…nobody managed to “slip” through on purpose with a lethal souvenir letter opener or a deadly disposable cigarette lighter…

The TSA spokesman said testing shows that the agency has a “very high success rate” in detecting firearms.

…for Rudolph Giuliani.

As I wrote in a couple or so comments here and elsewhere, while I’m most likely, at this point, going to vote for Mitt Romney, I am still considering going with Giuliani. There are a few things I have yet to consider.

For the most part, Julia Gorin is in lockstep with some of my own foremost thoughts in this column.

She is totally correct in her premise that Giuliani would be the first true friend of Israel to occupy the White House in a very long time. This is not to say that George W. Bush and Bill Clinton before him don’t (and didn’t) have good intentions where Israel is concerned, it’s just that both, like Ehud Olmert, are extremely naive when it comes to addressing the sort of pure malevolence that dominates the “Palestinian” side of the equation over there. Rudy, on the other hand, is infinitely more capable of calling a terrorist a terrorist and taking him to task for it. The former mayor of New York would take a hard-nosed approach to dealing with both Fatah and Hamas, rather than kissing up to the likes of Abbas or, in Clinton’s case, the late, unlamented Arafat.

Julia also opines, accurately, that one of the issues that has driven away conservative voters is Giuliani’s being pro-choice, and she believes that we should compromise on this in order to avail ourselves of his more powerful assets. When you come right down to it, such issues are more in the purview of Congress than they are of POTUS, anyway — and that, friends, shouldn’t even be. It is, after all, a social issue when you come right down to it; Spiritual, moral, however you want to package it, it should be a state’s right to make such determinations, not the federal government’s.

For the record, I am pro-life to the max, and don’t even see where legalizing open season on human fetuses (as Dubya once said, and I agree with him, fetuses have souls, just like the rest of us) should have ever been a topic for consideration, much less an enacted “right”. I believe that most of the alienation of any pro-abortion Presidential candidate by conservatives because of his/her beliefs on abortion rights is more a resentment thing than a logical reason to reject everything else the candidate stands for.

When I moved to New York in the second half of the 1990s (I had been living away from my home town since before Dinkins was elected to abuse the office of mayor, but friends living in New York had kept me abreast of the mess he was making of the city. Even under Ed Koch, during whose administration I did live in N.Y., the city was dirty and crime ridden), Giuliani was in his second term as mayor. The streets and subway stations were noticeably cleaner than I remembered, street crime was down by spectacular margin, as were the numbers of undesirables loitering about at all hours, city employees in positions of public contact were more polite, friendlier and more professional and as a whole, the city seemed healthier than it had previously. Rudy’s “quality of life” policies were working just fine, as was his overall management of the great metropolis.

“Giuliani supports same sex marriage” — I’m not sure where this story originated, but it is unfounded as the only comments the former mayor has made, on record, where the subject is concerned is that while he supports social unions (as does George W. Bush), he believes that all that is required for marriage is one man and one woman. Period. Another obnoxious rumor bites the dust…

There is, however, a single issue upon which will probably, ultimately hinge my “to vote for, or not to vote for” decision where Giuliani is concerned: Illegal immigration. He supported New York’s being a sanctuary city.

The excuses reasons he supplied in the above linked video were beyond flimsy: It would have cost little or no significant quantities of money and manpower for city and/or hospital employees to check the legal status of a questionable subject (a perfectly good use for a telephone or a computer network) and then, if said subject was found to be an illegal or a probable illegal, to call the immigration folks. We’re talking New York City here, where virtually every federal agency has an abundance of staffing! Granted, they’re all pretty busy, but by not investigating and reporting illegal aliens, the Giuliani mayoral administration was permitting ongoing felonies that have a direct negative impact upon both the U.S. economy and public safety.

New York City employees belong to unions. Most of them enjoy pay and benefits that the average working stiff would give his or her left (fill in the blank) for. As such, there are numerous people sitting around whose days contain more non-productive time than they do “nose to the grindstone” moments. I know this because I have several very old, very close friends who are employed by the City of New York whose boasts about the largesse of the agencies they work for are almost identical.

The Giuliani administration could have enforced immigration laws within the confines of their purview without making the fiscal and other sacrifices Rudy would have us believe this would have entailed.

Now…

Here’s the thing:

The candidate we nominate to run in the general election will almost certainly be facing Hillary, going toe-to-toe with the Clinton political machine. This will not be like playing checkers with Brother Juniper, it will be a no-holds-barred, back alley kind of fight facaded by a minimum of political niceties. The Clintons will also have the full and unmitigated support of the mainstream media.

I am of the opinion that Giuliani, who was toughened by years as a federal prosecutor and then District Attorney, City of New York — to say nothing of mayor of what is arguably the most intense city on earth — would have a better chance of beating Hillary than would any other Republican candidate.

Here is where the next question arises: The Republican nominee has won, now what will he do with the Presidency?

…weighs in on RINO McCain. She is spot-on, to the twentieth power.

No matter who those of us with a conservative point of view vote for to face Hillary in the general election, it is inconceivable that it be McCain!

“So who,” I find myself asking, “then?”

Truthfully, I haven’t a clue.

The only two true across-the-board conservatives have departed from the race, but McCain’s still there, and he seems to be garnering increasingly more support with his particular line of Bravo Sierra.

With eleven days left to decide, I can’t say that I’m all that thrilled at the prospect of selecting the “best” option from among the dubious pickings that remain. We are, after all, talking about electing the next President of The United States, not the next Dog Catcher General, and on a more immediate note, the candidate who has to face, debate and defeat Hillary Clinton (if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, I hope the devil and his retinue are dressed very warmly, indeed!) on a “no matter what” basis.

I hate to have to steal a line from my dear, profoundly missed late grandmother, but oy vey!

…along, evidently, with Marie’s.

I’ll accept it and “move on” (no relation to the communist dot org), but I will forever be mystefied.

I mean, everyone’s clamoring for another Gipper Administration, but those of uncompromising, across-the-board conservatism that come along are shunted aside in favor of candidates who cross the aisle on a lot of issues that are of major concern to most Republicans. The more we whittle away the more solidly conservative layers of the candidacy, the closer we get to a McCain nomination. Under less serious circumstances (by this I mean that electing a POTUS is anything but picayune), I would call McCain running in the general election unacceptable, but I would have no choice but to vote for him in an effort to prevent the Klinton Karamazov, along with their socialist agendas, criminal enterprises and Chi-Com friends from moving back into that big white house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Looking at the remains of the pre-nomination Republican field, I don’t look forward to what comes after. The stretch to the general election will be both unpleasant and, going further(from a rhetoric point of view), an embarrassment to our country.

We actually had a genuine Reagan conservative right there, before our very eyes and votable for, and we failed to take advantage of it.

Oh, well. In the Silver Lining Department, I’ll at least be able to witness certain events of January, 2009 with a clear conscience!

…Has A Dream.

H/T Times Watch

I bought a DVD set of the first season of Gunsmoke, and was presently ambushed: the first episode (and series) was introduced by the great John Wayne!

The show went twenty seasons — beginning with a Marshall Dillon, a Doc and a Kitty who were so young as to be hardly recognizable from the much later hour-long episodes. And Chester didn’t look anywhere near as old as McCloud!

Gunsmoke is one of my favorite TV series’ of all time, so I know I’m going to enjoy watching these DVDs.

I’ve been sort of avoiding posting on politics for the last few days, a short break as it were, but there seems to be an issue in the wood work that I feel a need to remark upon.

It’s this whole Obama-Clinton thing wherein the media and, to some extent, the concerned candidates themselves have brought up the color of the former and the gender of the latter in the course of their Presidential campaigns.

What causes me to take notice here is that the left, which includes the mainstream media (MSM), places so much emphasis on the minority status of one and the female status of the other.

The first black President, the first female President.

One result of this is the evident need of Hillary Clinton to shout from the rooftops of hers and her husband’s infinite and historical quest for equal rights and opportunities for blacks. Despite, of course, the former POTUS’ completely empty record in that regard.

Point being, we’re seeing the history of our political left repeat itself: For decades, they have demanded equality, for everybody else, to American born white males. I completely agree that all Americans should enjoy total equality in the marketplace, in the neighborhood and everywhere in between.

That said, those we select to represent us in government should be elected purely on the merits of their policies and their patriotism, their ideals and their courage, not because they are a certain color, a certain religion or a certain gender (I know that there are generally only two genders from which to choose, but I once lived in San Francisco and in that municipality, there may well be a third sex — I mean, I would not even consider personally investigating this from a field perspective, so I’ll leave it in the realm of uninvestigated conjecture).

But the liberals and their Democrat political domestic staff insist, as they always have, in making sure to hammer home the fact that Obama is black and that Hillary is a woman.

This is divisiveness at its highest order. Everyone knows that Hillary Clinton is a woman and that Barak Obama is black. Just look at a photograph of either. The media has a lot of influence upon questions asked and the issues involved — they do, after all, have the job of informing the public as to the above. So when they stress the genders and colors of the two Presidential candidates, what are they doing? They are disrespecting both, creating artificial wedges between them. Do we want a female or a black chief exec? For that matter, what about a Mormon?

Keeping bigotry alive is a primary objective of the left, its believers, its politicians, its media — the MSM. Without the ability to play the “race card”, liberal activists and Democrat politicians alike would lose a valuable propaganda tool — they could no longer blame a white, conservative Judeo-Christian society for “oppression” against all those who don’t belong to “the club”. They could no longer brand patriotic, conservative blacks “Oreos” or “Uncle Toms” (among others, Justice Clarence Thomas comes to mind) for succeeding on their own two feet rather than pursuing the victim agenda, and pit them against lesser achievers of the same minority status’.

They would be forced to confront the equality status for which they have purportedly fought (purportedly is the key word here) as the reality it has become, and concentrate on the true issues our politicians need to address in order to competently govern our country.

Well, at least they would have a few less distractions with which to razzle-dazzle the American people while, “behind the scenes”, they eased us into the adoption of socialism as a new platform for the distribution (allocation?) of our tax payments.

In summary, we need to ignore the ethnic prejudices projected by the MSM, and start looking at the candidates themselves. The media folks have pretty much demonstrated that they are too biased, racially and otherwise, to be acknowledged as an accurate source of information or political guidance…

…my friend Jeff sent me this awesome video.

It needs to be shared with all.

Enjoy the music and the fireworks!

…must have had an interesting past fourteen years together.

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

So the husband, who visits brothels, is appalled that his wife works at one, and his wife is appalled that her husband visits them? I mean, is this an uncontested divorce, or a plaintiff and defendant affair?

I admit to being just a bit confused, as one would seem to be the Yin to the other’s Yang. The first thing that came to my mind was the foundation of a slightly more liberal remake of “Escape” (The Pina Colada Song).

This may sound a bit redundant, but if it weren’t for people, there would be no comedy.

…so we’re talking SPAM here.

“Awright, Moose, we got one replica watch, eleven people whose lives are dedicated to enlarging our penises, six companies that are offering us cheap drugs, two time shares an’ a couple o’ women who say they’re real hot and they wanna talk to us.”

“Great, Biff, then we’re all set. First we’ll buy the phony Rolexes, then we’ll add a few inches to our love muscles, then we’ll order some cheap Viagra, then we’ll get some time in a Florida condo, then we’ll call the hot women. I guess we’ll have to let that Nigerian education minister smuggle in his twenty million bucks so we can use our 20% to get the watches, drugs, Miracle Grow and time shares.”

Where the hell, you ask, is all this going?

It’s just an observation: When a certain type of commercial overture goes on for a few months or years and then dies out (as has, for the most part, the above mentioned Nigerian scam — believe you me, they have replaced it with others, just check out this site, for example)… to go on,

When a certain type of commercial venture is going hot and heavy in the old “bulk mail” or spam filter, it indicates that it is profitable, thus being continuously pursued with much vim and vigor.

The spambot traffic that is arrested by the Akismet Spam filter at this blog averages 15,000 attempted such intrusions to my comment threads per month, and when I occasionally scroll through them, they are typically promoting sexually stimulating drugs, “nude celebrity photos” or pornography that goes to extremes that should land the purveyors in prisons or mental institutions for life.

My concern, here, is that unless there was a substantial and enduring market for these “products”, they wouldn’t be advertised so pervasively or over such a long period of time.

Some people are making major money off all too many other people who need some serious help!