baldilocks

More Evidence (UPDATED on March 30, 2010)

What two things do the UK and Israel have in common?

UPDATE: President Obama's animus toward Israel.

UPDATE: "Obama snubs Leader of the Free World" --Darmon Thornton

UPDATE: It's a safe bet that Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson Sr., Jeremiah Wright(!) and Louis Farrakhan (!!!) were treated far better than the heads of state of two of America's staunchest allies and the Dalai Lama. Fair warning to Canadian PM Stephen Harper.

What a disaster Barack Obama has turned out to be.

UPDATE (March 30, 2010): Little did I know that President Obama had insulted our Canadian allies months ago.  And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton adds a fresh, healthy dose of disdain.

By now, Stevie Wonder could see this pattern: cut America off from her friends and destroy her.

Long Story Short

(Thanks to Booker Rising who has a round-up of reactions to yesterday's legislated usurpation of the freedom of Americans by the U.S. House of Representatives.)

Be Cool (KS)

If you ever visit Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website, you already know that a recurring theme for many of BH's authors is the necessity for conservatives to bring their ideas into popular culture through movies, books, television, music and other media.  At first glance, this would seem to be a Sisyphean task.  Hollywood, publishing, popular song, magazines-all these industries are dominated by soft-headed soft-hearted leftists.  The sheer volume of tedious knee-jerk liberal crap put out by American pop culture has to be discouraging for right-of-center creative types looking to make art that displays their values.

While all of the above is true, conservatives have something in their favor when it comes to reclaiming the high ground in the American culture wars.  It is that government remains decidedly uncool in popular media.  Think about your favorite movies, books and television shows.  Are the protagonists in even 1/4 of them big gubmint types?  Are the heroes in your beloved films living in public housing or on welfare?  Are the lead characters in your backlog of DVR 'ed TV shows employed as paper-pushing bureaucrats in some federal agency?  Glancing at the fiction books stacked on top of your toilet, are your bathroom library tomes populated by men and women dependent on the various liberal do-gooders and bleeding hearts?  When you pop a CD into your car stereo do the songs that serenade you to and from the supermarket urge the listener to start collecting food stamps because that's the hip thing to do?  

Chances are, almost no items on the popular culture menu that you or anybody else in America consumes have the message that dependency on government is the hip thing to do.  Sure, you may get a message that right-wingers suck.  Hell, the eight years of the Bush presidency was one long pop-cult whine about how conservatives are the spawn of the devil.  Even then, leftists in the media couldn't create mainstream art that revelled in the glories of relying on the federal thumbsucker apparatus in order to survive.

Government is fundamentally uncool and dependency on government is about as fashion-forward as dreadlocks on an albino white dude.  Just like the rarity of pasty uber-crackers rocking Bob Marley's hairdo, it's hard to find the producers of mass media pushing for people defined by their tight relationship with government because it is lame.  Even Hollyweird and the rest of the pop culture goof balls understand this, which is why they don't usually make material that sends that message.

Conservatives have a great deal of work to do if they want to get their messages into the mainstream media.  But on a basic level, America loathes the idea of being dependent on government.  This means that the Right's job is not as tough as they think it is.  America is largely sympathetic to many conservative values.  It is up to creative people within the conservative movement to overcome their nervousness about lefty media dominance and start creating quality entertainment that reflects traditional messages about the role of government.   

PUT YOUR FREEDOM TO WORK

Cuba's political prisoners need your help and SOLIDARITY NOW.

Quick question...

Should a person that once accepted money from, and cohabitated with, an agent from a foreign espionage entity be made a US Ambassador?

Bring the Aid, Leave the Flag at Home

We interrupt the wonderful postings of my guest hosts to ask the musical question of our Commander-in-Chief....what the &^*%^ is up with this, Mr. President?

The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.

France's tricolor, Britain's Union Jack and even Croatia's coat of arms flap in the breeze.

But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world's — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport.

(...)

The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.

"We are not here as an occupation force, but as an international partner committed to supporting the government of Haiti on the road to recovery," the U.S. government's Haiti Joint Information Center said in response to a query about the flag.

So flying the flag in another country is a indication of occupation?  Actually I'm guessing that's what President Obama and Haitian President Preval agreed on when the latter paid a visit to Washington DC last week to thank the former for saving the lives of the surviving Haitians who were not only victims of a horrendous earthquake but victims of their own leaders long before the quake occurred.

The Obama Administration: displaying its contempt for America and her defenders since January 20, 2009.

Oh and it's quite interesting that the article appears in the Army Times.  First of all, it's an implicit criticism of the Commander-in-Chief (Note the weaselly language: "does not sit well with some veterans and servicemembers." I bet they couldn't find any GIs who liked the policy.)  But secondly, these civilian-run Army/Navy/Air Force Times papers generally have a liberal bent in spite of the intended audience.

(Thanks to Drew at Ace of Spades HQ)

AFTERTHOUGHT: One wonders how things would play out if the installation commander disobeyed orders in this matter.

DNA Registries, Obama and the Doe-Eyed Left (KS)

One of the interesting things about the presidential campaigns in 2008 is just how effectively Barack Obama and his team framed issues to serve their needs.  Throughout the election season-but especially during the primaries-Candidate Obama made a great deal of noise regarding just how badly the Bush Administration had abused civil liberties in order to fight the war on terror.  Then-Senator Obama contrasted the supposedly horrible Dubya record on constitutional rights with his own lofty promises.  By and large, Obama successfully painted himself as a true-blue friend of human rights during 2008. 

The problem with political campaigns is that they inexorably end.  Once they do, the harsh realities of governance can shatter the self-made myths about the people running the country.  The dissonance between a candidate's image and his actual governing style are often incredibly jarring.  How does the mythic St. Barry of the Sacred Civil Liberties square with one of President Obama's real-world positions?

Obama thinks that citizens should be DNA tested upon arrest.  Not conviction, not indictment...but right after the arrest.  Those DNA records would then become part of a national DNA registry that could be accessed by state and federal law enforcement agencies.  Pretty amazing considering the President's reputation as a civil liberties champion. 

Now, one can make a rational case for a national DNA registry.  Opponents of this program can come up with perfectly valid counter-arguments.  The issue I have is the shifting standards of progressive outrage.  What happened to the lefty thumbsuckers who constantly banged their spoons against their high-chairs wailing about President Bush's abuse of the US Constitution?  Where are Chris Matthews, Jack Cafferty, Michael Moore and every other prominent media liberal on the apostasy of Obama vis-a-vis civil liberties?  If the Patriot Act is a death blow to citizen's privacy rights, what does that make a national DNA registry?  If George Bush was a freedom-infringing fascist, how is Barack Obama any different? 

It seems pretty obvious that, like nearly every issue raised by Candidate Obama in 2008, defending civil liberties was just another campaign promise cynically used by the Democrats to get elected.  Once again, it should be clear that the Donkey Party is not serious about constitutional rights except as a means to rile up the marks within their own ranks.  Moreover, anybody who gets suckered in by Obambi's nonsense is a gullible fool.

PS:  Thanks to the Instapundit himself for finding the original link.  Gracias.

Pretty Much What I Like And Dislike About TED In One Go

The TED conference--started as one Big Deal, and snarled the traffic in Monterey when I was studying there, and infiltrated my mailbox and now there are TEDs everywhere--has some great lectures.  This one right here (via Instapundit) is a pretty neat lecture.  Creative ideas about creative stuff presented, uh, creatively.

But notice the language the guy is using here.  He's speaking to one political party, one political tradition, about another political tradition or two.  The entering argument is that everyone at TED, each of those well-off fancy schmancy hoi polloi types, is assumed to be of one political persuasion.

I think that's a real shame.

A Briny Pickle

My only question is, if they ban salt in NYC, what will they do about the ocean?

Any Dodger fans in the house?

Tommy Lasorda inducted into Cuban Sports Hall of Fame:



Quote Tommy:

I played in Cuba during WinterBall in the '50's as a pitcher. I played for Almendares and Marianao. I saw the government change hands twice.

Gracias por este honor. Mira! Mi sueno es un dia veer Cuba libre. (Thank you for this honor! My dream is to see a free Cuba.)

My kinda guy, that Tommy.

Le Corbusier

Architects can make neighborhoods and communities, for better or worse.  He made some buildings people not me liked, and a lot of architects imitated to less success.  It's beginning to be more acceptable to bash that architect.  Dalrymple's take is pretty vicious.  (Found via a Michael Totten description of Romania that's as usual a rewarding read.)

Can we roll back a big gubmint program just once? (KingShamus)

Mark Steyn, National Review's in-house demographic bore and all-around wet blanket, keeps it very real. 

Once the state swells to a certain size, the people available to fill the ever expanding number of government jobs will be statists — sometimes hard-core Marxist statists, sometimes social-engineering multiculti statists, sometimes fluffily “compassionate” statists, but always statists. The short history of the post-war welfare state is that you don’t need a president-for-life if you’ve got a bureaucracy-for-life: The people can elect “conservatives,” as the Germans have done and the British are about to do, and the Left is mostly relaxed about it because, in all but exceptional cases (Thatcher), they fulfill the same function in the system as the first-year boys at wintry English boarding schools who for tuppence-ha’penny or some such would agree to go and warm the seat in the unheated lavatories until the prefects strolled in and took their rightful place.

Republicans are good at keeping the seat warm. A bigtime GOP consultant was on TV crowing that Republicans wanted the Dems to pass Obamacare because it’s so unpopular it will guarantee a GOP sweep in November. Okay, then what? You’ll roll it back — like you’ve rolled back all those other unsustainable entitlements premised on cobwebbed actuarial tables from 80 years ago? Like you’ve undone the federal Department of Education and of Energy and all the other nickel ’n’ dime novelties of even a universally reviled one-term loser like Jimmy Carter? Andrew McCarthy concluded a shrewd analysis of the political realities thus: “Health care is a loser for the Left only if the Right has the steel to undo it. The Left is banking on an absence of steel. Why is that a bad bet?”

As much as it might ruffle some feathers to admit it, Steyn is...as usual...spot on.

History tells us that the GOP is loathe to undo a Democratic domestic program with the exception of slavery.  Look back to the New Deal.  What put the presidential stamp of approval on Social Security was not the Truman Administration, but when Eisenhower elected not to even try to dismantle it.  The Great Society could've been demolished when Nixon took office.  Instead, Tricky Dick decided to build on it.  Not even Ronaldus Magnus Reagan found the political will to take a wrecking ball to any of the craptastic big government programs he came across.

Meanwhile, are the Democrats ever scared to stop or massively reconfigure any Republican policy they run into?  No  They gleefully roll back tax cuts, missile defense funding, military spending...whatever they want to do, they do it.  It's only the gutless GOP that holds to the notion that the Donkey Party's program is sanctified under some bizarre domestic program stare decisis.  It has to make you think just how committed the Republicans are to their alleged core small-government beliefs.

Damned if you do...(KingShamus)

If you've ever played any video games, you've probably run across a point where a choice of actions directly correlates to an 'A or B'.  For example, if you shoot an opponent at one point in the game's progression, you create a chain of events that leads to your death in the game.  However, if you shoot that same opponent later in the match when you've completed other necessary tasks, you will continue to live in the game. 

As realistic and open-ended as computer games have become in the last few years, they're still a poor substitute for real life.  In reality, there are so many variables that go into everything that there are very few occasions where you draw a direct correlation.  I say this because in my last post here, I discuss why Mickey Kaus believes the Democrats will be hunky-dory if they just pass one their massive socialized medicine bills.  This is wishful thinking.  In life, you sometimes have several choices and every single one of them are terrible.  You don't get to dodge death and keep playing.  You're just toast.

The liberal media has in the last few weeks created a mini-narrative where...if the Democrats just pass health care deform...everything will be okay.  They cannot face the fact that the Donkey Party has painted itself into a deep dark corner and they have no way out.  If Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi ram-rod one of their bills onto Obama's desk, the voter rage could make the 1994 midterm elections look like a hiccup.  If Obama doesn't get a health care package, the Democrats still come off really bad.  To their lefty base they'll look weak and ineffective, which is the kiss of death in American politics. 

Here's the worst part for the Donks.  No matter what happens, the moderates and independents that were convinced in 2006 and 2008 that Democrats could be trusted with political power are starting to abandon President Obama.  This is in large part because of the way Obama, Reid and Pelosi have handled the health care reform process.

I think in this last year the Democrats have used up all their video game lives.  When they had President Bush to beat up on, they could just lay the blame for America's problems onto him and then skate away from most of the political flack.  When Obama was sworn in, the Democrats got to ride on St. Barry's dreamy honeymoon parade float from the American voters.  But now?  They have no good options left.  Barring some amazing and unforeseen turn-around, the Democrats have put their Congressional majorities and their Presidency into grave peril with no escape. 

To think people actually bought into the MSM meme that these guys were political super-geniuses.

A little Solidarity, please

For more information on Cuban dissident Guillermo "Coco" Farinas - currently on hunger strike - and other prisoners of conscience in Cuba, check out Uncommon Sense.

Elites And The Narrative

I note that Baldi (who is currently in a hot air balloon over David Malki's house planning to drop five hundred cubic meters of pudding onto a parking lot) went to CPAC, where there was talk of Tea Parties and such. 

I just got an email from Rich Galen, too.  Galen's a nice fella, and he went to Iraq as an adviser in media affairs, something sorely needed in our current environment of conflict as information war.  He is of the Beltway, however, and he swims in an elite sea.  In his periodic mailing list column he referred to "tea baggers".  This, I must add, is from an establishment GOP talking head.  Now, his on line post doesn't use the phrase, and he apologizes for the slur in his column commentary page, and I can easily believe he had no idea that the phrase might not be the one those Tea Party dudes like to hear.  

But the fact that for this long after the beating of Kenneth Gladney, party stalwarts are using the terminology of the anti's, might indicate how detached even a folksy guy who gets around the country can get.  Changing that narrative is hard work.

Black Activist Murdered

His name was Orlando Zapata Tamayo and he died last week from complications suffered from 18 days without being given water by the castro regime while in one of the regime's gulags. He'd been on a hunger strike for about 80 days, protesting inhumane treatment including beatings, torture, harassment and other debasements. He was serving time in prison for "disrespect." That's what the castro regime calls those Cubans in Cuba that have the audacity to want to be treated as human beings. As individuals. As people with rights to their own thoughts and opinions.

The castro regime would not let his mother visit him during his final days. And, when his body was finally released and was taken to his small hometown of Banes on the east coast of Cuba, the castro regime sent military personnel, state security agents, rapid response brigades and other rabble rousers to prevent people from attending his wake and funeral. Dissidents and other Cuban human rights activists were rounded up and detained and all those who had the wherewithal to offer their personal condolences to his bereaved mother and family were subjected to further harassment and intimidation by state forces and personnel. The Cuban state run media went out of its way to slander, libel and publish prevarications about him and his family.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo. A construction worker by trade. A simple, quiet man of few words. A man of color who dared to speak truth to power. A man who suffered not only physical assaults, but who was denigrated and humiliated, called a "worthless nigger" by his jailers as they took batons and clubs to his body. A man who endured these heinous acts with courage and dignity. A man who gave his all not only for his beliefs and convictions. But for 12 million of his fellow countrymen for whom "freedom" is only a dream.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo is my hero.

"Gogo Juice"

Cuban coffee. Hot, dark and rich. Ain't nothing like it and it'll keep you going all day.

Chap, Rush Chairman, Dang Glad To Meet You

The legendary Val Prieto doesn't need any intro--he's the man, after all, who forced Steve Graham to put a mojo'd pig in a China box and call it barbecue even though it isn't Carolina style--but perhaps I need to say hello.  I'm Chap, and until I went to my current job (and went dark because of it) I was hanging out at Chapomatic and causing low level insurrection over on the Navy side.  Right now I'm deployed somewhere and doing something if you know what I mean. By the way, Val, I've seen guys buy cigars at Cuban Crafters and like them, but around here they tend to buy their Esteli smokes through Cigars International because SondraK told us to contribute to CI's donation drive for active duty guys.  It's all to your benefit since if the tobacco kills us quicker you pay less taxes paying our retirement and health care later on.  Me, I'd prefer a Karuizawa or maybe an ancient Springbank but at the moment the closest I can get is probably Moussy, which tastes like a can of malt extract reluctantly mixed with soda water.  In a pickle bucket.

Why am I here? Well, we .mil types like to help each other out.

Okay, I'm totally here because the Air Force commissaries are better.

No idea just yet how to please Baldi's audience yet (I can't read this so there goes my trump card), but I'm tying on my tap shoes so we'll see what happens.  In the meantime, might as well strain the analogy by introducing folks to the righteous anger about diversity versus equality stoked every Thursday over at Commander Salamander's place, maybe noting that we're mixing amongst the genders and some don't like that idea much.  In any case, I'm sure my experience with our host will be better than it would be here.  Nice to meet y'all!

Oh, yeah...it's gonna get a lil' crazy 'round here

It seems Baldi brought back a few souvenirs from CPAC this year:

Yep. That's me. The Cuban blogger CPAC souvenir, and Baldi has graciously allowed me to guest blog here at her place, provided I dont make too much of a mess or drink everything in the minibar.

So, for the next couple of days I'll be here butchering the English language and answering any and all questions on anything Cuba related.

Like Cuban food and want a recipe? Let me know, I have plenty.

Wanna know where you can get a great Cuban non-contraband cigar? I got you covered.

Want to know the truth about Che Guevara? Pull up a chair.

You'd like to know what I think about Pacino's Tony Montana Scarface accent? I gwil tell chu, meng.

Need some new salsa steps? I'm your man.

Discuss US/Cuba policy? Let's roll, baby.

Seriously though, doesnt Baldi totally ROCK?

Why Future California Senator Mickey Kaus is wrong about health care reform (KingShamus)

Mickey Kaus might kick Barbara Boxer's butt in the 2010 elections[sarc/], but when it comes to the health care deform debate raging among Congressional Democrats, he's missing a few pieces of the puzzle.

...passing health care reform offers Dems, in the not-so- long term, a chance to do more than avoid Republican attacks. It offers the chance to disprove them. For months, both GOP and Fox hosts have been talking about socialized medicine and death panels and vicious Medicare cuts and the government coming between you and your doctor, etc. If Democrats pass the bill and none of this happens, Republican opponents will be more than defeated. They'll be discredited...Retreating on health care, on the other hand, gives credence to the Republican claims. Indeed, for all practical purposes it lets them win the argument.

Kaus' solution-Pass the bill, ASAP-doesn't help the Donkey Party at all in November, when voter hatred for the bill could possibly immolate the Democrat congressional majorities in both houses.  Oh, but Kaus has got an answer.

...OK, you say. If Dems pass reform and the sky doesn't fall, that might help them in the semi-near term. But how would it help  them this November, when many will be facing what looks like an impressive wave of popular discontent? One answer is to look at the public's response to the "stimulus" bill. It was unreasonable to expect last year's package of spending to have an immediate effect on the unemployment rate. But when the unemployment rate didn't fall, did voters say "Well, let's give it another year and see"? Or did they start to think the stimulus was a flop? Answer: flop. Similarly, if health reform passes and nothing much changes, they will very quickly start to suspect that the GOP predictions of doom were bogus.

The problem here is that the average citizen's health care is going to change very quickly and very dramatically when either the House or Senate bill passes.  ObamaCare isn't some rinky-dink Washington DC park refurbishing program.  It's a massive bazillion dollar scheme that will create vast new national bureaucracies, which will in turn trigger towering tax hikes to pay for it all. 

How can that not immediately change the medical system in America?  The economy reacted when the federal government farted out the relatively small Cash for Clunkers program.  The health care reform plans on the table are behemoths in comparison.

Oh and better still:  The gloriously awesome awesomeness that is ObamaCare doesn't kick in until 2014.  So the average American's health care gets worse, her taxes go up and she sees none of that rich creamy gubmint medicine for two more years.  How does all that square up with Kaus' notion that passing the bill will be politically less painful than not passing it?

EDIT:  I'm a Grade-A jerk for not saying 'Thank You' to the one and only Baldilocks herself for allowing a schlub like me to guest-post here on her site.  You rule, Baldi.