I think we all know who I'd like to see as my candidate in a brokered convention.

Conservatives gathered in Washington this week are increasingly relishing the prospect that the Republican presidential nomination fight will extend for months, and could even lead to a brokered convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer.

Fueled by former Sen. Rick Santorum’s stunning three-state sweep in Tuesday’s three primaries and caucuses, those at the Conservative Political Action Conference — the country’s largest annual gathering of right-leaning activists — said the chances for a stalemate in the delegate count grow with every stumble by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

“For the first time in a while, there is actually at this point a reasonable chance that the nomination could come down to a floor fight,” said Jeffrey M. Frederick, former Virginia Republican Party chairman.

The speculation even made it onto the dais at CPAC when Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said during a panel discussion that 2012 could make modern political history.

“I would have said that the day of the convention deciding the nomination was over and was settled by the rise of the primary,” Mr. Reed told the audience. “I’m not sure that will be the case in 2012.”

I guess yelling and screaming does work:

"With the White House under fire for its new rule requiring employers including religious organizations to offer health insurance that fully covers birth control coverage, ABC News has learned that later today the White House — possibly President Obama himself — will likely announce an attempt to accommodate these religious groups."

House Set to Ban Welfare Payments at Strip Clubs:

As the recession continues onward, House Republicans are worried that those receiving welfare payments may be having a bit too good of a time.

The chamber will again vote Wednesday on a bill which would ensure that electronic withdrawals of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families dollars aren't allowed to be withdrawn from ATMs at strip clubs, casinos or liquor stores. TANF replaced national welfare programs after the welfare reforms of 1996.

The measure, sponsored by Louisiana Republican Rep. Charles Boustany, had originally been approved by the House in December as part of a larger funding measure for welfare programs, but it was dropped from the final law. Now, it will get a stand-alone vote, along with several other measures which face an uncertain future in the Senate.

"The abuse of [electronic benefits transfer] cards must stop," Boustany said when the measure was first proposed in December. [...]

A drop of water in the ocean of fraud...

Maybe the title of the article should be, "Batistiano Mafia pro-embargo exile hardliners proven right once again!"

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has officially launched a Spanish-language satellite TV channel, saying it would deal a blow to "dominance seekers" – remarks that were an apparent dig at the US and the west.

Iran's broadcasting company said Hispan TV, the first Spanish-language channel airing from the Middle East, will broadcast news, documentaries, movies and Iranian films 24 hours a day.

The launch is Tehran's latest effort to reach out to friendly governments in Latin America and follows Ahmadinejad's tour of the region earlier in January, which included stops in Cuba and visits to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador.

It also comes as Washington and Europe have imposed tougher sanctions on Tehran over its controversial nuclear programme.

The EU last week imposed an oil embargo against Iran and froze the assets of its central bank. In December, the US said it would bar financial institutions from the US market if they do business with Iran's central bank.

Iran's state TV said the channel, which had been on air on a trial basis since October with a 16-hour daily programme, will target millions of Spanish-speaking people throughout the world.

"The new channel will limit the ground for supremacy of dominance seekers," Ahmadinejad said during a Tehran ceremony marking the inauguration. "It will be a means for better ties between people and governments of Iran and Spanish-speaking nations."

Ahmadinejad ended his speech in Spanish: "Viva la Paz! Viva el Pueblo! Viva América Latina!"

Iran broadcasts daily in five other foreign languages, including in English through state-run Press TV and in Arabic via al-Alam TV.

The west suspects Iran is pursuing ambitions to create nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies, insisting its atomic programme is only for peaceful purposes such as power generation.

State-sponsor of terrorism? Cuba? Nahhhhh!

I'll be publishing an essay Monday on what I've described in an email thread as "the most fucked-up Republican primary campaign of my lifetime." For the moment, though, go over to American Spectator and read the superb piece by Jeffrey Lord on (one of) the hatchet jobs being done on Newt Gingrich. Here's a taste:

As Ronald Reagan used to say: Well.

Yesterday we took note of former Reagan State Department official Elliott Abrams' piece over at NRO that went after Newt Gingrich on his relationship with Reagan. While voting regularly with Reagan as a young congressman from Georgia, Gingrich, claimed Abrams, "often spewed insulting rhetoric at Reagan, his top aides and his policies to defeat Communism." Abrams then goes on to cite " a famous floor statement Gingrich made on March 21, 1986."

Or sort of cites it.

In fact, I'm sorry to say, what appears to be going on here is that Elliott Abrams, a considerably admirable public servant and a very smart guy, has been swept up in the GOP Establishment's Romney frothings over the rise of Newt Gingrich in the Republican primaries. He is even being accused of trolling for a job in a Romney administration. No way!!!! Really????

What else can possibly explain a piece like the one Abrams penned on a day when Gingrich was being of a mysterious sudden targeted in one hit piece after another for his ties to Reagan? The pieces invariably following the Romney line that Newt had some version of nothing to do with Reagan.

A piece like the one Abrams wrote depends for its success in garnering headlines -- which it did -- by assuming no one will bother to get into the weeds and do the homework. Usually a safe assumption when dealing with the mainstream media, particularly a mainstream media that, as one with Establishment Republicans, hates Newt Gingrich.

Not so fast. [...]

I don't have a dog in this hunt: none of these candidates is my ideal of a conservative Republican in the Reagan mode. That said, however, the sniping, conniving, backstabbing, innuendos and calumnies (from all parties) are beginning to wear thin and piss me off. This is not the campaign I envisioned that was needed to end the Democrats' hopes of reelecting Jimmy Carter II.

(H/T L'il Sis)

I guess 'anti-Castro vitriol' is much worse than murdering political prisoners or denying basic human rights:

A disgusted Andrea Mitchell on Thursday decried the "anti-Castro vitriol" coming from Republican presidential candidates in Florida, sneering that they are "pander bears" to the Cuban community. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Teasing a discussion with Chuck Todd, Mitchell dismissed the GOP contenders: "And as Romney and Gingrich try to outdo each other with their anti-Castro vitriol, appealing to Florida voters, they think, Fidel weighed in today with his view of them." Todd lectured that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney "ought to be careful, because it doesn't sound believable."

Continuing to show her disdain, Mitchell made a historical comparison: "Well, remember, it was in Florida in '92 that the late Paul Tsongas accused Bill Clinton to be a pander bear, by pandering to the Medicare, Social Security contingent who didn't want any entitlement reform."

She then snapped, "I think we've now reached a new level of pander bears in Florida."

Andrea wins the Katie Couric sensitivity award today...

If you want to know why some of us feel the way we do, here it is in a nutshell:

Ron Paul took a risky position in Florida in Thursday’s debate, calling for communication and diplomatic relations with Cuba, saying that people's positions have changed dramatically over the last few years.

Paul said that Cuba isn’t going to invade the U.S. any time soon, and that Americans weren’t looking under their beds anymore, worried. Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich followed by pledging to continue the economic embargo on Cuba and to take any action short of military invasion to upend the government of Raul Castro.

Paul’s position is a potentially dangerous one in Florida, a state with a influential voting bloc of conservative Republicans from Cuba who have long favored aggressive policies toward Havana.

But a study of Cuban American voters in Florida suggests that Paul might be right, and that voters' opinions about Cuba are changing. Support for tightening the embargo dropped by roughly half between 2004 and 2008, according to a study by Benjamin Bishin, a UC Riverside professor.

Cuban Americans’ support for easing the embargo increased to 43.4%, from 26.7% in 2004, and support for easing travel restrictions increased to 47.4% from 32.9%, Bishin found. “Cuban Americans’ attitudes on issues of U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba seems to be in transition,” he wrote in a 2009 study.

Let's reward the regime. They deserve it, right? After all, the Pope is going to Cuba. That means something, right?

This is the best analysis of the ridiculous (but not unexpected) Keystone XL pipeline decision I've heard to date. The video is unembeddable so here is the link.

(H/T Smitty at The Other McCain)

"Alienation from the collective is always a duty." -- W. H. Auden

Despite what the "progressives" think, America is still a basically conservative nation.

Political ideology in the U.S. held steady in 2011, with 40% of Americans continuing to describe their views as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 21% as liberal. This marks the third straight year that conservatives have outnumbered moderates, after more than a decade in which moderates mainly tied or outnumbered conservatives.

The percentage of Americans calling themselves "moderate" has gradually diminished in the U.S. since it was 43% in 1992. That is the year Gallup started routinely measuring ideology with the current question. It fell to 39% in 2002 and has been 35% since 2010. At the same time, the country became more politically polarized, with the percentages of Americans calling themselves either "conservative" or "liberal" each increasing.

For all their posturing and primping and self-congratulation, "progressives" (or "liberals" as they call themselves to hide their innate Marxism) are just a small minority of lobotomized malcontents.

All we need is 10% of the moderates plus one and we take back America.

Moron.

Center-right New York Times columnist David Brooks opined a few months ago that President Obama, whom he once supported, was governing like a liberal.

Today, Brooks doubled down, telling Laura Ingraham this morning that Obama is not only governing that way, he is that way — or at least more that way than Brooks once thought.

"I still like him and admire him personally, but he’s certainly more liberal than I thought he was,” Brooks said.

“He's more liberal than he thinks he is. He thinks he’s just slightly center-left, but when you get down to his instincts, they’re pretty left. And his problem is that he can’t really act on them, because it would be political disaster. And so that means, I think right now he’s doing very little, proposing very little."

This is the same dolt who admired the crisp crease in Obama's pants. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what the fuck has become of our country?

The second superb article on Ron Paul and libertarians in American Thinker: "Ron Paul and the Dictatorship of the Libertariat."

[...] Think, for a moment, of the final moments of (spoiler alert!) Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. For those not familiar with the work, it's basically the story of a world where all of the people of talent go on "strike" and allow the parasitic and socialistic state that sought to exploit them to collapse. At the end of the book, the leader of the strike, a singularly talented man named "John Galt," steps out and, surveying the ruined landscape, draws the sign of the dollar in the air and declares that he and his compatriots are ending their strike and going back into the world. I do not suppose that Galt is planning on holding a vote as to who is going to be in charge of his new world.

This dictatorial character is perhaps the most off-putting feature of the Ron Paul movement. If we cycle back to the questions I asked at the opening of this piece, we can draw only two conclusions from any plausible answers. Either this campaign is a pointless exercise in intellectual frivolity when we can ill-afford such distractions or its adherents are in bitter earnest, in which case we face a problem of an entirely different character.

The great wisdom of the Founders was that they created a government for man as he exists. The Constitution of the United States was created by people well-acquainted with the many flaws of man and who therefore deliberately arranged a limited and representative government. Indeed, the government of the United States was designed to be, pace Lincoln, "of the people, by the people, and for the people." For all of their seductive talk of liberty, the Paul camp seems to be fundamentally opposed to this. If you listen closely to their ideas, they seem to have developed some strange form of vanguard libertarianism whereby they will seize the central levers of the government and bestow freedom from above in the hope that it will result in the creation of some sort of New Libertarian Man.

Without some such innovation, how could the sort of government envisioned by Ron Paul and his supporters ever exist? They cannot really be so naive as to imagine that a majority of the American people would sit by as the economy and the broader world fell into the vortex of chaos that the enactment of their policies would create. [...]

A great article about the less-than-savory aspects of libertarianism, vis-a-vis Ron Pau: "To Get Ron Paul's Insanity, You Have To Understand Libertarianism."

[...] As you'd expect, Paul is insouciant about nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran's incinerate-the-Jews/establish-a-worldwide-caliphate regime . Why wouldn't they want nukes? "Internationally, they'd be given more respect." Besides, "they are surrounded." (If only Israel would stop threatening to push the Shiites into the sea.) What's Tehran going to do with one or two nuclear weapons, Paul asks? Why Israel has dozens. Hint: The Iranians crazy enough to use them. A nuclear war would be just the thing to usher in the 12th imam.

On the Jewish state, Paul doesn't deviate one iota from L.P. party-line. Libertarians view Israel as the engine that drives what they call U.S. imperialism in the Middle East. Israel is said to sap our resources, drag us into their wars and make the Muslims -- who are otherwise peace-loving and well-disposed to our way of life -- hate us.

In his essay, "War Guilt in the Middle East," Rothbard excoriated Israel's "aggression against Middle East Arabs," "confiscation of Arab lands" and its "refusal to let these refugees (Palestinians) return and return the property taken from them." He had nothing to say about the equal number of Jews driven from Arab lands by pogroms at the time of Israel's founding.

Dondero says his ex-boss loathes Israel and "sides with the Palestinians and supports their calls for the abolishment of the Jewish state, and the return of Israel, all of it, to the Arabs." While Dr. Paul hotly denies that he's anti-Israel (his campaign calls Dondero a "disgruntled" ex-aide) everything he's done or said about the Middle East seems to confirm the charge.

Ayn Rand, who unintentionally provided the impetus for the movement, disdained libertarians, calling them "right-wing hippies.' She was unequivocal in her support for Israel, which she explained this way in a 1974 appearance: "When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are." [...]

Captain Electability to endorse Romney tomorrow:

John McCain will endorse his '08 rival Mitt Romney tomorrow, a top Republican source confirmed to POLITICO.

The Arizona senator fought a bitter nomination battle with Romney four years ago, though Romney has worked to mend the relationship since then. The endorsement was first reported by BuzzFeed.

McCain’s endorsement will help Romney pivot away from Iowa, toward New Hampshire, and turn the page on the caucuses in any case. But McCain also symbolizes much of what the GOP base doesn’t want in its 2012 nominee, so it’ll be interesting to see just how closely Romney hugs the Arizona senator.

The endorsement is also a blow to Jon Huntsman, who has attempted to campaign as a McCain-style maverick and staked his whole bid on the state that made McCain a national figure.

Need we say more?

A reminder from The Blogmocracy about the significance of today's date, five years ago:

January 3rd 2007

This is a history lesson. It is the truth and nothing can change it.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.

The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995.

For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this:

January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:

The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77!

The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%!

The Unemployment rate was 4.6%!

George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!

Remember that day…

January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy? BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES! THANK YOU DEMOCRATS (especially Barney ) for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment…to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

(BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie -starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy. Barney blocked it and called it a “Chicken Little Philosophy”, and the sky did fall!)

And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA!

And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?

OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY!!!!

So when someone tries to blame Bush…REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007…

THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!

Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel they were driving the economy into the ditch.

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008, 2009, 2010 & 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. Let’s remember what the deficits looked like during that period:

If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.

In a nutshell, what Obama would be saying if he was honest is “I inherited a deficit that I voted for, and then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.”

Here's a U.S. Representative saying what he should be allowed to say, were it not for silly politically correct mandates...

Here's the story on the banning of "Merry Christmas" in the House.

Send off a nice email to Rep. Rigell. He deserves it.

Once again, facts seem to counter the fantastical delusions of liberal progressive anti-Semites everywhere. The Sultan Knish blog (Daniel Greenfield) has a superb retort to the progressive hysteria over the statement made by Newt Gingrich that the "Palestinians" are an "invented people":

[...] The "Palestinian" Arabs on the other hand are an invented people, and not even a self-invented people. That dubious honor fell to some comrades in Moscow and the Arab nations who found it convenient to have terrorist militias that could launch attacks across the border, supposedly on their own initiative, but in reality answering to them.

Their whole claim to a state is the bizarre insistence that they are the region's original inhabitants who were driven out by the actual original inhabitants, the Jews. When they are actually the descendants of the Muslim conquerors who drove out or subjugated the native inhabitants. It's as if George Washington had not only put on an Indian costume but began claiming that his ancestors were there for thousands of years before the Cherokees drove them out.

Palestinian identity is just so much gibberish. The official definition of that identity encompasses only those parts of the Palestine Mandate which Israel holds today.

The people who live on the parts of the Palestine Mandate that were turned into the Kingdom of Jordan in 1921 are not Palestinians. There is no call to incorporate them into a Palestinian state. The people who lived in the parts of Israel that were captured by Jordan and Egypt in 1948 weren't Palestinians, and there was no call to turn the land that today comprises the so-called "Occupied Territories" into a state. But in 1967 when Israel liberated those areas-- only then did they magically turn into Palestinians.

How is anyone supposed to take this nonsense seriously? [..]

Bravo, Newt, for speaking the truth.

This is the last link I'll publish on the erstwhile candidate. For religious conservatives (and I'm not one of those), it's well worth reading and absorbing.

[...] However, the truth is those were private matters, too, and if Herman Cain had taken this position during this whole debacle, the affair wouldn't have affected his campaign. This is what damages and destroys conservative candidates and the self-government movement of America every time.

The crux of the problem is that Herman Cain sold himself to the public as a good God fearing man. If you really want to start winning elections -- and Christians listen up because you aren't the only conservatives that exist -- stop selling yourself as the picture of morality! You're not, so sell yourself on your actions, your plans, and your system. Don't act as if you live more morally than anyone because that destroys you every time. Stop trying to get the vote from those whose religions determine their political decision making. And, in turn, stop letting your religion determine your vote, because the bad news is politicians are on to you and don't mind lying about their morality to your face. [...]

An excellent analysis from Forbes of our current economic charlie foxtrot:

[...] So there you have the Obama formula for an economic growth. After the greatest runaway spending spree in American history during the Obama Administration, the answer is for government to increase spending even more, financed by increasing tax rates even more on the very investors and job creators that produce the jobs for the middle class and working people in America’s economic system. That is a perfect prescription for another recession, not the long, long overdue recovery America is still waiting for under Obamanomics.

Obama tells us, “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay a higher tax rate than somebody pulling in $50 million.” That would be wrong if it was true. But it is not. [...]

Read the whole thing.

"Air Raid on Pearl Harbor. This is not a drill."

Seventy years ago today, the United States (officially) entered the largest conflict ever fought on planet Earth. Japanese air and naval forces attacked the United States naval installation at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and almost destroyed the US fleet. By a stroke of luck (or intent) our carriers escaped the fate of eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers and one hundred sixty one airplanes. Fifty seven civilians and two thousand three hundred forty five service men and women lost their lives.

It is our duty as Americans to never forget the sacrifice made by our fellow Americans on that day -- and the days and months and years that followed. We prevailed against Japan (and Germany) but at an enormous cost. Thank you all.

* * *

I came across this superb essay by Jeffrey Kaplan in The American Spectator and urge all of you to read it:

[...] One of the heroes at Pearl Harbor was Doris "Dorie" Miller, cook (and heavyweight boxing champ) on the USS West Virginia (one of the battleships that was sunk but eventually repaired and sent back to the war), who grabbed a fallen anti-aircraft gun and kept firing even as dive bombers were coming at him and putting torpedoes in the ship's hull. Miller was awarded the Navy Cross by Admiral Nimitz personally, who noted he was the first "member of his race" so honored. He died in action in the Gilberts in 1943, aboard the escort carrier Liscome Bay. Manning Kimmel, the admiral's son, went down with his submarine off the Philippines island of Palawan.

Men like these made that "absolute victory," perhaps not inevitable, but most likely, as did the men who went after Osama bin Laden and persisted until they found him and killed him, as they have done to his deputies and his followers. Admiral Yamamoto went down with his aircraft in 1943, ambushed by American fighter planes following a radio intercept. At the crash site he was found gripping his katana.

Today, though, we can give some thoughts to those of our people who were lost on those days of infamy. Nearly 3.000 sailors and soldiers were killed during the two waves of Japanese attacks involving over 300 planes. In the attack on the World Trade Center, 2,600 were killed. Three hundred fifty New York City firefighters and 25 New York City policemen gave their lives to rescue and protect others during the attack. One hundred thirty military personnel and civilian employees were killed at the Pentagon.

We remember the great global war as one in which our nation was united and purposeful, and while this is a fair memory, we should not let the more ambiguous nature of today's conflict enervate us or undercut our will to prevail against our enemies and preserve the last and best hope for a free civilization on this earth.