I’ve added The Main Adversary to the blog list here.
It started with an item in The Weekly Standard that came in today’s mail. It’s a Scrapbook item titled, “Hsu’s on First“. The Washington Post says “Some fundraisers with legal issues slip through campaigns’ vetting.”
In another words, The WP morphs it from being another Clinton Scandal into something about campaign finance in general. Next thing you know, instead of going after the crooks they’ll say the thing to do is shut down the first amendment harder than McCain-Feingold so people like Hillary Clinton will not be forced to take illegal campaign contributions to finance attacks on those who criticize her.
That also got me to thinking about the general lack of curiosity in the major media about WHY Hsu and/or whoever was financing him was motivated to provide all this money. And that got me to thinking about other lack of curiosity items, such as the shooting of Paul Joyal back in March. That one sure dropped off the radar screen in a hurry, despite the super-lame explanations given by the local authorities.
So I looked to see if there was any recent news. The most recent mention I found was in the blog of a Mark Newgent, who is a conservative running for Baltimore City council. Newgent didn’t have any more news on Joyal, but there are some other things in his blog, including an insightful analysis of the foreign policy statements of Ron Paul. I’ll probably end up voting for Paul. He avoids a lot of the usual libertarian goofiness, but on foreign policy he’s not a lot of improvement. Here’s Newgent:
Paul believes that we should not have an interventionist foreign policy because it invites blowback. That is his position, ok fine, but he never offers an alternative to the historical examples or the present day issues that complicate his simplistic view. It is like the peaceniks during the Vietnam War who sang, “all we are saying is give peace a chance.” That’s right, that’s all they were saying. They did not offer any arguments as to why giving peace a chance would have benefited the United States in Southeast Asia, furthermore look at the human tragedy that happened when peace was given a chance. Ron Paul is doing the same thing. Instead of peace, it is isolationism. Paul never offers a solution other than empty platitudes about the intent of the founding fathers. That is all fine and good, but it is not an argument. Paul never, makes an argument past stating his position of preaching non-interventionism in foreign policy and urging the GOP to return to its isolationist past (look how that turned out). Paul and his supporters spout their nonsense then sit back as if saying they have ended the argument, when at best, all they’ve done is start one.
And there’s more good stuff over there, too. A young politician who knows all about Whittaker Chambers can’t be all bad, even if he knows how to think and write.