From Under Huckabee’s Rock

David Corn has a spine-chilling recitation of some previous writing from Mike Huckabee. In decrying various "cultural conflicts" in America, Huckabee once wrote:

Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornography, drug abuse, and homosexual activism have fragmented and polarized our communities.

AIDS and environmentalism? Then this:

It is now difficult to keep track of the vast array of publicly endorsed and institutionally supported aberrations — from homosexuality and pedophilia to sadomasochism and necrophilia.

Again: you try and disentangle this. I can’t. "Institutionally supported necrophilia"? The man is nuts.

Moore Award Nominee

"As far as conservatives care, the world will not be perfected until the last oryx is strangled with the intestines of the last lowland gorilla, their bodies burned in order to fuel an oryx-and-gorilla-powered Humvee. If solar panels could be weaponized, conservatives would demand we spend billions on them. If polar bears crapped gasoline, their futures would be bought and sold on Wall Street. But they don’t, and they aren’t," – Hunter at the DailyKos.

Is this the 2007 Moore Award winner? Don’t Forget To Vote Here!

Will Smith’s Bummer

I took Aaron to "I Am Legend" for his birthday. I wouldn’t bother if I were you. Once the dog dies, you stop caring. (And no, that’s not a real spoiler, so spare me the emails. If you don’t see the German shepherd heading for oblivion within the first five minutes, you need cognitive assistance.) In general, the increased cardiovascular skills of zombies these past few years have been a great disappointment. The novelty wore off pretty quickly. The great thing about the old-school zombies was that they staggered toward you slowly, menacingly and you could even bob and weave around them a bit. Now they come at you like bats out of Gitmo. No suspense. Just jumps. Whatever happened to suspense?

Quote For The Day

"For most of this campaign season, I doubted that Obama really was that new something. Now I’m not so sure he isn’t. Whoever Barack Obama is, there’s no doubting the genuineness of his phenomenon. And maybe, who knows, that’s all that matters…

An important component of this phenomenon is that the Obama crowds are surprisingly free of the usual anti-Republican venom. As much as anything, his rise is a reflection of the country’s increasing boredom with partisan hatred.

"I’m so tired of the president just talking to one part of the country, or one group," says Malia Scotch-Marmo. "I was in my twenties with Reagan, but I felt he talked to me, even though we were all Democrats. It would be great to have a black president. It would be great for kids to see. It would be a nice mind shift," – Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone.

Paul Or McCain?

A reader writes:

Just wanted to add to what I’m sure is a mountainous stack of e-mails applauding your formal endorsement of Ron Paul for the GOP nomination. I’m also fully in agreement with you about John McCain’s virtues and vices. I’m a soup-to-nuts, Cato Institute-type, Reason Magazine-subscribing limited government libertarian. Ron Paul has been my guy from the first. I also admire what you do in John McCain, and if not for Paul, I’d be a McCain backer. McCain’s a solid free-trader (at a time when the tide runs against the policy), a  moderate tax and spending cutter, pro-life yet mostly tepid on social policy, and best of all, a torture abolitionist. I agree completely that he was, and remains, dead wrong on Iraq. And yet I’m beginning to oscillate more, not less, between Paul and McCain. It’s for one conservative reason: timidity.

McCain will be a force for good in many ways, whereas Ron Paul is, by my lights, mostly right about everything (except immigration, on which McCain, significantly, takes a better position). Paul’s philosophical perfection unnerves me.

I am confident that our wrong policy in Iraq will at least be better regulated, and stewarded more competently and cautiously over time by McCain than by the intractable Giuliani or the spineless Romney. McCain does not share the blindness of Bush or the wanton indifference of Cheney, and is apparently willing to modulate his position to suit reality, rather than the reverse. I am less confident that a Paul presidency would succeed in withdrawal. I think his party would mutiny and others would cave. I intended to vote for Rep. Paul in the primaries and sit out the general election. More and more, the easily pleased impulses in me drift this Paul supporter toward McCain, though never away from the good doctor.