A Few Shiny Pebbles

In regards to the recent behavior of Hillary Clinton, we have to remember that a candidate is not officially nominated by a political party until the convention officially votes him or her in by a ballot taken at the site. Even if the “won” delegates were locked in to their candidate on the first ballot in the August convention, please notice that because of Hillary’s continued efforts, Obama will not carry enough locked delegates into the convention to win on the first ballot without special delegates, who will not be locked in and could decide to deny him their vote. Because she fought to the end of the primary, the nomination will be up in the air until at the very least after the first ballot.

Senator Clinton is aiming at the nomination this time or, at worst, in 2012. And no matter what he does, Senator Obama will not be certain of the nomination until the deciding vote is officially counted and accepted at the convention, and that depends on what comes out in the next almost three months. (Hillary might just have some blockbuster under wraps.) The super delegates already have a lot to think about.

Hillary has just said that she would be open to consideration as Obama’s vice president, if it will help the Party. I think that she probably doesn’t actually want it, but she wants to cause him problems, and her answer today has stirred things up. The situation is fraught with dangers for both of them, and this is my assessment:

If she did become the VP candidate, and Obama won:

First, as VP she would have little power, and Obama would be able to make her look meaningless by what he makes her do.

Second, as VP she and her husband would lose their position of power, and Obama, with Soros and others behind him, would be the power figure.

Third, as VP she would not be in a position to run in 2012. Either Obama would be successful, and be the candidate himself, or he would have a disastrous presidency, and she would be tainted, and it would also make the winner in 2012 more probably the Republican candidate.

Fourth, can you imagine the caustic relationship there will be between Obama’s staff and Hillary’s? Not to mention with the members of the Cabinet? And an ex-President running around with all Bill Clinton’s baggage and escapades? And the fact that no one could shut him up?

The situation, both ways, if Obama lost would be:

First, if she is the VP candidate, she might be blamed for the loss, and that wouldn’t be good for her immediate future, or for 2012. This is a major issue for her.

Second, if she is not the VP candidate, she can claim that she would have won. This would give her a power base for 2012, and continuing power in the opposition, against a Republican president. She would be an important figure once again, and it would give an added spice to her revenge against those who have turned on her now.

Third, her offer will allow her to say that she did everything she could to help him win, and at the same time people will blame him even more for any loss.

All this being said, if she does work hard to force herself into the VP nomination during the next few months, It could mean that she has finally decided that the two of them would win, and that once he’s won she can produce a huge hidden super-ugly-problem that will force him out of office, thus making her President. Given the problems already indicated on his side, such a Big Ugly could exist. She would have to determine if she could keep it hidden until after the election. If there is such a Big Ugly, and she thinks that even together they would lose or that she can’t hide it that long, she won’t try to be the VP candidate, and she will use it against him—optimally in October, if it can last that long—to make sure he loses and to clear her way for 2012. Either way, she will make sure it looks like the Republicans have released the information.

If she actually accepts the VP nomination from him, clear the decks. She will try to grab as much power as possible, and it will mean that she thinks there are possibilities worth pursuing. If Obama somehow gets elected, the public will find that he is far more Left than anything they imagined, and the public can move in large numbers when it is really, really upset to make its voice heard.

No matter what happens, Hurricane Hillary is forming as we speak. When and if she makes landfall, who knows what will happen?

Any way you look at it, this will be interesting to watch.

Trackposted to Pet's Garden Blog, The American Nationalist News Service, Outside the Beltway, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, Faultline USA, , and The World According to Carl, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

In regards to the issues involved with Obama and the Trinity Church, there is some serious maneuvering going on. In the first place, every act taken by the various people involved since the story first appeared has been deliberate. Reverend Wright deliberately went to the National Press Club and the NAACP meeting and gave speeches with content he knew was inflammatory to a large number of people. He clearly enjoyed it, even reveling in it. The same thing can be said about Father Pfleger’s recent, deliberate appearance at the Trinity Church. From Wright’s and Pfleger’s points of view, it was the chance to show their beliefs and abilities to a television and Internet video audience literally worldwide. These men did not get where they are in life muting their voices or tamping down their views. These performances were the kind of opportunities speakers dream about, the chance to be seen and discussed throughout the world!

There are many people here and abroad that believe in and cheer Liberation Theology, and who also either agree with or encourage the Black Liberation Theology branch of the philosophy. They have now been thrilled by at least three spectacular demonstrations of the clearly highly skilled proponents of these views. Wright and Pfleger have also reached people who may be drawn into the radical allurements of these beliefs., and now they have a vastly wider marketplace for their books and videos. They knew exactly what they were doing.

As for Obama, either he believes the same way they do, and is hiding it, or he used Trinity Church and its community solely as a political and social expedient. If it is the former, and he believes some or all of these views, then he is a liar, and with these beliefs he should not be raised to eminence as a nominee for the presidency of the United States. If it is the latter, he surely knew that there would be problems with that association, and it raises several questions about his behavior as a politician and his ability to judge the effects of his decisions over time.

Whether expedient or belief, each time he has moved himself a distance from the Church and its flamboyant apostles, he has been ambiguous enough to leave room for both sides to believe what they need to, to remain his follower. One listener could decide that Obama has always used it as an expedient, but should be forgiven because in his position it was a way, over time, to gather the power necessary to enable him to do important work in a tricky community. Thus the good he could accomplish, his goals, were worth the deception. Equally, another listener could decide that Obama really does believe in some form of Black Liberation Theology, and should be forgiven because in his present position he needs to gather the power necessary to enable him to do important work in the tricky community necessary to elect him to the presidency. Either way, it would be expedience, but of the kind acceptable to the majority of his followers. Either way, his followers could convince themselves that he has had in the past, and now has in the present, to “play the game” to achieve the necessary power to carry out his ideals.

At the same time, it leaves open the question of Obama’s real views as he maximizes his following given his background. The recent speeches given by Wright and Pfleger give Obama the ability to play both ends against the middle. (By being so blatant about their views, they can at the same time reach people who might delight in such radicalism and who might join them and Obama.) Moreover, their blatancy gives Obama the “hooks” he needs to object to them in a public yet ambiguous way that emphasizes their views and yet embraces the ambiguity.

Given his background, with its factual and undeniable twenty-years of relationship to an inevitably troubling group, he has actually played his cards quite cleverly. The moment the videos of Wright became seriously problematic, the subsequent deliberate speeches by Wright and Pfleger gave Obama obvious ways to “separate” himself from first Wright and then Trinity, and at the same time do so in a way that allowed him the maximum benefit possible for the circumstances.

Wright and Pfleger did quite well for themselves, too.

Trackposted to third world county, McCain Blogs, DragonLady's World, Maggie's Notebook, Adam's Blog, Right Truth, Pirate's Cove, Leaning Straight Up, , Democrat=Socialist, CORSARI D'ITALIA, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

One of my favorite thinkers, the brilliant Thomas Sowell, writes in “Random thoughts on the passing scene”:

Over the years, slowly but surely, we have painted ourselves into a corner on a whole range of issues, where we can no longer say or do what makes the most sense to us, but only what is considered to be politically correct.

In a profound way, the Democrats, with their Leftist, PC encroachments into our American life have been a disaster. In the battle between the ideas of “the Left” and “the Right” in America there has been a Leftist, PC disaster moving in slow motion, a Hurricane Democrat leaving legal and social damage and debris around in all aspects of our life.

What does this mean? I’ve spent a lot of space in several posts on this blog going into this in detail, but fundamentally, as a summary, here is part of what I said in my post “World at War: In Depth Part Two”:

Just as humans explore the physical world and its inhabitants, they also explore ideas . . . . These explorations take place in words, in writing, in reading, in the education of the classroom, the lecture halls of the university, in the office and shop, in conversations on the street, in the home, and so on. People live, run their lives, have their lives run, and even die because of words on a piece of paper, because of complex and difficult arguments in books and in classrooms and in dimly lit rooms late at night in obscure government office buildings. Words on paper guide people when they fight wars and make peace, build bombs and jet planes and medical operating rooms, send people to prisons and to gulags and to death camps, when they do any of the billions of purposeful, skilled, and structured activities of the human world.

These words find themselves combining and becoming forces in religion, philosophy, law, government, music, art, literature, education, science, technology, hobbies, recreation, social usage, vows and curses and every other activity the human brain and body gets involved with. There are “territorial wars” in these arenas, too. We need to recognize the fact that the world is a vast battleground in which great philosophies struggle for the minds and souls of men.

This election year is a major battle in that war of ideas. At every level—Presidential, Senate, House, and State and Local ballots—the battle is joined. And it is fierce and unusually bizarre. It is also imperative that our side wins as many of these individual battles as possible, especially on the presidential and congressional ballots.

As Thomas Sowell points out, again from his random thoughts:

Even if you think our presidential choices this election year are between disgust and disaster, anyone who has ever been through a real disaster can tell you that this difference is not small. It is big enough to go vote on election day.

This is an excellent way to view our position and choices in this election year. If the Democrats win the Presidency, it will be a monumental disaster, one that we will pay for for years. We will pay not only monetarily, by higher taxes and even higher spending than the Right has been doing recently, but also in the areas of Supreme Court and other judges, social policy, law, the Bill of Rights, hate crimes, thought crimes, the military, foreign policy, etc. Even in the arenas where McCain might frustrate and anger us, such as health, environmental, and immigration policies, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would be like a Category 5 Hurricane compared to John McCain’s Gale Force winds. And even there, McCain might actually listen to us if we come up with cogent arguments and there are vast numbers of us demanding to be heard. A Democrat president and Congressional majority would be a 8.9 earthquake!

If you think I exaggerate, remember things like Hillary Clinton wanting to make it a felony for both doctor and patient, for a person to pay a doctor in cash. Read Rick Moran’s, “52 Seconds of Obama Unilaterally Disarming America”. Think about the articles I linked to above, and reread Dick Lamm’s piece.

Then get to work for John McCain and other Republican candidates.

And pray. At least that hasn’t been outlawed yet.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, The Virtuous Republic, Rosemary's Thoughts, Right Truth, The World According to Carl, The Pink Flamingo, Cao's Blog, , Dumb Ox Daily News, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Naturally, the day I target as the day that I will be able to start posting on my blog again is a day that opens up with a whole list of things that I have to do before I can do anything else.

This is the oddest election year I’ve ever known, and the surprises are going to continue all the way, literally, to the day we all vote. Between now and the election I think everyone who can should take time to write about the important issues we are facing. We have to clarify what Conservatism means, and why it is important. If we can’t explain why we have become Conservatives and made a commitment to its philosophy, then we will be defeated by those who are more able to communicate a point of view, even if their articulated view may be a disguise for ideas most Americans would reject.

And, of equal importance, we need to clarify what our opponents believe.

I picture a history book written in the future, at the end of this 21st Century. What will it say about our stewardship of America in this the opening decade of that century? In history books, they always capture groups of separate events and connect them under headings that make them seem to have a lot more clarity than they could ever have at the time they happened. Terms such as “The Revolution of 1800” when Jefferson was elected, or “Bleeding Kansas”, or “Manifest Destiny”—they make it sound as though historical events are much tidier than they are, and as though everyone knows what they mean from the beginning and what they will lead to over time.

We must think in broader terms, and write in narrower images, so we can capture some of the essence of the specific, vast future that we are going to put into motion on November 5th of this year.

We need to know what we are doing, and then we need to do it.

Trackposted to Rosemary's Thoughts, third world county, McCain Blogs, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, Pirate's Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

My oldest brother has been through another series of medical emergencies. When this happens to someone you love, your mind and even your body feels as though they’ve been battered. Reality closes in around you, and the future becomes a matter not of days but of hours, and, sometimes, of only the next few minutes, as you’re waiting for the results of a test, or for a phone call. It’s totally exhausting, demanding your time and attention.

Now that things have started to stabilize, my world and the future have expanded again.

I will be in a position to start posting again next Monday, May 19th.

Okay, I was all set for today and Super Tuesday, popcorn all ready for the microwave, statistics, probability, and permutations buzzing through my mind, when one of my brothers came in laughing, and said, in passing, “Do you know, someone on the radio just said Obama should take Al Gore as his vice-president!”

My mind boggled.

My first clear thought was that it was ridiculous to believe that Gore would ever accept anything below the presidency, and I was surprised someone had even suggested it as a possibility. My second thought was the realization that they would actually be the perfect pair, two of a kind—much like the tailors in Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, who pretended to make a lavish wardrobe.

Of course, both Obama and Gore went to Harvard, among other universities, and therefore we should expect that as a team they would move beyond the petty creation of pretense attire and go directly to a rich verbal tapestry of Utopian Splendor in the Best of All Possible Climates.

They would be far luckier than the tailors in the Emperor’s story, because in that Once Upon A Time Kingdom, people saw that there were no clothes but were afraid to admit it, having been told that anyone who couldn’t see the clothes was a fool and a rogue. It took an innocent child to open their fairy tale eyes. But Obama and Gore could be sure that they didn’t need to find a way to keep those who saw the truth silent—“Change”, “Hope”, and “Carbon Credits”, being abstractions themselves, have the flim-flam value of being invisible to begin with. No number of children—or adults, for that matter—pointing out that “there is nothing there!” would have any effect at all, as, indeed, it hasn’t.

The tailors, who merely wanted gold, would have run off and spent their ill-gotten gains on the usual wine, women, and song, and the Kingdom’s people could have gone back to their daily lives embarrassed, a little wiser, and no worse off. But Obama and Gore are after power as well as riches, and I seriously believe that Obama’s unspoken plans and Gore’s unspoken intentions would both leave people a great deal worse off. That’s why their plans and intentions are, and will remain, unspoken. That’s why they rely on the unseen and un-see-able in their current campaigns for the nomination and for Global Warming.

And I am equally certain that there could be no actual Obama/Gore ticket. They would both insist on top billing, and that’s not the way it works in elections.

Be glad.

Trackposted to Rosemary's Thoughts, Woman Honor Thyself, Right Truth, DragonLady's World, The Pink Flamingo, Big Dog's Weblog, Gulf Coast Hurricane Tracker, Right Voices, and Stageleft, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I really like Dennis Prager, the radio talk show host, but he said something this morning that I disagree with, and I think it’s an important issue.

This morning Prager was discussing the story out of Colorado about the little boy who has decided he is really a little girl. Of course the school system is going out of its way to accommodate the child.

World Net Daily reports:

An 8-year-old boy is preparing to return to his home school district in Colorado as a girl, so school officials are designating two school restrooms as unisex facilities, and preparing to counsel other students on the issue of transgenderism. [...] [… according to] the television station the school is handing out packets of information to other students and their parents containing "information" about transgender people, and officials will answer questions from other students about the boy-seeking-to-be-girl "in order to protect the child as much as possible."

Prager rightly argued that the Colorado people were making a mistake in allowing the circumstances of a single child to cause a whole system to change. (This is not to mention the whole issue of transgenderism, and how young the children are, and the rights of their parents.) Prager said that the Left is acting again as though a single individual is everything, and the needs of a large number of other children don’t matter to them.

I admit, it looks like that at first. Just as when one person finds offense in the existence of a Christmas Tree or a Christmas play at school, or when an openly atheist boy wants to join the Boy Scouts, the whole system is supposed to allow the offended or “different” single individual to change the already existent circumstances.

But if Prager thought more about it, he might realize that it actually has nothing to do with individuals or forcing a system to accommodate a single person’s difference. The Left are Collectivists. Their focus is on groups, on Identity Politics, on “authenticity” in adhering to an approved group attitude and group beliefs. So what’s happening, to make it look to Prager like an individual is messing up a whole system?

This is one of the most important issues we can deal with in America. What is actually happening is two different actions which have combined to change the way the Constitution was supposed to rule America, and thereby injuring the country.

The first issue can be found in The Federalist Papers, which is a collection of brilliant articles written in 1787-1788 to convince people to ratify the newly written Constitution of the United States of America. Federalist #10, written by James Madison, began with the words, “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

He goes on to define a “faction” as a minority or majority group of citizens who advocate beliefs or actions that are adverse to the rights of others or the interests of the whole community. He states that in the outcome of this conflict,

. . . the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

And here is the important, the vastly important, issue. How do we cure this problem? Madison points out that there are two methods of taking the danger out of a faction: (1) “by removing the causes”, and (2) “by controlling its effects”.

He looks at method #1: How do we remove the causes? There are only two ways, the first is to destroy liberty by force, and the second is to give “to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests”. But it would be wrong to destroy freedom, and as long as there are human beings, there will be differences of opinion, different interests. So, he concludes, [emphasis mine]: “The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.

Hence [emphasis mine]:

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS. [….]

Madison writes that in the American Constitutional system, whereby different States come together in a Federal whole, under a Constitution of individual rights, allows factions to be handled by local or state action, and keeps the fights from becoming national conflagrations of hatred. (We have usually been pretty good about this, with areas considered to be “the Bible Belt”, or “the Southwest”, or Nevada allowing a form of licentiousness that Utah forbids, etc.)

Madison and the other writers were hoping to ratify the U. S. Constitution by convincing people that it would guarantee our rights and the check-and-balance form of Federalism.

But something has gone very wrong now. The Supreme Court, which is supposed to rule based on the Constitution, has been used by Leftist and Liberal activist Justices, to “rewrite” the Constitution, to find things in it that are not explicitly stated, to go against it in many ways (such as McCain-Feingold limits on political speech), and to interpret it by considering modern and postmodern views and the way that international governments and peoples interpret their own laws, which are apt to be Collectivist, and not for the Individual.

So, what is going on with those who insist that the individual boy forces the school system to make accommodations and instruct children in subjects that are not the provenance of the school system? If you consider that an individual person who wants a Christmas tree in the local townhall can’t get what he wants, you can see that it isn’t a matter of an individual against the system. In so many cases, such as in Colorado, it is actually that an “individual” who represents a Politically Correct, Politically Acceptable viewpoint, can thus force the non-Politically Correct, non-Politically Acceptable individual parents and other individual students to obey the Liberal, Leftist Collective mandate. It is each parent and each other student who is the individual here. It is the “transgender” student who becomes the PC Group, as a modular representative of that Group.

James Madison knew well that sort of danger. In Federalist #10, he wrote:

Theoretic politicians, who have patronized [the utopian, collective] species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

Mr. Prager, what is really happening in that Colorado school, or with Christmas, or with the Boy Scouts, etc., is like what Federalist #10 says about factions: you either cope with it (as a strict constructionist) or you forcibly change everything about the rest of the people. In the Colorado, etc., way the “individual” that has a proper group difference (PC) brings the faction into the Norm, but with those individuals outside that group, the improper individual (non-PC), each individual is forced to change to the PC strictures.

What is happening in Colorado is that the Collective that the little boy represents is assimilating all the other individuals into its mandates. It is Collective, not individual, justice.

This is why we need to be so careful about nominating and confirming Conservative, strict-constructionist justices.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rosemary's Thoughts, third world county, The World According to Carl, Shadowscope, The Pink Flamingo, Leaning Straight Up, Cao's Blog, Big Dog's Weblog, Wolf Pangloss, Pursuing Holiness, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’ve watched the results come in from the recent Primaries and Caucuses, and more and more I’m aware of just how unusual this presidential campaign is, on both sides. “Conventional wisdom” has been disproved again and again recently. What we need now is Unconventional Wisdom, a new clarity about what is going on around us and what to do about it.

Together, we of the Right have to carefully go through the process of determining just exactly what it is that Conservatives, and that Republicans, believe, and show clearly how it differs from that of our opponents on the Left. We have to produce arguments and questions, answers and solutions, and put them out to be judged and polished by the abrasions of free speech. We need to show that they are superior to the explanations that have come out so far, and, most importantly, we need to know why they are the best ones. This is among the great missions of the Internet, and its time has come.

Part of this task is to actively work toward filling the Senate and the House with Conservative majorities. Part of it is to actively support Conservative ideas and oppose those of the Left. Read Michelle Malkin’s “Quo Vadis, Conservatives”, at the National Review site, rev up your engines, and go to it! Let’s horrify the Democrats when they wake up on November 5th.

We need to show that we will act in large numbers to fight for the issues we believe in—just as we fought during the discussions of the problems of illegal immigration. Let’s assume that leaders of honor might demonstrate their superior understanding and love for America by following what are found to be the demonstrably best solutions to America’s problems as advocated by an active, dynamic Conservative movement in the country and in the chambers of the Senate and the House.

We won’t be in lock-step. Just as we were individuals with many points of view during the Illegal Immigration debate, we will have various approaches to problems; but we will address all issues in dynamic ways, in a serious discussion in the Marketplace of Ideas, building practical solutions that can bring about a significant, measurable change for the better.

Now, Barack Obama speaks about ending the divide between people on the opposite sides of the political fence. Moderates and independents often agree that this is essential, that there needs to be middle-ground solutions. The problem is that when it comes to the Left and Right, the solutions that will be offered are often of the sort: “Do we build an ice hockey stadium or an Olympic swimming-and-diving center?” With this kind of choice, there is no middle-ground possible. You have to make a decision, and once you start setting-up the structure and installing the equipment, those actions move you increasingly away from the choice not taken.

What is needed in all too many cases is far from an impossible bipartisanship. The Left and the Right usually offer quite differing solutions to the same problem. We need to highlight the differences and their consequences. For instance, the Right defends the Boy Scouts, who have strict rules about an open belief in God. The Left demands that the Boy Scouts tolerate an open disbelief in God. What is possible as a middle-ground? Nothing.

These are the kinds of issues that are raised, for instance, with the appointments of Justices to the Supreme Court. Once a judicial approach toward law enters by being held by a new member, that approach will be there for as much as thirty or more years. The structure that we build with confirmed nominees matters. There are immediate direct and future consequences. And not the least for the Boy Scouts.

Most of our solutions will set up institutions, regulations, protocols and policies. The bureaucracies formed will set up personnel and infrastructural and superstructural imperatives, and they bring with them differing futures. Actions have consequences, and official actions carry especially long-lived consequences.

The most important single thing we need is clarity. And that means detailed explorations of issues and real-life, successful examples. While the campaigns are ongoing, we need to do the serious work to flesh-out our beliefs. We need to know what we believe in and why, and how to demonstrate our beliefs. We need to seek out candidates at all levels and issues in all arenas that will further our Conservative beliefs.

We need to know who we are, what we are, and what we want.

And we need to get up and get out and get it.

This is just one way to look at the current political campaign, but it helps to clarify things in my mind. More than ever before, the campaigns have become games, with lying, bluffing, cheating, and every other trick in the book. A lot of things are not what they seem. Putting the primaries and caucuses so early and so close, along with the dynamics of the specific people running on both sides, has created a situation where the conventions will end up with candidates that have been selected because of all sorts of shenanigans by the press, the Left and Right followers, and the candidates themselves, to get where they are.

Iowa: Some Leftists assumed Hillary had more than enough votes, so they decided to goof up the Right’s caucuses, and vote for Huckabee, making it look like Huckabee is popular among more than just the evangelists, but also moderates and independents. But Obama won, because despite the polls, Hillary finally didn’t get enough votes, partly because some that went to Huckabee due to mischief. (For similar mischief, The Daily Kos blog openly tried to encourage Left votes for Romney in Michigan.)

New Hampshire: Hillary followers couldn’t let Obama win again, so they stopped their nonsense about voting for Huckabee. Because a voter could just show up and vote in New Hampshire, and an unknown number of voters are bused in from out of state. The Right people who don’t want Huckabee—Iowa scared them—went out for McCain, who seemed to be the one who might beat Huckabee. With the Leftists back in place for Hillary, and with the identity politics demography of New Hampshire, she won. Naturally, it’s shocking that some people apparently lied to pollsters on both sides for various reasons.

Nevada: Obama got the nod from the huge Culinary Union. But in Nevada a lot of that union is Hispanic, and Hispanics and Blacks are having more and more of a problem within communities. (See the Note below for an article about this). So some union members didn’t show up, and some showed up and defied their union, and Hillary won. (Yes, I know, it turned out that Obama got more delegates; but his staff thought that with the Culinary Union it would be a big win for him, not an actual loss in terms of votes.)

So now the war between Obama and the Clintons is joined in full. Meanwhile some on the Right are really worried about beating Hillary, and instead of voting their values and issues—which should be behind votes in a primary or caucus, some voted for someone they thoht might bring in cross-over votes in the election. But a lot of the cross-over primary and caucus voting was, and will be, trouble-makers on the Left who won’t cross-over in November.

The Main Stream Media press makes it look like McCain can get the most votes by getting cross-overs, so the problem is going to get worse, with votes going to McCain that should normally have gone to Guliani, Romney, and Thompson. McCain is now supported by people on the Right who don’t really support him, but who think he’ll beat the Democrat. Meanwhile, the Left is tearing itself apart, and may end up with a lot of animosity that sits it out from those who don’t get their side, Obama or Hillary, in the nomination. Where the Right could actually have chosen someone more Conservative than McCain and still won in the election, it will be stuck with McCain out of fear for something that didn’t eventually materialize.

Meanwhile, the MSM press is busy making everything economic and ignoring the big issue of the War, and is busy telling everyone that McCain will get the cross-over vote. It is trying to deal with the situation between Hillary and Obama. Having had to ignore and swallow so much that was negative about the Clintons, some in the press are turning on them viciously. Race and gender Politics are coming back to eat their children. More, voter fraud, a skill the Democrats have honed over the years, is being used within the party competition. Naturally, they are all shocked about this.

The Democratic Convention will determine its candidate before the Republican Convention meets, and we Conservatives might do best to go to a brokered convention knowing the other side’s candidate and the state of the over-all situation, in early September, than to decide too soon on a candidate that is extremely problematic. It will be necessary to vote for the Republican nominee in November, but there is a lot we can do before we name him.

There is simply too much at stake in this. The next president will probably have two or three Supreme Court Justices to name. We need to keep FBI files out of the hands of the Left, who have no limits in their hunger for power. Moreover, the Left will make government appointments throughout the system. (Remember how one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as President in 1993 was to fire all but one of the US Attorneys in the whole country on the same day?) New appointees will develop policy, rules, and regulations that we all will have to live by.

We need to act as though nominating our candidate is an important project, not a test of our commitment to the purity of our beliefs.

*NOTE: See Steven Malanga: The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates: Black anger grows as illegal immigrants transform urban neighborhoods, City Journal Winter 2008. Excerpt:

[…] “Massive illegal immigration has been devastating to my community,” [Terry] Anderson, [KRLA-AM black radio talk show host], a former auto mechanic and longtime South Central Los Angeles resident, tells listeners. “Black Americans are hit the hardest.” […] [A]s new waves of immigration inundate historically African-American neighborhoods, black opinion is hardening against the influx. “We will not lay down and take this any longer,” says Anderson. If he’s right, it could upend the political calculus on immigration.

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I heard about Fred Thompson pulling himself out of the presidential campaign. I admire him and everything he’s written and said in the past year, and I had a true hope that he would somehow get in if we had a brokered convention. So at first when I heard the news I was really depressed.

But I admit that reading the post about it by the Anchoress has cheered me up. The Anchoress is like a wonderful friend who always speaks with wisdom, and who always calms you down so that you can think clearly.

Now I can see the wisdom in Thompson’s move. As long as he stayed in the race, his followers would have hoped for his being the GOP candidate. Since that hope would probably have been futile, it’s better to be free from it now, so that we can seriously put our support behind someone who might actually get the nomination. And, yes, I’m going to vote for the Republican candidate, no matter who he is, but I hope it’s Romney or Guliani. Two of my brothers fought in Viet Nam, and I have a profound admiration for McCain, but McCain-Feingold, the Global Warming Farce, and other political issues leave me with little enthusiasm for his nomination. Still, whoever gets the nod will be far better than the Democrat choice.

More, whoever gets the Republican nomination needs our serious commitment. There can be no sitting this election out, no pouting or intellectual tantrums. Think back on the election in 2000 and how important it turned out to be that Bush beat Gore, how different 9/11 and the Supreme Court would have been had Gore presided in the Oval Office. We are going to make a choice just as momentous—and most probably even more important—as that of 2000. The Anchoress has it right: we can’t stay on the bench.

As I said in my last post, the 21st Century brings with it the greatest danger America has ever faced, because there can be no doubt that some of our enemies have the willingness, the petrodollars, and the ability to inflict devastating damage to our cities and to the technological infrastructure we absolutely depend upon. Other enemies travel with the Leftist ideologies that threaten our vigor and our freedom. Facing these, our votes will determine the world our great-great-grandchildren will inhabit, will call their own.

We are electing a future for America. Every time you think about the inevitable flaws of our candidates, remember that the fate of the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth lies in your hands. With even the worst of the four real possibilities—Romney, Guliani, and McCain (or, reluctantly, Huckabee)—America has a chance, through our determined effort, to continue to be that great country. But with either of the Leftist choices on the Democrat side we will be carried into a path away from the country set in motion by our Founders and toward the defeatist, depressing, attenuated weaknesses of the European Union and other Collectivist mistakes. Not to mention the little matter of Islamist Radical Terrorism and threat of World conquest.

Our incomparably precious country awaits our decisions, in this coming election that will determine so much. In the years to come the generations of the future will judge us for what we do in the next few months. When they look back into their past, when they see our stewardship of America, will they be proud and grateful that we rose to the occasion and chose the best that was available to us given our time and circumstance? Or will they curse us for playing emotional games because we decide that we don’t have the chance to vote for some perfect choice, and we therefore allowed, by our inaction, a future to take hold that would eventually destroy what miracles there could have been?

Some of you might wonder why I have not put Ron Paul’s name in the mix. It’s simple. Although I firmly believe that the level of world travel, communications, and weaponry make it impossible for America to be safe from terrorism and the threat of the Islamist Radicals, no man who seeks to be Commander in Chief has the right to proclaim that he is entitled to sit behind fortified walls, with superior weapons and wealth, while all his neighbors are slowly being slaughtered or enslaved. Even if the United States were to become self-sustaining in all ways including energy, the rest of the world will always be interconnected, and no man can with honor live in the wonder of the Declaration of Independence and at the same time claim its beneficence solely for himself and his followers.

I posted last week about the importance of this election, and I know I’ll post again in the coming months. We should be excited that we have so momentous a task ahead of us. We are Pioneers, making our way into a new Millennium. Most people in the history of the world have seen their lives limited and controlled by forces they had no hope of changing. We Americans have been given such a gift that we should treasure it and work our hearts out for it. We should be proud that we can prove ourselves on these battlefields we face. We should be energized as never before to work for our victory in the November.

Feel the eyes of the Future upon you, and act accordingly.

“Let’s Roll!”

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