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.

I just read this at Michelle Malkin's site regarding the whacked out response from Hollywood producer Don Murphy to the prolife rebuttal to Michael J. Fox's recent pro-stem cell research ads on behalf of Democratic candidates. The rebuttal ad features several Hollywood celebrities, and this guy just came unglued over this. I'd paste it here, but the language is too vile.
This episode is a perfect example of the sort of mindlessness from the left that drove me to conservatism. Nowhere in this tantrum does this guy attempt to address any issue. It's simply 6th grade name calling.
He begins by accusing the ad of being morally and logically unsound and of mocking Fox, but there's nothing else to support this. Anyone who could find this ad mocking of Michael Fox would probably hear jungle drums in the background of a Bob Coker ad. He obviously thinks his point is sufficiently self-evident as to need no illumination.
The rest of the post he simply obscenely defames the actors and ends with a call for medical experimentation on Patricia Heaton. Man o man!
Anyone with any capacity for reason will find this sort of intellectually vacuous tripe unacceptable. This is an extreme example, but as I read more and more from the liberal blogs I found that vitriol and outrage were nearly always used in place of reason. A sure sign of an indefensible position. You simply don't hear this from the right.
I count myself as very fortunate to have emerged from this inane jungle.

I live in Georgia just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee (Corker's last gig), and, while I'm obviously not voting in that race, being local to Chattanooga I'm experiencing the media blitz. Last night one entire commercial break was nothing but Corker and Ford ads. It's pretty intense.
So now we're hearing charges of subtle racism in a couple of Corker's ads and I wanted to weigh in with my take.
As anyone can see from my last post I'm an erstwhile liberal, so my credentials as a "typical southern white male republican" might be a little weak. But in any case I can tell you that until the MSM brought up charges of racism in that now infamous Corker ad it never once occurred to me that this was a white woman entreating a black man to "call me". The race of neither the actress or Ford ever were at issue. Didn't notice. Never.
In fact, and this is actually pretty surprising to me, I never really thought of Harold in terms of race from the outset. To me he was first and foremost a Democrat. His race never entered my mind while making my assessment of the guy. Honestly.
Sorry lefties, but the brand of racism you all depend on for rationalization and, in some cases, your very livelihoods doesn't actually exist in todays south - at least as I know it. There are, of course, isolated pockets of knuckle draggers, but they are very marginalized and insignificant. My experience has been one of racial harmony, in the main.
Anyway, back to the race. The Chattanooga Times Freepress ran about a page on each candidate this morning. There was no real bias that I could discern. At one point in the Ford piece, though, a woman described him as a "rock star". First Obama, now Ford? Oy!
The next next few days promise to be interesting.

In 1987 I was an idealistic college student and every bit the "knee jerk liberal" when my mugging began. I was one of about 20,000 who'd descended on Cumming, Georgia to march in support of Hosea Williams. The previous weekend Hosea had attempted a small march (only about 100 people) on Martin Luther King's birthday in Cumming to commemorate/protest the ousting of the entire black population of Forsythe County in the early days of the century. That march was met by hooded thugs who successfully sent the marchers packing with rocks and bottles. Outrage mobilized a small army of marchers, and a week later Hosea returned with our 20,000.

After marching a couple of miles to the courthouse downtown we spread out over the lawn to listen to the obligatory speeches. Corretta Scott King spoke as well as, if my memory serves, Andrew Young among others. All of them fairly upbeat and positive. Then came Hosea's diatribe.

In fairness to Hosea I'll admit that I don't remember the full content of his speech. (In fairness to myself I'll mention that most of it was unintelligible) But it's tone of self-righteous consternation, the relentless and unrealistic demands, and it's general vitriol were a bit sobering for me. It was in that moment that I experienced the first crack in my liberal facade. This man didn't speak for me. I was there to stand against racist thugs hurling bottles at my fellow Georgians (and for a bit of dangerous adventure, truth be known), but it seemed to me that Hosea was probably there to promote Hosea. Doubt as to the pure righteousness of all liberal causes crept into my psyche for the first time.

This crack opened a bit wider later in the same week. Oprah came went to Cumming to tape a show dealing with the march and the issues, and she had the audacity to include some of the white supremacists. I was thinking "good move" - nothing could expose their ignorance and hate better than a few minutes under the lights on national television. But then Hosea showed up with a few of his faithful to protest Oprah for including the racists. OY!

Thus began a gradual enlightenment on my part. No longer did I automatically cheer on the voices of the left. I'll admit that I usually cheered them merely out of inertia, but a new skepticism had replaced the reflexive spewing of the leftist line. Bit by bit I shed my previously dearly held beliefs when I could no longer square them with reality.

The process has taken an embarrassingly long time. Once you solidly stake out your political/social/philosophical identity it becomes very resistant to change. But over the years as I heard more and more bizarrely nonsensical accounts of political correctness and the more I actually listened to the faulty reasoning fielded by the left the further disillusioned I became. "More money is needed" they cried despite the fact that trillions of dollars spent in the last 40 years only served to nurture our social ills. "Racism thrives!" they proclaimed despite overwhelming evidence to the opposite. Victim, Outrage, Injustice...it goes on ad nauseam. Eventually I found myself pushed so far right that I couldn't see left anymore.

I'm not sure when the exact moment came, but a tipping point was reached sometime over the last two years when I let go of my last vestige of liberalism. And here's my Oprahesque confessional moment: I actually voted for John Kerry in '04. I know! I know! What was I thinking? It's kind of like waking up hungover the morning after the office Christmas party with the vague recollection that you groped the bosses wife the night before. That sinking feeling that you've been a total jerk in front of everyone and the panicky uncertainty of what else you did that you don't remember. Sheesh!

So, there it is. I've finally fully embraced reality at the age of 46 and eagerly anticipating casting my first Republican vote in about a week. My commitment to social justice is every bit as strong as it was that day on the Forsythe County Courthouse lawn, but my understanding as to how to achieve that justice has been revolutionized.

Hopefully I'll have something useful to add to the dialog, and if you've stumbled onto my humble effort I hope you'll visit again soon. Ya'll take care.


A bit of an update: Writing about that march brought back a lot of memories and I did an internet search for some old articles. I came upon this from a guy named Dafydd:

We ended at the town square, where Coretta Scott King showed up, sucking all the energy away from Williams. Williams didn't seem to mind; he gave a great talk, of which I heard about every third word (the speakers were inadequate for the job)... but what I heard, I liked. Unlike the Coretta Scott King funeral -- I haven't forgotten the topic -- Williams' speech was not at all partisan: anybody who wasn't a racist could applaud it wholeheartedly.

Sheesh, talk about a different take on the same event. But in true believer style this guy is willing to brand me a racist since I couldn't "applaud it wholeheartedly".