Is Rod Dreher the last honest conservative?

Surly asks of her Prophet,

Are you the last honest conservative?

His leftist commenters today overwhelmingly seem to think so for his bravely taking on a Megyn Kelly broadcast probing whether George Bush was not in fact right all along about leaving Iraq too soon.

Dreher doesn't deny he was ferociously for the Iraq war himself when he was taking NRO's checks and that was the popular thing to do, before subsequently being against it when the political weathervane swung around one-eighty and threatened to clock him in the head. And because Rod lives in TAC CEO Wick Allison's Obamacon lap these days, Barack's has now become Dreher's master's voice as well.

But we don't have to drop back through too many conservative posts on cooking and American Girl dolls to find the honest conservative shaking his booty on the right side of his stage this time, swaggering fashionably tough on ISIS, albeit using liberal Christian foils as his ostrich feather dancing fans in doing so.

When we finally wade through the typical obfuscating clutter there we find ourselves face to face with the honest conservative: loudly exhorting everyone while strategically committed to nothing at all himself. By all means, somebody should do something about ISIS. He's just not sure it would be prudent to advocate it should be him, or rather, the service men and women of his country acting on his behalf. Better to blog from behind.

Someone should stop those ISIS field trip bullies from pulling Rod's pants down, but we can't possibly expect the honest conservative himself to be the one to do the stopping, can we? Grownups! Grownups! Listen to Rod's cries of calculated, reader-maximizing ambivalence and quit stepping over him in indifference!

Protect this honest conservative Rod Dreher from ever having to take a stand - on anything.

Ed FitzGerald heads further toward joke territory

The Ohio State Troopers Association, a public-safety union, yanks its endorsement of Ed Fitzgerald. Excerpt:

On its Facebook page, the union said it was "the candidate's inability to give any reasonable explanation of his failing to secure a valid Ohio operators permit for years while continuing to drive on Ohio's highways that drove its decision.

"TSO noted that Troopers cite drivers for invalid licenses and for driving without a license or under suspension and the failure to secure a license is a serious breach of civic as well as the political responsibility of an elected official."

They would probably rather endorse FitzGerald than not after the SB5 fiasco which hurt Kasich with the public-safety unions to a seemingly irreparable degree. However "serious breach" is the key phrase. They really can't endorse someone who is such an incredible scofflaw. If he'd let his license or registration lapse once or twice before he held elected office it would be one thing. But the whole ten-year period coupled with the Westlake-woman-who-wasn't-wife incident is pretty hard to overlook.

My guess is that there is a lot of info on that event that hasn't been made public. But cops talk to each other.

"I don't care what they say"

UO has always been cheesy arena-rock redivivus and I dig them. I saw them a couple years back with my wife at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights.



Saturation came out a year before Pulp Fiction which featured their cover of Neil Diamond's Girl You'll be a Woman Soon. It's one of my favorite rock albums.

I could have posted Linger or These Are Days for '93; both very artful. But I'm a male chauvinist today, I guess.

Welcome aboard, Senator Paul.

Jen Rubin has a bit of fun with Rand Paul with his foreign policy reality issues and recent abrupt about-face. Excerpt:

His transformation does, however, show rather definitively that there is no real struggle in the GOP between isolationists and hawks. Rather there was Rand Paul vs. everybody else; now he’s apparently thrown in the towel. Or does he lack any true convictions, a criticism leveled at Hillary Clinton, who blows with the wind depending upon the political fashions of the day? As a former State Department official critical of the administration put it, “More and more he reminds me of another senator who had little foreign policy experience and thought he could be and should be president: Obama.”

If Paul is serious about this transformation, it is important to carry through on his newfound desire to obliterate the Islamic State, which he now recognizes is a threat to the United States. Would he reverse course and now support droning Americans who have joined up with the Islamic State? Maybe we do need a robust National Security Agency program to detect plots against the homeland. Maybe we should be using military trials at Guantanamo Bay and not risk bringing terrorists to the homeland for trial and incarceration with the regular prison population. Maybe we need a new secretary of defense, rather than Chuck Hagel, whom Paul voted to confirm. Paul’s about-face also raises the question as to what his beef with Clinton now is. Before she was too hawkish. Maybe now — like fellow Republicans — Paul will acknowledge that she was insufficiently persuasive in urging the president to take a tougher stance against Syria.

I would support a Rand Paul bid for President if he just said four words: "My dad was wrong."

whatever happens will be

...whatever that means...

But I think this is a masterful video. I saw this band live four times, really dug them. Twice before this song came out. They are great musicians, even the bassist and drummer who are total smart-asses. The album was actually released in '91, but 1992 was the year I heard this song multiple times a day.



The splendor of sepia-tone.

The glory of the B-3.

What is Ed FitzGerald?

So what is Ed FitzGerald really? Is he a Quarterback for the Cleveland Browns? That's what he compared himself to. Of course, he lacked a valid drivers license for quite a length of time, so, Cleveland Republicans with some sense of humor might want to insert a The Drive pun in the comments.

Or perhaps he is a giant snake attacking Cuyahoga County employees. That's what Laborers' Local 860 compared him to.

Or maybe Ed FitzGerald is merely the newest poster boy for political leprosy.

The QB-comparison piece quotes from a Columbus Dispatch article that contains some insights. Excerpt:

The emergence of two down-ticket races in the mid-term election follows the August implosion of Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ed FitzGerald that knocked his challenge to Republican Gov. John Kasich off the marquee.

Ohio’s 2014 election cycle thus becomes somewhat of a giant political-science experiment. When the governor’s race is largely decided before Labor Day, can Democrats focus on down-ticket races and grab enough voter attention to avoid a Republican sweep?

“People don’t show up at the polls to vote for or against the treasurer and auditor. They may make independent decisions, but they go because of the top of the ticket,” Yost said.

Cool. I love to watch mad scientists—or Democrats—do "experiments".

Barone on Obama: Transfixed with his self-image

Great article. Best one I've seen on the difference between Obama and a more traditional, successful American politician like Bill Clinton. Excerpt:

Reagan deployed that ability in establishing productive relations with allies such as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, with whom he was by no means always in agreement, and with adversaries such as Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, whose character, strengths and weaknesses he shrewdly assessed.

The ability to read other people comes more easily if you're interested in others, curious to learn what makes them tick. It comes harder or not at all if you're transfixed with your image of yourself.

Which seems to be the case with Barack Obama. Not only is he not much interested in the details of public policy, as Jay Cost argues persuasively in a recent article for the Weekly Standard. He is also, as even his admirers concede, not much inclined to schmooze with other politicians, even his fellow Democrats.

That goes double for Republicans. House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, is one of the most transparent and least guileful politicians I've encountered. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy and liberal Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., had no difficulty reaching agreement with him on the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act.

"I may be delayed"

Siouxie resembles Suzy Parker more than Jayne Mansfield. That's a feature, not a bug, IMHO.



I mad a hard time choosing something for 1991. Here's the page from the website I usually use to aid my memory for these postings. That was the year that Pearl Jam released Ten, U2 released Achtung Baby, the P-Furs released World Outside, R.E.M. released Out of Time, etc.

But I had to pick this one as my fave track from '91. Combining the Indian folk instrumentation which was hip in the UK at the time with sampling from arguably the first gansta rap evah, PSK What Does It Mean? from 1985, created the kind of buzz around a pop song I usually can't stand; it's the kind of song that knows it's cool. But slickness aside, the fact is that it's a great tune with incredible melodies and deserves the recognition it still gets.