This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "Lance Corporal Donald Hogan, Marine Hero" by The Mellow Jihadi, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Dave Gaubatz's post "Muslim Children in America are Being Taught to Hate" over at Family Security Matters. Congrats!
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, January 29, 2012
Red Tails
I keep seeing ads for this new war movie called Red Tails... looks liks the guys over at Red Letter Media didn't care for it at all:
Hmmm, think maybe I'll skip that one.
Hmmm, think maybe I'll skip that one.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Mitt vs. Newt
As I have said before, Mitt Romney is far from perfect, but I could probably live with having him as the GOP nominee. But Newt Gingrich recently won big in South Carolina and has endorsements from Rick Perry and Fred Thompson, and even got a quasi-endorsement from Sarah Palin, so there is still a fair chance that Newt could wind up being the nominee.
I think that's what the race has come down to, a choice between Mitt and Newt. Even though Rick Santorum still has respectable poll numbers, I don't really see how he could win... but his endorsement just might end up swinging things one way or the other, if he ever decides to drop out.
As far as Newt goes, I'm still very concerned about some of the positions he has taken on the issue of illegal immigration. I think Newt's "immigration boards" proposal will eventually lead to the complete unravelling of his campaign... if not now in the primaries, then sometime in the general election after it is too late to do anything about it. Some sort of implosion is inevitable, especially now that he has made the mistake of trying to call Romney anti-immigrant. (Newt may be trying to backpedal now, but so did Rick Perry after his "heartless" remark... and how well did that work out for Perry?)
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are both deeply flawed candidates, but I think Newt has flaws that will be much harder for him to overcome. As much fun as it is to watch Newt stick his thumb in the media's eye, I'm really not looking forward to the prospect of him being attacked by Obama from the right on the issue of illegal immigration... not to mention the plethora of attack ads that will be calling him a hypocrite for stepping out on his own wife while presiding over the Clinton impeachment.
Update: Here's some video taken from the Florida debate:
I think Newt comes off terribly here in his exchange with Romney, despite getting a few cheers at first when he mentions wanting English as the official language. In fact, he came off so terribly that now his aides are trying to claim that the audience was unfairly packed with Romney supporters.
Update: Here's another feisty exchange between Mitt and Newt, this one about Newt's proposal to build a colony on the moon:
Again, I don't think Newt comes off very well here... though I don't think this will hurt him nearly as much as the illegal immigration stuff.
I think that's what the race has come down to, a choice between Mitt and Newt. Even though Rick Santorum still has respectable poll numbers, I don't really see how he could win... but his endorsement just might end up swinging things one way or the other, if he ever decides to drop out.
As far as Newt goes, I'm still very concerned about some of the positions he has taken on the issue of illegal immigration. I think Newt's "immigration boards" proposal will eventually lead to the complete unravelling of his campaign... if not now in the primaries, then sometime in the general election after it is too late to do anything about it. Some sort of implosion is inevitable, especially now that he has made the mistake of trying to call Romney anti-immigrant. (Newt may be trying to backpedal now, but so did Rick Perry after his "heartless" remark... and how well did that work out for Perry?)
Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are both deeply flawed candidates, but I think Newt has flaws that will be much harder for him to overcome. As much fun as it is to watch Newt stick his thumb in the media's eye, I'm really not looking forward to the prospect of him being attacked by Obama from the right on the issue of illegal immigration... not to mention the plethora of attack ads that will be calling him a hypocrite for stepping out on his own wife while presiding over the Clinton impeachment.
Update: Here's some video taken from the Florida debate:
I think Newt comes off terribly here in his exchange with Romney, despite getting a few cheers at first when he mentions wanting English as the official language. In fact, he came off so terribly that now his aides are trying to claim that the audience was unfairly packed with Romney supporters.
Update: Here's another feisty exchange between Mitt and Newt, this one about Newt's proposal to build a colony on the moon:
Again, I don't think Newt comes off very well here... though I don't think this will hurt him nearly as much as the illegal immigration stuff.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
The Council Has Spoken!
This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "The Talking Points Meme" by The Right Planet, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Congressman Allen West's post "Mr. President, please don't play the race card in 2012..." over at his Facebook page. Congrats!
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Supply and Demand
Comcast has a great feature called On Demand that lets you watch shows whenever you want... well, it's great when they happen to have what you want to see, not so great when they don't. They have tons and tons of shows listed in the On Demand menu, most of which I never even heard of, and yet there are many times when very popular shows aren't listed.
And what gets listed changes all the time, with very little rhyme or reason to it... one season House is not available, the next it is. Chuck was available, but then it mysteriously disappeared from the On Demand menu after a mid-season break. You just never know what shows are going to be available or for how long... it's very frustrating.
Are all cable providers this flaky about their On Demand shows, or am I just unlucky?
And what gets listed changes all the time, with very little rhyme or reason to it... one season House is not available, the next it is. Chuck was available, but then it mysteriously disappeared from the On Demand menu after a mid-season break. You just never know what shows are going to be available or for how long... it's very frustrating.
Are all cable providers this flaky about their On Demand shows, or am I just unlucky?
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Council Has Spoken!
This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "The Tale Of The Swine" by Joshuapundit, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Fred Segel and Joel Kotkin's post "The New Authoritarianism" over at The City Journal. Congrats!
Wow!
These guys are pretty amazing:
It isn't just the novelty of having five people on one guitar, I think they actually sound better than the original song.
It isn't just the novelty of having five people on one guitar, I think they actually sound better than the original song.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Mr. Electability
I didn't see the most recent couple of debates, but I did manage to catch the speech that Mitt Romney gave after his decisive win in New Hampshire. I still do have reservations about Romney, but I thought it was a pretty good speech filled with some pretty sharp attacks on Obama's awful record. If everything I ever knew about Romney came only from that speech, then I'd be very inclined to support him right now.
The trouble is, I know a lot more about Romney than he's telling me in this speech.
I was inclined to support Rick Perry, mainly because his record on job creation in Texas seems to me to be the perfect thing to hit Obama over the head with... but Perry doesn't seem to have the communication skills required to translate his good record as governor into a successful presidential campaign. And now that Perry is apparently joining Newt Gingrich in attacking Romney from the left, I think Perry has blown whatever chance he had left of making any sort of comeback in the polls.
So where does that leave me? Well, I'm not entirely sold on the idea that Mitt Romney is the most electable GOP candidate we have... but there is something to be said for having people skills. After all, what's the use of having a good record if you aren't able to use it to persuade anyone of anything? It would be nice if we had a candidate who offered the best of both worlds, but I don't see anyone out there who has a good record and also has the good people skills needed to sell it... so, at this point, I'm thinking maybe I could live with having Romney as our nominee.
I was already willing to settle for Romney once before back in 2008, but thanks to Huckabee we wound up getting stuck with McCain... so instead of a candidate with an iffy record and good salesmanship, we wound up getting one with an iffy record and no discernable desire to even win the election. Let's not do that one ever again, please.
Update: Thanks to the Watcher's Council for the honorable mention.
Update: Rick Perry has dropped out and endorsed Newt Gingrich... hmmmm.
The trouble is, I know a lot more about Romney than he's telling me in this speech.
I was inclined to support Rick Perry, mainly because his record on job creation in Texas seems to me to be the perfect thing to hit Obama over the head with... but Perry doesn't seem to have the communication skills required to translate his good record as governor into a successful presidential campaign. And now that Perry is apparently joining Newt Gingrich in attacking Romney from the left, I think Perry has blown whatever chance he had left of making any sort of comeback in the polls.
So where does that leave me? Well, I'm not entirely sold on the idea that Mitt Romney is the most electable GOP candidate we have... but there is something to be said for having people skills. After all, what's the use of having a good record if you aren't able to use it to persuade anyone of anything? It would be nice if we had a candidate who offered the best of both worlds, but I don't see anyone out there who has a good record and also has the good people skills needed to sell it... so, at this point, I'm thinking maybe I could live with having Romney as our nominee.
I was already willing to settle for Romney once before back in 2008, but thanks to Huckabee we wound up getting stuck with McCain... so instead of a candidate with an iffy record and good salesmanship, we wound up getting one with an iffy record and no discernable desire to even win the election. Let's not do that one ever again, please.
Update: Thanks to the Watcher's Council for the honorable mention.
Update: Rick Perry has dropped out and endorsed Newt Gingrich... hmmmm.
Monday, January 9, 2012
The Council Has Spoken!
This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "2011 – Turning Our Backs on the Gods of the Copybook Headings" by The Noisy Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Daniel Greenfield's post "The Year We Lost Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia and Most of the Middle East" over at Sultan Knish. Congrats!
Monday, January 2, 2012
The idiocy of Iowa
I really don't understand the poll numbers that have been coming out of Iowa ahead of the caucuses there. Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are now close enough to each other to be within the margin of error, with Rick Santorum in third place, Newt Gingrich in fourth, and Rick Perry fifth.
I can see why Newt Gingrich might slide a bit in the polls, I have questioned for a while now how Newt could ever possibly maintain a lead in the polls for any great length of time. But why would Ron Paul be gaining so much momentum? I may have some libertarian tendencies, but there's no way I could ever vote for a guy who is crazy enough to toe Dennis Kucinich's line on foreign policy... his anti-semitic newsletters and flirtations with 9/11 trutherism aren't exactly sweetening the deal for me either.
And I'm constantly amazed at how well Mitt Romney always does in the polls. The argument for nominating him is always that he is the most electable, but how electable will he really be once the media's long knives finally come out? Romney's flip-flops already have much of his own party's base dissatisfied with him, but in the general election he would also be easily villified as a wealthy fat cat with a lousy record on job creation, and having Romneycare on his résumé will make it pretty much impossible for him to ever effectively campaign against Obamacare.
Another thing that bothers me, why on earth does Iowa always get the first say in our presidential elections? Obama beat McCain in Iowa by a margin of at least ten points, so why should Republicans be looking to Iowa as the first state to whittle our field of candidates down? I think it would make much more sense to give red states the first say in picking Republican candidates and blue states the first say in picking Democrat candidates, with states having the highest percentage of the vote for each party having the earliest scheduled primaries. If we did things that way, the GOP primaries would begin in Oklahoma and end in Hawaii... and the Democrats would begin theirs in Hawaii and end in Wyoming.
Update: Ace is still trying to make the case for Rick Perry... I think he makes a pretty good case, but when a kook like Ron Paul has twice the poll numbers that Perry has, it probably doesn't matter at this point. You can't reason someone out of a position that they never reasoned themselves into to begin with.
Update: Thanks to the Watchers Council for the honorable mention.
Update: Well, looks like Romney won in Iowa, but just barely, I still don't get it... why do we start there? What would the field look like right now if we were already talking about the results of the Oklahoma primary, and Iowa caucuses were still months away?
Another thing that bothers me, why on earth does Iowa always get the first say in our presidential elections? Obama beat McCain in Iowa by a margin of at least ten points, so why should Republicans be looking to Iowa as the first state to whittle our field of candidates down? I think it would make much more sense to give red states the first say in picking Republican candidates and blue states the first say in picking Democrat candidates, with states having the highest percentage of the vote for each party having the earliest scheduled primaries. If we did things that way, the GOP primaries would begin in Oklahoma and end in Hawaii... and the Democrats would begin theirs in Hawaii and end in Wyoming.
Update: Ace is still trying to make the case for Rick Perry... I think he makes a pretty good case, but when a kook like Ron Paul has twice the poll numbers that Perry has, it probably doesn't matter at this point. You can't reason someone out of a position that they never reasoned themselves into to begin with.
Update: Thanks to the Watchers Council for the honorable mention.
Update: Well, looks like Romney won in Iowa, but just barely, I still don't get it... why do we start there? What would the field look like right now if we were already talking about the results of the Oklahoma primary, and Iowa caucuses were still months away?
Sunday, January 1, 2012
The Council Has Spoken!
This week's results for the Watcher's Council vote are in, they've been posted over at Watcher of Weasels. The winning council entry for the week was "A case regarding citizen journalists proves, once again, that bad facts make for bad law" by Bookworm Room, and the winning non-council entry for the week was Victor Davis Hanson's post "A Vandalized Valley" over at National Review. Congrats!
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