Some Early GOOD News From the Primary Season

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After yesterday’s (Tuesday 1/29/08) Florida Primary, we seem to be down to the Final Four, and that’s definitely GOOD NEWS on both sides, at least for more Conservative voters!

With Rudy Giuliani bowing out after yesterday’s poor third place showing among Republicans and John Edwards set to announce his withdrawal today, that leaves Hillary and Obama for the Dems and Romney and McCain for the GOP. I'm not counting either Huckabee or Kucinich, because such guys have no realistic shot at even serving as a "spoiler" any more.

Think about it! The TWO most Left-of-center candidates on each side are OUTTA HERE!

I know some people argue that there really isn’t all that much difference between a Hillary Clinton and a John McCain (actually there is, but it’s in the details), in truth, there isn’t all that much difference (policy-wise) between an Obama and a Hillary, or McCain and Romney.

In this year of “CHANGE,” we are left with four pretty Centrist candidates, largely committed to more of the same on Bernake’s Supply Side Fed policies and all pretty much supporting the broader WoT.

Yes, I prefer the Republicans military approach to global jihadist terrorism, largely because the “Criminal Justice” approach to fighting terror failed miserably.

In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, James Fox (then head of the FBI’s New York Office) warned that, “America’s criminal justice system is inadequate to dealing with the problem of state sponsored, international terrorism.”

Once you accept that the Criminal Justice method is inadequate, there are only two options, (1) the military option or (2) the surrender option, which is to say there is ONLY ONE option, once we accept that the criminal justice method of dealing with state sponsored, international terrorism is inadequate to dealing with that task.

I also prefer the GOP’s stand on the economy, despite the fact that after Gingrich left Congress, the GOP fell into a “feeding frenzy at the public trough,” just as the Dems had done for the previous FOUR DECADES!

While there’s some hope that Republicans might learn from their mistakes, the Pelosi-Reid Congress doesn’t even seem to see that as a mistake, as they seemed poised to attempt to block the current President’s elimination of earmarks from all spending Bills.

In short, Conservatives can breathe at least a little easier today, with the two most Left-of-center candidates now officially out of the race.

Rudy’s Risky Strategy May Lead to an Early Exit

Aside from a dubious ("Big State") campaign strategy, Rudy Giuliani (once dubbed “America’s Mayor”) faces a new and largely (at least from his camp) unexpected foe – firefighters from across the country.

The first stop for a series of rallies organized by the International Association of Firefighters and family members of the victims of September 11th terror attacks, was a firefighters' union on North Orange Blossom Trail, Florida. Members urged voters not to support Giuliani for president.

Rudy Giuliani, much like Senator Hillary Clinton, is an abrasive, unlikable person and that’s a tough burden for any politician to overcome.

As Mayor of New York City, Giuliani was a veritable miracle worker. He took over from one of the worst mayors in that City’s history (David Dinkins), a man often referred to as “The Jimmy Carter of New York City.”

Under Dinkins New York’s population and its tax base both shrunk, but crime sky rocketed. The last year David Dinkins was Mayor, there were over 2,000 murders in new York City.

One of Giuliani’s initial master strokes was making Bill Bratton NYPD Commissioner. Bratton was beloved by New York cops and loathed by both criminals and ACLU-types alike.

In his first salvo in the Giuliani era war on crime, Bratton began unceremoniously locking up the so-called “Squeegee-men,” aggressive panhandlers who targeted drivers (especially women) on the entrances and exits of New York City’s many highways.

When some ACLU-types demanded, “How will these squeegee-men make any money,” Bratton famously answered, “I say, they should get off the booze, get off the drugs and get a job!”

That set the tone of one of the most successful crime policies ever developed and it made both Giuliani and Bratton national figures, and rightly so.

Bratton’s Compstat program was rightly hailed as “a stroke of genius,” by others in law enforcement. Repeat offenders were targeted both by police (for extra scrutiny) and by the courts (for longer sentences). Bratton popularized the mantra that violent street crime was “motivated by greed not need.”

Under Giuliani, New York began a massive gentrification, as “ghetto areas” shrunk and yuppies began reclaiming large swaths of the once blighted City. Rudy even made a deal with Disney to renovate and make-over New York’s Times Square!

The fact of the matter is that Giuliani was certainly one of the greatest Mayors New York City ever had, policy-wise, but his personal life was a mess, he became increasingly autocratic and when he dumped Bratton in 1996, he followed Bratton up with increasingly pedestrian choices (first, Howard Safir, and then, the infamous Bernie Kerik).

But after two terms and two consecutive Police and Fire contracts front-ended with ZERO percent raises, Guiliani had worn out his welcome with most in New York’s Emergency Response community, and it wasn’t all about money, although that was a sore point, as neighboring jurisdiction’s salaries soared, along with those of NYC’s Deputy mayors and Commissioners, no, Giuliani also alienated a lot of the top brass in both the NYPD and the FDNY.

It was indeed Giuliani who insisted that the City’s Emergency Command Post be placed in Building-7 of the World Trade Center, over the objections of both Police and Fire officials.

Ironically enough, Giuliani’s post-11 reputation has taken even more of a beating. Some of that is due to the sensitivity, especially of family members of the 9/11 victims that “No one should profit off of 9/11.” When long-time author, Dennis Smith (Report From Engine Company 82) wrote a book based on interviews with many of those Police and Firefighters who “worked the pile” after that day, family members of the victims went to the publisher (Simon-Schuster) to block its release.

For his part, Giuliani shamelessly intertwined his political reputation with 9/11 and built a lucrative anti-terror enterprise (Giuliani Partners) and lapped up the post-9/11 attention as “America’s Mayor,” alienating many 9/11 family members in the process.

Many saw that as just another example of Giuliani’s abrasiveness, a quality that is now threatening to put an early end to his White House hopes.

At this point, it’s hard to believe, let alone remember when Giuliani was seen as the Republican favorite, just six months ago.

Leftist Civil Rights Abuses Rampant With Canada's "Civil Rights Commission"

Leftists in Canada are trying, far more successfully, than their counterparts in the USA to silence the voices who oppose the insidious “American Liberal/”European Socialist” agenda.

Thanks to Canada’s Human Rights Commission, a commission that would be illegal here in the U.S. under the Bill of Rights, has allowed Muslims in Canada to persecute Ezra Levant (http://ezralevant.com/ and pictured above), now being tried in by the Canadian Civil Rights Commission in Alberta, for the “crime” of running examples of the Danish cartoons on the Prophet Mohammed, to show how frivolous the controversy was. His right to publish, his right to free expression is being challenged.

In another travesty, Catholic Insight, a monthly published in Toronto is being persecuted (prosecution is a term reserved for legitimate legal prosecutions that DO NOT violate individual rights, such as the right to free expression) for the “crime” of espousing the Catholic position on homosexuality (“hate the sin, but love the sinner”) and for “having vigorously opposed the gay rights agenda.” Canada’s Maclean’s magazine has a case pending for the “crime” of publishing an excerpt of a book by Mark Steyn.

Under Canada’s abusive Civil Rights Commission (CCRC), a recipient of a complaint, need not be told who the complainant is, or even what the complaint alleges and what’s more the CCRC has a 100% conviction rate, and no wonder, as, Rabbi Reuven Bulka and Sylvain Abitbol (Co-Presidents of the Canadian Jewish Congress, and strong supporters of the CCRC) penned an editorial entitled “Some human rights complaints are frivolous," which included this astounding line, “Human rights commissions must constantly recalibrate where the balance lies between free expression and its abridgement, but the determination of where to place the fulcrum must always be based on the statutory standard that such expression is “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.”

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In other words, the concept of a "pre-crime" is still fine by them. No-one has to be exposed to hatred or contempt for someone to be found guilty. It just has to be "likely" that could happen. And hatred or contempt - emotional feelings - are enough. The CJC doesn't even think that a discriminatory act is necessary for a conviction. They support the notion of thought crimes.

As David Warren a Conservative activist from Ottaw noted recently in his excellent piece (Kafka’s Canada); “we may begin to deduce that there are two classes of Canadian writers (including journalists, authors of books, and contributors to the Internet) who should not, at this moment, feel threatened with the loss of their freedom. These are gay activists, and fanatical Islamists. I would guess that radical feminists are also pretty safe -- for the moment. And perhaps also those who harbour deep racial resentments against people with white skins. Everyone else is a “fair target.”

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"The situation may change, however, for whimsical ideas about what constitutes a thought crime can and do vary from day to day.”

Ezra Levant asks the question, “Essentially they are pleading for Steyn and I as special cases. Is it because I'm a Jew and Steyn sounds like he might be, too? Is it because we're being sued by Muslim fanatics?

This is what the Left would dearly want for America too, but that pesky First Amendment that protects controversial speech gets in the way.

Golfweek Fires its Editor Over Anti-Racism Stance...

Golfweek Fired Editor Dave Seanor over its controversial cover depicting a noose in response to the comments that got golf commentator Kelly Tilghman suspended. Tilghman has apologized for jokingly saying younger players on the PGA Tour should "lynch [Tiger] in a back alley . . . "

Apparently Golfweek was looking for an illustration for its articles on remarks made by Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman on Jan. 4 during the second round of the Mercedes-Benz Championship.

She and analyst Nick Faldo were discussing the prospects of young players who wanted to challenge Woods and when Faldo proposed that "to take Tiger on, maybe they should just gang up [on him] for a while," Tilghman laughingly replied, "Lynch him in a back alley."

This week Golfweek announced that editor Dave Seanor was being replaced by Jeff Babineau, as it apologized for the Jan. 19 cover.

"We apologize for creating this graphic cover that received extreme negative reaction from consumers, subscribers and advertisers across the country," said William Kupper Jr., president of Turnstile Publishing Co., the parent company of Golfweek.

"We were trying to convey the controversial issues with a strong and provocative image. It is now obvious that the overall reaction to our cover deeply offended many people. For that, we are deeply apologetic."

What’s interesting is that Dave Seanor and Golfweek used that image to highlight the inappropriateness of Tilghman’s remarks and were fired, for, in effect, “the crime of “anti-racism.”

But that’s political correctness for you!

Bobby Fisher RIP

Bobby Fisher, the chess prodigy who defeated Soviet Grandmaster Boris Spassky in a televised Cold War confrontation, died Friday (January 18th, 2008) in an Icelandic Hospital, apparently from Kidney failure (he'd left the hospital in the Fall, refusing further treatment for his diagnosed kidney disease). Bobby Fisher was 64.

Like a lot of Baby Boomers, it seems like the question you’d expect Fisher to ask is, “When did I become so old?”

For many of us, he remains frozen in time as that twenty-eight year old Chess Master who did the seemingly impossible, coming back from a two game deficit, to defeat then reigning world chess champion, Boris Spassky.

Unfortunately, since that day in 1972, Fisher became more well known for his conspiratorial and often anti-Jewish tirades, then for his chess play. Those rants were made stranger still for his own mother being Jewish.

Fisher had always been a troubled individual. Early on, Manhattan’s Marshall Chess Club debated getting Fisher psychiatric help, but decided against it after one of the board members mused, “What if Fisher gets well and turns away from chess?”

He appeared on the chess scene once more in 1992 for a re-match with Spassky, in war torn Yugoslavi, which he won handily, garnering a $5 million purse in the process.

After years of railing against the U.S. from various spots in Asia, he emigrated to Iceland in 2005, where he lived his remaining thirty months.

Surprise!!! The NY Times Slimes America’s Troops, AGAIN...

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This past Sunday (1/13/08) the NY Times ran a front page story claiming it had found 121 incidents of former Iraq and Afghanistan veterans committing homicide back here in the United States. That amounts to 121 homicides committed by the 350,000 military vets who served in Iraq and Afghanistan over the four year period between 2003 and 2007.

The only problem with the story is that it failed to compare those numbers to what would be expected from a control group, say 350,000 Americans of that age group who stayed home.

The Justice Department’s figures show that 350,000 Americans that age would be expected to commit 150,000 murders every year.

So Afghan and Iraq war military veterans committed 121 murders over that four year period (2003 – 2007), while a similar sized (350,000) group of Americans of that age group who stayed home would average 150 murders each year or some 600 murders over that same four year period.

So, the NY Times made it seem like America’s military vets were more prone to murder when they got back home, despite Justice Department figures that seem to indicate that they are appx. FIVE TIMES LESS likely to commit murder than Americans of the same age who stayed home!

Is any of this surprising? The NY Times inability to get the facts straight, it’s overt and deliberate anti-Military and anti-American stands?

No, there’s nothing surprising about any of that.

But who are America’s military veterans?

Well, they are, in effect, the backbone of America’s working class. They are, for the most part, cops, firefighters, teachers, construction workers, truck drivers, they are the face of America and the NY Times keeps on spitting in the face of America time after time.

The question is WHY would anyone who works for a living (in ANY job) defend the NY Times’ blatant anti-working class slander???

What Does Iowa Mean?

The major shock coming out of Iowa is the poor showings for both Hillary Clinton’s and Rudy Giuliani’s camps. Of course, Giuliani barely campaigned there and many now claim his “big state strategy” looks better than ever (we'll see), while Hillary appears badly wounded, tracking a close third (29.5%) behind both Edwards (29.8%) and Obama (37.6%).

The Democrats seem to have embraced the message of “change,” and rejected Edwards as the candidate best poised to deliver that change. This will almost certainly serve to usher in at least one significant change, as it will almost without question CHANGE the Clinton strategy down the line.

On the Republican side, both Thompson and McCain have essentially ceded the Conservative core to Huckabee...at least for the moment.

Huckabee is indeed articulate, eloquent, with a sense of humor, BUT aside from having been very weak on illegal immigration, almost "pro-illegal immigrant," going so far as to offer the children of illegals "In-State" tuition rates, while citizens from out of state paid a higher rate under Huckabee's plan than foreign born nationals and ILLEGAL ones at that, he’s also sounded a lot like John Edwards in blaming corporate America (employer to over 60% of the American workforce) for all the ills of society! So, how is Huckabee still leading Thompson among Conservative voters? The answer lies with the personalities of both McCain and Thompson themselves.

For Thompson, the biggest obstacle he faces is that the GOP hierarchy, its "monied interests" have seen Rudy & Romney as "the only candidates who could possibly beat a Democrat in the national election."

Regardless of whether that is true or not, it is the viewpoint that most of those monied interests have come from and many of those interests are so-called "Moderate" or "Country Club" Republicans. That's the primary reason why Ronald Reagan was forced to pick a fellow Moderate (Bush Sr.) as VP back in 1980, instead of his own first choice, Paul Laxalt from Nevada. (*)

I think Fred Thompson’s camp initially felt he was a shoe-in as the most articulate Republican, but that's not held true - Romney is by far the most telegenic and slickly packaged GOP candidate, Rudy is, despite a slew of flaws, very articulate and even convincing, despite being a shameless self-promoter, on the subject of terrorism and even Huckabee has proven to be a better communicator than the Thompson camp envisioned.

As a result, Fred Thompson hasn't stood out and he hasn't gotten the traction he so desperately needs.

We're now nearly within a month of "Super Tuesday" and the nomination for both Parties will be pretty much sewn up by the end of that day.

Can a Fred Thompson or a John McCain make a move?

Yes, the GOP field, at this point, still seems still wide open, but trailing Huckabee (34%) and Romney (26%) so badly in Iowa (McCain and Thompson both garnered about 13%) is not a good sign at all.

Huckabee’s 34% to 26% win over Romney certainly puts credence behind the claim that the GOP’s Conservative base hasn’t been able to embrace the Romney or Giuliani campaigns and it may well boost his national figures. The pre-Iowa NBC/WSJ Poll had Giuliani and Romney tied for the top spot with 20% of the vote, Huckabee next with 17% and McCain following with 14% and his Iowa surge should no doubt help the Huckabee cause nationally.

Others, however, are undeterred by Rudy Giuliani's dead last showing. According to Norm Podhoretz, “The result in Iowa could not have been better for Giuliani tactically. Romney has been injured. Huckabee won, but did not apparently win by a huge margin, and there won’t be many other states where evangelicals make up fully three-fifths of the primary electorate. And John McCain did not, it seems, come in third with a surprising showing, but fourth with a very modest showing. If McCain beats Romney in New Hampshire, Romney will have a difficult time going on — but McCain clearly hasn’t yet turned the corner and brought conservative Republicans back in his corner. And Fred Thompson’s third-place showing wasn’t impressive enough to kick his campaign back to life. With no one especially strong on the Republican side through the first few states, the Giuliani strategy of betting it all on Florida on January 29 and the big states on February 5 is looking better than it did a week ago.”

Is that true?

Well, if Romney loses New Hampshire to McCain, and he’s trailing in polls there now, that would appear to open the door to a Rudy comeback, especially with Rudy’s expected strong showings in the large states like Florida and New York.

What Iowa has seemed to show is that a state that’s picked 6 of the last 8 Presidential candidates for both Parties has voted “No Confidence” in their Party’s chosen candidates (Hillary Clinton/John Edwards and Mitt Romney/Rudy Giuliani) and chosen, on both sides, the most outside of outsiders (Obama and Huckabee).

Within a month (February 5th) we’ll see if the rest of the country follows suit.

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(*) Thanks to Fred, for pointing out my error of substituting Mo Udall for Paul Laxalt.