Beck & Balko on the Republican Ticket '08
UPDATED 5 SEPT 08 1228 edst: Read this additional on-topic post from Billy Beck, as well as the embedded link.
Excerpt:
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...Look: lefties who are aces on The War On Drugs because they see the so-called "civil-liberties" (an absurd and hopelessly entrenched redundancy now) angle are also useless to a rational politics because they're so wrong about everything else. This is the stopped-clock syndrome: it doesn't matter how right they are about one important thing if that position doesn't spring from principles which can integrate and have integrated the rest of their politics. At that point, it's just arbitrary. They might as well just be magpies hollering from the trees.
Sarah Palin's position on guns is useless to me if she's about half-assed on everything else, which you should bet she is...
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Billy Beck's take on the McCain acceptance speech, followed by Billy's overview of the Republican ticket.
Radley Balko then dumps a little ice water onto the Sarah Palin canonization frenzy.
Remember, fans of this season's statist vs. Marxist gladitorial combat - McCain is still the guy who said this back in April, 2006:
"He [Michael Graham] also mentioned my abridgement of First Amendment rights, i.e. talking about campaign finance reform....I know that money corrupts....I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government."
Listen to that statement at 1:02 as broadcast on Imus:
Dig that part about "...complet[ing] the job" of stopping corruption at 1:17?
Think he'll take his Presidential oath to protect and defend the Constitution any more seriously than the two oaths - one as US Senator and the other as a US Naval Officer - he violated by authoring and supporting the McCain-Feingold "political speech restriction" campaign-finance reform law?
I don't.
You think I'm radical on the Second Amendment?
Just ask me about the permissible limits on political speech under the First Amendment.
To hell with McCain.
At least with Gus Hall, you know what you are getting when you cast your vote.
Tempus fugit.
posted by Concerned American | 5:47 AM
11 Comments:
So, he'd rather have Obama?
If you're going to open the question of what I'd "rather have", you could do a lot better than that.
The truth is, you won't be getting Gus Hall, you'll be getting Obama.
Voting for Gus Hall, at least you know who you'd LIKE to have, but it ain't gonna happen.
Welcome to the two party system. It's a horrible system, but the best one we've got.
Folks: The "Gus Hall" thing is a joke....he's a four-time POTUS candidate under the Communist Party USA banner.
In a choice between a live statist (McCain), a live Marxist (Obama), and a dead Communist (Gus Hall), I'll choose the dead guy.
'Cuz he'd DEAD....get it?
The dead guy cannot and will not eff you over every which way but loose, which is the plan (albeit in different musical keys) of both of the other yutzes.
Listen thoughtfully to the collectivist tunes sung by each of these jokers, and tell me honestly that there is a material difference between them.
If you will betray unfettered poltical speech, as McCain has proudly done - what is the substantive difference between that and what the Pelosi/Reid/Obama crowd say and do?
And do you really think that President McCain will veto AWB II (you know, the one WITHOUT the grandfather clause that was included due to political considerations in AWB I) when the Democratic Congress passes it next year?
And even if he does, there will be a veto-proof majority in Congress that will override.
Think, people - think!
"And do you really think that President McCain will veto AWB II (you know, the one WITHOUT the grandfather clause that was included due to political considerations in AWB I) when the Democratic Congress passes it next year?
And even if he does, there will be a veto-proof majority in Congress that will override.
Think, people - think!"
Obama will absolutely guaranteed sign it, and more - he'll have his most anti-gun aids and employees come up with the worst possible provisions and ask/demand that Congress put them in the bill. Further, he'll be appointing judges and Justices who will, one would hope, hear a case on the constitutionality of said law.
Bottom line: with McCain there's at least some hope (proven by the fact that he picked Palin instead of Ridge or Graham or Lieberman), with Obama its "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."
BTW, I don't like McCain (as a pol) at all. He was among my last choices. But for more than 150 years the only occupants of the White House were those with a "D" or an "R" after their names. It is McCain or Obama, not anyone else, dead or alive. THAT is the choice; CHOOSE (and deciding not to vote, or to vote for someone who will get 0.0007 percent of the vote is also a choice).
False dichotomy (McCain or Obama, not anyone else), amigo, and it's the very one the two parties want you to believe.
See, if you vote for one of these knuckleheads, you are by definition a supporter of your choice, which defangs your opposition to whatever ickiness your guy then perpetrates.
It's precisely the situation I have had to struggle through as a 2X Bush '43 voter.
Well, eff that.
I agree with you that Obama is the worse of the two choices.
But I also know that the difference between JohnnyMac and the Obamessiah is one of musical key, not difference in tune.
That tune is "less Constitution, more government, more taxes, more intrusion, less freedom".
I've made my choice, and I choose not to be yet again an enabler of more government.
I choose to be an uppity slave and a bad Jew.
I can thank Bush '43 for that.
So I will vote on Election Day on a "throw every incumbent out" rationale, as there are no races in my locality where I can vote for someone. I'll mitigate any potential harm by voting for the least likely candidate, and thus express my (pointless) protest.
Then it's back to prepping for the storm.
Marko of The Munchkin Wrangler said it best so far, and hence my repost of his electoral bottom-line today.
Enjoy your weekend.
Yeah vote for a nobody and you get Obama Real smart then you lose amendments 1 2 and 4
But at least you didn't vote for the lesser of the two evils. You can go to your servitude with you head high.
You didn't sink to working within the system.
That is the cowards way out, you will be able to say "Don't blame me I didn't vote for him"
That shows real leadership- I wonder how many idiots are going to follow you into battle. I wouldn't follow you to the messhall
I only hope that there are enough hillary diehards to offset foolish votes like yours.
Deal with it, the die is cast, you do not get choice three, you WILL get one of the two, and if do not vote for one of them, you are failing to mitigate the harm that will befall this country. YOU will be responsible for the greater of the two evils getting elected.
Failure to act when you have a chance to stop a calamity... Is that your idea of the American way? Real cowardly if you ask me.
You talk all this shit on line about getting the country right, and you can't even handle voting for a Moderate. You sound like my grandkids, whining because they can't have their favorite desert, and throwing a tantrum.
If you can't handle sullying your psyche by voting for Mccain how in the hell are you going to handle a full blown recession and the Obama Brownshirts taking all your toys away? Or are you going to be an "army of one" and retake the US Gov't from the leftists? How will you claim Moral high ground with all the pissed off Republicans who are in the same boat?
I am glad your single vote is not going to turn the tide.
If you can live with aiding the anti-Constitutionalists of both parties, so be it.
I won't do it.
Obama is a Marxist.
McCain is a statist who has violated his oath to uphold the Constitution.
Neither is fit to be President.
And neither the two-party status quo system nor your huffing and puffing changes those facts.
Enjoy your day, collaborator.
"I wouldn't follow you to the messhall..."
...but you're going to follow the herd to the voting booth.
You know what? I'll get to the mess hall without you.
Voting for a third party never works. The only one that came close in recent ears was Ross Perot and we ended up with Bill Clinton, arguably far worse than Bush 41.
Constitutionally, there is a major difference between Obama and McCain. Start with the kind of Supreme Court justices they would appoint. We have four conservatives on the bench, four liberals, and a swing voter. The liberals are all over 70 years old, while the conservatives are all much younger. The liberals will be the first to leave the bench.
If Obama becomes President, he could possibly fill all five liberal seats with...LIBERALS! If McCain is Prez, he would very likely be able to fill the lib seats with conservatives, making it a conservative controlled court for the first time in decades.
They could overturn Roe v. Wade, any major gun bans, all kinds of things.
To vote for a third party ends up in victory for the last candidate for which you would vote. It has happened nearly every time it has been tried.
The more accurate (but far less catchy) bumper sticker slogan should read: Don't blame me, I voted for the right guy. Blame the third party voters.
Given that Palin has a damned good chance of being president within the next four years if McCain gets in, I'll go with their ticket.
She's solid on the 2nd, we can worry about everything else later.
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