Conservative Donnybrook

I have two things to say about this.

First, any subject that would volunteer for a study that required them to drink wine from a straw is probably suspect in the palate discernment department. Any of my friends who are especially good at wine tasting (not me - I much more of a beer and Irish whiskey sort of guy) would tell you that much of the tasting experience is done through the aroma and feel of a wine. It is unlikely that you get much of the bouquet when slurping wine through a straw.

Second, if someone tells you to drink wine through a straw AND you accept AND the only other information they give you is the price of the wine, don’t you think you might catch on to what they’re doing? Besides the simple fact that all wine does, in fact, taste the same to me (good), I think given the setup described above, I’m liable to tell whoever is running the study just about anything out of pure cussedness and contempt for those sorts of studies.

On the other hand, if we ever charge for content from this blog, we’ll charge A LOT!

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I thought I would share a local story because it is stunning in its depiction of the ineptness of local government and in its illustration of why local government is much more important to the lives of people than, say, a presidential election. And, frankly, because I need to vent.

A story this morning in the Indianapolis Star revealed that county and township assessors underassessed property values for business and commercial property in Indiana by $3.86 billion. In Marion County, Indianapolis’ county, commercial property was undervalued by 30.1%.

Last summer residential property taxes were increased for most homeowners. Some of the increases were on the scale of 300%. My personal increase was 62%. Marion County residents took to the streets in a massive protest in downtown Indianapolis and voiced their displeasure, marching on the Statehouse (of course, they marched on a Sunday and nobody was there, but it was still symbolic and garnered news coverage). During the last county election, the mayor was thrown out of office (the first time an incumbent mayor had lost a reelection bid in 40 years) in favor of a Republican candidate that the local party declined to support and almost every incumbent on the city-council was defeated (turning it over to Republican hands). Continue Reading »

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Over the last ten years or so there has been a concerted effort to “bring civility back into politics.” I don’t understand why. Politics has never been civil. Just look to the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Senator Preston Brooks on the floor of the Senate in 1856. But with the Left’s push to put the filter of political correctness over society, political campaigns have fallen right in line. And the so-called “leaders” of the Right, the RNC, are buying into this nonsense.

Hussein is Senator Obama’s middle name is it not? There are some serious questions about his religious background, why Louis Farrakhan is so adamantly in is camp and why his wife has only recently begun to have a sense of pride for the United States. All these questions point to a more serious one. If Senator Obama is elected President which world leaders will he buddy up with (start planning your vacation to Cuba now)? Restraining avenues of campaigning only serves to help the Left attack the Right. The Left will not show our side the same courtesy of laying off sensitive issues. Look at the recent attacks on Senator McCain’s marital fidelity and whether he is a U.S. citizen or not. Why should we restrict our ability to campaign on the issues when the Left will never do any such thing? What happened to freedom of political speech?

The point being real politics requires candidates to get dirty. Especially when the truth about the opposing candidate is dirty. All too often you see critics opine that the American public does not care for attack ads and that they are sick of “dirty politics.” Well I am sick of p.c. politics. As much as I appreciate these critics wanting to protect me from “dirty politics,” I don’t need their help. I want to see candidates attack one another on real issues using facts. I want conservatives to question the backgrounds of their liberal opponents, even if it involves using their middle name. Why? Because liberals are wrong. Conservatives don’t have to work with them (sorry Senator McCain) or be nice to them, we need to defeat them at the polls because their policies will ruin this country. If that takes peeling back an appealing outer layer to expose the rotting core, so be it.

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Politicians in Washington are constantly hollering about the need to secure freedom for Iraqis, Kosovars, Afghanis, the people of Myanmar, etc… But it seems they forgot about the Americans held hostage in Columbia.

These men served their country only to be abandoned by it. Increased effort must be spent to free our fellow countrymen from the clutches of their communist terror. FARC is a dangerous organization many believe to be operating with the blessing, if not more, of Comrade Chavez in Venezuela. Freeing these men (by any means necessary) should coincide with an American economic and military return to the Western hemisphere. In addition to securing the blessings of freedom to our citizens held in captivity, an operation would demonstrate American resolve to the Tyrant of Venezuela and the members of FARC.

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So rarely do we hear tales of actual bravery and the will to survive.  An Australian fisherman swam to shore to get help for his crewmates.  The swim took almost 12 hours, but the Aussie made it.  His friend and crewmate was later found clingy to an ice chest adrift in the ocean.

For your bravery, determination and will to survive I salute you Mr. Williams.  Good work. 

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I’m a guy who likes to get to the bottom line, to simplify things. Here’s an article discussing four papers that is crying out for my brand of simplification.

You can entirely skip the first three paragraphs which are mainly a catalog of how smart the author of the papers is. The first paper’s topic analyzes the effects of political assassination on countries. The second paper discusses the effect that individual leaders have on a nation. The third paper discusses the effect of centralized coordination of corruption in a nation. And, finally, the fourth paper analyzes whether it reduces corruption to manage spending projects from the top.

It is the first two papers that I’d like to summarize. As I read it, George W. Bush is going about the process of democratization all wrong. Apparently, when autocratic leaders are assassinated, the countries they were running tend to become more democratic. So, instead of invading all these countries in the Middle East, we should just be rubbing out their leaders, thereby Bringing Democracy to the Region™. At least, that’s the message I get from the first two papers.

I’d like to see him do some research into whether in cases where Democracy fails to take hold after a single assassination, does it help to bump off the successor? I mean, is the process of Democratization iterative?

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Here is a classic debate from Firing Line history where Buckley demolishes Noam Chomsky and makes him look stupid. Charmingly.

Buckley’s line toward the beginning of this exchange where Buckley offers to take up Chomsky’s digression and then peeks over at him with a bit of a wink and sparkle in his eye is priceless.

Chomsky debate: Part I and Part II

And, as it turns out, this seems to be fairly topical.

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There are people whose passing affects one even though he has never met them. Ronald Reagan was one. Pope John Paul II was another. Today, we mourn the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr.

My “acquaintance” with him came about as a subscriber to the magazine he founded in 1955, National Review. One of the things I discovered early on is that if you waited long enough to renew your subscription, you’d eventually receive a letter from Bill Buckley coaxing a renewal out of you. As a result, I would always wait for the Buckley letter before I would send in my renewal since they were always a treat.

I also remember him from his television show, Firing Line. It was always entertaining when he’d get an opponent on the ropes. You’d see his eyebrow arch slightly and knew that the poor sap was about to find himself skewered by a superior intellect with consummate debate skills.

As our readers on CD may have noted in the past, we certainly see ourselves as standing on the shoulders of WFB. We cribbed his famous phrase, bastardized it, and used it as a tagline for our website, “Standing athwart history, yelling incoherently.”

The world is a little poorer for Bill Buckley’s passing. R.I.P.

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Sam Zell, the new owner of the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Cubs among other entities, thinks that the Democrats (specifically Senators Clinton and Obama) are scaring the American public into thinking the economy is worse than it really is. I happen to agree with him. One thing I cannot understand is why everyone says this is a terrible time to buy a house or stock. Common sense would dictate that buying a product when it is a buyers market is a good thing, no?

Anyway it’s good to see that the Trib is in good hands. I just hope he doesn’t rename Wrigley and sell the Cubs to a terrible owner.

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With the coldest winter many places have seen in years, the global warming thing doesn’t seem to be working out. Maybe you can lead the charge against the mini ice age that’s rolling in?

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Mr. Cubbedge has been (very) subtly goading us into taking up this story. For instance, he has posted on his website that “Conservative Donnybrook picks up the story” and has posted comments on this website about the story in unrelated topics. We only wish he’d come out and say that he thinks we should write about this issue instead of beating around the bush so much. In the face of all this indirect pressure, what can I do?

Let me say a few words about the sudden rash of “conservatives” advocating for Obama.

Just to catch everyone up on the story:

Doug Kmiec wrote the following piece for Slate.
Deal Hudson found it less than impressive.
Kmiec shot back with this retort. (Notice the insinuation that bloggers are not regular, butts-in-the-pews churchgoers who pray on a regular basis).

And then the piling on began…

Cubbedge…
Ramesh…
Kmiec answered Ramesh, but not Cubbedge (What’s up with that, Will?). Continue Reading »

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A recent study suggests that conservatives are not attracted to the courses of study which lead to the professoriate.

Mr. Maranto asked the Woessners to contribute a chapter to his book on why conservatives don’t pursue doctorates. Typically, he says, there are a few answers to the question. Liberals say conservatives want to make more money than professors earn, while conservatives argue that they get less encouragement from professors than liberal students do. What the Woessners found, though, is that those are not the only reasons. They looked at a 2004 survey of 15,569 college seniors completed by the University of California at Los Angeles’s Higher Education Research Institute. That research showed that while liberal students were more likely than conservative students to have contact with professors outside the classroom and to do research with them, the difference was not enough to explain why so many more liberal students wanted to pursue Ph.D’s.

Instead the Woessners looked at differences in interests and personality. They found that in a variety of ways, conservative students were less interested than liberals in subject matter that often leads to doctoral degrees, and less interested in doing the kinds of things that professors spend their time doing. Continue Reading »

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I was sort of waiting for Bill to take up this story over on Will Cubbedge’s website, Fish in a Barrel. However, Will was forced to comment off-topic and I thought I would simply promote his comment to a full-fledged post:

This is off topic, but of interest to lawyer types:

The former dean of my Law School, a prominent pro-lifer and Catholic apologist for Romney, has written favorably of Obama, and Deal Hudson has taken him to task:

Catholic Jurist Equivocates for Obama

WAC

This allows me to clean up the off-topic comment and allows you a chance to go check out FIB’s new look.

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First, there is the (spurious) claim that New York-style pizza is the best in the world. This is demonstrably false as New Yorkers’ excuse for pizza is barely discernible from a cardboard cut-out of pizza. Luckily, there are those with a much clearer vision when it comes to the paradisaical pie.

Now, New Yorkers propose this. Hot dogs in a vending machine? Are you kidding me? Probably served with little ketchup packets. News flash, New Yorkers: Ketchup does not belong on hot dogs! Get a clue.

I will say this: Nathan’s makes a decent dog, but it is nowhere even close to the king of all dogs, the Vienna Beef Dog.  If they put these little Red Hots in vending machines, they might be on to something, but a flabby little Nathan’s dog is not going to get anyone with a modicum of taste excited.

Good rule of thumb: When a New Yorker starts talking about food, he has no clue what he is talking about. I would check the orifice out of which he is talking.

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At 10:29 pm last night, the United States declared its unrivaled supremacy over every other nation on earth when it successfully destroyed a defunct satellite in a decaying orbit. Navy personnel took aim on the satellite’s fuel tank (and as any young boy would know, that would be the most fun place to shoot anything), fired and scored a direct hit. One thousand pounds of toxic hydrazine fuel went - well, it would have been sky-high if the satellite had been in the atmosphere. I’m not really sure what you call it in space.

At the moment of impact the satellite was traveling at more than 17,000 mph. Which is probably about the speed that Putin’s stomach slammed into his Adam’s apple. Ronald Reagan’s dream of protecting the West from the menace of nuclear annihilation is within grasp. The project that Ted Kennedy ridiculed as “Star Wars” and a waste of taxpayer money justified itself over the Pacific Ocean yesterday evening. The American people are safer tonight than they were at 10:28 pm last night.

What’s even more remarkable is that the shot almost was called off because conditions were not “ideal.” Even better, it appears that some of the debris may rain down on Chinese heads for the next day or so. Hopefully, this system can be deployed to protect our allies in Europe and the Middle East soon.

The United States Navy should be proud of their work last night.

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The USDA announced the recall over 143 million pounds of beef from a southern California meat producer/packer. The recall has scared many from buying or consuming beef products. The scare rippled through the nation, over the seas and on to foreign shores. The largest recall prior to the current was of only 35 million pounds! This recall truly is monumental. The question is, was the recall justified? Continue Reading »

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I was listening to Rush Limbaugh today and he took the time to read the entire text of the article I’ve reproduced below. Since we seemingly have both angry white men and women as contributors and comments I wanted to share it with you.

In Election 2008, Don’t Forget Angry White Man

by: Gary Hubbell, Aspen Times Weekly

There is a great amount of interest in this year’s presidential elections, as everybody seems to recognize that our next president has to be a lot better than George Bush. The Democrats are riding high with two groundbreaking candidates — a woman and an African-American — while the conservative Republicans are in a quandary about their party’s nod to a quasi-liberal maverick, John McCain. Continue Reading »

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Fidel Castro hangs ups his spurs!  The exiled Cubans in south Florida and all over the world have been waiting for this day since January 1st, 1959 and now it appears….nothing will change.  They (and we) have nothing to look forward to but continued socialism and tyranny on the island of Cuba. 

 Some day it has to crack under its own weight…right?

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I’m sure this Muslim nation will be the greatest of friends with the United States. Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and all the other UN-believers should give themselves a little pat on the back. I’m sure this won’t come back to haunt us.

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