Thank the Troops At Christmas

Sent a message here.

Dan Solove over at Concurring Opinions:

Over at Civilities, Jon Garfunkel points out that many blogs that use Site Meter and other third-party visitor tracking services are publicly displaying a lot of information about their readers: IP addresses, domains, location information, referring URLs, and if they came to the site via a search engine, the search terms that took them to the blog. In his post, Jon notes that he tried an experiment at a blog that uses Site Meter and linked up IP addresses to specific anonymous or pseudonymous comments. That blog was ours.

Our Site Meter stats are public. I really like allowing our readers to see our traffic stats, referring URLs, the search term queries that bring readers to our blog, and the location and domain information.

But Site Meter also lists the IP address of each visitor, something that the public really doesn’t need to see. An IP address is a unique numerical identifier that is assigned to every computer connected to the Web. It doesn’t reveal your name, but it can be used to trace back to the specific computer you used or be linked to your account with an ISP. In other words, your IP address can be used to find out who you are.

I fail to see why that’s an issue, frankly.  What’s the big deal about this stuff? This is supposed to be a method of suppressing free speech, supposedly.  I say ‘nonsense’. Look, friends, one of the qualities of free speech, as the founders envisioned such is having the courage to sign your name to something, and to have your name thus associated with the ideas you express.  We do the ideal of free speech no favors when we facilitate hiding behind some electronic wall or other.

Stop whining, America, and have the courage to stand up and be identified with your words and ideas.

Edit: Repair broken link- Bit

Acting on a hot tip from a fellow Swamp Stomper,  I found this after action report on Ron Paul’s foray on to Meet the Press.   Jeff Freeland, National Ledger:

[Ron Paul] was on the defensive from the start of the interview and never rebounded.  As I feared, Paul was unprepared and looked foolish as Russert peppered him with old quotes and positions.  The interview was fair and this is just what I expected from the NBC giant.  It was actually rather sad to see him manhandled this way but you can easily score this one Russert 1 Paul 0.

Meet the Press should be rebroadcast in your area.  Check your local listings.

In 1992 the Clintons campaigned on vote for one, get two.  Recently Mrs. Clinton confessed her campaign was all about a third term for B.J.

Yes the Clinton are a team but what kind of team are they.  Maureen Dowd appears to be suggesting that B.J. is the World’s biggest ego-maniac and Mrs. Clinton is his enabler:

When Bill gets slit-eyed, red-faced and finger-wagging in defense of her, is he really defending himself, ego in full bloom, against aspersions that Obama and Edwards cast on Clintonian politics?

Maybe the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well.

Dowd has already seen the Clinton’s dog and pony show, and does not appear to be ready for an encore.  Are you?

Hat Tip: Drudge Report.

Addendum:(Bit)

How bad is it when someone who has arguably been one of the bigger defenders of the Clintons, does this?

Well, it gets worse yet.

Michael Goodwin over at the NY Daily News:

Something was bugging me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then it hit me. While I was reading about the campaign, the realization came like a thunderbolt: I’m tired of Bill Clinton.

Tired of his half-truths and full lies about where he stood on Iraq. Tired of his bull, as when he says he’d campaign for Hillary “if we weren’t married” and calls her a “world-class genius.” Tired of his whining, as when he says the media has been too tough on her and too soft on Barack Obama.

All of this is as real as the lovey-dovey, hug-and-smile photo ops of them in Iowa. It’s theater, staged for maximum political impact. We’re being played again on the two-for-the-price-of-one angle.

But, as always, the game for him is about him. A vote for her is a vote for him. Vanity is a big part of it, with her victory the succession legacy he was denied when Al Gore lost.

Well, exactly what I said last night and David has tacitly suggested, in his writings as well.

I can’t help but wonder if Team Clinton has calculated in this factor, which seems to me so prevalent. It seems to me insuperable.

[sticky till 12/26]

Editor’s Note: This is a time of year when I don’t envy the position of members of the cloth.

Such men and women find themselves in the position of having to write a sermon on essentially the same message every year while making that message sound fresh. It’s not an easy thing to do. That’s why, for the last couple of years at Christmastime, I have simply re-posted “A Bithead’s Christmas”. It’s not laziness that drives that but an inability to come up with a fresh angle every year ; when I have an idea firmly in my mind I can explore and goals of that idea until I’m blue in the face and red in the fingers, and my keyboard is suffering under the strain. But often, the fresh ideas simply don’t come.

There’s this too. I have gotten more e-mail in the past six weeks requesting that article be reposted, than any of the thousands of other articles I’ve ever placed on this web site. It’s obvious that what I wrote in that article struck some serious chords, in the readership of this website, and on the web at large, since the vast majority of people reading the article are apparently coming in from Google, looking specifically for it. I am amazed.

Perhaps it’s better that way.

Sometimes the expression of an idea comes out perfectly, and explains it well, no matter how many times it’s repeated. The Christmas story, the Christmas promise, is most certainly one of these. It is precisely as I said previously in this space; Christmas, and thereby, Christianity itself, has been going on for a little over 2000 years, in spite of all the naysayers, protesters and government regulations that history has managed to toss up in those 2000- plus years. It does so, because at the core of it all, is a message that all the naysayers, Protesters and government hacks will never understand, much less conquer. It is a message that will survive the ravages of time, government, and liberals, fascists, and anything else long after you and I are no longer even a memory in this world.
The Christmas message, you see, is eternal, and ever green.

(Evergreen.  I am suddenly struck with the symbolism here)

There is something of a journalistic precedent for this as well. . . I do not pretend to hold myself quite so high in the world as these media outlets, but I’d like for you to consider two examples from some well-regarded media outlets; Papers from around the country this day will be Printing “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”.  The Wall Street Journal has for years posted the same editorial every Thanksgiving for the last 47 years, and if I’m not mistaken they perform similarly on New Year’s Day as well.

So with all this in mind I will offer once again this year:

A Bithead’s Christmas

I find myself wanting to take more seriously, the challenge of writing to the subject of Christmas, today, than I have in years past. It’s not clear in my mind as to why, but this isn’t unusual… I never really do have a firm grip on why I want to attack a subject in these spaces. In fact, the writing of a coulmn for me has becomes more an effort of exploring a subject; the codification of random thoughts. The act of putting those thoughts into words on a screen allows me to think about, and RE-think about the subject at hand. My thoughts on a given subject often do not fully take shape until such time as I’ve re-written them twice. Often, indeed… usually, the ideas are already there, waiting to be cast into words, but not fully defined until the act of sitting down and typing them out. I suppose this subject is no exception.
To this effort, some blogs, this time of year will quote the great Gospels of Christ’s arrival, and expound on that. And that’s worthy, and right. Some others will take the secular angle of the holiday and go off on that. That too, is fine, though frankly it’s always for me missed the core of the topic, a little.
But not me, for either of those tacks. Not this year. I’m going to go off the beaten path, for this post, at least in context of this blog, given it’s Christmas, and off the beaten path in terms of the Liturgical calendar, given it’s me. I’m going to stick with the meaning of Christmas, but to point it up, I’m going to turn to something a little later… about 30 years later… for my subject. I trust you’ll see why when I’m done.
This story is in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. We’ll use Luke’s version for the purpose.

In Luke 18 it reads:

15 Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. 16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. 17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”

Now, all three versions add a little something to the story, and I suggest you read them yourself to get it all. Most times that Christians hear this text or read it, a child is being baptized. The apparently intended thrust of reading it in those situations is to make a loose connection with the Children being accepted by Christ. And, that’s a valid angle for the story. But, think about the story line, here, so you can get the flavor of what I’m going to describe to you. There’s a far bigger angle that many miss.
Christ has been playing “superstar” for a while, now. He’s been attracting flat out huge crowds wherever he goes. The disciples are starting to become concerned for the (human) well being of Christ. Children are, then as now, a source of some stress to adults already under stress, so the disciples decide, wordlessly to give the Lord a break. But Jesus says.. “Hey… No.. Let ’em come… It’s OK. ” Apparently, seeing some remaining resistance in their eyes, he reinforces the command with a statement that must have shaken them badly. “It’s to the likes of these as belongs the Kingdom of God.”
Now, It’s not hard for us to imagine what’s going on in the minds of the disciples…. They must have felt a little put back… While not saying so, they must have figured they had an inside track to Heaven. (Shrug) It’s human nature.
The passages don’t record if they said anything, but you just know what they’re thinking, here… “Comon, Jesus… We’re tryin’ to give you a break here! And you elevate these lowest of low, mere children, into the ownership of heaven? You raise a polite nothing to a path to heaven and eternity? What’s THAT about?”
And you know, Jesus knows it too. He knows full well what they’re thinking, because watch what he comes back with: “I’ll tell you the truth;”, he says, “Unless you change… Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”
But what does he mean, here? He’s talking, I’m afraid, about how you lose touch with happiness and the sense of wonder, as you become an adult. That loss prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of heaven as it is.
For most of us, the happiest times of our lives was when we were children. When we’re younger, we have less in the way of cares, and troubles. Let’s admit, too, that as we get older, we become aware of, and allow more and more sadness into our lives.
It’s true; It’s a hard world out there, and being adults we’ve come to understand this, in a way of understanding that only long exposure and experience… and lots of scar tissue, can bring.
It seems that every year we have more worries and concerns.

Oh, yeah, do we EVER worry. We worry about our health, and those concerns increase with advancing age. We worry about our jobs, about our investments, our savings, about the future in general. Retirement is a concern. Will we have enough? We’re too fat, we’re too skinny. We’re too tall, we’re too short, our once wavy hair is still waving… Only, it’s waving bye-bye. We worry about the future our kids will have and the normal growing up problems, but we also worry about the future that we’ve left our kids. We look at the news, and we wonder what kind of a world have we left them? We even worry if we worry too much.
We’ve seen marriages and relationships we thought would pass the test of time, pass away, instead. Things we had hoped would come to pass, didn’t, and those we’d not dreamed, in our wildest nightmares would happen, did. We see loved ones die. Jobs disappear. Hearts get broken.
And friends, those are just the hum-drum... The everyday worries that every generation has had, since Cain bopped his brother’s bean with a rock. Then you get into the problems particular to us and our times; AIDS, oil shortages, cancer, drugs, the way our own technology seems to be spiraling out of our control…And Islamofacists.

Ah, yes, there’s nothing at all, to my mind, like the specter of 3000 plus people dying on national television, in Washington, NY and Pennsylvania… while we watch, to remind us that we’re not in control.
And yes…. it’s all about control, if you think on it for long. All these things I’ve listed are worries about things we cannot control, try as we might.

The list of these reverses, these scars, gets longer as the years progress, and it starts eventually, to break down the positive outlook in every one of us… Each according to their ability to resist. Each step, each worry, each bit of emotional scar tissue, if you will, moves us farther away from the relative joy of our comparatively carefree childhood.
By now the sharper among you will notice where I’m going with this; This is where Christmas comes in. This is why Christmas holds a special place in our hearts, and our traditions.
You see, even for the not-so-religious, it is a time of renewal of our fragile human spirit. All of the hurts, small and large, become less pronounced, and fade under the soft glow of the lights, the candles, the fireplace, and the smile of the children.
Have you ever noticed that it’s the children, in fact, that do us the most healing? Christmas, it’s said, is for the children. Presidential speechwriter and WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan noted recently about some of the qualities of children:

“They are susceptible to wonder. A child can look at a red toy car in the red-green glow of Christmas tree lights and imagine an entire lifetime. A child can play with a new doll and smell good things being cooked and hear sweet music and it can make that child imagine that life is good, which gives her a template for good, a category for good; it helps her know good exists. This knowledge comes in handy in life; those who do not receive it, one way or another, are sadder than those who do.”

Of course, we move away from that ability as we grow older. Our long experience has hardened us to the realities of the world around us, and perhaps jaded our point of view. But here comes Christmas, which gives us, individually and collectively, the chance of looking at the world through the wonder-filled eyes of a child once again… Becoming childlike ourselves in the process, and becoming healed and renewed.
The experience is a far deeper one for those who have accepted the Christmas promise, and it’s meaning. Reacting to that promise includes allowing someone else to run the controls of our lives. Remember I said it was all about control? Well, I want you to think about the features of being a child. It was Randall Jarrell, I think, who once quipped:

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

Well, let’s remember.

You’re NOT in control of much of anything. Someone who knows better, and is by far more powerful than we, is running things. And looking back, I’m sure most of us would conclude that having that situation back would be of comfort to us. Haven’t we all wished to resign from the world of adulthood at times?
I guess this would be a good place to slip in a parallel story. Consider the fictional person of Ebeneezer Scrooge. Think about how the story develops; He’s had some serious emotional setbacks in early life… and those have become a self-feeding, never ending circle by the time we meet him, 7 years after his best friend’s death.
All these setbacks have made him cold, and hard, and for all outward appearances, non-feeling. He’s covered with emotional scar tissue. Being hard, is his way of dealing with what he cannot control.
Only after his overnight experience do all these cares get swept away, along with his anger of not being able to control his situation…. The realization comes to him that he never really WAS in control in the first place, so stop fretting about it all… Think about what are essentially the first words out of his mouth as he realizes that the weight of his worries.. Not unlike worries you and I have had, are gone; “I’m as light as a feather….” The weight of that scar tissue… And all the concerns they represent having been lifted off his shoulders…
“…and as giddy as a Schoolboy!”
Like a child.

“I’ll tell you the truth”, he said, “Unless you change.. Unless you transform, and accept the kingdom of heaven like a child, you’ll never enter it.”

Amazing parallels, aren’t they?

I’m reliably informed that Charles Dickens was not as a rule what one would call very religious. Yet, in looking at the parallels in these two story lines, I must wonder in all honesty if he didn’t have some help with “A Christmas Carol”.
Now, you’ll notice I took some liberty with the way the Biblical text was quoted. Some liberty, I say, but not very much, really, since it’s long been pointed out by Bible scholars that the word that earlier versions of the text had as ‘change’ were really translated from the ancient Greek word for “transform”. This is a major point, because it demonstrates what the first step is, and whose it is… yours.
And no, change and transformation are not the same thing. The best description I’ve ever thought of to explain the difference between the two, runs along these lines:
If I take a rock, and in the other hand I take a large hammer, and I hit the rock with the hammer, and break it, I’ve changed that rock. If I take that same rock, and take a small hammer and chisel, and very carefully, perhaps over a period of decades, sculpt that rock into a flower, I’ve still merely changed that rock.
Transformation, on the other hand, is when the rock itself, as a matter of responding to it’s own will, becomes a flower. And of course that’s beyond the normal power of the rock, by any standard we know.

What Christ therefore is saying is, that we must become children, as of a matter of our own will. Which is, as I say, impossible by any standard we know…. Which in turn leads us to the source of all things, who teaches us how, and gives us the power to do it.
You see, the externalities I mentioned, the lights, the fire, the children…and that which Dickens writes of… the giving, the being open to what joys are around us, and so on, helps toward the goal of understanding the Christmas promise, but it’s not the whole deal.
At the core of it all… (and this is a connection that, alas, many people never make…) is that the one whose birth is being celebrated every December the 25th, is the one who takes over that long list of worries. But understand,here…THAT’S WHY WE CELEBRATE!!

With those worries removed, lives get changed, hearts mended, child-like perspectives restored in a way that the lights, carols and greenery can never do on their own. And the newly remade Children find that the authority and responsibility and all the ponderous weight connected with them, are taken away by the one who said “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me”.

Now, I must warn you; There are those who will resist being told all of this… to the point of removing such joy as they find, wherever they may find it, often using the power of governments, and force of arms to have it removed from town squares and schools, mocking, persecuting and yes, even killing those responsible for the spreading of the news of this miracle.

It’s a sad truth, that a world used to darkness, you see, will continually fight to see the darkness continued.  That warning given, however, I will say to you also, that it’s no accident, Christmas being called the season of light, and that Christ is called the light of the world.

If I have one wish for this Christmas, it is that you will be open to the light…. With the wondering eyes of a child.

No, Billy…. this kind of nonsense is exactly what caused me to start steering clear of “Reason” some time ago. there is absolutely no profit whatsoever in it for me. None.

Mind you, when I say profit, I am talking about being able to change minds.

I’m tempted to say that there’s no profit in it for you either, but in the end, that’s for you to decide.

We’ve been saying here for some time that Ron Paul’s association with the neo-Nazi group Stormfront disqualifies him from the presidency.  In looking at the photos LGF just now I state for the record: “Game over’ Ron Paul is all done.

Anne E. Kornblut and Alec MacGillis, Washington Post, report Mrs.  Clinton is now claiming the legacy of the adminstration of her husband, B.J. Clinton.   By my reasoning, Mrs. Clinton has just claimed co-ownership of everything from the Gennifer Flowers’ scandal to the pardon of Marc Rich.    Answers will be demanded.

Byran, Hot Air, asks if Mrs. Clinton is “[T]he ultimate anti-feminist candidate?”

Hat Tip photo:  Doug Ross.

Steven Taylor at OTB:

Via the LAT: Grim tales from Zimbabwe

Life here is full of Catch-22 dilemmas that would strain credulity if they were fiction: It costs more to go to work than you can possibly earn, for example. There is no economy to speak of, either, just the black market, where even the government gets its dollars. And hospitals, like the one where Junica Dube was giving birth, with no medicines and little staff, are places of death, not life.[…]

The stores are so empty that the government statistician says it’s impossible to work out the inflation rate. (Independent economists estimate that it is between 40,000% and 90,000%.) Given the depth of the economic crisis, it’s difficult to see how anything works.

A journalist more than doubles his salary by making candles on weekends. A Reserve Bank employee buys and slaughters cows on the side. A sign writer sells sandwiches cobbled out of difficult-to-come-by bread. Teachers, who can go to South Africa with no visa, bring back cooking oil, the staple called maize meal, flour and sugar to sell.

…

Basic necessities like salt are in short supply, even in the capital Harare. Inflation is estimated to run between 40,000% and 90,000%. Everyone from laborers to professionals must hustle to try and make ends meet and about the only thing that seems to function properly is the government’s secret police.

Says Taylor:

The whole piece is quite depressing.

It is tragic to see what one man and his enablers can do to a country, an economy and its people

Yes, well, let’s remember at the root of all this poverty is socialism.  In this case, Robert Mugabe, leading it, but it hardly matters. The result of socialism is always the same.  We’re seeing the results of a government trying to control all aspects of life, supposedly for the purpose of the betterment of the lives of the people. Cuba. North Korea. Etc, Etc. It’s all the same. It’s what happens every single time it’s tried. It’s also  not far off what the Democrats want to do, here in the ‘states.

Any questions, class?

AL-QAEDA NETWORKS DISRUPTED; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 19 SUSPECTS DETAINED

Posted: 21 Dec 2007 06:06 AM CST

AL-QAEDA NETWORKS DISRUPTED; ONE TERRORIST KILLED, 19 SUSPECTS DETAINED

CONCORD, N.H., Dec. 21 -Washington Post- After months of discussion within her campaign over how heavily she should draw on her husband’s legacy, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is closing out her Iowa and New Hampshire campaigns in a tight embrace of Bill Clinton’s record, helping fuel a debate about the 1990s with Sen. Barack Obama that she thinks she can win.As part of the Clinton strategy, the former president is playing an increasingly prominent public role as an advocate for his wife. He appears to have overcome concerns within the campaign over how closely she should associate her candidacy with his time in office and over whether his appearances could draw attention away from her.Both Clintons are making the case that theirs was a co-presidency — an echo of Bill Clinton’s controversial statement during the 1992 campaign that voters would get “two for the price of one” if they elected him. At times, the former president has seemed to cast the current race as a referendum on his administration.

So, in short, what this amounts to is a run for a third term for Bill Clinton as president. the reason that they’re doing this now is clear; Hillary Clinton’s camp has been totally unable to make the argument that she could be president herself, on her record.  They’ve been trying to suggest for some time now that she has the experience to pull the job off.  The people, on the other hand have been saying for some time that she does not.  Apparently that message is now getting back to Hillary Clinton’s campaigners, and they’ve decided to retool.

Ed Morrissey points out, and I think correctly, that she really didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.  This is particularly true given that they were billing themselves as co-presidents, back in the day. But Ed points out the level of cynicism involved in this move:

Only in the Clinton machine could anyone debate whether a wife should embrace her husband, even figuratively.

Ouch!

Did she think that anyone would have separated the two of them in considering her for the Presidency? Of course not; without Billl, Hillary becomes nothing more than a Senator with eight years of experience in public office. Without him, she’s got less experience in that arena than Barack Obama.

Well, in fact,without him she’s not even a senator.

Think about it; everything that Hillary has done for the last 30 years, has been King Midas in reverse, and there is no escaping her own history of failure.  While involved with the educational system in the state of Arkansas.  She oversaw that educational systems fall from a ranking of #46, to dead last in these United States. her a chance to institute government health care, were similarly failure prone. All this would seem to add up to a situation where Hillary Clinton can not with any degree of sanity claim that we should be electing her to the office of president of these United States based on her experience. (Yes, she did try, and that’s telling.)

So now, having no positive record of her own to run on, she wants us to take her erstwhile husband’s record as her own. Meantime, Bill Clinton, who never tires of talking about his own record, really does want to turn this election into what amounts to a referendum on his administration.  I would suggest to you that the Republicans wouldn’t much mind that situation either, given that most of Hillary’s negatives come from Bill Clinton having been elected president.

Awesome Christmas video.

Hat Tip:  John Stephenson, Right Wing News, and Stop the ACLU.

Edit:   Added John’s home blog.

Let me first say that I’ve never been overly enthralled with Mike Huckabee and his candidacy for presidency.  He’s never struck me as overly bright individual to begin with, and his activities subsequent to announcing for the presidency, and have not changed that perception.  Indeed, they’ve solidified it. The guy can’t find his backside with a flashlight, both hands and step by step instructions.

That said, he’s taken on a new level of stupidity with this most recent whine about Rush Limbaugh. David’s comment to the point is nothing short of brilliant:

You don’t claim to be running against the Washington elites and then pick a fight with the person who makes his living skewering the same elites.

That said, let’s face facts here; the support for Huckabee in the Republican rank-and-file has never been more than lukewarm. In my hearing, Limbaugh has been walking a fine line are several days now, as regards Huckabee, apparently sensing… as we do here… just how thin his support really is. In truth, the press likes Huckabee better than the Republicans do.  the vast majority of punditry around the Beltway, and outside of it, have been giving tacit recognition of this idea for some time now.  They just haven’t said it directly.

The problem of course is not so much is social conservatism, and his lean towards Christianity; those in fact, are his strong points.  Unfortunately, it they are his only strong points. for all that he is a social conservative, he has clearly demonstrated he is not a conservative in the Reaganesque sense of governmental minimalism.in fact, Limbaugh is quite correct when he says that Mike Huckabee makes John McCain look good.  David and I have both often lamented McCain’s selective liberalism.  Huckabee takes McCain’s liberalism and takes a step farther into the abyss.

The perception of all of this is starting to play hell with Huckabee’s polling numbers.

Limbaugh been suggesting for some time now that the numbers being presented by the pollsters that say Huckabee is out in a commanding lead shouldn’t be taken all that seriously. And he’s right for several reasons… not least of which, the early numbers seldom if ever give us any indication of what’s coming in the later months of the primary season. but looking deeper, one sees all of the candidates within a couple of points of each other. It’s clear to me that the earlier projections of Huckabee being so far into the lead as to be inevitable, were utter nonsense, (and for reasons I’ve described here in some detail a few days ago are likely wishful thinking) The pollsters no more know who is going to be the nominee than do the voters themselves.

At some point within the last week I mentioned to David that I thought Huckabee and his campaign was more about inertia than  about actual thought.  I stand by that statement. Huckabee went after Limbaugh because he recognizes that Limbaugh and his listeners are looking very seriously at the man and not the momentum, and once people start doing that, he doesn’t stand a bloody chance of winning the nomination.  The only way out of that box, is to try and discredit Limbaugh himself. The trouble of course is that Huckabee simply doesn’t have the mental wherewithal to take on the likes of Rush Limbaugh. what Huckabee has failed to reckon with, is that Limbaugh and the politics that he represents, are far and away more popular than Mike Huckabee and his politics ever will be.

Thus we see Huckabee, losing a good deal of his momentum, because he’s decided to pick a fight with, what is in all honesty, one of the founders of the Reagan brand of conservatism. my guess is that the shark has been jumped and Mr. Huckabee’s candidacy will be a memory of the scope of a Howard Dean or a Mike Dukakis by mid-summer.

I submit to you that Mike Huckabee’s rapid rise, and his forthcoming even more rapid fall are both due to the hunger in the country as a whole for Ronald Reagan’s brand of conservatism.  Ronald Reagan made no bones about his faith.  His political conservatism, grew out of that faith.  When Mike Huckabee came along and started making all the proper noises, a lot of people figured that conservatism was part of the deal.  They are now rapidly finding out that that’s not the case. On Immigration for example Huckabee is looking like a real loser. As a result of this and many other issues high on the list of conservatives,  He’s falling in the polls faster than he rose.  ( Thus giving a new meaning to the word “Huckaboom ” which will forever translate as “Everything blowing up in your face”.)

The question now becomes whether or not a true conservative in the mold of Ronald Reagan can capitalize on that desire amongst the electorate. I have suggested repeatedly that looking out over the field of Republican possibilities, the only one that really stands out to me is Fred Thompson, which is why he has my support.

Richard Gardner over at OTB:

 A Congresswoman from Indiana has died. I’ll readily admit I was not familiar with her (like another 300 members of Congress). I came across her death searching for Fort Carson on Google. She seems respectable person .

Well, I’m not so sure. The one reference I could find to her on this blog was back in 2004 and was as regards her involvement with a move to involve the UN in our elections process.

The clear intent of this move was to try and turn a Republican victory into an international dispute. That doesn’t sound overly honorable, nor does it sound very American… though it does sound like a liberal Democrat.

Rest in peace, Ms Carson. But know that I for one am glad you didn’t carrry the day.

Billy;

While I do understand your disconnect here, give Reynolds a little credit… he’s clearly pointing at the hypocrisy of the whole thing.  That’s a valid angle as far as I’m concerned.  It’s certainly a comparison we’ve used often enough here.

When what they demand of themselves is so vastly different from what they demand from the rest of us, it is nothing but hypocritical.

The thing of it is, what he’s pointing at is absolutely prototypical of the energy Nazis like Al Gore. rather like pointing at the number of gallons of fuel, and the number of tons of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere by all those attending a conference in Bali a couple of weeks ago.

What all this boils down to, is what I’ve been saying all along; this is all about the power to make choices for other people.  Choices that they don’t have to make for themselves, once they attain that power.