RWFG on 'Gonzo'

Victor Morton, the Right-Wing Film Geek, reviews Gonzo:

Former work colleague Stacy and I went to see GONZO together last week, in part so he could review it for the American Spectator. I have long known that Stacy loves Hunter S. Thompson and had written several times for the newspaper on him, so I figured he’d get a kick about at least seeing GONZO. . . .
The nub of Stacy's complaint was that the film was too heavily focused on Thompson's political involvement in "the Sixties," and thus skrimped heavily on large chunks of material, both from earlier and later.

My review in The American Spectator was a bit harsh, because Alex Gibney's film to a large degree reflects the narrative that Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner has spun since Thompson's death, that the only really important work of HST's career was what he wrote for Rolling Stone. Wenner especially discounts Thompson's later writing, including his columns for ESPN.com.

This notion of the great Gonzo in his final years as irrelevant was personally hurtful to Thompson's widow, Anita, who worked with Hunter on the ESPN columns. As she told the New York Daily News, Hunter "wrote more in the final five years of his life than he did in the previous 15 years of his life."

Gibney makes one major concession to Thompson's post-Rolling Stone career, by beginning the film with a re-enactment of HST writing his post-9/11 column for ESPN:

The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives. . . .
We are going to punish somebody for this attack, but just who or what will be blown to smithereens for it is hard to say. Maybe Afghanistan, maybe Pakistan or Iraq, or possibly all three at once. Who knows? Not even the Generals in what remains of the Pentagon or the New York papers calling for WAR seem to know who did it or where to look for them.

Very good -- the column is read by Johnny Depp, who functions as the voice of Thompson's writing for much of the film. But Gibney obviously chooses this column for the opening scene because it fits his own Bush-hating, anti-war worldview. Thompson matters, Gibney is saying, because Thompson was a man of the Left.

No, Thompson matters because he was a brilliant writer, one of the most creative writers of the 20th century, the inventor of a style that has been often imitated but never equalled. He is admired by so many journalists -- not all of them on the Left -- because, more than any other writer, Thompson conveyed the sense of journalism as fun.

Every reporter who has ever given that spontaneous air-punch of triumph -- yes! -- after hanging up the phone with a source that just gave him the quote that cinched the big story knows the Thompsonesque thrill of journalism as a rollicking good-time adventure. When I first met his widow last fall, she explained one common misconception about Thompson:

"A lot of young people are under the assumption that if you do a lot of cocaine and drink a lot of Wild Turkey, you, too, can write like Hunter S. Thompson."

You don't have to gobble mescaline and guzzle whiskey to be gonzo, you just need to conceive of journalism as a grand sport, a competitive excursion in search of the Big Story. (Ask Philip Klein about how I scooped him with his own notes while he lounged in the hot tub in Santa Barbara.)

Go back and re-read Hell's Angels, as I recently did, and you'll see that Thompson repeatedly excoriates other reporters (from Time, the Associated Press and the rest of the same MSM outlets that we all still hate today) for publishing stories filled with inaccuracies, hype and "official bulls--t," stories that failed to accurately describe who the Angels were, what they did, and why they did it.

Thompson's account went deeper, told a bigger and more interesting truth, and debunked the press hysteria that depicted the Angels -- a relative handful of Harley-riding hoodlums in California -- as a ubiquitous Menace to Society who might, at any moment, swoop down on your Middle American town and gang-rape your daughter.

Thompson got the Real Story, in other words, and thereby exposed as gullible chumps the big-shot Professional Journalists with their precious "objectivity" and "ethics." One can almost hear Hunter shouting: "Objectivity, my ass! How about some facts for a change?" That was the brilliance of Thompson as a journalist, and it is admirable without regard for the narrow lens of left-wing politics through which Gibney insists on telling Thompson's story.

Victor fairly well enjoyed the Gibney film (rating it a 6 on his 10-point scale) and points out that my own deep familiarity with the gonzo syllabus probably accounts for most of my dissatisfaction with the film. I didn't mean to tell anyone not to go see the film, which certainly delivers enough fun in two hours to justify the cost of a $9 ticket and a box of popcorn. I just didn't want anyone to go see it without the caveats.

If you want to know Hunter S. Thompson, read his books. But I guess it's the old story -- if you've read the book, you'll always be somewhat disappointed with the movie version.

At any rate, I owe Victor for a couple of beers and a plate of quesadillas. But considering that I introduced Victor to Ann Coulter, the balance sheet's probably still in my favor.

An odd thing

I never heard of David Benkof until today, when I learned he'd suddenly decided to abandon his blog (GaysDefendMarriage.com) and disassociate himself from the Proposition 8 campaign in California. His cryptic last post:

It is with great sadness that I announce that I feel I must withdraw from openly supporting man-woman marriage in the United States. I recently learned quite a bit of disturbing information that makes it impossible for me to continue supporting a movement I no longer respect. I have not yet decided when or even if I will write about why I’m ending my participation in this debate.
I’d like to thank Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy who got me started with blogging at MarriageDebate.com and encouraged me to create my own blog, which ultimately became GaysDefendMarriage.com. I’d also like to thank the dozens of commenters, both those who agree with me and those who disagree, who have made this Web site a true place of conversation rather than just another pro-man-woman-marriage site.
In case you’re wondering:
1) I do not advocate that people give time or money to the Proposition 8 campaign in California.
2) People should vote their consciences on the ballot measure. I’m not a California voter, but if I was, I’d probably hold my nose and vote yes, though I can’t be sure.
Have a good summer, everyone!
-David Benkof

I have no idea what scandalous discovery caused Benkof to decide to pull the plug. In a message to a pro-gay site, Benkof said:

"I no longer feel comfortable being allied with the people running the Prop. 8 campaign, and the same-sex marriage movement in America in general, with a few exceptions - most notably Maggie Gallagher. I have made a tentative decision not to publicize the disturbing information that caused me to end my promotion of man-woman marriage in the United States. But there is very little that I know about those subjects that a journalist, blogger, or activist cannot find out through diligent googling and asking the right questions of the Prop. 8 campaign."

Which suggests to me that it's some action by the activists behind the ballot initiative that Benkof is protesting. Benkof appears to be a relative newcomer to political activism, and a True Believer type motivated by idealism. It might be that whatever "disturbing information" he's protesting is the kind of thing that wouldn't really shock someone who's been around politics long enough to become accustomed to the extreme cynicism of that nasty racket. But it's curious that he would go out of his way in his farewell to praise Maggie Gallagher, who remains committed to the movement that Benkof suddenly finds untenable.

Unhelpful advice

Just what we need -- Harvard whiz-kid Ross Douthat to tell us "How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream."

Yeah, Ross is the GOP's answer to Mudcat, offering up pithy insights into proletarian politics based on his hardscrabble upbringing on the mean streets of New Haven and Cambridge.

I'm thinking of my next book: I've Got Ties Older Than You: Now Shut Up and Get Me a Cup of Coffee, Kid.

Too clever by half

One of the favorite tricks of political writers is to seize on some analogy that seems clever, pick only the evidence that supports the comparison, ignore contradictory evidence, and then bask in the glow of their own cleverness. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John Heileman:

Feel free to tell me I'm nuts for asking the question, but doesn’t it seem that,
more and more, the McCain campaign is turning into the Clinton campaign? . . .

(You're nuts. Hey, you said, "feel free" . . .)

Yet it's hard not to see the similarities between the chaos afflicting McCain-land now and what went on in Clinton-world during the primaries. In the former, like the latter, you have an outfit with no clear lines of authority, rife with elephantine egos and feuding factions that have been at each other's throats for years, none with the slightest compunction about bearing their animosities (albeit anonymously) in the press. And in McCain, like Clinton, you have a candidate who not only tolerates but seems to encourage an atmosphere of anarchy -- and who finds it difficult to fire anyone, no matter how incompetent.

There is a world of difference between the the candidates and their campaigns. Hillary came into the campaign with higher negative ratings than Charles Manson, yet was considered the inevitable nominee. She ran a front-runner's campaign, put a pollster (Mark Penn) in charge of her team, failed to organize effectively in caucus states and didn't make organizational changes until it was too late to affect the outcome.

John McCain, who was counted out of the GOP primary contest a year ago, managed a comeback that parlayed three early primary victories (in New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida) into an impression of invincibility, causing his strongest rival, Mitt Romney, to call it quits in February.

While it could easily be argued that the McCain campaign did nothing much in ensuing months to capitalize on that early knockout punch -- e.g., if they've organized at the grassroots, they did so without anyone noticing -- they now seem to be catching up in fund-raising, at least, and recent polls indicate a dead heat, despite the media's Obamamania and the "enthusiasm gap" among Republicans.

The recent shakeup at McCain HQ comes six weeks ahead of the traditional Labor Day kickoff of the general election campaign, and there's still plenty of time for further staff changes before the real serious hammering gets underway.

But here's the big flaw in Heileman's analogy: A general election is not a primary campaign. There are no caucus states (where Obama's organizational superiority trumped Hillary) and there are no "superdelegates" to be wooed (it is only because of superdelegate endorsements that Obama can claim the Democratic nomination).

Most importantly, in the general election campaign, McCain will benefit from the activities of surrogates. The NRA has announced plans to unload $40 million against Obama. The vaunted "Republican attack machine" -- talk radio, Fox News, Matt Drudge -- will swing into action, amplifying every Obama miscue and gaffe.

Liberals seem to forget the role that Drudge and other conservatives played in damaging Hillary in the early stages of the primary campaign, for instance amplifying her October blunder on drivers licenses for illegals. But by mid-March, as soon as Obama appeared to have the nomination locked up, the "attack machine" switched sides, with Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" helping Clinton to fight it out to the end.

There's no need to wonder why Obama's post-clinch "bounce" proved small and of short duration -- the "attack machine" and Operation Chaos had been softening him up for two months. It's pretty clear that cheerleaders like Heineman have underestimated Obama's unreadiness to face the "attack machine." Here's a clue: Let Hopey make some impromptu gaffe with the European press during next week's Grand Tour and see how quickly that mushrooms into a Eagleton-style crisis.

Back in 2004, I remember listening to Limbaugh one day when one of his callers complained that Bush never seemed to attack liberals directly. Rush replied, "He doesn't have to -- that's what I'm here for."

That's a point worth keeping in mind as this campaign develops. John McCain has obvious limitations as a candidate and the shortcomings of his campaign organization may be very real, but one thing the Republican nominee doesn't have to worry about is his attack message. Conservative talk radio reaches an audience numbered in the tens of millions, and a single banner headline by Matt Drudge can make TV news producers jump out of their chairs.

If there's anything we learned during the Democratic primary campaign it's that when Obama's off-script and under pressure -- remember that April 15 debate in Philadelphia? -- he's a one-man gaffe factory. And if there's anything we know about the GOP "attack machine," they're experts at making Democrats suffer for that kind of stuff. All it takes is one little goof and Obama will find himself morphed into a Walter Mondale clone.

So let John Heineman go ahead and break his arm patting himself on the back for his clever analogy. I remind him that Dukakis was ahead by 17 points in July 1988, and Bush 41 was scarcely a more appealing candidate than John McCain.

Sarah Silverman, available

If you like 'em smart, sarcastic and zaftig -- and let's face it, who doesn't? -- she's on the market again:

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel and comic Sarah Silverman have called it quits after five years of dating, reps for the couple confirm to Usmagazine.com.
The break up was mutual, a source says.
"Jimmy and Sarah will have no further comment," their reps Lewis Kay and Amy Zvi tell Us in a statement.

No comment so far from Matt Damon.

UPDATE: Also no comment from Ben Affleck.

Liberals attempt satire, fail

Every blogger on the planet has spent the day having conniptions over the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker:

Michelle Obama in an Angela Davis-style 'Fro, with an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, Obama in Arab-type garb, a flag burning in the Oval Office fireplace with a picture of Osama bin Laden over the mantle.

New Yorker editor David Remnick endeavors to explain that this is an artistic effort to "hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about" Obama "that have been propagated . . . on the right . . . about Obama's supposed 'lack of patriotism' or his being 'soft on terrorism' or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers."

In other words, Remnick meant this as a smear of Republicans, so it's OK. But the Left's official arbiters of outrage aren't buying what my old buddy Atrios calls the "Everybody Knows That They're Good Liberals So It's Satire" excuse. I'm tempted to offer specific suggestions for a counter-satire -- "Offensive Obama-Themed Cover Illustrations Rejected by David Remnick" -- but somehow I don't think Atrios would appreciate the nuanced irony.

Michelle Malkin, who's been on the receiving end of the "They're Good Liberals So It's Satire" treatment, isn't sympathetic to Obama's indignation.

UPDATE: The Good Liberals at the New Yorker have apparently diverted the Left's indignation from John McLaughlin calling Obama an "Oreo." Again, I resist the temptation to add nuanced irony.

Abortion, Inc.

The big-money reality of Planned Parenthood:



Linking this article about Planned Parenthood's "rebranding" effort to move to suburban malls, Ed Morrisey says:

[Planned Parenthood] got over $15 million [in federal taxpayer funding] in 2007 while garnering more than a billion dollars in revenues from their operations. In return, its national PAC has already raised over $250,000 for the 2008 cycle and spent $200,000 of it, and 97% of it goes to Democrats. That makes their earmarks look a lot like strawman redistribution of tax money back to the Democratic Party.

Students For Life is promoting an online petition to end taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.

Is Obama inevitable?

My latest American Spectator column:

Evidence of conservative despair isn't hard to find nowadays in Washington."We're doomed!" one veteran communications operative of the Right exclaimed last week when I asked her to assess the current campaign. . . .
Are prospects really so bleak? Despite the dispirited state of the GOP, the ideological muddling of the McCain campaign, and the media accolades for Obama, it is far from a foregone conclusion that Hope and Change will triumph Nov. 4. . . .

Please read the whole thing. When I sent that out over Facebook this morning, a fellow journalist replied, "Hope is not a plan," and talked about the apparent lack of an anti-Obama strategy. To which I replied that I'm not a strategist (nobody's paying me for advice), but . . .

But if I were a strategist for Obama, I'd have screamed "hell, no" the minute I heard someone suggest this idiotic European trip idea. And if I were a strategist for McCain, I'm pretty sure I could come up with a way to play that trip to my candidate's advantage. Whether the actual strategists at the McCain campaign (you know, the geniuses with the six-figure salaries) see the same thing I see -- well, who knows?

Being a conservative journalist means that people feel entitled to give you grief for every stupid thing Republicans do. What I always say is, "Look, no Republican has ever asked me for advice. And every time I've volunteered advice, I've been ignored. I've got zero influence over what they do, and I'm as unhappy as you are, so don't complain to me."

If the geniuses with the six-figure salaries aren't earning their pay, that ain't my fault.

UPDATE: Philip Klein says his column about the worst-case scenario of an Obama presidency has been misinterpreted as an indifference to that possibility. I repond:

Phil, I hope I was not guilty of misrepresenting your views, but you've been in a lot of the same bull-session discussions as me, and you know that the Bright Young Minds of the Right are hardly in a panic over the prospect of an Obama presidency. If George W. Bush has been president since you were in college, and if you were in middle school when Republicans captured Congress, it is understandably difficult for you to remember what it was really like the last time Democrats controlled everything in Washington. So while I don't mean to say you've got a "who cares" attitude, a lot of your peers do have that attitude, and it's not hard to see why. . . .

Go read the rest of that, too.

When Democrats say stupid things, is global warming to blame?

Well, it causes everything else:

A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the "black hawk down" battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels.
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, also equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women's suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. . . .
"In Somalia back in 1993, climate change, according to 11 three- and four-star generals, resulted in a drought which led to famine," said Markey. "That famine translated to international aid we sent in to Somalia, which then led to the U.S. having to send in forces to separate all the groups that were fighting over the aid, which led to Black Hawk Down. . . ."
Markey was speaking to 25 students from the World Wildlife Fund's Allianz Southeast Climate Witness Program. The students had come to the Capitol to brief members of Congress on the risks of global warming.

Henceforth, any Democrat who blames global warming for something utterly random will be diagnosed with Markey Syndrome.

BTW, does Markey mean to suggest that women's suffrage is unquestionably a good thing?

Obama's bounceless summer

UPDATED & BUMPED: Today's Gallup daily tracking poll has Obama by three, 46-43%:

Today marks the 14th straight Gallup Poll Daily tracking report in which 46% to 48% of voters favor Obama, and between 42% and 44% favor McCain. This narrow zone has given Obama a continuous, but fairly slim, lead over the two-week period.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen's daily tracking poll reports a 43-43% tie for the second straight day.

PREVIOUSLY: Despite adulatory press coverage, Barack Obama's support still hovers in the 40s. The latest Gallup daily tracking poll has him up 47-43%:

The current figures, based on July 9-11 polling, exactly match the averages for each candidate over the past two weeks of Gallup Poll Daily tracking. During this time, Obama's support has ranged between 46% and 48% in each three-day rolling average, while McCain's has registered between 42% and 44%.

Chris Matthews Syndrome is not yet a pandemic.

'Fast Eddie' Morrissey

When I got on the McCain campaign's conference call this afternoon, I didn't realize that Ed Morrissey of Hot Air was also on the call.

Ed actually got his version of the conference call online 7 minutes faster than I did, which is pretty doggone impressive. I'm pretty quick at whipping together spot news, and it's not often I get beat -- even by 7 minutes -- when I'm in a hurry. So, a big hat-tip to Capt. Ed.

UPDATE: Oh, yeah, the conference call. Former U.S. Treasure Rosario Marin said, basically, that Obama would tell the National Council of La Raza that McCain has changed his position on shamnesty open borders immigration reform. Not true, according to Marin. The "border security first" position is just a precursor to implementing the whole enchilada of guest workers and amnesty for illegals. Or, at least that's what I took her to mean when she said, "He will do it in steps."

I never got to ask my question, which was, "Is there really any point in a Republican getting into a pandering competition with a Democrat?"

Corrupt Democrats? Yawn

The indictment of several Democratic legislative aides in a Pennsylvania corruption scandal elicits this hopeful thought from Ed Morrisey:

This comes at a very bad time for Democrats. They need to hold Pennsylvania in November if they want to win the Presidency, but a massive corruption scandal makes that a lot less likely. . . . [T]his could tip the Keystone State into the red column for 2008 — and possibly several more cycles beyond that.

Sorry, Ed, you're wrong. Having co-authored an entire book on the Democratic Party's history of corruption, I can tell you that people who vote Democrat don't care how crooked the Democrats are. You don't vote for the party of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton if you care about honesty in government.

The Democratic Party's something-for-nothing ethic -- the thievish and corrupting notion that people are entitled to government benefits paid for by other people's taxes -- renders the party scandal-proof. Oh, sure, Democrats pretend to be upset when Republicans are caught in scandalous behavior. But their phony outrage merely hides their glee at the prospect of ousting a Republican, so they can elect more Democrats, so they can vote themselves more "free" government benefits.

If the people of Pennsylvania cared about corruption, they would never have elected as their governor Ed Rendell, boss of the notorious Philadelphia machine. Republicans therefore cannot benefit politically from a Democratic scandal in Pennsylvania, because it is the voters themselves who are the source of the corruption.

It is foolish to expect public officials to uphold standards of morality that their constituents routinely disregard. How is the politician who lines his pockets from embezzled funds any worse than the man who joins a corrupt labor union? (Of course, all labor unions are corrupt.) How is a crooked government employee worse than someone who votes for Democrats in hopes of getting more taxpayer-funded benefits? It's theft either way, and calling it "progressive social policy" doesn't make it moral.

Juan La Raza McCain

Trying to outpander Obama:

Barack Obama takes the podium at the National Council of La Raza/The Race tonight. John McCain will Hispander, as Mickey Kaus puts it so well, tomorrow.
It’ll be an open-borders lovefest for Obama, who was championed yesterday at The Race conference by L.A.'s zealous pro-illegal immigration mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa. . . .
As for McCain’s appearance tomorrow, the Pittsburgh Tribune Review calls it "the biggest mistake of his 2008 presidential run."

He wasn't born here. Is it too late to deport him?

UPDATE: Selling out conservative values? No, it's a "centrist shift," says the L.A. Times.

The lows get higher

While checking the stats on SiteMeter (currently averaging 1,400+ visitors daily), I noticed that I've only had four days with less than 500 visitors in the past month.

Peak traffic is always dependent on getting linked by the biggies, the real trick to increasing the average is to build "residual" traffic -- people visiting posts from weeks or months ago that they've found via Google searches or older links on other sites. So even on days when traffic's slow and nobody's linking, you still get a relatively steady stream of visitors -- the lows get higher.

One key to residual traffic? Celebrities. I do the occasional "celebrity update" just to keep from boring people to death with all-politics, all-the-time, and these posts -- about Natalie Portman, Britney Spears, Lindsday Lohan, Keira Knightley, Ann Hathaway -- bring visitors to the site day after day.

BTW, did you hear that Hollywood starlet and former Vogue covergirl Sienna Miller, 26, is having an affair with Balthazar Getty, who is 33, married and has four kids? Shameful. Almost as shameful as Sienna being photographed topless, kissing Getty on his boat near the Italian coast. Despite all the wealth and fame of my fabulous blogging career, never once have I been tempted to kiss a starlet on my boat near the Italian coast.

Barr slams Obama

On Obama's "national service" plan:

"Americans are among the most generous people on the planet and excel at serving one another," says Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
"Unfortunately, Sen. Barack Obama wants to turn service into a government requirement" by forcing middle, high school, and college students to work in federally approved jobs. "But service must be an outgrowth of the heart to be life-changing for both parties. It isn't possible to mandate generosity or coerce compassion," Barr explains.
Moreover, "it certainly isn't Washington's responsibility to dictate to every middle school, high school, and college across America the sort of activities they should require of their students," notes Barr. “If local school boards and college presidents believe mandatory service to be a good idea, they can -- as many have done -- make it a graduation requirement. There's no justification for the federal government to set a national standard."

Mandatory generosity? Coercive compassion? That's the kind of "Hope" we can do without.

Cynthia McKinney wins Green Party nomination

Adding an extra dose of crazy to the presidential campaign:

The liberal environmentalist Green Party nominated former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as its presidential candidate Saturday.
McKinney, 53, held off three rivals to win the party's nomination during its convention in Chicago, Illinois. . . .
First elected in 1992, she lost a primary challenge in 2002 after suggesting in a radio interview that members of the Bush administration stood to profit from the war that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. In 2004 she ran again and won with a low-key campaign in which she largely avoided controversy. But voters ousted her again in 2006 after she was accused of a physical altercation with a U.S. Capitol Police officer who questioned her after failing to recognize her at a security checkpoint.

She joins fellow Georgian Bob Barr in the presidential field. (BTW, the fundraising ticker at Barr's Web site is now nearing $450,000.) Time magazine has a feature about Barr who "could conceivably Naderize John McCain in a few key states." The Time story has a Nevada dateline.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

UPDATE: Politico says the GOP is ignoring Barr:

If Republicans are worried about the third-party presidential candidacy of former GOP Rep. Bob Barr and the possibility that he could win enough votes to affect the outcome in several states, they aren't showing it.
At present there are no plans to follow the time-honored method of dealing with pesky third-party candidates by seeking to knock Barr off various state ballots. Indeed, when asked for comment about the Barr campaign, John McCain's campaign flat out declined to offer one. . . .
If McCain's campaign, or anyone acting on his behalf, does challenge Barr's ballot access, Barr's campaign believes they would have a powerful argument that the Republican would be acting hypocritically and they are optimistic he will not do so for that reason.
"I remember when McCain was locked out of the New York ballot in the 2000 primary," said Russell Verney, Barr's campaign manager. “He eventually sued the state and said the people deserved a choice. I don't think he'll go back on his word and will tell his activists to refrain from denying people a choice."

Hmmmm.

PUMA update

Andrea Shea King has an interview with Will Bower, co-founder of the dissident Democratic group PUMA/Just Say No Deal:

Nearly 18 million people voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primaries and many of them believe their candidate was cheated out of being the Democratic nominee for president.
Now more than two million, based on donation and other records, are determined to protest the nominating process and push for an open convention in Denver this August. . . .
"We said we are not falling in line just because Obama and (David) Axelrod and the DNC were saying 'All right, this is over, let's all get behind Barack Obama.' There are plenty of us out here saying, 'No this is not over. You have treated us very unfairly and in fact, anti-democratically,'" he said. . . .
"CNN did a poll at the beginning of June that showed 1 of every 5 Clinton supporters would not vote for Obama. Well, just one month later that's now 1 in 3. So we're getting our numbers up and we're growing strong. And if the DNC's not worried about us, then they're clueless as to this movement."

A lot of people have underestimated the Clintons' ability -- or their will -- to cause havoc within the Democratic Party if she was denied the nomination. Part of the reason was that the media tended to portray Obama as the only candidate with enthusiastic grassroots supporters. Bower and the PUMA crowd are a reminder that there still are Hillary fans out there, and that they represent a potential source of trouble for Obama and the DNC.

(Cross-posted at AmSpecBlog.)

The Best Defense

Armed mom chases off two intruders:

Hunley, who is 5-foot-3, emptied her handgun, firing four shots at the intruder. The gunman ran out the front door. Neither Hunley nor her daughter were hurt during the exchange of gunfire.

Robert Waters (who lives in Ocala) will no doubt save this story for his next sequel to The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves With a Firearm.

(Via Hot Air Headlines.)

U.N. vetoes Zimbabwe sanctions

China and Russia exercise their veto in the Security Council:

British and US efforts to apply punitive pressure on Robert Mugabe were abruptly undermined last night when Russia and China vetoed a UN security council resolution seeking sanctions against Zimbabwe.
The resolution, calling for an arms embargo, and financial and travel restrictions on Mugabe and 13 other regime leaders, was backed by nine nations but foundered on the vetoes of the two permanent members. The arms embargo would have affected Russian and Chinese weapons exporters.

While detesting the self-interested supporters of tyranny in Russia and China, I have to wonder what purpose would have been served by sanctions. After all, what influence could economic sanctions have on a thug like Mugabe who has already willfully destroyed his own nation's economy?

It's a sad commentary that the United States, which has spent hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives to overthrow the Saddam regime in Iraq, won't lift a finger to save Zimbabwe from Mugabe, a dictator so thievish and brutal as to make Saddam look like a Boy Scout. One wonders why Barack Obama doesn't make an issue of the Bush administration's indifference to the suffering caused by Mugabe's criminal despotism.

Chuck Schumer's bank run

Blamed for the IndyMac debacle:

The immediate cause of the closing was a deposit run that began and continued after the public release of a June 26 letter to the OTS and the FDIC from Senator Charles Schumer of New York. The letter expressed concerns about IndyMac’s viability. In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts.

The L.A. Times:

Schumer's response? In an e-mail quoted by Bloomberg News, he says: "If OTS had done its job as regulator and not let IndyMac's poor and loose lending practices continue, we wouldn't be where we are today ... Instead of pointing false fingers of blame, OTS should start doing its job to prevent future IndyMacs.''

Guess he got tired of sabotaging the troops in Iraq and decided to apply his skills on the domestic front.