To quote one of my favorite speakers (Dinesh D’Souza), “I feel a bit like a mosquito in a nudist colony — where to begin?”

I sit here today, in a bit of physical pain.  My chest, arms, abs, and quads all ache from the beating they took last night.  I had an unreasonable amount of difficulty getting out of bed this morning, not because I was physically tired, but because the muscles used for sitting up apparently suffered some buildup of lactic acid during my exercise regimen yesterday.

You see, I’m in the Air Force Delayed Enlistment Program.  Last night, the DEP ran our PT test (we’re not quite there yet, me included, but we’ll make it by ship date), and then trained for a full hour and a half.  This exercise is nothing, simply nothing, compared to the physical demands of basic training — for this, and many other reasons, I plan to train as hard as I can before I go to basic training.  I want to mitigate as much of the pain as I can.  Oh, and to all you Marines out there: 

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But at least he has a great tan.

Via HotAir.com, Rolling Stone interviewed the Silver Fox earlier this year, and Charlie Crist made it very clear where he stood on the stimulus package:

But when I interviewed Crist this spring for my piece The GOP Jihad, here’s what he told me he’d have done had he had a darn vote:

Rolling Stone: Just a final question: Had you been in the Senate, would you have voted with the other Republicans for the stimulus package?

Crist: Absolutely.

Oh, say it ain’t so, Chuck!

There is simply no possible way to show the true level of my contempt for such a creature as Charlie Crist.  You see, in that article (The GOP Jihad), Crist said the following:

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Jenny Sanford.

Check this out:

Next year South Carolina will elect a new Governor, and what will happen then?

Well, it depends on who we elect.

It would be a real shame if our next Governor chose not to stand up to the big spenders in Columbia who have grown state government so massively in recent years. Or if we had a Governor who was content to allow our 19th Century form of government to continue without accountability or reform. Or someone who would let the education bureaucracy continue to stifle all attempts at adding competition into the public school system.

That’s why I think it is so important that South Carolina elect Nikki Haley as our next Governor.

Read the whole thing here.

Seriously, at this point, I put more stock in Jenny Sanford’s endorsement than I do with her basket-case husband.  And this isn’t your typical quick-hitting form letter.  It’s a thoughtful, complete, lengthy endorsement:

So when I’m asked my wish for South Carolina’s future, my wish is for a leader of state government like Nikki Haley. She’s principled, conservative, tough, and smart.

And it even hits the most important point:

Please go to her website, www.nikkihaley.com to learn more. And please make a financial contribution to her campaign (all of the details for how to make a donation are on the enclosed card and on her website).

Yeah.  After this, I say Jenny Sanford for President — if the Dems can have a superstar woman whose husband is a cad, we can do that much better.  /smirk

I wrote this on my Facebook account earlier today, and just now had the chance to post it here.  It was inspired by the poem Erick posted earlier today, and is meant to be read with that poem in mind.

One of my favorite movies is Saving Private Ryan. In some things, it is completely unrealistic (Ted Danson would not be caught dead supporting any war, much less appear in a real uniform)…but overall, it does the best job of any movie I’ve ever seen at showing the people in a war.

Most war movies have a different focus than Saving Private Ryan — they develop a single heroic character, surround him with a minimally-developed supporting cast, and follow the story arc through smaller buildup battles to an epic final battle in which the hero, though bloodied and bruised, triumphs over his enemy.

Those of you who have seen it may be wondering, isn’t that the story of Saving Private Ryan?

Well, a little. But it is more than that.

Think of Braveheart — a great, classic war movie. Mel Gibson plays William Wallace, the unwilling warrior who united a nation against the oppressive English. Who of you can name a single character in that movie? No, don’t give me stuff like “Oh, there was that Irish guy!” Names only.

But now think of Saving Private Ryan. There’s the obvious one, Private James Francis Ryan, the guy the squad is sent to save. Now think of the other guys. Captain Miller. Sergeant Horvath. Caparzo. Wade. Upham, the boy who became a man because the war forced him to be. Reiben, the Jewish guy who taunted the German POWs as they made their way into the FOB, who cried over the inscription of a Hitler Youth knife found on a German corpse. Jackson, the Bible-quoting sniper.

When any of these guys die, it hurts — and it’s only a movie. It hurts, because when they die, you have begun to feel some camaraderie with them. Your heart bleeds for the loss of Caparzo, the guy who just wanted to save a little girl from the destruction of war.

(Major spoiler alert, just for this paragraph…) And when Captain Miller, with his dying breath, grabs Private Ryan by the shirt and demands that he live a life worthy of the sacrifice of the men who died to make him both safe and free…at that point, the words “Earn this” means more than your simple campaign phraseology, because you know the names and faces of the men who died to make Ryan safe and free.

William Wallace, at least in the movie, died for an idea — the great, wonderful, pristine idea of making people free. Captain Miller, or at least the men like him, died to ensure that you continued to be free.

Simply asking people to remember those nameless brigades who have died…doesn’t have the same impact as when you see one man, know his name, and know that the purpose of his death was to continue the opportunity of America to provide a safe haven for freedom.

The part of the movie that is most poignant, however, is set up in the first few seconds of the movie. You hear a single bugle, playing the movie theme, and Spielberg shows a single shot of an American flag, sun shining through it, flying over the Normandy American Cemetery near Colleville-sur-mer. At the beginning of the movie, you’re merely interested in the beautiful artistic expression of the shot — but in the reappearance of this shot at the end of the movie, you realize that the flag — and your ability to breathe the free air that makes it wave — has been bought by the individual sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of Captain Millers.

People often think of the military as a single, homogeneous mass. That’s not a bad thing; the military trains its members to work as a single unit. But the sacrifice is never made by the Army, or the Marines, the Navy, Air Force or Coast Guard. The sacrifice is made by Captain Miller.

The five branches of the American military are, for lack of a better term, bureaucracies. And if you don’t agree with my assessment, try joining the Air Force — they killed a rainforest to make the paperwork just for my enlistment. The military bureaucracy doesn’t bleed. Military people bleed.

So today, don’t thank the military. Go find a veteran, and thank them. They’ve earned their freedom, and yours too.

It’s just a job, y’know?

Crist Lite, also known as Senator George LeMieux, apparently has some ’splaining to do.

From Mark Krikorian, via The Corner blog at NRO:

When Gov. Charlie Crist named his pal George LeMieux to keep the Senate seat warm for him, Jonah observed that “Any votes Crist Lite [LeMieux] makes in Washington will be, for political purposes, Crist votes.” Well, it’s not just votes — any controversy that arises will become Crist’s problem too.

And now there is such a controversy, which broke even before LeMieux was sworn in on Thursday. Until his accession to the Senate, LeMieux was chairman of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, described by a local CBS news report as “a Florida-based law firm which specializes in helping companies hire foreigners to replace American workers inside the United States.” Well, it turns out LeMieux’s firm may have done its job a little too well for his own good; it helped import low-paid Mexican sheet-metal workers for a hotel construction job at a time when there are reported to be as many as 2,000 unemployed sheet-metal workers in South Florida alone, not to mention those elsewhere in the U.S. who’d happily move for a job. And if you search the long table here, you’ll find unemployment among sheet-metal workers was over 8 percent even before the recession.

So George LeMieux’s job was to make sure Americans got fired?  Jeeze, you can’t write this stuff in a Hollywood scriptwriting shop.  And what was LeMieux’s response?

LeMieux says “I didn’t bill any time on the matter” and isn’t familiar with all the details of the case. He was just, you know, chairman of the firm.

Yeah.  So if that’s not the Senator you want in Florida, put your money where your mouth is.

Not that this is anything out of the ordinary.

No, this is just particularly spectacular, even for them.  Klavan on Culture is one of my favorites (sorry Klavan, Louder with Crowder is more my style), and his latest entry is…stunning.  It speaks louder and better of itself than I can for it, so here it is:

Oh beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountains’ majesties
Above the fruited plain

America, America, God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Or at least, he is by the standard applied to Bob McDonnell.

The sharp-eyed folks over at the Weekly Standard spotted a full-page ad starring Creigh Deeds‘ statements in a full-page advertisement in the October 29, 1999 Bath County Recorder regarding “special rights for gays:”

NO SPECIAL RIGHTS FOR GAYS
I don’t believe in discrimination, but I don’t believe in special rights for anyone. I have never voted to allow gay partners to receive medical insurance — or any other benefit — from the state. It’s sad that Mr. Collins has to resort to bigotry and hate-mongering.

Well hang on.  All Bob McDonnell did was say that if a judge had broken the law, he/she should not be a judge anymore.  And here’s Mr. Deeds, saying ‘just because you’re gay, doesn’t mean you get special treatment.’

BIGOT!

Or…something.

Most fun, though, is the third headline:

Putting families first

Oh snap.  You mean…Creigh Deeds believes, like Bob McDonnell, that families are important to the fabric of society?

Why, that theocratic so-and-so.  How dare he make that claim — I bet he hates working women.

Vote with your wallet.

I like Geraghty anyway, but this is both accurate and funny:

And today, in a front-page story, the Post feels the need to rehash how Bob McDonnell responded to a 2003 question of whether he committed sodomy. Never mind that he’s served as the state’s attorney general since then. Never mind all the other issues affecting a state that’s still deep in recession and with a budget in crisis; this is what the Post thinks I need to hear about the most. I’m not coming at this particular race as a political guy; I’m coming at it as a constituent, and comparing the candidates’ history of sodomy just isn’t among my top one hundred issues.

Strike three. I just don’t need to plunk down three quarters for that. Whatever coverage I need to read for work, I can find on that web site that they keep urging me to visit on every other page.

Seriously?  This is what passes for front-page news at the WaPo?  Although I know that the WaPo’s investigation into Bob McDonnell’s graduate thesis is their usual R-bashing shtick, I can see looking into the writings of gubernatorial candidates.

I’m not holding my breath for an expose on Creigh Deeds’ paper trail, but that’s another thing entirely.

Comparing the candidates’ personal experiences with sodomy, however, has absolutely zero to do with anything in Virginia politics.  That might make the gossip column interesting, but it has nothing to do with issues at hand in the Virginia gubernatorial race.

Word to the WaPo: Treat us like adults, not like the dolts on your staff.

Because if we can’t win a race with that guy, in this state, we should cede all of America to the idiot hordes of Massachusetts.

Seriously, we deserve to lose if we can’t rally ’round McDonnell.

So here’s what I propose: Find me everything, every tip, every rumor, every speeding ticket that Creigh Deeds has ever gotten. If he looked funny at a cop, I want to know. If they’re gonna set up an email address at the White House to track “fishy information” from the American people, I can set one up to track the utter BS coming from the Washington Post.

And don’t limit yourselves to Creigh Deeds. Amy Gardner is fine with me too. If she donated five bucks to a local Democrat, I’d like to know. If she was photographed in college drinking with minors, I want to know. If they’re gonna play this game, I’m okay with that. Let’s roll. But don’t whine at me when I win, playing by your rules.

Send this information to me at conservativegodfather@gmail.com.

I’m sick to friggin’ death of putting up with the Washington Post and their Democrat-lite campaign exercises. They screwed Allen in ‘06, they swung Virginia for Obama in ‘08, and now they’re trying to hose us again. NO FREAKING MORE.

It’s time to go Olbermann on these brown-nosing, excuse-making, push-polling, election-meddling elitist hacks. I’m going in the military in under a year, so I have nothing to lose but time. It’s time to dome-check these media jerks.

By now, you’ve most likely heard quite a bit about Van Jones, the White House Green Jobs czar.  The self-described communist who is in charge of the White House’s efforts to remake a capitalist economy (now there’s a misfit) has been shown to be quite the radical in the last few days.

Van Jones’ focus is supposedly on the creation of “green jobs.”  He couldn’t tell Newsweek magazine what a green job is, but he’s supposed to create them.  And that’s not even the best part – despite 60 billion dollars being devoted to the “building of a new green-based economy [...] not one green job yet exists.”  Were the rest of the Van Jones saga completely nonexistent, it’s hard to imagine that someone would have difficulty creating jobs of any kind with 60 billion dollars.  Van Jones, at least at first glance, is a singularly ineffective person at growing (*snicker*) green jobs.

But the fun is only just beginning.

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