Stories by Thomas
Posted at 9:55pm on Aug. 12, 2007 I Still Think He Won't Win
But then again, I don't think any of them should
By Thomas
Full disclosure: I have no dog in the 2008 Presidential brouhaha, am unlikely to develop a dog in the immediate future, and frankly, share a sentiment with a commenter/diarist whose handle rhymes with MeveFellBay, to-wit: None of the above. Part of this is because I have a hard time getting enthusiastic about political campaigns (yes, a great guy indeed to have a Director of RedState); part of it is because, with or without Fred! I'm underwhelmed by the current candidate pool, which ranges from a liberal New Yorker to a nativist to a crazy libertarian to some guy named Cox, with not a lot of improvement or fall in between; and part because, as I've said so many damned times, we are taking our eye off the ball of Congress, the State elections, and 2007, and royally hurting ourselves in the process.
Believe it or not, however, all of that was a digression. The point of this post was to say, for pretty much the only time in over a year, Mitt Romney blew my socks off (go to 9:30):
Now, the mandatory carping: I disagree with the old Mittster on a few things, not least of which being that if you're going to put faith in the public square -- an enterprise of which I'm an enthusiastic supporter -- you need to be prepared to discuss and defend it there. I'm fully aware of why Romney isn't interested in that conversation, but Catholics have had to do it for decades; I see no reason why this should be different. There's more, but it's just nit-picking.
With that said, Wow. If you could get him to drop the Ken-doll approach that he insists on adopting when the mike is on, I'd have been on this guy's team for a year now. That you can't concerns me in many of the same ways Al Gore concerned me, and the parallels are disturbing; but if this was how Mitt Romney was 24/7, I'd be a Romneybot too.
Posted in 2008 | bungee jumping | culture | Life | off-the-cuff | primaries | religion | Romney — Comments (96)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:05pm on Jul. 13, 2007 I Say Again, They Are Cowards and Tucktails
This time, let's get a jump on the action by shooting the refugees before they hit the boats
By Thomas
To the men and women who would do this, I maintain that you are nothing but a group of tucktails. If the Iraq War is so bad, so immoral, do everything in your power to stop it. Allocate no funds. Bush vetoes? Keep allocating no funds. Force Bush to choose between literal force protection and a staredown.
Stupid, immoral, cowardly excuses for human beings, the lot of you. If this war is merely a waste of lives and treasure, you are honor-bound to stop it at all costs. So do it. Relive the 1970s. Show us that you accept the inevitable slaughter of millions as irrelevant so that we can all watch the evening news without being bothered. Prove that refugees dying on boats and in camps are merely pictures, and not men, women, and children possessed of human dignity, being tortured because the United States won't live up to its promises. Remind the world again that we are a paper tiger, and then grieve when another embassy is held hostage.
Heck, why wait? Why don't we go slaughter a million Iraqis in bombing runs, so this time the blood will be directly on our hands, and we can avoid the irritating images of boat people and other refugees fleeing genocide?
That our Party once knew the value of honor, and words kept, and standing for the weak when they could not; and now accepts in its midst those who would spit on all those things, is a shame to the Republican Party. That the Democrat Party -- a Party that once championed the dignity of all Men -- not only slaughters them in the womb, but would abandon them to slaughter ex utero for political advantage; and that few Americans call them the mass-murdering tyrant enablers they've become -- should shame us all as Americans.
Fall on your face in shame, my fellow Americans, because we are giving away our honor, a piece at a time.
Posted in Cowards | Democrats | Killing Fields | Traitor Republicans | Tucktails | War | Yellow-Bellied Appeasers — Comments (90)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:47pm on Jul. 13, 2007 I Say Again, They Are Cowards and Tucktails
This time, let's get a jump on the action by shooting the refugees before they hit the boats
By Thomas
Posted in Cowards | Democrats | Killing Fields | Traitor Republicans | Tucktails | War | Yellow-Bellied Appeasers — Comments (0)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:07pm on Jun. 13, 2007 Ok, ok, for the love of God. We get it.
I agree with you, and even I'm getting sick of it.
By Thomas
In the interest of full disclosure, this comes neither from Erick, the Directors, the Contributors, or indeed, anyone but me. The opinions expressed herein are entirely my own. The opinions expressed herein are purely hortatory, and not admonitory.
I hesitate to take this sort of thing to the front page, because the front is generally reserved for the pressing issues of the day, and this is a site maintenance thing. With that said:
I recognize that the Senate Bill That Won't Die is garbage. I'm fully aware that respect for the rule of law is being tossed down the drain so we can have a permanent class of helots and so the Democrats can have more voters. I have no doubt that La Raza and MECHa and other racist groups are getting a kick, not only out of the bill, but our reaction to it. I am amazed, to borrow a friend and fellow Director's phrase, that the President chose this as his hill to die on. I get it. I get all of this and every other argument you can imagine about the "great immigration compromise."
I also get that what I'm about to ask will be as successful as my request for a Christmas present was. But please, please, please:
Can we lay off immigration just a bit? This ain't PoliPundit or VDare; there are other issues with which we might just maybe want to concern ourselves, like a war, the budget, the courts, and other unimportant things like that. From looking at the diaries and comments, you'd think we were at war with all of Central America, and their primary combat technique is to swamp us with day laborers.
Please. Let's give silence a chance until the bill is at least presented again.
Posted in Immigration | Immigration | immigration bill | kill me now — Comments (108)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:56am on May 31, 2007 Feddie Kicks Chrissy and Another Little Girl
Watch as Matthews and Dionne have a lovefest and become incoherent
By Thomas
Steve Dillard, one of my old blogging heroes (now retired), was on Hardball last night to talk about this crazy idea that Giuliani shouldn't get a free pass on being pro-baby-murder on his way to the Presidency. You can infer how I feel about that position.
(Mandatory note to the retarded among our readership: The foregoing sentence does not represent, and is not intended to represent, the views, opinions, and snark of RedState; the Directors; the Contributors; the parent company's owners, agents, employees, and officers; or indeed, of anyone. I add this simply because some people who support a guy whose name rhymes with Bomni are not alone in believing that front-page content is indicative of site positions.)
Anyway, there's a lot to enjoy in this, but my favorite parts come when Steve calls Giuliani an extremist on abortion (behold Matthews's response); when Steve deftly pirouettes through the cliche bits on the Iraq War; and, best of all, when Matthews offers a laugh to the audience with an opener -- I'm transcribing this verbatim -- "the Hierarchy, which is populated, as you and I know, with a lot of Republicans, the Archbishops and above." Putting to the side that the overwhelming majority of American Bishops, Archbishops, and Cardinals are Democrats by birth and tradition (if you disregard issues relating to fornication, sodomy, and the murder of humans, they'd be lauded by liberals far and wide), I just have to say this: Pope Benedict is a Republican? He's the only thing standing "above the Archbishops."
I mean, his coolness factor was through the roof before, but now we're in serious demigod land. (No blasphemy intended, Your Holiness.)
Steve was much more polite than that, but did a great job. Check it out.
Posted in Life Issues — Comments (14)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:30pm on Apr. 20, 2007 Lessons in political suicide.
That knife you bring to the gunfight should be aimed away from your chest.
By Thomas
Running into the 1988 Presidential election, Bloom County -- for those of you who were even more children than I at the time, a left-leaning comic strip penned by, what else, an Austinite -- took to calling the two major party nominees the Wimp and the Shrimp. The joke -- with respect to one of only three one-term Presidents of the twentieth century -- took aim at the elder Bush's penchant for genteel, Rockefeller Republicanism; love of bipartisanship; and general image of softness, compared to the giant who came before him.
Little did we know that the truth of that image would come back to haunt us throughout the man's presidency, culminating (but hardly ending) in that great bipartisan moment in which President Bush (1) decided that everyone who'd read his lips scant years before had been suffering from mass dyslexia.
One of the great worries many of us had in 2000 -- aside from the fear that we'd soon have an android in charge of the nuclear codes, and that his alien masters would overrun us all -- was that the Wimp's wimpiness was congenital, and a dominant gene. This did not overly concern me, because, first, any idiot -- and George W. Bush is not an idiot -- could figure out what cost his father the Presidency; and, second, I watched the younger Bush absolutely annihilate that old crone Ann Richards, and not gently, either. Sure, he liked the bipartisan game, but he knew where the long knives were kept.
I maintain that I was right, but to a point; and the beginning of my error is the beginning of the explanation for the absolute fecklessness of the last two and a half years of President Bush's last term.
Read on.
Posted in Clausewitz | George W. Bush | knife fights | politics | Republicans | Republicans | wimp — Comments (39)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:59pm on Feb. 7, 2007 Let's End This Equivocating.
Come on, you tucktails. Prove us wrong.
By Thomas
"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
"I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less."
"Only by adopting the techniques of the big lie can the vice president make his case that those opposed to the Iraqi war fail to understand the importance of a firm response to terrorists. In fact, given the deleterious effect it has had on our effort in Afghanistan, and the enormous boost it has given to anti-American forces around the world, the big truth is that the Iraq war has damaged our ability to fight terrorism."
In 1974, every American who voted for a Democrat took the blood of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians on his hands. The Democrats responded by feeding the Reaper, as they'd been elected to do. To this day, they congratulate themselves for their noble sacrifice of millions of Asian lives.
In 2006, every American who voted for a Democrat took the blood of millions of Iraqis on his hands. The Democrats have responded by offering non-binding resolutions.
For thirty years, the Republican Party sliced off core Democratic voting groups who had become convinced that the Democrats were and are weaklings, cowards, and faithless allies willing -- joyful -- at the prospect of sending millions to the abattoir. The Democrats are now responding to the same kind of mandate by adopting a new pose of cowardice.
Read on.
Posted in Congress — Comments (33)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:43pm on Jan. 31, 2007 Is Hell Exothermic or Endothermic?
We have someone on the scene who now knows for sure.
By Thomas
In Catholic theology, the term scandal has a very specific meaning, that's usually lost on the outside population and the overwhelming majority of Catholics. The Catechism -- or, as liberal Catholics would have it, "that silly rule-summary-thing" -- identifies scandal thus:
2284 Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to do evil. The person who gives scandal becomes his neighbor's tempter. He damages virtue and integrity; he may even draw his brother into spiritual death. Scandal is a grave offense if by deed or omission another is deliberately led into a grave offense.
2285 Scandal takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it or the weakness of those who are scandalized. It prompted our Lord to utter this curse: "Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."[85] Scandal is grave when given by those who by nature or office are obliged to teach and educate others. Jesus reproaches the scribes and Pharisees on this account: he likens them to wolves in sheep's clothing.[86]
2286 Scandal can be provoked by laws or institutions, by fashion or opinion.
Therefore, they are guilty of scandal who establish laws or social structures leading to the decline of morals and the corruption of religious practice, or to "social conditions that, intentionally or not, make Christian conduct and obedience to the Commandments difficult and practically impossible."[87] This is also true of business leaders who make rules encouraging fraud, teachers who provoke their children to anger,[88] or manipulators of public opinion who turn it away from moral values.
2287 Anyone who uses the power at his disposal in such a way that it leads others to do wrong becomes guilty of scandal and responsible for the evil that he has directly or indirectly encouraged. "Temptations to sin are sure to come; but woe to him by whom they come!"[89]
(Emphasis added.) And that brings us to Hell's newest permanent resident: Robert Drinan. Read on.
Posted in Liberals — Comments (40)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 2:07pm on Jan. 23, 2007 What a Waste of a State of the Union
I love the idea of Democratic Rule through 2010
By Thomas
If you're, ahem, fortunate enough to be constantly plastered with White House spam email, you'll have noticed that the President is pushing health care reform as one of his major initiatives. Here is the point-by-point. The executive line summary is an attempt to start taxing a portion of employer-provided benefits to push folks into tax-deductible individual healthcare plans. (blackhedd ably discussed this here.)
To this I say: You have to be kidding me.
Let me start with first principles, and why I'm hacked:
(1) We're Republicans. We do not tax. We became, over the last twelve years, the Other Party of Spend. I don't see why we should cede our last bit of ground on that front now. I may have to accept abortion-philes and cowards in my Party, but I should not have to have the one reason God made Republicans taken away. And as this creates a new taxing structure, you're gonna have to pardon me if I don't believe it's not a tax, and if the public doesn't buy the argument that it's not.
(2) This will not pass. Regardless of the merits of the thing -- and I believe them dubious at best -- this is gonna be one phenomenal waste of what little political capital Bush has left. There are only two reasons to set forth something this high-profile when it has no chance of passing: (a) You want to embarrass your opponents when they shoot it down, or (b) you want to build on this into and through the next election, because you believe it's a high-profile issue that can produce key electoral votes. Neither of these things apply here.
I can't even begin to fathom what went through what's left of the WH brain trust. Well, we need a home run shot to recapture political momentum. War? Nope. Something for the base? Ok, everyone, stop laughing. I know! Let's tax medical benefits!
It doesn't end there. Read on.
Posted in The White House — Comments (108)/ Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:53pm on Jan. 19, 2007 Thus Begins a Quixotic Quest
For a shining planet, known as Earth
By Thomas
As a prelude to the first open thread we've had in a while, I thought y'all would like to know that Senator Sam Brownback officially kicks off his quest for the Presidency tomorrow. You can watch it live on C-SPAN tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. EST.
Full candor requires that I disclose that I'd love it were he to have an actual shot at this thing; but because he and I agree on pretty close to every policy issue, he doesn't have a whelk's chance in a supernova.
Open thread.