Favorites, Good Words, and Really?

The Right’s “Favorite People,” according to right-wing bloggers polled by John Hawkins at Right Wing News. The numbers in the parentheses are the votes received from the polled bloggers, my comments follow in italics. The list:

21) Glenn Reynolds (6) Agree
21) Laura Ingraham (6) Umm…sorta, but not really. She IS cute, though.
21) Sean Hannity (6) NO! Too damned strident for my tastes.
21) Milton Friedman (6) Interesting…an economist? But: agreed.
21) George Allen (6) Nope.
20) Antonin Scalia (7) Yes!
17) Hugh Hewitt (8) Good, but not a favorite
17) Ann Coulter (8) Absolutely frickin’ NOT. Over the top, and not in a good way.
17) Tom Coburn (8) Who?
15) Walter Williams (9) Who, again?
15) Tom Tancredo (9) Interesting ideas, but too jingoistic for my tastes.
14) Victor David Hanson (10) Ab-so-frickin’-lutely!
12) Jonah Goldberg (11) Yes.
12) John Bolton (11) Oh my, Yes.
11) Newt Gingrich (12) I hope he runs for President. He has MY vote.
10) Dick Cheney (13) I’m basically ambivalent about Dick, but I like his style.
9) Rush Limbaugh (15) No.
7) Donald Rumsfeld (16) Yeah! HELL YEAH!
7) Charles Krauthammer (16) Yep.
6) Michelle Malkin (17) She’s prolific and well-spoken. But, once again, over the top.
4) Mark Steyn (19) Yes. There are equal but not better pundits.
4) George W. Bush (19) Only Number Four?
2) Thomas Sowell (20) He’s good. Very, very GOOD.
2) Rudy Giuliani (20) Umm, can I get back to you?
1) Condi Rice (22) I don’t agree with her Number One ranking, but I DO admire and respect her. A lot.

There were “honorable mentions,” too. I find it interesting that my personal top three pundits (Steyn, Hanson, Krauthammer) made the list. But then again, that’s not too surprising, eh?

Here’s a few quotes, taken out of sequence, from an editorial written by Vin Suprynowicz, a guy who thinks as I do:

In Lebanon, Hezbollah is nowhere near ready to surrender. To end a war which has now been dragging on for 58 years, somebody's ass has got to, finally, be whupped.

[…]

Imagine now that America, finally stirred from her lethargy, had fought through that miserable year of 1942, American boys desperately throwing away their lives at places like Wake and Midway as they took on a superior foe while equipped only with inadequate pre-war weapons and supplies.

Now, in 1943, the tables are finally starting to turn. We have finally driven the Japanese from Guadalcanal. Our factories having run at full pace for a year, we now have enough materiel to start slogging our way up the island chains toward Japan ... when some vastly superior coalition of nations steps in and says, "Your response has been disproportionate. They only sank a handful of your ships and killed a few hundred sailors at Pearl Harbor. Look at the pictures of the suffering your bombs and torpedoes are causing. This is barbaric."

Imagine that a three-year cease-fire had been imposed, during which Imperial Japan had time to rest, refit and re-arm. Then, in 1946, when Japan was ready, they attacked us again, unexpectedly, sinking more of our ships in Australia and in San Diego. Back to war we go.

[…]

The defeatists cry that "Nothing can be accomplished by violence; war only breeds more terrorists who will fight forever."

Really? Sixty years later, is America still under attack by the aggrieved suicide-belted grandchildren of the Germans and Japanese whose cities we flattened and burned to rubble in '44 and '45?

No. Because wars usually do resolve these issues -- if one side is allowed to fight to a decisive victory. It's just that the pink petticoat gang shriek hysterically and threaten to faint dead away when confronted with the reality of how real wars really end.

Someone raises a white flag, and promises to fight no more if only you'll give the survivors some food and water and stop burning them out of their holes. Many of the conquered women marry the conqueror's soldiers and move home with them, giving up their native dress and learning to drive Buicks.

As I said, the man writes the way I think. Good on him. Although we appear to be in the minority, there are still a significant number of people left in America with the ability to call a spade a spade. We’re usually shouted down by the “the pink petticoat gang,” however. Or categorized as “unevolved.” God save me from evolving…please.

“Liberal McCarthyism.” You don’t say? No, really? Heh. I remember getting into one of those pointless arguments (I think it was at maha’s place…) where I maintained the Left was much more uncivil than the Right. And I was shouted down. Imagine that.