Another Classic Charlie Crist Flip-Flop: From Homophobic Closet Case to
Pro-Gays-in-the-Military Closet Case

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Gay-rights activists might consider this “progress.” Republican can congratulate themselves on being rid of the beau ideal of transparent bogusness:

Charlie Crist, who previously opposed repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell when he was a Republican . . . will now support the repeal compromise . . . .
Until recently, Crist had been saying that the current policy works. But with the repeal compromise moving forward in Congress, both Republican Marco Rubio and Dem Kendrick Meek . . . have been pressuring Crist to take a stand on the compromise.
Now Crist is coming out for it.

Charlie Crist, the political hermaphrodite, preferred candidate of the addled and confused. But hey, it’s Florida . . .

So, now that “Crist is coming out for it,” cue the disco!

Why is it that so many conservatives are OK with Donna Milo but have nothing but contempt for Charlie Crist? It’s the opportunism, stupid!

Let me say to any pro-gay-rights voter in Florida who might be reading this: If that’s a fundamental issue for you, OK. It’s a free country — and might stay a free country if you vote for Marco Rubio.

But if you feel like you can’t vote for an honest conservative Republican like Marco, go ahead and vote for the liberal Democrat. Please don’t vote for that two-faced back-stabbing crapweasel, Charlie Crist.

Obama: If You Think I Screwed Up On
the BP Disaster, You’re Just Ignorant

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He went to Columbia University and Harvard Law, which means he’s umpteen zillion times smarter than you are:

“Those who think that we were either slow in our responses or lacked urgency don’t know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred,” Obama said during a rare news conference in the White House East Room. “We understood from day one the potential enormity of this crisis and acted accordingly.”

Translation: Shut up, you stupid morons! Can’t you see that you’ve got an Expert Genius running the country now? You should be grateful.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Los Angeles Republican Party Wins Lawsuit Against Ron Paul Supporters

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Taking over a county-level Republican Party isn’t really that hard. In most places, if you’ve got a core group of five or six smart organizer/activists who really know what they’re doing, you can oust the incumbent party leadership within a year.

Since 2008, supporters of Ron Paul have done this in many counties, and there are a few states where Paul supporters (and their sympathizers) constitute a real threat to the GOP status quo. Paulistas were among the leaders of the Utah coup against Bob Bennett, for example — and good on ’em for that.

However, there are always those who seem to think that the ends justify the means, and in Los Angeles County, California, this resulted in some disgruntled Paulistas forming a “shadow party” and filing suit against the existing county GOP leadership, claiming that the leadership had been unlawfully elected. My friend Joe Fein at Valley of the Shadow had posted about this earlier, and today informed me that the “shadow party” lawsuit had been dismissed, as LA Republican Alex Burrola reports at the Flash Report:

Now, less than two weeks out from the California primary, we hope that all Republicans in Los Angeles County can unite and pull together for victory in November. Jane Barnett and her leadership are committed to welcoming all Republicans – including those who may have been led astray by the blandishments of the shadow RPLAC – into the fold to register voters, raise much-needed funds, and support our party’s nominees in the summer and fall in what promises to be a game-changing and exciting election cycle.
It is truly unfortunate that so much effort of the leadership of the largest county Republican organization in the United States was devoted to responding to the sour grapes behavior of Robert Vaughn’s group. Hopefully, Judge Solner’s unequivocal decision and his awarding of fees and costs to the duly elected party leadership will send the right message to malcontents in other county committees, and encourage them to consider working within the existing framework and engaging in productive conduct to grow the party, not selfish behavior that can only harm our chances at the polls. . . .

Please read the rest of that, which should be required reading for anyone else who thinks they can sue their way to power. More generally, while I am very much a critic of the GOP Establishment, I consider it better to be in a position to exercise some minor influence than to alienate everybody and marginalize myself by being a complete douchebag. Remember Rule 6.

Once more, thanks to Joe at Valley of the Shadow for the tip.

If You Were Floating In The
Abstract Symbol Space Surrounding
His Head, You Would Know

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by Smitty

John at Power Line asks “Why Bother?” to the 1,200 National Guard troops deployed to Arizona. These troops will, apparently, filter out all of the drugs and guns coming across the border. Lawyers and money, apparently, not so much.

The point of all of this is not to do anything effective. (The deployment, not the Obama Administration.) Rather, this is a fig leaf. Governor Brewer can no longer say “You’ve done nothing” to the Administration. She can say “You’ve done nothing effective,” but now the problem has been moved from the tangible realm of effects to the Abstract Symbol Space (ASS) where we can ask questions like “What is effective?” and reply that “It depends upon what your definition of ‘is’ is.”

What is less than nothing? Less than nothing is a Lame Abstract Symbol Space gesture that claims to help while serving as a choke point to block real assistance. As they say in the military: “Buddy is half a word.”

The Classic Liberal Is a Good Blog

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Just switched the FMJRA Award to The Classic Liberal, which is a good excuse for a brief Rule 2 seminar. Earlier today, I got an e-mail from a journalist who was doing a story about how the Dale Petersen video went “viral.” The reporter asked me why I called out Gawker for failing to give me a hat-tip on the video:

Adrien Chen at Gawker can’t bring himself to give me a hat-tip for being the first to blog about “The Most American Thing Ever Made,” but I’ll count this as one more uncredited mitzvah for the Clown Prince of the Right-Wing Blogosphere.

I linked Gawker in the process of taking notice of the non-hat-tip, and made a joke of it, because I don’t want to become one of those humorless bloggers — no need to name names — who spend way too much time compiling their Enemies List.

My own Enemies List is extremely short, not because I’m so merciful and magnanimous, but because I did too much dope back in the ’70s and don’t have enough spare memory cells to keep track of every douchebag who has screwed me over. Much less do I have time to keep track of the douchebags who have screwed over my friends. So I’ll sometimes link a douchebag and accidentally piss off my friends who expect me to keep track of their Enemies List.

Lots of my friends consider Dave Weigel a douchebag, for example. But I know Dave, we’ve covered the same stories — including the insane crucible of NY-23 — and he is the only big-time MSM blogger who includes me on his blogroll. Just imagine how that must piss off Charles Johnson, and you understand that Weigel can’t possibly be more than 97% douchebag. So there is at least some hope for his redemption before he reaches Rule 6 territory.

It takes persistent effort to make my Enemies List. Very few people can devote the kind of career-long effort that David Brooks has made toward becoming the Douchebag King and even Brooks occasionally writes something that isn’t completely wrong. The world would still be a better place if Brooks were air-dropped from a C-130 over Waziristan without a parachute, but that’s not necessarily the first thing on my “to do” list when I seize total power in a coup d’etat and become Maximum Leader of the revolutionary junta.

My e-mail reply to the inquiring journalist  involved a brief discouse on Rule 2 as an expression of the beneficial networking effects of reciprocal linkage, my concept of the blogosphere as a collaborative enterprise, “No Blog Is An Island,” etc. When I finished with that e-mail, I resolved to deliver the FMJRA Award to the most recent blog to have trackbacked here.

The Classic Liberal was the lucky linker, and I want to take the opportunity to praise the general design of his site. It’s clean and simple, with a nice overall look. It is easy to read — the type isn’t eye-straining small — with lots of links.

Good blogging, in other words. And he linked here, which is the very essence of good blogging in my book.

After the coup d’etat, there will only be so many crew members on that C-130 to Waziristan, and the Maximum Leader will be in charge of deciding who gets the honor of kicking the payload out the rear door. Keep that in mind.

Was The Guilt Card Necessary, Dan?

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by Smitty

There are some religions that thrive on guilt, Progressivism among them. It’s certainly crucial that we support bloggers when reality gets rough. However, Dan Riehl raises the hackles a bit:

Think of it as sort of a dispensation for all Right wing homophobes. We will resume our guilt free fag hating again tomorrow; maybe we’ll even kick some sand at Andy Sullivan for good measure. Carry on.

I, for one, support Cynthia out of regard for her wonderfulness as a person. A few points:

  • We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t have differences of opinion, sometimes stark. Too, Dan Riehl is applying nothing but his trademark abrasive humor here as an advertising tool here; he means to do good.
  • We can have opinions stated in a calm, positive manner without going to the wretched excess of a Fred Phelps. Aside: I’ve heard he’s a Calvinist, which, if true, would explain much.
  • It’s cheap and easy to employ, a la Phelps, major differences of opinion as an excuse not to love our neighbor as ourself. Cut that noise out.

Summarizing, don’t let my distraction with Dan distract you from offering support to a wonderful lady and blogger.

The Right Needs To Extend The Olive Branch To The Left

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by Smitty

Inspired by this photo and post over at iOwnTheWorld,

allow me to share a thought.
No, I’m not about to scuttle principles, espouse Brooksian centrism or go totally Charles Johnson on you.
Rather, consider that there are a number of people who sort of know that they’ve been duped by the Left, but haven’t personally been burned yet and thus may see the costs of admitting they’ve backed a false leader as too high.
Don’t make that cost high for them.
It’s quite easy and honest to make the case that the current global economic toilet bowl in which we’re swirling isn’t new.
By refusing to get into an ‘us vs. them’ analysis, and instead keeping a dispassionate, impersonal, historical view, I’ve had plenty of civil political discussions with Obama voters.
Now, I haven’t gone for the ‘big win’, either. None of them have admitted that, “Yeah, we kind of tubed it there.”
But focusing on who quarterbacked which team, at the expense of considering principles, is exactly the kind personality-driven distraction that helped enable the current mess.

So, as the bills come due, slogans like “State’s Rights” may indeed be undesirable. I do submit that the State as a political entity needs to be revitalized. The value of the State as a blast shield against Federal over-reach cannot be pointed out too many times.
States also, moreso from a Conservative than Libertarian vantage, have a valuable place in discussion with the Left. While a Libertarian of any caliber is forced to clash with the Leftist on purely theoretical grounds, the Conservative can limit the scope of Libertarian-style arguments to Federal discussion.
Want Socialism, Lefty? Have fun with that in your State, just don’t leave any Marx on me. Unlike a Libertarian, I can argue strongly the existing legal and historical case for the Federal Constitution, and leave teaching the Economics to the market. Let me restate that: I don’t find it contradictory at all to favor Libertarian arguments at the Federal level, and something else within a State. The State of Virginia defines marriage the way reasonable people do; I was happy to vote for that. I’m not a proponent of a Federal Amendment along those lines, because figuring out what private individuals are up to ought not to be a Federal tasks. We SoCons should lay by our dish on that point.
Back to my hypothetical Lefty here, this kind of simple, positive approach means that I’m really not attacking Leftist thought at all.

Sadly, there is more at stake that theory. It gets down tot the Benjamins.
The discussion, however it unfolds, is going to involve massive sacrifice.
If the Lefty end of your conversation is 50+, you’re going to have to assure them that, whatever the Economic rehab plan is, they’re not coming up empty.
No, Generation X is going to have to be willing to throw itself under the bus ahead of the Boomers in the name of saving future generations.
When you forgive outright and double down with the refusal to be vindictive, even if it means paying for Social Security, knowing that you’re buying so much air, the Lefty can be helped through depression, into acceptance of the fact that the Progressive Era has been nothing but the most expensive failure in human history.

Having said all that, it’s true that the scope of these words doesn’t extend beyond me and the half-dozen or so Lefties with whom I deal.
Plenty of others may see the Left as a sort of Georgia, and themselves a Sherman.
However emotionally satisfying that imagery may be, that’s not the healing route.
And, no, there are plenty on the Left that lack the kind on introspection necessary for this: “They’s some men you just cain’t reach,” from Cool Hand Luke.
I get that. However, this mellow, reflective approach is still the preferred going-in position.

VIDEO: Carolina Sex God in TV Interview

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Always reluctant to speak to the media about his shagadelic mojo, Will Folks gives an interview to WCBD-TV:

He rehashes the “protect my family” excuse, which has never made any sense at all. How would a media revelation of an affair be more hurtful to Folks’ family than his self-exposure? He reminds me of the skeezy husband whose wife has gone mysteriously missing, pretending in an interview with the local TV station to be all heartbroken about her disappearance. Then a few days later, you see him being perp-walked after they find his wife’s body in the woods.

Yesterday, Ace of Spades ended a post about the Folks-Haley saga with this:

Not complete proof, but you know what? I would start looking for another candidate, if I’m being honest.

No. As I’ve said, I don’t give a rip about who wins a South Carolina gubernatorial primary, but I don’t agree that Nikki Haley should be thrown under the bus because of something a washed-up political consultant says on his blog. That sets a very dangerous precendent. And conservative lesbian Cynthia Yockey says we must fight back against what she calls “this Axelrod tactic.”