VIDEO: New Marco Rubio Ad; PLUS: Rudy Giuliani vs. Arianna Huffington

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On the heels of Marco’s endorsement by Rudy Giuliani — Sorry Charlie made the always-dangerous mistake of double-crossing an Italian — the Rubio campaign rolls out this warm, positive ad:

FLORIDA SENATE: Key Race Roundup

By the way, on “Morning Joe” today, Arianna Huffington and Giuliani had an interesting go-round:

Why is Arianna defending Charlie Crist? I don’t know, but she certainly has an extensive history of supporting closeted gay Republicans. IYKWIMAITYD.

(Cross-posted at Right Wing News.)

UPDATE: Excuse me for recycling an old joke that even I’ve grown tired of, but . . . Allah hates me. I saw this Huffington-Giuliani video at Daily Caller and linked them when I posted at 12:33 p.m., cross-posted at Right Wing News and had it all over Twitter but, when Allah blogs it six hours later — after getting it from Newsbusters — there’s zero acknowledgement that anyone else has had it online all this time.

Welcome to the Chopped Liver Zone.

Nevada Voters to Hopeless Harry Reid: ‘We’re Just Not That Into You’

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Let’s see, 62% of Nevada voters oppose ObamaCare, and Harry Reid couldn’t get 50% in a poll match-up with Charles Manson, so obviously it’s time for Harry to make fun of Sarah Palin and launch a sparsely-attended bus tour of the state:

“You can’t escape who you are. My roots are here and no one can take that away from me,” Reid told a crowd of more than 100 cheering friends and supporters inside the Searchlight Nugget casino, about 60 miles south of Las Vegas. . . .

Having been to the Searchlight Nugget, I’ll guarantee 20 of those “cheering friends and supporters” were there for the slot machines and 10-cent coffee. But the Hopeless Harry Tour continued on to Las Vegas, where Reid reportedly drew about 1,000 “hard-core Democrats” — at least 2,o00 less than the attendance at Ann Coulter’s Vegas speech at the Henderson Pavillion (fixed seating for 2,400, plus lawn seating for up to 1,500).

More on the Hopeless Harry Tour from Nice Deb, Ruby Slippers, Jennifer Rubin and Liberty Pundits. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports on Eric Odom and Steve Foley’s operation in Vegas:

The television cameras went 60 miles south, to where Sarah Palin kicked off the “Showdown in Searchlight.”
But come the midterm elections, what may be more significant is what is happening here, in a dark condominium where the Home Depot tags are still on the lawn chairs that double as indoor seating for guests.
The blinds drawn against the desert sun, this is the new burrow of Eric Odom, a chief organizer of the first nationwide Tea Parties last year. Mr. Odom moved here a few weeks ago with his fiancée and a blogger sidekick to mobilize the state’s Tea Party groups for the midterms. . . .

They didn’t even name the “blogger sidekick.” That’s just so wrong. Anyway, here are Eric and Steve in their “burrow”:

BTW, Eric’s fiancée fixed me breakfast one morning while I was crashing on their sofa, so you should probably make a donation to Liberty First PAC just for that.

Kathy Shaidle and ‘Casual Bigotry’

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Conor Friedersdorf wants Mark Steyn to “repudiate” Canada’s answer to the Tasmanian Devil after Steyn linked a post in which Kathy wrote:

[T]he nation’s ethnic makeup is different now, for one thing. Way more residents/invaders/settlers from “manyana” cultures. More illiterates, more people with no sense of history.

Is this untrue? Does the U.S. not, indeed, have more illiterates in 2010 than we had in 1960? Are there no such things as “mañana cultures,” where there is less emphasis on efficiency, punctuality, prudence? Is it not a fact that many illegal aliens are illiterate even in their own languages?

The facts may be in dispute, but apparently no argument is permissible. Freidersdorf condemns Shaidle for “casual bigotry against Hispanics and blacks,” and condemns Steyn for “uncritically pass[ing] along” her views to readers of the Corner. This assumes that readers of the Corner lack the discernment to decide for themselves whether they agree or disagree with Shaidle. Must Steyn include a disclaimer with every link to Shaidle? “WARNING: This person may occasionally say things I do not endorse.”

There is a baby-and-the-bathwater problem with Friedersdorf’s argument. Conor seems to be saying that anyone caught writing a potentially objectionable sentence is persona non grata from that moment forward, no matter how many hundreds of thousands of non-objectionable sentences they have written before or since. And anyone who quotes that person (“uncritically”) is presumed complicit in their thought-crimes.

Well, who could possibly be acceptable by Conor’s standards? This demand for Rhetorical Purity is only ever enforced against conservatives. Liberals can and do say objectionable things every day without being threatened with ostracism — liberalism being the virtue that excuses every vice.

To my knowledge, Kathy Shaidle has never driven off a bridge and left a girl to die in a submerged Oldsmobile. She is therefore a better human being than Ted Kennedy ever was.

And you can quote me on that.

UPDATE: In the Texas Hold ‘Em game of political incorrectness, Shaidle goes all in:

Wow, I’m more powerful than I ever imagined. Henceforth, I insist that you ALL refer to me as “the Mexican Whisperer”! . . .
And you Mexicans: what the hell are you doing reading my blog? That lettuce isn’t gonna pick itself!

WARNING: This person may occasionally say things  that result in reflexive coffee-spew.

Bedtime Viewing

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by Smitty

Some of our readers appreciate the crunchy stuff, so here is a bit of absurdity via Kottke:

If you’re feeling more classical than jazzy, you can go for Apocalyptica:

And if you’re feeling more crunchy and absurdist, Beatallica blends ‘Enter Sandman’ with ‘Taxman’ to demented effect:

Word Association With Joe The Plumber Goes Unwell For John McCain @3:40

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by Smitty

Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher looks tanned and much-improved in this clip, no doubt from having spoken at enough Tea Parties.
A few soundbites:

  • “If this was a Republican movement, I wouldn’t be here.”
  • “Democrats are great people.”
  • “The GOP looks at [the Tea Parties] as a tool.”
  • “I just put my name on the ballot to join my local precinct.”

(The attempt to embed the video failed in an epic way. *waaaah*)

Update: JD Hayworth on PJTV, strongly disagreeing with Senator McCain, but in a collegial way, on pretty much everything. I realize that A Conservative Shemale isn’t a fan, but Hayworth sounds like what we need politically, and in quantity.

Shootout at the RNC Corral

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First, a co-chairman of the Republican Regents resigned, and now the Republican National Committee’s chief of staff has resigned.

Maybe one too many rejected RNC solicitations? Just a guess.

Allahpundit has the necessary strategic insights. I’d offer my own insights, but I’m a bit too busy right now laughing over a silly post at Frum Forum by Chris Currey, who claims to have been “purged” by the GOP. Best line:

I voted for Clinton, twice. I thought he was the best Republican president since Ike. . . . I thought that Clinton practiced and articulated true Republican ideology in his fiscal discipline, job creation, smart tax cuts, and foreign policy better than anyone since Ike.

Right. And we all fondly remember how Ike loved getting blow jobs from interns in the Oval Office. 

As seems de rigueur in such cases recently, Currey feels compelled to invoke the name of William F. Buckley. Of course, invoking his name is so much easier than actually reading William F. Buckley, who utterly loathed the Eisenhower presidency and the “Modern Republican” movement of that era. 

When a man begins to suffer delusions of persecution, however, it’s best not to quarrel with him, so if Chris Currey is convinced he has been purged, we’ll all just nod politely, excuse ourselves and walk away, leaving him to mutter to himself.

Speaking of Charles Johnson . . .

John McCain Gets His Queeg On

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“Bitter”? “Unprincipled”? “Self-pitying”? Gosh, it’s a shame Newsweek didn’t notice this stuff back in 1999:

Many of the GOP’s most faithful, the kind who vote in primaries despite 115-degree heat, tired long ago of McCain the Maverick, the man who had crossed the aisle to work with Democrats on issues like immigration reform, global warming, and restricting campaign contributions. “Maverick” is a mantle McCain no longer claims; in fact, he now denies he ever was one. “I never considered myself a maverick,” he told me. “I consider myself a person who serves the people of Arizona to the best of his abilities.” . . .
His dramatic shifts raise several questions: How much of his maverick persona over the years has been real and how much simply tactical? . . .  Is the anger people sense in him anger at Obama, or the American electorate, or fate, or himself? . . .
Something about John McCain leaves people, on both left and right, feeling betrayed and disappointed. . . .
Yet catch McCain off guard—or off script—these days, and he can act authentically put-upon and self-pitying. His former champions in the press are picking on him, writing hatchet jobs, he suggests. . . . As for those pleas to bring back “the old John McCain,” it’s a familiar refrain to him, code for saying he’s unprincipled. The old John McCain, the current one insists, hasn’t gone anywhere: any changes in his positions are readily explainable tweaks rather than anything systematic or nefarious. He bristles at charges that he’s bitter.

“Ah, but the strawberries — that’s where I had them! They laughed at me and made jokes . . .”

J.D. HAYWORTH FOR U.S. SENATE

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