Bull Moose Strikes Back

• Uh oh. The Mariners are in for a shitstorm. And one that has nothing to do with their crap playing. Apparently unaware they were located in Seattle, one of the few cities openly jealous of San Francisco, they threatened to kick a couple of kissing lesbians out of the stadium. Judging by the picture of one, they were (kinda) the kind of lipstick lesbians you want to see kissing, not the butch or Earth Mother kind.
• Ladies, I have a second opinion on this. If you are working in an office with me and are hot, expose as much cleavage and leg as you can without getting arrested. If you are either ugly or hot and working in an office with one of my braggart friends, wear a burqa. And slide the scale accordingly between those points for your particular situation.
• Susan Sarandon becomes among the first to proclaim that she is moving to Canada if McCain is elected. (Bottom of article.) What are you still doing here now, Susan? Bush ‘04 didn’t drive you out, but much more loon friendly McCain will? The Onion has covered this, I believe.
• For how savvy and worldly the left always thinks they are, they sure got played by McClellan. All he did was write a book boosting each of their talking points with tired conjecture and speculation and watched the dough roll in. I’d almost say good for him if he wasn’t such a sleaze.
• Speaking of sleazes, it must easy for Olbermann to call for higher taxes on the rich when he has no plans to pay them himself.
• The Great Anthropomorphic Global Warming Cover continues. Al Gore slapped the snooze button, and that’s good for 7 more years.
• Speaking of The Goracle, just when I thought opera couldn’t be less appealing, this story breaks.
• When the people I have to deal with are factored in, I believe my job should be on this list.
• This is an interesting concept, but I’d have to see what Harley-Davidson could do with it before signing off. There must be some place to put excessive amount of chrome.

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Dan in Real Life demonstrates why I have told my wife she’s not allowed to die of any woman disease until all of any daughters of ours have left for college.

Steve Carell does a toned down Michael Scott in the film.

Dan in Real Life: B+. (Good one for a guy to watch with his wife. Guy will enjoy it and will also get credit for watching a romantic comedy.)

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Monbiot. Sounds French for “Moonbat.” I hope when Mr. Monbiot tries his citizen’s arrest of John Bolton for “war crimes” tonight Bolton defends himself and punches that idiot square in the throat. I’d bet Bolton’s mustache could whoop that sissy’s ass.

Of course, it’s risky to defend yourself in the UK these days. But I’m sure Condi still has enough pull with Her Majesty’s government to get Mr. Bolton out of the country if necessary.

Here’s another great example of the left’s hypocrisy. They’re always clucking about dissenters being oppressed, yet they are the ones who actually want to arrest their political opponents. It goes beyond this incident. Check out the many fantasies on the internet of arresting Bush and Cheney.

UPDATE: Bolton escaped the citizen’s arrest. I’m sure he was sweating it, though…

UPDATE 2: Last January, my wife tried to put John Bolton under citizen’s arrest, too. Also unsuccessful. WE’LL GET YOU BOLTON!

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Take at least a minute today to remember the men and women who died at Bunker Hill, Normandy, Anbar Province and all the places in between to protect the freedom of future generations of Americans like my daughter there.

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I’m watching Into the Wild right now, and just referred to Emile Hirsch as “the kid from Speed Racer.” Apparently, I’m referring to 23 year old men as “kids” now. So, yeah, get off my lawn.

UPDATE: There is a part of the movie set in Carthage, South Dakota, which explains why my mother shared a plane with director Sean Penn out of Sioux Falls a few years ago – mystery solved. For all of it’s acclaim from coast dwellers, I’m probably one of seven people who has seen this movie who has actually been to Carthage, South Dakota. (Geocaches are hard to come by out in that area, and a hunt for one brought me out that way from Madison, South Dakota.)

UPDATE 2: Since I kind of live blogged the movie, why not throw in a mini-review:

Into the Wild was intense, well crafted, and very beautifully filmed. Say what you will about Sean Penn, and I often do, but the man has a talent for acting and filmmaking. (He only does the latter on this film.)

Emile Hirsch plays Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, in the true story of a young man who after graduating Emory University, decides to deal with his mommy and daddy issues by going off the grid, donating his small fortune to Oxfam, burning his cash, and living off the land and odd jobs from South Dakota, to Nevada and Arizona, to California, finally ending up on an old Fairbanks city bus in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

Now despite his crybaby reason for doing it, and despite the fact that I maintain if he would have majored in something useful like Chemical Engineering instead of the politics of Africa he would have been fulfilled enough not to do it, McCandles’ adventure story is impressive. After a tough day of dealing with nimrods, I’ve fantasized about walking into the wilderness and living off the land. However, where I’d probably have fun for a week until I started missing my internets, my Xbox 360, and my choice of ice cold Diet Mountain Dew or Miller Genuine Draft Lite, McCandless did it for two years.

Despite his hippie-like existence, and even association with actual hippies, McCandless seems to remain a decent guy. He works his way to Alaska, he passes up the chance to nail a beautiful hippie girl because she’s only 16 and he knows he’s leaving, and he has a generally positive influence on the people he comes across. I really enjoyed the portion of the movie with Hal Holbrook as a fairly conservative old man who takes McCandless under his wing, teaching him craft and offering to adopt him the day he leaves to Alaska. They have a life message for each other that’s kind of touching, but it’s pulled off in much less of a Hallmark Hall-of-Fame Movie of the Week than it sounds.

Unfortunately, (Spolier Alert, if you consider something that happened in real life and was widely reported a spoiler) when McCandless snaps out of it, has an epiphany, or whatever, and decides to rejoin society, he has an accident that leads to a slow, painful death. The sad irony of the story is the very isolation that has saved his humanity in the end takes his life.

Penn has a keen eye for what I declared “hiking cinematography” – wilderness cinematography from the tenuous man-made structure of a logging road, hiking trail, or abandoned bus. Eddie Vedder checks in with his first worthwhile effort since Pearl Jam’s “10″ with a soundtrack that is pitch-perfect to convey the mood of the movie. And while I would have maybe found the story somewhat contrived if it wasn’t true, it was true, cobbled together from several sources in a book by Jon Krakauer who also wrote Into Thin Air, another great wilderness story that was made into a solid movie.

Into the Wild: A-.

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As promised, I’m going to post a review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, however it’s going to be a preliminary grade. About 30 minutes into the movie I started feeling very sick to my stomach and with about 10 minutes left I had to go stand to the side and watch the rest of the movie in case I had to dash to the bathroom, which I did as soon as the credits rolled. Somehow, after waiting 19 years for a new Indy movie, I got attacked by a stomach virus on the very night it opened. Obviously, because I spent most of the movie with my attention divided between my rumbling guts and the movie, hoping the movie would end before I had to vomit, I can’t tell for sure if the movie actually dragged in the middle, or if I just thought it was.

In addition to those distractions, once again the biggest, loudest retards in the theater sat behind me again, declaring loudly what they had “figured out” five minutes after the movie assumed that you knew. The theater we saw the movie in, a beautiful, new, medium sized theater with DLP projection, has a special screen for 21 and over only. It’s a nice idea, but I’d prefer a special screen for people who promise to shut the hell up during the movie.

First, I really liked the way they handled Indiana Jones being in his 60’s. What could have been a weakness was turned into an advantage. Although Indy has stayed in shape working for the OSS during World War II and continuing with his archeology adventures, he has also matured since we saw him last almost two decades ago. He goes by Henry now as much as Indiana. He doesn’t laugh like he used to when his enemy finds an amusing demise the way his younger companion does. In short, he’s turned into his dad in many ways. (They even drive this home by having Indy use a variation Sean Connery’s famous line from The Untouchables.)

Of course, despite the fact that he’s older, doesn’t mean he’s not Indiana Jones anymore. Even though he had a team of Soviet agents with guns trained on him, he still manages to make a spectacular get away and survives both a nuclear blast and getting his junk decontaminated in the first fifteen minutes or so.

I was worried that Shia LaBeouf’s character of Mutt would be an anchor around the neck of the movie, but he turned out to be a fairly pleasant surprise, countering some frantic, if naive, energy to the old, wizened Indy who saves his whip and fist for when it’s only absolutely useful. Of course, it didn’t hurt that he showed up on a vintage Harley Softail and led some KGB agents on a chase through Indy’s college campus on it, even if Indy was riding bitch. (What can sum up the struggle of good versus evil better than Indiana Jones on a Harley on one side and commie KGB agents on the other side?)

I enjoyed the fact that Spielberg and Lucas took not only Indiana Jones into the ’50’s, but also the plot line into the ’50’s. Where the ’30’s based Indiana Jones movies were earthbound, this movie, set in the nuclear age and the dawn of the space age, has a plot that reflects the ’50’s. All of the Indiana Jones movies have a supernatural element to them, and it was fun to see it move beyond a religious relic. (Also because of the ’50’s setting, there is some throw away non-sense about Indy being the victim of McCarthyism, but Spielberg and Lucas said their piece and moved on before it got too sickening. A real hero like Indiana Jones would never have been accused of communist sympathizing in real life, even under “McCarthyism” but Indiana Jones movies were never big on realism.)

I think the movie did suffer from a lack of a main baddy to cheer against. In the first and third movies there was not only “the Nazis” but the main Nazi bad guy whose death we could all relish, and of course Temple of Doom had Mola Ram. Cate Blanchett was cute in her roll as a Soviet colonel hunting the same powerful relic as Indy, but not exactly fearful. The Soviet that was supposed to be that guy wasn’t quite sadistic enough on screen to relish his downfall, as cool as it was.

It seemed like the middle dragged a little to me, though as I was thinking about it as I was in bed for the last 32 of the 36 hours, I can’t say as it really did more than any of the other Indy movies. It did seem that they did set up one or two big sets only to end up with not much of an action set piece that the sets seemed to beg for. I really need to see the movie again healthy before I can judge it fairly, but for now I’ll have to knock it down a bit.

John Hurt turned out to be a nice addition to the cast at the very end, and brought some good comic energy to the movie, and it was nice to find out what happened to Marion Ravenwood. (Now how about an update on Wille Scott and Short Round in the next movie?)

At the very end of the movie, Hurt’s character says something about it being a shame how much of life is wasted just waiting. No kidding. I hope that was Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford’s regret being expressed about not returning to the world of Indiana Jones for almost twenty years. Indiana Jones still has it, and I think if he rode again after shaking off the dust bunnies in this one, he could do it even better. Mutt tries to put on Indy’s hat right before the credits roll, but Indy grabs it away and puts it on his own head. Maybe he’s not quite done. There’s still 30 years of Soviets to fight.

Preliminary Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: B+

UPDATE: The commies don’t like it, that’s another reason to like it.

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• MSN lists 18 things a grown man should never have. I have a few of the things on the list. (No drinking glasses with logos on them? Packers glasses, FTW!) It’s hard for me to take the list seriously when an “Obama ‘08″ bumper sticker isn’t on the list.
• Who would have thought that after the life he led, it would be brain cancer that will get Ted Kennedy. As much as I think that Senator Kennedy represents many of the problems this country has, I wouldn’t wish that on him. What a terrible way to die. (I will not tell the joke I heard about him upholding the family tradition by taking it in the head, as that would be in extremely poor taste.)
• George Takei is gay? I always thought there was a little sexual chemistry between Sulu and Chekov.
• I’m guessing the NFL opting out of the labor deal is going to be bad news for the Packers. And Seahawks.
• You know what I don’t want to hear about Gears of War 2? That it’s going to be more girlfriend-friendly. Come on. Some of us are married and don’t care. How about a girlfriend option you can pick from the menu?
• Everyone at work took the news pretty well today. They were a little worried about picking up the extra work, maybe, but gracious.

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I received an offer to be a law clerk at a local firm today. I generally interview like crap, in case you haven’t noticed, but I had the offer before I left the office today. I haven’t accepted yet, I had to crunch the numbers, but I will be accepting tomorrow morning. It looks like a lot of work on foreclosures (go figure), an estates case coming up, and some other random collections and appellate work. One of the lawyers will be arguing in front of the Washington Supreme Court in the fall, so I’ll have to see if I can get in on that somehow. (The prep work, not the arguing, obviously.)

There’s no IP work involved, but it will give me a legal job on my resume and writing samples to hand out when the IP firms come a-interviewin’ next fall.

The funny thing is, for how long I’ve been working towards this, it’s going to be kind of scary to be giving my notice at my current job tomorrow. I’ve been there for seven years, and have kind of gotten used to suckling at their teat. There will be less teat suckling now.

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I am now amongst a small group of people who have enjoyed an Elvis impersonator show with the current Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and a former CNO. Seattle’s finest, no, the Northwest’s finest Elvis impersonator was the entertainment at the local Navy League’s Armed Forces Day Gala. I don’t know, don’t ask. He was entertaining, but I felt a little sorry for him and his wife (playing Ann-Margaret) because the crowd didn’t exactly get into it, seeing as how it was mostly deadly serious Naval officers, a Congressman, and other local politicians and business leaders. (I’m never quite sure how I’m allowed into these things. They might think my wife wouldn’t come if I wasn’t allowed, but I think she would.) A few of the middle aged women played along for a few songs, screeching for Elvis but mostly it was kind of weirdly subdued. I did want to go home and watch Bubba Ho-Tep after the dinner.

I did get a chance to talk to Admiral Roughead (what a great name for a CNO) for a few minutes during the VIP reception before the gala started, and I got to use my cousin as an icebreaker. He gave me some dirt on her and her husband (another Naval officer) from back in the days when they were dating.

The CNO gave a stirring keynote talk about how kick-ass our Navy is and how we supporters of the Navy and the other branches need to keep pushing for funds. It’s too bad our Congressman Norm Dicks (D-umbass or D-runk) had to take a dig at the Iraq war when introducing him. Maybe Dicks, who is on the Appropriations Committee, doesn’t like how the cost of the war is cutting into his pork.
Earlier in the day we took in the parade. Bremerton has the nation’s longest running Armed Forces Day parade. It’s usually presided over by a local Medal of Honor winner from World War II, he missed this year due to health issues, but it’s only the second time he has missed. It’s rare that they get a grand marshal quite as grand as the CNO, but they always pull in a pretty high up flag officer. We scored a nice spot in the shade for the hottest day of the year, and the kids, my wife and I enjoyed the parade. They have three separate motorcycle groups. Pretty swell.
There was some controversy this year when they wouldn’t let a moonbat anti-war group march in the parade. The police let them march after the parade had ended, however. Most people dispersed by the time they came through. The leader of the group promised they would be respectful and wouldn’t let any “anarchist types.” I gave them the benefit of the doubt, but when they walked down the street they were marching behind a 911 Truther group banner. I’d rather have the anarchists. At least with anarchists you know what you’re getting, and they generally aren’t willfully ignorant of physics.

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Last October 9, I posted the following (here, last item), in an extremely tounge-in-cheek fashion:

Personally, I, like every other fan boy on the planet, think that the Indiana Jones new movie will suck because it wasn’t based on one of my fanfic stories.

It begins.

These internet fanboys are getting entirely too predictable. The bile spewed at The Phantom Menace caught me off guard. The same bile about to spewed at Indy 4, totally predictable.

I don’t know if the movie will be horrible, a masterpiece like Raiders of the Lost Ark (aka The Scary Box Movie), but most likely it will be somewhere in between. Hell, just the pictures of Cate Blanchette with the jet black hair in that dominatrix Soviet uniform should keep it out of horrible territory. But it won’t matter. In the world of the internet – where Ron Paul is president, where “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is the best example of old television, and Jon Stewart is the pinacle in journalism, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the worst movie ever that does not feature Jar Jar Binks.
Maybe these fanboys ought to put down their copies of The Green Lantern and create something themselves rather than co-opting the creations of others and then being  mad when the new edition of that creation isn’t what they would have done.

You can be sure when the review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull appears on this blog next week it will be fair and not influenced by the rejection of my Indy spec, Indiana Jones and the Extremely Well Hidden Geocache.

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• Natalie Portman isn’t making any endorsements and Sean Penn’s endorsement of Obama was less than ringing? OH MY GOD WHO DO I VOTE FOR?!?!?!?!
• Speaking of Penn, I bought his last directorial effort, Into the Wild, on HD DVD based on the closeout price and rave reviews of people I trust. If it sucks, I’m going to have to put him on my enemies list. Oh, wait, he’s already there…
• I thought Obama was a smart, educated man. Didn’t he ever read any Shake-you-for-a-beer? The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Bush: “We shouldn’t appease terrorists by trying to negotiate with them.” Obama: “Hey! Stop talking about me!”
• I bought my wife a $429 trail/jogging stroller for Mother’s Day. Does that make us Yuppies? Does it help if it was on sale for $350?
• I have to watch the kids tonight while my wife goes to a reception for the Chief of Naval Operations. How’d I get stuck with that deal? At least I get to go to the dinner tomorrow night where he’ll be speaking. Funny thing is my cousin worked right under him at the Pentagon before he was CNO and before she got shipped to Afghanistan, so I’ll even have an icebreaker. (I’m sure my wife will steal it tonight, though.)
• It’s supposed to be 87 here today, which will break some records. I look forward to hearing the calls of global warming again after a much cooler than usual spring.
• The nice weather will probably delay the introduction of my new copy of GTA IV to the inside of my Xbox. Maybe there’ll be some time in the evenings.
• Less than a week until the new Indiana Jones! Lucas is talking about a fifth one already. Let’s wait to see how this one measures up first.

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75 down, 15 to go.

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My God, the test is in two hours, and I’ll I’ve done is work out! Better start studying.

Who knows what I’m paraphrasing? That’s this week’s chance to win a 6-pack of Milwaukee’s Best Light Ice.

I think as an experiment I’m going to see if I can write an entire Trademark Law exam without using the phrase “likelihood of confusion” and still pass.

UPDATE: Churned out another one. You know, they should give us finals at the beginning of the semester when we’re not all so tired from the semester. There’s probably a part of that cunning plan that I haven’t thought all the way through.

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I’m going to organize a Bull Moose Nation cuddle party. Who’s in?

What the hell is this? We have the perfectly good alternative of organizing fight clubs and instead people do this? No wonder the Islamists don’t take us seriously.

Seriously, be warned now: When I’m Emperor anyone who has participated in a cuddle party will be the first sent to the re-education camps.

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I didn’t write much last week and don’t expect much this week. I’m mired down in finals preparation. I have the Trademark Law final tomorrow night, and my Patent Law take-home, which I’m roughly half done with is due Thursday by 5 PM.

I’m going to try to do this all without burning a vacation day, so that means every second between now and at least late Wednesday night will should be devoted to something either work or school related.

See ya on the other side.

In the meantime, here’s something worth reading.

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• Yet another study where they could have saved the grant money by just asking me. In my house if you were born under President Ford you took the most beatings. If you were born in President Reagan’s second term the least. there was a pretty linear line for beatings vs. year born between those two points.
• “Prostitutes are a product, like cereal,” said one man. “You go to the grocery, pick the brand you want and pay for it. It’s business.” Hmm…. I just got a good idea for a niche trademark practice.
• I noticed that Senator Obama used “The Rising” as his theme music in North Carolina. That made me think: If The Boss is looking for another horrific terrorist attack to use as the inspiration for another great album, he’s endorsed the right man.
• How much wood do you think Al Gore was sporting as the death toll from the Burma typhoon kept going up? He couldn’t hold his wad even a tasteful period before blaming it on manbearpig global warming. Because everyone knows there were never powerful typhoons before the industrial revolution.
• I flipped to a random Simpsons DVD and played three consecutive episodes the other night. It turned out to be three Season 5 episodes that had a now-dead guest star in each one: “$pringfield” with Robert Goulet, “Bart’s Inner Child” with James Brown, and “Boy Scoutz ‘N the Hood” with Ernest Borgnine. I wonder if a show has been on too long when each episode from the fifth year it was on contains a different dead person. UPDATE: Apparently Ernest Borgnine is still alive. Who’d have thought?
• Today on the ferry I had three Mormons share my booth with me. Far be it from me to stand in judgment of any man’s religion – as long as that man isn’t trying to kill me in the name of it – but those people are too nice. Maybe we should all be Mormon. For how wacky I find of some of their beliefs, I can’t say I’ve ever had an ill word to say about any Mormon I’ve personally known, other than being too nice, and I’m generally not one to spare ill words.
• And what’s with the all the good looking Mormon women? Included in the people sitting with me was a young couple – a kind of ugly dude and an extremely cute girl. I can see them at the meeting where they assign husbands: “Sorry, to get a plain dude you need to be smokin’ hot. In the Mormon community extremely cute only gets you kind of ugly.”

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The suspicious ferry riders have been found and cleared. I’m sure the Seattle PI feels vindicated in not running their picture. They shouldn’t. They should feel like they dodged a bullet.

I’m writing this on the ferry, and there are about 1000 people on board with me right now. The ferries on the routes we meet up with on the way into Seattle have even more people on them. The Seattle PI decided that it was OK to gamble with our safety because running pictures of olive skinned people in connection with the word “suspicious” made them feel funny in their politically correct pants.

Never mind that 25 of the last 27 people to commit horrific terrorist attacks inside the borders of the United States happened to have olive skin, if they look middle eastern, they must be given a greater benefit of the doubt, right? And spare me any politically correct lectures. From my my college roommate of Pakistani decent to my Iraqi and Iranian first bosses to my wife’s Iranian uncle, I am well aware that Middle Eastern does not equal terrorist. But that does not translate into someone should never be called a suspicious person if they have olive skin.

I’m not sure where the Seattle PI got the idea that one has to be convicted of a crime before their picture can be shown in the paper, especially if the FBI wants to talk to them. Especially when they were acting weird enough to get the attention of a ferry crew that is used to all kinds of weird behavior, and see many more than two dark skinned people a year.

And what horrible fate befell these men when they talked to the FBI? They checked out their story and cleared them. What a horrible fate! The men were here on business and had never seen a car ferry before. Fine. No one’s rights were violated, no one was whisked off to Gitmo in the middle of the night. You couldn’t have helped out with that Seattle PI? You’d rather play your idiotic political correctness games with the safety of thousands on a what has been established to be a possible terrorist target? Jerks.

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Ugh… My son gave me the cold that put him out of commission. I came down with it on Friday, and it hasn’t gotten much better. The main problem with all of that is that I have my exam in Income Tax Law tonight and was supposed to be studying for it over the weekend. I did study, but it’s hard to concentrate either coughing and blowing my nose or drugged up on cold medication. That’s also the choice I face for taking the exam.

Fortunately the material is pretty straight forward, so hopefully I can concentrate enough to pull a decent grade. It is a 4-credit class, after all.

UPDATE: Done! I think I did pretty well, though I think I might have boned one of the Section 1031 questions by not watching the original basis close enough. Oh well, that’s just one subpart of one question, and the answer I gave was probably chalk full of partial credit. Feels like a B+, though there might be enough graduating full-time 3Ls who have ceased giving a crap about their class standing since they’ll never pull out of the bottom third of the class, that maybe I can sneak an A-. Either way, I won’t lose any sleep over it.

Three classes and six credits down, two classes and five credits to go.

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THE BEST-KNOWN appearance by a Bull Moose here in recent years came in 2000, as Sen. John McCain brought his “straight-talk express” to Seattle and then took it across the water to Bremerton.

Says Comrade Joel Connelly before laying ground work for what is sure to be the Seattle PI’s war on McCain to start after the Democratic nominee is settled. Washington might be a critical state and a real fight for Hillary against McCain. (It won’t matter for Obama, but Washington might be one of the ten states that would tip for him if he gets the nod.)

First of all, the people of Seattle and Bremerton are treated to a Bull Moose sighting almost every day.

Second of all, while his claim to the Teddy Roosevelt mantle was one of the things that attracted me to McCain in 2000, I think that needs to be reevaluated. McCain supports a strong, aggressive foreign policy, at least talks a good game on conservation, claims to be against corruption to a fault (I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that he learned his lesson after the Keating Five scandal), and can be dangerous when pissed off – all TResque.

However, I’m pretty sure TR wouldn’t close the prison at Gitmo. TR was one of the men responsible for having Gitmo in the first place, and I’m sure he’d love to see it being used as a good place to store dangerous enemies to the United States.

Second, though McCain has changed his tune on this a little bit, I don’t think TR would be very excited about the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill. Allowing Spanish to become the defacto large minority first language and allowing those in this country illegally to march down the streets of our major cities proudly waving the Mexican flag on May Day probably would have made his blood boil, as this oft-quoted passage from 1919 would suggest:

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American…There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization, just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

Since McCain seems set on continuing to use the Bull Moose mantle to get the votes of people like me, I wish he’d recalibrate himself a little, especially since he is starting to look like a lock for the presidency.

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