chairman's phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from Catholic and Evangelical Protestant Democrats curious about details of the Republican caucus. This entry also explains how the Madison County precinct caucus will be organized, with all the precincts meeting in classrooms at Winterset High School. (Madison County has only 10 precincts: Winterset, the county seat, is divided into two precincts, and the county's seven other cities and 16 townships are combined to form the other eight precincts. Compare that to more than 183 precincts in Polk County, home to Des Moines.)
RealClearPolitics - Politics Nation: Republicans Battle For Show
Why third place in Iowa may be enough.
"Now, something as absurd and counterdemocratic as this can be so only if the media say it is so, and every four years for as long as I can remember, the profession has been promising to swear off the bottle and stop treating the Iowa caucuses as if they were a primary, let alone an election."
No Blog of Significance: "Negative. You Are Not in My Chain of Command"
Part of a reflection on Frank Schaeffer's memoir, Crazy for God: "I find the doctrines of scripture's inerrancy and sufficiency tremendously liberating. Man always wants to give you one more hoop to jump through, one more command to follow, one more invented doctrine to believe. Man likes to make things up as he goes, to inflate his sense of self-importance and to acquire power. The one thing you cannot do, if you are tired of being told to believe or to do nonsense, is to diminish the authority of the Word of God. It is the only thing that keeps the nutcases off your back..."
BnBstar bed and breakfast World Travel Game
A cool 12-level game testing your ability to quickly place cities, world capitals, and other landmarks on a world map. (Via TulsaNow forum.)
