Ron Paul Out Fundraises McCain: The Game’s Over, John.

I still regard Ron Paul as a bad joke.  And yet, we see that he’s managed to out fundraise John McCain.

I’m not quite sure what this is indicative of, except perhaps the bump that Paul got from the left just recently being reflected in his donation take, versus the major hit the John McCain justifiably took on the immigration bill.

Frankly, I won’t get excited about this one, either way.  Bottom line: In my judgment, in neither case, do either of these two have any credibility amongst the Republican party.  I recognize that that is a somewhat controversial statement.  (Shrug) Name of the game, though my guess is that it’s less controversial recently than it was a few months ago.

It’s been my sense that support for McCain is remarkably soft, as it was during the last presidential cycle.  Cross party support was his claim to fame, and McCain lost on it both times.  The difference is it didn’t take him quite so long this time.

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When one of the people generally considered to be the laughingstock of the party out- fundraises you, it’s well past time to start looking for the exits. Look, let’s face it, the only reason that the left ever latched on to John McCain, is precisely the same reason that they’re latching onto Ron Paul, just now.  They figured McCain was a Republican that had creds in the Republican party, and therefore felt more comfortable voting for him, then somebody who was a more overt leftist, such as John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and so on. And, time was, he actually did have some, despite coming down to the left of Bush on many points. McCain’s being a Republican at least in name was fairly attractive to most democrats, in that they could run is named in the noses of most republicans, with the question attached to it, how can you not support one of your own?

Democrats, you see have never gotten used to the idea of not being in lockstep with their party leadership .  Therefore dealing with such matters on the republican side, tends to elude them.

But when McCain’s idiocy over the immigration bill started to cost him those perceived Republican creds, the Democrats deserted the now sinking ship. Many of them, I suspect, ended up going for Ron Paul.

I hold no illusions about the possibility of either sweeping both parties to get to the White House.  Frankly I’d be uncomfortable if I thought either one of them stood a snowball’s chance.  Further, I’ll more than grant that the support Ron Paul, John McCain, or any other Republican gets from rank and file Democrats is going to be fairly thin, as a rule.  That’s simply the nature of the game. This decidedly is not another case of the jailbreak that Ronald Reagan caused in two elections… mostly because neither could hold a candle to RR.  So I take nothing from the idea of any movement among Democrats to support fringe Republican candidates. Then again, Reagan wasn’t a fringe candidate, either.
(Boy, there is an unlikely scenario; my putting John McCain and Ron Paul in the same paragraph with Ronald Reagan.  Sheesh.)
But there’s a message here, in this bit of news, apparently addressed to John McCain and his staff; When one of the people generally considered to be the laughingstock of the party out- fundraises you, it’s well past time to start looking for the exits.  The game’s over.
Some others noting the story:Hot Air, PoliPundit.com, Patrick Ruffini, National Review The Moderate Voice, The Raw Story, The Daily Background, Donklephant, Washington Monthly, Roger L. Simon, IMAO, Liberal Values, The Atlantic Online, Captain’s Quarters.

Rusty Shackelford is asking for some help.  I’ll post the text here, just in case, because I wouldn’t put it past these sand monkeys to try to knock Rusty over.

No joke, the Taliban have posted a message on a well-known Islamic forum addressing me, Rusty Shackleford, indirectly.  In it, they gloat that their website is back online.  I’ll just add: for now.

Here’s a rough translation:

Islamic Emirate / the return of the Voice of Jihad network web page on the Internet. The MERCIFUL return of the popular Voice of Jihad the Internet network.In name of God the Merciful Praise be to Allah, peace and prayer to the prophet Mohammed Messenger of God, and all his companions that follow his guidance.

For a long time now the official site of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan – Taliban has been shut down– due to the exposure and prosecution it was closed by the enemies of Islam. [editor’s note: the “infidel enemies of Islam” that got the website closed was The Jawa Report—mwuhahahaha!]

Now, we praise God for His generosity for returning the official site of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan-Taliban to work again on the internet by helping the officials of the party, most notably brother Karim / Abdullah minister-correspondent of the popular network.

You now browse the pages of the Voice of Jihad and follow the news of the country [Afghanistan] and news releases and informative material through connecting with

www.alemarah.orgwhich you all know and pray to Allah Almighty that the Voice of Jihad pages remain and that the the arrows hit right in the heart of falsehood.

Peace and God is Greater, Glory to God and the Prophet and the believers in your brothers pages (Voice of Jihad) official site of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan long –

In essence, the Taliban webmaster is gloating that our temporary victory over their now defunct website was short lived. I believe the gauntlet has been officially thrown down.

The Taliban vs. The Jawa ReportIn one corner: lone anonymous part-time blogger and his small circle of friends and readers.

In the other corner: large well funded Islamist party which once controlled an entire nation and which has millions of sympathizers around the world.

Who will be the ultimate victor? I wouldn’t put my money on the Taliban.

For alas, if you follow the links at the new Taliban website it appears that the Taliban are having a hard time keeping them working.

Oh, look what else has happened. It looks like the whois privacy service that was protecting the webmaster, bought and paid for by the Taliban, is no longer working.

Having a bad day there Karim & Abdullah?

e-mail the Taliban: [email protected]

PS–The official Taliban website is still receiving business services from the Vancouver, Washington Dotster company which masks the webmaster hosting the Taliban website through their Privacy Post service.

You can complain to Dotster here.

Webhosting complaints should be directed to:
[email protected]
[email protected]

Hat tip: Internet Anthropologist

PS-I was thanked by the Feds for helping get the last Taliban website yanked. So, spare yourself the worrying that they want this website to remain up. They don’t. And providing business services (even free services) to the Taliban remains a Federal crime in the U.S. as well as in most countries.

I know for a fact, that there’s a good deal of technical talent in the readership of this site. Go to it, guys. Pay particular attention to the links involved, particularly the links to “whois”.

You know, it almost seems useless to bring this up again, since both David and myself have mentioned it several times in the last four days or so.  But this is an interesting angle:

Michelle Malkin points to Doug Heye, who in turn notes that the Carbon dioxide generated at the “LIve Aid” concerts tomorrow will be greater than Afghanistan did during the whole of 2006.

It’s little disconnects like that that should leave you wondering about the honesty of those involved with this situation.

And I have another caution for you; friends, watch where the money from this thing goes. We have some very strict laws in this country as regards foreign donations to our campaigns for elective office here in these United States.  Laws which Clinton Gore ignored, particularly as regards China, but not limited to that country.  Now we have concerts all over the globe.  Supposedly the purpose for these concerts is to raise the issue of “global warming”… or was it to increase the problem of global warming?

Oh well, anyway, watch where the money from this thing goes.  How much of this money, and how much of this momentum, will find itself being directed at Gore’s presidential aspirations?

Consider yourself forewarned.

Both McQ at Q&O, and James at OTB note the wailing from Susie Madrak.

Only because it’s handier, will use the comments of James to start this off;

Susie Madrak, under the attention-grabbing headline “No More Dead Bloggers,” laments “the utter injustice of a Democratic political system that is very, very happy to take the money and volunteers the blogosphere sends its way” and yet returns only “Bubkis” to the non-A-listers.

There is not even a little doubt in my mind that, if Rittenhouse Review’s Jim Capozzola had remained a Republican, he’d be alive now. He would have been in a well-paid think tank job, living the high life. (He did, after all, have a masters degree in foreign policy.) Most importantly, he would have had health insurance for the past six years.

James wisely gets into this, by quoting Capozzola himself, and rebounding  Madrak’s arguments therewith, saying:

It’s also rather ironic that Jim Capozzola is being invoked in defense of the position that bloggers should be taken care of by the Establishment

Yes, well, absent anything else, bloggers have attained the reputation they have pure lead because of their disconnection to the “establishment”. This would be particularly true of those on the left, at least in terms of image.

Having such people “taking care of” by “the establishment” would appear at least on the surface to be somewhat counterproductive to the accepted purpose.

To be perfectly Frank, however, Capozzola’s death ends up being nothing more than an opportunity for rabble rousing to Madrak in much the same way as John Edwards used the death of his kid.

And I wonder, if this call for such people to be taken care of by “the establishment” isn’t really the results of the long held secret wish of some bloggers on the left to be considered as part of “the establishment”.

Moreover; (And I know I’m going to be called insensitive over this. So be it…) Madrak claims Capozzola as a friend in her eulogy post, but if he was in such need, where were his friends? Are they, also, destitute to the point of not being able to chip in? It’s all the rage, to blame “the establishment” and it certainly does a fair job of raising the rabble. But I noticed no change of regret, that they failed in their responsibility to the person that they called “friend”.

And for some indication of consistency of position on the friends not chipping in, let me quote the response I gave to the post James cites a few months gone:

In watching what’s been going on on the left side of the sphere lately, the one conclusion that you can draw is that the left is anything but charitable, even to each other. The whole thing seems to be about personal power and satisfaction, and to hell with anyone else. They are all out for themselves.

If Madrak’s description of the situation can be considered anywhere near accurate, it would seem to be the logical conclusion of what I observed several months ago. It would also seem to reinforce my comments of this morning. in short, the primary aspect of the charity issue, would seem to begin with Madrak, herself.
And just as I go to post this, a thought occurs; What did he die from? I mean, Madrak seems to be looking for an extrernal cause for the cause of death. She seems to be blaming a lack of socialism for that death.  But think;   Was it possibly, as I suspect, lifestyle choices that brought this early death about? If so, it hardly seems fair to blame “the establishment”, even assuming his “friends” were pouring money into his pockets, which they apparently were not.

Insanity gone amuk.

This weekend, rock stars will jet around the world, cars and buses will clog traffic, and elaborate sound stages will be set up to burn massive amounts of fuel to send the message to fans at home that they had better conserve their energy or face the allegedly dire threat of global warming.

From John Berlus, American Thinker.

Or it would be like holding an environmental concert starring a guy who uses 20 time the energy a normal person uses, to showcase bands flown in on high-energy jets on a stage that uses enough electricity to to run small villages — as members of Arctic Monkeys pointed out.

Don Surber.

Paging Al Gore, paging Al Gore.   

Related: Has environmentalism become the new “death cult“? (Hat tip: ST reader Sev)

Sister Toldjah.

“The last thing the planet needs is a rock concert,”

Roger Daltry, the Who, quoted in reference to Algore’s Live Earth concert, via Sister Toldjah.

• It could be that my perception on this is a little bit off.  Lord knows, it’s happened before.  But this Live Earth, or whatever they’re calling it now… thing, coming up this weekend… the issue that these concerts are supposedly trying to deal with, is global warming, which is supposedly caused by flying jets and driving.  So is encouraging people to come to these concerts by flying to them and writing to them , counterproductive?  Apparently besides me somebody thought so; the concert in Rio De Janeiro was canceled, and last I heard the Germany concert was still on, though they were giving away tickets to fill the seats.  Al Gore, is no genius, so the only other two logical answers we’re left with, is the man’s either an idiot, or a genius at fund raising from unthinking twerps, in his mad grasp for political power. By the way, I notice that Cat Stevens (Who now calls himself Yusuf Islam…who recorded the song “peace train”, and now calls for the death of Salman Rushdie) is performing at the German show. Don’t it figure… If it’s anti America, it’ll be on one of those stages this weekend.  Including of course, Al Gore himself, assuming springing his kid from jail isn’t taking too much of his time.  Scrappleface has more.
• I see the French press has an interesting little sidebar up, on Shakeel Bhat, otherwise known as “Islamic Rage Boy”. It would be so easy to solve that particular problem with 2oz. of lead.  After putting up with him for this long, I can’t help but wonder if the western world wouldn’t be better off doing precisely that. As in “OK, you’ve set your message, here’s ours.” Boom. And damn it, but it’s tempting.  I mean it, seriously.  Think of it this way; who is it going to tick off, that isn’t already?Are they going to like us more if we don’t consider it?  And if you think that comment’s over the top, consider what he’d like to happen to you.
• Boortz is turning the tables on CAIR. Good for you, Neal.
• John “Breck Girl” Edwards hairdresser spoke up today. The $400.00 coffs that we keep hearing about, were actually cheaper than some of the ones that this hairdresser has done.  His prices, we’re told, very from $300 to $500 per cut plus airfare and hotels.  Gee, I feel so much better about this.  Forgive me, but do I really want somebody who’s willing to toss that much money around for a haircut in charge of the country?  And with it, my money?  The democrats, most of them, too, and I think that says more about them, than it does about Edwards.
• If I hear one more person telling me about how “we republicans are supposed to be better than that” (Check the comments) in commenting on the events of the day, and particularly on the political back and forth between the parties, I’m going to scream. I watched for years , decades in fact, while Democrats made personal attacks on members of the first family, (but only, of course when that first family was republican ) and I’m not supposed to respond in kind?  To beep with that.  Please explain to me where it is required that I bring a knife to a gunfight. Far as I’m concerned it’s just one more step down the road to political correctness, and I’m not having it.
• He will deny it if you say so, but David Broder has become part of the government class that we spoke up here last week. he now thinks that Congress is in trouble with their polling numbers because they have become too responsive to the people.  My emotions and response are somewhat mixed, between wondering what color the sky is on his world, and the rather bleak assessment that he wants politicians making all our decisions for us, without our input.  Captain Ed gets this one right. You should also check out the comments, particularly the first one.
• I’m off to the ballpark, and when I come home I’ll have some photographs of last evening, as well as some quick shots of the ballpark itself. (Update: The home team won. I got a bunch of pictures, but there are all in a high-rise, and they’ll need a little touching up for the web. I’ll post ’em tomorrow sometime.

Al Gore has lost yet another court battle, and this time he can not blame republican appointees.  From the Associated Press:

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – A Brazilian judge has canceled Saturday’s Live Earth concert in Rio because police said they do not have enough officers to guarantee crowd safety.

Organizers of the free show on Rio’s Copacabana Beach said Wednesday they were trying to overturn the order to prevent Latin America from being left out of the worldwide music fest aimed at stopping global warming.

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A few days ago, I asked the question “So what’s going on, that these are all doctors?”

A few hours later, DavidL posted Jihadists posing as doctors,suggesting that al-Qaida in Iraq was involved.

Now we find out by way of The Telegraph that this stuff is all fairly well linked.. and went deeper than we knew:

A group of 45 Muslim doctors threatened to use car bombs and rocket grenades in terrorist attacks in the United States during discussions on an extremist internet chat site.

Police found details of the discussions on a site run by one of a three-strong “cyber-terrorist” gang.

They were discovered at the home of Younis Tsouli, 23, Woolwich Crown Court in south-east London heard.

One message read: “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad and take the battle inside America.”

There’s more to this story, and I would advise you to go and read it.

I am not a fan of Brown v. Board of Education(1954), as I have so written.   Having said that, neither am I fan of hijacking Brown,  The case prohibited segregation in public primary schools.   Today there is virtually no, if any,  school segregation.

Rather Brown has  been bastardized to justify diversity.   De-segregation is not diversity.  Justice Clarence Thomas:

Because this Court has authorized and required race-based remedial measures to address de jure segregation, it is important to define segregation clearly and to distinguish it from racial imbalance. In the context of public schooling, segregation is the deliberate operation of a school system to “carry out a governmental policy to separate pupils in schools solely on the basis of race.” Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Bd. of Ed., 402 U. S. 1, 6 (1971); see also Monroe v. Board of Comm’rs of Jackson, 391 U. S. 450, 452 (1968). In Brown, this Court declared that segregation was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Swann, supra, at 6; see also Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430, 435 (1968) (“[T]he State, acting through the local school board and school officials, organized and operated a dual system, part ‘white’ and part ‘Negro.’ It was such dual systems that 14 years ago Brown I[, 347 U. S. 483,] held unconstitutional and a year later Brown II[, 349 U. S. 294 (1955)] held must be abolished”).¹

     Racial imbalance is the failure of a school district’s individual schools to match or approximate the demographic makeup of the student population at large. Cf. Washington v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 458 U. S. 457, 460 (1982). Racial imbalance is not segregation.² Although presently observed racial imbalance might result from past de jure segregation, racial imbalance can also result from any number of innocent private decisions, including voluntary housing choices. See Swann, supra, at 25-26; Missouri v. Jenkins, 515 U. S. 70, 116 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring). Because racial imbalance is not inevitably linked to unconstitutional segregation, it is not unconstitutional in and of itself. Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 433 U. S. 406, 413 (1977); Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 443 U. S. 526, 531, n. 5 (1979) (“Racial imbalance … is not per se a constitutional violation”); Freeman v. Pitts, 503 U. S. 467, 494 (1992); see also Swann, supra, at 31-32; cf. Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U. S. 717, 740-741, and n. 19 (1974).

Diversity is not rooted in the Constitution and is just a social theory.  It came and it will pass.   The Constitution should not be hijacked to justify promoting certain social theories.

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Ya know, some things are just too rich to pass up.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The 24-year-old son of former Vice President Al Gore was arrested for drug possession on Wednesday after he was stopped for allegedly speeding in his hybrid Toyota Prius, a sheriff’s official said.

Al Gore III — whose father is a leading advocate of policies to fight global warming — was driving his environmentally friendly car at about 100 miles per hour on a freeway south of Los Angeles when he was pulled over by an Orange County sheriff’s deputy at about 2:15 a.m..

A subsequent search yielded a small amount of marijuana, along with prescription drugs including Valium, Xanax, Vicodin and Adderall, said sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. There were no prescriptions found, he said.

The story goes on to remind is that this is young Gore’s second brush with the law, as regards drugs.

As I say, this one was just too rich to pass up, but it’s also rich enough that I don’t even think I need to comment on it.

Bump and Addendum: (Bit)

Captain Ed notes the story this morning:

I understand the impulse to treat politics as a bloodsport, but even those who prefer that mode should really limit their attacks to the combatants.

…

I know that some bloggers are having fun with this, and I don’t mean to be too critical of my friends, but it’s at the same level as the attacks on Jenna and Barbara Bush. We may dislike Al Gore’s policies and sanctimony, but that shouldn’t apply to his son. His misfortunes tell us nothing about his father’s policy or sanctimony, and as an adult, Al III answers for himself. Attacking Gore through his son amounts to a cheap shot.

To the extent that the younger Gore broke the law and endangered people, he should be prosecuted and punished in accordance with the law and precedent of California. Let the folks in California deal with it. Mocking the Gores has little to do with any substantive victory but merely personal attacks that do nothing to advance a political cause.

A noble sentiment.  However, I’m going to disagree with Ed, here.
I am reminded of Doug Wead’s extensive paper on President’s Children, written for then VP George W. Bush, which later became a book that perhaps sheds some light on all this… All The President’s Children.

For those who don’t remember, Wead goes into great detail as regards the family history of each of the presidents, Specifically the 159 or so children of Presidents, to that time, and examines what can only be termed the high rate of failure in such families.

I am also reminded of a two hour documentary on the issue, put on by the A& E. network a few years back. Hal Erikson of All Movie Guide descried it this way:

In this special episode of the A&E Network documentary series Biography, the advantages and disadvantages of being children of the President of United States are disseminated in a frank and entertaining fashion. Beginning with the troublesome stepson of George Washington, the special goes on to analyze the lives and accomplishments (or, in some sad cases, the lack of same), of such high-profile progeny as Tad Lincoln, Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Luci and Linda Johnson, Steven Ford, Amy Carter, Patti Davis and Chelsea Clinton. In some cases, tragedy struck the presidential families through their offspring, as witness the lingering death of little Willie Lincoln and the unexpected demise of Calvin Coolidge Jr. after sustaining a foot blister while playing tennis. Also grist for the mill are the two sons of presidents who went on to become chief executives themselves: John Quincy Adams and George W. Bush. Many presidential children are interviewed, parsing no words as they recall the trials and tribulations of living in the shadow of the most important political figure of the free world. Also on hand is the Associated Press’ White House correspondent, Helen Thomas, defending the media’s sometimes incessant, often obsessive coverage of the children of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Yet, in each and every one of the cases where Children of Republicans were involved, Democrats were quick to jump on the attack. … Even in the case of vice president Cheney’s daughter for simply engaging in a lifestyle that liberals normally find nothing wrong with, and not even worth commenting on, if there were not a Republican involved.
Clearly, Democrats have no problems whatsoever in using this kind of thing as a political weapon.  Why should I? And, as I have stated elsewhere in this site, the fastest way to lose a war, is to announce to your enemy the weapons you will not use. With all that in mind, I have no worries whatsoever about picking up their own weapon and beating the snot out of them with it.

I respectfully submit that the illegal activities taken on by “G3”, and the attitudes that led to them, are the direct result of the values and the attitudes passed on to him by his father, and his father’s circle of friends. The failure is parenting? Certainly… but more deeply, what we see is the logical consequence of the values that those of Al Gore’s stripe are trying to get the rest of us to follow. PAW: If liberals want an understanding of the failures of the country, vis-a-vie’ liberal non-thought, all they have to do was look at what it’s done to their own kids.
Think about it; the recent dancing about Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and so on… the underlying national comment in all those cases was parental responsibility for what they became. There were any number of instances of such conclusions with more dramatic and tragic consequences… the two teenagers behind the attacks at Columbine high school, for example. Those are just a few of them were famous cases; or, infamous.
Further, as demonstrated with the attacks on the Bush daughters, the Democrats (And in this, I include the press) have no worries about the kind of (I think false) nobility that The Captain calls as to here. Indeed Democrat politicos and the mainstream media have both made such attacks a staple.

How many writeups have we seen about Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter? How many writeups about the Bush twins? As a matter of history, how many stories did we see about Mrs. Reagan, Mrs. Nixon, have we forgotten totally about the recent attacks on Fred Thompson’s wife?  If these are all right for attack, if these are all indications of failure of a republican philosophy, which is clearly the underlying charge when democrats point these things out, how is it out of bounds for Republicans to do the same?  How is it that Democrats get a pass on this stuff?

Sorry, but in my view they don’t, even though clearly the press feels that way… I note this morning paltry coverage of the event as compared to the feeding frenzy that resulted from 18 year old Jenna Bush trying to get a beer at a party.

Further; Do we have any indication that if we were to stop pointing out the foibles of the families of Democrats, that they’d stop similarly attacking Republican families?  You know we don’t.  Sorry, they’re not getting a pass from me.  Fair is fair, gird your loins, sucka.

There’s another point to be made here, now that we’ve allowed ourselves the distinct privilege (Snort!) of the direct comparison; I submit there is a major difference between a couple of eighteen year old girls of whatever parentage trying to get a beer, and a twenty year old repeat offender loaded down with controlled substances, driving his vehicle and 100 miles an hour while under the influence of same, thus endangering other people’s lives.

Here’s a story from The Australian that gives an indication of just what kind of cowards we’re dealing with:

THE leader of a radical Pakistani mosque was arrested while trying to flee in a woman’s burqa as security forces stepped up pressure on a few hundred hardcore followers still holed up inside. Firebrand cleric Abdul Aziz’s capture sparked an exodus from Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, with 1,200 male and female students surrendering to the authorities a day after clashes there left 16 people dead.

The government of embattled President Pervez Musharraf hailed the capture of the firebrand preacher as a major success, after months of criticism that it was failing to tackle extremism.

“After all the things he has said and all the oaths he took from his students that they should embrace martyrdom with him, look at this man,” deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said.

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