Picking a Fight with President Abraham Lincoln

Before I get to President Lincoln, last week, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. The new state was formerly recognized by the governments of the United States, Britain, France and Germany, to name the only prominent government and three minor governments.

In the last week, just the US Embassy in Serbia has been sacked. The "demonstrators" now have their eyes on the US Consulate. Pictures of burning American flags fill my television screen.

Serbia's Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said "the United States has taken on historic responsibility because it trampled on the international law that is the basis of the peace and stability in the world." He added, "As a nation and a state, we will put up resistance every day until the United States is convinced that the rule of international law must be re-established in the Balkans and the illegal declaration of the fake state of Kosovo is annulled."

Drats! If only the United States was in Europe!

The Republican nominee will be the next President of the United States but the nominee should not underestimate Sen. Barack Obama if he is the Democrats' nominee.

I am flabbergasted that someone with a resume of no accomplishments could go as far as Sen. Obama has traveled. But maybe there is an explanation in the words of President Abraham Lincoln who early in his political career said, “A universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded . . . In this day and age, and this Country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”

I found this quote AFTER my immediately prior post citing Sen. McCain’s legislative success. Extremely odd, no?

I’m reluctant to pick a fight with President Lincoln though my recent post would clearly indicate he and I hold opposing views.

Clever me, allow me to suggest the 1850s are a completely different “day and age” than 2008 and that public sentiment is not everything and accomplishment should count for something.

Accomplishments! What dadgum accomplishments?!

First, some definitions per Merriam-Webster's On-Line Dictionary:

feminism: 1: the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes 2: organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests

sexism: 1: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially discrimination against women 2: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex

A few days ago the Boston Globe ran an idiotic page 1 story on the laments of "feminists" becuase the "experienced" Sen. Clinton was losing to the inexperienced but "eloquent" Sen. Obama. My unpublished letter:

Editor,

Can we please stop with the unwarranted praise of Sen. Hillary Clinton and her “experience” (Clinton's struggle vexes feminists, February 19, A1)?

My goodness, do not “accomplishments” matter?

If Sen. Clinton could point to a single accomplishment then maybe I could understand the vexation of certain women.And, let’s not confuse our definitions. Women desirous of electing an unaccomplished woman are more accurately referred to as "sexists" not "feminists"; the former should not be allowed to sully the latter. (End of letter.)

Of course, Sen. Obama is even less accomplished than Sen. Clinton. Never has anyone so unaccomplished (except maybe President Harry Truman before the fact of his Presidency) traveled so far in American politics. When reasonable, logical people make this observation during the general election, look out for the race card.

If people are so impressed by Sens. Clinton and Obama's lack of accomplishment, I can only imagine how awed they must be by Sen. McCain's resume! Whether you agree with the legislation or not, it's McCain-Feingold. It's McCain-Kennedy. It's McCain-Lieberman. McCain. McCain. McCain. McCain legislation everywhere. Leaders lead, for the umpteenth time in this space.

These were the four letters the Boston Globe chose to publish on the "vexed" feminists article:

Letter 1:

"CLINTON'S STRUGGLE vexes feminists" (Page A1, Feb. 19) vexed me in turn. Senator Hillary Clinton's years as a corporate lawyer and first lady now constitute "hyper-substantive" preparation for the presidency; Senator Barack Obama's years as a community organizer, teacher of constitutional law, and member of the Illinois Legislature evidently have no relevance.

Clinton's legislative record raised doubts about her judgment; the way she has run her campaign confirmed them. Yet some of her supporters want me to stop at her ovaries when I evaluate her as a candidate. Can't we have Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano or Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius? (End of letter 1 by Deborah.)

Letter 2:

SUSAN MILLIGAN'S story accurately highlighted my frustration with the Democratic primary contests this year. While in many respects it is gratifying to see two Democratic candidates from backgrounds unique to presidential politics (Blogger's Note: cathartic, liberal guilt), it has been frustrating to watch Obama's style eclipse Clinton's experience (Blogger's Note: what freakin' experience?!). As a woman, I am proud that Hillary Clinton is such a viable presidential candidate; I am even more proud that my daughter was able, and enthusiastic, to cast her first presidential vote for a woman (Blogger's Note: can you say "sexist"?).

However, I have been dismayed that Obama has garnered so much attention and support, despite his relative lack of experience, essentially because of his speaking style. I am concerned that an Obama victory would convey to young women this message: Work hard, amass an impressive resume of experience, and expect success - unless, of course, a charismatic man comes along, in which case your experience will become irrelevant (Blogger's Note: Much like young women are learning if you work hard, amass a truly impressive resume as a lobbyist your experience will become irrelavant if you lobbied an influential, conservative US Senator, huh?). (End of Letter 2 by Cynthia.)

Letter 3:

I'M A feminist, which means I vote for the candidate whose policies will most benefit women. Many women are stuck in low-paid Wal-Mart-type jobs; Clinton was on the Wal-Mart board of directors. Many women's families have been devastated by the Iraq war; Clinton voted to authorize the war. Many women find themselves suddenly single mothers with no safety net; Clinton speaks enthusiastically about her husband's welfare reform, which made it tougher for some low-income women to get education and training. Unlike the women quoted in "Clinton's struggle vexes feminists," who seem to look only at her gender, it's because I'm a feminist that I didn't vote for Clinton in the primary. (End of Letter 3 by Betsy.)

Letter 4:

CLINTON WAS not the "experience" candidate running for the Democratic nomination. Bill Richardson had by far the most substantive and relevant resume, and she crushed him in the early primaries. Likewise, she greatly outgunned the much more experienced Joe Biden. Anyone have a gender explanation for that? (End of Letter 4 by Sharon.)

Naturally, I think my letter was the best of the five.

Anti-McCain Sludge I
(The New York Times Smear I)

In my immediately prior post I used the sub-title “Anti-McCain Sludge” not dreaming I’d actually use it as a main title today. Given the speed with which the liberal media has turned on Sen. McCain, I confidently add “I” to the title today knowing this theme will most certainly appear several times before Election Day.

For those unaware, the New York Times published a way too clever piece today never accusing Sen. McCain of an extramarital affair (sex! more liberal media obsession with sex!) with a lobbyist (corruption!) but one that was super-heavy on innuendo. I’m going to leave my secondary observation here as any more words simply gives the smear too much credit. The piece was devoid of any facts that could support a serious charge.

My primary observation is: I assume high profile lobbyists are very well compensated. If females cannot have the access to powerful male politicians for the now extremely obvious reason and the market value for female lobbyists tumbles, whose fault will it be? The New York Times? Sexist, powerful males? I wonder.

We will never be a gender blind society until we are a gender blind society.

Emptying the Folder II

Clintons as Nauseating Victims

Sen. Hillary Clinton is never so nauseating as when she is playing the victim, something she has perfected. Well, MSNBC personality David Shuster gave her the chance, again, last week when he made a comment that the Clintons were “pimping out” their daughter, Chelsea, “in a weird sort of way”. Yes, Mr. Shuster should not have invoked Ms. Clinton and, yes, the implication was that Ms. Clinton was the “prostitute” in the poor choice of words. But, my take is that Mr. Shuster was clearly talking about the unseemly behavior of Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, they, after all, were the subject of his sentence; Ms. Clinton was the object. Again, the comment was ugly but the Clintons always have a way of casting themselves as victims and they are getting significant mileage out of this. I think the Bush daughters are about 5 years younger than Ms. Clinton and I just don’t think they were ever as “protected” as Chelsea is.

Race Card No. 1

Sen. Hillary Clinton supporter and current Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell said this earlier this week in advance of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Primary, “You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.” I’m looking but so far I can find no outrage by the indictment of Pennsylvania’s Democratic voters. Oh, and no outrage by the Clinton campaign continuing to play the race card?

Race Card No. 2

Also playing the race card is NAACP Chairman, Mr. Julian Bond, who said the Democratic Party’s decision to not sit the delegates of Michigan or Florida (which would only benefit Sen. Clinton, hmmmmm), give rise to “great concern at the prospect that millions of voters in Michigan and Florida could ultimately have their votes completely discounted.” Refusing to seat the delegates would remind voters of the “sorid history of racially discriminatory primaries.” Refusing to seat the delegates would apparently have noting to do with following through on the Democratic Party’s promise to not seat the delegates if either state moved their primary too far ahead in the calendar. “Billy (he’s 7), if you don’t do your chores, I’m going to take away your Game Boy, I mean it this time.”

The Irrelevance of Obama’s Race

This was the published letter to the editor (of the Boston Globe) of Mr. Leonard C. Alkins, President Emeritus Boston Branch, NAACP, Roxbury, MA, on the column I reproduced just below by Mr. Jeff Jacoby:

Although I do not always agree with (Mr.) Jacoby's perceptions and opinions on race and politics, I give him kudos for this op-ed. He is right on point, and I want to thank him for writing this piece. (End of Mr. Alkins’ letter.)

Anti-McCain Sludge

In anticipation of what’s to come, I surfed the internet on a few selected themes and Sen. John McCain. Well, the lunatic, hate-filled, Left, has plenty of ugly spins on Senator McCain’s time in the U.S. Navy. No, the Democratic nominee will not promote it; the Democratic nominee will even claim the moral high ground and condemn it, but the Democratic nominee will most certainly benefit from it.

The U.S. Supreme Court

As I’ve written over and over again, the second most important responsibility of the President of the United States is to appoint judges, especially U.S. Supreme Court judges. I just finished reading Mr. Jeffrey Toobin’s, The Nine, Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court. Mr. Toobin is the fairly liberal senior legal analyst for CNN (Mr. Toobin thinks only President Bush was “going to do whatever it took to win” the 2000 election; apparently, Vice President Al Gore was indifferent to the election’s outcome, p. 145). Anyway, back on page 339, Mr. Toobin ends his book with a paragraph starting, “So one factor – and one factor only – will determine the future of the Supreme Court: the outcomes of presidential elections. Presidents pick justices to extend their legacies; by this standard, George W. Bush chose wisely.” Though I think President Bush picked justices who were thought to share his judicial philosophy and to fulfill directly-related, presidential campaign promise, Mr. Toobin could not agree with me more. President Bush did appoint wisely (Justices Roberts and Alito), and his appointments will ultimately add to the argument that President Bush was a “great” President (see December 8, 2007 post).

Open Letter to Sen. Barack Obama

Dear Sen. Obama,

"Hope" is not a national security policy. (End of open letter to Sen. Barack Obama.)

I sent the following letter to the Boston Globe today; it's self-explanatory:

Editor,

With Senate Democrats handing President Bush another victory in the war against terrorists on Tuesday (with the House to hopefully follow suit), passing his requested modifications to FISA, the President will expand, with Congress' acquiescence, the powers of the executive branch . . . yet again.

Whether during an upcoming debate or in an interview, it would be helpful if any member of the liberal media establishment could ask Sens. Clinton and Obama, "If elected President, of the many powers accrued the executive branch on President Bush's watch, which powers would you immediately cede back to your friends in Congress on your first day in office?"

The gnashing of teeth by liberal elites at President Bush's expansion of the powers of the Presidency is laughable given what we can presume about the answers. (End of letter.)

I sent this letter to the Boston Globe a few days ago; it's self-explanatory:

Editor,

With liberal politcal cartoonist Matt Davies' cartoon of February 7 (published in the Boston Sunday Globe on February 10), the ultimate in conservative conspiracy machinations is almost complete.

The cartoon depicts Sen. McCain with a chest full of medals and the scorn of the Right thus making Sen. McCain more attractive to the thoughtful Middle and unhinged Left; the enemy of my ememy is, indeed, my friend.

Those devious, dirty-trickster, conservatives! (End of letter.)

The Irrelevance of Obama's Color

I posted on February 6, 7, 9 and 10, boom, boom, boom, boom; I don't know if I ever posted four times in five days; please make sure you don't miss anything.

The skin-color and gender obsessed will not let us assess the candidacies of Sen. Clinton and Obama on the merits. "History is going to be made" we are continuously told. First African-American! First woman! And I was trying so hard to be color-blind and gender-blind. A shame we won't be discussing first Mormon.

Anyway, it looks like Mr. Jeff Jacoby, conservative columnist of the Boston Globe, has been reading my blog again. After several posts on race and racism, here is Mr. Jacoby's excellent column from today's Boston Sunday Globe:

Oh, and because I love writing it, as I wrote on December 6, 2006, "We will never be a color-blind society until we are a color-blind society." As Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion released on June 28, 2007 (note the seven month lag time until the CJotSCotUS caught up to me?), "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

The column (bold for my emphasis; one embedded comment noting my only point of significant disagreement with Mr. Jacoby):

The Irrelevance of Obama's Color
Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
Boston Sunday Globe
February 10, 2008

On the subject of Black History Month, I'm with Morgan Freeman, who described it a few years ago as "ridiculous" - for the excellent reason that "black history is American history," not some segregated addendum to it. The only way to get beyond racial divisions, he told Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes," is to "stop talking about it. I'm going to stop calling you a white man, and I'm going to ask you to stop calling me a black man."

Amen to that. The sooner we resolve to abandon the labels "black" and "white," the sooner we will be a society in which such racial labels are irrelevant. And what better moment to make such a resolution than this one, when white Americans by the millions are proving that the color of a person's skin is no longer a bar to anything in this country - not even the presidency.

Whether or not Barack Obama's bid for the White House ultimately succeeds, it has already demolished the canard that America will not elect a black president. His impressive win over Hillary Clinton in the Iowa caucuses could perhaps be dismissed as a fluke, but after Super Tuesday there is not much left to argue about. Obama carried 13 states last week, and the whiter the state, the more imposing his victory.

He took Utah with 57 percent of the vote; North Dakota with 61 percent; Kansas with 74 percent; Alaska with 75 percent. Idaho chose Obama over Clinton by 80 to 17 percent.

Far from being a strike against him, Obama's color is manifestly a political advantage. Not only because black voters will vote for him with enthusiasm, but because tens of millions of white voters will, too. Countless Americans plainly relish the chance to prove with their vote that they are not tainted by racial bigotry (Embedded Disagreement: So far, only Democrats have voted for Senator Obama; I strongly believe white, liberal Democrats are greatly moved by "white guilt" and many "relish" to vote exactly as Mr. Jacoby writes; this, of course, is still a veiled form of racism because the voters are conceding to noticing skin-color). "I confess that I plan to be moved to tears," Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, has written, "on the day that I vote for a black man for the presidency of this stained and stirring country."

It isn't only liberals and Democrats who find Obama attractive. Among his supporters is Jeffrey Hart, a former speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Peter Wehner, a former assistant to President Bush, writes in the Washington Post that Obama is "an appealing figure to many Republicans," because, among other things, his campaign is not based on racial grievance. "Obama, more than any figure in America," Wehner suggests, "can help bind up the racial wounds of America."

Obama is infinitely preferable to black candidates before him like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, professional racial activists whose stock in trade is the exploitation of black victimology and white guilt. As the first black candidate with a realistic chance of becoming president, Obama is understandably attracting record-setting levels of black support. But what makes his candidacy so plausible is precisely his appeal to whites - an appeal that would dry up were Obama to make racial identity the focus of his campaign. This is the interesting paradox at the heart of a campaign that is so often described as "transcending" or "going beyond" race.

Yet real racial transcendence will be achieved not when a black candidate's race is no bar to his election, but when it is not even an issue in his election. When the Morgan Freeman standard becomes the rule - when there are no longer "black" candidates and "white" candidates, because Americans will be indifferent to such labels - only then will our politics have truly gone beyond race.

Is the colorblind idea nothing but a dream? It need not be.

There was a time in US history when anti-Italian prejudice was so intense that the prospect of an Italian-American president would have been unthinkable. When 11 Italian immigrants were lynched in New Orleans in 1891, The New York Times described the victims as "sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins . . . a pest without mitigation."

During World War II, thousands of Italian Americans were expelled from their homes, and hundreds of immigrants were interned in military camps.

Yet there was little if any attention paid to Rudy Giuliani's ethnicity during his recent campaign for president. No one blamed anti-Italian bigotry when his effort came to naught. For all intents and purposes, his Italian descent was simply not an issue.

The color of Obama's skin is irrelevant to his character and to his fitness for office. Would that its significance to his campaign were nil. No, we're not there yet. But there is no faster way to a society in which race doesn't matter than to stop talking and acting as if it does. (End of excellent Mr. Jacoby column.)

Back to my Roots

Sen. John F. Kerry apologist, Mr. Peter Canellos, of the Boston Globe, was at it again last week; my email to him correcting the record:

Mr. Canellos,

Recently, in considering how Sens. Clinton and Obama would address the issue of the war in Iraq, you wrote, “But after Thursday's debate, it's clear that they plan to contour their arguments differently. Clinton seems to have closely watched what happened to (Sen.) John Kerry in 2004, how he found it difficult to explain simultaneously that he disagreed with Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq but was nonetheless serious about fighting terrorism.”

On August 9, 2004, fully 22 months after he voted for the war and 17 months after the beginning of major combat operations, Sen. Kerry said he still would have voted for war even if he knew at the time that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD and there was no operational link between Saddam Hussein and terrorists (Kerry says he’d still vote to authorize war, Boston Globe, August 10, 2004).

In endorsing Sen. Obama on January 10, 2008, Senator Kerry said, “(Sen. Obama) was, after all, right about the war in Iraq from the very beginning!” Note the exclamation point; I got the quote off the Senator’s web site, that’s how he punctuated the sentence.

So, let me get this straight (begin haughty, arrogant, drone voice), a decorated Vietnam veteran, a Senator with 19 years prosecutorial experience, 20 plus years in the US Senate with many on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, possessor of “foreign affairs gravitas” (that’s me laughing), AND ACCESS TO ALL THE INTELLIGENCE, and with the power to ask any and all the questions of the Administration he needed (recall, he's a former prosecutor; me laughing again) to satisfy himself of the situation and with the freedom to go public if he was denied, was wrong and a State Legislator from Illinois had it right? Talk about willful suspension of disbelief.

Or, what national intelligence/security information is the Illinois Legislature getting? I now wonder if the Illinois Legislature received the intelligence that President Clinton used to justify his December 1998 cruise missile attacks on Saddam Hussein’s WMD complex?

Saddam Hussein fooled the intelligence community of two administrations (the UN and every other country's intelligence organization), what's so hard to understand? If Sen. Obama saw the evidence that Sens. Clinton, Edwards, and Kerry saw and he didn't vote to protect America, I'm sure I don't want him as President - that's Job #1 of the President. The brilliant Sens. Clinton, Edwards and Kerry saw the evidence and voted for war. They saw the evidence and voted for war. If anyone believes the "war of choice" garbage, how miserably do those same believers think these three Senators failed in their most important job?

Anyway, Sen. Kerry is on record in your own (news)paper as NOT being against the war in Iraq deep into 2004; your revisionist history is a disservice to your readers. (End of email to Mr. Canellos.)

As of this morning, Mr. Canellos has not responded to my email.

But, I did receive an email from Globe columnist, Ms. Joan Vennochi, this morning. In my unique way, I'm making an impact.

Crestfallen

Sen. John McCain is a bona fide Vietnam War hero and an accomplished legislator, his name appearing on many pieces of landmark legislation. I will enthusiastically support his candidacy for the Presidency and I will work tirelessly for his election.

I'm certainly glad that yesterday I wrote Sen. John McCain can attract the votes of those who call themselves Republicans. The sting of today's events is just slightly less.

It will be interesting to see if any apparatus of the Democratic Machine will use the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth, a group of 295 Vietnam veterans who dared to express an opinion about who should be commander-in-chief during the 2004 Presidential election, as a pretext to smear Sen. McCain.

And just for laughs, on one of the political news programs last night they discussed the prospect of a brokered convention . . . for the Democrats! Yes, I'm sending my political antenna out for an adjustment.

It's too early for me to speculate on a Vice Presidential possibility for Gov. Romney because I still think Gov. Tom Ridge is the smart move.

It's been a while since I've been surfing the news web sites but why hasn't Gov. Huckabee suspended his campaign yet?

Exit Poll Results and Romney’s Way Forward

For those who don’t enjoy insufferable and tedious posts on exit poll data, please stop reading now, I do not want to alienate you.

For the gluttons, please know I did some serious exit poll compiling this morning. I went to the state-by-state exit polls for 14 of the Republican primary states from Super Tuesday and pulled selected data on party affiliation and ideology.

As I’ve been harping on these two characteristics since I started writing about the primaries and caucuses, I was not going to go through the 4 – 5 pages of data per state and find another criterion to support the narrative I wanted to write. For better or worse, I needed to stay with what I started.

Not finding an exit poll summary, I compiled data from the 14 different exit polls. I averaged the percentages for the four characteristics I examined. This is absolutely an okay methodology because the sample sizes for all 14 polls were roughly the same (600 – 800 or so). To get exact percentages, the correct formula would have been to add each response by question (numbers not reported but determinable) and divide the sum by all the responses by question (I have a day job and a family, I wasn’t going to do this).

After all my work was done, I did find a narrative on one of the news web sites that cited summarized results for the approximately 9,500 responses across the 14 polls. I assure you, my calculations were within a percentage point or so and my calculations do not change the gist of my post. I’m reporting my numbers, damn it!, I did all the work!

Looking at party affiliation, across 14 states, 74.5% of respondents identified themselves as Republicans. Sen. McCain won this group with 37.43% of the total. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 35.43% and 21.71%, respectively.

21.79% of respondents self-identified as Independents. Again, Sen. McCain won this group by 38.26 percent. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed with 26.86% and 18.93%, respectively.

Looking at the 64% of respondents who self-identified as Conservatives, Gov. Romney won this group with 39.57% of the vote. Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee trailed at 30.21% and 24.57%, respectively.

Finally, of the 27.07% of respondents who self-identified as Moderate, Sen. McCain won a whopping 51.36%. Govs. Romney and Huckabee trailed at 23.29% and 16.29%, respectively.

Please note that the data as summarized on the news site and by me contains data from Utah. Utah voted overwhelmingly for Gov. Romney, so much so that I needed to see what the numbers looked like without Utah. What the summarized numbers cannot tell you, but I can, is that by removing Utah from the data, Gov. Romney still won Conservatives with 35.54% of the vote (McCain trailed with just more than 32%).

Conversely, please also note that the 14 states included above consists only of the primary states. There were six other states that held caucuses on Tuesday and Gov. Romney WON THEM ALL (well, except West Virginia because of gamesmanship between Sen. McCain and Gov. Huckabee). It can be assumed that if such “exit poll” data was available for Alaska, Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and West Virginia, Gov. Romeny’s numbers in all four instances noted above would have been much higher.

So what does it all mean?

Well, first, I still think non-Republicans are too big a part of Sen. McCain’s success but I’m not arrogant enough to say I know better than if the 74.5% of respondents who self-identified as Republicans truly are or not. Of those who see themselves this way, Sen. McCain has proved he can get their votes.

It also means on Saturday, Gov. Romney needs to energize the Conservatives in Kansas and Louisiana (it looks like Washington starts a caucus process but doesn't complete it on Saturday). If he does this he'll tell the big states remaining (Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio) with a loud voice that he is the conservative candidate. Of course, hanging around costs money and it's easy for me to spend the Gov.'s money.

I still believe Gov. Romney would prevail at a brokered Republican convention.

And just an administrative note, of all the web sites I've been visiting to collect data, CNN.com's is the best.

Super Saturday!

On Saturday, February 9, Republicans in Kansas, Louisiana and Washington, if I'm reading CNN.com properly, have caucuses or primaries. On Saturday, February 9, Gov. Mitt Romney improves on the momentum he gains from the great state of California.

Over the weekend, President Clinton was in four churches stumping for his wife. I don't know how many he was in yesterday and today. Sen. Clinton was campaigning in at least one church over the weekend. I'm just sayin'.

We'll revisit this again, but can we all agree to change one's mind is to "flip" your position? I think if you change it back, it's a "flip-flop". I never wrote that Sen. John F. Kerry was a flip-flopper because he wasn't. In Sen. Kerry's case, he took EVERY position so he was, as I was the first to name him, the Great Equivocator (formally, July 3, 2003; informally in many unpublished letters, years before).

Is there any meaning to Sen. Hillary Clinton declaring she "found her voice" in New Hampshire and just days later the Clinton campaign was reminding everyone that Sen. Obama is black?

More tomorrow night; there will be much to digest and ponder in the interim.

Divisive Hillary and Denigrating Boston Globe

While the Clintons were injecting race into the Democratic Presidential primaries, my ridiculous (news)paper, the Boston Globe published a letter from an idiot who wanted to know if Mr. Karl Rove was now working for the Clintons. You see, the hate-filled Left thinks conservatives and Republicans are the root of all evil and cannot comprehend that the viciousness of the Clintons has nothing to do with anything but the Clintons. Recall, the Clintons blamed Founding Father Alexander Hamilton for President Clinton receiving oral sex from an intern. It wasn't Bill's fault, you know.

My letter in response to ever-more-liberally-extreme Globe columnist, Ms. Joan Vennochi, who is now no better than an idiotic letter writer:

Editor,

In her column assessing the revival of the Carville/Begala, brass-knuckle, politics of personal destruction, as perfected by President and Senator Clinton, Ms. Joan Vennochi included this gratuitous shot at Republicans, "What the Clintons tossed at (Sen.) Obama is nothing compared with what (Sen. Obama) will face from Republicans if he is the nominee (Clinton's next task, January 31)."

And that is exactly the point about a liberal media establishment full of hatred for all things Republican.

The sentence in a column about the ugly campaign tactics employed by the Clintons should have read, "What the Clintons tossed at Sen. Obama is nothing compared with what" the Clintons will toss at the Republican nominee.

A President Hillary Clinton will divide this Country like it has not been divided in 135 years. (End of first letter.)

As regular readers of this space know, nothing aggravates me more than liberals, Democrats and national politicians who denigrate 295 Vietnam veterans who dared to make their voices heard during the 2004 Presidential election.

The Boston Globe published a ‘news’ story, not an opinion piece, that only referred to the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth as a “group”. My letter:

Editor,

The "group" so derisively dismissed by the Boston Globe that exercised its First Amendment rights to express an opinion about Sen. John F. Kerry's fitness to be commnader-in-chief in 2004 is 295 Vietnam veterans who earned enough medals to armor plate a Humvee ('Swift-boated' once, Kerry now helms Democrats' armada, January 24, A18).

That the Boston Globe continues to deny this and continues to denigrate the Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth is an outrage.

But conceding Presidential elections are rough (and so, apparently, are Democratic Presidential primaries!), liberal extremists are delusional if they think Sen. Kerry is the man to lead any fight.

On November 15, 2007, Sen. Kerry accepted the $1 million challenge to prove false any one of the arguments made by the 295 decorated Vietnam vets. It is January 26, 2008 and Sen. Kerry has yet to collect his $1 million.

On January 23, 2007, when announcing he'd spare the country another run for the Oval Office, Sen. Kerry said it is time to "put my energy to work as part of the majority in the Senate, to do all I can to end this war and strengthen our security (Kerry won't run for President in '08, January 24, Boston Globe)." It has been exactly one year since this sanctimonious pledge and the Senator has done nothing. I guess nothing is all this Senator can do.

Sen. Kerry helms a dinghy and national Democrats board at their own risk. (End of second letter.)

I had a pretty sizeable stack of New York Times, Boston Globe, and Wall Street Journal articles loaded with examples of how ALL the candidates were “pandering”, something the liberal media establishment thought only Gov. Mitt Romney was doing, but developing the post will take time and may no longer be relevant given we could be down to the nominees next Wednesday.

I cited the Democratic candidate's addiction to church appearances in an earlier post and noted Gov. Romney would never be given any latitude by the liberal media establishment to get anywhere near a church. From a January 26 Boston Globe ‘news’ story (page A8), in just leaving a church, Sen. Clinton said, “Thankfully I was raised to be a praying person. Every time the church door opened we were there.” No doubt she’ll lose this line when trolling for dollars this weekend in Godless Hollywood.

Going through the stack I cannot now find another pandering reference I tried to save, I cannot even tell you which candidate it was, but one of the candidates was traveling in South Carolina with a band that essentially had the name the “Jimmy Bobby Jimmy Bobby” band. Again, no word if the candidate is one of the five remaining and, if so, if the candidate is taking the hillbillies to Hollywood to help raise money.

This was one of my favorite quotes was from Sen. John McCain while campaigning in Pensacola, FL where he did some pilot training, “Part of my paycheck every month was devoted to helping the economy of Pensacola.” If I ever ran for President, I’d be able to use the same exact line in Trumbull, CT; Cherry Hill, NJ; Voorhees, NJ; Ocean City, NJ; Margate, NJ; Avalon, NJ; Newark, DE; South Bend, IN; Cambridge, MA; Boston, MA; Philadelphia, PA; West Caldwell, NJ; Morrestown, NJ; Framingham, MA; Woonsocket, RI; Westborough, MA and Hopkinton, MA. How many delegates is this worth?