Rudy Giuliani is out of the running. He seems happy to be out of the running. Makes me wonder if that strategy of his to not compete in the early primary states was intentional. Could he be headed for the back end of a (shudder) McCain/Giuliani ticket ? Rudy didn't seem interested enough in becoming president. He might have been slightly more interested than Fred Thompson, who ran his campaign as if he was on Valium, but not interested enough.

I have to ask you a favor.

For over four years, the Democrats have told us we can't win in Iraq, that the war is lost, that the surge was useless, that Iraqis weren't capable of democracy, that the war was immoral, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. You know the drill.

It's time again to vote for the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) Porker of the Year.

First, a little background.

What a relief. Where there was pain, there will now be only gain (so they say), as our House Of Representatives, in a rare show of bipartisanship, passed an economic stimulus package today.

Here it is, two days before the Democratic South Carolina primary, and the latest polling has Barack Obama holding an 11 point lead over Hillary Clinton. What can the Clintons do to change that and tilt things in their favor ? Hmmm. It wouldn't be to get a months old sex scandal they've been sitting on made public so close to the election that it can't be disproved, would it ? A guy named Larry Sinclair has made a YouTube video claiming he had gay oral sex and did cocaine with Barack Obama in 1999. Devastating to Obama if true, which is most likely isn't. Even if it isn't true, it's potentially devastating to Obama in South Carolina due to it's timing. This sure looks like a setup, a hit job on Obama. Sinclair even says he will take a polygraph test. I'll be real surprised if that ever happens.

I have to admit, when liberals fight amongst themselves, it cracks me up. The Hillary/Obama row during last night's South Carolina debate was no exception. Mostly, I get a kick out what passes for an insult among liberals. For example, Obama said he was helping unemployed people in Chicago when "you [Hillary] were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart". Only in liberal la-la-land would being a lawyer for a highly successful corporation like Wal-Mart be reason for an insult. Us folk out here in the real world would call that "a really good job". For most of us, if we landed a job like that, our parents would be calling all the relatives and telling them how well we were doing. Not in la-la-land. In la-la-land, working for a corporation is B-A-D, because corporations are E-V-I-L. Never mind that corporations give millions and millions of americans a J-O-B. In la-la-land, being a lawyer isn't really bad as long as you are a civil rights lawyer or a lawyer that sues doctors or businesses, like John Edwards was, but corporate lawyers are scum. It's in the la-la rule book.

I'm sure you all remember Nancy Pelosi saying she was going to clean up the "culture of corruption" in Congress when the Democrats took control in 2006. Nancy was referring to the culture of corruption in the outgoing Republican Congress, of course. It was a big campaign issue for the Democrats, and it worked. The evil Republicans were cast out of the temple, and the Democrats, the party of all that is good and holy, the party of light, regained control. Hallelujah, brothers and sisters. A great weight was lifted from the backs of the people, and the shadow removed from the sun. No longer would government be beholden to special interests. Pelosi was going to oversee the "most ethical Congress in history".

A two-year government commissioned study proposed that federal gasoline taxes should be increased up to 40 cents per gallon over five years. The purpose of the massive tax increase would be to fix aging bridges and roads, and reduce traffic deaths.

Surprise, surprise. I guess I should have seen this coming, but I didn't. I keep hoping we have grown past all this stuff, but we haven't. Here we are approaching the South Carolina primary, the first with a significant percentage of black voters (50% of 2004 S.C. primary voters were black), and suddenly, out of the blue, the Clintons are charged with being racists, based on racially insensitive remarks that Hill and Billary supposedly made.

The scene was the New Hampshire debates. Moderator Charles Gibson asked the Democrats the following question: “We started the surge early this year. You all opposed it. But there are real signs it has worked…So I want to ask all of you, are any of you ready to say that the surge has worked?”

Written by Karl Marx in 1848.

At last night's Republican debate, Fred Thompson finally showed up. Better late than never, I guess, and one comment in particular by Fred was worth the price of admission. That was the one where Thompson unmasked Mike Huckabee as the pseudo Republican that he is. Here's the quote:

A few months ago, I attempted to determine Barack Obama's actual positions on issues, because his speeches were mostly collections of generalities, offering little of substance. I read his book 'Audacity Of Hope' and found it to have the same vague content as his speeches, and his website didn't offer anything either, so I came away frustrated in my attempt.

I'm not like John Edwards.

My last post was about how popular 'Change' is with presidential candidates and voters.

Every four years, we hear our presidential candidates talk about the need for change. Most of them refer to themselves as candidates for change, even if they've spent a lifetime inside the Beltway. You rarely hear a candidate say 'I want to be the candidate for the status quo !'. Such a candidate wouldn't get many votes. The closest they get to that is to call themselves the candidate of experience. Sometimes, candidates want to take us back to the past, like Republican Reagan impersonators, or Democrats longing for the 90's. On the Democratic side, Obama, Edwards, and Hillary are all trying to be the 'change' candidate. Being viewed by america as the candidate who will bring change is almost always an attractive position in which to reside, because one thing americans can agree on, regardless of where they stand on the political spectrum, is that the status quo is messed up. That's certainly true now, as the President, Congress, Democrats, and Republicans all have low approval ratings.