Lora Foster
Peggy Shannon
Anna Lee Peterson
And last, but absolutely not least, two wonderful pics of:
For the first time, I feel like we deserve to win more than they deserve to lose.
And he’s probably right. I remember someone calling out to McCain somewhere, saying: ”Give me a reason to vote for you, rather than against the other guy.” And Bill, in his usual fashion, describes how McCain might have done just that.
This struck a chord with me, though:
Newt Gingrich’s fire-breathing army of young reform Republicans who stormed congress in 1994 grew, in about a decade, into the party of Duke Cunningham, Trent Lott, and the Bridge to Nowhere. I watched this unfold — especially after 2004 — and time and time again, the core conservative values of discipline and responsibility were betrayed, mocked, and ignored. Restraint is not an easy sell in a society this affluent — not compared with the view of government as a bottomless bag of candy. That’s why we’re supposed to be the party of adults.
Power corrupts, and I believe there is no power more intoxicating and corrosive than the ability to spend other people’s money at will. If Newt’s Army could go so far astray, you can bet the country was disillusioned, disappointed, and furious — not just ready for change, but eager for it, even change as ethereal and diffuse as what Senator Obama has been peddling. We lost the Senate and the House in 2006 because of this. We were going to lose the presidency in 2008 for it. And we deserved to lose it.
Quite right. Republicans somehow thought—and I include GWB with Capitol Hill on this one—that if we spent an obscene amount of taxpayer money, but just a little less than the Democrats would have spent, that core Republicans and the conservative base would not mind.
Well, we did mind, and through our indifference (if not outright hostility) handed over Congress to the Democrats. That the socialists in control have done absolutely nothing of consequence since, is a blessing, but not altogether an unexpected one: the extreme Left agenda was never going to get accomplished, no matter how much Pelosi and Reid promised their base.
So here we are. It would be nice for a President McCain and VP Palin to have to work with a chastened Republican-controlled Congress, but that’s not going to happen, I think. What McCain will have to do is block all the Democrat overreach and overspending, and force them to cut taxes (corporate tax rates, income tax rates, the death tax, capital gains tax, you name it), because the socialists’ agenda (which would become fact under a President Urkel) will be to increase taxes on all of us, and spend according to plan, not according to actual*.
If you think the dollar is weak against other currencies now, just wait until that happens.
McCain will have much to do, and I only hope that he’s up to the task. He’s going to get crucified by the mainstream media (the appeasement of which is his glaring Achilles heel), and excoriated by his Democrat buddies on the Hill (Kennedy, Reid etc.)—and my only concern is that he’ll buckle, and become a petulant, lame-duck president within the first two years of his presidency.
The Candidate McCain that Bill Whittle lauded to the skies in his NRO article is not quite the same as the Senator McCain we’ve seen over the past half-dozen years. His patriotism is beyond question: it’s his actions in Congress which still create suspicion among conservatives.
So unlike Whittle, I look upon McCain not as the White Knight Who’s Going To Change Washington. I look upon McCain who’s going to have to do a great deal more to convince me that his idea of “change” does not include hooking up with hardcore socialists like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Russ Feingold and Ted Kennedy, with all of whom he has partnered in the past, just to pass a piece of legislation which he might have thought was worthwhile, but which in the final analysis turned out to be horribly flawed—and total anathema to the people whom he now expects to vote him into the Oval Office.
I suspect that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
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*The Democrats believe, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, that raising tax rates will increase tax revenues, and they will plan for spending to increase under that belief. In fact, raising tax rates reduces tax revenue, and, as the tax cuts of Kennedy and Reagan proved, the opposite is true: cutting tax rates increases actual tax revenue. But reality-based planning, for socialists, will always take second place to dogma, which is: soak “the rich” and redistribute their wealth to (primarily) Government and “the poor”.
1969 - 90 Alfa Romeo Spider
I don’t know if there was ever a more frustrating car made than the Spider, whether in 1750cc or 2000cc form. When (if) it worked, the Spider was one of the greatest experiences in motoring: the howl of that beautiful Alfa engine, cornering which could make your skull burst though the skin, and quickness which, at the time, was the equal of cars six times its cost.
And then the windshield wipers would stop working, or the door handle would come off in your hand, or the lights would inexplicably quit. Or (as happened once to my friend Sal) the oil pan would separate itself from the car, for no apparent reason. Stupid little stuff always seemed to go wrong with the Spider.
Remington 1100 shotgun
Like the Alfa Spider, the Rem 1100 was always bedeviled by something breaking (usually, it should be said, the extractor), and the 1100 also has that annoying little quirk whereby the release button has to be depressed in order to load the blessed thing. Once you have all that stuff sorted out, the Model 1100 is one of the most pleasant shotguns to shoot, of any ever made. (One guy fixed his 1100 problems forever like this, but voided any kind of warranty—the usual caveats apply.)
Here’s Debbie Harry, her heart of glass shattered by the car which broke down on her:
And for no good reason, here’s another pic of Debbie, looking not quite so forlorn:
Hailing from Arizona and Alaska, the Republican ticket has a chance to rekindle a western conservatism different from the old Yankee paternalist sort or the Bible Belt version. They like their guns out there (some still kill their own food) and they are pro-life and deeply pro-America, of course. But at a time of grave challenges, the themes of economic freedom and opportunity, the resistance to the idea that government holds all the answers, could resonate with voters.
This is an election, as the Democrats have realised all along, about an America on the cusp of change. With the moose-hunting, establishment-taunting Mrs Palin at his side, Mr McCain might represent a bigger change than the one that his opponents are offering.
Much of what Baker writes is true—even when he (like many commentators Across The Pond) misses the point about American conservatism.
What he misses, in the larger picture, is the two types of change we’re going to be presented with.
The kind of change being proposed by Urkel is that which would make our society more like that of Europe (and Britain): larger, more intrusive government; weaker, more vacillating foreign policy with a weaker military to depend on; statism-based social policy—government telling us how to run our lives as opposed to letting us decide for ourselves; a weaker, more relativist attitude towards crime; support for a failing state-managed education system; a national health service like Britain’s (and one as likely to fail); and of course, much higher taxes to support all this. Oh, and more gun control.
Whatever kind of change the McCain/Palin administration will propose—and I await details with breathless anticipation—it’s unlikely to be any of that.
It seems clear to me that what we are suffering from is the inevitable backlash created by a generation or two of working mothers who were - and are - absolutely determined to drive home their own agenda, no matter what. The Have It All mums who wanted both babies and plum jobs as a legal right have only succeeded in scaring off employers and choking the flow of top promotions.
As a result, prospects have been soured for all women, not just for the mums. And those oh-so-generous new provisions for maternity leave, provided by a government desperate to appease these working mothers at any cost, have served only to alienate employers, not encourage them.
Women now receive maternity pay for nine months and can take up to a year off. A year? What do they do? Build an extra storey on the house, or just have a baby?
The terms are hardly alluring for putative employers, who surely have rights, too.
Including the free choice to invest in people and channel their funds and energy into employees who they think will bring them the best return? Don’t be silly, that’s illegal.
Long-term commitment to career development, continuity, the sacrifice of uninterrupted service? Harriet’s Equalities Office conspires to ensure that these virtues no longer have their own reward.
The whole system is skewed to placate women who boomerang in and out of full-time employment to raise a family - and now that system is fighting back.
And justifiably so.
Lest we forget: companies are in business to make money, and part of that effort is efficiency. So the time comes to promote someone to a senior VP position, and the boss has a choice between a 35-year-old man who’s smart, ambitious and capable, and a 35-year-old woman who’s likewise smart, ambitious and capable, but has made noises about wanting to start a family. Can anyone blame the boss for picking the candidate who will be there every day for the next year over someone who may take a whole year off on maternity leave?
Indeed, if I were a shareholder and I found out that the boss had picked the person who wasn’t going to be there to do the job, I’d move heaven and earth to get the boss replaced with someone who had the company’s interests more at heart.
It’s difficult enough for women to get ahead—yes, I know that there’s still some stupid vestigial prejudice against promoting women—but I have to tell you, loading the dice in women’s favor, as Government seems to have done so often, actually does no favors to women either.
This is bullshit. Companies do not exist to provide a support system for motherhood, or for families in general. They exist to make money for their shareholders and owners. That doesn’t mean that said shareholders and owners should act like money-crazy despots and fire a woman just for getting pregnant, of course (and good grief, how often has that happened in the past anyway?). But the other side of the pendum swing is what’s causing the current situation, and anyone who didn’t see this one coming is a bloody fool.
One wonders how or whether his opinion of her will change now that she’s the future VP of the United States…
With rolling countryside stretching to the sea, a pheasant shoot and ornamental lakes, Kelling Hall is a stunning estate even by the standards of the great stately homes.
But the £25 milllion price tag for this Norfolk country pile, built by the Shell Oil dynasty, comes with an extra bonus - most of the next door village as well.
The 13-bedroom Arts and Crafts manor house, surrounded by 1600 acres, includes 10 properties from the nearby Kelling village as well as most of the land around the settlement.
You know, there was a time when I would have lusted after a place like this—truly—because it is, in a word, gorgeous. Nowadays, I’m somewhat more jaundiced.
If it were not in England (where one couldn’t use those 1,600 acres for shooting not just shotguns but assault rifles and handguns), I’d lust after it now.
But as I see it, a large estate like this in today’s England just isn’t worth the hassle. There’s always a chance a bunch of thieving gypsies “travellers” might occupy the back 40, or some teenagers set fire to the barn just for the hell of it, or some class-warrior politician raise the taxes on it, and so on. Hell, given the socialist policies of England today, I don’t know if anyone could afford the death duties.
So the owner is selling it, and it will doubtless be converted to a bunch of housing estates in the future anyway—because if the heir to Shell Oil can’t afford to run it, who could?
Sic transit pulchritudae.
A teenager has vowed never to touch alcohol again after an exotic holiday cocktail containing a ‘secret ingredient’ caused her head to swell to abnormal proportions.
Corinne Coyle, 19, was rushed to hospital in Crete’s popular party resort of Malia after just a few sips.
The cocktail, bought in a Greek bar for 10 euros (£7.80), and served in a bowl, is said to contain a mixture of Baileys, chilli powder, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, cider and gin, plus a ‘secret ingredient’.
For those of my Readers who are of a young and impressionable age, allow me to state that this benighted girl drew from this episode the wrong lesson completely.
The lesson, of course, is not to quit drinking. The lesson should be:
Never drink strange dago drinks, no matter how exotic they may sound.
If you stick to single malt Scotch, your head is guaranteed never to expand.
Of course, 10-year-old Glen Morangie isn’t the world’s cheapest way to get drunk, but then again, hospital bills are not the cheapest way to stay healthy, either.
When two gunmen smashed through the glass front door of her suburban Fort Worth home early Wednesday, Kellie Hoehn didn’t think twice. The 34-year-old mother of two grabbed a shotgun that had been pointed at her face, starting a struggle that ended with one intruder killed with his own weapon and another in the hospital.
“I wasn’t going to let them get to my babies,” she said, recalling the moment when she pushed up the muzzle of the shotgun, pointing it away from her children’s rooms.
Although the intruders told her to keep quiet, she screamed for her husband. She told her 12-year-old son, who was awakened by the sound of the shattering glass front door, to get his 5-year-old sister and hide.
“It was like a horror movie,” her husband, 32-year-old Keith Hoehn, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I thought I was a dead man. We’re fighting for our lives.”
With Kellie Hoehn clinging to the weapon’s muzzle, her husband tackled the man who held the shotgun. She knocked the intruder in the head with a jar candle, giving her husband a chance to wrest the shotgun.
By then the tussle had spilled out onto the front lawn. Keith Hoehn shot one of the men who had a pistol, police said. Wounded, that man ran away.
Then the intruder who initially had the shotgun charged Keith Hoehn.
Kellie Hoehn told The Dallas Morning News that she screamed at her husband, “Shoot him, shoot him, shoot him.” Her husband fired the shotgun and the man fell to the ground. Then the shot man lunged a second time.
“Well, I shot him again, and I guess that was it,” Keith Hoehn said.
I guess so. One dead, one critically-wounded goblin. Job well done.
[waits politely for applause and cheering to die down]
No charges will be filed against the couple, of course, because this happened [clap clap clap clap] deep in the heart of Texas.
Dead goblin count: 171
I have a question: do you know of a good, solid handgun training course in the Bellingham WA area?
I’ll let my WA Readers answer that one.