Category: Uncategorized

Last Week: 9-5. Season: 36-24, .600. Fantasy: 3-1.

W-Indianapolis Colts over San Francisco 49ers
L-Tampa Bay Buccaneers over New York Jets
W-Denver Broncos over Washington Redskins
L-St. Louis Rams over Seattle Seahawks
W-Carolina Panthers over Arizona Cardinals
L-Houston Texans over Tennessee Titans
W-Cleveland Browns over Chicago Bears
San Diego Chargers over Pittsburgh Steelers
W-Detroit Lions over Baltimore Ravens
L-Miami Dolphins over Buffalo Bills
W-Green Bay Packers over New Orleans Saints
W-Jacksonville Jaguars over Cincinnati Bengals
L-Atlanta Falcons over New England Patriots
W-Dallas Cowboys over Philadelphia Eagles

Chad the Elder of the Fraters Libertas is one of the few who recognizes how deep the damage runs. He quotes an FL reader who is a longtime Republican and writes in response:

I’ve patiently been swabbing the decks of this damned ship since Jimmy Carter was the captain, waiting for the stars to align so we could get the pilots we were promised. This was supposed to be my time. I wanted to see some major payback action. But what did I get? Mystery Man Roberts. And now Mystery Old Maid Miers? And I’m supposed to be satisfied?

I’m furious. I don’t give a good G** damn if the Republicans never win another election as long as I live. I’m done with them. No more time. No more money. 2008 will probably pit Hillary against McCain and frankly, I can’t tell which one I despise more, a pox on both their houses.

Here’s my attitude in a nutshell: I trusted you. You screwed me. Now there’s going to be Hell to pay.

Dismiss Nathan if you wish. Tell him to sit down and shut up. Wax on about the “perfect being the enemy of the good” all you want. Try to convince yourself that this is just another brilliant strategic masterstroke by Karl Rove.

But, no matter how you twist it, the fact of the matter is that the choice of Miers has driven him from the Republican fold. And I’m afraid to say that he’s far from the only one. Part of the base is goin’ boys and they ain’t coming back.

Believe it or not, people do get disgusted and leave permanently. I was a die-hard Reagan Youth Republican, I was active in the Young Republicans and attended not only the Republican convention in 1988, but also the subsequent inauguration celebration. But personal contact with people like Ken Lay, Georgette Mosbacher and others in George Bush’s inner circle had planted some seeds of doubt in my mind, and when the first President Bush broke his pledge on taxes, I realized that the Republican Party politicians were largely frauds concocted to fool the much more conservative Republican grass roots.

I left the Republican Party then and have not, to the best of my recollection, voted for another Republican since. I have not regretted it, as Minnesota Republicans turned their backs on conservatives and chose a former Democrat from New York as their standard bearer.

Read the whole thing at Fraters Libertas, it’s very illustrative of the serious problem facing Republicans in 2006 and beyond.

From NRO’s Corner:

The latest from Senate Democrats: “President Bush Needs to Think About Hispanics Every Day of the Year”.

Somehow, I find it difficult to believe that the Senate Democrats will be pleased if the president puts up a door poster of Vida Guerra inside the Oval Office.

RC emails with the good news that the Fetid Swamp is drained at last:

Rather to my own surprise, but with confidence that it’s the right thing, I’ve decided that this will be the final installment of The Fever Swamp (at least for now — for like the answer to the inevitable questions about family size, “So, are you done?,” I daren’t quite say the Swamp is finished for good. Who knows?). Thank you to all of the gracious, intelligent people who read and enjoyed the columns, and who wrote so often and so kindly to me. And thanks also, I suppose, to those of you who loathed them. It is always a pleasure épater la Gauche.

I don’t recall ever writing about it, but as RC correctly surmised, I definitely fell into the latter category, that being those who didn’t read Gurdon’s column and loathed it nevertheless. Dislike for the Fetid Swamp was one of the few areas where Little Miss Fecalicious and I were in total agreement – Sweet Shub-Niggurath, just writing about it in the past tense makes me happy – although I shudder to think what torments K-Lo will devise to replace it.

No doubt it will be something on the order of dating advice from the Littlest Chickenhawk, or perhaps a weekly panegyric to the Dear Leader will suffice. And they wonder why people won’t renew their subscriptions.

Jonah Goldberg writes on NRO:

Today he [Ryan Sager] complains that conservatives are experiencing with the Miers appointment what libertarians have endured for years with Bush. That’s fine, to a point. But it seems his determination to stay true to his perpetual theme is skewing his analysis a bit. Any libertarian who voted for Bush did so knowing he was at best the lesser of two evils. There was nothing in his campaign in 2000 or 2004 a libertarian could have interpreted as a real overture to their concerns. Most of the libertarians I know voted for Bush with their eyes wide open, believing he’d better on foreign policy or less bad on domestic policy. Meanwhile, conservatives — or at least some conservatives — legitimately feel betrayed by Bush over Miers. He promised or (vide Ramesh) at least strongly lead conservatives to believe, that he would appoint Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.

Libertarians have no such claim of betrayal because he made no such assurances to them that he would be a champion of small government. I’m sure someone can find quotes that run counter to this, but I don’t think anybody can seriously dispute the general point that Bush never ran as a government-is-the-problem conservative and to claim feelings of “betrayal” because he didn’t govern as one is simply dishonest.

Not being in any way a libertarian, Bush didn’t betray us. But this is a somewhat disingenuous statement by Goldberg, as the conservative media was huge on advancing the idea as Bush as Reagan’s true heir. Bush didn’t necessarily make assurances that he would be a champion of small government, but I daresay that most conservatives believed that he would be.

It is ironic, is it not, that the one valid argument that liberals could make regarding the stupidity of conservatives is one that they will surely never touch.

Jon Wertheim writes on SI:

I draw two conclusions: Navratilova doesn’t select her partners haphazardly. She picks talented, young players who complement her skills. (Note too, that both Kuznetsova circa ’03 and Groenefeld circa ’05 are bright prospects, but are unlikely to go deep in the singles draws of Majors, and thus default a doubles match.) The other conclusion is that playing alongside one of the all-time greats has a healthy effect on the game of an up-and-coming star.

Despite the age difference, Navratilova seems to cultivate strong relationships with her doubles partners and finds a nice balance between dispensing pointers and helping her partners without becoming a surrogate coach. Check out this transcript for an example of her off-court nurturing of Groenefeld.

If I were a talented teenager on the WTA Tour, I would be begging “Grandma” to play doubles with me.

Hmmmm… after breaking up with her long-time lover, aging lesbian finds new inspiration in “off-court nurturing” of teenage girls playing tennis…. “Doubles” is that what they’re calling it now, Queer Party Friends?

Perhaps I am too skeptical, but this tends to remind me of grown men who can’t find anything better to do with their time than go camping with young boys.

Cengel protests:

Tax cuts as, “textbook Keynesian socialist action”? Since when have socialists, Keynesian or otherwise, ever been in favor of tax cuts (in theory or in practice)?

Textbook Keynesian calls for accomodative fiscal and monetary policy in times of economic contraction in order to “smooth out” the business cycle. It also calls for restrictive policy measures when the economy begins to “overheat”, which on the fiscal side never happens.

His support for the combination of tax cuts and spending boosts during the 2002 recession indicates that far from being a conservative, George Bush is a Keynesian Republican in the Nixon mode.

From WND:

The student who blew himself up outside a packed Oklahoma University football stadium Saturday night tried to buy large quantities of ammonium nitrate – a key ingredient in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing – the week before, according to a new report.

Also, Joel “Joe” Henry Hinrichs III attended a Norman, Okla., mosque near his university-owned apartment – the same one attended by Zacharias Moussaoui, the only person charged in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a report by KWTV-News 9 in Oklahoma City.

And surprisingly, he lived with Swedish roommates who just happened to be Jehovah’s Witnesses! Excuse me, Pakistanis who just happened to be Muslim. What a coincidence!

The only real surprise that the government authorities haven’t attempted to blame the bombing on repeated viewings of “Heathers” yet. That NFL Sunday Ticket is just looking better and better, isn’t it?

Peggy Noonan sounds less than completely enamoured of her erstwhile paramour:

The headline lately is that conservatives are stiffing the president. They’re in uproar over Ms. Miers, in rebellion over spending, critical over cronyism. But the real story continues to be that the president feels so free to stiff conservatives. The White House is not full of stupid people. They knew conservatives would be disappointed that the president chose his lawyer for the high court. They knew conservatives would eventually awaken over spending. They knew someone would tag them on putting friends in high places. They knew conservatives would not like the big-government impulses revealed in the response to Hurricane Katrina. The headline is not that this White House endlessly bows to the right but that it is not at all afraid of the right. Why? This strikes me as the most interesting question.

Here are some maybes. Maybe the president has simply concluded he has no more elections to face and no longer needs his own troops to wage the ground war and contribute money. Maybe with no more elections to face he’s indulging a desire to show them who’s boss. Maybe he has concluded he has a deep and unwavering strain of support within the party that, come what may, will stick with him no matter what. Maybe he isn’t all that conservative a fellow, or at least all that conservative in the old, usual ways, and has been waiting for someone to notice. Maybe he has decided the era of hoping for small government is over. Maybe he is a big-government Republican who has a shrewder and more deeply informed sense of the right than his father did, but who ultimately sees the right not as a thing he is of but a thing he must appease, defy, please or manipulate. Maybe after five years he is fully revealing himself. Maybe he is unveiling a new path that he has not fully articulated–he’ll call the shots from his gut and leave the commentary to the eggheads. Maybe he’s totally blowing it with his base, and in so doing endangering the present meaning and future prospects of his party.

Sometimes, the degree to which I am beyond these slow-witted commentating cretins actually unsettles me. I mean, I only told this to every starry-eyed Republican I knew back in 2000 back when Bush first unveiled his Compassionate Conservative snake oil. (I realize you’ll have to take my word for this, as I wasn’t writing columns until the autumn of 2001, but trust me, I’ve always loathed and distrusted the guy.) And then again, in 2004.

It’s been like watching the WWII-era Germans gobble up small European countries. “The Reichkanzler says he’s going to invade Austria… he’s not REALLY going to invade Austria… he wouldn’t ever invade Austria… oh, he invaded Austria… he says he’s going to invade Poland, but he can’t possibly invade Poland… oh dear, now he invaded Poland!”

Morons.

And yes, I am feeling a wee bit short-tempered today, actually. Not because of Ms Harriet Cryptkeeper, but because I’m under the metaphorical weather.

PS – If she gets on, someone simply has to release a Women of the U.S. Supreme Court swimsuit calendar. I’m not sure who is scarier, the half-shrunk Wicked Witch or Creepy McCrypto. Throw in Janet Reno and Helen Thomas and you’ve got yourself a party.

PPS – And yes, it’s good to see the Last Republican Conservative, Ann Coulter, performs exactly as one expected in ripping the both Dear Leader and his “trust me” theme to tattered shreds.