ConservativeINC

9:00 - 9:30 EST:

McCain is the “Sheriff,” Rudy is great on the economy, Romney’s looking good, and Thompson eviscerated Huckabee to receive the first raucous round of applause. Rudy is talking about how the Republican party has a big tent in order to give him some cover for his liberal social viewpoints.

Rudy’s commercial is better than anything he said during the debate. It was about how he is going to propose a tax cut his first day in office.

Ron Paul is at the debate; I thought he wasn’t going to be allowed. He talked about how the country is heading towards economic doom because our interest rates are too low, we’re mortgaging our future with China as the banker, blah, blah, blah. The same things we’ve heard for a long time now.

9:35 - 9:40 EST:

Huckabee fumbles the Iran Navy incident while Thompson got a laugh out of it. Thompson: “If they [the Iranians] went one step further they would have been introduced to the power of America’s military might.” Good line. Rudy is talking a good line on Iran going more for the serious answer; talking about sanctions, making sure it doesn’t become a nuclear power, and talking up the economic difficulties inside Iran. McCain, if in the situation as Captain of one of our Navy’s ships, well, he said it’s not his place to second guess those captains.

Rudy made, and McCain concurred, that this situation was probably about Iran probing to find out how serious we are after the NIE that came out saying Iran isn’t close to getting nukes. Ron Paul said that he’s hearing a lot of overreacting regarding this incident. He doesn’t want to start WWIII over a couple of speedboats - does he remember the Cole? And then Brit Hume gets a laugh by calling out Paul over mischaracterizing the response the other candidates were calling for - they all said they put their faith in the decision-making powers of our ships Captains.

Romney gets a dig in on Paul by saying Paul has been reading Ahmadinejad’s press releases a little too closely.

9:40 - 9:50 EST:

McCain did a good job at taking credit for the surge. He is right about how Petraeus should have been Time’s Man of the Year. By the way, did you see any stories about the surge today? It is the surge’s one year anniversary.

Rudy did a fine job talking about the Middle East Peace Process. He also made the point that others supported the surge and McCain, like a stubborn child, stuck to his point that he was the only one.

Ron Paul talked his moronic talk about how the United States is the problem in the world. McCain made a joke about how we shouldn’t trade with al Qaeda because they only have one-way tickets (i.e. homicide bombers).

9:50 - 10:00 EST:

Thompson on Pakistan: first a couple of jokes about how polls suck and how since the NY Times isn’t reporting on Iraq it must be going well. He thinks that everyone is being premature in hoping for a different leader than Musharraf. “Who else are we going to get” is his basic rationale. And I think he’s right; we’re going to get someone worse if Musharraf left. We have to worry about their nukes and we have to lean on them to fight terror.

Romney brought up a very interesting name: Pakistani General Kiyani. Here’s a brief on him from a blog called IntelliBriefs and here’s a couple from Stratfor (ONE and TWO). Interesting stuff.

Ron Paul wants to treat Israel as “grown up.” He is naive. Israel is hardly a stepchild of the United States. Giuliani backs up Israel saying it is one of our most important allies and we need to protect our allies. Plus, we need to lean on Musharraf.

I guess while I was searching for the Pakistani General I missed something from Huckabee. Thompson said, in reference to Huckabee, our aide goes to training Pakistan’s military and not to the government in general.

10:00 - 10:20 EST

Romney is talking about change now. He says that people are fed up with Washington politics as usual. He will “take Washington apart… make it smaller.” *CLAPS*

McCain’s claim to being for change is - hold your breathe - the SURGE. Oh and spending practices and some other stuff. He had an Abramoff mention pointing out he doesn’t know the man. His last sentence contained the word change a half dozen times. Not nearly as bad as a speech I heard in an MBA class last semester when some guy said “like” over one hundred times, but still bad.

Huckabee is concerned not about his future but the children’s future. I thought he was about ready to cry (crying only works for girls - like Bill Clinton - HA!). He’s good with roads (ask Trucker Magazine, seriously). And he made highways accessible to every child in his state - seriously.

Thompson talked about his tenure as a Senator - about Welfare Reform and everything else. He also made his impassioned speech about personal freedom.

A Rudy joke bombed. He said that the change the Democrats were talking about was - wait - the change in your pockets. Side splitting. He also said “change” a lot; it is this campaign’s buzzword, if you didn’t already know that. Oh, and he has been an executive before, I think he was mayor or something.

Carl Cameron slams Huckabee over an ad he attached his name to about how a woman should act (subservient to her husband). Low blow by Campaign Carl. Huckabee got a couple laughs out of it. He’s a Baptist and he believes that wives should submit themselves to their husbands as should husbands submit themselves to their wives. Home run for Huckabee.

Ron Paul says he’s the only Constitutionalist and Republicans should love him. Talk about how we shouldn’t be in NATO and how we borrowed ten billion from China to give to a military dictatorship in Pakistan that overthrew a democratically elected government in order to bring democracy to Iraq. If you accept his argument there is no room to argue. But, if you have a brain, you will not accept his arguments.

Commercial break - cholesterol drugs and other goodies.

10:20 - 10:30 EST

IMMIGRATION!!!! Finally.

McCain up first. Blamed his failed immigration plan on the people’s mistrust of the federal government. Then he talked about how we should be compassionate because an illegal immigrant who is married to a serviceman is being deported and that is wrong. Yeah, it is wrong, but it is also the exception. One clapper.

Mitt says illegals should get in the back of the line if you want to live in this country. Claps.

“We need to be a nation of high gates and wide gates,” says Thompson. We also need to crack down on employers and end sanctuary cities. We would end those sanctuary cities by cutting off federal funding to those cities. Disagrees with in-state tuition for illegals. Claps.

Paul was asked whether going after illegal immigration is important enough to write off the Hispanic vote. Paul answered this question well talking about how if you subsidize something it is going to increase. Basically, if you make it financially beneficial to break the law people will break the law. And we shouldn’t automatically assume that if we support protecting the boarders the Hispanics will leave the party. Applause.

Huckabee says we should assume people are legal and not illegal. No sound.

Giuliani says it would be “absurd” to ask people about their immigration status if they are reporting a crime. He probably has a good point here; haven’t thought about it much. Illegal kids were put in schools to keep them off the streets. I think he makes a good point by saying we should focus on those illegals who continue to break the law once they broke into our country. And he kept on talking and talking. Britt cut him off and that was it.

DEBATE OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

After Party

WINNER: Fox News had a room filled with about thirty South Carolina voters. When asked how many supported Thompson before the debate only three raised their hands. When asked who they thought won the debate nearly everyone voiced support for Thompson.

LOSER: Ron Paul. BigT

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I guess when you become a reporter you have to check all your common sense at the door and pretend to be a moron because anyone who is older than 18 knows who gets the wildest at parties; GIRLS!

But we have three stories here (Washington Post, Reuters, and a site called eFluxMedia) about how girls get crazier at parties than guys and how those girls wear very little clothing (if any).

Now, I have to make a confession, one of the reasons why I chose to write a story on this was because I thought it would be a good way to get some pictures of cute college co-eds on the site. Boy, I was wrong! I wouldn’t even suggest typing “college”, “drunk”, and “girl” into a Google image search because, well, let me put it this way, those pictures aren’t meant for everyone. But here’s one that is kind of alright.

I think three words can sum up the “duh-ness” factor of this story: Girls Gone Wild. Since I get my TV through a satellite I get shows airing for the Eastern time zone while I live in the Western time zone. This means that I get late night cable shows starting at 9 p.m. local time. Let me put it this way; sometimes it seems like the GGW commercials take up more time then the show itself!

Plus there are frequently commercials advertising phone numbers you can call to talk to “sexy singles” in your area. They even have a dozen different area codes to make sure your area is covered. All of this points to one simple fact: college-aged girls love showing their skin to the camera.

“Private parts” is now an archaic term. Girls get drunk and then act dumb. Now, I think that I’m personally to blame for this because I like to include some of these horribly coarse pictures in my pieces; like this one!

And this one!

Ha, got you! I had to include a drunk guy for the ladies. OK, enough of this, here’s some of the story from the august Washington Post:

The first on-the-scene study of college drinking behavior shows that parties with drinking games result in higher blood alcohol levels, while themed parties encourage college women to drink more heavily than men, new research suggests.

Previous studies of college drinking have relied largely on individual behavior and self-reports of drinking habits. Researchers at San Diego State University and the University of Michigan have determined that environment and party activities also affect drinking behavior.

“Most studies use survey methods that require people to recall their drinking behavior — days, weeks or months prior — and such recall is not always accurate,” corresponding author J. D. Clapp, director of the Center for Alcohol and Drug Studies and Services at San Diego State University, said in a prepared statement. “By going out into the field and doing observations and surveys, including breath tests for alcohol concentrations, we were able to mitigate many of the problems associated with recall of behavior and complex settings.”

The team observed 1,304 young adults (751 men, 553 women) at 66 college parties over the course of three semesters. The parties all took place in private residences close to an urban public university in southern California. The team noted party environment, surveyed attendees and collected blood-alcohol concentrations.

The researchers found that playing drinking games, having a personal history of binge drinking, attending a party with many other intoxicated people, and attending a themed event all predicted higher blood alcohol levels. The researchers expressed surprise over the finding that women at themed events drank more heavily than their male peers.

Just remember this guys: keep the party small, the booze flowing, and the cameras rolling because the girls are going to play. BigT

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Andrew Sullivan, who has thrown his support behind Ron Paul for the republican nomination, did a couple posts about Ron Paul’s alleged support/penning of hate speech (anti-gay, anti-Semitic, and racist) in newsletters that went out under Paul’s name. The original story that outed Ron Paul as a bigot comes from The New Republic’s website.

Sullivan’s first post is about his initial reading of the article. Titled Ron Paul Exposed? Sullivan, the ex-editor of The New Republic, expresses concern over what he called “a repellent series of tracts, full of truly appalling bigotry.” But he didn’t go so far as to pull his support of a man who has not and will not seriously compete for the republican nomination. Here’s what he said about it:

Paul needs to say not only that he did not pen these excrescences, he needs to explain how his name was on them and disown them completely. I’ve supported Paul for what I believe are honorable reasons: his brave resistance to the enforced uniformity of opinion on the Iraq war, his defense of limited constitutional government, his libertarianism, his sincerity. If there is some other agenda lurking beneath all this, we deserve to know. It’s up to Ron Paul now to clearly explain and disown these ugly, vile, despicable tracts from the past.

Mr. Sullivan seems like a kid who has just found out [SPOILER ALERT - DON’T READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA] Santa doesn’t exist. Instead of being the White Knight of a bygone era of personal freedom and a limited government, Paul might be part of the leading echelon of radicalism’s dark underbelly.

Here’s Congressman Paul’s response through his campaign and found in Sullivan’s post titled Ron Paul Responds:

“The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and denounce such small-minded thoughts.

In fact, I have always agreed with Martin Luther King, Jr. that we should only be concerned with the content of a person’s character, not the color of their skin. As I stated on the floor of the U.S. House on April 20, 1999: ‘I rise in great respect for the courage and high ideals of Rosa Parks who stood steadfastly for the rights of individuals against unjust laws and oppressive governmental policies.’

This story is old news and has been rehashed for over a decade. It’s once again being resurrected for obvious political reasons on the day of the New Hampshire primary.

When I was out of Congress and practicing medicine full-time, a newsletter was published under my name that I did not edit. Several writers contributed to the product. For over a decade, I have publicly taken moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name.”

While Mr. Sullivan remains a supporter of Mr. Paul he does think “much less” of him.

I’m very glad to hear it. Taking moral responsibility is the right thing to do. But I should say I think less of Ron Paul after reading this article than I did before. Much less. I am not persuaded he is a bigot (like Jamie, apparently), and I remain impressed by the message and spirit of the campaign he has waged.

After reading both sides I have presented here I would have to say that my own opinion falls somewhere closer to The New Republics analysis rather than Mr. Sullivan’s. These newsletters (excerpts from some can be found at The New Republic) were published over the course of a couple of decades (starting in 1976) and there is no way I would ever let something with my name go out for that long that I found abhorrent. There’s just no way.

Having said that and considering the fact that I am no Paul supporter I still don’t think this is enough to convict the man of being a bigot. There is a chance that he could just be an absent-minded leader who doesn’t closely read everything that is put out under his name. A small chance.

The only way I can see around calling him a bigot with the views that have been expressed in his newsletters (although nothing was bylined to him) is by arguing that he is sympathetic to the goals of some other bigots (like a limited government) but finds their reasoning (it’s the minorities fault) severely misguided. And, still, this is a stretch in my mind.

Heck, forget what I said. I knew there was a reason why I never liked this guy even though he says some things I agree with. He’s a nut who’s going to lose. BigT

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