I was surfing about looking for reactions to Sen. McCain's acceptance speech tonight and came across Megan McArdle's reaction. No offense intended, but what is it about John McCain that is so distasteful to her? She can't seem to comment on the guy of late without mentioning how awful she thinks he is. Generally I find her blog thoughtful and worth reading, but she just really seems to hate McCain. Her post seems rather snarky and cynical, with no indication why:

The words "I fought corruption" should never pass the lips of a charter member of the Keating Five.

Someone should inform Ms. McArdle McCain (along with John Glenn) was cleared of any misconduct. Moreover, Bob Bennett (one of the fellows investigating the Keating 5 at the time) has pointed out that the reason McCain was included in the Keating 5 is that Democrats did not the Keating investigation to be an all-Democrat affair.

"I fight for you" is a clever tag line, and I presume the image that the McCain campaign has settled upon. This will allow them--just barely--to keep making the ridiculous claim that John McCain doesn't like to bring up the fact that he was a POW. If John McCain didn't want to bring it up, he would have instructed his staff not to mention it to every single person they talk to, including the barista at Caribou Coffee.

Yes McCain mentions his POW experience more than he did in 2000. How Ms. McArdle connects the "I fight for you" line to the POW escapes me. I suspect he mentions the POW experience fairly often because of the traumatic and transformative effect those 5 1/2 years had on the direction of his life. Imagine that. Sort of like Obama mentions his upbringing helping to make him the One who will heal the planet.

Ack! The dreaded "Free America from Dependence on Foreign Oil" meme rears its ugly head. This is high definition hogwash. Drilling isn't going to save us from Demon Oil any more than windmills will. It might make us some money. But we'll still be part of a world economy that will be pigheaded about buying their oil from funny people who don't even speak English.

How is this different from Obama's hogwash, except McCain is willing to allow more drilling while we work on alternatives? For all of Obama's talk, we'll still be dependent on petroleum when he leaves office (if he wins).

John McCain does not seem particularly comfortable talking about God. The lines are there, but they're mechanical, clearly recited by rote.

A lot of people are not comfortable talking about their belief in God in public, not even politicians. Just because he finds it awkward to talk about doesn't mean he's being phony. McCain is not the Huck, after all.

McCain claims he'll cut government spending. I'll believe it when I see it.

At least McCain will try, unlike Obama.

Boy, the folks at the RNC really hate national health care.

Don't libertarians hate national (aka government-run) health care too? McCain is for letting people choose their health insurance options from the private market, and provides subsidies for those who need help to buy insurance. What's sooo awful about that?

The other major change isn't really a change--it's a relative shift to emphasizing the martial virtues. This, I think, is why Kerry seemed so ridiculous "reporting for duty"--his political persona was about as far as you could get from the warrior ethos. McCain is the real thing. Too much of the real thing, for my taste--he seems to think that the values that guide a brigade should also guide the nation at large. This is a bad idea for the same reason that we should not be run by the codes of the Bar Association or the Hippocratic Oath.

Where in his speech did Sen. McCain propose to re-organize the country as a military brigade? I must have missed it. What values did he mention that are 'brigade values'? The speech I heard emphasized things like:

Service to/love of his country.

Reforming the Republican Party by moving it closer towards its core ideals.

Working with the opposition to solve our problems, where possible.


What is so awful about that?

On Bill Maher

In keeping with this blog's tradition of being far behind the bleeding edge, I just wanted to write a bit about Bill Maher. He stirred up the blogosphere during Pope Benedict's visit to Washington and New York. He called the Pope a Nazi and accused him of being an apologist for pedophilia.

This generated a modest furor of course. Did conservatives get Maher fired? Nope. Did they Maher to apologize to Catholics or the Pope? Nope. Did it change anything? Not really. Personally I don't think it ever will. Bill Maher is a seldom funny, arrogant, smug comic who has found a market niche entertaining people who share a world view similar to his. They're the people who don't respect religious folk, and people who know that conservatives are stupid and/or evil. Conservatives and conservative Christians are not part of his audience, just people for Maher to mock and be contemptuous of. He doesn't care if he offends them. HBO doesn't care as long as he makes HBO money.

Perhaps it would be better if we ignored the jerk instead of giving him free publicity.

It's stuff like

this that makes me feel unwelcome in the Democratic Party. What a demonstration of the virtues of embracing diversity and tolerance.

A little self-exmination blogging..

This post over at Althouse prompted me to take a look at the posts on this little blog to see what kind of blog it is. It seems that I've become a male political blogger of sorts. Funny thing is, I'm not a very political person. This blog started as a place to vent after the Wellstone "memorial" and as a place to express myself on whatever caught my fancy. This included stuff like Project Runway, astronomy pictures, weather, occasionally sports, and lots of politics.

Why politics? It may be my inner curmudgeon prompts me to write about stuff that annoys me. Politics as a subject has a pretty high annoyance factor with me. Since I live in St. Paul and DFL elected officials are thick on the ground, I find lots of things about the DFL to be annoyed about. I get the chance to see the Minnesota DFL and their friends in the press work up close and they are a constant source of disappointment. The GOP isn't much of a power here, but I suspect that if they were, I'd be annoyed with them too. Certainly Jason Lewis wouldn't think much of this place, if it was worth noticing... .

Democrat Bigotry on Display

Via Tom Maguire, (who has much more to say about it) this post from the "Big Tent Democrat" at TalkLeft just reinforces my dislike of the way Dems are unable to listen to a Republican without labeling them as a racist or bigot or some other derogatory term. Apparently, if one disagrees with a liberal Democrat that person must be evil in some way. Republicans of course are racist by default. I'd call them jackasses, but that would insult the good name of donkeys worldwide.

Obama's Speech

Am I deluded, or was the Kim Ode/Patricia Lopez story about the effects of Barack Obama's speech on racial issues just a little one-sided? They mentioned one person who was critical of Obama's effort. Everybody else, it seems, was sure that white folk just don't understand. Would it have hurt that much to have actually paid some real attention to what his critics were saying? How hard would it have been to report the reactions of more than one person critical of the speech, as opposed to getting one critical opinion, followed by every other person they quoted being critical of those who did not like what Obama said?

Of course that might have been confused with objective journalism, and we can't have that at the Star Tribune, can we now?

Who's to blame for McCain?

Over the past couple of weeks, I've a lot of comments from alleged "true conservatives" on blogs expressing sentiments like this:

Again, dont blame me if Obama or Clinton win in November. Blame the people that brought us McCain. If they were really interested in winning the general election, they would have known better than to nominate this liberal.

Well, I'm going to go with the " blame it on conservatives " option here. More specifically, the failure of conservatives to produce a GOP candidate better to their liking.

Setting aside differences over policy, I've seen three complaints about how McCain won. He didn't get the majority of Republican votes. He got a lot of support from independents and Democrats in the open primaries. He's been foisted on conservatives by the GOP establishment. Horsehockey.

John McCain didn't cheat to win the nomination. He won it by the rules established by the Republican party. He got more votes than any of the other candidates, enough to win 50% + 1 of the delegates. It's not McCain's problem that the "true conservatives" couldn't find a candidate to unite behind. If conservatives don't like open primaries, get the rules changed to make them closed. It's not like there wasn't time between the 2000 election and 2008. The notion of the GOP Establishment forcing McCain down conservative throats doesn't pass the smell test either. This would be the same establishment that McCain went against so often, on issues like spending, taxes, and campaign finance reform. The GOP establishment didn't really start lining up behind the guy until he started winning primaries. In short, conservatives have only themselves to blame for the current nominee.

What other things should be considered by "true conservatives" before they vote Democratic or stay home? How about 4 possible Supreme Court vacancies in the next 8 years? How about the fact that there are not enough conservatives votes in the US to win a Presidential election by themselves. This means the GOP has to attract some moderates and independents (and possibly some conservative Dems) to win. So perhaps some compromises would have to made after all.

McCain is doing well tonight

I wonder if Mark Levin's head will explode (figuratively)...

My First Caucus

After many years of just voting, I went to my first caucus tonight. Since I am not a member of any MN political party I didn't know if I would be considered to be rather like the skunk at a picnic, but I guess when you live in St. Paul and go to the GOP caucus they tend to want to make a fellow welcome.

In truth, the gent running the show seemed quite impressed with the turnout (district 67B for those keeping score) of about 150-200 people (my very unscientific guess) . I ended up as the Sgt-at-Arms for my caucus room, oddly enough. Fortunately the job mostly consisted of making sure the speakers adhered to the time limits for debating resolutions. Anyhow, if I had wanted to be a delegate for my precinct it would have been pretty easy to do (3 delegates + 6 alternates for the precinct, and 5 people present) , but it seemed to me that being elected a Republican delegate when I'm not a Republican wouldn't be cricket.

The straw poll was held first with Mitt Romney winning, followed by Mike Huckabee.