PUMA turns McCainiac

You knew it had to happen sooner or later:

(Via AmSpecBlog.) Kicked out for opposing Hope:

Debra Bartoshevich, the duly elected Democratic Party delegate for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin who vowed undying loyalty to the former first lady, has been dumped by the state party and barred from attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver next month.

Associated Press on the (un)Democratic Party:

The Wisconsin party's administrative committee voted 23-0 to strip Debra Bartoshevich of her status as a delegate to the Denver convention next month.
Bartoshevich, 41, was pledged to Hillary Rodham Clinton. But when the New York senator suspended her campaign in June after Illinois Sen. Barack Obama clinched a majority of delegates, Bartoshevich told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she would support Arizona Sen. McCain.
On Friday, state committee members agreed that Bartoshevich had lost her privilege to be one of the state's 92 delegates because of her comments and her affiliation with Citizens for McCain, a branch of his campaign designed to recruit independents and Democrats.

So much for all that yadda-yadda from progressives about the right to patriotic dissent! Ed Morrissey corrects the record on how Obama has "clinched" the nomination:

Obama has not won sufficient delegates to capture the nomination. Neither he nor Hillary Clinton could reach that point, but Obama has enough pledges from superdelegates to win the nomination, if they don't change their minds. Hillary's supporters want a floor vote in Denver with enough debate to give superdelegates an opportunity to rethink their pledges, but so far the Obama campaign has managed to put a stop to it.

How long before liberals start denouncing Ms. Bartoshevich -- the erstwhile Democrat in good standing -- as a racist?

Jobless atheist losers are dangerous

The Knoxville killer:

If the suspect’s own resume is accurate, Owen said, Adkisson worked in a variety of places across the country and most recently worked in Knoxville in 2006. The chief did not specify where Adkisson last held a job.

I only mention this criminal scumbag because a liberal blogger has accused the "right-wing blogosphere" of ignoring this alleged example of "domestic terrorism." The aforesaid liberal blogger ignores the fact that the aforesaid criminal scumbag was apparently an atheist:

Neighbor Karen Massey says, "I was telling him about my daughter graduating from Bible college and I was a Christian and stuff...and he just automatically turned angry." . . .
"I'm really shocked but at the same time knowing now what has happened he and I did have some pretty extensive discussions, biblical discussions."
Those discussions led her to believe Adkisson didn't believe in the bible's teachings.
"He apparently had a problem with what the Bible said and the contradicting. He felt was contradictions which I don't personally believe, because I am a Christian."

Obviously this loser had some problems with that part about "Thou shalt not kill." So, yes indeed you are right, Mr. Liberal Blogger. I ignored this story . . . because I didn't want to be accused of fostering hatred against atheist losers. Not all of them are mass murderers. Yet.

UPDATE: Others ignoring the story in the "right-wing blogosphere" include Confederate Yankee and Michelle Malkin.

UPDATE II: New details emerge:

Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly. Sources say investigators also found a copy of the Knoxville Yellow Pages, a Chilton's repair manual for 1983 Ford pickup trucks and two recent issues of Swank magazine, although detectives are unsure how these items relate to the crime.

OK, I made up that last sentence. Excuse me if I missed the show last week where Hannity told his listeners to go kill UUs. Generally speaking, mass murders cause liberals to call for banning something. I guess now they'll try to ban AM radios. Or 12-gauge shotguns:

Adkisson . . . was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation. . . .
"We heard the first shot," said Marty Murphy, 66, a church member since 2000. "It sounded like a bomb went off."

Back when the so-called "assault weapons" ban was being debated, I kept making the point that, in terms of close-range lethality, nothing beats a 12-gauge shotgun. In a home-defense situation, the mere sound of a round being chambered in a pump-action shotgun will send any halfway clever intruder running for his life. This was ignored in all the idiotic hysteria over semi-automatic rifles, but Adkisson's crime highlights the fact that nothing matches a 12-gauge in killing power: Three shots, two dead, seven wounded.

Pray for 'The Prince of Darkness'

Robert Novak has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. He's survived cancer before, but after his accident last week, his doctors apparently decided to do a CT scan. Novak, one of America's finest investigative reporters, is 77.

Early on in his career, Novak's saturnine appearance earned him the "Prince of Darkness" sobriquet. His longtime column partner, Rowland Evans, was a patrician WASP known and loved by Washington insiders, and so it was generally suspected (not altogether unfairly) that Novak was the troublemaker whose inside scoops caused so much embarrassment for the Establishment.

Novak's 2007 memoir is full of fascinating never-before-revealed tidbits about how he got his biggest scoops during his 50-year career as a newsman, including the scoop about Joe Wilson's wife that became the "Plamegate" controversy. Although a staunch conservative who's never made any pretense of "neutrality," Novak is first and foremost a newsman who values a fact-filled scoop over any partisan or ideological loyalty. (His reporting has made him plenty of Republican enemies over the years.)

Prince of Darkness is not only an amazing inside look at the business of journalism, it's an important historical chronicle of our time. I recommend it without hesitation.

UPDATE: You stay classy, HuffPo!

UPDATE II: Ed Morrissey notes still more classiness from the tolerant and enlightened progressives at Democratic Underground.

UPDATE III: Michelle Malkin pays tribute:

Novak has had a huge influence on my career. During a college conservative journalists’ confab, he urged us to seek metro newspaper jobs, pay our dues, and try to stay out of Washington for as long as possible. I took the advice to heart and left D.C. after a year as an intern at NBC to take my first newspaper job at the L.A. Daily News and then the Seattle Times.

This is something overlooked by many young conservatives who seek to emulate Malkin (and Ann Coulter, too). Because of their youthful good looks, some of their admirers imagine that these two ladies came right out of college as conservative superstars. But as she mentions, Malkin spent seven years working for Left Coast newspapers before becoming nationally syndicated in 1999, and was a 31-year-old married mom when she published her first book, Invasion, in 2002.

Coulter spent even longer as a relative unknown -- first as a New York lawyer and then as a Senate staffer -- and didn't publish her first book until she was 34. It is far too common nowadays to meet ambitious young conservative writers who obviously want to be "the next Malkin" or "the next Coulter," but who don't want to pay their dues, and seem disappointed that fame hasn't found them by the time they turn 25.

Malkin also notes as "typical" the Associated Press's superficial "summary" of Novak's career. I would urge anyone who thinks Novak is just another right-wing pundit to read Prince of Darkness and learn the truth.

Rachel defends dog-blogging

Attempting a defense of the indefensible:

[A]s we all know, I routinely violate rules #2 and 3 and yet I'm one of Vox's favorites, which was pointed out a few times in his comment thread, and thus was born the Lucas Exception by Vox Day, which states that "if a female blogger can be confirmed to be as amusingly bloody-minded as Rachel Lucas, she may post about her dogs or other non-feline pets, so long as such posts are not made more than thrice per week. Kids and cats are still right out."
Don't be jealous. Not everyone can have an Exception named after them. You see, Vox gets me.
Which reminds me of something I often want to say here because once a while, someone will not get me and will misinterpret my penchant for the dog pics. I believe the reason I get the Exception, the thing that Vox and most of you (but not all) understand, is that I don’t think the dogs are cute. I think they’re ridiculous. I am mocking them. With affection, of course, but still.

I'm not buying it. Dog-blogging is intrinsically wrong. The only reason Vox overlooks it is because Rachel's cute. If she weighed 400 pounds, the Exception wouldn't exist.

On the other hand, I grant a waiver to Rachel under McCain's Law of Shameless Traffic-Baiting:

"Traffic is traffic, even traffic generated by flame wars with left-wing trolls, Google searches for celebrity breasts or links from ridiculous dog-bloggers."

There is nothing as honest as pure capitalism.

UPDATE: Proving that she's not merely skating by on cuteness and dog-blogging, Miss Lucas adds an update to advise:

I’m sorry ladies but there are only so many lectures about the MomBlogging Revolution and Powerful Womyn and all that happy horses--t that a person can take. It’s not only tiresome on an intellectual level, most of it is the precise opposite of entertaining. Which in my mind, is what blogs are for. Entertainment. Even if they’re educational too, they have to be entertaining on some level to get anyone to come back. Otherwise we’d just read books.

Entertainment? You mean like punkabilly, Harleys, hotrods, hot babes and classic pop swing?

'Black Hawk Down' veteran vs. Obama

Michael Durant, the helicopter pilot who was held captive in Somalia in the "Black Hawk Down" incident, weighs in on the Landstuhl controversy:

"Over the last week, Barack Obama made time in his busy schedule to hold a rally with 200,000 Germans in Berlin, hold a press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy in Paris, and hold a solo press conference in front of 10 Downing Street in London. The Obama campaign had also scheduled a visit with wounded U.S. troops at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, but this stop was canceled after it became clear that campaign staff, and the traveling press corps, would not be allowed to accompany Senator Obama."
"I've spent time at Ramstein recovering from wounds received in the service of my country, and I'm sure that Senator Obama could have made no better use of his time than to meet with our men and women in uniform there. That Barack Obama believes otherwise casts serious doubt on his judgment and calls into question his priorities."

(Cross-posted at AmSpec Blog.)

In defense of Elaine Donnelly

Last week, the Washington Post's Dana Milbank unleashed a 1,038-word sneer against Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, who had testified in defense of the military's "don't ask, don't tell" ban on open homosexuality in the armed services.

A courageous knight -- well, Robert Knight -- gallantly comes to the defense of a great lady:

Milbank began his column by sarcastically introducing Mrs. Donnelly only as someone "who has been working for years to protect our fighting forces from the malign influence of women."
Donnelly, who served on the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Armed Services and a presidential commission examining the role of women in the military, has worked for years promoting policies that support military families, and resisting the liberal campaign to lift the combat exemption for women. To Milbank, who apparently wants to shove our daughters into harm's way as soon as possible, that's "maligning" women.
Milbank goes on to describe Donnelly’s testimony and responses to questions as "an extraordinary exhibition of rage." Anyone who has seen Mrs. Donnelly under fire knows that she does not do "rage." What she does do is to demolish the other side's arguments with logic and documented materials. . . . Every inch a lady, albeit a lady tough as nails, Mrs. Donnelly does not sink to the level of her opponents.

Milbank seems to be one of those "anointed" liberals who confuse policy disputes with opportunities to display their superior social morality. To oppose gays in the military or women in combat is to be a homophobe or a sexist and therefore inferior, and liberals feel obligated to pull out all the stops when targeting their inferiors.

Readers old enough to remember the original 1993 controversy over this issue will recall that homosexual activity within the U.S. military has been banned since time immemorial under the Universal Code of Military Justice. President Clinton, on his first day in office, signed an executive order rescinding that ban, infuriating the Pentagon and veterans' groups. In a compromise measure worked out by Gen. Colin Powell and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the "don't ask, don't tell" policy was instituted.

Conservative critics at that time recognized the compromise was fundamentally unworkable, but accepted it as preferable to the Clinton policy. No compromise with liberals is ever permanent, however, and so the flaws of "don't ask, don't tell" -- which were evident from the moment the policy was announced -- are used as arguments to adopt the Clinton policy that caused such a firestorm in 1993.

With the facts on her side, Mrs. Donnelly will not back down, although she may be steamrollered by a Democratic Congress as a gesture intended to placate the Democrats' wealthy gay contributors. But don't mistaken, last week's hearing only a gesture.

The Democrats wouldn't dare actually do anything about this issue by passing legislation that Bush could veto, thereby exposing the Democratic majority in Congress as the tool of radicalism it is. Until Nov. 4, the Democrats will pose as moderates concerned about bread-and-butter economic issues -- "working families," yadda, yadda, yadda -- and will wait until after President Obama is elected to reveal their actual agenda.

If you ever had any doubt . . .

. . . that the Left hates religion:

When you don't know how to think for yourself, it's easy for those in power to tell you what to think.
Thus Osama Bin Laden can convince 19 people to fly planes into buildings just like George W. Bush can convince a majority of Americans that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. It's the naive gullibility that comes from a lifetime of believing in fairy tales and rituals and superstition.

That this DUmmy appropriates as his S/N the name of one of the finest rock bands of all time only adds to his idiocy.

Like my man Howlin' Wolf, I ain't superstitious, and I don't believe in "fairy tales." The reality of Jesus Christ is clear in the testimony of the witnesses to His life, death and resurrection. Furthermore, as the apostle Paul observed:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools . . .

RTWT, as they say. You are free to believe what you want, and I hope you'll excuse my effort to "impose my beliefs" on you. But I would be remiss if I failed to remind you that the rejection of self-evident truth has consequences.

McCain supports civil rights

Ward Connerly's Arizona initiative:

Sen. John McCain said today that he supports a proposed initiative on the November ballot in Arizona that would ban preferential treatment on the basis of race or sex in public education, jobs and contracting, an apparent change in his previous position that such attempts are divisive.
In an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, McCain said he supports the proposed ban on affirmative action; similar measures will also be on the ballot in Colorado and Nebraska.
Asked if he supports measures that would "do away with affirmative action,'' McCain replied: "Yes, I do. I do not believe in quotas. But I have not seen the details of some of these proposals. But I've always opposed quotas.''
"But the one here in Arizona you support?'' Stephanopoulos asked.
"I support it, yes,'' McCain said.

Stephanopoulos and the Washington Post reporter both play games with the phrases "affirmative action" and "quotas." Either the policies are systematically discriminatory, or they are not. It is such race-obsessive discrimination that is "divisive," not Ward Connerly's courageous crusade to eliminate the discrimination.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin jumps on this story with both feet this morning:

Barack Obama, a lifelong preference-monger, has the wrong convictions on this issue. McCain doesn’t have any.
You asked for straight talk. You got it.

By the way, have you noticed that there are no "John McCain for President" ads on Michelle's site? The GOP nominee isn't advertising on either Michelle's personal blog or on Hot Air -- two of the top conservative sites on the Web, with a combined average traffic of over 450,000 visitors per day. I don't know if that's by the campaign's choice, or by her choice, but either way, I'm pretty sure it's not accidental.

'No woman ever fantasized about being ravished by a liberal'

Good line from P.J. O'Rourke, via Vox Day.

Are there any conservative Republicans left?

Bush is signing that godawful mortgage bailout, John McCain calls Wall Street "the villain" . . . as if one Democratic Party wasn't bad enough, now we get to choose between Democrats and Democrats Lite?

An Echo, Not a Choice!

Celebrity update

Kind of a slow day for celebrity news:

• Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, a British model being touted as the next Kate Moss, was photographed with a bong. And she looks like she's already had a few tokes.
• In other celebrity dopehead news, Whitney Houston's got a new single, and Amy Winehouse ... well, she's Amy Winehouse, right?.
• Shia LeBeouf was busted for DUI and hospitalized for surgery after a 3 a.m. car wreck. What, you've never heard of Shia LeBeaouf? Yeah, me neither. Turns out he starred in the Transformers movie and the Indiana Jones sequel. Slow day, like I said . . .
• Sarah Larson, George Clooney's ex, is not interested in another relationship. Once you've had Clooney, you never go back.
• Lindsay Lohan partied with girlfriend Samantha Ronson. Once you've had Ronson . . .
• And, finally, Charlie Sheen is trying to do a K-Fed on Denise Richards, saying that his ex-wife is an unfit mother because she's a liar. Yeah, Charlie, and you're pure gold, man.

(Gossip, rumors and dish via WeSmirch.)

Little Miss Attila offers to make me a %$&#ing sandwich

In exchange for gin. There's an important lesson here for you ladies: Never let your feminist principles stand between you and a free martini.

Little Miss Attila: A Role Model of True Empowerment!

(And once again, I ask: What is it with redheads in classic pinup art?)

K-Lo is the Taliban?

OK, a silly Washington Post feature about 16-year-old girls buying bikinis:

They all want bikinis.
"A one-piece looks weird," says Carly, a long-limbed and graceful cross-country runner. "No one wears one-pieces unless they're old or on swim team."
Rebecca, a red-headed, freckled softball player with an infectious smile, enthusiastically agrees: "One-pieces actually make your stomach look bulgier."
"I think some one-pieces look good, but it seems like people who aren't confident about themselves wear them," says Alyssa, a petite cheerleader with a creamy complexion and muscular build. "Bikinis are more popular because they're sexier. They draw a guy's attention."

Next, Kathryn Jean Lopez, referencing Kathleen Parker's new book, Save the Males, suggests this is "begging for a dad to be on the scene. . . . Where's dad to just say no?" Next thing you know, a gay leftist is comparing K-Lo to the Taliban.

But what was K-Lo really saying? That no teenager girl should ever wear a bikini? Or was she saying that 16-year-old girls who want to look "sexier" to "draw a guy's attention" might be suffering from a dearth of paternal influence?

Frankly, a dad's perspective might have been simply to inform these girls of the counterintuitive fact that -- even if your goal is to "draw a guy's attention" -- sometimes showing less a little less is better than showing more. A one-piece suit has a certain elegance and suggests a more serious purpose: That you're at the beach or pool to swim, rather than merely to work on a tan.

Dad might even point out that, hey, who says a one-piece isn't sexy? (The "long-limbed" Carly in the Washington Post article might discover she looks especially stunning in a one-piece, which tends to accentuate the legs.)

Something I've often said is that women who leave nothing to the imagination tend to attract guys with no imagination. A really attractive woman is still really attractive even in old jeans and a sweatshirt, and an ugly woman is still ugly, no matter what she's wearing. A beautiful woman doesn't need to flaunt her assets in order to attract guys.

That's the kind of common-sense insight a Dad might offer. Dads can and should help their kids resist peer pressure and pop culture. That's what K-Lo was saying, I think. To compare her to the Taliban is unhelpful.

The Dalai Lama's a Marxist?

Anita Thompson interviews the Dalai Lama:

When he first got to China, the Dalai Lama studied the history of the Chinese Revolution. "I always describe myself as a Marxist, as far as social and economy is concerned," he explained. "In the meantime...I totally am very against, or disagree with, the totalitarian system."
This is the modern principle. Don't think just about the profit, but rather, equal distribution: these are also modern principles. "I am a liberal democratic socialist idealist," he teased.
"My brain could be more red than Chinese leaders'. They only think about money -- economy, economy, economy -- and they don't care about the gap between the rich and the poor and the immense corruption."
There used to be a very sincere ideology in the Chinese government, even during Mao's reign. Of course it was very sad. But at that time, there were many good Communist Party members who dedicated their whole lives to service to the people, "not thinking about their own pockets....That kind of spirit is now lost. Difficult and very sad."

Frankly, I prefer "immense corruption" to Maoism. The Great Leap Forward alone resulted in the deaths of 30 million Chinese. I'm obligated to point this out because, as the Dalai Lama told Anita, "The media should be truthful, unbiased, honest." And the unbiased, honest truth is: Socialism sucks.

Whore hoppers for Hope

The Smoking Gun reports that two men in Chicago have been arrested in recent weeks on charges of solicitation of prostitution -- while wearing Barack Obama T-shirts:

Memo to Barack Obama supporters everywhere: If you plan on soliciting some sexual favors from a prostitute, perhaps you should leave your t-shirt promoting the Democrat's presidential campaign at home. For the second time in recent weeks, a Chicago man has been nabbed on a misdemeanor rap for soliciting sex from an undercover officer while promoting the hometown pol's White House bid.
Sherman Cleveland, 40, was arrested last week and had his car impounded after he allegedly offered a female police officer money if she'd perform a sex act upon him, according to Officer Laura Kubiak, a Chicago Police Department spokesperson.

There must be an innocent explanation. These grassroots activists were just trying to do some outreach to the sex-worker community, canvassing the precinct, when they said something to these undercover cops about recent polls showing that approval ratings of Congress are so low, they're below the low job approval numbers of President Bush. A simple misunderstanding . . .

Dumb things to say

"We better pray Obama gets elected, so Republicans will start acting like Republicans again."
-- guest at a wedding attended by Sister Toldjah

Obama ads: 'No measurable impact'

Donald Lambro, Washington Times:

Barack Obama's summer saturation ad campaign in key battleground states has not increased the Illinois Democrat's poll numbers, according to senior strategists for John McCain's campaign and recent independent polling. . . .
The Obama campaign, flush with cash, is spending record amounts of money on big media buys in states like Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Colorado and Michigan, but the latest polls show that, if anything, the polling in these states has either changed little or the Arizona Republican has narrowed the gap in them. . . .
"So far we're not seeing any evidence that they have had any measurable impact," said a top McCain campaign official on the condition of anonymity.
McCain campaign officials say their own polls show that for all his spending, "Obama's numbers haven't budged a bit."

Read the whole thing. This was obviously written before the latest round of tracking polls, but that "budge" had nothing to do with advertising and everything to do with network news fellatio . . .

'Come with me if you want to live'

Arnold Schwarzenegger terminates trans-fats in California. So when you and your gay spouse get the munchies after smoking too much medical marijuana, you'll have to make do with cholesterol-free low-fat organic bran muffins. Maybe if Mexicans start smuggling trans-fats into San Diego, Schwarzenegger will finally get tough on illegal immigration . . .

Obama bounces to +9

St. Hopey's got his biggest lead so far in the Gallup daily tracking poll -- 49% to 40% for Crazy Cousin John.

Notice that McCain has actually lost three points since Wednesday. Could this be a backlash against McCain's new aggressive approach? So far, there's no sign of a negative impact from the Landstuhl controversy for Obama, but it's probably too early to tell.

Remember: This tracking poll is a three-day sample averaging results from Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Obama's press coverage Thursday was all sunshine and cuddly bunnies, and it wasn't until Friday that the blogosphere and talk-radio jumped all over the Landstuhl controversy. I wouldn't be surprised if Monday's Gallup tracker showed Obama losing a couple of points off his lead.

(Rasmussen's latest has Obama ahead by 5 points, 49%-44% including "leaners.)

It's too soon to tell how this will play out, though. On the day Obama landed in Afghanistan, I said we'd have to wait until July 31 to know the net impact of his trip. We just have to wait and see.

'Stunningly dishonest'?

So says Matthew Yglesias about John McCain's new ad invoking Obama's snub of the wounded heroes at Landstuhl.

Granted, as Allahpundit has noted, the ad does seem to mischaracterize the specific reasons why St. Hopey decided that visiting the brave American men and women who sacrifice for freedom wasn't quite as important as working out with an awestruck German reporterette.

But what's with this all-of-a-sudden progressive concern with facts? Why, just four short years ago, the Left was perfectly happy with "fake but accurate" news.

UPDATE: McCain stays on the attack:

(Via Hot Air.) How will this play? Too soon to tell, but the latest polls are not encouraging.