Since this is becoming a minor issue today with Romney speaking before the NRA convention and the Washington Post using *democrats* who are opposed to his record to attempt to describe Romney’s record here in MA, it’s important to re-post this link.

Don’t believe the hype.  Romney was a pro-2nd Amendment governor during his tenure here in MA.  I have every reason to believe he will continue to be a pro-2nd Amendment President. 

http://www.goal.org/newspages/romney.html

Romney’s 2nd Amendment and pro-sportsman record while he was *actually* the Governor in Massachusetts was very positive. 

Legislation: During the Romney Administration, no anti-Second Amendment or anti-sportsmen legislation made its way to the Governor’s desk.

Governor Romney did sign five pro-Second Amendment/pro-sportsmen bills into law. His administration also worked with Gun Owners’ Action League and the Democratic leadership of the Massachusetts House and Senate to remove any anti-Second Amendment language from the Gang Violence bill passed in 2006.

Please read the rest before you shoot your, um, mouth off.  Romney’s record with 2nd Amendment supporters and sportsmen here in Massachusetts was in excellent shape when he left office. 

This is from the *premier* 2nd Amendment and pro-sportsman group in the Commonwealth. 

There have been a lot of attempted distortions of Romney’s record – factual, rhetorical and simply incorrect distortions.  Outright lies in a lot of cases.  Before people believe the lies they should contact G.O.A.L. and ask what the real story was.

It gets complicated for people to understand because Massachusetts is such a universally Liberal state with supermajority liberal votes in both chambers of the legislature.  But  don’t be fooled.  Romney was one of the strongest 2nd Amendment governors MA has had and he’s *leagues* better than his successor. 

It’s relatively easy to be a pro-2nd Amendment Governor when you’re elected Governor of Montana, or Utah, or Texas or Kentucky, and even Georgia or Florida.  In fact it might be easier to be a pro-2nd Amendment Governor if you were elected in Maryland or New Jersey.  We all know there will never be a pro-2nd Amendment Governor elected in New York until the world ends, or well after the world ends, actually.  Barring that, Massachusetts in my view is – and has been for more than a decade now – the toughest place on Earth for a pro-2AM Governor to function successfully, and Mitt Romney did so.  If people are looking to find a “core” in his 2nd Amendment principles, you just have to look at his record here, and it speaks for itself very clearly.

It will *never* be good enough to satisfy the people who don’t live here and don’t understand this Commonwealth’s politics, I know.  In a sense you DO have to live here to understand what he was swimming against, but he swam very well and very skillfully, and left a strong legacy here.   On his 2nd Amendment record in the Commonwealth I’d take him back as governor *any day* and I’ve said that a few times now.

Let the twisted Op-Eds begin!

Right here in this very post you will find the answer to all of the cultural questions you might have from the past 60 years.  It’s all here, in a nutshell.  Like anything else, it has been about the roles of the sexes in our society, and particularly the role of men, but also the role of women in relation to men:

Matt Groening finally reveals where “Springfield” from the Simpsons was really (theoretically at least) located. 
 
It’s Springfield, Oregon – chosen after the name of the town where the original “Father Knows Best” show was portrayed (not in Oregon). 
 
Of course, the Simpsons more than anything else as a cultural phenomenon were all about how “Father Knows Less Than Nothing, And He’s An Idiot.”  Homer Simpson was 23 years of the incompetent, bumbling, hapless and utterly clueless father figure.  No matter how stupid he seemed, there was always something more stupid waiting around the corner.  No matter how incompetent he was and what a terrible father figure he was, he was basically propped up by the rest of his family – but he was never the support, except for comedy.  Homer Simpson is the Schmuck whose family loves him despite that, and as the Schmuck he was the model for the Simpsons’ father figure.
 
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/04/11/mystery-solved-simpsons-creator-reveals-where-springfield-is-located/
 
Matt Groening, by the way, was a five-year student at one of the most leftist colleges on the Left coast:
 
Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington.  Courtney Love (from “Hole”, last heard from as the wife of Kurt Cobain) went to school there also.
 
http://www.evergreen.edu/
 
The big feature of their campus is “Red Square”
 
Revolution! 

Anyone who ever watched the Simpsons with their father sitting in his chair knows how uncomfortable Homer really made American men, American Dads, and fathers.  My Dad HATES Homer Simpson.  It was a full-court press against their authority – and even more than that – their basic competence as human beings – for more than 2 decades.  Homer Simpson was a relentless portrayal of American fathers as clueless, helpless, irresponsible, stupid, sometimes coy, inadvertently funny, hapless, haphazard, mostly dumb, irresponsible, and generally pitiful creatures.   Nobody can deny it:  it’s in every episode!

It was really Matt Groening’s reaction to Father Knows Best.

And one of the original actors from Father Knows Best would have applauded The Simpsons, and it’s important to read that, too, from Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Knows_Best

“I wish there was some way I could tell the kids not to believe it. The dialogue, the situations, the characters ­ they were all totally false. The show did everyone a disservice. The girls were always trained to use their feminine wiles, to pretend to be helpless to attract men. The show contributed to a lot of the problems between men and women that we see today. . . . I think we were all well motivated, but what we did was run a hoax. ‘Father Knows Best’ purported to be a reasonable facsimile of life. And the bad thing is, the model is so deceitful. It usually revolved around not wanting to tell the truth, either out of embarrassment, or not wanting to hurt someone. If I could say anything to make up for all the years I lent myself to (that), it would be, ‘You Know Best.’”[3]

Not telling the truth is the big sin that a lot of people continue to commit regardless of what side of the political divide they’re on.  The capacity to try to deceive out of embarrassment or shame is particularly strong.  The 1950s were built around a very strong firewall of embarrassment and shame:  the penalties were so high that everyone lied.  The whole culture lied to itself.  But it was a very sunny lie, and a very optimistic form of deceit, because we had just basically destroyed the worst evil in the world and frankly controlled the Universe as far as anyone knew it. 

Now we’re lying to ourselves in a different direction – which doesn’t make it any better.    Destroying the father figure in American life has had terrible consequences for everyone and the pendulum just keeps swinging, I think with less bearing and more violence than ever.   

We sometimes refer to it as the Nanny State but Chris Christie from Jersey is quite right when he describes it as “paternalistic”.  It’s the new, statist paternalism, where people sit around on a couch and wait for checks from the their father, the Government.  How can it be anything but when it wants to know about everything you do, and force you to do whatever it dictates?

I think if you look back at the Popular Science archives from the 1950′s, on the balance, the world was a better place.  There was certainly a lot more opportunity for people – for everyday people who wanted to make a career in their homes and with their lives without driving themselves into horrific debt.   Go take a look.  You really could make a living in the ’50s doing the kinds of things the advertisers in Popular Science had for you.  And a Law Degree was something you could get from a mail correspondence place in Chicago.  The world has changed completely for people like my father and no wonder he feels like he’s living on another planet.  Nobody can make a living now, unless they’re a lawyer, a banker, a tech guru, a pornographer, a government employee or one of their benefactors. 

http://www.popsci.com/content/wordfrequency

Sorry, everyone for the kerfuffle.  I was pretty steamed at Neil the other night for summarily de[publishing] my post that (really, truthfully) broke the message that Marco Rubio had endorsed Romney.  I understand why he de[published] it – it was too short, it wasn’t much of a post, and it violated the posting rules as such.  At the same time I was upset because I took a bit of “artistic license” with that post and I *intended* it to be very, very short and then talk more about it in the *comments*.  Also if Neil had just asked me either publicly or privately to expand upon it  a little, he knows I revise my diary entries and I would have absolutely done so.

I was ticked, burned, discombobulated, singed, crisped off, hacked off, pi**ed off and generally not in a good mood that he summarily de[published] me.  I took a day off and I forgive him .

Now, we really need to get back to talking about the serious things we’ve got ahead of us in this election cycle.  The facts are that now, both Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan have endorsed Romney and I consider his status as the nominee to be a fait accompli.  I also want to say that I like the way Marco Rubio thinks and when I see him on television, I just really think he’s a terrific person and one of the brighest stars we have.  He is potentially a Great Man and I mean that in the  profound sense of the term.  Redstate was *absolultely correct* to have supported him so strongly.  I can tell by watching him and listening to him that he and I would have great conversations based on the way our minds work.  I think that’s why he endorsed Romney, in the end.   I support him 110%.   He’s a great person. 

I was angry at being summarily de[published].  It wasn’t necessary, but I’m over it.  I won’t make the same mistake again and Neil won’t have to de[publish] me again, even though he really shouldn’t have felt he had to in the first place.  Let’s get one thing straight:  whenever I post a diary entry, I’m online – I’m logged into Redstate and also Gmail.  I don’t post from a Blackberry or a mobile device and even if Neil had just given me a warning in the thread that would have almost instantly sufficed to have me flesh it out a little more.  Instead he just [depublished] my post.  OK.  Maybe he was in a “[depublishing] mood.”  I forgive him.

Moreover anyone who knows me understands that when I write something, I usually go back and add several explanatory and/or exculpatory sentences and paragraphs after the fact.  I am bittersweet about Rubio supporting Romney but bittersweet it is.  The Sweet part is that I had a longstanding belief that Romney was eventually going to move the mountains to get the endorsements and the money, and the Bitter part is that none of our other candidates really rose to the level to challenge him effectively.   But it’s OVER.  In my mind at least.  And thank God, because now I can concentrate on some other things Redstaters might actually *agree* on.  Let’s not let Atavism turn into Onanism and mentally masturbate our way to defeat, here. 

Let’s move forward from here.   We have lots of big fish to fry, even bigger than the big Sturgeon carcass that washed up on the beach in North Carolina, and the last thing we need right now is more rancor and disunity.  As Peggy Noonan said today, it’s ours to lose ”virtual sigh”.  And she was much more charitable about Obama being “creepy” than I would have been, but mine is not to rewrite the columns of WSJ contributors.  I love her even though I disagree with her all the time.   One good thing about that column today is that she’s really got ahold of a strong *feeling* about Obama that I think is starting to take hold even among his former supporters, and with a lot of good reason.  He should have stuck with the Assistant Professorship, frankly.  But all of us know that wasn’t The Plan, Stan.

So let’s not lose, shall we?

We don’t need any more of our own circular firing squads.  Obama’s campaign is the Lonely Sinking Feeling and the most important thing we need to do is not screw up much more.  Let’s have a little solidarity here, people!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-My2AkcZeE4

This might come as no surprise to people here at Redstate, but I think it’s useful to highlight it anyway.  E.J. Dionne’s column over at the Washington Post this morning manages to do the almost unimaginable — even for him:  first state the law carefully, then offer an opinion masquerading as a definition that fundamentally debases and alters what it means, and then posit the twisted alternative as the truth that people actually believe – as long as it’s a group of people he doesn’t support. 

This is one of the most amazing (and uncreative and hacked-up) examples of intellectual malfeasance I’ve seen yet:

I’m talking about “The Right’s Etch-A-Sketch Imperative” in which he first states the relevant text of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and then proceeds to tell people what it “really means” while asserting the NRA and gun owners believe or adhere to his twisted-up, lurid interpretation.   

Please read the article in its entirety at the Washington Post’s website, and when you get down to paragraphs 9 and 10 be prepared to witness this astounding feat of projection and transmutation:

…there was a national outcry because under the Florida law, a citizen has a right to use “force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”

Flash forward (you don’t have to go very far!)  to the next paragraph, where he talks about the NRA’s “utopia” based on “feeling threatened” and “no longer counting on law enforcement to preserve the peace.”  Neither the NRA nor the Florida law talk about “feeling threatened” or “just shooting.”  To my knowledge as a member I’ve never discussed the word “utopia” in connection with concealed carry.  And they certainly don’t talk about “no longer counting on law enforcment” either - they talk about using deadly force if it is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm “to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”   That’s a universe away from Dionne’s assertion that it means:  “If you feel threatened, just shoot.”  They couldn’t be any farther apart! 

Dionne probably knows that the use of lethal force in this case is being scrutinized according to the way the law is written, not what he is imagining it means so that he can project that on others.  In fact it would be a travesty of the law and nothing I as a gun owner would support if the law said what he claims it does!   Then he has the chutzpah to put one right after the other, without even a few intervening, dissembling paragraphs to play around with the primacy/recency effect.  Amazing.  He just glues them together and expects people not to notice they’re utterly different, and moreover to buy his interpretation.  It isn’t even goodspeak Orwell.

The doublespeak continues, but this is a particularly breathtaking and brazen example.  Dionne knows very well that the shooting is being investigated in the context of what the law says.  It’s amazing to me that the Washington Post can keep running a column – even from this columnist – that contains such an outrageous distortion of both the law and the facts, wrapped up in a slanderous caricature.   [Author's note:  Yes I know that when it's written it's libelous, but "slanderous" sounded better at the end of that sentence.]

It’s hard to believe he understands the words he writes, much less publishes them for other people to read in a major national newspaper.  Even E.J. Dionne has a certain responsibility as an editor for such a large publication not to further distort and propagandize, particularly when – even at this late date – all the facts have not yet come out and everyone’s tensions are high.

I’ve thought for a long time about it and if Redstate had a paywall and/or a subscription plan to be a part of the blog, I would pay for it.  I’m thinking somewhere along the lines of $5.00 a year to read only front page articles, $10 a year to read front page and recommended entries as well as comment, and $25 a year to read and contribute with full commenting privileges everywhere (subject to applicable rules, of course). 

What do you think?  For a long time I’ve wanted not to *contribute* to Redstate but actively to *pay* for the content here.

To help the process of thinking about this I have 5 options and I’d prefer if you indicate your choice in the response:

1 – I would never pay for anything on a blog or in the blogosphere. 
2 – I would pay a subscription fee to read the blog but not comment
3 – I would pay a fee to read the blog, comment but not contribute entries
4 – I would pay a fee if it allowed me full access including creating entries
5 – I believe in micropayment subscriptions for all access, all the time

Very short post.   On March 1st, I wrote a post , a little tongue-in-cheek, about Energy Secretary Chu’s dustup in his testimony before Congress regarding the Administration’s view of increasing gasoline prices.  I wrote:

“Why is anyone so surprised that this Administration’s Energy Secretary said what he said and then had to walk back his comments about the Administration wanting the price of gasoline to go high, stay high, and get higher?

And higher, and higher and higher…

And higher, until it is as high as it is in….Europe?  It’s not like it’s any SURPRISE or anything.  Which is probably why Chu said it in the first place.

I mean, that’s been a policy recommendation that you could have read in the pages of Scientific American 7 or 8 years ago, from Michael Shermer.”

People read that and  I guess they thought:  “Oh, this is just Kowalski spouting off again.  Besides, those egghead publications of his, you know, nobody reads them.”

Almost eerily confirming the gist of what I wrote is this March 17th blog post/article on SciAm’s website by Gary Stix (h/t: Drudge).

Am I clairvoyant?  I must be channeling people.   Or maybe I’m quantum tunneling them.  Or maybe it’s all because of too much Penn & Teller.

“Effective World Government Will Be Needed To Stave Off Climate Catastrophe”

When you say:  “This is the Plan” as a layman, people call you derogatory names and wave their hands dismissively.  When Gary Stix confirms it in the pages of Scientific American, it’s the reasonable sounding alternative.  I recommend everyone read the whole article, but here are some highlights:

I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science.

…”This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”

Unfortunately, far more is needed.  To be effective, a new set of institutions would have to be imbued with heavy-handed, transnational enforcement powers.

Would any institution be capable of instilling a permanent crisis mentality lasting decades, if not centuries?  How do we create new institutions with enforcement powers way beyond the current mandate of the U.N.?

And all seven billion of us must be “recruited” to “act in unison.”

Well, there you go.  Scientific American wants to scale back on the hard science, bring the soft sciences and global-government forces to the fore, so they can act in a “heavy-handed” way, to recruit all seven billion of us to “act in unison.”  The only thing he didn’t use was Eric Holder’s “brainwashing” term.  If I wrote that here on Redstate, people would call me a crazy right wing nutjob.  But luckily I didn’t have to:  Gary Stix at Scientific American just did.

Hello everyone. 

I mean this post as a little bit of a poll and also because I’m willing to take a personal risk if enough people think it’s important that I do so.

I’d like to talk in a future post about my experiences owning guns in America, beginning with my early experiences shooting BB guns and pellet guns, my later experiences on a high school rifle team, traveling through my ‘interregnum’ as a Teenage Moonbat, and my current experiences as a licensed gun owner in Massachusetts. 

I think it’s an important issue, and it’s one that’s crucial to me when I consider our choices in the upcoming election.  If there’s enough support for it here, I’d like to write a comprehensive piece describing my experiences throughout my (mostly adult) life. 

Obviously, I disagree with Eric Holder and presumably the President – I think it’s crucially important that responsible citizens have the right to own firearms of virtually any type or kind; I also think people should have their concealed carry permits recognized everywhere in the country.  Here on Redstate there have only been a couple of reliable 2nd Amendment supporters, though  - I’d like to add my voice to theirs.  My hard-earned belief is that people who are responsible firearm owners are the least of our worries in this society. 

Do you think I should?  I’m willing to do so, but before I write the whole thing I’d like to ask if there’s any real interest in it here.  I can encapsulate my views very simply:  “The responsible people I’ve known who own guns in our country are the people we really want to encourage.”  Just the opposite of the “brainwashing” Eric Holder is talking about. 

For many years I had personally wrestled with the concept of owning firearms again but I can say that after I decided to purchase my handguns I never slept better.   In the past two and a half years I’ve not only slept with one of my guns (a Ruger SR9) under my pillow on a few rare occasions, I’ve also carried a Smith and Wesson 4040PD Airlite in my car and on my person hundreds of times – walking down the street, going to the grocery store and the gas station, walking the dogs at night, etc., etc.  Completely concealed.  These guns (and others) are kept where I can get to them safely every single day, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Knowing you have the ability to protect yourself and your family is enormously beneficial to your state of mind.  Everyone should be able to.   Liberals too, if they so choose.  I believe as much in their 2nd Amendment rights as I do in their 1st Amendment rights. 

By the way it will come as no surprise to anyone who has access to the NICS database that I own the firearms I do.  I was fingerprinted when I bought each of them.  I was instantly checked by the FBI at the moment of purchase, with my fingerprint and Social Security number as well as the model of gun(s) and the purchase price, time, date and location of purchase and a few other things.  Some people mind that, I haven’t:  I bought them from reputable dealers and I’m quite proud to own them and use, shoot and carry them.   

As per my usual these days, I’d just like to ask a simple question:

Why is anyone so surprised that this Administration’s Energy Secretary said what he said and then had to walk back his comments about the Administration wanting the price of gasoline to go high, stay high, and get higher?

And higher, and higher and higher…

And higher, until it is as high as it is in….Europe?  It’s not like it’s any SURPRISE or anything.  Which is probably why Chu said it in the first place.

I mean, that’s been a policy recommendation that you could have read in the pages of Scientific American 7 or 8 years ago, from Michael Shermer.   Everyone who knows anything about energy prices in terms of petroleum energy – gasoline, diesel, fuel oil, etc. – knows that the strategy has been to push the price into the hard core pain zone for most Americans to force them to what are euphemistically called ”clean energy technologies”.  The kind that our country has been funding through the front door and the back door to people who become millionaires on the taxpayer dime and then have their companies go bankrupt.   On the taxpayer dime. 

Now, we all know that people in the LARGE areas of this country where you have to drive to get to a store – not to mention your neighbor’s house – are going to suffer the most when gasoline gets to European price levels.  You “flyover” people out there in Middle America that have to have a pickup truck, a family car, and a good 4WD vehicle for the winter and need to drive 20 miles to get to town or a store, you’re the ones who are going to hurt the most.  Anyone in the RV business can look forward to multi-up camping.  And I don’t even want to talk about the recreational boating industry.  But see, that’s part of the plan!  They’re going to need more government assistance to make ends meet at that point!  This time, they won’t massacre the Kulaks, they’ll subsidize them. 

So why is anyone so surprised?  Stephen Chu shouldn’t be walking back his comments – it’s a CONSENSUS among his colleagues and has been for a long time, which is why he said it.  The only question has been how to do it politically.  Now, when Barack Obama was elected there was such a messianic buzz floating round the Administration that for a while, to his believers, it seemed like he could just raise the price of gas to $8 a gallon all by himself and people would just forgive him and melt into a swoon.   Chu himself wanted to make every roof in the country white to reflect more solar radiation. 

Really, that’s what everybody thought!  Stephen Chu, if anything, is only guilty of testifying honestly in front of Congress!  He just didn’t elaborate!  With all due respect to Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama has no intention of firing him over that testimony – it was perfectly honest and only backwalked when it became a political liability, which is exactly how the Obama Administration operates and always has.  Instead of firing him, Obama should give him a medal for telling the truth, and then taking the heat for his boss.   Chu is first and foremost a scientist and he’s a little rusty when it comes to politics – he just assumed everyone got it.  There’s nothing extraordinary there at all, and in fact, what Chu should be doing is being called back to discuss why he initially said what he said, in much more exhaustive detail, because he can provide it if anyone can!

Barack Obama would absolutely like to see gasoline at $8/Gal and so would Stephen Chu and so would Andrea Merkel and so would Sarkozy and so would everyone who advises these kinds of policy decisions at Harvard University.  There is *absoultely nothing* wrong with what Chu said.  The only thing that’s even the least bit funny is that he had to backwalk it, because that’s been THE PLAN for more than 10 years now:  to make America’s gasoline prices comport with Europe’s – “One way or the other, you…”

Short post:

Today, February 20, 2012 -  in addition to being “President’s Day” - is the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s successful three-orbit mission aboard Friendship 7.  He was the first American to orbit the Earth, and anyone with even a cursory appreciation of the history of America’s manned space program knows that it was an urgent and somewhat harrowing mission.

There is no Google Doodle celebrating  that accomplishment today – at least, none so far that I can see.   It was an incredibly significant event for America, in many ways more significant than Gagarin’s orbit.  Until John Glenn’s successful mission, there existed grave and not unsubstantiated doubts that America was capable of putting a human in Earth orbit, much less bring one back safely.  We really weren’t sure we’d get Glenn back alive until he splashed down and was picked up by the USS Noa.  His first words upon exiting the capsule (after blowing the side hatch) on the deck of the Noa were:  “It was hot in there.”  Indeed it was.   The Atlas did not shrug.

Seven and a half years later, an American placed the first human footprints on the moon.  

However, Google *did* create a Doodle to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s mission on April 12, 1961.  He was the first person to orbit the Earth.

I have a few serious questions given the outcome of the CPAC straw polling.

Jonathan Gruber has just published a cartoon-based graphic novel that purports to explain, in a format everyone can understand, the entirety of Obamacare.

You can buy it here for $13.95.

Question #1 is simple - why didn’t he publish it for free on the internet if the aim was to make Obamacare as accessible to as many people as possible?  If the explanation is all it’s cracked up to be, and will help people understand and support the plan, and the motivation was to provide that explanation to the largest number of people possible, why not find a way to provide it for free over the Internet instead of exclusively at $13.95 for the paperback (or $30.00 for the hardcover)?

Question #2 is also simple:  Why is Gruber so angry at Mitt Romney?  Angry enough that a normally buttoned-down economist from MIT is resorting to using the F word in his interviews?  To quote Dr. Gruber:

Romney wins the CPAC straw poll in an almost dead heat with Santorum and Gingrich in a very distant third place and all his money running out.   I take it from this and the rest of the CPAC results from the Washington Times that basically, nobody knows ’nuthin.  Including the people who direct this blog. 

Redstate just got thrown under the bus — at CPAC!

I’m taking advantage of the fact that as Kowalski, who on Redstate founded the concept of making long, extemporaneous comments to oneself, I’m allowed occasionally to also write a two or three sentence post as a diary entry.  It’s short and sweet:

I’ve changed my mind.  I’m supporting Newt Gingrich over Romney for President.  It’s taken me a long time to come to this decision but all the events of the past week have changed my mind.  We need someone in office who will really help keep the momentum built with so much sweat and tears over the last two years moving forward. 

So there it is, for now.  I’ll have a longer post later explaining the change of mind, and it’s despite what I think are Newt’s legitimate flaws.  On the balance Romney’s flaws are more serious, it’s just taken me some time to come to that conclusion.

I don’t feel too badly about doing it because, let’s face it, my advocacy for Romney here has been kind of halfhearted and tepid at best.  And I haven’t given either of them any money (yet).  In the end, it really has come down to thinking hard about the people who have worked so diligently in the past several years to reinvigorate the Conservative movement in this country.  To be honest with myself I have to stand with them. 

Newt Gingrich for President!  Seriously.

It’s a simple question:

If Obama decided that he was going to lose with Biden as his VP on the ticket, what is the absolute latest date he *COULD* switch Biden for Hillary?

I happen to think he could do it as late as August or even right up until the day of the election, but would it be legal that late?   Is it legal, in other words, for an incumbent President to announce 48 hours before an election:  “I’m changing my Vice President, effective after the election, to Madame X?”  Has any such thing ever been done in American history?  What about changing them before the election actually occurs?  What’s the deadline on that and why?

What’s real lowdown on Robert Reich’s proposal that he swap ‘em, in terms of hard and fast deadlines?

I’d like to know people’s thoughts on this because for the past several days I’ve had some very interesting dreams, one of which features a Drudge headline showing Obama and Biden with Hillary in a photograph, at an outdoors event, exchanging what look like table napkins.  That, and I don’t believe a word Hillary Clinton says about not running, and frankly Biden would be *perfect* for the State Department right now.  I think it’s been in the plans all along, to be honest.  I’m just wondering if there’s a real Constitutional barrier to it.

[Aside and update:  I have another blog entry coming about this but I'd like to say one thing right now.  Yes, I do support Mitt Romney over Newt Gingrich as I've said in the thread with Ender at the top of the Recommended column.  "Most of all to thine own self be true" and all that.  However, I'd also like people to know that even if my pick loses, I will support this Party's nominee with everything I can offer.  I am neither the Establishment nor, in truth, the Base or part of the Movement Conservatives per se.  But I am loyal to this Party and its people, and that won't change out of spite or cussedness or sour grapes.]

Ladies and gentlemen, watching the results of the Republican Presidential primary contest the past few weeks has led me to conclude that our national sporting events are sadly outdated.  In particular, our National Pastime needs to be radically redefined.

We need to replace baseball with my new hybrid sport:

“Full-Contact Poker Foot Chess”

This will be a hybrid sport that synthesizes the best of full-contact Judo, the intrigue, bluffing and luck associated with a good game of Poker (large bets allowed), the careful strategy and intense action of an NFL game – with the cerebral analytics of Speed Chess.

To all you baseball fans, I’m sorry for not including you here but you will be allowed to wear your favorite team’s cap during certain phases of the game, either to psych out your adversaries or just to cover your bald spots.  And at the end, the losing team (if certain conditions are met) gets 1 chance to score an extra “significant quantum” of points by successfully shooting (only X ring hits count) a high-powered target rifle at a target more than 500 yards away, just to make it interesting.  This “special teams” effort will only be permitted if a successful attempt would send the game into overtime, and can only be used once per regular-season game, twice per game during the playoffs if double overtime is possible.

I’m going to need some help fleshing this out in terms of how we award points,  and the long and complicated way that games will be conducted and referreed, but I think this new sport really gets to the heart of what America’s election season is really all about.

My thinking is, this new sport has something for everyone:  it’s got the deep analytics of turn-based games like chess combined with the controlled violence necessary to keep people interested, and a lot of opportunity to structure the stages of the game and propose rule changes to really have some substantive debates and keep the rules “process people” happy.   We’d have to pick a team size based on the number of players in an NFL game, roughly, but in addition to their usual positions each player will have specialties that can be used during (and after) each down.  In a nod to motorsports, teams can choose players on their starting lineups each week through a 5-lap SCCA race, but that has to be done well before the game begins, in the parking lot of the stadium.  Players will, however, be allowed to wear sponsorship jerseys that reflect their favorite NASCAR teams.

I deliberately excluded motorsports from the “core” of the new sport because it lowers the barrier to entry, and it’s an optional feature.    I want to make sure almost every team can play this game all across the country.  You’ll need a few chess sets, a couple of decks of cards, some old football gear, some inexpensive Judo mats, some basic timers,  in other words, things people should be able to come up with all across the country without any large up-front cost.   Surplus equipment, really.  The high-powered rifle can be borrowed on an as-needed basis, you just need one, and almost every town in America has someone who has one.

What do you think?  Please submit your own ideas for America’s new national pastime, right here in this thread.

And take it seriously, but don’t take it all too seriously, if you know what I mean.

Because what we’ve got right now, folks, on the political side, is a truly unprecedented contest.  It’s unlike anything most of us recognize.  We’re in uncharted territory, and so let’s think Big.

Everyone is consumed with the Presidential horse race in this country and there are good reasons why they are.

But just for a second, I’d like to comment on a headline on Drudge today, which has ostensibly nothing to do with the race for U.S. President … except in terms of the foreign policy of our current administration.  It’s here at the Financial Times:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5dc3ce02-4059-11e1-9bce-00144feab49a.html

The “Egyptian Spring” that overthrew Hosni Mubarak was widely ballyhooed at the time as being the victory of a liberal Democratic movement ousting a murderous dictator.  It was the Egyptian Hippies Raging Against the Machine, ushering in a new age of liberalism and secular tolerance.  What actually happened was that the military took complete control of the country after the wealthy took off for parts elsewhere, and the subsequent elections (certified by Jimmy Carter) expressed the “will” of the remaining Egyptian people – mostly hardcore Islamists - to elect other, hardcore Islamists into positions of power across the entire country.  And that is what the country is right now.

Of course, the Egyptians in this country at the time told us that the Muslim Brotherhood and the even more extreme Islamist groups in Egypt were just disorganized fringe elements, nothing to be concerned about, and that the wellspring of liberal democracy was finally coming to replace a thug the United States had supported.  In fact they warned against the regime change in Egypt being “hijacked by Israel” in Chicago.

It now looks like absolutely none of that was true at all.  It was complete counterfactual propaganda.  It was all just a smokescreen.  What’s emerged is that the Islamists are in fact in power in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has 46% of the vote, the really ultra-radical Islamists are actually in power,  and now they’re seeking to extort/borrow money from the International Monetary Fund.  $3.2 billion dollars, according to the Financial Times.

In a recent article talking about why Obama should castle Biden with Hillary, Robert Reich alluded to the idea that somehow America’s foreign policy under Obama was a glistening triumph because of “results” like this.  It seems to me that we’ve got hardcore Islamists in power in Egypt who are now basically extorting the IMF for money.  What do you think of that triumph?  And couldn’t it be said that the professors who were talking in Chicago about the extent of influence of the hardcore Islamists in Egypt were simply lying at the time?

Here’s the link to Robert Reich’s reference to the “Hillary/Biden” Castling event.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/obama-clinton-2012_b_1173300.html

“Moreover, the economy won’t be in superb shape in the months leading up to Election Day. Indeed, if the European debt crisis grows worse and if China’s economy continues to slow, there’s a better than even chance we’ll be back in a recession. Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined.”

They’ve “shined” apparently by helping the most radical Islamic regime in Egypt’s history to come to power.  Not a record really that I would be that proud of.

Very short, and not recommend worthy, maybe, but a thought tonight on the eve of the Iowa Caucuses, or Iowa Caucii as they’re being called here on Redstate tonight.  They’re certainly the most cockeyed caucii I’ve seen in a long time.

By Howard Cosell, with posthumous apologies to Howard Cosell.  I love you, Howard.  Please don’t strike me down.

It’s a heck of question to ask whether I know what’s going to happen here, people, as we go into the final rounds.  Because this is just the first round and we’ve got so many things happening now that practically the entire race ahead of us is still a murky road, a confounding collection of pits and twists and turns, and practically no practitioner of the persuasive preregotive would do anything other than to say they’re just basically stumped.  Dan McLaughlin is weighing in about Rick Santorum on the front page, Rick Santorum is seeing huge boosts from the 700 Club because of the 700 Club, and now Rupert Murdoch, and Mitt Romney and Ron Paul are locked in a dead heat in Iowa with our new contender, Santorum, who is the fourth man in a three man battle royale for the top seat in the first primary.

Then of course there’s Gingrich, that erstwhile supposed victim of a Romney-boat attack, formerly called a Wounded Wolverine by our Man of Courage Dan Rather, all driven out of himself by his own curious commentary.  All of it might mean something, but maybe not to anyone except the victors.  In the middle of a mild winter, we’ve got the serious Republican nominees locked in a dead heat here in the middle of the freezing cold, and we’re all looking for the leg warmers and good cigars.  Newt Gingrich is being a gentleman but showing that peculiar face of his, that sad square face of not knowingness, of complete befuddlement surrounded by utter confidence that appears there for some inscrutiable reason.

Romney’s people have been kicking him hard (and most of it is deserved, and reciprocally too) for a long time now.  I myself haven’t seen anything Romney’s landed below the belt.  They’re both this new kind of Republican fighting match champion flip flopper politico group led by focus groups and honed by consultantspeak.  The facetious face of our nation.  A serious group of well-monied behind the scenes figthers are there in each corner, something to chomp on and contend with, a world of pollsters and opinion seekers.  When you look to the corners you have to see those crowds of carefully selected consultants waiting to pounce like careful cats on anyone who comes across their corridor.  Santorum is, of course, a choice who deserves a voice and Rupert Murdoch is tweeting about that man’s rise in the final rounds, a stellar rebound, an incredible change of fortune right here on the cusp of the voting!  The very cusp!  Before the first punch is really thrown!  An amazing change of fortunes, but who knows who will benefit?!

We’ve got a long time ahead of us, folks and more contentious and momentous battles to come so this is just a foretaste of the Thrilla in Manila.  Rick Perry and his organization, my personal favorites, might be right at this point to hang back and not let themselves be drawn into the Republican melee.  Not at this particular time, in this pernicious place, Rick.  It’s very early.  Don’t ever let anyone tell you this is an Establishment fight – we’ve got a full street fight going on here, a real down and dirty contest of wills that makes the Establishment blanch when they think about the power of the fisticuffs being thrown back and forth.  In ordinary times the Establishment doesn’t like to get this dirty, and they’re not right now.  They want their hands off and far away from the brusing battles, they don’t want to get their sleeves dirty in this fight.  There are left hooks, there are jabs, we’ve got the Spiked Pipes(tm) and the mixed martial arts now, a kind of voodoo mixture of fighting that’s sure to bring the house down.  And the house will come down.   And they’ll be there afterward, clean and unsullied, to pick back up whatever is left of it.

As far as my predictions are concerned, please reference the title here because my prognostications (along with Howard Cosell’s) would be extremely careful and uncommitted.  I don’t know where this is going in the first round but all of our candidates are out there naked on the floor and they’re running around like modern gladiators, and we’re glad that some of them aren’t wearing clothes and most of them have no shields so it’s going to be a bloody next few rounds.

In the spirit of the strange and weird contest we find ourselves observing carefully with meticulous attention here through this blog, I invite our more careful and perspicacious observers to weigh in to the discussion but with one, primary and singular caveat:

You Must Do So In The Voice of Howard Cosell, as Best You Can

From here on out I want to hear frank contribution in only the best voices of One of the Most esteemed Sports Voices in the World.  I’m not frankly interested in listening to other peoples inane droning, I’m not worried about hearing academic discussions, I’d like to hear a raw and honest discussion, in the voice of Mr. Cosell, how we should be viewing the race as it exists right now, in all its magnitude, manifesting itself gloriously and also perhaps sadly, at this moment in front of us all.

My prediction is that there are punches that have yet to be thrown and certainly in this contest of wills many more rounds to fight.  So here we go, viewers:  channel Mr. Cosell and give us all tonight, if not your best, then your best guess as we wait until tomorrow where the first round will unfold right before us.  Here is your chance to outdo the odious, to overcome the obtuse, and to out-alliterate the alliterative and voice for yourselves, tonight Redstaters, before it’s all over, in Howard Cosell’s voice, how you think things are going to wind up.  Have at it generously and with complete confidence that nothing you say will be judged on anything other than artistic merit and sheer good sportsmanship, as it should be.

Howard Cosell must decide the first rounds of this contest if there is any God in heaven so please all you pugnacious prognosticators, shed your petty vanities and here, announce to us all on the podium your predictions.

[I made a couple of minor edits and fleshed it out a bit more.  The overall arc is the same.]

Here is where I go off the rails and tell people that I’ve finally decided on which candidate I like the best and tell them whom to vote for.

I’ve decided to endorse three of them, in this order:

1) Rick Perry, current Governor of Texas
2) Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts and…
3) Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives and general Idea Man About Town and Bon Vivant.

I’ve thought a long time about this recommendation and I hope you will too.  They’re in the order I prefer, and you’ll notice that I’m not and never have been a Redstate front-pager.  I understand why their order might be different than mine.   Redstate has a self-imposed duty to support unwavering pro-life candidates and people with impeccable Conservative records.  That’s their imprimatur as a blog and an adjuvant to Human Events and I understand the demands of their mandate.  But as a longstanding user here, someone who the Editors tolerate with various degrees of hilarity and/or disgust, I can differ from them time to time without suffering the Spiked Pipe(tm).  And therefore I will do so now:

Rick Perry is my #1 choice right now because I think he’s actually the least compromised and most truly bonafide Conservative candidate in the race.   He had a couple of missteps in the early debates but everything since then has been wonderful.  He is going to be the only candidate I donate money to in this election cycle.  I’m supporting him with cash.  Not much, but he’s the only candidate I’m supporting with cash.  Romney and Gingrich have enough already, and I want more than anything else to see Rick Perry make this a contest.

In the end I trust Rick Perry more than I do either Romney or Gingrich when it comes to the things I care about as a Republican/Conservative.

This is not fealty to Redstate:  I’ve liked Perry from the beginning and the only thing that upset me were his bobbles in the earlier debates.  He screwed up a little but it was no big deal to me.  After watching him debate several times now I still think where he’ll find his moment in is the one-on-one contest with the guy whose job he wants to take.  He wants to debate the One, not the Others, so to speak.

Among the last two candidates I think are viable, I pick Romney over Gingrich.  To some of you, knowing that I live in Massachusetts that’s not much of a surprise, but believe me – it’s a surprise to me.  I’ve had nothing but time to assess his tenure as governor here now that Deval Patrick is our governor, and my verdict is that I would take Romney back tomorrow if he wanted to be Governor again.  PLEASE.  Yes, Romneycare sucks in Massachusetts and I *still* pick him over Gingrich.  Why?  Because I really think he’s learned more than anyone else in the past five years.  People are going to look at me and throw shoes and say, “Kowalski, you schmuck, you’re just a starry eyed optimist” but I still think he’s a better and more stable candidate than Gingrich who can get things done against an *almost overwhelming* opposition.  I have no real *oomph* for Gingrich.  I’m sorry but I don’t.  I look back at his record and I read the people who won’t endorse him now, and they’re the people who knew him best.  You can hate on Ramesh Ponnuru but he’s no flake and if it came down to having someone on *my* side in a bad debate scenario, you’d better believe I’d want Ramesh in my corner.

So Romney is my fallback candidate of choice — and believe me — people can lick their wounds and learn to live with him as the President here on the Right.  He’ll be great with a legislature that holds his feet to the fire in particular.  He’ll also do a great job on the world stage for America, because he’s not going to trip over his words, he’s not going to make mincemeat out of the English language, he has a great looking family, and as far as those things are concerned I don’t have any doubt he’ll meet anyone in the world eye-to-eye with no problem.  And I don’t want to hear any more about people fired from Bain Capital:  that’s part of the job.  Romney is a careful and thoughtful man, and he’ll do *very* well with a legislature behind him that keeps his toes warm.  Romney lived with the most single-party state legislature in the country and did a pretty good job from the other party.  He didn’t waver on the 2nd Amendment even though there was a lot of pressure for him to do so.  The key thing about Romney is that, yes – it’s true to a certain extent: he does change his positions according to political calculations, but if we have a strong legislature behind him, that will do a lot of good.  Romney really wants this job and my educated guess is that he’s going to be a very accessible President to the people who were able to overcome their doubts and work productively with him.   He wants to be a success, and he knows America has to succeed for him to be a success if he wins.

I don’t know of anyone personally who can learn to live with Gingrich in Massachusetts, but I guess people think someone can, so I’ve had to reassess him.  The time goes back a long way.  I’ve had to discard a lot of things I thought I knew about him.  I apologize for my most memorable “memory” of him, which was planted there erroneously.  Who is he?  Who would he be?  He’d be a Philosopher-President with a hardcore Engineering sensibility, and I mean that in terms of real Engineering, not social Engineering.   Very gabby and talkative, at times in several different directions.  Sometimes captivatingly so, and he’s very far from clueless.  He’s someone who talks with people with his ideas, who tries to persuade them with the power of his ideas as a leader, occasionally making use of the Bully Pulpit to do so - and convincingly – a lot of the time.  He doesn’t mind conversations with people - he really *is* smart enough to make his case and think around most of the potential obstacles, most of the time.  I can really see Newt Gingrich using the Oval Office address effectively again (to a lesser extent Romney also).  In terms of other things — Is he a person who truly loves America?   Someone who wants to see America succeed?  A guy who knows how the sausage is made in Congress?  Someone who isn’t going to show up there wet behind the ears as the Executive?  Newt Gingrich is all those things, too.  **I** can definitely live with a guy like that as our President.  He’s always said that if the moment was there, he’d be ready for it.  So I’ll give him the chance, too.

All that has passed is past.  At some point the statute of limitations on mistakes has to be invoked.  Newt’s wives don’t bug me.  The fact that political cartoonists find him easy to caricature doesn’t influence my thinking by one iota.  Romney’s adventure with the Massachusetts Legislature doesn’t bother me.  Let us all look toward the future.  You go to war with the army you have, not always the army you want.

So there it is.  Hurl the substantive matters at me now so I can debate them with you, and I’ll do my best.  My hope and money is with Rick Perry, there’s $50 in that, my safety is with Romney, and my last best choice is Gingrich.  I can learn to live with him if you Gingrich guys can learn to live with Romney in that eventuality.

My sincere belief/suspicion is that Romney will be the nominee.  In that case I am going to be proven wrong on #1, passably right on #2, and right on #3, also.  As far as spending $50 on Rick Perry’s campaign, if I lose, I couldn’t lose the $50 supporting a better guy.  We’ll see what happens.

I will also say that I’ve tried to read as many thoughtful people’s accounts of these folks as our nominee as I could.  And the Washington Times was wrong:  it’s not like stuffing a cat into a trash can, it’s like trying to flush a cat down the toilet.

There are a whole list of people who I will not accept as President.  I’m not an elitist:  I don’t even have a car I can drive right now.  The elitists have their picks, I have mine and until I become an official member of the Elite (which I’m sure I’ll let everyone know when the transition occurs) those are my picks, in that order.

Out of all these three, my biggest doubt about Gingrich comes down to what I fear is a tendency on his part to 1) Micromanage and 2) Lose Interest.  I’m worried that he’s a quick study and that he won’t follow through.  That’s why he’s last on my list.

In the end, I want to impel everyone who reads this to think carefully, balance it all out, and vote for the person you really think is the overall best to lead our country during these weird and strange and dangerous times.  I think a vote for any of these three men wouldn’t be wasted.  Governance is a continuous process and life never stops moving.  We can work with these three people better than anyone else, none of them have two heads, and most of the one head each of them have is pretty damn good.  They are all my pick for President (but I do have a preference).  

I think after watching her performance in her newfound (apparently an epiphany after all the years of avoiding being contacted by the media) role, that it’s perfectly clear:

Chelsea Clinton is going to run for President in 2016 or 2020.

Yes, we’re off to a slow start, it’s a boring start, but Amanpour has already stepped down and now Chelsea Clinton gets out of the blocks (despite it not being her career choice at all) with a stable, bland as unbuttered toast debut.  There’s nothing there to criticize except the anticlimax of it all, which means that she made it.  She’s fixed in that spot now and is cemented as a talking head who has nowhere to go but UP.  She survived the first week by pumping out an overdose of mediocre blandness, and that’s what you want to build on when you’re Chelsea Clinton – bland, unbuttered toast that takes at least five or six years to build the following for…

See you in 2016 or 2020.  She’s gonna run!

She’s going to be the Eleanor Roosevelt of the next 30 years.  She’s starting off slow and boring but she’s going to modulate that gradually until “My Day” is HER day.

Some people read the commentary and criticism of her initial appearance and say she was too bland, too boring, etc., etc.  But you know that’s on purpose.  She doesn’t want to be as polarizing as her mother, so she’s going to be as bland as powdered milk until she gets some traction.  Pretty soon, Chelsea Clinton is going to be on EVERYTHING, everywhere.  It was a perfect debut for her, exactly what I expected – super low-key, almost incomprehensibly boring, almost like it didn’t happen.  That tells me she’s going to be around *forever*.

Human Events is running an ad here on this site that invites people to take a survey about Herman Cain’s candidacy.

Fine, as far as that goes, but why does the first question have to be complete nonsense and totally unanwserable the way it’s phrased?

Here’s the question:

Herman Cain has recently come under fire for sexual harrassment allegations that have surfaced from his days as president of the National Restaurant Association. Pundits have critizied the Cain campaign’s handling of the scandal, and are questioning whether he can maintain his newfound frontrunner status.

1. Can Herman Cain survive this scandal, or will the allegations destroy his campaign’s momentum? Vote now!

Yes
No

When you attempt to answer this question, you see that it is really two questions with only one answer allowed.  It’s extremely poorly phrased.  It’s a meaningless question.

You could answer “yes” or “no” and the value of your answer would be completely interpretative given the way the question is written.

A better way to write it, not the best way, but at least a logically answerable way would be:

“Choose between the two:  A: Herman Cain’s Campaign can survive this scandal.  B: The allegations will destroy his campaign’s momentum.
1) A
2) B”

Something tells me we can do better than this.

//

*This question is required

The markets fall several hundred points in a day.  Today the DJIA is down more than 3%.  Then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, they’ll rise.  Then they’ll fall precipitously as everyone swoons 500 points over the next phase of the Eurozone crisis.  Then they’ll rise again as better news emerges – for a day or two, as the news of a new deal in Europe is reported.  Then someone catches a cold, Berlusconi falls asleep at a meeting, and the markets fall again.  You get the idea.

It looks an awful lot like the Europeans are manipulating the stock market through the selective development of “good news” and “bad news.”

Next, Sarkozy is going to slip and fall on some ice in France and Merkel will catch the flu at the same exact moment and the markets will just stay eeeeeerily stable.

I don’t have enough money to trade in the equities markets right now but just watching this weird behavior reported breathlessly everywhere across the world every day, I have to think:

All this quasi-regular periodic convulsion seems like an ideal money pump.  You can make the markets rise on good news, you can make them fall on “bad” news, and each time you can calibrate the rise and fall of the markets fairly well.  They’ll rise and drop by several percent depending on what the news is.  Spurt up several hundred points (a few percent) on good news and it will just as reliably sell off when there is more “bad” news.  This has been going on for a long time now.

We see this weird sawtooth pattern in the Dow and it’s amazing how well it corresponds to the news coming out of Europe in one form or another, good or bad.

I think the Eurps are pumping the equities markets.  They seem to be having a crisis then a reconciliation then a reemergence of the crisis than a reconciliation then another reemergence of the crisis, and so on and so forth.  They’re broke!  They need money real bad.  Particularly the wealthiest members of their societies right now, because they’re all in deep doo-doo generally, so it’s better to have money when you announce the final austerity programs for everyone else.

How long can they keep that up?  What do you think?  Look at this sawtooth pattern in the past six months.

It seems to me that the Europeans know when the markets will go up and when they will fall because of the news they make, they’re just convulsing the markets up and down almost at their whim and according to the spirits of the angels in their medicine cabinets.  You only have to know they’ll rise and fall by a few percent to make a LOT of money – as long as you know in advance which direction the swing will go.

http://money.cnn.com/data/markets/dow/