Why Rudy can win

Rudy Giuliani's poll numbers definitely have declined a bit; some say his campaign is flagging, that his disagreement with the Republican Party's conservative base on some social issues is finally catching up with him. But I keep coming back to this Time magazine profile of Giuliani I read a number of weeks ago; and in it, after a speech Rudy had given in Spartanburg, South Carolina (no hotbed of social liberalism there!), the reporter David von Drehle found this:

One of the first people I met at the rally turned out to be a member of First Baptist church. His name was Paul Walters; he is a dentist, a Republican committeeman and a Giuliani fan. When I asked what his pastor might think of that, he just shook his head as if I was missing the point.
"Rudy can handle the social issues," Walters said confidently, because of his record in New York and because "people are going to look at the bigger issues, especially terrorism. Until we get a handle on that, the social issues will be down here," he said, gesturing at knee level. A few minutes later, John McCarley, a weather-beaten cattleman with a deep drawl and a faded Yankees cap, echoed that analysis. "We're in an era where we need leadership," he said. "There will be social issues where we disagree, but ... we won't have a litmus test. He transcends that."

And that's good conservatism, too. There may be a "litmus test" when it comes to being a conservative (for example, how can you be a conservative and argue that there is no right to private property whatever); but I don't know that abortion is it (and anyway Giuliani's judicial appointments and overall philosophy would seem to indicate that he would have it be a matter left up to the individual states---which is exactly what we did with abortion in this country prior to 1973).

And by the way, if John McCain defies my earlier prediction and does quit the race, poll numbers I've seen indicate that the majority of his support might just go to...Giuliani.

Er, and Hillary wants your input too!...

Is Al Jazeera copying from Hillary? Are Hillary's people copying Al Jazeera? Do they have the same media adviser???? You make the call...

In all seriousness, I guess it's just that making and posting online short videos is popular right now, and a way to connect with the candidate. But it is a rather odd coincidence...

Al-Jazeera/English wants your input...

...and they say so themselves, right here. They want input from Americans on how they can make their channel better, and they invite YouTubers to make 30-second-or-less videos as a response.

Well, don't let them down. Tell 'em what you think--and don't forget to include some constructive criticism. For example, note that even many in the Middle East find something to criticize when it comes to Al Jazeera...

Whither the McCain campaign?

The political world is abuzz today over the resignations of two top staffers to the presidential candidacy of Senator John McCain; some details here. This, on top of the Arizona senator's relatively poor fundraising numbers and other staff layoffs announced recently, has some wondering if McCain is about to quit the campaign.

My prediction: don't bet on it. Remember the McCain temperament and personality. He's feisty, he's stubborn, he loves to go for broke and to do exactly what conventional wisdom would tell him not to do. At times, this has led him in my opinion into some unwise moves; it was stupid, not to mention suicidal, for him in 2000 to basically wage a frontal assault against religious conservatives; and this year's immigration bill didn't deserve McCain's stubborn support. Now, however, being down in the polls and already pronounced dead by some pundits, McCain will think he's got this situation right where he wants it. With nothing to lose, he can shoot from the hip and do whatever he wants; the revival of the Straight Talk Express, etc etc etc. You can hear it now. So he won't quit.

But he won't become the GOP nominee, either.

Little girl lost; naturally her video is on YouTube

A very young girl is perhaps given Ecstasy. Her eyes roll back in her head. She's in a car with a bunch of apparently teenage girls; naturally they take a video of her and it gets posted on YouTube. Naturally. The cops are looking for the young girl and her mother.

My question is: why make a video of this, and post it anywhere? Who thinks that giving a toddler drugs is cute?

Quote of the day

From a recent piece by the LA Times' Ronald Brownstein on the record so far amassed by the Democratic majority in Congress: "Relentless argument and sparse achievement isn't an ideal formula for success."

To be fair, that's something that needs to be said to congressional Republicans, too.

The surge in Iraq might be working; time to leave!

An American military leader in Iraq (full story can be found here) says:

Major General Rick Lynch, commander of coalition forces in central Iraq, said the addition of thousands more 'surge' troops in recent weeks had enabled him to clear 70 percent of his territory south of Baghdad of insurgents. 'Those surge forces have given us the capability that we have now to take the fight to the enemy,' he told Pentagon reporters via satellite from Baghdad. 'If those surge forces go away, that capability goes away and the Iraqi security forces aren't ready yet to do that,' Lynch said. In the troops' absence, insurgents would regain ground and be free to carry out roadside-bomb attacks in Baghdad, 'and the violence would escalate.'
'It would be a mess,' the commander said, days before a new debate over withdrawing troops is to start in the Democratic-controlled Congress.

Other interesting stuff on this topic can be found as always here.

Why we must secure our borders

This is scary--the original article came from reporter Todd Bensman of the San Antonio Express-News. His most crucial findings:

More than 5,700 illegal migrants from 43 Islamic countries, including State Sponsors of Terror, have been caught while traveling over the Canadian and Mexican borders along well-established underground smuggling routes since 9-11, a traffic that continues daily. People caught coming from these countries in the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa are labeled by our federal law enforcement agencies as "Special Interest Aliens." ... I have estimated that between 20,000 and 60,000 have gotten through without getting caught since 9/11. Most are probably economic or politically persecuted migrants but all of those who evaded border patrol also did not undergo terror watch list screening and are walking around the country anonymous. This evasion constitutes the primary national security vulnerability of our unguarded borders.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media has met Mr. Bensman's findings with...silence.

Losing their nerve?

The New York Times reports that some Bush administration insiders are wavering with regard to the war in Iraq:

White House officials fear that the last pillars of political support among Senate Republicans for President Bush’s Iraq strategy are collapsing around them, according to several administration officials and outsiders they are consulting. They say that inside the administration, debate is intensifying over whether Mr. Bush should try to prevent more defections by announcing his intention to begin a gradual withdrawal of American troops from the high-casualty neighborhoods of Baghdad and other cities.

Let's be clear. If the administration goes that route, it will simply embolden 1] antiwar Democrats; and 2] the terrorists in Iraq (and elsewhere). It's not going to appease anybody. And it would seem to go against every principle the administration has been defending with regard to the war for months now.

Now, now, watch out for that hateful rhetoric...

Did anyone else catch this? Tom Matzzie is the Washington director of the liberal political organization MoveOn.org. Nothing wrong with that. He's also passionately against the war in Iraq. He certainly has that right. But in a recent New York Times piece highlighting antiwar groups' increased influence with Democrats, note what Mr. Matzzie had to say:

“The principle under which we’ve been operating is more like a political campaign,” Mr. Matzzie said. “The central strategy is creating that toxic environment for people who want to continue this debacle.”

A "toxic environment"? Is that what we want in our politics? Seems as though I've heard liberal leaders decry that kind of attitude when they believe conservatives engage in it.

The Virginia Tech shootings, gun control, and Europe

Everyone remembers the Virginia Tech shootings from last April...and we continue to send our thoughts and prayers to all those affected by the shootings, and to the families of the victims. But what really struck me was the at-times hysterical reaction to the entire thing from some pundits, especially in Europe. European newspapers argued that what happened at Virginia Tech demonstrated conclusively that America must ban semi-automatic assault weapons (even though the shooter didn't use that weapon); another said it was easier in America to get a machine gun than it is to secure a driver's license (not true); and a third suggested that gun violence continues to become more common in America (it isn't---it's been falling for over a decade). The respected analyst James Q. Wilson rounded all this up a few weeks ago---and added this:

AS FOR THE European disdain for our criminal culture, many of those countries should not spend too much time congratulating themselves. In 2000, the rate at which people were robbed or assaulted was higher in England, Scotland, Finland, Poland, Denmark and Sweden than it was in the United States. The assault rate in England was twice that in the United States. In the decade since England banned all private possession of handguns, the BBC reported that the number of gun crimes has gone up sharply. Some of the worst examples of mass gun violence have also occurred in Europe. In recent years, 17 students and teachers were killed by a shooter in one incident at a German public school; 14 legislators were shot to death in Switzerland, and eight city council members were shot to death near Paris.

Something to remember.

Zero-tolerance, zero sense

A schoolgirl writes "I love Alex" on the gymnasium wall. Okay, she shouldn't have done it...but a four-month suspension? Inflexible "zero-tolerance" policies are a menace. Details here.

Love and language

What if you love language, and words, and writing, but you're looking for love on internet relationship sites and the persons seeking your affection can't write worth a darn? On this, a writer for the NY Times reflects and Ann Althouse comments.

Wow! I'm not surprised dept

The New York Times today in a long editorial urged (surprise!) that the U.S. get out of Iraq immediately. The editorial has more weaknesses, contradictions, and holes in its argumentation than one can count, but Jules Crittenden does an excellent job of parsing them all out. Read his whole piece. And I'll have a little more to say on the editorial a bit later.

The romance of the Red Sox

...a fascinating piece today, written by a long-time Red Sox watcher who attended games in Fenway Park in the days of Ted Williams, but who ironically has spent his entire career as a sportswriter in...Detroit.

Falsehood of the day

It comes from both Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne and Democratic Senator Evan Bayh (an interview with whom Dionne referenced), of Indiana, in this recent Dionne column. In discussing the failure of the recent immigration bill to pass, Bayh and Dionne blame what they see as conservatives' (read: the Bush administration's) use of government:

"And the strongest arguments in the restrictionists' arsenal played on a widespread belief that the federal government was too incompetent to enforce whatever tough provisions the bill contained. Bayh pointed to poor planning for the Iraq war and the failure to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina as leading inevitably to skepticism. "A government that's going to permit that is suddenly going to know how to make an entirely new employment system work?" Bayh asked."

Hmmm. Really? That explains it? One can't deny that some people may have felt that way. But what about the fact that the last time we passed an immigration "reform" bill, the legislation called the Simpson-Mazzoli bill of 1986, it too promised a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants...and tougher border enforcement. And what did we get? In 1986 there were approzimately 3 million illegal immigrants in this country. Today, the "official" count is 12 million; I suspect there are more than that. So the public rejection of this bill didn't necessarily have to do with revulsion at the Bush administration and its use of government; maybe instead it had to do with a lack of faith in immigration legislation, period, dating back over two decades.

What Senator Domenici has wrought...

In his call for a change of strategy in Iraq the other day, Republican Senator Domenici claimed he opposed automatic or swift troop withdrawals. But he has given momentum to those calling for exactly that. I coulda told him...

Argument with the biggest hole in it of the day

Today, Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post wrote about the White House response to Bill and Hillary Clinton's criticism of the commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence commutation. The Bush administration, through its press spokesman Tony Snow, ridiculed the Clintons' attack on the president's decision with regard to Libby, pointing to former President Clinton's pardon of millionaire businessman Marc Rich on his last day in office. Froomkin was not amused, claiming this is a distraction from the real issues, whatever they are. Let's focus especially on this part of Froomkin's "argument": "And furthermore, there is an ethical chasm between Clinton's pardons -- unseemly as they were -- and Bush's decision to grant clemency to someone involved in an investigation of his own White House."

Baloney. Lookit: 1] What "investigation"? As far as one can tell, the Fitzgerald investigation is over and Libby is going to be all they'll get. We already know who "leaked" Valerie Plame's name to the media, and there's no evidence it was done deliberately for "revenge" or whatever, nor am I convinced that Plame was covert. 2] Even liberals such as Alan Dershowitz and Richard Cohen agree Libby's sentence was excessive. 3] Now, let's look at Marc Rich--extremely wealthy; convicted of a crime; on the day of his pardon, he was still in France, where he'd skedaddled some time before rather than do the time--he'd done no time whatsoever; as far as one knows, there were no cries that Rich had been convicted unjustly or that he'd been done wrong; but there WERE those who pointed out that his wife was a big-time Democratic Party contributor and was a Friend of Bill.

So Rich was pardoned. "Chasm"? Yes, there is one--and once again it's the chasm between a member of the Washington DC mainstream media and reality.

France update: Le Big Mac--bon! Running--non!

New French president Nicolas Sarkozy gets his exercise with a good run--but did you know that by so doing he has angered French intellectuals, who argue that jogging is not a "sensitive" or "spiritual" act, and thus he has "fueled a French suspicion that running is for self-centered individualists like Americans"? Only in France...

Wow! I'm not surprised dept.

Non-story and non-surprising-headline of the day: "BRITNEY SPEARS MAKES BIZARRE APOLOGY"...