Oh bother

Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel? That's the wackiest idea I've heard all day, and I've heard about plans for a Winnie the Pooh live-action movie. But then again, it's Trump we're talking about, so it could wind up that Winnie the Pooh gets named ambassador and Huckabee will get his head stuck in a honey pot.

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The Republican debate: Just the abortion bits

I’m going to confine my discussion of the Republican debate to one issue and two candidates who pulled talking points from their ass and pretended they were science.

Scott Walker supported his position opposing abortions even to save the life of the mother by flat-out denying that that ever comes up, claiming that “there are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven.”

Huckabee, who is actually saner than Walker in allowing for a life of the mother exemption, thinks that “now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception. The reason we know that it is is because of the DNA schedule that we now have clear scientific evidence on.”

“DNA schedule” is not a thing.

The Huckster also thinks fetuses have 5th and 14th Amendment rights and the president can just “invoke” those rights to declare abortion banned. Which is insane on so many levels. Beyond the lunacy of treating embryos and fetuses as legal people, those amendments limit governments and only governments. Oh, and the 14th amendment applies to US citizens, which it defines as “All persons born or naturalized in the United States”. Born, you peckerwood roadkill-eater.

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Out-of-context Quote of the Day from the Republican Convention

Mike Huckabee: “I was in college before I found out it isn’t supposed to hurt when you take a shower.”

History takes a long time for us to reach (Updated, with a scurrilous calumny)

Follow-up: Sgt Evan Vela (see previous post) sentenced to 10 years.

Secretary of War Robert Gates spoke at the Munich Conference on Security Policy today. A Russian member of parliament asked him in the Q&A whether the US hadn’t created its own problem in Afghanistan by funding the mujahedeen. Gates responded, “If we bear a particular responsibility for the role of the mujahedeen and Al Qaeda growing up in Afghanistan, it has more to do with our abandonment of the country in 1989 than our assistance of it in 1979.” So the lesson is, once you intervene in another country, you have to keep doing so, forever.

Bush was interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox today (taped Friday).

CONVINCING TO CONVINCE: He said that McCain is a true conservative, that “His principles are sound and solid as far as I’m concerned,” but “if John is the nominee, he has got some convincing to do to convince people that he is a solid conservative.”

Speaking of solid, he says that Huckabee was fat and now isn’t, which is why he’d also be a good president. Or something: “I remember Mike when he weighed a lot and I’ll never forget getting off at the airplane and there he was at the foot of Air Force One and I couldn’t recognize him. And the reason I bring that up is he’s disciplined.”

He refused to believe that any Republican candidate could possibly disagree with him: “I’m sure that you can find quotes from people running for office that sound like they’re at odds with me.” What about Huckabee’s remark that Bush’s foreign policy showed an arrogant bunker mentality? “I think he has tried to walk back that position.”

But in the end, it all comes down to, um, reality: “And I confident that the nominee will be the person who is capable of assuring the American people, one, the reality, I see the reality. And secondly, I’ve got a plan to deal with it.”

On Barack Obama: “I certainly don’t know what he believes in.”

(Update: the Fox transcript is atrocious, getting curiously opaque when Bush fires this scurrilous calumny at Obama: “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and break the Mani Mijad (ph). I think (INAUDIBLE) that in a press conference.” The WaPo is clearer: “The only foreign policy thing I remember he said was he’s going to attack Pakistan and embrace Ahmadinejad.”)

On why it’s pointless to try to make rich people pay their taxes: “I promise you the Democrat party is going to field a candidate who says I’m going to raise your tax. If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.”

SUCCESS, YOU SAY? WHY THAT’S SO CRAZY, IT JUST MIGHT WORK! “You know, I met with General Petraeus when I was in Kuwait on my trip to the Middle East. And my message to the general was, success is paramount. And therefore, whatever you recommend, make it based upon the need to succeed.”

OR NOT: “But I will listen, give them careful consideration and make up my mind. But it is going to based upon whether or not we can succeed or not.”

ON WATERBOARDING PAST: “First of all, whatever we have done was legal...”

AND FUTURE: “...and whatever decision I will make will be reviewed by the Justice Department to determine whether or not the legality is there.”

A FAIR QUESTION: “And for those who criticize what we did in the past, I ask them, which attack would they rather have not permitted - stopped? Which attack on America did they - would they have said, well, you know, maybe it wasn’t all that important that we stop those attacks.”

ABUNDANTLY CLEAR TO NERVOUS NATIONS: “In my trip to the Middle East I made it abundantly clear to nervous nations that Iran is a threat. And that’s what the NIE said if you read it carefully.” However, “the NIE sends mixed signals.”

OUR GOAL IN IRAN: “To pressure them to the point where we hope somebody rational shows up and says, OK, it’s not worth it anymore.”

HISTORIOGRAPHY: “it’s very hard to write the future history of America before the current history hasn’t been fully written.” So true. “And as far as history goes and all of these quotes about people trying to guess what the history of the Bush administration is going to be, you know, I take great comfort in knowing that they don’t know what they are talking about, because history takes a long time for us to reach.”

BOOKS THAT HAVE WRITTEN: “There just isn’t - objective history. I don’t know how many books that have written about my administration, probably more than any other president, which actually says I’m doing something.” He’s said this before; he really believes there are more books about him than about Lincoln or JFK or FDR, because he’s just that important.

Asked what advice he might give his successor: “Rely upon a higher power to help you through the day.” He makes being president sound exactly like working a 12-step program.

Caption contest:

It makes a lot of sense to make sure that we can grow our own food

Name of the day: State Department spokesman Karl Duckworth.

The US is down to its last World War I veteran, one Frank Buckles, 107. Germany’s last survivor died last month.

Mike Huckabee penned a typically subtle editorial for the Jerusalem Post. He writes that on one of his trips to Israel to convert the heathen or pray for the End of Days or whatever it is that keeps him going back so many times (possibly it’s the falafel) (they don’t really have falafel in Arkansas), he took his 11-year-old daughter to Yad Vashem, where they “faced the grimly surreal pictures from Dachau and Auschwitz” (Huckabee doesn’t know what the word “surreal” actually means). Little Sarah wrote in the guest book, “Why didn’t somebody do something?” “[W]ith those words,” The Huck says, “I knew that, in her own way, she ‘got it.’ Unfortunately, some in America, even some running for president, don’t get it. Those who don’t understand that the war in Iraq is a critical part of the war on terror, don’t get it.” And they secretly love the Nazis. Especially Obama.

Yesterday, Bush showed his continuing relevancy by meeting a NASCAR prize winner. Today, he met a hockey team, the Anaheim Ducks, who won the Stanley Cup. “These Ducks are awfully mighty,” he said.


He also attended the swearing-in of the new Agriculture Secretary, Ed WhoCaresWhatHisNameIsHe’llBeGonePrettySoon. Ed, Bush says, “understands what I know -- it makes a lot of sense to make sure that we can grow our own food. It’s in our national security interest that we’re self-sufficient in food.” And how do we do that? By exporting it. “The best way to keep the ag economy growing is to open up new markets for America’s crops and farm products around the world.” Also, by having them grow things that aren’t food: “I’d much rather our farmers be growing energy than trying to buy from other parts of the world.”

See, and you thought Bush didn’t have a rational agricultural policy.


He warned against farm legislation currently before Congress. “It seems like to us it lacks reform”. You may think that sentences like that show a certain carelessness, but quite the contrary: every word is painstakingly evaluated, then carefully written down, each one on a separate piece of paper. The pieces of paper are then randomly drawn out of a hat to produce the Bush syntax we all enjoy so much.

Republican Debate: You can’t have a president who sees a whole bunch of America as invisible

Transcript.

5:06 McCain: “Let’s have some straight talk...” Oh, let’s.

Speaking of catch-phrases, with Giuliani out of the race we need never hear “The Terrorists’ War on Us” again.

Huckabee thinks Congress has been betraying Reagan’s principles by increasing the deficit. Does Huckles remember the 1980s?

Huckabee: “It’s not gonna get better unless we have some serious leadership in Washington that says that we’re going to have to start having policies that touch the people not just at the top but the people at the bottom.” Well, that’s just kinky.

Defending his record as governor against McCain, Romney says several times that “facts are stubborn things.” Given that they’re in the Reagan (snicker) Library – and that’s actually it’s official name, the Reagan (snicker) Library – shouldn’t he repeat the Great Communicator’s phrase “facts are stupid things”?


Huckabee, wistfully, wishes that Rush Limbaugh loved him as much as he loves Rush.

Romney: they don’t call it America warming, they call it global warming.

Huckles thinks people will spend the stimulus plan’s tax rebates on “shoes that they probably don’t even need” (in Arkansas, shoes are considered a luxury item), and that shoe will probably come from China.

McCain: “When a town on Norway is somehow affected by the housing situation in the United States of America, we’ve gotten ourselves into a very interesting dilemma.” Says a mortgage should be one page long and in big letters at the bottom say “I understand this document.”


McCain: “I’m tired of borrowing money from China.” As Samuel Johnson said, when you’re tired of borrowing money from China, you’re tired of life.

McCain repeatedly refuses to answer whether he would still vote for his own 2006 immigration plan, saying it wouldn’t come up for a vote now.

Romney: “It’s important that we, as Republicans, stay in the house that Reagan built.” Absolutely: someone nail the doors shut.

By the way, the major advertiser on CNN for this debate: the coal industry.


There was much back and forth over whether Romney last April was advocating a timetable for withdrawal of troops from Iraq when he said, “Well, there’s no question that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about, but those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone.” McCain has been attacking this, not for the idea of a secret timetable being monumentally silly, but for suggesting that there might actually be a time when we leave Iraq. McC: “If we weren’t leaving, how could the enemy lay in the weeds?” He also repeats, over and over and over, that timetables was a “buzzword” for withdrawal. Romney says the Washington Post “gave you three Pinocchios” for making that claim.


The Huck hopes we won’t be in Iraq for 100 years like McCain says we should be, but “we need to leave with victory, and we need to leave with honor.”

Huckles says if we leave prematurely, “It will erupt in a completely destabilized environment into which that vacuum is exactly the kind of situation that al Qaeda can build a strong base.” Put “in other words” at the start of that sentence, and it’s an almost classic Bushism.

McCain is still touting the judgement that led him to say that Rumsfeld was incompetent. Way to set a high standard.

Romney says that people prefer governors as presidents rather than senators because “They’re actually leading something.”

Mittens says one of his two great regrets in life (he doesn’t say what the other one is) is that he didn’t serve in the military, which he’d “love” to have done. I’m sure everyone who did go to Vietnam just “loved” it.

Curiously enough, it’s one of McCain’s two great regrets in life that he wasn’t a Mormon missionary in the south of France. I see a wacky Disney switcheroo movie in the offing.


COMPETITION: What might the other great regret in Romney’s life be? Polygamy jokes will be disallowed as too easy. Let me start you off: He always wished he could be a real boy.

Romney says that Lincoln wasn’t a military expert either, and he turned out all right. Twitt: Lincoln was a captain in the Illinois militia.

Huckleberry: “You can’t have a president who sees a whole bunch of America as invisible.”

Would Reagan endorse you? Mittens: yes. McCain: yes. Paul: probably, because he was in favor of the gold standard too. Huckabee: Well, I would endorse Reagan. “Reagan was something more than just a policy wonk.” Yes, yes he was.

A bit of an overreach

Huckabee went from talk show to talk show this morning, trying to explain that what he really meant when he said in the last debate that Iraq might still have had WMDs was that Iraq might still have had WMDs. He admitted “I don’t have any evidence,” but the guy who doesn’t believe in evolution hardly requires any evidence to suggest that they might be in Syria or “some remote area of Jordan.” “But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach.” He added that “My point was, Saddam Hussein bragged that he had them. We know that he in the past had used them. So there have been weapons of mass destruction. ... They didn’t exist when we got into Iraq, but that didn’t mean they never were there.” Oh, don’t you try to get out of this with your clever verb tenses, mister.


He added that Bush “didn’t lie to us. ... I support that the president did what he believed was necessary. ... But to second guess the president now, I think, is really not a very prudent thing to do. It doesn’t make us feel any better.” Define “us,” Mike. He likened such second-guessing to Monday-morning-quarterbacking, saying “But when you’re out there on the game, and guys that are weighing 320 pounds are rushing at you, you know, you have to make split-second decisions. And sometimes they’re not always perfect.” Of course there may not have been any 320-pound guys, or they may have been in Syria or some remote area of Jordan...

By the way, this week he’s said that he’s afraid of 320-pound football players and of Chuck Norris kicking him in the head. Also cheese, he has an unnatural fear of cheese. My point is: for him, fear is as an acceptable excuse for bad decision-making, which just doesn’t bode all that well for his own decision-making process (plus, of course, the decision to invade Iraq was not made in a split-second).

He concluded, “I think what we’ve got to do is to say, let’s make the best of what we have in Iraq.” Yeah, let’s do that.

Elsewhere, Romney said that McCain is “trying desperately to change the topic from the economy and trying to get back to Iraq.” Indeed, McCain told Tim Russert,

I believe that most Republicans’ first priority is the threat of radical Islamic extremism. Now, I know the concerns about the economy...

MR. RUSSERT: More than the economy?

SEN. McCAIN: More than the economy at the end of the day.

And he told a campaign rally, “There’s going to be other wars.” Oh good, something to look forward to, then.


McCain’s campaign promises: pizza and the draft.

Republican debate: Just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t mean that it wasn’t planted

Florida debate. No transcript that I can find.

McCain denies having said that he still needs (at age 72) to be educated on economics. Which he did say. Claims he is “well-versed on economics”.


Ron Paul says that we are literally spending ourselves into oblivion. Brian Williams a couple of minutes later says that American banks are turning to foreign investors literally to stay afloat. If I hear the word literally misused one more time my head will figuratively explode.

Sorry. Pet peeve.

McCain brings up the “bridge to nowhere” over and over.


The Huck says that just because we didn’t find WMDs in Iraq “doesn’t mean they weren’t there. Just because you didn’t find every Easter egg didn’t mean that it wasn’t planted.” Although sooner or later those Easter eggs, like Bush’s justifications for the war, do start to rot.


The Huckster is allowed to get away with claiming that his proposed “fair tax” is 23% rather than 30%. He also says that more money you earn, the more the IRS and the government want from you. No one came forth to defend the principle of progressivity, of those able to pay more paying more.

Romney (in a blue suit with a blue tie against a blue background which over the course of the evening he seemed to melt into) (why does the suit look so much darker in all these pictures?) says that all the great progress in Iraq did not come from “General Hillary Clinton.” Which sounds like barely disguised sexism, but not in a way you could quite pin down, so he’ll get away with it.


McCain says the D’s would “raise the white flag” in Iraq, says it was totally worth every single dead American soldier.

The Huck, in a question to Romney about gun control, refers to “so-called assault weapons.” Romney promises never to support gun control legislation again.

Mittens flat out refuses to say how much of his fortune he’s putting into the race.


Just like Obama said in the last D debate that no one in all of America would refuse to vote for him because of his race, Mittens says no one in all of America would refuse to vote for him because of his religion. The Constitution says there shall be no religious tests, so it’s against the law for any voter to consider his Mormonism. Or something.

Romney says “the idea of Bill Clinton back in the White House with nothing to do is something I can’t imagine.” Which sounds like a barely disguised crack about Bill’s likin’ for the ladies, but not in a way you could quite pin down, so he’ll get away with it.

Mittens: Hillary takes her inspiration from the Europe of old (or possibly the Europe of Olde), Big Brother, Big Government...

Huckleberry says that he didn’t object when Chuck Norris said that McCain is too old to be president because Chuck can kick him in the head.

McCain says he’ll send Sylvester Stallone (who evidently just endorsed him, and has a new Rambo movie coming out) to beat up Chuck Norris. And by gum he’ll send Norman Schwarzkopf too.


McCain, in response to a question about his temper, which I think came from an email and not from the fact that McCain just threatened to send a 61-year old and a 73-year old to beat up a 67-year old, says temper what temper and claims to have lots of friends and adds that he admires the way Giuliani “led this country” after 9/11.

We didn’t have a political discussion, we had a discussion on what’s best for America

An Afghan court has sentenced journalism student Sayad Parwez Kambaksh to death for blasphemy (after a rapid trial in which he had no lawyer) for downloading material about the role of women in Muslim societies. The re-Talibanization continues apace.

Speaking of re-Talibanization, Mike Huckabee compares “the seculars” to Nazis.

Bush met with a tammany of mayors today. “I’ve often said being mayor is a lot tougher than being President -- I don’t have to fill the potholes and empty the garbage.” I’ve tried to think of a joke about that without much success (the best being that if you think filling potholes is tougher than being president, you’re not doing it right). The problem is that I keep getting mental images of Bush emptying garbage and filling potholes, and I go to my happy place.

Bush said, “We didn’t have a political discussion, we had a discussion on what’s best for America, particularly given the economic uncertainty we face.” Yeah, “uncertainty,” that’s what it has. Here’s another picture (from yesterday) of Treasury Secretary Paulson’s “uncertainty”:


But here’s my point, George: if the #1 politician in America considers “a political discussion” as being the opposite of “a discussion on what’s best for America,” you’re not doing it right.

This is what a discussion on what’s best for America looks like

The point of the discussion (on what’s best for America) was to enlist the mayors in the push to ratify free-trade deals with Colombia and other countries because “It certainly doesn’t make any sense to say in a country like Colombia, your goods can come in our way, but our goods can’t come your way -- being treated the same way.” No, it certainly doesn’t make any sense to say that, George. Maybe if we try it IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, they’re not treating us the way we’re treating them.”

Huckabee’s action steps; Giuliani’s secret weapon is revealed

Rudy is fighting back against the Chuck Norris Factor by finding his own celebrity endorser. I got an email today from the Giuliani campaign from... Jon Voight. I knew Rudy reminded me of someone: Ratso Rizzo.

I’ve been skimming Mike Huckabee’s 2007 book From Hope to Higher Ground, and honestly it isn’t interesting enough to provide decent fodder for blog-mockery. There’s a defense of Wal-Mart as empowering consumers. There’s a brief defense of his role in Wayne Dumond’s parole, which inaccurately describes Dumond’s victim as Bill Clinton’s cousin, and says mysteriously that he intervened in the case because he “received information that gave me reason to consider commuting his sentence to time served.” There’s a mention of his 2006 visit to Guantanamo; he decries the “unspeakable degradations that are put upon them day in and day out”. The guards, of course, not the prisoners.

The best bits are the “12 action steps” at the end of each chapter. His “12 Action Steps to STOP Being a Selfish Citizen” include 1) Pray before meals, 3) Attend church, synagogue, or house of worship at least once a week, 6) Read a chapter in the Book of Proverbs each day. Also, 10) Buy Girl Scout cookies.

I checked the book out of the library (you didn’t think I’d buy it, did you?) for the chapter on thinking vertically instead of horizontally, a bit of Huckabee rhetoric I’ve puzzled over before. “Thinking horizontally”, which is bad, is about perpetuating partisan and other divisions, but after reading a whole chapter it’s still not clear if “thinking vertically” is coded Christianity, as has been suggested, or if it has any content to it at all. “12 Action Steps to STOP Thinking Horizontally”: 1) Open doors for others, 3) Attend worship services every week, 8) Don’t use profanity, 12) Purchase some inexpensive umbrellas and give them to total strangers on a rainy day.

His “12 Action Steps to STOP Being Cynical” include 2) Read the Bible more; blogs less.

Hey!

Hezbollah’s leader says he found some shit in the attic, and he’s gonna put it on Ebay. Or something.

The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was.

In an interview with Beliefnet.com, Mike Huckabee tries to re-spin his view that we need to “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards” as being something other than writing his religion into the Constitution by banning gay marriage and abortion – why, he’s not proposing an amendment to require tithing! Although he says, “The Bible was not written to be amended. The Constitution was” (he’s never heard of the New Testament?), he claims that his religious views on these issues aren’t necessarily religious views: “I think that whether someone is a Christian or not, the idea that a human life has dignity and intrinsic worth should be clear enough. I don’t think a person has to be a person of faith to say that once you redefine a human life...” blah blah blah etc. But of course he is a “person of faith” and does derive his views of marriage and abortion from his religion and is trying to embed those views in the central document of the republic.

As for defining marriage as available only to heterosexual couples, why that’s just history, and “I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again.” The doggy door, presumably. How about a man and a woman, but the woman doesn’t submit graciously to her husband?

The Huck says that his run has made “people realize that Christians are real people and they have a real world view that’s defensible and intellectually sound”. Unlike, presumably, those who believe in evolution.

A wonder

Huckabee says he can appeal to South Carolina voters because when he was in college, he used to fry squirrels in his dorm room (was that at his Baptist college or the seminary?) in a popcorn popper. He does not say whether the squirrels’ deaths were natural or otherwise.

On the last stop of his tour of the Middle East, Bush was in Egypt today, meeting Hosni Mubarak. “You’ve got a great deal of experience,” he told the dictator, “and I appreciate you feeling comfortable in sharing that experience once again with me.”


Evidently Egyptians were upset that in Bush’s speech Sunday when he praised other Arab countries for their fake democratic reforms, he left out Egypt, so today he praised Egypt’s “steps toward... democratic reform,” but failed to say what those steps might be. He praised “the fact that women play an important role in your society... I do so because not only I’m a proud father of two young professional women...” And so the invoking of the names of Jenna and Not-Jenna set back the cause of women in the Middle East by twenty years.

He said that Lebanon should hold “immediate and unconditional presidential elections”.

THERE’S A WONDER: On the Israeli-Palestinian front, I told the President I’m going to stay -- there’s a wonder whether or not the American President, when he says something, whether he actually means it. When I say I’m coming back to stay engaged, I mean it.”


Finally, on the White House website Bush answered emailed questions from the general public, if by general public you mean Americans who think Bush is doing a great job and would like to know who picks out his ties and why don’t we just “invest in research to try to create some kind of big battery that would replace the use of oil.” Bush said he was glad to be getting home because “After all, there’s no better place to lay your head than in your own bed with people you love.” Oo, kinky.

Amending the Constitution so it’s in Huckabee’s God’s standards

Mike Huckabee: “I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”

I assume that’s about banning gay marriage, although perhaps he also favors a constitutional amendment requiring wives to “submit graciously” to their husbands.

Republican debate, wherein is revealed why marriage is an important institution

Republican debate, South Carolina, this time Fox generously allowed Ron Paul to participate, though they spent the whole evening asking him questions like, “Are you insane, or just a big ole loser? Thirty seconds, please.”

Paul was asked to disavow his supporters who believe 9/11 was a government conspiracy. He wouldn’t do it, although he did say that personally, “I’ve abandoned those viewpoints.”


What viewpoints has he not abandoned? Paul told his fellow candidates that they need to “understand the importance of Austrian theory of the business cycle.”

And that’s quite enough about Ron Paul.

McCain kept insisting that “I’m called the sheriff by my friends in the Senate who are the appropriators.” Of course, he’s from Arizona, where I belief it’s traditional for sheriffs to be batshit insane fascists. McCain added, holding back a tear, “and I didn’t win Miss Congeniality. And as president, I won’t win Miss Congeniality, either.” Will you settle for Sheriff Congeniality?


Huckabee said the Second Amendment is “just as precious” as the First. The precious, the precious... He was not asked if the 3rd Amendment was more or less precious.

Not having soldiers quartered on you.

You should know that, people.

There was a fascinating theological discussion over what would happen to Iranians who dared challenge the United States Navy. Huckabee said they should “be prepared that the next things you see will be the gates of Hell” while Thompson said, “I think one more step and they would have been introduced to those virgins that they’re looking forward to seeing.” Which is it, gentlemen, virgins or gates of hell?

McCain was asked what he would have done if he’d been the captain. “If I’d have been the captain of the ship, I probably would have assessed the situation as it was at the time.” All those years in the Navy really paid off, huh John?

Later, butting into a question about Israeli-Palestinian peace being answered by Ron Paul, McCain irrelevantly interjected, “Could I just make a comment? I’m not interested in trading with Al Qaida. All they want to trade is burkas. I don’t want to travel with them. They like one-way tickets.” Yeah, like your track record with landing planes is so great.


Twitt Romney said that foreign policy in the 20th century was like a game of checkers, but now it’s more like 3-dimensional chess. Which I think means the Vulcans are totally gonna beat our asses.

Wait, could Romney be a Vulcan? A Mormon Vulcan? Because that would explain a lot.

Romney: “My whole life has been about bringing change to things I have touched”. Um, eww.

Huckabee again cited Trucker’s Magazine, bragging about Arkansas’s improved roads. Also, “We had no bridges falling down in Arkansas.”

Asked about the thing about wives submitting graciously to their husbands, Huckabee complained that “everybody says religion is off limits, except we always can ask me the religious questions.” Yeah, funny that, reverend. And he said that his views about the inferiority of women (or wives, anyway) “has nothing to do with presidency.” And he objected to the rest of us even paying attention to something that “really was spoken to believers, to Christian believers.” How dare he not be left in hypocritical peace to say one thing to Christian believers, and another thing to the rest of us? He said that anyone who knows his wife, “I don’t think they for one minute think that she’s going to just sit by and let me do whatever I want to.” So I guess she’ll be going to the gates of hell for not submitting graciously, hmm reverend? And he claimed to have really meant that husbands and wives submit to each other. Which is not what he meant. At all. “Each partner gives 100 percent of their devotion to the other and that’s why marriage is an important institution, because it teaches us how to love.”


Thompson: “We need to be a nation of high fences and wide gates, and we get to decide when to open the gate and when to close it.” Fred gets hours of entertainment playing with his garage door opener.

Thompson says employers should be required “to use the modern technology that we have now so that they can, in effect, push a button on the front end and find out whether or not someone is legal”. So he wants to install buttons on aliens, is that it?


Huckabee says that it is possible to get rid of all 12 million illegal aliens: “People got themselves here, they can get themselves to the back of the line.” Boy, illegal aliens really do all the jobs Americans don’t want to do.

Can’t you keep it in your pants just this once, Rudy?

Republican debate: If you tell a half-truth as if it is the full truth, then it can become an untruth

Hillary’s new theme is the contrast between talkers (Obama) and doers. This seems a little dangerous, since Bill Clinton was very much a talker and very much (ahem) a doer. Sometimes both at once, if I remember the Starr Report correctly.

Another day, another presidential debate (at least it was just one today), this time without Ron Paul, kept out by Fox. Missed the little guy. He and Dennis Kucinich, who was excluded from the ABC debate yesterday, should have held their own debate.


Romney explained that one of “the great lessons of Ronald Reagan” is that cutting taxes grows the economy.

Romney seriously got in Huckabee’s face, demanding to know if Arkansas’s taxes went up while he was governor. Huckabee dodged (rather ineptly) four times before admitting that they indeed went up, blaming a court order forcing the state to improve education. “You know, education is a good thing for kids,” he informed Romney. Also roads. “People want roads,” he informed Romney. Especially roads leading the hell out of Arkansas. Later, when Romney tried to question him again, the Huckster refused to talk to him any more, and looking rigidly straight ahead, said, “I believe I’ll let Chris [Wallace] be the moderator here.”


Romney finds it “kind of offensive” that D’s are attacking corporations which are creating jobs (in yesterday’s debate, he demanded of McCain, “Don’t turn the pharmaceutical companies into the big bad guys”).

Giuliani said that R’s are better than D’s at getting people out of poverty, and that they just need to tell poor people that, and to do so in as condescending a way as possible. For example, as mayor, “I would go into the neighborhoods where I was being castigated for work fair and I would say to them, ‘I’m doing workfare because I love you more. I care about you more.’” He says that the proof of his effectiveness in getting people out of poverty was that when he left office, a lot fewer people were receiving welfare. Quod erat demonstrandum.

McCain on Bin Laden: “I know how to get him, and I will get him.” Asked later to elaborate on how he’d “get him,” Mickey C said he’d do it by expanding intelligence capabilities and by making it the top priority. That’s so crazy it just might work!


Huckabee wants the border fence built “with American labor and American materials.”

Huckabee commits heresy: “Even Ronald Reagan can make mistakes” (on giving amnesty to illegal aliens).

There was a lot of talk about the relative merits of a senator or a governor becoming president, especially in foreign policy. Giuliani, who was neither, cited his experience in, oh, what was that event again? And that “a Saudi prince handed me a $10 million check and wanted me to use it as a criticism of American foreign policy, I handed that check back to him and told him what to do with it”. See? a born diplomat. Also, he threw Castro and Arafat out of the UN’s 50th anniversary celebration, so don’t say he has no foreign policy experience.


McCain said he never heard Romney criticizing Rumsfeld. That’s because I was a governor, replied Romney, adding that he thought there were intelligence failures in Iraq. For example, not realizing that Iraqis didn’t want to be invaded. “There were some who said there would be dancing in the streets when we came into Baghdad, and there was, but for a short period of time.” He added that “We were understaffed by a dramatic amount.” “Understaffed”? I believe the military have their own term, Mr. CEO. The Trader Joe’s I went to a couple of days ago, that was understaffed.

The Huck repeated that Guantanamo is “too darn good,” so he wants to shut it down, and it’s not because of what the world thinks, “I don’t care what the rest of the world thinks.”

The Huckster’s “vertical leadership” thing is really beginning to irritate me. “[P]eople are looking for a positive
president who leads not so much horizontally — left, right, liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican — but vertically, up, not down.” What? WHAT??

Huckabee on Romney’s attack ads: “if you tell a half-truth as if it is the full truth, then it can become an untruth.”

Ain’t it the, uh, truth.

Republican debate: Not subject to a bunker mentality

First of three presidential debates this weekend. Kill me. Transcript.

In the foreign policy segment, the candidates all praised George Bush and his glorious little war, and ganged up on Ron Paul for failing to understand America’s true role in the world: innocent victim.


Giuliani: the Islamic threat has “nothing to do with our foreign policy,” but comes from their “perverted thinking.” Later, looking for examples of terrorism against non-Americans, he cited as an act of Islamic terrorism the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Romney: “The president is not arrogant. The president is not subject to a bunker mentality.” Huckabee, who asked if Romney had actually read all of his article before attacking it (Romney said he had, knowing no one would believe he read it any more than they believe Huckabee wrote it), took the opportunity to backtrack, saying that what he meant by “arrogant” was Rumsfeld’s insistence that Iraq could be occupied with a small military force.

Romney said the US and its allies (the US still has allies?) should “move the world of Islam to modernity and moderation”. This is a guy who spent two years unsuccessfully trying to convert the French to Mormonism.


(They’ve all been reading up on radical Islam. Romney, who told Paul he didn’t understand what radical jihad is, talked about someone named Sayyid Cuetip. Huckabee, of all people, did a better job of pronouncing Sayyid Qutb’s admittedly challenging name.)


Fred Thompson propounded this exciting concept about when the US should involve itself in the affairs of others nations: “We should only go in where we should and where we’re able to.”

At which point Jeri Thompson sighed.

McCain: “I didn’t say we needed a secret plan for withdrawal [from Iraq].” Secret plan? Who has a secret plan? I think he’s remembering Nixon’s secret plan for getting out of Vietnam.


I still don’t know what Huckabee means by “vertical leadership.”

Romney got increasingly testy at the jibes against him, as when McCain called him the candidate of change. Romney is quite thin-skinned.

In the segment on immigration, which as always mostly involved a learned lexicological discussion of the meaning of the word amnesty, McCain went out of his way to invoke the sacred name of Joe Lieberman, who says that anyone who says McCain supports amnesty is a liar.


Thompson, asked about oil company profits, says he “takes note” when they profit, and he takes note when they lose money. When has an oil company ever lost money? Well, an oil company not run by George W. Bush, obviously. Thompson says high oil prices are from supply and demand, and China going all over the world making deals with dictators. Thank God we only get our oil from democracies.


What’s up with that weird thing with Giuliani’s eyes?

Eisenhower started the program to put a man on the moon? Whatever, Rudy.


Huckabee wants a $1 billion prize for the first person who comes up with a car that can get 100 miles per gallon. Oh Huck, you’ll have to do a lot better than that: Exxon-Mobil’s bounty is $10 billion for the head – just the head – of the first person who comes up with a car that can get 100 miles per gallon.

The Huck says dictators in the Middle East and Venezuela are “enslaving” the American people.

A people perverted

Giuliani’s latest fear-mongering ad may be the fear-mongeringest yet:



“A people perverted”?

As I was watching Mike Huckabee on Jay Leno, I suddenly wondered if watching Leno meant I was crossing a picket line like Huckabee (who does like his crosses). The Huckster claimed to have been under the impression that Leno had made the deal with the writers’ union that in fact Letterman’s production company made. Appropriately, then, the Huck plagiarized an old line of Jon Stewart’s, saying he wanted to remind people of the guy they work with rather than the guy who laid them off (Stewart said in 1999 that the Republican House managers of the Clinton impeachment looked like every guy who ever fired his dad).

The Huck said that when he was a minister he saw every single “social pathology,” so they were not abstract to him and he could put a name and face to each one. However he was evidently applying terms like “social pathology” to his parishioners.

Speaking of social pathologies, he said that if he had run that attack ad, he would have felt like he needed to take a shower, and then I swear said something about wanting to give Romney a shower.

He explained that his “Fair Tax” would be applied to drug deals and prostitution, thus ending the black economy overnight.

Well, that’s what he said.

I guess he can not only put a name and face to every social pathology, but also a sales tax of 23%.

Love at first sight:

If people want to be cynical about it, they’ll be cynical about it

Sgt Frank Wuterich, leader of the squad that carried out the Haditha Massacre, who both ordered the massacre and participated in it (see previous posts on Wuterich here and here, and all Haditha posts here) will be charged with manslaughter but not murder. 24 innocent civilians murdered, no one charged with murder.

Mike Huckabee, as you probably know, held a press conference today to unveil his “negative attack” ads against Romney (“No executions”, “Supported gun control”), but instead he announced that the ads, which he showed to the assembled reporters, would not run. Unless they do: an email he then sent out (which included the phrase I just quoted, “negative attack”), noted, “If it was run at all, it would be until the stations pulled it off their schedules.” So that’s all right then.

The ad ended, “If a man’s dishonest trying to get the job, he’ll be dishonest on the job.” And if a man’s a pious hypocrite trying to get the job... Asked if his showing the ad at the presser might spark cynicism, the Huck said, “If people want to be cynical about it, they’ll be cynical about it.”

Is that true?

more at twiigs.com...

No, there is no option for not being cynical about it. I mean, there is just... no... option.

Huckabee is presenting this as yet another of those tales of temptation and redemption those Baptists love so much: “I believe that Americans aren’t interested in politics that divide us, they want their leaders to focus on what will lift them up and make things better. I almost forgot that today in the face of the withering barrage of criticism we have endured over the last few weeks from my rivals. I say almost, because our negative ad won’t run.” Unless it does.

By the way, one of those things that will lift us up and make things better: banning abortion, the subject of another ad which he did start running today.

With Jesus and Truckers magazine behind him, Huckabee can’t lose

Daily Telegraph headline: “Bhutto’s Son Given Key Role in Party.” The keys to Dad’s Jaguar? Maybe when you’re older, son.

Bhutto the Younger running the Pakistani opposition from his punt on the Cherwell reminds me of a story about the one-time master of Magdalen College, Oxford, greeting a new pupil who happened to be the imperial prince of Japan. He asked what his name, Prince Chichibou, actually meant. “The Son of God,” Chichi said. Warren replied, “Of course you’ll find we have the sons of many famous men here at Magdalen.”

Mike Huckabee went on Meet the Press this morning. He bragged about his accomplishments in Arkansas: “And I left my roads in great shape, took them from the worst in the country to what Truckers magazine said were the most improved.”

Russert brought up an old speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in which the Huckster called for “tak[ing] this nation back for Christ” and asked where that leaves non-Christians. Huckabee: “Oh, it leaves them right in the middle of America.” Surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence.

He stood by his old statements that homosexuality is a “sinful lifestyle,” explaining, “when a Christian speaks of sin, a Christian says all of us are sinners. I’m a sinner, everybody’s a sinner. What one’s sin is, means it’s missing the mark. It’s missing the bull’s eye, the perfect point,” adding, “The vagina, it’s missing the vagina. There, you made me say it, Russert, are you happy now? Are you happy?”

He said that gays may or may not be born “that way,” but “the behavior one practices is a choice. We may have certain tendencies, but how we behave and how we carry out our behavior––”, at which point he gulped and abruptly changed the subject.

He claimed that as governor he never tried to legislate his beliefs. But what about his attempts to ban abortion? Huckabee: “Well, that’s not just because I’m a Christian, that’s because I’m an American.” So that’s okay then. “It’s not a faith belief. It’s deeper than that. It’s a human belief. ... If I believe that your intrinsic worth is not changed by your ancestry, your last name, by your IQ, by your abilities or disabilities, if I value your life and respect it with dignity and worth because it is human, then that’s what draws me to the inescapable conclusion that I should be for the sanctity of every and each human life. ... I like it that in this country we treat each other--at least we should--with that sense of equality.” Would he send women who have abortions to prison? No: “I consider her a victim, not a, not a criminal.” So much for that sense of equality.

Politicizing this tragedy

Bush on New Year’s: “This weekend is a good time to give thanks for our blessings -- and to resolve to do better in the coming year.” Bush could spend all of 2008 lighting his farts and still do better than in any other year of his life.

Speaking of setting the bar unbelievably low, I’ve got another entry in the game of Gotcha against Huckabee: yesterday on McNeil-Lehrer I heard him refer to Benazir Bhutto as a candidate to be president of Pakistan.

But then Hillary Clinton, asked by Wolf Blitzer whether Musharraf should resign, said, “If President Musharraf wishes to stand for election, then he should abide by the same rules that every other candidate will have to follow.” Er, Hills, he was “re-elected” in October, until 2012. That’s kind of what all that fuss was about, with the fired supreme court justices and the state of emergency, remember?

Blitzer asked Hillary about Obama’s questioning of her judgment and thus her credentials for dealing with crises like this (and by the way, Obama gives the impression of reflexively opposing anything Hillary says, as when he argued against her call for an international investigation of the Bhutto assassination, saying, “It is important to us to not give the idea that Pakistan is unable to handle its own affairs.”). She said Obama is “politicizing this tragedy,” whereas she of course is “focused on extending my sympathy to Benazir Bhutto’s family.” Through a CNN-O-Gram.

Let me express my sorrow that Benazir is dead,
By speaking live on satellite with a talking head.

Let’s see, what rhymes with Blitzer...?