Feed: Captain's Quarters - AggScore: 46.5

I'm So Glad We've Had This Time Together

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The time has come to sail Captain's Quarters into drydock. Tomorrow I officially start my new adventure at Hot Air, and as we have discussed all week here, all of my blogging efforts will go into building on the success at that site. I will continue to write as I like, as often as I like, on subjects that I like, with my own perspective, and gain access to a much larger platform at which to do it. The site will remain on the Internet. The archives will be accessible at this link, so if you ever decide you wish to review my work or search for a favorite post, it will be ready to serve you. I hope all of the commenters at Captain's Quarters will join me at Hot Air. For those who missed the open-registration deadline, I can add people manually. Send an e-mail to "register" at...

Heading Right Radio: The Week In Review!

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Note: This post will remain on top until show time; newer posts may be found below. Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), Duane "Generalissimo" Patterson of the Hugh Hewitt Show joins us for the 90-minute week in review. Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! And don't forget to join our chat room! Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...

Fear And Loathing In The Hillary Clinton Campaign

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"Knows the military"? I'd call this the last act of a desperate woman. Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton present themselves as the person most people would want answering the phone at the White House in the middle of the night. In fact, the Democrats have done their best to minimize the threats to the US, especially since it became clear that John McCain -- with his decades of work on military policy -- would be the Republican nominee. Does anyone remember the line that the "war on terror" was just a bumper sticker? John McCain could simply clip off the last ten seconds of this ad and run it for the general election -- no matter which Democrat won the nomination. I can't wait for the pushback against Hillary for this ad....

AOL Hot Seat Question Of The Day

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AOL and BlogTalkRadio have partnered on the Hot Seat poll, extending the debate to our listenership. I will host a 15-minute show weekdays at 1:00 pm ET to review the poll, interview the blogger, and take calls from the participants. We'll speak to a wide spectrum of bloggers and callers alike for each day's poll -- including today's: embedSWF(9, 0, 0, "widget", "recent")This content requires the most recent version of the Adobe Flash Player. Get this version below:Get Flash Be sure to tune it at BlogTalkRadio -- and don't forget to cast your votes! We will also take your calls at (347) 205-9555....

Obama Double-Talk On NAFTA Confirmed: CTV

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After reporting on Barack Obama's dance with the Canadians on NAFTA yesterday, Canadian broadcaster CTV got accused of perpetrating a smear against the Democratic front-runner. They insisted that Obama meant every word he said about overturning the free-trade treaty, and that no one had contacted the Canadian diplomatic corps to reassure them that it was mere demagoguery. CTV responded today by naming names -- and suddenly the Obama campaign has grown quiet: The Obama campaign told CTV late Thursday night that no message was passed to the Canadian government that suggests that Obama does not mean what he says about opting out of NAFTA if it is not renegotiated. However, the Obama camp did not respond to repeated questions from CTV on reports that a conversation on this matter was held between Obama's senior economic adviser -- Austan Goolsbee -- and the Canadian Consulate General in Chicago. Earlier Thursday, the...

Israel To Gaza: Get Ready

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The Israelis have sent a warning to Gaza and its Hamas leadership after the latest rocket attack on Ashkelon. If the attacks continue, Israel will invade Gaza and conduct large-scale military operations to eliminate the threat: Israeli leaders warned Friday of an approaching conflagration in the Gaza Strip as Israel activated a rocket warning system to protect Ashkelon, a city of 120,000 people, from Palestinian rockets. Ashkelon was hit by several Grad rockets fired from Gaza on Thursday, a sign of the widening scope of violence between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. One hit an apartment building and another landed near a school, wounding a 17-year-old girl. Located 11 miles from Gaza, Ashkelon had been sporadically targeted in the past but never suffered direct hits or significant damage. "It will be sad, and difficult, but we have no other choice," Matan Vilnai, Israel's deputy defense mister, said Friday, referring...

Hillary: I Want My VRWC

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What's worse in politics than being attacked? Being ignored -- and Hillary Clinton wants it to stop. She wants back into the national discourse after mostly being overlooked since the debacle of Super Tuesday: There was a time not long ago when Hillary Clinton dominated the discourse in both parties’ presidential contests. Now, she’s struggling to get her message out and remain part of the campaign conversation as the media and her remaining rivals, Barack Obama and John McCain, stampede toward a general election matchup that seems more and more likely. .... Today, though, after a post-Super Tuesday string of wins by Obama, Clinton hardly draws notice from the Republican party. The daily barrage of press releases from the Republican National Committee almost exclusively targets Obama. McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, makes almost no reference to Clinton in his campaign appearances, instead zeroing in on Obama’s record. Oddly, I had...

Turkey Made Its Point

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Turkey has ended its incursion into northern Iraq, according to the Iraqi government, and its troops will return home shortly. The raid intended to wipe out PKK bases in the Zap valley, and some sources in Turkey claim that they have succeeded: Turkey wound down its major ground offensive against Kurdish PKK rebels inside northern Iraq on Friday, although it declined to confirm an Iraqi minister's statement that it had already withdrawn all its troops. Turkey sent thousands of soldiers into remote, mountainous northern Iraq on February 21 to crush rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who use the region as a base for attacks on Turkish territory. Washington feared the incursion could destabilize an area of relative stability in Iraq.... A Turkish military source, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, confirmed only that Turkish forces had fully withdrawn from the key Zap valley in northern Iraq,...

The Economics Of Fear

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The Economist takes a look at Obamanomics, and it sees William Jennings Bryan and class warfare. Instead of offering hope, Barack Obama offers the same fear- and envy-based tactics on which populism has always thrived. While Democrats have often used these tactics in primaries, the Economist worries that Obama might try to govern based on these promises: FOR a man who has placed “hope” at the centre of his campaign, Barack Obama can sound pretty darned depressing. As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico. The man who claims to be a “post-partisan” centrist seems to be channelling the spirit of William Jennings Bryan, the original American populist, who thunderously demanded to...

Black Superdelegates Get Harassed By .... Obama Supporters?

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Black superdelegates report harassment, intimidation, and namecalling in attempts to get them to change their votes. Has this come from the vaunted Clinton machine, desperately attempting to pull out a miracle win? No -- it comes from affiliates of the Barack Obama campaign, which hardly needs the hard sell (via Memeorandum): African-American superdelegates said Thursday that they’ll stand up against threats, intimidation and “Uncle Tom” smears rather than switch their support from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to Sen. Barack Obama. “African-American superdelegates are being targeted, harassed and threatened,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), a superdelegate who has supported Clinton since August. Cleaver said black superdelegates are receiving “nasty letters, phone calls, threats they’ll get an opponent, being called an Uncle Tom. “This is the politics of the 1950s,” he complained. “A lot of members are experiencing a lot of ugly stuff. They’re not going to talk about it, but...

Democrats Want To Fund ACORN, La Raza With Stimulus Bill

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The Democrats reacted in anger when Senate Republicans blocked their latest economic stimulus bill. Harry Reid said that bankers and lenders were high-fiving each other in hallways after the GOP torpedoed the bill, but perhaps a better explanation of Reid's disappointment comes from Bob Casey (D-PA). The beneficiaries of the bill turns out to be somewhat different than advertised: Here's the transcript: Mr. CASEY: “We want to do a couple of things with this legislation, which we know is the Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008. Our Majority Leader, Senator Reid, and our leadership and the members of the Democratic Caucus set it out fairly specifically. A couple of basic things this legislation would have done: first of all, it would have continued what we started in the end of last year, foreclosure prevention counseling dollars, to give money to organizations around the country that are certifiably expert at this, organizations...

Once More, With Feeling: Registration Open at Hot Air

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In case anyone lost their sanity in the Byzantine series of updates on my earlier post, comments registration has been open all day at Hot Air, with a few glitches. The link to the registration page is here. It will remain open until later tonight. However, I can also add people myself to the user database, if commenters are having problems registering. Send an e-mail to "register" at "captainsquartersblog.com" (without the quotes), and be sure to include your preferred username and password, as well as the e-mail address you want to use for your account. I can add people manually or fix earlier registrations at any time, so keep that e-mail address handy. Some have asked whether I will be cross-posting most of my material at Hot Air for the remainder of the time left at CapQ. I believe I will. With Bryan already hard at work at his great...

Geldof: The Unexpected Bush

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Bob Geldof pens an unusual article for Time Magazine today, extolling the intellect and virtues of President George Bush. He starts off by noting -- as have we conservatives since early in the administration -- that Bush has no talent for marketing. Geldof instead assigns himself that task and reminds people that Bush may be the most significant President in modern times for the lives he has saved: The Most Powerful Man in the World studied the front cover. Geldof in Africa — " 'The international best seller.' You write that bit yourself?" "That's right. It's called marketing. Something you obviously have no clue about or else I wouldn't have to be here telling people your Africa story." It is some story. And I have always wondered why it was never told properly to the American people, who were paying for it. It was, for example, Bush who initiated the...

Heading Right Radio: International Property Rights Index; Movie Day!

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Note: This post will remain on top until show time; newer posts may be found below. Today on Heading Right Radio (2 pm CT), Americans for Tax Relief affiliate group Property Rights Index released the second annual International Property Rights Index. PRA’s Executive Director Kelsey Zahourek talks about it, and Betty Jo Tucker, movie critic and host of Movie Addict Headquarters, joins us for another Top 5 movie list! Call 646-652-4889 to join the conversation! And don't forget to join our chat room! This show is now sponsored by Lifelock -- and listen to find out how you can save 10% on their services. Did you know that you can listen to Heading Right Radio through your TiVo service? Click here for the instructions. Also, you can subscribe to Heading Right Radio through iTunes now by clicking this link:...

Open Comment Registration At Hot Air Today! (Update)

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UPDATE IV: Some commenters are continuing to have issues with creating a login. If for some reason you just can't get it done through the system, e-mail me your preferred user name and password to this account: "register" at "captainsquartersblog.com" (without the quotes). I will manually add you to the system -- but give me some time to get it done. BUMP: Registration is now open. It will remain open until later tonight. Link to register is here. UPDATE III, 9:30 am CT: Had a glitch with registration this morning, but it's fixed now. Earlier this week, we held a comment registration event at Hot Air to try to get as many CapQ commenters into the system as possible. Some missed the window, however, and I have received many requests to hold another open-registration event. As I reported yesterday, we have scheduled another period of open registration today, February 28th,...