May 2006 Archives

Click the image below and read the citations with asterisks.

When you find some quiet time this Memorial Day weekend, take a moment to offer a prayer of thanks for the selfless service of Nate Bruckenthal.

On April 24th, 2004, Damage Controlman Third Class Nathan B. Bruckenthal, USCG died from injuries sustained in the waters off Iraq in a suicide bombing attack by Islamic terrorists. He was the first Coast Guardsman to be killed in action since the Vietnam War. Petty Officer Bruckenthal left behind a wife, Pattie, and their only daughter, Harper (born seven months after her father's death).

From the web site of the Nathan Bruckenthal Memorial Trust:

National Review's list of the top 50 conservative rock songs is finally out!

6/8/06 Update: Carson Holloway plays the killjoy.

Hat tip: Michelle Malkin

The U.S. Coast Guard has a new top dog. Admiral Thad Allen assumed command yesterday as the service's 23rd Commandant. This is his official photo ...

... but I think most folks remember photos like this.

Go get 'em, Admiral!

Long ago, I gathered evidence proving that Spongebob Squarepants is an indisputably heterosexual stud among studs. Well, more proof keeps bubbling to the surface. Steve Price caught this rare photograph and e-mailed it to me the other day:

Anybody who jams with AC/DC is chock full of testosterone!

You live in a small town named Hercules and you like its charming, quaint look. Then Wal-Mart buys land in your town, invests $1 million to redesign the property to suit your town's desires, and gets ready to build a new store. What's a poor leftist to do? Why, just get the town council to seize the land.

Attorneys from Wal-Mart told the council that the retailer had spent close to $1 million to redesign the property to the community's liking. They said the council couldn't claim it was legally necessary to take the land and that the decision set a bad precedent.

"Today it may be Wal-Mart but the question is where does it end," Wal-Mart attorney Edward G. Burg said.

City officials countered that buying the land was acceptable to ensure it was developed to the community's liking and fit in with overall plans for the city.

Property rights? What property rights?

Here's hoping Wal-Mart relocates its new store just outside the Hercules city limits.

As long as I'm on a fiscal conservatism kick, I'll invite you to read NixGuy's brief and effective post about a different way of budgeting, this time on the state level. It's called Zero Based Budgeting, and it's fundamentally different from Baseline Budgeting.

A cut is not a cut when you're playing games with the federal budget.

Imagine that the Federal Blog Promotion Administration has a current budget of $100 billion for 2006, and the Bush administration requests $120 billion for 2007.

Now imagine that the happy little piglets on the House Appropriations Committee draft their 2007 budget with another $30 billion in the FBPA authorization bill ... the better to fund several Congressmen's pet projects. Pretty straightforward so far, and sadly very predictable:

Now let's say that the full House of Representatives, backed by the Bush Administration, objects to the pork. They change the FBPA's 2007 budget back to $120 billion, which looks like this:

Naturally, if you're a tax-and-spend Washington politician and you hate being told "no", you immediately call a press conference to denounce the horrible "cut" in the FBPA budget.

But wait! How can it be a "cut" if the budget went up? It's called "baseline budgeting", and it's a deceptively easy way to scare uninformed constituents into supporting the tax-and-spend piglets in expensive suits.

The Congressional Budget Office defines the baseline as a benchmark for measuring the budgetary effects of proposed changes in federal revenue or spending, with the assumption that current budgetary policies or current services are continued without change. The baseline includes automatic adjustments for inflation and anticipated increases in program participation. Baseline, or current services, budgeting, therefore builds automatic, future spending increases into Congress's budgetary forecasts.

Baseline budgeting tilts the budget process in favor of increased spending and taxes. For example, if an agency's budget is projected to grow by $100 million, but only grows by $75 million, according to baseline budgeting, that agency sustained a $25 million cut. That is analogous to a person who expects to gain 100 pounds only gaining 75 pounds, and taking credit for losing 25 pounds. The federal government is the only place this absurd logic is employed.

-- Citizens Against Government Waste

You can also sometimes see the flip side of this silliness in action when politicians try to paint themselves as budget-cutters, while actually spending more. You've heard of stores that fool consumers by artificially raising prices just before a "deep discount sale", right? Politicians pull the same trick regularly.

So the next time you hear scary stories like "cuts in the Veterans' Administration budget", don't swallow the bait without thinking. First, find out whether those sneaky politicians are playing the baseline budgeting game again.

I'll be in Marietta all day today at my brother's graduation, so you won't see much happening here. See you folks soon!

By now we've all heard about the deal between Ken Blackwell and the Republican leaders in the statehouse, in which the proposed TEL amendment is to be replaced by (supposedly) equivalent legislation. But that deal's now in some jeopardy because somebody forgot to scratch the governor's back. Bob Taft won't play ball:

Taft's fellow Republicans in the Legislature agreed earlier in the week to put limits on spending into state law so that GOP governor candidate Kenneth Blackwell can pull his unpopular Tax & Expenditure Limitation Amendment proposal from November's ballot

In exchange, Blackwell pledged to contact Citizens for Tax Reform, the committee that brought the issue, and encourage it to withdraw the proposal.

Taft's office said that's not good enough.

"We are not going to offer our feedback or have further discussions until the governor receives a letter committing to take this off the ballot, signed by every member of the petitioning committee," said Jon Allison, Taft's chief of staff.

The original deal was "legislation first, TEL withdrawal second." Now Bob Tax Taft wants that order reversed. Naturally that leaves Blackwell twisting in the wind, with no choice but to trust in the good faith of the party leaders who've spent years trying to undermine him. Would you trust those land sharks? Yeah, I thought not.

So here's the situation:

Joe Carter calls Andrew Sullivan his brother in Christ. But Tim Challies thinks it's safe to assume that Sullivan's no Christian. I lean toward Challies' view, but I'm terribly reluctant to disagree when someone professes to be a Christian. We'll see.

Bo and Taffy, lounging sisters

I had to do this again at some point, you know.

Canada's National Post reports on a new law mandating identification badges for religious minorities ... in Iran:

According to the Post, Iran's 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on their clothes. Christians would have to adorn red badges and Zoroastrians would be have to wear blue strips of cloth. To go into effect, the law would have to be approved by Iran's supreme leader and highest authority, Ali Khamenei.

If this is true, it obviously hearkens back to this.

--

Update: The rush is on to verify the report.

Update 2: Is this what it's going to take for people to see the threat Iran poses?

Charles Krauthammer on President Bush's well-intentioned immigration policies:

The only thing that might work is a physical barrier. The president offhandedly dismisses a wall as something that could never stop the "enormous pressure on our border.''

By what logic? Opponents pretend that these barriers can always be circumvented by, say, tunnels or clandestine entry by sea. Such arguments are transparently unserious. You're hardly going to get 500,000 illegals lining up outside a tunnel or on a pier. Such choke points are exactly how you would turn the current river of illegals into narrow streams -- which is all we need to turn the illegal immigration problem from out of control to eminently manageable.

...

And is it just conservatives who think the United States ought not be gratuitously squandering one of its greatest assets -- its magnetic attraction to would-be immigrants around the world? There are tens of millions of people who want to leave their homes and come to America. We essentially have an NFL draft where the United States has the first, oh, million or so draft picks. And rather than exercising those picks, i.e., choosing by whatever criteria we want -- such as education, enterprise, technical skills and creativity -- we admit the tiniest fraction of the best and brightest and permit millions of the unskilled to pour in instead.

A real fence beats a virtual fence any day.

Sick of GOP moderates? Have no fear. Point Five offers a flowchart outlining a sure-fire way for conservatives to win in 2008 by sitting out 2006.

I know that many of us on the center right are very unhappy with the Republican Party, both here in Ohio and on the national level. RINO-bashing is easy partly because so many of them surtround us (God knows I enjoy it myself). But let's not get carried away by sitting out the November '06 election in an attempt to "teach the moderates a lesson."

We conservatives can't afford to sit out elections when things don't go our way every time. We have to stay engaged. Our best bet is to neutralize liberals, change moderates into conservatives, and turn conservatives into activists. Our battlegrounds include county party organizations, primary races, and the new media. We won't win every fight, but if we keep pushing and making steady gains every other year we'll reinvigorate the center right in the Republican Party.

I usually think of the typical conservative as someone who stands athwart history yelling "stop" (thank you, Mr. Buckley). But if you think about it, that means that it's not the liberals who are fighting inertia. We are! Government's default behavior is to slide toward statism and socialism. The public has inevitably learned that it can vote itself largesse from the public treasury*, so it falls to conservatives to stop the slide and drag society back toward liberty.

When we disengage as Steven Kelso is tempted to do, we allow the socialist slide to accelerate. That's not the smart way to teach moderates and liberals a lesson. We need to constantly persuade and demonstrate and illustrate so that we can recruit enough conservatives to dig in and reverse the slide. We can't win over the DeWines and the Voinoviches, but we can eventually replace them with folks like Bill Pierce. Jim Geraghty summarizes the strategy nicely here and here and here and here.

I realize that it gets tiring to fight and lose as much as we do, but if we don't fight we'll lose everything. Pause and catch your breath, conservatives, but don't quit.

Cross-posted at the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance

Joe Carter parodies an Andrew Sullivan essay on "Christianism" ... and simultaneously defangs the gay rights zealot:

So let me suggest that we take back the word conservative while giving this type of wishy-washy posturing a new adjective: Sullivanism. Sullivanism, in this view, is simply a faith. Sullivanism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between a conservative and a Sullivanist echoes the distinction we make between consistent and inconsistent. Conservatives are those who consistently follow a conservative political philosophy. Sullivanists are those who call themselves conservatives yet rarely embrace conservative policies, always do so inconsistently, and believe that all issues must be subordinated to the uber-issue of same-sex marriage.

...

That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a conservative Christian. I dissent from the intolerance of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one British man represents Christianity and that millions of Americans who do not agree with his views are all "Christianists." I dissent from having both my faith and political outlook co-opted and wielded by a man whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The words conservative and Christian are not the sole property of Andrew Sullivan. It's time the quiet majority of believers took the terms back.

Will St. Andrew of The Aggrieved Essay respond?

Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell has agreed to a deal with with GOP leaders in the Ohio Legislature that involves Blackwell working to remove the Tax Expenditure Limitation (TEL) amendment from November's ballot.

Want details? Go to the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance and just scroll.

FYI: TEL background here.

Bret Stephens suggests a four-part strategy to break Iran's mullahs without launching a military strike:

• Take the diplomatic offensive.
• Target the regime's financial interests.
• Support an independent labor movement.
• Threaten Iran's gasoline supply.

The details have got me thinking beyond a crushing missile/air strike. Maybe it isn't 100% unavoidable?

Don't miss the reader responses, either.

Bull.

Vox at a voice from eden noticed a theological switcheroo in one of Andrew Sullivan's posts on "Christianism":

Sullivan writes: "The first rule for a Christian should be, to my mind, humility in the face of God. That does not square with absolute certainty about God's politics or the willingness to force others to share the same interpretation of Christ's message as you do."

Well, no. The first rule for a Christian is to love -- the ONE commandment Jesus gave his followers. Moving and acting in the political realm, in whatever manner the Spirit moves one, should be seen as a way of expressing Christian love. All other motivations for taking part in the political life in our society are secondary to this.

Absolutely correct! I'm disappointed in myself for not seeing it right there in front of me:

Matthew 22:36-40 (New Living Translation)

³⁶"Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?" ³⁷Jesus replied, " 'You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.' ³⁸This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹A second is equally important: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' ⁴⁰All the other commandments and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments."

Maybe Andrew Sullivan's creating an à la carte version of Christianity for himself. He wouldn't be the first.

"A Second Childhood"
by G.K. Chesterton

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Men grow too old for love; my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

Strange crawling carpets of the grass,
Wide windows of the sky;
So in this perilous grace of God
With all my sins go I;
And things grow new though I grow old,
Though I grow old and die.

--

Hat tip: Middlebrow ... what a great find!

After you see this animation of FedEx airplane arrivals at an airport during a thunderstorm, you'll have a new appreciation for air traffic controllers.

Hat tip: American Digest

Gregory Borse noticed Andrew Sullivan's logical inconsistency, too:

A quote from Andrew Sullivan:

But history shows that Christianity, when pressed, will murder and burn and torture countless people to enforce orthodoxy. We live in kinder, gentler times, and Christianity experienced a Reformation, a Counter-Reformation and even the Second Vatican Council in ways that Islam sadly has not. And so regular Muslims are far closer to Islamists than many Christians are to Christianists.

Daniel Larison's reply:

Non-moral morality

Andrew Sullivan's second fiskable quote:

My belief in this boundary for political debate is not based on morality as such. It's based on a political judgment. That judgment is that in a society where so many people differ on so many vital, irresolvable issues - especially the meaning of life, the fate of our souls, the morality of sex, the salience of gender, the true beginning and end of life - we should keep the law as neutral as possible, so it does not become oppressive of people's freedom to decide for themselves what is true or untrue, right or wrong. This requires certain virtues - the ability to tolerate immorality in one's neighbors, moderation, restraint, openness to debate.

This statement refutes itself.

Read that again, and this time notice the use of moral terms like "should" and "virtues." Sullivan disclaims any moral basis for his recommendations, but before the paragraph ends he can't help but slip back into moral language. If moral arguments on these issues are truly out-of-bounds, why should anyone take Sullivan's recommendations seriously? By definition, the opposite viewpoint would be equally moral.

So why the use of "should" and "virtues"? Here's why. Sullivan can't honestly remain neutral and also hold any views at all. Neutrality isn't possible.

Andrew's making moral claims of his own, but he won't come right out and say so. He labels his advocacy as amoral "political judgment" to conceal his own moral judgments. Why? I suspect he worries that in an argument acknowledging the existence of moral standards, his own beliefs will be found wanting. In a situation like that, it's much easier to disparage your opponents and sling epithets at them than it is to admit that you're mistaken. Then, after writing your views into law (either by legislation or by lawsuit), you can unleash the raw power of the government against your opponents ... while comforting yourself with rationalizations about your own "neutrality."

Non-neutral "neutrality"

Here's the first quote that needs a good fisking:

My issue with Christianism is not "intolerance." In a free society, I'm quite happy to live among people who are intolerant of me, who decide not to associate with me, and generally disapprove of me, for whatever reason they decide. My point is that such intolerance not be enforced by the civil law; and that the civil law be restricted to reflect non-sectarian moral arguments that can be assessed and debated by Christian and non-Christian, Jew or Muslim, Mormon or atheist alike. If we can achieve a broad moral consensus, good. If we cannot, especially over divisive religious disagreements, then neutrality is the better option. And neutrality exists. A law that allows legal abortion or gay marriage as well as adoption and straight marriage is neutral with respect to its citizens' choices. It is not biased in favor of any one of them. If you have a moral objection, persuade and proselytize, don't legislate.

Sullivan's neutrality is anything but. Sullivan thinks that there are three choices available to civil government in a debate over moral issues: promote the behavior in question, prohibit it, or allow it without comment (the supposedly "neutral" option). But the "neutral" choice is actually a mild variety of promotion. A debate over what's right and what's wrong has only two choices by definition. To allow something is to say "it's not wrong", and that's identical to saying "it's right."

Sullivan's neutrality is misleading on another ground too. He says he wants civil government's neutrality when he actually wants promotion. He wants the availability of abortion or gay marriage to be protected by civil government, not simply allowed. If any coalition of like-minded citizens decides to oppose what Sullivan wants, then he expects civil government to step in and force those people out of his way. That is not neutrality. That is outright promotion.

Where government is concerned, moral neutrality is a myth. Sullivan uses "neutrality" as a weapon to demonize and demoralize conservative Christians for holding views that he doesn't like, while exempting his own views from criticism. Talk about selective application!

--

Update: Melinda at Stand To Reason accurately identifies Sullivan's tactic:

Sullivan is trying to disqualify some arguments from the political realm by labeling them extreme and religious. Look, everyone has a worldview that has consequences for political positions they hold. We don't exclude some citizens by labeling them and disquaifying them. We all get to bring our views, the whole variety of them, to the public square, express our opinions, agree and disagree, argue and dispute, and vote. The non-establishment Constitutional clause was one-way, meant to keep the government out of religion, not Christians out of politics.

I'm going to remember that remark about the one-way clause! Very nice!

Andrew Sullivan is trying to defend his recent accusations against "Christianists" (his term, which sounds an awful lot like "Islamists"), but a recent post on Time Magazine's site illustrates his inability to hide his disdain for conservative Christians behind repeated professions of "neutrality."

The preliminaries

I have two key points to raise before I attack Andrew Sullivan's neutrality, and he'd be wise to answer them if he wants to be taken seriously by anyone other than the radical left and those who oppose all religious expression.

First, let me point out that Sullivan hasn't identified who these "Christianists" are, other than one man* whose nationwide influence Sullivan fails to demonstrate. What is a "Christianist", exactly? Does it depend on the fervency of one's Christian faith? Or is it a belief that faith-based morals should inform one's policy preferences? Sullivan doesn't say ... and the mind is left to imagine a vast seething horde of secretive "Christianists" lurking in the shadows. Please, Andrew, more details.

Second, which current civil laws are enforcements of "Christianist" religious beliefs? Sullivan doesn't say. We can guess, but there's not much point in doing his work for him; let him make a full accusation so we can identify who the accused really are. Veiled insinuations won't cut it. The universal legal prohibition of murder finds its root in religious beliefs. So do the prohibitions of theft, rape, pedophilia and fraud. Would these laws fall under the "Christianist" umbrella and therefore be invalid?

If it's unacceptable to base laws on morals conveyed by any divine law-giver, then I wonder what basis Sullivan uses for his non-sectarian "moral" arguments? Why should I take him seriously if there's no divine sanction to back it up? All I have to do is find enough people to agree with me, and we can enforce our own non-sectarian argument over Andrew's. What recourse would he have then? None ... if he's intellectually honest.

* Correction: Besides David Barton, Sullivan also labels Ramesh Ponnuru, Hugh Hewitt, Robert P. George, Senator Rick Santorum, and Eric Cohen (who's Jewish) as "Christianists." However, my point remains. What, exactly, marks a person as a "Christianist", other than opposition to Andrew Sullivan's agenda?

UPDATE: Mel Gibson's a Christianist too, now.

The new White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, has begun issuing detailed rebuttals to mainstream media myths about the Bush Administration. It's about doggone time that somebody did.

Hat tip: Chuckoblog

Kathleen Willey, Candice E. Jackson, and Juanita Broaddrick remind us that Hillary Clinton's no moderate. Nor is she polite, solicitous, respectful, caring, or modest.

We on the right know this, but it's good to remind the folks in the center every so often ... and more often as 2008 approaches.

Hilarious!

Hat tip: NixGuy

Would you rather eat a thick slice from a small pie, or a slightly thinner slice from a much larger pie?

If you can grasp this concept, then you can figure out why tax cuts increase tax revenue.

UPDATE: Mark Goldblatt and Gary Wolfram hammer the point home.

Matt & Mark argue the point over at the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance.

Andrew Sullivan has a problem with "Christianism", but his description leaves me wondering just what exactly one of these strange beasts is:

Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Calm down, Sully. Breathe.

Who are the leaders of this dastardly conspiracy? What beliefs must one check off to be safe from their nefarious designs on power? More to the point, am I a "Christianist" in Sullivan's book because I oppose gay marriage?

What utter tripe. No wonder Sullivan declined to defend his hit piece on Hugh Hewitt's radio show. Andrew, here are two good definitions: Islamism and Christianity.

Expatriated Ohioan blogger Dennis The Peasant is bullish on Blackwell:

This is one heckuva useful map of Ohio. It's broken down by counties, and uses the familiar red vs. blue color scheme to track votes for Ken Blackwell and Jim Petro.

Click on it. You'll like it.

Ken Blackwell's central economic initiative is the Tax Expenditure Limitation amendment. My gut reaction is to support the TEL, but that's just tentative. While I read up on the subject, here are a few useful links for your information. I'll add to the list as I find more.

• The text of the TEL itself.
• Tom Blumer at BizzyBlog rounds up answers to common TEL objections.
• The Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions and the Independence Institute conducted a joint study that concluded "a well-constructed Tax and Expenditure Limitation might be the only thing that will force Ohio policymakers to hold the line on spending."
• The American Policy Roundtable has five objections to the TEL amendment.
• Michael New's history of the repeal of Colorado's TABOR amendment (here and here).
• Ramesh Ponnuru on a flaw in Colorado's TABOR called the "recession ratchet."
• The Ohio Parks and Recreation Association has several anti-TEL resources.
• Ted Strickland doesn't have a detailed objection to TEL anywhere on his site, but he does have this blurb.

Give me a shout if you have any recommended reading that I missed.

My very good Colorado-born friend e-mailed me a revolting story from TheDenverChannel.com:

The mother of a U.S. Marine was grieving for her dead son when she found that his savings account had been claimed by the director of the funeral home.

It was money that he had no right to and despite a court ruling, the funeral director refused to pay. What's even more puzzling is that he's not just any debtor, he's the mayor of the small town and a member of a City Council that has financial responsibility for the city's budget.

...

Jason's body was returned to Colorado for burial. Records show that the funeral was paid, in full, by the Marines. But after closing out her son's accounts, Jason's mother realized that the probate court had sent the proceeds of Jason's savings account to the funeral home, which is run by Jim Bostick.

...

In addition to his duties as mayor and member of the Ft. Lupton City Council, [Jim] Bostick also owns two funeral homes. In his role with the city, he is heavily involved in overseeing the finances of the town.

OK, milbloggers. Let's close ranks and charge.

Bostick Funeral Home
106 N 10th Ave
Brighton, CO 80601
(303)659-8465

Bostick Funeral Home
806 Denver Ave
Fort Lupton, CO 80621
(303) 857-2290

City of Fort Lupton
130 S. McKinley Avenue
Fort Lupton, CO 80621
(303) 857-4707/-6694
(303) 857-0351 [fax]

Fort Lupton City Council: LuptonCouncil@aol.com
Barb Rogers, Fort Lupton City Clerk: cityclerk@frii.net

--

Update: The original story ran on April 28th. Today, an encouraging follow-up was posted by TheDenverChannel.com.

John Donovan asks us to "gently and politely remind Mr. Mayor Bostick to follow through - and that means we need to follow-up. A gentle heat, that would be 'simmer' on your blog-stove. Why? Because Bostick would appear to be a deadbeat." Sounds like a good plan. Trust, but verify.

Shhhhh!

I'm hunting big game.

Convicted 9/11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui has been sentenced to life in prison. The creep had this to say:

Moussaoui, as he was led out of the courtroom after the 15-minute hearing, said: "America, you lost. I won." He clapped his hands as he was escorted away.

And you wonder why Osama bin Laden called America a "weak horse" and a "paper tiger"?

[Note: Scroll down for newer posts.]

Republicans
Craig Foltin: 10,152 (38%)
David McGrew: 6,321 (23%)
Joe Ortega III: 5,289 (19%)
Paul S. Burtzlaff: 3,505 (13%)
C. J. DeLorean: 1,923 (7%)

Democrats
Betty Sutton: 18,688 (31%)
Capri Cafaro: 15,256 (25%)
Tom Sawyer: 13,739 (22%)
Gary Kucinich: 7,855 (13%)
Bill Grace: 3,326 (5%)
Michael Lyons: 933 (2%)
John Wolfe: 871 (1%)
Norbert Dennerll: 410 (1%)

I know that this District's going to stay blue, but at this point we can only hope that the GOP Machine wakes up.

It used to be that you could shrug off Republican losses here by blaming Sherrod Brown's war chest and name recognition. This time around, the Republican Party overwhelmingly racked up endorsements for Craig Foltin, so the name recognition excuse is gone.

Watch and see if our party really funds Foltin well in the general election race. They no longer have Sherrod Brown's war chest to complain about. If the GOP doesn't push gobs of money to Foltin's campaign, you can bet it'll be a tacit admission that their RINO candidate is destined for the business end of Betty Sutton's steamroller. If the party does help Foltin, it only means that their collision with reality has been delayed until November.

Alas, poor Capri. We hardly knew ye.

[Note: Cross-posted at the SOB Alliance]

A friend of mine told me about a phone conversation she had today, and I couldn't help but grin. My friend is a conservative Republican, but apparently one of her Democrat friends isn't aware of that. The gullible Dem called my friend and asked her in a worried voice who might be the best candidate to vote for today. Without skipping a beat, my friend sweetly said "I hear good things about Capri Cafaro." The gullible Dem brightened immediately and said "Oh! I just love her! Thanks!"

Here's to Republicans who can wait to laugh until they hang up the phone. Cheers!

Paul Burtzlaff had an hour-long question & answer session with the folks from Meet The Bloggers yesterday, and I think it went very well. The audio will be up soon, so I'll link to it when it's available. [UPDATE: Here it is.]

The other bloggers in attendance were Scott and Michele Bakalar, Tim and Gloria Ferris, George Nemeth, and Tim Russo. I was the only conservative blogger there, so it was no surprise that most of the questions came from a center-left perspective. To their credit, my friendly opponents didn't ask Paul any "gotcha" questions, and they were uniformly courteous while still asking pointed questions. This bunch is really interested in getting information out to the voters, not in pushing a liberal agenda. They do an admirable job of limiting the Meet The Bloggers forums to raw information and saving their analysis and punditry for their own blogs. I will try to do the same.

Naturally nobody on the Democratic side of the aisle is going to vote for a conservative Republican like Paul Burtzlaff, nor will I vote for a Democrat. Further, we partisans and political junkies tend to be pretty skeptical creatures when we meet an office-seeker. Nevertheless, I think Paul may have disarmed them.

Moments ago, I received the following e-mail from an anonymous source within the Paul S. Burtzlaff for Congress campaign:

Dear Brain Shavings:

We are releasing the following polling numbers in the Republican Primary for Congress,OH-13:

In a poll of 985 likely voting registered Republicans conducted between Wednesday, April 26, 2006 and Saturday, April 29, 2006:

Paul S. Burtzlaff is leading the race for the Republican Nomination:
Paul S. Burtzlaff	35%
Craig Foltin	24%
David McGrew	13%
Joe Ortega	7%
Other	1%
Undecided	20%

 

Amongst male voters:
Foltin	30%
Burtzlaff	25%
Ortega	10%
Mcgrew	9%
Other	1%
Undecided	25%

 

Amongst female voters:
Burtzlaff	47%
Mcgrew	19%
Foltin	15%
Ortega	4%
Other	1%
Undecided	14%

 

Amongst identified pro-life supporters:	Burtzlaff is carrying over 57% of the vote
Amongst voters aged 62 or older:	Burtzlaff is the leader with over 46% of the vote
Amongst veterans:	Burtzlaff is the leader with over 43% of the vote

I'm really sensing an upset now. I wonder if Foltin, McGrew, Ortega and friends have any comment? They can reach me at if they do. Incidentally, as you've probably noticed from the disclaimer at lower right, I endorse Paul Burtzlaff in this race.

Update (5/3): Boy, were these numbers ever off the mark! Either my source fed me a line, or the Burtzlaff campaign wasted their money on a pollster with an IQ below room temperature.