Category Archives: Out There

‘Waterloo’ DeMint: President Obama deserves ‘slap in the face’

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In his never-ending quest to chase civility right out of our politics, Jim ‘Waterloo’ DeMint has now contributed the following:

“If the court throws it out, I think it’s a well-deserved slap in the face to the president and the Congress to make us think that what we’re here for is to honor our oath of office, which is the pledge to defend the Constitution, which limits what we can do,” DeMint said.

I realize that you can’t tell from that what the issue is. You might reasonably infer that Mr. Obama is trying to declare himself king or something, with that hyperbolic nonsense about honoring the oath of office and defending the Constitution. But these people talk like this; it doesn’t have to make sense.

No, the administration’s great sin here, the imagined flouting of the Constitution, is trying to address the inexcusable farce of the way we pay for health care in this country.

You know what? I think I’m going to become a straight-ticket voter. I’m going to vote against anyone who advocates Conan the Barbarian politics. You know what I mean: The sort of politics that holds that the greatest things in life are:

To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.

The upside is that you NEVER lose an argument

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Or if you do, you have a whole other set of problems…

Anderson Cooper brings our attention (blast him) to the following:

Daytime Exclusive: Woman Marries Herself in Ceremony

Nadine, 36, joins Anderson to explain why she married herself after getting a divorce. Nadine had a ceremony to celebrate the event and invited 40 guests. She even received wedding gifts.

Her unusual event made headlines, but Nadine says she wasn’t in it for the publicity. She says she decided to go through with the self-marriage because “it was about really committing to changing my life. I feel very empowered, very happy, very joyous. I want to share that with people, and also the people that were in attendance, it’s a form of accountability.”

Nadine experienced a painful divorce and says it was rough after learning her two kids wanted to live with their father. “Six years ago I would’ve handled a problem by going out and drinking. I smoked, I was 50 pounds overweight… this is just celebrating how far I’ve come in my life.”

Since the split, Nadine enjoys spending time with herself, going out on date nights, buying treats and gifts for herself, and says she’s no longer waiting for “someone to complete her.”

What are we going to call this? “Same-self marriage?” Will it catch on?

I hope not. The whole thing worries me. It’s just so easy for self-love to turn to self-abuse…

“Conservatives Fooled Again!” Aw, lighten up, Francis…

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Before my friends on the left get too wound up telling us what a dangerous right-winger Mitt Romney is, I thought it might be helpful to share with you the sort of thing that actual right-wingers are saying about him. This, and the picture above, are from a release I got promoting a book by a couple of self-styled conservatives:

Des Moines, IA —Just like his lukewarm predecessors Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, and John McCain, Mitt Romney will lose the election this fall, which means the time is now for patriots to begin planning for 2016 lest they risk getting fooled again by the Republican establishment.
So says best-selling conservative author Gregg Jackson and nationally-syndicated radio host Steve Deace, the co-authors of the explosive new book We Won’t Get Fooled Again: Where the Christian Right Went Wrong and How to Make America Right Again. Endorsed by former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former Congressman J.C. Watts, We Won’t Get Fooled Again documents 30 years of failed political activism by conservatives, including interviews with several of the movement’s leading figures like Ann Coulter, Dr. Richard Land, and Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family.
“Moderates never win presidential elections and Romney won’t either,” said Jackson, former talk show host at WRKO in Boston. “Every time we have allowed the Republican establishment to have its way the country has lost. And as someone who was on the radio during Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts, I saw up close that he’s a flip-flopper at best, and a total RINO (Republican in Name Only) at worst. You can’t trust anything Romney says in one news cycle, let alone over the long haul. Whenever the American people are faced with the choice of liberal or liberal-light, they always go with the outright liberal. That’s how we got Obama in the first place, and thanks to the GOP and the failure of many conservative leaders, 2008 is repeating itself all over again.”
Deace, who also writes for Townhall.com, concurs. “Romney has all the lame of Bob Dole plus the flip-flopping integrity of John Kerry,” Deace said. “Right now in the White House we have a committed leftist the American people seem poised to reject, but leave it to the Republican establishment to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory yet again by nominating someone who has a record of healthcare mandates, taxpayer-funded abortions, and support for the homosexual agenda that rivals Obama. Coming off of the successful 2010 mid-term election, you would’ve hoped the GOP would’ve gotten the message America wanted something dramatically different than Obama, but sadly that message fell on deaf ears. This is why the time is now for grassroots conservatives and patriots to take it upon themselves to get it right in 2016 and not leave it up to the failed Republican establishment again.”
The headline on the release was “Conservatives Fooled Again!” Which just makes me want to say, Aw, lighten up, Francis…

Here they come, all right — and ‘they’ includes YOU

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A fragment from the latest of the DCCC releases that come to me several times a day, which was headlined, “here they come…“:

Since Rick Santorum dropped out yesterday, the Obama-Romney general election has fully engaged.

Just hours after Santorum’s announcement, Karl Rove teamed up with the Koch Brothers to launch a $1.7 million SuperPAC ad buy attacking President Obama in key battleground states.

There’s too much at stake to fall behind Romney, Rove, and the Koch Brothers.

Since the general election kicked off yesterday, we’re only 951 donors away from our goal of 10,000 supporters standing strong for President Obama and a Democratic Majority.

Contribute $3 or more right now to fight back against the Republicans’ swift-boat attacks >>…

My favorite part, I think, is that excellent example of the way parties use completely nonsensical terminology that they know has a proven track record of stirring the emotions of their base — in this case, “swift-boating.” (A term that hasn’t had any sort of relevance for eight years, and never had the meaning that Democrats ascribe to it — but it stirs the indignation of the faithful, and that’s the point.)

This release can be understood on several levels. One is face value: Now that his chief rival has dropped out, Mitt Romney will turn his full evil machine on our beloved President Obama, so you must give us money so we can fight him! Which is problematic in that the situation is not new. Romney has been trying to ignore his rivals and focus on the general election since before the Iowa caucuses; he just kept getting distracted. Now, you’ll see more of the same, with fewer distractions.

Then there’s another, ironic level. This is but one of a very long series of missives over the past few months going after Mitt Romney (remember how bemused I was that the Dems were totally focused on Romney, even as Gingrich was winning the SC primary?), and also trying to scare you into giving money so the party could keep doing so. No Rubicon is being crossed here, folks. Just another step on a long, boring road.

But there is one sense in which we are seeing a qualitative change at this moment. We are, with the departure of Santorum (although not of Gingrich or Paul), entering waters that partisans on both sides have longed to enter. We are entering the area where, according to the self-justifying propaganda of both sides, they believe they have the excuse to throw off any constraints that might in the past have pulled them somewhat in the direction of truth and proportion.

In other words, here they come — the Dems and Repubs both — and their coming at us with stuff likely to be even more outrageous than what we’ve seen.

For months, the two sides have been preparing their followers for this moment. During the SC primary campaign, I repeatedly heard and saw Republicans excusing the attacks they were hurling at each other by saying, “You’d better toughen up and learn to take it now, because if you’re the nominee, this is nothing compared to the horrible stuff that Obama will throw at you in the fall.” And I would turn and look at Obama, and I would wonder whom they were talking about. We’ve all seen the kinds of campaigns Obama runs. The fact that he was NOT like that was a prime reason why we endorsed him in the 2008 SC primary.

Meanwhile, the Dems have been working as hard as ever to demonize the opposition, building to this moment when they could say, “Now these monsters will stop chewing on each other and come after US!” At which point we’re all supposed to run for the hills or something. No, excuse me — we’re supposed to throw all our money at the Democratic Party (which will FIGHT for us!) and then run for the hills.

Well, thanks for the warning. You’ve  reminded me that it’s time to batten down the hatches. A squall of foolishness is headed our way. Here they come…

Ah, Madeleine, you’re better than that

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I really liked Madeleine Albright when she was secretary of state, and not just because she coined the phrase about the U.S. being the “indispensable nation” in world affairs, which encapsulated the responsibility our nation has at this juncture in its history as well as I’ve seen anyone else do it.

So I hate to see her stooping to allow her name to be affixed to another of those hyperbolic rants that I get, several times a day, from the DCCC:

Brad —

It seems every time women take one step forward, extremists try to push us back.

Here in America, Republicans have launched an all out attack on women’s rights…

Oh, really, Madame Secretary? All-out attack? So I suppose women are just being rounded up and thrown into concentration camps en masse, without regard to habeas corpus. Because that’s what an “all-out” attack on rights would look like.

And this from someone who had to deal, on behalf of this nation, with places of which such things might actually be true?

She should leave this stuff to James Carville and Nancy Pelosi and the other usual suspects whose names appear on these things. She should value more highly her reputation for having a sense of proportion.

Ayn Rand disciple teaching Citadel cadets

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This video, brought to my attention by Nancy Mace Jackson on Twitter, is interesting on a couple of levels. First, it’s apparently a course on conservative theory taught by Mallory Factor, who’s been in the news again recently.

Second, the guest speaker appearing before the class is Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute. Interesting guy. He’s introduced as having served in Israeli Intelligence. He has an accent I can’t quite place — he sounds vaguely like former USC President John Palms.

The ideas he’s talking about could hardly be more timely than now, when various strains of libertarianism, from Ron Paul to the Tea Party, are striving to seize control of the Republican Party.

Like Mitt Romney really needed this today…

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Elie Wiesel, seen in a file photo with an area man.

If we’re not having a Kulturkampf in one direction, it’s coming at us from another:

Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor who has devoted his life to combating intolerance, says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “should speak to his own church and say they should stop” performing posthumous proxy baptisms on Jews.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner spoke to The Huffington Post Tuesday soon after HuffPost reported that according to a formerly-Mormon researcher, Helen Radkey, some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had submitted Wiesel’s name to a restricted genealogy website as “ready” for posthumous proxy baptism. Radkey found that the name of Wiesel had been submitted to the database for the deceased, from which a separate process for proxy baptism could be initiated. Radkey also said that the names of Wiesel’s deceased father and maternal grandfather had been submitted to the site…

To which I can only say, Proxy baptism? Really? That doesn’t sound kosher to me, somehow.

Anyway, the Mormons are saying they didn’t really “baptize” Wiesel, even though his name pops up in their records. Nor did they intend to sorta, kinda baptize Simon Wiesenthal’s parents:

SALT LAKE CITY — Mormon church leaders apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.

Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large. Jews are particularly offended by an attempt to alter the religion of Holocaust victims, who were murdered because of their religion, and the baptism of Holocaust survivors was supposed to have been barred by a 1995 agreement…

The church immediately apologized, saying it was the actions of an individual member of church — whom they did not name — that led to the submission of Wiesenthal’s name…

Hey, it could happen to anybody, right? Right?

I don’t want to cast any aspersions, but this seems kind of… out there. I mean, we baptize babies who don’t know what’s going on, but dead people? Dead people who are not of your persuasion?

Here’s hoping they just keep on flying, right on out into space

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This just in from the Ayn Rand Institute:

“Atlas Shrugged” Still Flying Off Shelves!

WASHINGTON—New reports from Ayn Rand’s publisher indicates that sales figures for “Atlas Shrugged” are continuing a remarkable trend.

In 2011 all English editions of “Atlas Shrugged” sold 445,000 copies.

“This is incredible,” says Dr. Yaron Brook, executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. “Since Obama was elected, ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has sold more than 1.5 million copies. This is unheard of in the publishing industry, for a 55-year-old novel to register sales of this magnitude. And what’s even more remarkable is that this is even more than the book sold in 1957 . . . when it was a best seller!”

In addition, Penguin’s new “Atlas Shrugged” iPad app recently won the Publishing Innovation Award for best app in the fiction category.

“Atlas Shrugged” is a mystery story about the disappearance of America’s great thinkers, industrialists, inventors and artists. Its theme is the role of the mind in man’s existence. A philosophical novel of breathtaking scope, “Atlas Shrugged” has been embraced, in recent years, by people looking for answers to the problems of an ever-expanding federal government.

# # #

Come on, duh — the Tea Party has been a very popular thing in certain quarters over the last couple of years. This is right up their alley. Think about this: Ayn Rand is selling right now for the same reason Sarah Palin books sell. That, and the fact that some people probably confuse Ayn and Rand Paul.

So stick that in your Objectivist pipe and smoke it. Just be sure to do so in the designated smoking area, well away from the building.

Frum on why GOP leaders don’t trust Gingrich

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This is from a piece that David Frum wrote for CNN:

“Why liberals oppose a strong American presence in space.”

That was the title of the very first speech by Newt Gingrich I ever attended, all the way back in the winter of 1983. The event was the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.

The speech hit the two great themes that have characterized Gingrich’s career to this day: enthusiasm for grandiose ideas — wrapped in rancor, division and name-calling…

… to Gingrich, such substantive issues were not the stuff of campaign politics. Campaign politics was about finding ways to define your opponent as alien, hostile and dangerous. The definition need not correspond to any actual real-world problem…

Frum concluded by saying those who care about the party’s chances — and who know better — aren’t going to sit still and let Gingrich lead the party to ruin:

He is a candidate of talk-show hosts and local activists — and of course of Rick Perry and Sarah Palin — but not of those who know him best and have worked with him most closely. Gingrich may raise more money after his South Carolina win. But prediction: Romney will raise even more, among the great national network of Republicans who recognize that to nominate Gingrich is to commit party suicide.

Of course, Frum wrote that without  having seen the latest Rasmussen numbers out of Florida.

The people who are surging for Gingrich only want to know what the party establishment thinks for one purpose: So that they can do the opposite.

What “rights”? What is it that you’ve lost?

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It always stumps me when libertarians say things like this:

SPARTANBURG — Madison Evans cupped her cell phone with her sparkly blue fingernails and shot photos of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas during a campaign stop here Tuesday.

“It’s the first time I’ve seen him, and it’s awesome,” said Evans, a 20-year-old Greenville waitress, subtly bouncing on her tiptoes with excitement.

“We young people are awake,” said Evans, who posts articles about the long-shot Republican presidential candidate on Facebook daily. “We are all a big family when it comes to Paul. He’s talking about peace. He’s talking about giving us back our rights that have been stripped from us.”

Let’s run that last bit again:

He’s talking about giving us back our rights that have been stripped from us.

Say what? I have no idea what she’s talking about. What rights? What happened? Who’s bothering you now, dear?

This is why I’m not a libertarian. These things that bother them so much are not even visible to me. I don’t feel harried, picked on, bullied. Government in no way threatens me. I marvel at these people (the Paulistas) who think it threatens THEM. People who don’t get it that they are the government, who instead see as something OUT THERE menacing them.

I ask again, what rights that have been stripped from you? What is that you used to have, and don’t have now? To me, that sort of statement demands explication, but to Paulistas, it’s just an article of faith. They don’t have to explain, because they all FEEL it. They are put-upon, picked on, by the big, bad “they” out there.

And I don’t know what the stimulus is that provokes that response.

What’s up between Jim DeMint and Ron Paul?

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A normally very knowledgeable Republican told me recently that Warren Tompkins’ decision to back Mitt Romney was a signal to the base that Jim DeMint, despite his public neutrality, was really for Romney.

Why, I asked, didn’t DeMint just come out for Romney the way he did four years ago? The answer: It was OK four years ago to support the author of Romneycare. But not now, when the GOP is defining itself in terms of its staunch belief that Obamacare — which was based on Romneycare — is the end of the world as we know it.

Interesting thesis.

But if it’s true, how come DeMint keeps saying all these nice things about Ron Paul? Check out the video above, or this from earlier this month:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said Wednesday the Republican presidential candidates need to listen to Ron Paul and would benefit from integrating some of his libertarian ideas into their platform.

“One of the things that’s hurt the so-called conservative alternative is saying negative things about Ron Paul,” DeMint told conservative radio host Laura Ingraham. “I’d like to see a Republican Party that embraces a lot of the libertarian ideas.”…

DeMint said he does not agree with the Texas congressman on everything but that the rest of the GOP presidential field should capture some of what Paul’s been talking about for years because the Republican Party “needs” the libertarian movement.

“You don’t have to agree with everything he’s saying, but if the other candidates miss some of the wisdom about what he’s saying about monetary policy … that will be to our detriment,” DeMint said…

So what’s up with that?

3 SC state senators endorse Ron Paul, who talks about how great Nullification would be for SC

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Ron Paul in the State House lobby today with Sens. Verdin, Bryant, Bright and Davis.

Which is not usually the kind of event I turn out for, but it was my first chance to see Ron Paul in person. This time around, anyway (and maybe ever; I’m not sure).

To end the suspense — he looks just the way he does on TV, like the cranky crazy uncle who sits in the corner and only occasionally says cryptic things.

Not to insult him. You can look like that and be a great guy; that’s just the way he looks. Lord knows how I’d get described if I were running for president. I’m often shocked at photos of myself.

Anyway, the news was that three SC state senators were joining their colleague Tom Davis in endorsing Dr. Paul. They were:

Danny Verdin from Greenville and Laurens counties, chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. He said he’d “never heard a message that… resonated in my heart more.”

Lee Bright of Spartanburg. I seem to recall him supporting Michele Bachmann earlier. “Dr. Ron Paul is conservative in all areas,” he said, unlike all those other candidates who are only “conservative” here and there, in spots. “… and he says what he believes.”

Kevin Bryant of Anderson, whom you may know as one of the first lawmakers to take up blogging. He quoted Goldwater: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice,” and went on to say “We’re going to have to do some extreme things to turn around America.”

For his part, Dr. Paul expressed his gratitude. In response to a question, standing in the presence of a likeness of John C. Calhoun, he said that nullification is still a viable idea, at least academically. And he almost wistfully longed for it to be a fact. While he doubted it would be often used (he don’t know us very well, do he?), he thought it would be great for South Carolina to be able to exercise that power. This helps explain why Sen. Bright is backing him.

I want to go back and listen to my recording and get that verbatim for you, but I’ll have to do it later. Gotta go see Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee (yes, Huck!), and possibly others, at another event. The subject is foreign policy.

In an interesting parallel, Tom Davis backs Ron Paul

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Tom Davis signs on with Ron Paul.

Earlier this evening, Sen. Tom Davis put out this release:

SENATOR TOM DAVIS ENSORSES RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT“It’s easy to campaign on lower taxes, less spending and fewer regulations – it’s another thing entirely to stand up for these limited government principles when the entire Washington establishment is aligned against you. Yet for more than three decades Ron Paul has cast thousands of lonely votes in our nation’s capital based on the constitutional principles that this country was founded on – and that the Republican Party has promised to protect. Yet while generations of politicians – including far too many Republicans – were losing their way or caving to the status quo, Ron Paul was standing as a Tea Party of one against a towering wave of red ink.”
“2012 marks the fifth consecutive year in which the federal government is going to spend well over $1 trillion in money it doesn’t have. Each and every American taxpayer is now on the hook for $135,000 worth of federal debt – and last year’s debt deal adds another $7 trillion in deficit spending over the coming decade. Meanwhile the U.S. Senate hasn’t passed a budget in nearly 1,000 days.”

“I’m endorsing Ron Paul because enough is enough. Despite this wave of unprecedented government spending, our unemployment rate has remained above 8 percent for the last 34 months and 146.4 million Americans – one out of every two people in this country – are now classified as poor or low-income.”

“Government activism and government intervention clearly hasn’t fixed our economy – which is why the Republican Party needs a nominee who isn’t wedded to that failed approach. We won’t chart a path to fiscal solvency or victory in November by running toward the failed ideas of the left – we will achieve those victories by returning to the principles that the Republican Party once stood for.”

“That is why I am proud to endorse Ron Paul for president.”

“Ron Paul’s record matches his rhetoric, his fiscal plan matches the fiscal challenges that our nation is facing and his movement represents the taxpayers whose interests have been ignored in the political process for far too long.”

“I’m also endorsing him because unlike what the pundits have led you to believe, he is the candidate who gives the Republican Party the best chance to beat Barack Obama in November.”

“We have a choice: We can keep electing candidates who talk about change only during political campaigns as a way to get elected, or we can finally elect a candidate who will walk the walk and make that change a reality – restoring our bottom line, our individual liberties and our national pride in the process.”

To learn more about Senator Tom Davis visit www.senatortomdavis.com

My first thought was “Wow.” I’ve always liked Tom and have a lot of respect for him, and even though he worked for Mark Sanford all those years and was so close to him, I never regarded him as being nearly as much of a radical libertarian as the former governor. But with this move, he has exceeded his friend in that regard.

But you know what? In his own way, he has done much the same thing that The State did in endorsing Jon Huntsman. Yes, in one regard he did the polar opposite — Ron Paul is the last of the GOP candidates that The State, or I, would endorse. As Cindi Scoppe wrote:

Like any libertarian, Ron Paul embraces the worst positions of the far right and the far left: no social safety net, unregulated markets, an isolationist foreign policy and no moral standards. He is the candidate for those who refuse to accept that they are part of a society and can’t see how much their vision of a crippled government would hurt all of us, themselves included.

But in another sense, the two endorsements were alike.

Surely Tom knows that Ron Paul will never be the Republican nominee for president just as well as The State knew that this was not to be for Huntsman this year. But he went with the candidate he thought it should be, rather than the candidate that it would be. So good for him.

Oh, and lucky Tom. As hopeless as his candidate’s cause is, at least he won’t embarrass Tom by suddenly pulling out. Ron Paul’s candidacy is forever.

All in the family now.

Ayn Rand is alive and well in the Club for Growth

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It’s been really interesting to see his rivals tear into Mitt Romney for being some sort of heartless capitalist. And it’s been equally interesting to see the Mark Sanford wing of the GOP defend him.

I didn’t have time this morning to finish reading the front-page piece in The Wall Street Journal (which unfortunately is hiding behind the pay wall) about this phenomenon, but I can share with you this release from the Club for Growth:

Statement On Newt Gingrich’s Attacks On Mitt Romney And Bain Capital
Club for Growth President Chris Chocola: “Newt Gingrich should stop his attacks on free markets and apologize to Governor Romney for them”

Washington, DC – The Club for Growth PAC issued the following statement today in reaction to Speaker Newt Gingrich’s attacks on Governor Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital. Yesterday, Gingrich said “Those of us who believe in free markets and those of us who believe that in fact the whole goal of investment is entrepreneurship and job creation…we find it pretty hard to justify rich people figuring out clever legal ways to loot a company, leaving behind 1,700 families without a job.” (Source: New York Times, 1/8/11) Gingrich’s attack was echoed that same day that by the Democratic National Committee, which also attacked Romney for his job creation record at Bain Capital. (Source: Democratic National Committee YouTube Page, 1/8/12)

“Newt Gingrich’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital are disgusting,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. “There are a number of issues for Mitt Romney’s Republican opponents to attack him for, but attacking him for making investments in companies to create a profit for his investors is just wrong. Because of the efforts of Bain Capital, major companies like Staples, Domino’s Pizza, and the Sports Authority now employ thousands of people and have created billions in wealth in the private economy. Attacking Governor Romney for participating in free-market capitalism is just beyond the pale for any purported ‘Reagan Conservative.’ Newt Gingrich should stop his attacks on free markets and apologize to Governor Romney for them.”

Ayn Rand, high priestess of the cult of Self, may be technically dead, but who needs her when we have the Club?

No word, by the way, on whether Chris Chocola is related to the Count. Probably not, given the spelling difference.

Ex-GOP candidate boasts of high ACLU rating. No, really.

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Seeing as how I’m old enough to remember the epithet, “card-carrying member of the ACLU,” I was a bit taken aback by this release from erstwhile GOP presidential candidate wannabe Gary Johnson:

GOVERNOR GARY JOHNSON TOPS OBAMA, PAUL ON ACLU CONSTITUTIONAL REPORT CARD
Liberty Watch Scorecard

January 3, 2012, Santa Fe, NM — Former New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson ranks highest of all major presidential candidates in a “Liberty Watch” report card just released by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU report ranked candidates according to their positions on issues of civil liberties and adherence to the Constitution.
Johnson ranked higher than both President Obama and Texas Congressman Ron Paul in the ACLU Liberty Watch ratings. The report card included candidates’ positions on issues ranging from immigration to gay rights to a woman’s right to choose.
On the ACLU Liberty Watch website, ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said, “Republican-turned-Libertarian Gary Johnson scored even better than Paul, Huntsman and Obama, earning four and three torches on most major issues. They stand in stark contrast to the other major GOP candidates, three of whom — Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum — didn’t earn a single torch in any of the seven major categories.”
The full Liberty Watch Report Card can be viewed at www.aclulibertywatch.org.

There’s an explanation. It seems that over the holidays when I wasn’t paying attention (OK, I admit I never was actually paying attention to Gov. Johnson, but last week I was like in negative Johnson-attention mode), the candidate gave up on running as a Republican, and is now seeking the Libertarian Party nod.

Which explains a lot.

Before, he was a Republican. Now, he’s more down on the two-party system than… well,  than an UnPartisan. Dig the fund-raising pitch on his site:

Everybody says they want a viable alternative to America’s two-party chokehold.
Everybody — Meet Gary Johnson.
The two-party is over.
See what I mean?

N.H. paper says ‘Ron Paul is a dangerous man’

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This just in from The Slatest:

Things are going well for Ron Paul in Iowa, but the GOP hopeful may not get as warm of welcome in New Hampshire – at least if one of the state’s more influential newspapers gets its way.

The New Hampshire Union Leader ran on op-ed Thursday from its publisher trashing Paul for his “warped” views on national security and foreign policy and calling him the “favored candidate of the lunatic fringe,” which includes “white supremacists, anti-Semites, [and] truthers.”

“Ron Paul is a dangerous man,” the anti-endorsement begins. It ends: “His defenders say they admire Ron Paul’s ‘consistency.’ It is true, Paul has been consistently spouting this nonsense. It is about time New Hampshire voters showed him the door.”

The paper endorsed Newt Gingrich back in November. You can read the Paul piece here.

Of course, the Union-Leader isn’t exactly known for toeing the mildest of lines itself.

But what about that really out there stuff that appeared in Paul’s newsletters over the years? I’d be curious to know how Doug Ross and other Paulistas around here react to that stuff.

Farewell, Earthlings: Nothing like an emotionally unstable country with nuclear weapons

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So supposedly the Dear Leader died Saturday morning, and it took state television until Sunday night to announce it. Why the delay? I suspect it may be that it took the newsreader that long to rehearse making the announcement while sounding grief-stricken.

Why would I suggest that she, and the hundreds of other North Koreans we’ve seen exhibiting ridiculous, over-the-top grief behavior could be faking it?

Because the alternative doesn’t bear thinking about: The idea that a whole country, and one with nuclear weapons, could be this emotionally messed up.

I mean, look at the guy. And review anything you know about him, starting with the way he has kept in country in a perpetual dark age (literally dark in the sense that it is so primitive, it stands out from space at night because of the lack of electric lights). For years, the Chinese have been pressing him to follow their model — continued political oppression, but increased wealth for citizens — but he and his regime said “no dice.” He preferred for his people to suffer in every way.

And again, as I said look at the guy. What a loser. Sure, we westerners may be superficial, with our penchant for electing people who are taller and have good hair, but this is ridiculous. No self-respecting free country would ever elect a guy who looks like this. Far as I’m concerned, The Economist famously said it all several years ago, with its best cover ever.

Basically, this was a guy with no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Or if he had any, he kept them carefully hidden.

If the grief is sincere, then this is the most extreme mass case of Stockholm Syndrome ever. And that’s troubling.

How is Newt Gingrich like Alvin Greene?

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Slate examines the subject of whether Newt Gingrich is more than merely an excitable boy:

Is Newt Nuts?

Consider the symptoms: Bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, impulsiveness, spending sprees …

… We’re quick to describe politicians whose views we find extreme or whose behavior seems odd as “crazy,” and perhaps anyone who runs for president in some sense is. But I’ve long wondered whether Newt Gingrich merits that designation in a more clinical sense. I’m not a psychiatrist, of course, and it’s impossible to diagnose someone at a distance. Without medical records that he hasn’t released, we can’t know whether Gingrich may have inherited his mother’s manic depression. Nevertheless, one observes in the former House Speaker certain symptoms—bouts of grandiosity, megalomania, irritability, racing thoughts, spending sprees—that go beyond the ordinary politician’s normal narcissism.

One possibility is that Newt suffers, and benefits from, the milder affliction of hypomania. In his 2005 book The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (a Little) Craziness and (a Lot of) Success in America, John D. Gartner, a Johns Hopkins psychiatrist, argues that this form of extreme optimism explains the achievements of everyone from Christopher Columbus to Andrew Carnegie. Gartner writes: “Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas. They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with questions ‘just doesn’t get it.’” Hypomanics lack discipline, act on impulse, suffer from over-confidence, and often lack judgment.

Is Newt delusional? Yes… except… the world keeps conforming itself to his delusions, making them reality.

I mean, he was crazy to run… I mean, come on, a guy with his baggage? But now he’s the frontrunner.

He had the same thing happen in the early 90s. He was the mad insurgent, the bomb-throwing back-bencher who thought he was born to rule — but he became speaker. The world changed in order to fit his megalomaniacal delusion.

It’s kind of like the Alvin Greene phenomenon. He was crazy to run, right? But he won. So who’s crazy?

Newt has GOP establishment sweating bullets

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Peggy Noonan does a good job today of telling us just how uneasy the GOP establishment is about the rise of Newt Gingrich:

… What they fear is that he will show just enough discipline over the next few months, just enough focus, to win the nomination. And then, in the fall of 2012, once party leaders have come around and the GOP is fully behind him, he will begin baying at the moon. He will start saying wild things and promising that he may bomb Iran but he may send a special SEAL team in at night to secretly dig Iran up, and fly it to Detroit, where we can keep it under guard, and Detroiters can all get jobs as guards, “solving two problems at once.” They’re afraid he’ll start saying, “John Paul was great, but most of that happened after I explained the Gospels to him,” and “Sure, Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize, but only after I explained how people can think fast, slow and at warp speed. He owes me everything.”

There are many good things to say about Newt Gingrich. He is compelling and unique, and, as Margaret Thatcher once said, he has “tons of guts.”

But this is a walk on the wild side.

She also understands that the fact that Newt makes the GOP establishment very nervous is a plus for him with the GOP base. Quite a little self-destructive spiral they have going in that party, huh? If the grownups, who’ve been there and know better, say, “Don’t do it!” they just can’t wait to rush in…