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iSnark
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About Me
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Friday, May 18, 2012 ∙ 2:23 pm EDT
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February 2012
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© 2012
McGehee
55°
cloudy
Newnan, GA
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Earlier today, Instapundit asked:
Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?
He’s posted one response that works quite nicely, but it’s not a complete explanation of why I don’t support him (perhaps partly because I’m not what can properly be called a “social-con”).
In 2008, I wasn’t “all-in” for Romney even when I voted for him in the Georgia primary. At that point the only serious candidates left were him, John McCain and Mike Huckabee, whose rhetoric had balanced the worst of the “religious right” with the worst nanny-statism of the big-government “right” (it is possible to balance the best of those tendencies; he just didn’t do it) (though if he had I still wouldn’t have voted for him). Romney was then what Santorum is now: the least unacceptable of a bad lot, due in some part to the fact he wasn’t being sold as inevitable. It wasn’t yet his turn. He wasn’t yet entitled to anybody’s vote.
Now he’s His Electable Inevitableness, all the things that made McCain impossible for me to vote for in the primary campaign, and should have made me withhold my vote that November, Palin or no Palin. You watch: if Romney gets the nomination he’ll try to recapture the conservatives he’s spent this entire campaign cycle alienating, by choosing a running mate from deep within our own ranks, on the assumption that if it got the right to vote for McCain it’ll get the right to vote for him.
That’s why I’ve sworn not to fall for it if it happens again. I will not be an enabler.
Anyway, I think Reynolds is misstating the situation back in 2008. Despite his nanny-statism it was Huckabee, not Romney, who was the darling of the low-information social-con voter—after all, he won the Georgia primary that year.
Anyway, all of this points to another of my Rules to Vote By. The first one was, If you can’t figure out how a ballot proposition is supposed to achieve its stated objectives, VOTE NO. You just need to look at California, where 99% of the laws on the books that actually accomplish anything, are the result of ballot propositions that were voted in by people who assumed that if they couldn’t understand it it must be a good idea.
The new one relating to this subject is, Never vote for the guy whose TURN it is.
Update, early March: Here’s another one: never vote for a so-called conservative who can’t manage to get along with Rush Limbaugh. That leaves out both McCain and Romney.
Twenty Twelve
The Etch-a-Sketch Candidate
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© 2012
McGehee
59°
rain shower
Newnan, GA
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A while back I mentioned something called Splashtop, which enables anyone with a cell phone or mobile device to log into a computer without having to sit down in front of it, and operate it as if he were, in fact, sitting down in front of it.
Today, just before leaving to run errands, I downloaded an upgrade of some software that I wanted to install, but I was using a different computer and just had enough time to save the file to my Dropbox account.
Later, at lunch in a different town, I used my phone to log onto the computer at home that I wanted to install the upgrade on, accessed the Dropbox folder, and ran the upgrade program. All went as it should, and when I got home the upgraded software performed exactly as I expected it to.
I like the app and what it lets me do—but the 7” screen has its limitations.
I’ve read that Windows 8 will offer, among other things, the means to log in to your Live.com account on any computer running Windows 8, and use it as if it were your own. I’m not sure just how far that will actually work, but I assume it involves a lot of web apps and “cloud” software, and probably the use of flash drives. In my case it will also involve the use of my hosted website space to store files behind layers of password protection, for anything I consider too sensitive to store on someone else’s space or carry around on my keychain.
And of course, my main computer is a laptop, so it’s not as if I have to leave it at home.
iThingie, etc.
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© 2012
McGehee
49°
fair
Newnan, GA
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Until that minivan ad (I think it was a minivan they were selling) (update: yes, it was) I have no recollection whatsoever of having heard Ozzy Osbourne singing “Crazy Train.” And yet the “ay, ay, ay” bit in the ad was definitely familiar.
I’ve since listened to the song itself twice on Youtube, weeks apart. I can now hear the rhythm guitar in my head very clearly and even hear the vocals about as clearly as Ozzy speaks these days.
I can only conclude that I did hear the song many times before that commercial.
Maybe while riding an elevator somewhere.
Dividing by Zero
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© 2012
McGehee
1 comments
66°
partly cloudy
Newnan, GA
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Very early this morning somebody posted an entry to Protein Wisdom touting “online reputation management.” The body of the post included the URL reputationmanagementdeluxe.com (unlinked) while the end of the post included a link to internetreputationmanagement.com, apparently a competitor. Personally I suspect somebody wanting to damage both sites, since the inclusion of one’s own URL in a hack designed to make it look like a competitor hacked a third party’s site, wouldn’t speak well of the perpetrator’s intelligence. My last comment on that post pointed this out, just minutes before the post vanished and Jeff apparently reclaimed control of his site.
Then the hacker struck again, a couple of hours ago, and at least a couple of posts have been deleted. It remains to be seen whether the siege has ended or if there is more to come.
For all that Jeff has been lamenting his alleged irrelevance, this attack seems to suggest otherwise.
Corrupt Bastards
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© 2012
McGehee
53°
partly cloudy
Newnan, GA
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Stacy McCain wants bloggers to link to his piece at Spectator.org.
So, here.
What, you want content too? Oh, all right.
At last, the candidate arrived, eliciting applause and cheers from his waiting supporters. Santorum answered a couple of questions from the press gaggle, then did a brief TV interview with Andrea Tantaros of Fox News, before the crowd outside was led in to get their “grip-and-grin” moments with the candidate. While the candidate shook hands and posed for photographs with the CPAC attendees, I walked over to talk with his campaign’s finance director, Nadine Maenza, who confirmed previous reports that Santorum had been raking in online donations at a pace of $1 million a day since Tuesday’s trifecta. In fact, Maenza said, she had been informed that the campaign had already collected a half-million dollars that morning, so that total donations to Santorum since Tuesday were already more than $3 million.
Such a windfall of campaign cash, like the crowds of supporters and the swarming media coverage, is further evidence of Santorum’s status as the top rival to the Republican presidential field’s longtime frontrunner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. ► Santorum’s Second Surge
I just want to keep His Electable Inevitableness from screwing up our chances of getting the peewee leaguers out of the White House. If that means nominating Santorum, so be it.
1773
Twenty Twelve
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© 2012
McGehee
2 comments
38°
clear
Newnan, GA
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ExpressionEngine’s software update process is disgustingly complicated. For a site that has new content maybe twice a week it’s way too big a deal.
I ain’t going back to Wordpress, so where does that leave me?
@#$!!
Dividing by Zero
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© 2012
McGehee
6 comments
57°
sunny
Newnan, GA
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In the 2012 presidential campaign so far only one candidate earned enough of my support that I was willing to contribute money—and he is now out of the race. It’s possible he will nevertheless be on the ballot in next month’s Georgia primary, and depending on what happens before then I might still vote for him.
Of the four still running, the one with the largest number of delegates is unacceptable to me, and if nominated will not receive my vote. I first announced this back in, I believe, 2010—so it’s not as if I’m springing a surprise on anybody.
Any one of the other three, including Ron Paul, could and almost certainly will receive my vote in November if he is the nominee. Paul is the least acceptable of the three, but that should tell you how strongly I feel about the fourth.
Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania is a long way from being my first choice for the nomination. He’s a former Senator, which is slightly better than being a sitting Senator because the IQ points have had some time to grow back. He took a great many positions as a Senator that were anathema in this house. Nevertheless, among the four candidates still running at this time, he is the least unacceptable—and if he is still running on March 6 he will receive my vote.
Will I give him money, or put a bumper sticker on my truck or a sign in my yard? No.
I’m cutting bait. Which is one step above going right over the rail, and the last act of optimism I am prepared to offer for this presidential campaign.
Twenty Twelve
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© 2012
McGehee
1 comments
49°
fair
Newnan, GA
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We have a surplus laptop that we were using as a host for MagicJack since we fired Vonage as our VoIP carrier.
Now, using MagicJack in the first place isn’t really my idea of the best alternative to Vonage, since it still costs money (though less than), but getting that number ported over to, say, Google Voice (which doesn’t cost a thing) would require us to port it to a wireless carrier first. For some reason GV can’t port in a number directly from a landline service, among which by some odd logic Vonage and MagicJack are included. But be that as it may, this number is on MagicJack and the dongle needed to be plugged into a computer that was up and running nearly 24/7.
The story does get around to ChromeOS, eventually.
I had set the laptop to stay awake even when the lid was closed, as long as it was plugged in, and with a neat little app called Splashtop I could check on the thing and perform whatever maintenance was necessary, including reboots, using my phone or my Kindle padlet. Well, the other evening I discovered that an iTunes installation I had left in place on the laptop was going nuts.
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Dividing by Zero
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