The American Spectator

FOOL ME THRICE
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Meet the New Barry Goldwater:

Before the American public answers, “Who’s Next?” We better ask Obama and McCain, “Who are you?” so we “won’t get fooled again.”
— Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

Mr. Hillyer makes as good an argument for John McCain as I have ever read in his column.

That being said, I cannot, and will not ever vote for John McCain. Let me count the reasons:

1. McCain-Feingold
2. McCain-Kennedy
3. The Gang of 14
4. Requiring men in harm’s to “interrogate by a field manual.”
5. “OK, give them their damn fence.”
6. Closing Gitmo and bringing that terrorist scum to Ft. Leavenworth and getting them lawyers as if they were entitled to the same treatment as a U.S. citizen.

I survived eight years of the Clintons, and I am sure I can survive four with Obama.

Lastly I absolutely no faith in him to appoint Conservative judges, and should he do so how will he get them past a Democrat controlled Senate?

I am damned proud to be writing in Ted Nugent for President!
— Jim Karr
Blue Springs, Missouri

The biggest asset McCain has going for him is he’s better than Obama or Hillary. That’s pretty much the same Bush had going for him. No, we are going to get half a loaf at a time when the full loaf is needed. This is the time for a Reagan to come forward but all we get is a McCain. Yep, grumpy old man. Quin Hillyer forgets about McCain-Feingold and some of the other legislation McCain has sponsored that has flown in the face of constitutional and conservative thought. Conservatives might support McCain because we don’t have much of a choice, however, the nation will not benefit greatly by his presidency. The best that can be said is: he’ll do until something better comes along.
— Pete Chagnon

It is not John McCain’s conservative philosophy “with occasional forays into liberalism” that I object to so vehemently. I have a hard time getting past his self-serving attitude in the Senate. For instance, the three months in 2001 when he openly negotiated his switch to the Democrat party. Jim Jeffords beat him to the punch and he remained a Republican — our loss, I wish Senator McCain had made that move. Again in 2004, he made overtures to John Kerry to become the Democrat nominee for Vice President. Straight talk, honesty and principles!

In the last ten years, John McCain has shown he can’t be trusted. At every turn he did whatever he could to embarrass and thwart the Bush White House — and then went on Meet the Press or Hardball to crow about his pranks. Fool me once…
— Judy Beumler
Kentucky

“New Barry Goldwater”? “Old Barry Goldwater”? “Old John McCain”? “New John McCain?” They are all spelled out the exact same way. “R-I-N-O”!!
— Michael Skaggs
Murray, Kentucky

President Lyndon Johnson was once asked what he would do about people overseas who told Americans to go home. Johnson wasn’t bothered about it, he said that if a man told you to leave his house, you didn’t argue with him, you simply picked up your hat and left. John McCain has repeated insulted conservatives, he called them racists and bigots and he said that he doesn’t need their support and doesn’t want it. I took President Lyndon Johnson’s advice a long time ago about John McCain — he told me to leave his house, so I picked up my hat and left. I’m not
going back no matter what anybody says.
— Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

As a conservative, I can’t wait to NOT vote for Senator McCain this November. As Rush Limbaugh has noted, “We are all mavericks now.”

And Senator McCain is going to get a dose of his own medicine, at least from me and any other conservatives I can influence.
— Blant Hurt
Jonesboro, Arkansas

I can live with McCain as POTUS. I certainly prefer him to Barack. And I despise Hillary. But I wonder what his honor obsession is covering up. What is it McCain found honorable in leaving a wife who waited for him all the time he was a POW. And whether McCain’s contemptuous behavior toward conservatives is a way of overcoming the powerlessness of his captivity. So I’ll be damned if I vote for him. Or any RINO.
— Wolf Terner
Fair Lawn, New Jersey

All that Quin Hillyer writes about good Senator McCain is true. Yet I can’t help but harbor a nagging suspicion. At the Senator’s advanced age, and very possibly liberated from another election campaign, that he’ll give full play to his inner apostate — and it’s not liberal principle or policy that will suffer as a result.
— Jeff Schmidt
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

If Quin Hillyer can’t tell the difference between an influence peddling crook (Keating 7 and Airbus contract) and a true conservative, I wonder what he is doing on your website.
— Tom DeLand

Quin Hillyer responds:
On the air tanker contract, it is because of McCain that the crooks are in jail. That is one more point in McCain’s favor, not against him.

HOLY MIKE
Re: W. James Antle III’s Huck and Spend:

What you fail to understand in your article, is Mike Huckabee is expressing his Christian worldview. He exonerates what staunch conservatism leaves out of the equation. Although most evangelicals are conservative, what has been missing, in the philosophy of those they have had to embrace in the past, is the explicit commands in both the Old and New Testament to take care of the orphans, widows, all who are poor plus the social injustices often heaped upon the underprivileged in any society Although encouraging free enterprise will eliminate a great deal of poverty, leaving it only to chance will not! Jesus said, “the poor will always be with us.” There is segment in any society that must be helped.

Mike Huckabee did not make a mistake, nor will he quit or change, to satisfy far right advocates. Although he is far right of John McCain, he knows there is something terribly amiss in our country right now that must be fixed. Liberalism and socialism is not the answer. It’s track record is one of failure. However Huckabee knows that conservatism must add to it’s social conscience an ingredient that has been missing for all to long. Besides he sees the grass roots rebellion that is already brewing. If Republicans don’t wake up there will be a landslide in November that will put the far left in charge putting us on a tragic course towards catastrophic failure.

I doubt if they will, but staunch conservatives would do well to listen to him. Huckabee’s voice could go far in bringing about a needed Republican victory in the fall.
— Earl Hill

W. James Antle, III writes: “Republicans in Washington were not ruthlessly cutting spending — they were increasing spending across the board, on education, prescription drugs, pork barrel projects, and defense without setting any priorities.” A few comments:

(1) After the last almost eight years, it should be abundantly clear to everyone that Republican and Democratic office holders differ from one another on spending only in which constituencies they serve at the behest of well paid lobbies who bundle campaign funds. Some would argue that there are exceptions. Senator Tom Coburn comes to mind, but if you look on his website under “constituent services” you will notice that the second item is “grants” (pork by any other name). The exception is a matter of degree, not behavior.

(2) If you believe that in the future Republicans will reduce the size of the federal government, thereby reducing taxes, you fit Albert Einstein’s definition of insane: Doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. As I’ve said in previous letters, Congressmen are merely responding to the demands of their organized constituents and they really cannot be expected to commit political suicide. That’s simply an unreasonable demand.

(3) Unfettered spending coupled to tax cuts is unethical because of its consequences for our children and our grandchildren. It is not in the long-term interest of our nation’s economic well-being and security. If you believe that tax cuts generate enough economic growth (and tax
receipts) to pay for tax cuts, please read Ben Stein’s article advising Senator McCain on tax policy should he be elected president. To quote Mr. Stein: “The next thing (you need to know) is that the Republican Party (my party and yours) has for the last 30 years or so been operating under a demonstrably false and misleading premise: that tax cuts pay for themselves by generating so much economic growth that they replace the sums lost by tax cutting.”

(4) For the reasons outlined above, I think it is futile to discuss budget cutting at this time. Regardless of what Ben Stein writes, I have no doubt that promises of cutting taxes will be a successful campaign tactic in spite of the probable negative consequences for our children, grandchildren and the nation’s well being.

(5) So, I cannot understand why TAS and conservatives aren’t focusing more on the FairTax instead of budget reduction and tax cutting.

(6) If you don’t already know how the federal tax code sits at the juncture among constituents seeking federal pork, their lobbyists and our Congressmen in both parties, I beg you to do a little research. While it’s true that FairTax doesn’t address spending, a serious argument can be made that enacting the FairTax would set the stage for a more fruitful discussion of federal spending.
— Mike Roush
North Carolina

HOSPITALISM
Re: Lawrence Henry’s Things They Don’t Tell You:

I’ve worked in healthcare for many years, including three years in a dialysis clinic.

I’m surprised that you’ve been left so uninformed. In the hospital where I work, and in the clinic where I worked, they hire people called “hospitalists” whose specific task it is to coordinate complex healthcare plans and explain such things to patients. Maybe you need to find out if your hospital and/or dialysis clinic has such people.

And because transplants are such complicated things, and the pool of organs is small, the transplants are assigned to people with the best “risk” of succeeding (i.e., the least risk of rejection). It’s an unfortunate thing, and frustrating for a repeat transplant patient like you, but them’s the facts.

I wish you every success in finding out just what the deal is with your “process.” If you feel that your health is not up to the “being a pain in the bottom” to your healthcare professionals to ask questions and find answers, I suggest (if you have not already done so) appointing a medical
proxy who can more aggressively pursue the information you need.
— Anastasia Mather
Staten Island, New York

Always enjoy your stuff, and I’m keeping you and your family in prayer. I’ve written you once before, our tracks are pretty similar in a lot of ways — I’m on my 25th year of what’s been a great cadaver transplant, although things have been getting shaky of late.

I, too, have always been amazed by how often I have I have been misinformed and under-informed, and how often I have been told contradictory opinions about even the most basic facts of transplantation. When I first got my transplant I asked every doctor who came around for statistics on how long I could expect to keep it, and everyone had different answers — sometimes varying wildly. I even had one doctor tell me he’d never heard of anyone keeping a cadaver kidney for more than twelve years, and he was a nephrologist. Anyway, to get to the point: I clicked on the link about the allocation scheme and saw it was a UK website. I think it’s safe to assume our scheme is about as complicated as theirs, but I’m pretty sure you will have to keep looking to find out exactly what the U.S. system is.
— Yates Glenn

MAKING IT
Re: Christopher Orlet’s Creative Class Blues:

I heard the following on NPR. It is a story that I tell liberal acquaintances. I missed the details of the Author’s name and the title of the book, but here is the summary of what he did.

This young man recently graduated from a university in North Carolina. He decided to move to another state and to a city that he had never been to before. He had only twenty-five dollars in his pocket, no car and no credit cards.

His goal was by the end of one year he would have a car, an apartment and money in the bank. He would neither use his degree nor, use any personal contacts with friends or family. He would achieve his goals entirely on his own.

He lived in a homeless shelter for three months. He got a job with a moving company using the following sales pitch. “I will show up to work on time, give you 8 hours of honest labor, and show up the next day and do it again. I’m the best person you could ever hire.” Needless to say he got the job, and promotions.

By the end of the year he had a car, an apartment, and $5000 in the bank. He did it with discipline. He did not party; He used the library for entertainment. He ate simple home made meals and nutritious foods (inexpensive) .He walked, bicycled or used public transportation.

The moral of this story is that, “Yes You Can!” It takes discipline and no self-indulgence. (And no whining!)
— Fred Edwards

PULPIT POUNDERS
Re: Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder’s Experiencing Obama:

DREAM ON
The tax free sanctuaries of our dreams
Are fewer than we thought. Now it seems
Pulpit pounding preachers have taken the stage
To teach us all about hate and rage.

Many Americans shudder and cringe
At this much cheered chewing-the-scenery binge.
The bellowing pastor is a well loved fellow.
A white priest tries to play Othello.

From friends like these should one run screaming
Or just remain above the fray smiling and dreaming?
— Mimi Evans Winship

FLUMMOXED
Re: Jay D. Homnick’s Rush Fiddles with Nero:

Flummery is an English dessert, like a light, whipped custard but pretty bland and tasteless and not filling at all. Hence the term used by Rush. I have had first hand experience of it because my mother often cooked it for me and my brothers when we were kids. We must have been poorer then than I knew at the time. I haven’t heard about it for years, until I read this article, and it reminded me that it was probably the only dish my mother ever cooked that I never liked. My father often cooked us tripe, but that was a real atrocity and ranks far above flummery in terms of frightfulness. Tripe is a war crime, people should hang for serving it, they are heartless monsters preying on the weak and helpless. If somebody says you are talking a lot of tripe, he really has a problem with you. John McCain talks a lot of tripe.
— Christopher Holland
Canberra, Australia

Did the “late John Wayne” arise from the grave to contact the author of the Nero Wolfe series? Let us hope that when he did that he wasn’t yet “late.”
— Steven Dennis
Raleigh, North Carolina

Come on, Jay. Rush has Mr. Snerdley (James Golden).
— Andy Weintraub