But the polls show he can beat Clinton...

That is the reason I keep hearing from people, whom I've considered sensible in the past, for supporting John McCain. They don't necessarily like him any better than I do, but they just want to win the game.

I have a couple points of why this is absolutely the wrong reason to be supporting a candidate. Quite honestly if we end up nominating a guy, who will not make a good Republican president, based on polling data taken in January for a November election, we will not win in November.

As of today, the composite polling at Real Clear Politics shows that McCain can beat Clinton by a whopping 0.1%! If you look at the graph on that page, you can see the polling trends between McCain & Clinton for approximately the last year. It is in this graph where my first point lays.

Around January 1st, McCain picked up support, largely from the media, & began polling ahead of Clinton by about 5%. That was when, all the sudden we stopped hearing "Giullianni is the only candidate who can beat Clinton" & started hearing "McCain is the only candidate who can beat Clinton." That was a month ago. Notice on the McCain v. Clinton trend graph that, with the exception of January, Clinton has been polling ahead of McCain, by quite a decent margin, since July. What will happen to polling data over the next 9 months?

Let's look at the trend graph for the Florida primary. From May 2007, up until about January 15th, Giulianni had Florida locked up. Then McCain gained ground for about a week and a half, now he is neck and neck with Romney, & Giullianni is expected to get less than 15%.

My, how things change in just a few days! There are 279 days between today & November 4th. Do we as Republicans really want to sell out our philosophy, based on January polling data that says that McCain has been more popular than Clinton for the last 29 days? Now that his popularity against Clinton is almost gone... What now?

My opinion, McCain will not beat Clinton in the general election. Hopefully, he won't have the chance to try, but if he does end up with the nomination, the race is over. Clinton will eat him up. Slips like the gaffs on his knowledge of economics, & the ridiculous attempt to cover himself with poorly executed "truth-stretching" and "subject changing," will not pass the Clinton Machine.

Some are saying that only he can garner support from independents & even some Democrats. Well, what if we gain these constituents, but at the expense of losing conservatives who will likely stay home? I will really have problems voting for him , & likely will not.

Anyone suppose that this is why so many liberal media outlets have been playing up McCain? Hillary has high negatives, that is people will come out to vote against her. No one has won an the presidency with negatives as high as she has. The only way to overcome this is to get people who want to vote for a republican to stay home.

Nominating John McCain will indeed have that effect.

Sorry to say it....

But John McCain outright disgusts me.

Here is a post from Mark Levin on National Review Online that outlines the reasons that any American, let alone a conservative American should say "NO THANK YOU!" These were all good reasons prior to Thursday night, when John decided to pee on our shoes, & tell us it's raining.

Thursday started with yet another liberal media endorsement for John, this time from the New York Times. Read it! It's a wonderful outline of how liberals think John is liberal enough for them. I'd also suggest you look here to see why the same people like Hill/Bill/ary. When we start looking to the likes of Alan Colms to tell us who is the best Republican candidate, we are in trouble.

Then came the Thursday night debate, Tim Russet asks:

"Senator McCain, you have said Repeatedly, 'I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.' is it a problem for your campaign...?"

McCain, the guy who supposedly has a monopoly on integrity, replies:

“I don’t know where you got that quote from, I’m very well versed in economics. I was there at the Reagan Revolution.”

Unfortunately for McCain, more people have access to the internet today than in 2000. Here is the link to the Wall Street Journal article where he said in November 2005:

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

By the way, in the same article, we can read his feelings on the Bush tax cuts which he now says he supports:

But Mr. McCain is no antitax supply-sider himself. He grandstanded against the Bush capital-gains and dividend tax cuts and even co-sponsored an amendment with Tom Daschle to scuttle the reduction in the highest income-tax rates. Why? "I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy and I still do. I want to cut the taxes on the middle class." Even when I confront him with emphatic evidence that those tax cuts have been an economic triumph and have increased revenues, he is unrepentant and defends his 'no' vote by falling back on class-warfare type thinking: "We have a wealth gap in this country, and that worries me."

You may be asking 'Oh, but Mr. Shirt, that was 14 months ago, perhaps he's educated himself?' Well, on December 18, 2007, a bit more than one month ago, McCain told The Boston Globe:

'The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should,' McCain said. 'I've got Greenspan's book.'

Wow! In 13 months time, he decided to educate himself by procuring a book! Note, he did not say "I'm Reading Greenspan's book." Pure silliness! Besides, I don't think that Greenspan meant for his book to be an economics primer. McCain could have started with actually reading Economics in One Lesson, or The Wealth of Nations... or for that matter On the Wealth of Nations! Ronald Reagan read these & many more, he understood them, & he based his philosophy on them. Sure McCain was in the Republican Party during The Reagan Revolution, but apparently he didn't understand what was happening around him.

The media, who want us to nominate McCain, have let this slide. The Clinton Machine will not let this slide. Unfortunately, this is typical McCain. He does his thing, then he changes his story to match the image he is trying to pass off that day. Then when we question him, we're told that we are wrong... we don't understand... we are deliberately trying to malign him & distort his record. No John, we are pointing to the truth.

I know I'm a little late to the punch on this. I could have wrote this on Friday night, but I had to wait. My first reaction was, this "man of integrity" is a liar. Seems harsh, so I decided to temper my position with time.

But then Saturday came. After John decided that maybe leaving that economics gaff out there in the ether wasn't a good idea, he decided to change the conversation back to the War. He did this by claiming Mitt Romney advocated a timetable for pullout of Iraq. Here is a link to McCain's Statement, in which he also claims that Romney has since changed his mind, due to the success of The Surge, for which McCain has tried to claim sole credit.

The problem is, this is just not true! Here is what was said on Good Morning America on April 3, 2007:

QUESTION: Iraq. John McCain is there in Baghdad right now. You have also been very vocal in supporting the president and the troop surge. Yet, the American public has lost faith in this war. Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, there's no question but 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. You want to have a series of things you want to see accomplished in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police, and the leadership of the Iraqi government.

QUESTION: So, private. You wouldn't do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?

MR. ROMNEY: Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven't reached the Rhine by this date, why, we'll go home, or if we haven't gotten this accomplished we'll pull up and leave? You don't publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course, you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don't do that with the opposition.

Remember grammar class? When they gave you a sentence, & asked you to identify which words were the subject, the object & the verb? How about those reading comprehension tests where you had to read a brief snippet, then Identify the topic & what was said about it?

The topic is: timetable for pull out; the question is: would you veto a timetable for pull out; the answer is: Well, of course. What's all that stuff about setting milestones & timetables in private? Um, because victory requires a plan, a plan requires goals.

What's wrong with telling PM al-Maliki, "Look, we want to be done with this by 2010, so you need to have your guys up to speed by 2009?" That's not a timetable for pull out, that is a goal for success.

If John McCain is saying he doesn't want to set goals in the war, perhaps we should begin to question his expertise in this subject too.

Is John McCain lying? He's at the very least being purposely deceptive. He is certainly not demonstrating "integrity".

Anyone at the Strib got a calculator?

This AP report seems to confirm what structural engineers have been theorizing since a week after the I-35W bridge collapse.

The likely problem was the size of gusset plates used to hold the steel beams together. Here's a photo showing an example of what gusset plates are; conveniently, this is a pier of the 35W bridge. The plates are the rectangular pieces full of rivets.

So, the probable impetus of this tragic collapse was set in place in 1967, when the bridge was built. According to Wikipedia, Carol Molnau was born in 1949. So she was about 18 when it all began. Any one at the Star Trib paying attention?

Oh, I know. The complaint isn't that she actually made the bridge fall. It's that she didn't spend enough to update the bridge, which had been declared "structurally deficient". Of course, Carol started her MN/DOT position in 2002, and the first declaration of structural deficiency came from the Feds in 1990. That's 12 years prior to Molnau taking the lead.

I was a JMC major at Iowa Sate in the 1990's, so I know that all Journalism students are told, you don't have to use math, but I always took it as tongue-in-cheek. A little math, and a bit of logic would tell us that if we had $715 million to spend on LRT through the Ventura administration, we probably could have fixed our bridge 10 years ago... well, if priorities had been straight anyway.

The Metropolitan Council proudly claims 9.4 million LRT riders for 2006, which is more than double of expectations. Let's assume that all 9.4 million paid a fare, a big assumption, since the ride between MSP's Lindburg Terminal & Humphrey Terminal is free. Let's also assume that none of these 9.4 million fare payers used a transfer ticket, meaning that part of their fare would also have gone to cover the cost of riding the bus route. At a normal fare of $1.50, this pie-in-the-sky scenario brings us $14.1 million dollars per year. At that rate, the initial building costs will be paid off in 50 years. Of course, the operating costs will be piling up over this time, as will maintainance costs, labor costs & all other costs associated with the line.

9.4 million divides out to 25,753 people per day on LRT. The 35W bridge carried 140,000 vehicles per day. Many of those carried more than one person. Each of those vehicles had gasoline onboard, bought by the vehicle's owner, who paid the gasoline taxes that fund both roads & mass transit. There is no freeloading for the occupants in the vehicles, in fact, they are paying the bulk of the true cost for 9.4 million annual LRT riders.

The Star Tribune was a major proponent of our little train. As the news paper of Minneapolis, they also knew the bridge was structurally deficient. Does anyone else think that the Stribs vendetta against Carol Molnau is little more than a serious case of projection? Maybe, if they were honest, they might see whose priorities have been misplaced.

HELLO??? WYOMING???

Only hours after Mitt Romney seals his first victory in Michigan... Oh, what's that? It's how many? Oh, His SECOND victory?!?! Why then, has everyone in the media been telling us for several hours about Romney's "first" victory? Why are the informers telling us that now Romney, McCain & Huckabee each have a victory to their name?

I'm just a newbie blogger, with 4 whole posts to my name*, and I can tell you the score is Romney 2 states/42 delegates, Huckabee 1 state/21 delegates, McCain 1 state/19 delegates. What's more is Romney only got 12 delegates from Michigan... Umm, in other words, he's been the winning candidate since January 5, when he won his real first state, Wyoming. It's not how many states a candidate wins, it's the total number of delegates of 1,191 or more that seals his nomination.

McCain's concession speech chalks up his defeat to Romney's hard work in making sure Michigan voted for her "native son". With all due respect for what sacrifices McCain has made for this country, but what a sore looser! Hey, John, even if you had won Michigan, you would have had to get ALL 12 of Romney's delegates to claim that you were the leading Republican in this race. Even then, the total delegate score would have been McCain 31, Romney 30, Huckabee 21. Your not exactly beating anyone like a drum.


*I would have more posts, but I'm getting over an ear infection. I forgot how excruciating those can be. My apologies to my reader! ;-)

What's a billion between friends?

I received this in an E-mail. The author is unknown:

"-A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.

-A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.

-A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age.

-A billion days ago, no one walked on two feet.

-A billion dollars ago, was only 8 hours and 20 minutes ago at the rate our government is spending it."

In other words, If you took every dollar Bill Gates has, it would run the government for 20 days, 18 hours.

Change... No longer allowed to "rock"

THIS STORY reminded me of a classic piece played by the Democrat Party Orchestra way back in 2000.

First the modern day story, which I do not think is a big deal in itself. Apparently, Obama held a campaign function in Illinois, with the theme "Change Rocks." Unfortunately that phrase is patented by a New York teen who markets a line of jewelry. This teen, probably looking for his 15 minutes promised to him by Andy Warhol, called out his lawyers. The Obama campaign basically said- hey...relax, we made no money off the phrase, so this well is dry, but if you want to work for us...you can.

Big deal, eh? Considering that the people who run campaigns are not stupid, I have to believe that someone working for Obama could have strung two simple words together on their own. I kind of doubt that anyone needed to maliciously & intentionally steal this bit of intellectual property. Teenagers these days!

But that story reminded me of THIS STORY. This one was on the front page, below the fold, of the New York Times June 9, 2000. The fact that this opinion piece passed as front page "news" on the so called Nation's Paper is irritating enough, But there is something else.

The writer essentially comes to the conclusion that Gore will be a better president than Bush, because he cared so much about the details. The writer's case-in-point was the absolute dedication Gore had to getting something as simple as his logo just perfect.

From the article:
"The vice president just was not satisfied. A team of graphic artists had labored to come up with a logo to emblazon on Al Gore's campaign buttons, bumper stickers and placards, but he felt they had failed to capture the right spirit. So he sketched an alternative, a swoosh and a star -- a simple, futuristic look with the words, 'Gore 2000.'"

Well, that was the Al Gore Myth we were being sold in 2000. In fact we still are being sold this line about Al Gore. "Oh, he's a genius, he really has a mind for details," This is the sound of the tune made by the DNC's maestro manipulators; the vibrations that the strings on the democrat violin make as they are being played... for fools.

This is the logo that the writer witnessed Gore creating:



I do like the logo. But shortly after I read this article, I came across something very interesting... An Ameritech logo:



Does look similar. The one I actually saw had the same blue background & the same white font as the Gore logo. My cynical side says, Gore saw this on a pay phone, & decided to steal it. It's not that simple.

Ameritech was a Chicago based telecommunications company. This "brilliant man of details " surely recognized the monetary donations Ameritech had made to the 1996 Democratic National Convention. Which was held in Chicago, where He & Bill were nominated for a second term run.




























So, anyone think the same manipulation machine is not working today? Whether they are telling you that Hillary is a "world class genius," or even that Al Gore currently has any idea of what he is blabbing about, you are being played.

How could anyone in the Democrat Party possibly know if change rocks?

Iron My Shirt! Oh, Please!

Wow, an introduction & a rant all at once! This is my first post, hopefully all goes well.

This blog was named by Hillary Clinton. You may be saying, "NO! You mean the sexist protester at the Clinton rally in New Hampshire named this blog," Nope, it was Hillary, or at least someone in her campaign, who named this blog.

Does anyone out there think that that event was not staged? If you honestly do, I have some carbon credits I'd like to sell you. $100 a piece, & I promise I won't mow my lawn for one week per credit purchased.

Anyway... Anyone who has been to a Clinton rally, or has been paying attention to the campaign happenings, can tell you that her events are tightly screened & structured. Ask yourself, how did this guy get in? How did he end up on the stage? How did that huge sign get by her keepers? Within mere feet of Lady Mac Beth herself? Are you buying this?!?

Did anyone notice the change in tone she took after her defeat in Iowa? Her shrill grating tone gone. In it's place, a soft, gentile, feminine, almost grandmotherly voice emerged. And then...she almost crys!!! Almost as if on script.

Dear readers, Hillary Clinton is a manufactured fraud. Obama got Oprah's endorsement & creamed Hillary in Iowa. Obama took the majority of Democrat women in Iowa, but according to Clinton's script, they were supposed to fall in like sheep behind Hillary. But they didn't. So what does Hillary do? She put on a plagiarized version of the Oprah Show, & starts to CRY! Then New Hampshire Democrat women fell in line, just like the script said.

Democrats are being played like a stringed instrument. The musician is so smooth, they don't even feel the fingers coaxing them to play the tune.

UPATE: No longer just speculation! This has been uncovered as a planned & coordinated stunt by a Boston radio show called "The Toucher & Rich Show!" Ahh, & the band plays on...