Freshly Mugged

Well, at 7:10 am I cast my first general election Republican vote! Felt pretty good, y'all. Thank God I came to my senses before it was too late. Ok, then on the way to work I heard the most ironic Harold Ford ad yet from neighboring Tennessee. It begins with "Are you conservative? Do you have traditional conservative values?" Then the sound of a needle slipping off of a vinyl record.."Then don't vote for Bob Corker!" The ad then rattled off a list of sins they imagine Bob committed against true conservatism. But the best was kept for last. The tag line was: " He's not one of us! Not by a long shot!...I'm Harold Ford and I approve this message." I mean COME ON! The Democrat is attempting to woo conservatives by proclaiming the Republican's not one of "US." Sheesh! I don't know why Harold just didn't run on the Republican ticket. His entire campaign has been run as though he were.

I'm local to Chattanooga, and stong early voter turnout was the lead story on the local TV news. You can see the Chattanooga Times Free Press story here and the same in Nashville's Tennessean here. The last time I can remember this much electoral interest being generated in this area was the 92 Bush/Perot/Clinton debacle. Tennessee shamefully fell to Clinton in that one. My read locally is that Corker is heavily favored, but that's no doubt skewed by the fact that this is Corker's home turf. Off topic a bit: During the 92 race I remember one old country guy on the local TV news declaring: "I'm votin' for Bush 'cause I don't think I can stand four years of Hillary!" If he'd only known...

I just deleted a post entitled "Shameless Hypocrisy from the Academy" that I posted just a couple of hours ago. At issue in the post was the recent revelation of photos of University of Pennsylvania president Amy Guttman posing with a student dressed as a suicide bomber at her annual Halloween party. This can be found at The Democracy Project . The gist of my post was that it was very hypocritical for the president of a university allow such a get up at her party and to pose for a photo when colleges and universities routinely trample the constitutional rights of their students for far more innocent violations of their hysterical, politically correct, and illegal speech codes. I linked to several posts from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (F.I.R.E.) website citing examples of this sort of abuse coming on the heels of costumes/ costume parties deemed to be racist, sexist, or otherwise offensive.
Well, my new blog buddy edmcgon did me a great service (pigskins and politics) by pointing out that The University of Pennsylvania had no significant mentions on the F.I.R.E. site. And on checking for myself I found that F.I.R.E. actually gives U of Pa a green light (best) rating in terms of their upholding first amendment rights. Whoops!
I updated the post with his comments, but on reconsideration I felt it was best to delete the post altogether since I could hardly accuse President Guttmann of hypocrisy. Much the opposite. So, I took it down.
Thanks to edmogon for the heads up. I should have done my homework on this one, and I'll be doubly circumspect, and thorough with my research in future posts.
I feel the issue of freedom of speech on our campuses warrants our attention, and I encourage everyone to follow that link to the F.I.R.E website. There's tons of enlightening info there. Thanks, Chip

UPDATE: Amy Guttman apologises for the photos. Sounds like she's a refreshingly stand up administrator.

Just a quickie!

I saw Michelle Malkin's post on Hollyweird on the campaign trail , and she ended with this:

"Will Cameron Diaz do a repeat on Oprah this year about how, like, rape could be legalized if we don't make the right voting choices?"

I'm thinking that Cameron is more insightful than she's knows, 'cause if you vote for the Jihad loving Dems you may have the Rape Sheikh coming soon to a mosque near you!

I had fun watching Joe Scarborough and pals covering the demise of the GOP on MSNBC last night. Amazing. The whole affair had the feel of some post disaster coverage and the Democratic sweep of the mid-terms was presented as though it was a done deal. The only thing missing was video of enraged conservatives ransacking local Republican HQs and burning Bush in effigy. Sheesh!
Meanwhile, my man Sean was interviewing Bush over on Fox. Quite the contrast.
I'm eagerly anticipating watching the Scarborough's of the world eat crow when this "disenchanted, angry as hell" Republican base arrives at the polls in mass. Next Tuesday will be my first time to vote rationally in an election (save for the primary), and I have complete confidence that there will be no conservative boycott. It was reason that drew me to the right side of the aisle, and the predicted wide spread no shows by Republicans wouldn't be reasonable. No way is the Republican base going to cede control of Congress in these dangerous times in order to make some self defeating protest. No way.
In 2004 the MSM was positively giddy when the early (and laughably erroneous) exit polls gave Kerry a comfortable lead. Then reality broke in when the actual numbers came across, and they couldn't even pretend to hide their bias. So, next Tuesday night I'm gonna settle in with some beers, tune into CNN or MSNBC, and gleefully watch their crestfallen expressions once their dearly heralded poll driven expectations disintegrate and flutter down like confetti at a Republican victory celebration.

The other day I posted about the ideological debate I'm having with my Mother in Law. I later inadvertently deleted the post. Anyway, the gist of that post was that my mother in law, a devout christian in her 70s, surprised me by voicing her support of the Democrats and blaming all of our nations troubles on the Republicans. I was surprised since by any measure she's someone you'd expect to be a staunch conservative. But a peek at her background helps to explain the disparity.
She grew up in depression era West Virginia where her dad worked a coal mining concern. He later worked on some to the big TVA project. They were fairly poor and there was FDR coming on strong with the relief projects, so it's understandable that she grew up in a Dem leaning household.
What's more difficult to understand is the fact that she still reflexively supports the Dems in the face of all the evidence that they've become a very different party since the 30s. Mom in law is pro-life, for lower taxes, not thrilled about gay marriage, etc, etc, etc. Yet, she adamantly refuses to even consider the evidence.
This morning I told her that I was going to work on her for the next week about changing her party loyalty and she replied "I've been a Democrat all my life. My Momma and Daddy would roll over in their graves if I voted Republican". Goodness!
Last night I was with she and my Father in Law as they watched reports of the John Kerry blow up on ABC, and it seemed pretty obvious that they were pretty much accepting everything they were being told at face value. Ok, at one point while discussing these things with her she told me that I just hadn't been paying attention to what's been going on. And yet she's getting all of her information unfiltered from the MSM!
And there's no doubt that she'll vote come Tuesday. In Georgia a ballot cast for a Democrat is pretty much a wasted effort (as I well know from my years as a confused liberal voter), but I'm still a bit frustrated that I've not been able to break through her resistance with reason. And the whole issue underscores the danger of a media nearly unified in support of the left.