Author: VD

A New Hampshire journalist fails to draw the obvious conclusion:

All year, New Hampshire independents have broken for Democrats by about two to one — roughly two thirds have said they’d vote in the Democratic primary, a third in the Republican primary. But in the last University of New Hampshire poll, there was a sudden and huge shift — toward Republicans. The poll found just over half of independents saying they’d vote in the Democratic primary and just under half saying they’d vote Republican. That might help Ron Paul. But if the NH independents suddenly breaking Republican in the last few weeks are not the anti-war independents, they might be switching to vote for McCain, who has pounded the pavement here in the past few weeks much more than any other candidate. Because New Hampshire has so few social conservatives, and most of them are Republican, I’d be surprised if those independents were suddenly deciding to break for Romney or Huckabee or Thompson, who is down into Duncan Hunter territory here.

Hope springs eternal in the professional anti-Paul pundit. Obviously no one is suddenly getting enthusiastic about McCain, his endorsement in the Union Leader notwithstanding, he’s been around forever. This is the sort of hint I’ve been waiting to see, it is the first clear indication that Paul is going to outperform expectations in New Hampshire.

A Ron Paul victory is still unlikely. It always was. So what? If you simply want to associate with a probable winner, then buy a Tom Brady jersey and wear it while voting Democrat next year. But if you possess any principles, then stand by them. As for the pragmatists, it’s worth noting there are 18 million reasons a Paul victory is looking less unlikely than it was three months ago.

Even the Associated Press is paying attention now:

Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s supporters raised over $6 million Sunday to boost the 10-term Texas congressman’s campaign for the White House. Called a “Money Bomb,” the goal was to raise as much money as possible on the Internet in one day. The campaign’s previous fundraiser brought in $4.2 million.

What they didn’t mention is that not only did the Tea Party fund-raising dwarf that of the Guy Fawkes Day money bomb, but it broke John Kerry’s single-day fund-raising record of $5.7 million. Well done, all of you who helped make it happen.

Ron Paul has proven that there are still Americans interested in freedom and human liberty. He’s shocked the political pundits with the fervor of his support and his ability to raise money for the campaign, now it’s time for the people to shock the pollsters when the votes start counting.

The Jags are tough. They smacked Pittsburgh right in the mouth and the Steelers crumbled. I am also very surprised that Miami finally got a win and at the apparently boundless limits of Roy Williams’s cluelessness. When they actually name a penalty after you, how dumb do you have to be to drag down Donovan McNabb in precisely the manner that inspired the creation of the penalty.

Now that the Good Ship Rudy is sinking under the weight of public rejection, NRO’s David Frum has decided that he’s not that keen on letting the little people have an opinion on how they will rule themselves:

Since the 1960s, conservatives have chafed and seethed against liberal elitism. Liberals have used their influence in the courts and government bureaucracies to win political victories they never could have won at the ballot box. Conservatives have reacted by turning to populism — to a defence of the commonsense wisdom of ordinary voters against the pretensions of know-it-alls.

Conservatives have drawn strength from populism. But you can overdo any good thing –and I am beginning to think that on this one, we’ve zoomed the car into the red zone….

The currently front-running candidate in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has built his campaign on a plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax. Economists and tax experts virtually unanimously agree that the plan is beyond unworkable — that it is downright absurd.

Right, a failure to substitute faux conservative elitism for liberal elitism, THAT’S the problem. And how can it possibly to be “downright absurd” to eliminate an onerous, unjust and evil tax that didn’t exist for the majority of the country’s history. And Frum reveals himself to be either a deeply dishonest man or a shockingly ignorant one when he tells obvious untruths about Ron Paul:

Huckabee and Paul have not the faintest idea of what they are talking about. The problem is not that their answers are wrong — that can happen to anyone. The problem is that they don’t understand the questions, and are too lazy or too arrogant to learn.

I have emailed Mr. Frum at asking him to either retract his erroneous charges about Ron Paul or to debate me concerning the economic realities of the federal income tax and Ron Paul’s proven knowledge of them.

UPDATE: I have since written a detailed response to what passed for Mr. Frum’s defense of his erroneous assertion.

Ron Paul on homeschooling:

My commitment to ensuring home schooling remains a practical alternative for American families is unmatched by any Presidential candidate. Returning control of education to parents is the centerpiece of my education agenda. As President I will advance tax credits through the Family Education Freedom Act, which reduces taxes to make it easier for parents to home school by allowing them to devote more of their own funds to their children’s education.

I am committed to guaranteeing parity for home school diplomas and advancing equal scholarship consideration for students entering college from a home school environment.

We must have permanency in the Department of Defense Home School Tier 1 Pilot Program, providing recruitment status parity for home school graduates. I will use my authority to prevent the Department of Education from regulating home school activities.

I will veto any legislation that creates national standards or national testing for home school parents or students. I also believe that, as long as No Child Left Behind remains law, it must include the protections for home schoolers included in sec. 9506 (enshrining home schoolers’ rights) and 9527 (guaranteeing no national curriculum).

Federal monies must never be used to undermine the rights of homeschooling parents. I will use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to encourage a culture of educational freedom throughout the nation.

It’s not quite up there with my policy of closing the public schools altogether, but then, I don’t expect a presidential candidate to be quite as radical as I am. It’s certainly a good deal better than Bush’s No Child Left Alone policy.

Today is the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and Paul’s supporters have declared their intention to repeat their money bomb that left the mainstream political pundits reeling today. So, if you feel inclined to throw a few bits of colored paper at his campaign, this is the place to contribute to the Ron Paul Revolution. And here’s how the Tea Party is doing today.

A succinct explanation for those women who claim to be looking for “nice guys”:

What happened to all the nice guys?

The answer is simple: you did.

See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic guy pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. He’d tag along with you when you went shopping, stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn’t feel like going out, or even sit there and hold you while you sobbed and told him about how horribly the (other) guy that you were fucking treated you.

At the time, you probably joked with your girlfriends about how he was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to him. They probably teased you because they thought he had a crush on you. Given that his behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic, you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for him, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were “just friends.” Besides, he totally wasn’t your type. I mean, he was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn’t know how to dress himself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, fit, rich, stylish boyfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.

This may sound slightly bitter, but it is as accurate a summary of the American scene as anything I’ve ever read. I never was a nice guy, but two of my best friends were and they suffered accordingly. What the ex-nice guy here is describing is what I’ve referred to in the past as being a member of a girl’s posse, desirable enough to maintain but not desirable enough to date.

Desirable women keep posses of fall-back dates, desirable men keep stables. That’s how it works, and that’s why polygyny is quietly making its way back into the mix as equalitarianism methodically weakens the traditional Western familial structure.

A public school principal believes the standards at his high school are too high:

Last month, Principal Bennett Lieberman sent off a stern memo to teachers. “If you are not passing more than 65 percent of your students in a class, then you are not designing your expectations to meet their abilities, and you are setting your students up for failure, which, in turn, limits your success as a professional.”

I’m looking forward to watching the continued self-demolition of the American public schools. You might think they can’t possibly get any worse, but I have no doubt that we haven’t seen anything yet.

Huckabee attracts support from 23% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide and Rudy Giuliani earns the vote from 19%. The frontrunners are followed by Mitt Romney at 15%, John McCain at 12%, and Fred Thompson at 9% (see recent daily numbers). Ron Paul currently attracts 5% of Likely Republican Primary voters nationwide.

Now that Huckabee and Paul combined have the same support in the polls as “frontrunners” Giuliani and Thompson, it’s interesting to see that the usual suspects have suddenly dropped the “electability” angle.

Gordon Brown follows through on his threat to betray Britain to the unelected bureaucrats of Brussels:

Gordon Brown today has signed Britain up for the EU ‘non-constitution’ constitution without, of course, having bothered to have held the referendum that the Labour party had promised.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that representative democracy IS NOT DEMOCRACY in the same way that social justice is not justice. It is time to end the charade.