restless reformer

So says George F. Will in Newsweek.  This is one of the reasons that, though I won’t be voting for Obama, I don’t buy the “he’s really, really left” meme.

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Join the rebellion - leave the GOP in one massive, rebellious, “We’re not going to take it anymore” storm.  Visit ConservativeRebellion.org, sign the pledge to leave the GOP on September 5th, and encourage others to do so as well.
Let’s send a message to the GOP: the Republican Party is not supposed to be the party […]

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The reactions to the SCOTUS decision to give Gitmo detainees due process is being met with apocalytpic anger from commentators on the right.  This is one of the many reasons that what passes today as conservatism doesn’t make any sense to me anymore.  It doesn’t look at all like conservatism.  
There are conservatives who applaud […]

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For some reason, I can go a week without a single good thought, and then I have about 37 I want to blog in one day.  Today, it’s all politics-dominated (which I guess makes sense, as they’re voting 2 hours south of me).
I’ve been surprised over the past couple years to discover how many more […]

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It’s always nice when someone is able to discern the absurdity of political spin.  Here’s Jesse Walker of Reason on the political spin of the Obama-Ayers “connection” -
The point of Sunstein’s comments, obviously, is not to “equate” Epstein with Ayers, just as the point of Obama’s earlier comments, obviously, was not to “equate” […]

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Washington Irving embedded a comical criticism of the way people in modern society uproot in his classic story The Legend of Sleepy Hollow:
There is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for, they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap, and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have […]

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…and in the interest of truth and fairness, here’s proof that (a) the recent ABC debate was absurd and by far the worst yet, and (b) that all the Clinton-Obama debates have been overwhelmingly biased against Obama as far as “scandal” and “gotcha” questions go.
And yes, the person who conducted this little study needs a […]

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Bill Kauffman lives about an hour from me, in Batavia, NY, where I spent my first two years of undergrad (good ol’ GCC).  Politically, he’s a conservative/libertarian and a localist, and he’s written a few books that are on my reading list.  I’ll be able to meet him in a few weeks, as he’ll be […]

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I’ve been fairly disconnected from all things Ron Paul lately, but the American Conservative Magazine reports some interesting news:
Apparently, Ron Paul’s plan to stick with the presidential race for the purpose of gathering support and changing GOP policy is working at the grassroots level.

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This is classic Clinton. Listen to how she responds to a reporter’s question about her statement to Bill Richardson, “Obama can’t win.”
“You know we have been going back and forth in this campaign about who said what to whom and let me say this about that. I don’t talk about private conversations. But I […]

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Bill Kristol, neocon par excellence (if you can even use the word “excellence” when talking about a neocon, which you can’t…I’m still irritated that the NYT picked that guy as the “conservative,” though I’m not surprised. It is the NYT, after all.) has written an abysmal response to Obama’s speech. In the first […]

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I’m 29 years old, and I’m already crazy skeptical and cynical when it comes to politics. So when I started reading comments this afternoon about how Obama’s speech, which I didn’t catch when it happened, was perhaps the greatest speech on race ever given by a politician, I had my doubts.
I watched the speech a […]

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Peggy McIntosh: White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack (pdf). It’s years old now, so some of it’s out-of-date; but it’s eye-opening nonetheless.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like […]

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For clarification: Jeremiah Wright is not the kind of person I’m upholding as a model for racial reconciliation. I’m using the controversy as a springboard to talk about race issues.
Here’s Barack’s statement on Jeremiah Wright, which I think is appropriate and not just the right move politically, but the right move period.
On the other […]

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This is a very controversial piece, and I freely admit I may have to rethink some of this as discussion moves forward. Additional Point: One of the things I’m trying to do with this series is to demonstrate that one can agree with “liberals” or “progressives” (for lack of better words) on the causes and […]

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