There is nothing necessarily wrong with losing a primary and running as an independent or as a write-in during the general election. Joe Lieberman did so in 2006, and some DC residents hope Mayor Fenty will do so this fall. Both of them had taken risks—and knew that they’d offended some of their party’s partisans in taking them—because they thought that they were fighting for an issue more important than their elected office. For Lieberman, it was the war. For Fenty, it would be children’s education.
Now Lisa Murkowski wants to run a write-in after losing her primary. Why? I really don’t see what big issue she’s defending, other than her own ego.
Hubbard posted this at 6:36 PM HKT on Friday, September 17th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch
The longer the controversy over the Flaky Lower Manhattan Islamic Center Ground Zero Triumph Mosque goes on, the more hugely embarrassed I am.
Yes, there’s a non-zero chance that Cordoba House is front for something nefarious (though not a terribly clever one I’d add). Equally obvious is the fact that the center has so far achieved the exact opposite of its stated goals of fostering religious tolerance and interfaith dialogue; this shouldn’t have come as a terrible surprise.
Neither of those can excuse the sheer stupidity and offensiveness of most of the opposition to it. Never in my life have I heard so many conservatives so eagerly demand state intervention of any kind, let alone intervention to stop religious practice on private property. Not only has due process gone completely out the door, none of the mosque’s opponents — to my knowledge — have even proposed offering to buy-out Cordoba.
By far, though, the most amazing argument is not only that Cordoba is part of some Grand Jihad, but that its construction would be a major victory for that cause. Here’s the usually-sensible Newt Gingrich channeling Andrew McCarthy:
The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites. For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term. It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.
Today, some of the Mosque’s backers insist this term is being used to “symbolize interfaith cooperation” when, in fact, every Islamist in the world recognizes Cordoba as a symbol of Islamic conquest. It is a sign of their contempt for Americans and their confidence in our historic ignorance that they would deliberately insult us this way.
If Jihadis wish to believe that Cordoba’s construction outweighs the routing the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein I, for one, do not think we should try to convince them otherwise.
I hope it’s lower after reading this. It’s difficult to find a better example of (1) baseless and malicious race mongering, and (2) someone openly stating that they don’t really care what the facts are when declaring an opinion. Damn the facts: whatever it takes to disparage Fox News and call Republicans racist, that’s what Dean’s willing to do.
I’ll be glad with the race hucksters at the NAACP decide to disband and go home, because that way we might stand a chance to, for just once in our lives, not hear the exact same damned rhetoric every time a school or business decides to stop being in the business of racial discrimination.
“Too many lives were sacrificed. Too much blood was shed. Too many tears were shed. We can’t turn back now.”
Is that in response to being denied the right to vote? Or is it in response to a county government deciding to stop forcing white kids and black kids to take lengthy bus rides each morning to distant schools so that the classroom aesthetics jibe with some bean counter’s notion of diversity? Or is it in response to being told that it’s 10:40 and McDonald’s stopped serving breakfast 10 minutes ago? Or is it in response to your date not putting out? Who cares: When you’re with the NAACP, the same lines work for every situation.
Apollo posted this at 12:19 AM HKT on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, Race
So the Governor of Arizona may have exaggerated stories of drug violence in her state. Because the entire nation now believes that Arizona’s business is our business, this is the subject of a Dana Milbank column in the Washington Post. Being the ass he is, Milbank can’t resist this bit of facetiousness:
Ay, caramba! Those dark-skinned foreigners are now severing the heads of fair-haired Americans? Maybe they’re also scalping them or shrinking them or putting them on a spike.
There was, of course, nothing about hair or skin color in what the governor said.* If Milbank would get out of his Beltway bubble, where most “Mexicans” are in fact Guatamalans or Salvadorans with very dark skin, he’d know what those of us in the southwest know, which is that a very large number of Mexicans are not dark-skinned at all. A couple of hours watching Telemundo would leave you to believe that Mexicans are as white as the king of Spain. Certainly there are tons of Mexicans here in Austin who, at the end of a Texas summer, are whiter than me.
Mexico is a racially diverse country, ranging from tall and pale people of pure Spanish decent to short, dark people of unbroken Mayan lineage. Arizona and Texas border the northern, whiterregions of Mexico – except for their, um, different driving style, it is difficult to tell these people from native Texans. In large part, because there’s very little difference. Those of us who have daily interaction with actual Mexicans fully understand this, and don’t stereotypically think of them as “dark-skinned.”
That’s just the editorial overlay of a jackass east coaster who thinks so poorly of his countrymen that he believes opposition to illegal immigration simply must come from a bunch of racist bumpkins. Few things so greatly display one’s ignorance as to incorrectly presume the ignorance of others.
*Indeed, she claimed that bodies were being found without heads, so we would have no clue what color hair they had. But a good journalist should never let details get in the way of a race mongering cheap shot.
He seems even less capable than his predecessor of admitting that his opponents have actual thoughts and actually disagree with him. Turns out, he has single digit approval numbers in Israel because of his name, and because Israelis can’t stand him “reaching out” to Muslims.
Of course, back in 2007 and 2008 he hyped his name as a reason to support him, saying it was going to help us in certain parts of the world. Then his supporters (and the McCain campaign) jumped down the throat of anyone who actually used his full name, calling such people xenophobes and racists. Now the presidents seems to think that his name is a reason that one of our closest allies no longer trusts us. This is too much drama for me. He should just go back to being “Barry.”
Apollo posted this at 6:35 PM HKT on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, CHANGE!
This story about Danny Glover getting booed during a commencement address highlights a growing problem in the American academy.
For Morgan Jackson, who came to watch her cousin Sidney Allen graduate, the constant booing a few rows behind her was “irritating.”
“You would think you could let this be about the people who were graduating today,” she said of the hecklers, who “probably didn’t know anyone graduating and only came to cause a scene.”
She wanted the hecklers to “let this be about the people who were graduating,” but what did Glover ramble on about?
The celebrity’s speech, which highlighted many advances for minorities in the past 63 years since Glover’s birth, was inspirational, said Allen, who is black.
Glover, who has been criticized for his friendship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, told the class of 2010 that global warming is real and that climate change is a human-rights issue, as well as an environmental issue.
A UNICEF good-will ambassador, Glover talked about the dangers of Arizona’s proposed immigration Senate Bill 1070 and about his efforts to fight work-force discrimination and poverty in places such as Haiti.
So, basically, Glover talked about everything under the sun except for “the people who were graduating.” Why the hecklers should be restrained by the situation when the speaker isn’t is beyond me.
But at a more fundamental level, why was Glover even there? He has no connection to the college, no connection to the students, has pursued a career that it would be stupid to encourage others to emulate, and, to be gentle, is not a particularly wise man. Yet here a state university is using tens of thousands of dollars to pay him to come to campus and ramble about stuff that he’s done.
Every year around this time I grumble that my own college paid Bill Bradley $50,000 to speak at my graduation. His speech, to the minimal extent I remember it, was mostly about how old he was (e.g. today’s graduating class has never used an 8-track — crap like that). His life – a Rhodes scholar going into the NBA and then becoming a seantor – is significantly more praise-worthy than Glover’s, but because he had no connection to the college or the students, the speech was garbage. $50,000 garbage.
My wife’s commencement speaker the next year was Christine Whitman. Despite the fact that our college is consistently ranked among the most politically active in the nation, she spent much of her speech telling the students to register to vote. The rest of the speech was sour grapes about how extremist the Republican party had gotten, and promotion for her then-current book. I have no reason to believe that the college paid her less than Bradley (equal pay for equal non-work!), but whatever they paid her was completely wasted.
Colleges ought to cut this crap out. It’s expensive, subsidizes the egos of ego maniacal jerks like Glover and Whitman, and wastes everyone’s time at the graduation ceremony (which should be about those who are graduating, right?). If you need a speech, let a professor who is close to the students do it. It’ll mean an lot more to the students, and it won’t cost $50,000.
Crap like this from Democrats would be a lot more persuasive if the president from their party didn’t spend decades being buddy-buddy with an actual domestic terrorist.
Anytime a Democrat accuses Tea Partiers of terrorism, any reporter worth his salt should ask the following: “In light of your concerns about domestic anti-government terrorism, would you now criticize Barrack Obama for maintaining a lengthy relationship with admitted domestic anti-government terrorist Bill Ayers?” Or perhas simply, “What, other than competence, was the difference between the president’s friend Bill Ayers and executed terrorist Tim McVeigh?”
Perhaps as a follow-up, “I can cite to three proven instances of violence by Democrat activists against Tea Partiers; can you cite me three proven instances of violence by Tea Partiers against their political enemies?” “I can cite a proven instance where Democrat activists went to a Tea Party and beat up a black guy while shouting racial epithets at him; can you cite a proven instance where Tea Partiers have done the same?”
Unfortunately, reporters would rather keep being stenographers for politicians who say stupid crap rather than asking questions about the stupid crap politicians say.
If you’re a normal person and you hear the name Connie Mack, you naturally think of the guy who owned and managed the Philadelphia Athletics, accumulating far and away more wins and losses than any other manager in baseball ever will, mostly because he did it for 49 years.
It’s one thing for liberal activists and journalists (forgive my redundancy) to go off like a bunch of idiots about how the new immigration law has created Nazizona, where anyone with skin darker than an Alpine White Nazimobile gets beheaded and catapulted southward over the border. I expect it from them, because they’re a bunch of idiotic race mongers.
It’s another thing for a congressman, and a somewhat important Republican congressman at that, to bring this sort of idiocy to the party.
People who have no conception of what “probable cause” means should just STFU on this topic until they do a little reading. If I were a betting man (and I’m not), I would wager all of my earthly possessions that “probable cause” is the single most litigated issue in all of criminal law. There are literally thousands of court cases, including dozens (perhaps hundreds) of Supreme Court cases discussing what, precisely, constitutes “probable cause.” And, contra the great Mr. Mack’s unfortunately existent great-grandson, police cannot simply stop people walking down the street and demand to see their papers. Even if a state passed a law stating “Police can simply stop people walking down the street and demand to see their papers” – which the new Arizona law definately does not say – police could not simply stop people walking down the street and demand to see their papers. Such a law would be unconstitutional. If I were writing a legal brief and felt like overemphasizing this point, I could make a 50-page string cite of federal cases that would support that proposition.
Congress is an utter disgrace, and has been for quite some time. It would be difficult for my opinion of Congresscritters to get lower. Still, Mack’s ignorant diatribe shocks me. He’s an embarrassment to Congress, to his party, to his state, and to the man who dominated early 20th Century baseball. Shame, thy name is Cornelius Harvey McGillicuddy IV.
John Edwards, at least getting the first letter correct for the travel destination the American people wish he would choose, has gone to Haiti.
He said he had come with a group of 25 to 30 people, including doctors, and had brought supplies and medicine in an effort to “help in whatever way we can.”
Yes, John, I’m sure that philandering ex-senator lawyers are an enormous help. After this catastrophe, I have no doubt that many Haitians are undersexed and undersued.
Apollo posted this at 10:10 PM HKT on Friday, January 22nd, 2010 as Buffoon Watch
