Soul Food: it’s yummy stuff. The origins of what is known a Soul Food, however, are often forgotten. For very pertinent reasons, it can legitimately be called ‘Black Food.’
Foods such as rice, sorghum (known by Europeans as "guinea corn"), and okra — all common elements of West African cuisine — were introduced to the Americas as a result of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Yams and watermelon are other examples.
Eventually, such fare became known as Southern Food. These days, Soul Food is considered a delicacy. (Personal note: I like the stuff very much, with the following exceptions. Yams and chitlins have crossed the threshold of my lips only once, respectively.) But, back in the bad old days, masters fed their slaves the type of food considered crap, and saved the choice meats, grains, and vegetables for themselves. Much of the fare called Soul Food consists of plantation throwaways.
European enslavers fed their captive workers as cheaply as possible, often with leftover/waste foods from the plantation, forcing slaves to make do with the ingredients at hand. In slave households, 'vegetables' consisted of the tops of turnips, beets, and dandelions. Soon, African-American slaves were cooking with new types of "greens": collards, kale, cress, mustard, and pokeweed. They also developed recipes which used lard, cornmeal, and offal; discarded cuts of meat such as pigs' feet, oxtail, ham hocks, chitterlings/"chitlins" (i.e., pigs' small intestines), pig ears, hog jowls, tripe, and skin.
The Occupy Wall Street volunteer kitchen staff launched a “counter” revolution yesterday -- because they’re angry about working 18-hour days to provide food for “professional homeless” people and ex-cons masquerading as protesters.
For three days beginning tomorrow, the cooks will serve only brown rice and other spartan grub instead of the usual menu of organic chicken and vegetables, spaghetti bolognese, and roasted beet and sheep’s-milk-cheese salad.
They will also provide directions to local soup kitchens for the vagrants, criminals and other freeloaders who have been descending on Zuccotti Park in increasing numbers every day.
(All bolding mine.)
Rice and other Spartan grub. Hmmm.
One wonders how the OWS cooks know that the “freeloaders” are vagrants and criminals. After all, aren’t both the “professional homeless” and the “amateur homeless” (the OWS protesters) squatting on land that does not belong to them? I bet I know how they know: most of the amateurs are white and most of professionals are black. And both groups are freeloaders. After all it isn’t as if the OWS protesters bought the food.
I wonder why the OWS cooks don’t want to cook for the “professional homeless” aka “freeloaders.” And what are the “non-freeloaders” doing to help the cooks? Delivering the goods? Chopping the vegetables? Washing the dishes? Disposing of litter? Not according to reports. But, of course, the “non-freeloaders” are speaking “truth to power,” so, one assumes that counts.
But, oh wait! Some designated persons labored to prepare the food and want it to go to the hungry and downtrodden! Except not the actual hungry and downtrodden.
But, oh wait! The “freeloaders” are vagrant and criminals! But according to the Left, vagrants and criminals do what they do only because the rich won’t help them. So the OWS want to help them! Except they don’t.
But, oh wait! OWS cooks will still feed the “professional homeless”—just not the good stuff. Only the slave food.
But, oh wait! There are soup kitchens where the “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” can eat. Wonder who funds those places. No matter. The “vagrants, criminals, and freeloaders” have the soup kitchens--equal but separate facilities in which to chow down. They can “freeload” on someone else’s dime and time.
So, in one ill-considered decision, the Occupy Wall Street sorts manage to epitomize hundreds of years of slavery and government oppression against black Americans and, on top of that, managed to promote one of the principles in the Bible—that those who do not work, should not eat. In one fell swoop, they have become everything they say they are against.
Football star Chad Ochocinco recently got into a bit of Twitter heat for tweeting that he was reading conservative blogger Glenn Beck’s book “Broke.”
He tweeted the following:
“Gotten through 3 chapters in @glennbeck book and so far everything he’s said is either common or his opinion based off research.”
“I don’t agree with a lot of this s— but nonetheless its interesting reading the views n opinions from what I’d like to call the other side.”
(...)
Therefore upon sending out the tweets, Ochocinco was heavily criticized by followers—some even un-followed him.
One follower responded: “unfollowing [you] after two years because you’re a Beck fan. Disgraceful and disappointing.”
(...)
Since when did [black people] put a limitation on whose book we could read, or what types of books we are entitled to read? It is a very sad day in modern America when a Black man is ostracized for reading a book. Seems very reminiscent to the days of slavery when Blacks privately read (for purposes of knowledge) in hopes that the slave master wouldn’t catch them, or worse.
Right. In the days of American slavery, it was often legally forbidden to teach a slave to read and those who did so were punished with jail time or worse--along with their students. Refusing to follow the Twitter feed of an athlete who reads certain books is a response clearly not in the league of the legal proscriptions of the Bad Old Days. However, the mentality is identical. The person displaying either response has one goal in mind: control.
"Do what I want or I'll kill you."
"Do what I want or I'll ostracize you."
One wonders how many black people are no longer fans of Mr. Ochocinco due to his reading material. I'm sure that the number would blow the lid off the irony caldron.
Side note: I'm just happy to see a pro-athlete reading anything. I might send him a copy of my book; a little football, a little love--I'm sure he'd love it. :)
So, what exactly is the debt ceiling? Put simply, it's an arbitrary limit set by Congress on the amount of money the U.S. government can borrow. The theory behind the debt ceiling, which was enacted during WWI, was that it would limit government borrowing and keep it from growing out of control.
CALLER: I was wondering, Mr. Limbaugh, what do you think if Washington and the government doesn't come up with a budget, is there a good chance that I will not be getting my Social Security check next month?
RUSH: Totally up to Obama.
CALLER: Okay.
RUSH: I'm gonna give you some numbers on this. Your Social Security check should be made with ease. There is money. In fact, one of the ways that it happens is that Treasury bonds, by law, will be sold and redeemed and the money used to fund Social Security payments.
CALLER: Hmm.
RUSH: That is a matter of law. It's certainly a matter of choice. It has nothing to do with running out of money.
Politicians will argue that when the US Treasury loses this ability then the US will default. This is however, technically incorrect. The US Treasury will be able to pay all of its $30 billion dollars in bondholding due the month of August at the expense of other programs from direct funds received from taxation. This would stop the US from going into a technical default and buy the Congress time to get its act together.
"The fact is we will pay our debts if it’s the last dollar we have. There are enough assets in Social Security and Medicare to pay the benefits of those programs for several years. Other programs can be funded from tax revenue. There certainly will be disruption...But this is not a deadline we should rush and make a bad deal and do something that cuts benefits from seniors without giving them better choices."
You know why the markets aren’t in complete panic over Obama’s reckless debt-ceiling brinksmanship? Because they don’t take it any more seriously than I do. It’s so transparently a phony political kabuki dance — a show-bizzy publicity stunt whereby Obama depicts himself as the Only Adult in the Room — that investors simply can’t believe anyone could be that stupid.
But “political reality” operates to different rules from humdrum real reality. Thus, the “debt ceiling” debate is regarded by most Democrats and a fair few Republicans as some sort of ghastly social faux pas by boorish conservatives: Why, everyone knows ye olde debt-limit vote is merely a bit of traditional ceremonial, like the Lord Chancellor walking backwards with the Cap of Maintenance and Black Rod shouting “Hats off, strangers!” at Britain’s Opening of Parliament. You hit the debt ceiling, you jack it up a couple trillion, and life goes on — or so it did until these GOP yahoos came along and decided to treat the vote as if it actually meant something.
And that's it, kids.
We are officially in a Democrat-managed fantasy land. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi had a grand plan in the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election. The scheme entailed giving our money, our kids' money, our grandkids' money and our great-grandkid's money to a narrow collection of favored union hacks, crony capitalist suck-ups, racial grievance specialists and the bureaucrat class. When in the 2010 midterm elections the American public expressed it's deep-seated nervousness with the Donkey-Puncher Party's Mark McGwire on steroids spending, St. Barry of the Sacred Pantscrease decided he would simply ignore the public and continue as if the GOP House majority didn't exist.
That's why this is occurring. The President can yakkety-yak about protecting seniors or getting corporate jet owners to pay their fair share. Dude can go on prime time TV and make his lame-ass campaign sloganeering disguised as an actual policy speech. None of that matters.
The President has caused this fake as hell media-driven crisis. He wanted this to occur. Most of all, he wants enough Americans in full-on panic mode over this so he can paint the Republicans as wild-eyed maniacs and beat them in 2012.
It's always been about politics for Barack Obama. It's never been about making the nation stronger, getting the economy moving, putting people back into the workforce or even just keeping Social Security as is. With this man, the modus operandi is always getting as many people as possible to be dependent on government so he can than use those folks as a bought and paid for voting bloc for his reelection. Spending, deficits and debt don't even kinda enter into Obama's calculations.
Meanwhile, America is quickly coming to the point where her debt is going to be 100% of our GDP. That spells doom for...well...everything.
But whatever. Let's keep pissing our pants over Obama's manufactured crisis. That doesn't totally play into his hands and help his flagging political fortunes or anything.
The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.
But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.
Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”
As a statement of fact, the Bamster was of course correct. He did win the 2008 presidential election in very handy fashion. John McCain was a lousy candidate, but that doesn't change the fact that 52% of the public pulled the HopeyChangey lever.
As it relates to the contemporary fight over the debt ceiling, Obama's 2009 triumphalism represents just how badly the President misread the circumstances that swept him into power. Candidate Barry ran as an aspirational post-partisan Lightbringer. He was going to change the country's imperial posture on the world stage and reverse the damage done to the US's reputation by the American warlord Premier Bush. International intellectual elites, formerly hostile governments, hardcore terrorists; all would fall for Barack Obama's apologies for past American misbehavior and his sophisticated charisma.
On the home front, an Obama presidency was advertised as an even-keeled moderate administration that would stand athwart the ideological poles of American politics cooing, "Let's Be Nice." President Pantscrease (thanks again, David Brooks!) wasn't going to give in to the extremes of the Republican Party hacks of course, but he also wasn't going to let Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi define his political agenda either. Sure, there would be some new spending, but nothing crazy. Yes, there were going to be some tax hikes, but only on the really rich people.
A conciliatory anti-Dubya abroad and a pragmatic centrist in the domestic sphere: this is the Barack Obama many Americans voted for in 2008.
In 2011 we find ourselves sifting through the wreckage of Obama's presidency. All the ridiculous spending with absolutely nothing to show for it, all the bloated Leviathan government programs passed against the public's will, all the ludicrous domestic decisions that have damn near annihilated the private sector, all the random wars started with little public explanation and even fewer plans for victory; all of these things and more were borne out of Barack Obama's self-delusion. This arrogant ideologically-blinkered talentless achievement-free hack of a man, with decades of politically correct college campus leftism crammed into his thick Ivy League skull, actually thought that just because he snookered some folks into believing his factless self-description he could govern like the Marxoid rabble-rouser he actually is.
Better still, Barack Obama wants John Boehner and the rest of the GOP--you know, the folks who won last November--to make the exact same mistake he did back in 2009. In the budget ceiling battle going on, the President needs Speaker Boehner far more than he probably ever thought he would. In fact, Obama's chances for pulling a victory out of this (and saving his re-election bacon) rest on John Boehner's forgetting the reason why people voted for the GOP in the midterm elections.
Related: Let's look at the grand agreement that Obama wants and needs Boehner to approve. The Democrats get the Republicans to stop hammering them about profligate spending. In exchange for that, the GOP gets what exactly?
...the president and his allies are playing a familiar card. It’s not that they are against entitlement “reform,” they say, it’s just that they want to protect the beneficiaries from any financial sacrifice. And so we learn in recent days (see here and here) that Democrats are willing to put sizeable Medicare and Medicaid “cuts” on the table. Among the changes that are reportedly under consideration are further reductions in what providers of services and products are paid, trims in Medicare’s support of hospital-based physician-training programs, and importation of Medicaid’s pharmaceutical-rebate scheme into the Medicare prescription-drug benefit for the so-called “dually eligible” (that is, the elderly who are enrolled in both programs). And apparently some Republicans are willing to play along.
These kinds of changes in Medicare and Medicaid are nothing new. Various versions of them have been included in every budget deal going back 30 years, and most especially in the bipartisan deals of 1990 and 1997. They do not constitute genuine entitlement reform. They will not fix Medicare and Medicaid. And they will not solve the nation’s budget problem.
Yes, on paper, the Congressional Budget Office will say they save money, perhaps even a lot of money. But CBO has said that every time a budget deal in the past has included similar provisions. As the years go by, the savings always vanish in the regulatory complexity of the programs, and entitlement spending continues to rise just as it always has. Moreover, arbitrary across-the-board payment cuts are actually damaging to the efficient operation of the health system. They lead to cost shifting, and they drive willing suppliers of services out of the marketplace. In the end, price controls do nothing to change the underlying reasons for cost growth.
So...the Republicans would get nothing. And a whole lot of it.
Excuse my Frogtalk, but why the frack should the GOP cave in on this? Because some jack-ass grandees over at the Washington Post are crying about it? Newsflash: The mainstream media hates Republicans and conservatives the way Roman Polanski hates statutory rape laws. They lie and lie and lie some more, all in the hopes of convincing enough people of the progressive-approved narratives.
More than a few people got their knickers in a twist when Rush Limbaugh said he hoped Barack Obama would fail. Very few people, even those on the Right, ever mention the countless magazine articles, newspaper op-eds and television pieces the MSM produces every goddamn day that practically begs the Lord for the Republicans to fall down a sinkhole and vanish from the political scene.
What about the Mitch McConnell horrible train wreck compromise, you ask? 'Demoralizing' would be a grotesque understatement. Imagine if in World War II the Allies spent months planning the D-Day invasion of Normandy, executed the landing, suffered horrendous casualties and successfully secured a beachhead in France...then turned around and went back to England on June 7th. That's the kind of insanity Senator McConnell is proposing here.
The Republicans have gone too far to stop now. If they do some sort of preemptive surrender where they end up with no real spending cuts while giving their imprimatur to Obama's liberalism, the GOP will all but guarantee the formation of a third party. That in turn will probably mean an Obama win in 2012. The stakes are that high.
Bob Belvedere, a blogger you need to read, takes this view of the modern liberal mindset.
Leftism is incompatible with American Values. It despises custom, morality,and Right Reason. It rejects the importance of tradition and, in fact, scorns and spits on it. Leftists seek not to learn from the wisdom of those who have come before them. They disdain the hard-won knowledge that politics is the art of the possible. They seek to remake the world in their image, to be as gods.
How can you deal with such people?
You can’t because they believe they have found The Answer — that secret knowledge that the man of the Right believes can only be known to God. The Left believes mankind can be perfected, whereas those on the Right know that Human Beings are, well, human, in the purest sense of the that word — they err and will always err, they are flawed and will always fail.
Thus, the Right seeks to craft governments and institutions that put checks on the damage erring men can do. The Left, on the other hand, believing that people can be perfected, sees no reason for such restraints. Their faith in the idea that the Eschaton can be Immanentized, leads them to brook no opposition because, well, how can you oppose the Illuminated Wisdom they have discovered unless you’re an idiot or a fool? It is a torturous logic they follow and it leads, inevitably, given the frustrations they will experience imposing it on their flawed fellow Human Beings, to them torturing their fellow Human Beings. And it has in every single place it has been tried.
Read the whole thing. It's that good. I'll be here when you come back.
People have been saying this for a while, but Mr. Belvedere's post is a strong reminder of a fundamental truth: The progressive movement has engaged in a slow-motion just-slightly-under-the-radar civil war on traditional America for at least the last 50 years. The roots of this conflict lie in several places. Early utopian dreamers like Hebert Croly and John Dewey, frustrated by 18th century classical liberalism, laid the intellectual framework for several generations of liberal activists. Woodrow Wilson's Constitution-bashing administration is a key component. FDR's 'let no crisis go to waste' opportunism enshrined many unconstitutional assumptions into the fabric of American politics. All of these factors and more led to the rise of the 60's-era New Left radicals such as Bernadine Dohrn, Tom Hayden and Noam Chomsky. This driving force in US politics has scored many victories in the last five decades.
A skeptical reader might ask how the last fifty years in American political life can be seen a 'war.' After all, it can be argued that the Constitution creates the conditions for gridlock, narrow-issue voting blocs and partisan rancor. One could make the case that the modern wrangling we see over the national debt, abortion and our various wars is nothing more than business as usual. To some extent, the people who take this position are not completely wrong.
However, consider the following scenario: a state supreme court threatens to create a right to gay marriage if the state legislature doesn't do it on their own. The earliest American thinkers--even Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall himself--couldn't have imagined a scenario where the legislature would be told by the judiciary to make a law. It goes against what most citizens in the modern era think of when they consider the roles of elected officials and the courts.
Think the situation laid out above is crazy? If you do, well, you're wrong. That's just the kind of insanity New York just went through in the push to legalize gay marriage.
The strategy used by the American Left, in which they use their ideological companions in the courts to force a result that progressives demand, is 'democratic' in roughly the same way that Josef Stalin's show trials were 'legal'. They both have the patina of the rule of law, but, in reality, they're both shams. In both instances, a large force bullies another party in order to come to a pre-determined outcome. Most importantly for our purposes, by going so far outside the bounds of constitutional law and tradition, progressives have all but abandoned previous understandings of how America governs itself. This amounts to nothing less than an act of war by the Left against groups of citizens it regards as not just political opponents, but as outright enemies.
It helps if one thinks about American politics like a football game. Imagine that the Washington Redskins are playing the New England Patriots. For three quarters, both sides play by the standard rules of the league. There are lead changes and penalties and back-and-forth action, but the teams play within the framework of NFL regulations; i.e. a touchdown is six points, pass interference is illegal, etc. Then, at the start of the fourth quarter, Washington announces that it will play the rest of the game with 12 players on offense and defense, as opposed to the customary 11. A few minutes later, the 'Skins proclaim that their team will play with a round soccer ball (as opposed to the regulation football) and that they can merely kick it anywhere into the end zone to score a touchdown. Moments later, Washington announces that it will arm its players with hockey sticks which their team can use in any way they please. Finally, the Redskins bribe the officials to allow the Washington club to do whatever the hell it wants.
In this admittedly fanciful situation, it should be clear that while the New England Patriots were busy following the previously understood rules of the NFL game, the Washington Redskins had abandoned playing football altogether. The Washington squad was playing an entirely different game in order to beat New England. They didn't just cheat in order to get a blatantly unfair advantage over their opponent. By going so far outside the regulations, they had in effect declared war on the Patriots.
The same is true of American liberals over the last several decades. They have used anonymous bureaucrats, the judicial branch, moronic Republicans, the mainstream media and any other useful club to expand the size of government and ravage the old Constitutional order. Rarely do liberals score major victories through legislation alone. When they do, it is usually done over the strenuous objections of the citizenry.
This is war. It's not a war fought with bullets or bombs (except when Bill Ayers is really worked up). Instead, it's a war fought with statist regulations, legislation from the bench, Arlen Specter and Learjet liberal Hollywood propaganda. But just because there aren't battlefields and graveyards doesn't mean there isn't a serious conflict going on in America between liberals and conservatives. Whoever wins that fight will determine not just the fate of America, but the world economic and political order created by the US's influence.
The Crack Emcee brings us a CNN anchor dude getting emo.
You’ve got to love this. They went after her – again – and they got nothing! All they’ve exposed is the media’s craven nature and it’s willingness to act as the go-to guy for the Democratic Party. Watch the clip. At one point the reporter looks *stunned* because he’s got to admit the person he’s “investigating” is somebody good who he clearly admires. It’s like he was given the job of killing a kid and he,..just,..can’t,…do it.
Da Emcee nails it...again.
How about we call the former governor by her rightful title. Sarah Palin: The Most Vetted Non-Presidential Candidate Ever.
Did anybody go through Barack Obama's e-mails as US Senator when he announced his run for the Presidency? If the media did, you never heard about it. Ya gotta think that if the lamestreamers did find anything in an Obama email nit-pick expedition, some producer or editor at one of the big media dogs would dutifully toss it down the memory hole. Wouldn't want the general public to get an unfoavorable impression of the Left's Chocolate Jesus sacred worship figure.
Numerous news outlets have decided to crowdsource the Palin e-mails. Did these same media organs go with this tactic when ObamaCare was being debated? How about Cap-n-Trade? What about the Porkulus? Nope. None of that got our Fourth Estate a-rolling like Palin's e-mails.
Amazing.
I'm a Herman Cain supporter. I hope he is the GOP nominee in 2012 because I think he's got the best shot at beating Obama. Having said that, here's an argument for a Sarah Palin presidential run: Nobody can touch the chick. They can't lay a glove on her. Her detractors couldn't hit her with an RPG if she was the broad side of a barn and they were standing ten feet away.
The Left throws everything at her. They have fired every salvo they possibly can. They've had squirrelly weirdo reporters move next door to her house. They engage in bizarre conspiracy theories about the 'true' mother of Trig Palin. They blow her verbal 'gaffes' into week-long exposes, then get cranky when it turns out that she was right.
The progressives almost always come out looking worse than she does whenever they get into a food fight with Palin. She makes them look ridiculous. Better still, because the left cannot stand to get humiliated, they forget the first rule of holes: when you've put yourself at the bottom of one, the first thing you should do is stop digging. Instead, they continue to take shots at her, hoping that just once they'll get lucky and put an end to her career in public life.
Chances are that the media has found every possible trouble spot Sarah Palin might have in her background. Barring something completely out of the blue, there are no scandals lurking in Palin's history. If there was, you can be sure the MSM would've reported it by now.
You can argue against Palin on stylistic grounds. You might think her snowbillyisms and folksy demeanor won't translate into a winning formula in a national election. You can even question some of her policy emphases.
The one big advantage Sarah Palin has over everyone else in the 2012 presidential field is that there will be no surprises. Every rock has been turned over. If she runs for the White House, you can be sure the media will keep digging into her past. You can also be sure that Palin will beat them more often than not. In a race that is certainly going to be a media-driven death march against whoever the GOP nominates, being a proven MSM slayer is no small thing.
I believe both parties, and most people in the public eye, would agree, if they could make an agreement which could be enforced and relied upon, that "We shall not beat up each other over this stuff."
That would accrue to everyone's interest in the political/media class. Note I speak only of this class. I am not saying that this agreement would serve anyone else's interests. But it would serve politicians' and media-types' interests.
You don't screw with me, I don't screw with you. For this class, such an agreement would be mostly upside.
But the problem is, of course, the same one as is the whole point of the Prisoner's Dilemma: You can't trust your opponents to go soft on you.
So what do you do? Concede the field, in which case only your own allies get pummeled like this, but you sweetly avoid pummeling their guys in the hopes that they will honor their side of the bargain?
They won't. They never do.
Read the entire piece. It's full of win.
Both American political parties, from the show horses on down to the foot soldiers, simply cannot maintain the kind of reciprocal understanding Ace describes. He's absolutely correct when he says that the political class would benefit enormously from a mutual agreement to shut the hell up about it's sex scandals. For a lot of reasons, politicos can't resist the attack dog urge. Interestingly, it wasn't always this way.
In the 60's, when John Kennedy had hot and cold running girls installed at the White House, the Republicans knew about JFK's peccadilloes and decided to keep their powder dry. Whether it was out of a desire to keep their own shenanigans private or just out of a sense of deference to the presidency, the GOP were tight-lipped about President Kennedy's numerous extramarital excursions. Congressman Weiner's misadventures in web-based hook-ups make it clear that the old early sixties circumspect attitude is not just gone, but probably can't come back.
This inability on the part of the Democrats and Republicans to hold their fire is a big reason why Mitch Daniels' idea of a truce on social issues is so monumentally wrong-headed. Who polices that agreement? Nobody could; even if every Washington DC politician said yes to it, no single person or organization would be trusted by either side to act as a fair mediator/enforcer.
Another problem with Daniel's truce is that even if the politicians went along with the deal, the mainstream media most certainly would not. The most knee-jerk attack dog partisans in American politics are the editors, producers and reporters that make up the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the lamestream Democrat Party rah-rah chorus. If they have access to information that helps Democrats or damages Republicans, they will run it. This will force Breitbart and his allies to do the same thing when they get information damaging to the Dems. The truce would be over almost before it started.
In fact, given how cuddly the MSM is with the Democrat party, a truce on social issues could only hurt Republicans. With the exception of Fox News and several big-name rightish blogs/websites, the conservative argument against abortion, gay rights and other lifestyle debates is almost never given a fair treatment by the big news outfits. Under the Daniels scenario, Democrats could truthfully say they weren't scoring points while their allies in the press and Hollywood kept pushing the progressive agenda. Republicans would have few options. They couldn't expect the MSM to help them out. Worse, the Republican's sorta allies on the Right blogs--the ones that might be able to pump up a conservative social agenda--just don't yet have the same kind of reach that the lamestreamers have in the media universe.
Finally, just how far down the political totem pole would the truce go? Would it only affect the Beltway folks? If that's the case, the social issues gag order would unravel as soon as a state legislature votes to approve gay marriage, put limits on abortion, allow prayer in school or mandate that teachers instruct students on condom use. Just because DC pols swear off social issues legislation doesn't mean the states have to. As soon as a controversial social issue flared up at the state level, national Republicans and Democrats would almost have to weigh in. That would put enormous pressure on the truce's architecture; once one politician says something, others are going to want to discuss it too.
Weiner's train wreck is a reminder of just how impossible a voluntary censorship of any kind is in modern politics. Political figures cannot be bound by informal gag orders. Mutually assured partisan destruction won't hold anybody back from using damn near any club to beat their opponents over the head. The price is too low and the payoffs are too high.
Allahpundit over at HotAir.com makes an astute observation about the rising political fortunes of Herman Cain.
By the way, note his choice of hat here and the country/western soundtrack. Like I said after Frank Luntz’s focus group went nuts for him in South Carolina, he may very well emerge as the “southern candidate” in the field. How the media’s going to square that with their deathless assumptions about southern conservative racism, I have no idea — but it’ll be amazing to watch.
Read the rest, I’d say.
What does it mean to be from the South? If you listen to the scions of popular culture, all you have to do to find a racist sexist homophobe proto-fascist is talk to a denizen of old Dixie for five seconds. It’s such a lazy intellectually dishonest position, but many people have internalized that sentiment. For some, merely hearing a Southern accent means the speaker is thinly-disguiseduber bigot. The truth is far more nuanced, and much kinder to Southern folk, than tired shopworn stereotypes.
Does racism exist in the South? Of course it does. Flawed human beings, not choirs of angels, live in the South. The real issue is just how much race plays in electoral politics. The 2008 presidential election gives us an indication of the race factor. It seems like the answer is 'Not nearly as much as you might think'. Barack Obama beat up on John McCain in North Carolina and Virginia, two key members of the old Confederacy. Obama's victories would suggest that caucasian persuasion racial animus wasn't enough to stop voters in these states from pulling the Donkey Lever.
Since the South isn't a bastion of knee-jerk race hate, here's an interesting question--What happens when 60% of Southern whites vote for Herman Cain in the 2012 general election? How does pop culture, with all of its built-in lefty prejudices, react to that?
There are two probable outcomes to that hypothetical scenario. One is that Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment universe will pull an Officer Barbradyand act like that Cain's snagging the cracker vote is no big deal. The South is still racist, but those stupid hillbilly wingnuts are so thick that they can't help but vote Republican even though the GOP nominee is a black man. Lord knows the media loves to ignore things that mess with their preferred narratives. The old head-firmly-buried-in-ones-own-ass approach has served the entertainment biz quite well over the years, so this is quite likely to happen once again.
The other possibility is that pop culture figures acknowledge that southern whiteys voted for a black man, but will argue that Herman Cain doesn't count as a true brother because he's conservative. As strange as that sounds, it's well within the bounds of cultural Left's playbook. According to Jesse Jackson Jr., if you're black and you don't vote for health care reform, you're not really black. According to the weird feminist sisters, Sarah Palin's right-of-center leanings means she's not really a woman.
Both of the above predictions/probabilities make the Left look incredibly stupid. Which is all the more reason why Herman Cain should be the Republican nominee for President in 2012. Make Cain the GOP standard-bearer, then watch how Alec Baldwin, Tina Fey and Chris Rock struggle to explain that Herman Cain's victory doesn't count as racial tolerance. Failing that, put Cain at the top of the ticket, then get a good hearty laugh when doucherocket cultural critics like Michael Eric Dyson and Cornell West try to explain to average Americans that Herman Cain really is not black.
In the post 9/11 age, Westerners have tried to explain why Islam has taken such a violent turn. From full-throated terrorist apologias to more sober hard-eyed analyses, America and her civilizational cousins have examined the reasons for violent jihad. Great debates have been had over the last ten years. September 11th was a wake-up call for many Westerners. While many of us are still asleep, the US conservative movement has at long last decided to examine the deeper motivations and passions that drive Islamic fundamentalism.
While this process of examination has been beneficial, sometimes it is necessary to listen to Muslim dissidents themselves. They will often tell you far more of the story than you'd likely get from other sources. That's why Raymond Ibrahim's translation of a Khaled Montaser piece is pretty important.
We Muslims have an inferiority complex and are terribly sensitive to the world, feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces [their conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is "okay." We are hostages of this anticipation, as if our victory hinges on it—forgetting that true victory is for us to create or to accomplish something, such as those [civilizations] that these converts to our faith abandon.
And we pound our drums and blow our horns [in triumph] and drag the convert to our backwardness, so that he may stand with us at the back of the world's line of laziness, [in the Muslim world] wherein no new scientific inventions have appeared in the last 500 years. Sometimes those who convert relocate to our countries—only to get on a small boat and escape on the high seas back to their own countries.
There's a lot of truth to digest there.
First, it is important to note that there are Muslim scientists and thinkers doing important work. They study and invent and innovate not in Damascus, Jakarta or Tehran but in London, Frankfurt and Chicago. This indicates that there is no genetic or racial basis for the lack of 'Islamic inventions'. It is the culture of Muslim-majority nations that is stifling.
The West in general, and America in particular, is the only place where a Muslim can safely use his mind to create something other than yet another jihadist ideology or violent terrorist organization. If you're a clever Muslim who wants to invent something in the United States, chances are that the fast-thinking Farouk will be rewarded for his hard work and labor should his innovation actually perform. The same cannot be said for the vast swath of kleptocracies that riddle the Middle East. The man with a plan in the Islamic sphere will most likely see his good idea stolen by the thieves that man the important government posts or ignored by religious fundamentalists. There's really no reason for the intelligent person to even bother trying, so he doesn't.
That five hundred year failure rate has to gall many hard-core Muslims. While the mongrelized infidels in America and Europe have dominated the world with rapidly changing technology, vibrant expansionist pop culture and wild commercial success, Muslims live off the fruits of Western intellectualism but cannot hope to emulate it in their own homelands. According to the Koran, it is Muslims that have the truth--and more importantly, God--on their side. For Islamic supremacists, having God in their corner should've meant that they would be blessed with inventions and innovations. They should've been the winners of progress, not the debauched kaffir West.
Consider another irony. Even many of the Islamic sphere's bad ideas come from us. The Ba'ath party that dominated Iraq and continues to oppress Syria is merely an Arab facelift for a German socialism. Bashar al-Assad is basically Erich Honeker with a much funnier name and a slightly more brutal secret police organization.
More to the point of Montaser's article, Islam's constant seeking of Western validation--specifically through the conversion of Westerners to Islam--speaks to the inherent weakness of the faith. We in the West sometimes think that Muslim expansionism is a sign that the Western world or that Judeo-Christian values are in decline. But what does it say about Islam when the only way they can feel good about themselves is if some Eurotrash brainfart or American half-wit starts praying to Mecca five times a day?
When you always have to have the approval of others, you are doomed. The same is likely true for the supremacist version of Islam. While non-Muslims cannot do much to make that collapse happen, we can encourage those voices who criticize the backwardness of modern Islam.
I snagged the link from Kathy Shaidle's Five Feet Of Fury, who directed me to Jihad Watch, which got me to Raymond Inrahim's post. Thanks to all.
Summary: "I'm not apologizing for RomneyCare. I thought it was cool, so whatevs. Also, I'm not changing anything from my 2008 health care plan because that would look like I was flip-flopping and I sorta have an image problem about being a slippery political weasel."
No really, watch the clip. Then come back and tell me that's not pretty much what homeboy said.
Meanwhile, Allahpundit does his counter-intuitive reaction thing to Romney's speech.
No one would have believed him had he apologized so there was no sense in doing it. On the contrary, if I were advising him, I’d tell him to go on the attack and make his opponents be as specific as possible in what they’d do differently. The more he can discredit their plans as unworkable, the more he can reframe RomneyCare as the best choice from a very bad set of health-care policy options. In fact, if he’s feeling extra cheeky, he could use the public’s ruinous love affair with Medicare to his advantage. Under RomneyCare, the state forces you to buy a product from a third party; under Medicare, the state forces you to buy the same product from the state. It simply calls it a tax instead of a mandate, and instead of granting you coverage immediately, it shafts you until you’re 65. Do Pawlenty, Gingrich, et al. also oppose the “mandated” premiums known as FICA? I’m not sure Romney wants to go the Mediscare route since it’ll make fiscal cons even angrier at him than they are now, but if he gets desperate enough, look out.
If Mitt has any chance of getting the GOP nomination, Republican primary voters will first have to get over their lingering reservations about Romney's past social liberalism and his more recent changes of political heart. Importantly, the party rank-n-file will have to get over it's virulent hatred for ObamaCare. If the President's government medicine scheme is no longer seen as a huge threat, RomneyCare will not seem like such a big deal. That means that Mitt won't have to keep defending his Massachusetts health plan. Most of all, issues like foreign policy or terrorism, will have to come to the forefront of GOPers concerns.
The rub for Romney is that his doubling-down strategery can only be successful if a bunch of things break his way. The irony here is that super-achiever alpha dog Mitt finds himself in a position akin to a middling baseball team just before the regular season begins. What do the managers of these kind of clubs always say? 'If our ace starting pitcher stays healthy, we'll win a pile of games.' 'We can be successful if the third baseman can repeat his slugging stats from last year.' 'The team is gonna do real well if a few of our rookies pan out and live up to their potential.'
Ball clubs like that almost never succeed. Why? Because there are simply too many factors that have to go right. Let's say the stud hurler keeps himself from getting hurt for the entire year. That doesn't mean those year one noobs are going to pan out. The third baseman who hammered fifty home runs last season? He just tested positive for cattle steroids and will be lucky to plink out fifteen dingers after his fifty game suspension and his lack of chemically-enhanced power.
Romney is in the same position. Because of his problematic voting record and his insistence on defending his health care plan, Mitt has to rely on a heaping helping of good fortune. All politicians require a large infusion of luck to get elected. In Romney's case, his chances ride on a set of circumstances that isn't likely to fall into place. By making this speech, Romney has decided that he's most likely not going to be president.
Donald Trump has been making President Obama's failure to release his long-form birth certificate a huge public issue for several weeks now, though it has been much discussed in Internet political circles for the last three years. But now that the president has finally made the birth certificate public, I have a few thoughts about it.
The timing of the release is a strategic blunder two-fer.
Trump has said that he would run as an independent in the 2012 presidential race if he didn't get the GOP nomination. Such a race would ensure President Obama's reelection. However, since the president released the certificate today, he has effectively deflated a Trump spoiler candidacy and neutralized a potential weapon against the GOP candidate (it would have been far more damaging to the GOP candidate had the president released the certificate, say, in September 2012).
I don't think that was what the president intended to do. But, thanks anyway, Mr. President!
I ask because that's the only reason I can figure why he pwns himself, then doubles down on stupid via his Twitter stream.
In a recent post at the Washington Post's site, juicebox mafia capo Klein thinks he's figured out who Barack Obama really is.
Perhaps this is just the logical endpoint of two years spent arguing over what Barack Obama is — or isn’t. Muslim. Socialist. Marxist. Anti-colonialist. Racial healer. We’ve obsessed over every answer except the right one: President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he’s facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.
If you put aside the emergency measures required by the financial crisis, three major policy ideas have dominated American politics in recent years: a health-care plan that uses an individual mandate and tax subsidies to achieve near-universal coverage; a cap-and-trade plan that attempts to raise the prices of environmental pollutants to better account for their costs; and bringing tax rates up from their Bush-era lows as part of a bid to reduce the deficit. In each case, the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.
It's important to note just who is making this wack-job statement. As noted by my new blog homie Proof, Ezra Klein was the founder of the junior high mutual zit-squeezing club Journolist. The four hundred reporters, academics, professional liberals and assorted mouth breathers in the listserv were basically a wing of the Obama presidential campaign in 2008, with future Obambi Cabinet members to boot. Needless to say, Klein has a serious intellectual interest in rehabilitating his teeny bopper fan boi crush's political fortunes.
Now, let's look at the 90's era Republican's 'best ideas'. The individual mandate that some Republicans championed back in the day was...and more importantly, is...unconstitutional. I know Klein thinks the Constitution is just some old impossible to understand scrap of parchment, but when something is plainly unconstitutional that pretty much makes it a stupid idea, not a good one.
As for cap-n-trade, I don't know if paid Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein has been keeping up with current events, but anthropogenic climate change has been revealed to be a fraud. C&T was a policy cooked up in response to fears of global warming caused by man-made carbon dioxide emissions. Why would Republicans keep advocating a policy that supposedly solves a problem that does not in fact exist?
Finally, we get to Klein lauding President George HW Bush for raising taxes. Ezra pats Pappy on the back for 'getting the job done' on the 1990 budget deal in his original piece. Funny thing is that Klein never really specifies how these tax hikes were successful, either as policy or politics. He just sorta says they are and moves on.
When confronted about the shakiness of his 'Republican raises taxes = epic win' theory, Klein has a ready retort:
This is the part when you realize that debating Ezra Klein is like having a discussion with Barry Bonds about the dangers of performance enhancing drugs. No, it's even worse than that. It's like debating a pre-med student on specific techniques and methods involved in neurosurgery. The dude is simply in way over his head.
How did Bush the Elder get wacked for raising taxes? For one thing, Bill Clinton hammered him for it in campaign ads.
That ad was a staple of Clinton's 1992 campaign. What makes the spot so effective--and what Ezra Klein simply cannot grasp--is that HW Bush's raising taxes gave Clinton ammunition that didn't just wound the President, but also damaged the Republican brand on a critical everyday checkbook issue. Why does Klein think people vote for the GOP anyway if not because of tax policy? It must be for the Republican's famous snappy fashion sense and party-hearty attitude [sarc/].
The best part of Klein's journey into fail is when he is again confronted with his stunning lack of understanding, he resorts to the lamest of rhetorical evasions and promptly moves the goalposts. But hey, far be it from me to point out how badly his argument is falling apart. Let's let Klein's own source, that he dutifully pointed out, do it for us.
If politicians are not rewarded at the polls for the choices they make, don't expect other politicians to make similar choices.
What exactly are we dealing with here? Klein brings up a political period from the recent past. It's not like it's a hundred years ago, when the issues and characters involved are far removed from our current context. Nor are we talking about particularly deep or convoluted political theory. No, this stuff is pretty easy to understand.
Which makes me believe that Ezra Klein is not just another overpaid undersmart liberal. By producing such an elementary amateurish piece--and then digging further down into the proverbial hole--it's clear Klein is a masochist.
Ace had a great post the other day that I meant to talk about, but I didn't get to it. Well, I'm getting to it now.
Here's the money chunk.
...And at universities, in the pseudo-sciences, they are constantly attempting to "explain" conservative thinking as a type of cognitive dysfunction. Not willing to give into the faddish and ephemeral? Ah, well, a part of your brain is too small and won't let you sample "new experiences."
Note the normative assumption always packed into these claims: That the conservative brain is "too small" as compared to the liberal brain, defined as normative; the conservative measure represents a deviation away from the assumed norm while the liberal trait is privileged as the norm, or if not the norm, then the ideal.
No pseudo-scientist every finds that liberals have a bigger amygdala (or whatever) and are therefore "too open to new experiences" (a.k.a. too trendy, too faddish, too ephemeral in one's sense of self). None of these guys ever says the liberal trait represents a deviation from the norm or ideal -- no, they're always the norm or idea. It's always the conservative's traits that need to be "explained" as a psychological defect or an actual defect with their physical brain structure.
Yeah, you should definitely read the whole thing.
The thing is, that denormalizing process of conservatives and conservatism Ace talked about has been going on for a long time. To pick just one example, think about guns. For most of America's history, gun ownership wasn't really debated all that much. It was only relatively recently that the Left got the bright idea to limit gun ownership amongst law-abiding citizens.
A key part of the anti-gun strategy was to denormalize the idea of firearms. Guns weren't just supposed to be severely curtailed in the general population. They were weirdo objects for strange people. Whether it was geographic arguments ("Southerners are all gun nuts, of course") or class justifications ("The uneducated are the only ones people who still have guns") the goal was the same. In fact, lefties were so hell bent on making guns abnormal they faked at least one scholar-researched book to make it look like America didn't have widespread gun ownership in it's history.
In general, the Left has had some success in making conservatism seem strange. At the very least, they've reinforced amongst themselves the 'Right=Alien' arguments they always make. For committed progressives, conservatives are not just political rivals anymore. They're the Other.
Truth be told, the hard Left doesn't make up a majority of American citizens. Break it down on a state-by-state basis. Even where they make up the largest percentage of voters, they don't make up a majority. From those perspectives, it's pretty easy to see just how marginal the liberal ideology is in America.
Conservatives should take this vulnerability on the Left--specifically, their lack of numbers-- and use it against them. More importantly, how about we examine and highlight their own behavior. For your viewing pleasure, courtesy of No One Of Any Import, are some lefty protestors barking at a recent Tea Party rally.
Blinkered, moronic and as charming as athlete's foot ? Where's the sign-up sheet for that?
Lefties insist that they are the sane, logical and normal ones.
Yeah, that dude is totally playing with a full deck.
Before we get too cocky, liberals have a few advantages. They still control the MSM and they can still get some progged-up professors to create 'science' to prove their ideological biases. These are no small things. They can dupe a lot of the politically uncommitted folks out there.
However, conservatives have distinct advantages of our own. As stated before, the voter identification numbers are on our side. Best of all, any time the Left goes out in public, they behave like the complete oddballs that they really are. It shouldn't be too hard to make liberals seem strange--because they are strange.
Seriously, you have a group of people that are cool with one of their own shouting that he wipes his ass with the American flag every night. Now that's definitely a little bit of hyperbole on his part, but the fact remains that homeboy's peers were copacetic with his sentiment that the American flag should be disrespected early and often. Just a reminder: THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
The Right can score legislative victories. They can win elections. But in order to really make inroads they have to start beating back progressive culture. That means pointing out just how alien their ideology is when compared with the mainstream of American political thought.
ALSO: Here's the great RS McCain with a story about another Lefty weirdo. How weird are we talking about here? How's about possible jail time sound?
Looks like the Unions are flush with cash. Too bad they don’t spend it on their members.
Haha.
Let's suppose you're a UAW member. You do your job. You toss in your dues. Then you notice that your union has given $29 million dollars to Democrat Party candidates. Now your leadership might be hunky-dory with pro-gun control pro-abortion eco-nut tax-hiker gay friendly candidates, but how cool are you with all that?
Maybe the UAW isn't such a good example. President Obama just gave them a car company. Maybe the guy on the line is willing to put up with the vast variety of lefty crap if he thinks he got a good deal out of hijacking Government Motors.
Lets try a different group. What about the rank-n-file Teamsters? Thirty million dollars were sent from that union's coffers to political candidates, with 93% of that going to Donkey Punchers. The Unicorn-in-Chief's energy policies ("Drill Nowhere, Drill Never, Double Eco-Boner Rainbow All The Way!") have pushed diesel prices up past four dollars a gallon. That's gotta be putting a serious hurt on the wallet of most truckers.
The leadership of unions no doubt enjoys having a cozy relationship with Democrat Party power brokers. Rubbing elbows with the well-connected Donks and getting them to push the union big-wig's agenda is huge. The problem is that the average union member might not think their interests are being represented very well if all their dues money is going to Democrat candidates.
Blogger pal Chris Wysocki of the great Wyblog notes that we're entering a very special season.
Yes, it's that time of the year again. Time for the feminuts to whinge about Lilly Ledbetter and having to work for slave wages just because they don't have a penis.
Except it's not true. None of it. There is no male-female wage gap.
Recent studies have shown that the wage gap shrinks—or even reverses—when relevant factors are taken into account and comparisons are made between men and women in similar circumstances. In a 2010 study of single, childless urban workers between the ages of 22 and 30, the research firm Reach Advisors found that women earned an average of 8% more than their male counterparts. Given that women are outpacing men in educational attainment, and that our economy is increasingly geared toward knowledge-based jobs, it makes sense that women's earnings are going up compared to men's.
I want a raise.
Haha, you and me both homie.
First of all, you should be reading Wyblog because he rules, so get to it.
The popping of the male/female pay differential myth is a needed reality check for the ultra orthodox feminist left. As necessary as this story is, it's just as important to recognize that the Feministing/GloriaSteinem cohort absolutely will not budge from their militantly wrong assertion that men get paid more then women. It's a foundational doctrine of feminism; going against that sacred text would be like asking David Brooks to stop writing hand-wringing mush-mouthed columns for the New York Times.
The thing is, the popular understanding of feminism (as opposed to the far-left campus version) got a few things right. Women should be paid the same as men for the same kind of work. That's just fair.
However, the further down the reading list you go on the Sisterhood of The Snarling Harridans' syllabus, the more incorrect stuff you find. From the role of men to the bizarre confused ideas about abortion, lefty feminists can't create paradigms that even sorta resemble reality.
The worst mistake that feminists have made in the last 40 years is their relentless denigration of motherhood. Remember when Academy Award-winning actress Natalie Portman described becoming a mother as "...the most important role of my life"? For many people, this was a charming sentiment. For at least a few feminists, this was simply not kosher. Check out Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams' reaction to Ms. Portman's announcement (quoted from The Other McCain):
Why, at the pinnacle of one’s professional career, would a person feel the need to undercut it by announcing that there’s something else even more important? Even if you feel that way, why downplay your achievement? Why compare the two, as if a grueling acting role and being a parent were somehow in competition? And remind me — when was the last time a male star gave an acceptance speech calling fatherhood his biggest role?
For now, forget the tin-eared insensitivity. That's a feature--not a bug--when it comes to feminist writing. More importantly, Ms. Williams' sentiment is a symptom of fundamental misreading of the importance of being a mother.
The Left in general, and feminism in particular, has spent a great deal of time, effort and money infiltrating the commanding heights of the culture. From the universities to the federal bureaucracy, feminists have carved out a sphere of influence from which they can push their ideas. In the course of a few decades, radicalized women (and not a few indoctrinated men) have become a sizable part of the national discussion on any number of issues.
The problem is that even with all the influence feminists currently wield, it pales in comparison to the power that mothers have in shaping the future. If feminists really wanted to create a society where, in the words of Gloria Steinem we raised girls like boys and boys like girls, feminists would be squeezing out children by the cart-load and raising the kids from the nanosecond they're born. Mothers have the kind of 24/7/365 access to a child's mind that a feminist ideologue can only dream about in her fevered fantasies.
Imagine if feminism hadn't drifted into BettyFriedan/BarbaraEhrenreich employment-centrism in the early 1970's, but instead had focused on actually changing American culture at its roots. The results would be stark. In fact, if that had occurred, the US would be hardly recognizable.
Conservatives and traditionalists often become angry when feminists demean the vital importance of motherhood. It's an understandable reaction; nurturing matriarchs are central to the emotional life of almost everyone and it's hard to hear it when some campus theorist makes it seem like mothers aren't important. Instead of being angry when feminists dismiss motherhood, we should just politely nod and move on, rather than give these leftist maniacs any bright ideas.
The great Jerome Corsi documents yet another shrapnel fragment flying off the continuing Obama train wreck.
Bill Ayers: One more, one more (question)
Question:Thank you sir, thank you, thank you. Time magazine columnist Joe Klein wrote that President Obama's book, "Dreams from My Father," quote: "may be the best written memoir ever produced by an American politician."
Ayers: I agree with that.
Question:What is your opinion of Barack Obama's style as a writer and uh …
Ayers: I think the book is very good, the second book ("The Audacity of Hope") is more of a political hack book, but uh, the first book is quite good.
Question: Also, you just mentioned the Pentagon and Tomahawk …
Ayers: Did you know that I wrote it, incidentally?
Question: What's that?
Ayers: I wrote that book.
Several audience members: Yeah, we know that.
Question: You wrote that?
Ayers: Yeah, yeah. And if you help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties with you. Thank you very much.
Oooooof.
WND contributor Jack Cashill seems to thinkthis is a shot across Barack Obama's bow. In his opinion, the very anti-war Bill Ayers is angry at Obama for the President's Libyan war kinetic military action. I think that's a pretty good assessment.
I don't believe that's the entire story here though. I think Bill Ayers is suffering from a classic case of 'Tire Tracks From Under Obama's Bus' Syndrome. Peace Prize Barry basically used Ayers like a kleenex. Instead of Ayers catching at least a little credit for penning Dreams--something like 'By Barack Obama and William Ayers'--homeboy got a whole lot of nothing.
It might have been easier on Ayers to get no props for Dreamswhen Obambi was a hack community rabble-rouser or a benchwarming Illinois state Senator. When the former Weatherman watched Obama become a Democrat Party show-horse and media-created President, without ever acknowledging Bill Ayers' full contribution to the St. Bambi mythos, that was probably incredibly grating. Obama's North African adventurism may have been simply the last straw.
More importantly than Bill Ayers needing to recover from his skinned knee and bruised ego, this episode is just one more nail in the coffin for the Barack Obama 2008 campaign narrative. Dreams From My Fatherwas a big piece of Obama's intellectual curriculum vitae. As opposed to the supposedly illiterate Dubya or the crusty old warrior John McCain, Candidate Lightbringer was a serious author who had written not one, but two books. Dreams and The Audacity of Hope were meant to display Barry's intellectual firepower. While the junior Senator from Illinois had almost no legislative accomplishments, his alleged mastery of the written word was supposed to assure nervous voters that they were supporting a true Renaissance man.
And now we see the myth of Obama's intellectualism crumbling. All it took was one of the key enablers in Bamster's web of lies to get pissed off at his former protegé. Barry's chickens are finally coming home to roost.
But really, one can't be completely shocked when a politician as weaselly as Barack Obama is found out to have inflated his resume. To paraphrase Winston Churchill's comments about Clement Atlee, Senator HopeyChangey's barely-there congressional record had much to be humble about. No empty-suit candidate with a similar doughnut hole in his history could do anything else. Obama is clearly no exception to this fibbing phenomenon.
The blame for Obama being able to pull off this sham rests not with the president, but with the American mainstream press. The New York Times/MSNBC/Washington Post Axis of Fail constantly pats itself on the crotch for brave truth-telling. Instead of digging into Obama's shady past, they did everything they could to bury damaging details about their preferred candidate and attacked his opposition.
Better still, this MSM willful blindness also reveals just how badly they suck at the one job in which they're supposed to be experts. They're the ones who were supposed to figure out just how much Bill Ayers figured into Barack Obama's narrative. The lamestream press allowed the illusion of Barack Obama's superior intelligence--a major component of his appeal to voters--to flourish without a question. By doing that, they set themselves up to be punked by bloggers who have shown more initiative in the last two years than Big Media has shown in the last two decades.
UPDATE: Now a big ole' Memeorandum thread too. Time to pile on while the piling on is good, I say.
Via the American Thinker. I think John Hawkins is spot on in detecting the sarcasm here, but if you’re inclined to believe that Ayers is The One’s ghostwriter, you’re bound to detect a “deeper truth” in his tone.
... I think he enjoys mocking people who push this idea and enjoys it doubly when they can’t detect the mockery. In fact, I’d bet that this is his stock response anytime the book is mentioned in his presence — insisting that he wrote it to see if the listener laughs and then toying with them if they seem credulous. But as I say, your mileage may vary.
Yeah, this doesn't exactly work for me. AP's analysis blithely discounts Jack Cashill's work that pretty much proves that Bill Ayers wrote "Dreams". Cashill lays out the bones of his argument here.
To credit Dreamsto Obama alone, one has to posit any number of near miraculous variables: he somehow found the time; he somewhere mastered nautical jargon and postmodern jabberwocky; he in some sudden, inexplicable way developed the technique and the talent to transform himself from stumbling amateur to literary superstar without any stops in between.
If anything, the last few years should make Cashill's thesis even more believable. The Duffer-in-Chief is not exactly breaking his back as President. Dude works harder on his NCAA basketball brackets than on seemingly anything else. The guy requires a teleprompter for both formal and informal occasions. It seems highly unlikely that Barack Obama would put in the work necessary to become a strong writer.
Moreover, why can't two things be true at once? Why can't Bill Ayers be sarcastic and be telling the truth at the same time? I mean, it's sorta weird, but it's not such a strange thing. Ayers is a squirrelly lib hack. It makes weird sense that he'd do something so goofy and underhanded. Homeboy probably gets a little thrill thinking how clever he is laying out this secret in plain view.
It's just wonderful that even a thumb sucking lib like Congressman Weiner can admit he thinks BarryMed stinks on ice. Go ahead, homie. Chug down that sweet refreshing Haterade.
Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday he was looking into how a health law waiver might work for New York City.
Weiner, who is likely to run for mayor of New York, said that because of the city’s special health care infrastructure, his office was looking into alternatives that might make more sense. Weiner is one of the health care law’s biggest supporters; during the debate leading up to reform, he was one of the last holdouts in Congress for the public option.
Why is this happening, Weiner?
“The president said, ‘If you have better ideas that can accomplish the same thing, go for it,’” said Weiner. “I’m in the process now of trying to see if we can take [President Barack Obama] up on it in the city of New York, … and I’m taking a look at all of the money we spend in Medicaid and Medicare and maybe New York City can come up with a better plan.”
Here's a plan for Weiner and the rest of the Democrats: How about we scrap the entire thing and call it a wash? Y'all can make lame sorority girl-style excuses for why you voted for ObamaCare--"I was really drunk," "My ride took off without me," "He said we were cool"--and we'll completely understand. I swear, everybody on the Right will stop laughing at you after a couple of weeks. A month, tops.
It's neat how the people who screamed the loudest about passing this monstrosity--the unions, the media and the progosphere sycophants--are the ones who most desperately want a note from Papa Barry to get out of ObamaCare. What's even better is that the Republicans in Congress are still dawdling along wondering if they should completely defund ObamaCare.
Ummm, here's a clue. If everybody--even Anthony "Brainless Knee-Jerk Statist" Weiner, for God's sake--is begging the government trying to get out of nationalized medicine, that means it's a dog's lunch that can be scrapped with little political risk.
I snagged this story link from Jonah Goldberg's twitter feed.
...among the leftmost wing of the House Democrats. Good to see it.
Reps. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Donna Edwards (Md.), Mike Capuano (Mass.), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Maxine Waters (Calif.), Rob Andrews (N.J.), Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas), Barbara Lee (Calif.) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.) “all strongly raised objections to the constitutionality of the president’s actions [in Libya]” during that call, said two Democratic lawmakers who took part.
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) even asked why President Obama's actions aren't impeachable. And from an unnamed Democrat lawmaker:
“They consulted the Arab League. They consulted the United Nations. They did not consult the United States Congress...They’re creating wreckage, and they can’t obviate that by saying there are no boots on the ground. … There aren’t boots on the ground; there are Tomahawks in the air.”
In my previous post, a guest tries to float (verb usage intentional) the idea that there was no congressional authorization for either of the Iraq Wars, among other actions in which the United States Military has been ordered to engage. Of course the assertion about the two Iraq conflicts was easily disputed. I haven't bothered to look up the others, most of which were conducted by Democrat presidential administrations.
I do hope the Left wing of the congressional Democrats stands firm. We will see.
Matt over at the Conservative Hideout has some thoughts on the so-called 'Worst Generation'.
My parent’s generation spent the wealth that was so painfully earned by their parents. Then, they created failed program after failed program, all paid for with trillions of borrowed dollars. And when the programs were clearly failures, and, in fact, made things worse, they plodded on. The kept following the leftist narrative, and never-ever cut their own benefits, no matter how unsustainable they were. They also rejected the spirit of their parents, who had endured the great depression, and survived WW II. Their parents had sacrificed, but the boomers wanted what they wanted, and they wanted it immediately.
Read the whole piece, ya'all.
While I agree with much of Matt's sentiments, I think the Baby Boomers sometimes get a bad rap. After all, they didn't come up with Social Security. That was second-gen progressive Franklin Roosevelt's idea. The Great Society programs--Medicare, Aid To Families With Dependent Children--were dreamed up by Lyndon Johnson.
No, the Boomers didn't create a lot of the now-crumbling social spending architecture that threatens to destroy America. What many folks in the post WWII generation did was assume that the nationalized Ponzi schemes and subsidization of personal failure they inherited from older generations were going to continue without consequence. With that monumentally absurd analysis in place, the New Left movements that arose in the Baby Boom generation set about creating ideologies and rationalizations that reinforced their flawed assumptions.
Look at one example. Conservatives assert that welfare is destroying the American family. Baby Boom feminists (and their intellectual progeny) argue that the traditional family is outdated and sexist. The nuclear familial arrangement, with its coercion and fundamental unfairness towards women, is not worth being concerned about. The dissolution of that unfair institution is not only necessary, it should be welcomed. Welfare might be hurting marriage and the old family arrangements, but it's just doing the needed work to get society to the post-traditonal family that feminists crave.
While some elements of the Boomer left were busy cementing themselves into soft socialism and cultural Marxism, many others entered into the media. Take a gander at who sets the agenda in much of the MSM. Arthur 'Pinch' Sulzberger, the head of the New York Times, was born in 1951. Steve Capus, president of NBC News, was born in 1963. The editor of the Washington Post is Marcus Brauchli, who was born in 1961.
These folks--and many others in the legacy media--are all part of the post-war Baby Boom. How many times have you watched some gauzy nostalgia-laden montage of 60's and 70's era protests/concerts/hippie love-ins/Timothy Leary yammerings? The reason why these dreadful creations are so ubiquitous is because the Boomers who look back at that time so fondly are the ones who make up the majority of American news organizations. Further, most of the contemporary coverage of the baby boom social movements are almost always positive. The excesses of dudes like Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman or Bill Ayers are generally airbrushed away. Even better? The self-congratulation to actual accomplishment ratio is usually quite skewed. "Hooray for us, we stopped the Vietnam War and stuff. Also, we listened to the Velvet Underground, so yeah..." Yikes.
Because Baby Boomers--especially lefty boomers--dominate the media, they paint a distorted picture of 60's/70's youth. If you just watched CNN or read Time Magazine, you'd think every teenager in America from 1966 to 1978 was an idealistic acid-gobbling Vietnam War protester who lived on commune in Southern California with her Native American spirit guide, seven sex partners and five children named after various wildflowers while David Crosby constructed ever more elaborate water bongs and Gloria Steinem ritualistically burned her bra. The reality is that boomers during their formative years inhabited a broad continuum, from stern straight-laced traditionalists to wild-eyed liberal doucherockets, and that many of these neat categorizations we're fed just don't add up.
What is the worst sin of the Baby Boomers? The knee-jerk leftism to which some of them continue to bitterly cling is annoying as hell. The unreal self-descriptions and constant back-patting is tiresome. The thing is that none of them would be particularly fatal. They'd just be aggravating.
The most egregious error committed by the Boomers isn't any of that crap. According to Stanley Kurtz, via the great Pundette, the issue for the 'Worst Generation' is the fact that they didn't make babies.
In 2005, I reviewed some of the first books on the subject and concluded that a demographically induced economic crisis could spark a revival of religious traditionalism, a far more radical decomposition of the family, or both.
At the time, it looked as if a possible demographically-induced economic crisis was at least a couple of decades away. We seem to be running ahead of schedule. To a large extent, the economic troubles here and in Europe already factor in the unsustainable entitlements of the future.
Although an economic crisis is imminent, and the underlying cause demographic, I haven’t noticed many calls for increased child-bearing. That is in striking contrast to the world-wide movement in response to the less proximate and more theoretical global warming crisis. It’s a measure of how unthinkable changes in our post-sixties life-styles still are. Yet it doesn’t mean change won’t happen, if and when a demographic-economic crisis truly strikes.
It probably doesn't matter all that much that a lot of Boomer peeps smoked a gazillion pounds of OG Kush looking for a cheap buzz or a spiritual experience or whatever. The tendency for elf-esteem boosting hagiography of 60's and 70's accomplishments doesn't explain our present difficulties. The leftist leaning of many in that generation by itself doesn't damn the post-war generation.
The fact that they couldn't be bothered to squeeze out a few more kids here and there is the lasting destructive legacy of the baby boom demographic. In many cases, it wasn't purposeful. Their intentions were often noble, or at least not totally self-serving anyway. Often there were perfectly rational rationalizations for their reproductive decisions. Career moves, financial choices, a concern for the environment, bad relationships, high divorce rates; all those things tend to slow down the baby-making. More, all of these factors could've happened to any generation.
I really don't think baby boomers sat down as an entire generational cohort and decided to stop making kids as much as their parents did. I also don't think they all planned a demographic collapse that would threaten the entire economic future of the America. There were definitely more than a few Boomers who were worried about overpopulation, but for the most part it was a host of decisions and life events that slowed the Boomer breeding.
The problem here is, like so many other good (or at least not-evil) intentions, America has managed to pave a road right into the abyss with miles of supposedly good plans and allegedly smart ideas. The Boom generation didn't mean for this to happen. Nonetheless, we find ourselves in dire circumstances due to some very misguided decisions.
This is the test of our democracy. Ms Piven must be delighted.
'Delighted?' That repellent old socialist windbag is panting for more of the same as we speak.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, where all but the most blinkered left-wing ideologues actually live, Herman Cain throws down a marker.
Big ups to RS McCain for posting this vid. Read the rest of his piece as he makes some good points and includes a smidge of Breitbart magic as well.
As for Herman Cain, he declares, "Wisconsin in ground zero for the rest of America"
Listen to this man. He speaks the God's honest truth here.
As I said in an earlier post, Obama has sent his troops into this fight. Organizing For America pretty much sat on its hands during the 2010 election season. Unlike in November, the President has decided to enter this battle with both barrels blazing. He is gambling that with OFA assistance, rent-a-goon union tactics and good old fashioned media bias, he can get Wisconsin Republicans to back down.
Obama must not be allowed to win this fight.
Ponder this scenario: The GOP in Wisconsin is broken. They give in to Democrat demands and business as usual reconvenes. The consequences from that loss would be dramatic and immediate. First, this will embolden the Obama political hack groups to pull this kind of stuff anytime a fiscally conservative statehouse gets too uppity. If the Cloward/Piven/Alinsky tactic works in CheeseHeadLand, the Left will naturally seek to use these same political moves everywhere else. Obama will send out OFA to infiltrate, disrupt and disarm any state's attempts to slow the growth of government.
Governors from states that are in similarly dire budgetary straits--like all 50 of them--will look at this hypothetical conservative failure in Wisconsin with great interest. They will learn that there is no political gain to be had from trying to evade the budgetary dilemmas they face. Runaway entitlements, public-sector union issues, basic fiscal discipline...all those concerns will go by the wayside. Politicians will instead recalibrate their messages to voters; the big fight in the next election cycle will be which party can best deliver the gubmint cheeeeeeeez to state-dependent voters.
Just a reminder: Even after the compassionate conservatism of the Bush years, Republicans will never--EVER--win that argument. If faced with the prospect of Republicans offering an efficient well-organized welfare state or Democrats promising a generous fluffy relaxing social safety hammock, voters will choose the Donkey Punchers every time. When a little kid cries for a Snickers bar, he really doesn't care how much money Mommy saved when she bought the thing. No, the child only cares that the chocolate goody gets to him as soon as possible and that there is more where that came from. Same thing with is true with the electorate if faced with that kind of 'choice.'
What Obama and the Dems are trying to do is nothing less than the repeal of the 2010 midterms.
Wisconsin might not be America's political Ragnarok. Perhaps I'm misreading just how big this thing is. However, the fact that Barack Obama has decided to expend such effort and has unleashed his rabble-rousers tells me that this is a massive deal.
Amy Woodruff just sorta gave the entire game away, didn't she?
So much of the pro-choice side's intellectual argument rests on the utterly vacuous legality defense. Roe v. Wade supposedly brought the process of terminating unwanted pregnancies from the filthy unsafe back allies into the respectable clinical sterile environment of the modern operating room. Remember, according to the pro-abortion crowd, terminating a pregnancy has to be legal or women will be put at risk and denied their constitutional rights.
First, a question for the audience: At what point does the giggling moronic Planned Parenthood hack in the video consider the legality of what she is doing? After all, Amy Woodruff doesn't know she's being set up. As best she can tell this is a real pimp with a real ho who is peddling 14 year old minors for sex. In fact, she is doing everything in her power to help a pimp--a degenerate sex trafficker who is selling children--stay out of trouble with the law.
Human imagination would be sorely tested trying to dream up an ideologically blinkered moral idiot such as Ms. Woodruff. It seems impossible that a person would allow herself to get so confused that she turns a blind eye towards this kind of extreme child endangerment and exploitation. Unfortunately, reality is far more inventive than our darkest nightmares.
Make no mistake-Ms. Woodruff is engaging in criminal behavior. Moreover, it's a crime involving the central justification of Planned Parenthood. That organization breaks its arm patting itself on the back for protecting women from abuse. Yet here we see a gatekeeper of Planned Parenthood making sure that underage girls are kept in sexual bondage. If the situation in the clip isn't exploitation of women, what the hell is?
Speaking of rights, what about the right of fourteen year old girls not to be turned into sex slaves? I mean, I know it's not like the right to abort a child that is so obviously spelled out in the US Constitution [sarc/] but still. I'm not a civil rights expert, but I'm pretty sure that if someone is pimping out minors for sex, that is going to adversely affect that whole 'Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness" equation. I guess the right of Planned Parenthood to make money off of terminating pregnancies trumps the rights of teenagers to not get used like a box of Kleenex.
Instead of preventing abuse, the legality of abortion has created the conditions for ever-uglier forms of anti-female assaults. Better still, the group that considers itself the primary guardian of women's rights is right there giving aid and comfort to the most vile abusers out there. Why, if I didn't know better, I'd think Planned Parenthood was just paying lip service to protecting women while they simultaneously set ladies up for a particularly nasty fall or something.
Prediction: There will be about a hundred times more outrage from the pro-abortion feminist sob sisters about how this video was obtained rather than the fact that Planned Parenthood put itself in the position of helping out a pedophile-enabling pimp.
I snagged the original link at Instapundit. Muchas gracias.
Cross-posted at BDKS. Thank you very much, Juliette. You rule.
By now, most people have heard about the shooting in Tuscon, Arizona that left six people dead and wounded eighteen others, including Representative Gabrielle Giffords. This pointless act of violence by a deranged young man should be denounced by every right-thinking person. Unfortunately, some of our allegedly right-thinking media commentators are trying way too hard to make their ridiculous political points.
First up, here's Howard Fineman, calling on Obama to use the Tuscon shooting for his own purposes.
Now comes Tucson. The deaths there are not about politics, ideology or party. From what we know, Jared Loughman's acts were those of a madman divorced from reality, let alone from public debate.
But that doesn't make Tucson politically meaningless. The president need not, and should not, speak of ideas or programs or parties. What he can speak about, and what perhaps he will speak about, is civility.
Arizona has become a ferociously divided and dangerous place, in which our indispensable need to argue--arguing is, after all, who we are as a people--seems at times to veer into an abyss.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords--"centrist" Democrat, survivor in a district with more Republicans than Democrats and more independent voters than either--has prospered in Congress by crossing lines and doing so with a sense of earnestness and good will.
Like her, the president has been attacked harshly of late from both sides: by progressives who regard him as a sellout, by Tea Partiers who regard him as a power-mad socialist usurper.
He and Giffords think of themselves as fellow travelers on a middle path of civility and compromise in a dangerous world. The president will likely argue that, implicitly if not explicitly.
Fate works in strange ways. This event is the first on the watch of Obama's new chief of staff, and a deal-making, turn-the-heat-down approach to politics is what Bill Daley is all about.
As was the case with Clinton, Obama may be able to remind voters of what they like best about him: his sensible demeanor. Amid the din and ferocity of our political culture, he respectfully keeps his voice down, his emotions in check and his mind open.
That is the pitch, at least. The trick is to make it without seeming to be trying to make it. He will, after all, be speaking at a funeral.
Jeeeeeeeebus.
There is so much fail here, it almost overwhelms reason.
First, Fineman strains mightily against observable reality to draw a connection between Giffords, an actual moderate, and Barack 'I Won'Obama, a hard left statist who has to be dragged kicking and screaming to split the difference with Republicans. In fact, there is no comparison between the Representative and the President besides the fact that they're both Democrats. Quick tip for Fineman: When you call your partisan opponents hostage-takers, you're reaching across the aisle with a sharp left hook to the jaw. If there is a mood of partisan rancor in Arizona--or America--Obama hasn't done anything to alleviate it and done much to perpetuate it.
Even worse is Fineman's fetishization of 'civility'. Note that liberals only care about civility when they're the one's catching a good old-fashioned passionate ass-whooping at the ballot box. The 2010 midterm elections are still a giant source of pain for Democrats and their media enablers. Now that conservatives have a tiny chance to enact some small-government ideas, the professional Left wants Republicans to 'tone down' all this 'hot rhetoric'. In Fineman's five brain cell math, the GOP's insistence on dismantling Obama's health care reform bill = Tucson shooting.
Here's another problem. Homeboy wants America to have more 'civil' political debates. Forget for a moment that for Fineman, a well-mannered conversation means the Democrat Party gets it's way on every issue forever. The bigger issue here is that Fineman wants Barack Obama to score political points at what sort of event? Oh yeah, a funeral. You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a scenario more impolite than somebody throwing partisan bon mots over the body of a nine year old child.
Wait, did I say 'impolite'? What I meant to say is 'vulgar and nauseating'.
But hey, maybe Howard Fineman is right. After all, the Paul Wellstone funeral was a rousing success.
Next up, here's Paul Krugman. He's a New York Times columnist and a massive douchetool, but I repeat myself. Watch as this Nobel Prize winner completely beclowns himself.
We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist. (Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.
...You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.
This is what it sounds like when liberals wet the bed.
Let's break this down. Krugman wants us to believe that elements of the conservative movement created a climate of hate that led to this shooting. A cursory glance at the artifacts left behind by the shooter proves Krugman wrong. Take a look the alleged murderer's Youtube page. Here are his favorite books.
Animal Farm, Brave New World, The Wizard Of OZ, Aesop Fables, The Odyssey, Alice Adventures Into Wonderland, Fahrenheit 451, Peter Pan, To Kill A Mockingbird, We The Living, Phantom Toll Booth, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Pulp,Through The Looking Glass, The Communist Manifesto, Siddhartha, The Old Man And The Sea, Gulliver's Travels, Mein Kampf, The Republic, and Meno.
Funny. I don't see Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh mentioned in there. Try as I might, I can't find any Tea Party pamphlets or conservative manifestos either. Why, it's almost as if Paul Krugman is using his own political template for what he thinks the American conservative movement is and projecting that distorted image onto the Tucson shooter.
Again, Krugman is arguing that his right-wing bogeymen pushed the attacker to violence. If that were the case, there should be something, even a minute scrap of evidence that suggests that the shooter was influenced by conservatives. In fact, the shooter's most beloved tomes seem far less like a Tea Partier's book club assignment and far more like a slightly off-kilter high school sophomore's summer reading list.
If we want to really pick through the books and find a pattern, you'd be hard-pressed to find any real partisan trend. "Animal Farm", "Fahrenheit 451" and "Brave New World" are well-regarded works of fiction loved by members of the Right, Left and apolitical. If "The Odyssey", "Gulliver's Travels" or "The Old Man and The Sea" are right-wing calls to arms, they're the most well-disguised revolutionary tracts ever. "We The Living" was written by Ayn Rand, so in some bizarre left-wing fever dream, this could be evidence of the shooter's right-wingery. But then what are we supposed to make of "The Communist Manifesto" and "Mein Kampf"? These are the holy texts of international and national socialism and not exactly beloved political tracts within the conservative movement.
Contrary to Paul Krugman's bullshit on stilts masquerading as sober analysis, there is no coherent political philosophy to be found in the shooter's favorite books. But surely for Krugman to tar the Palin/Beck/Limbaugh axis as inciting violence, there must be something going on in the shooter's intellectual life. Perhaps the attacker's Youtube videos showed Krugman the indications he needed to make his accusations.
Nope. Nothing here.
Maybe this video?
Once more, we find nothing in the attacker's personal statements that indicate that he had any intellectual connection to the Tea Party, conservatives or Sarah Palin. That begs the question: From what part of the political spectrum did the shooter come from? If you answered "Insane Street In The Nutbar Development Right Smack Dab In the Middle of Crazyville", give yourself a gold star. You just did better at examining the motivations of the Tucson gunman than an overpaid undersmart New York Times hack.
Howard Fineman and Paul Krugman: Kindly go to the back of the short bus, sit down and shut the hell up. Your services are no longer required. For anything. Ever.
UPDATE: RE-Violent political rhetoric.
Paul Krugman had a pathetic crying jag over Sarah Palin's 'infamous' targeting of vulnerable Democrat representatives for the 2010 midterms. If that picture...which I had never seen until today...is so inflammatory, what about the DailyKos? Jim Treacher finds this little gem.
"[Gabrielle Giffords] is dead to me."
BoyBlue posted this diary on January 6th, 2011. By Paul Krugman's dainty standards, this is eliminationist rhetoric that contributes to a climate of violence. But since this angry missive came from the a left-wing site, I guess this doesn't count. It's just sober political talk, right Paul?
What's even cooler is that Markos Moulitsas took down the post. Yup. It's gone down the memory hole. If it was done out of a sense of class or fear of political blowback is anybody's guess.
The Giffords shooting has already turned into a left-wing cluster bang. The problem is that it's only going to get worse.
UPDATE II: Of course, more elements of the progressive movement have chimed in blaming conservatives for the shooting. One problem: It's not right-wingers publicly calling for violence.
Hey Eugene Robinson, Joshua Marshall, and Keith Olbermann: Your propaganda cartoonist, your socialist-apologizing little pissant artist, your tantrum-throwing scribbler is the one that is saying that America needs violent revolution to fix it. It's not the Right that's saying this stuff. It's Ted Rall, respected member of the statist movement, that's proposing a violent overthrow. Then you have the nerve to use some maniac with no political motivation beyond his own insanity as a tool to try to make your patent lies about conservatives stick.
The fact that this leftist narrative coalesced so quickly tells us a few things about liberals. They're liars. Ironically, for a political movement that breaks it's arm patting themselves on the back for being geniuses, the left revels in group-think. Worse, there is absolutely no tactic too low for them. The only thing they care about is if the strategy works to wound their enemies.
UPDATE III: Eugene Robinson says that the Right has a monopoly on violent political rhetoric. Check out this link [WARNING: Not Safe For Work] and you tell me-Is Eugene Robinson senile or is he just conveniently lying about the eight years of liberal demonstrations during the Bush presidency when Robinson talks about the Right's supposed lead-pipe lock on inflamatory partisan rhetoric?
Face facts. Many elements of the Left spent the Dubya years using the most vile, disgusting, hate-filled language against America, Israel, the American conservative movement and others that progressives deemed as enemies of their movement. MSNBC, The New York Times and many other left-of-center media organs did nothing to condemn this broiling leftist rage. In fact, many of them stoked the fires of partisan hate while pretending to be sane comentators. Eugene Robinson and others in the 'respectable' liberal camp want us to forget all that vitriol--again, emanating solely from the Left--and focus on a single political graphic used by Sarah Palin as evidence that the Right is the only part of US political life that employs violent rhetoric.
Check it out ya'all. Robert Stacy McCain finds us an exciting romantic tale. It's called "Senator Max Baucus: Hook-Up Master".
If you’re a regular dude looking for a date, you go to a bar or use an online dating service. If you’re a United States Senator, you just get the taxpayers to hire you a girlfriend:
U.S. Sen. Max Baucus says he plans to marry his girlfriend and former director of his state offices. Baucus said Monday he and Melodee Hanes were engaged over the Christmas holiday in Helena. The 69-year-old veteran Democrat says they intend to marry in Montana this summer.
Baucus and his second wife, Wanda, divorced in early 2009 after 25 years of marriage.
The senator recommended Hanes for Montana’s U.S. attorney post in 2009, a move that later came under scrutiny due to their relationship.
By then, Hanes had withdrawn her name from consideration and instead took a job with the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.
Boy hires Girl, Boy falls in love with Girl, Boy tries to use his position as an elected official to get Girl a high-paying government job--Yep, that's how everybody's love story goes.
By the way, here's Maxi's soon-to-be blushing bride.
I guess Baucus is marrying the Hillary Clinton Circa 2006 Look-Alike Contest Winner. Huzzah.
Say what you will about the Senator's lack of ethics, or his unorthodox taste in the ladies. One thing is certain: He's always a sober legislator. Right?
Montana Max kept asking, "Where's the courage?" Here's an even better question-Where's the breathalyzer? Forget about the blood-alcohol level. This dude is pumping 80 proof flop-sweat.
Hey Treasure Staters, just an FYI for ya here. Max Baucus is up for re-election in 2014. Find a viable candidate that actually represents the interests of your state to beat the drunken sleazeball pile of fail masquerading as your United States Senator. You've got a few years, but I'd say you need to get on it now, just to be on the safe side.
First, Glenn Reynolds on what the GOP should do in 2011:
...ignore the press. The establishment media still have their power, but they've never been weaker, and they're perceived by an ever-greater percentage of Americans as simply an arm of the political-class Democratic Party. If you pay attention, they have power over you. If you do what you think is right, they don't.
Historically speaking, this seems to be the hardest thing for many Republicans inside the Beltway to do.
The social scene in Washington DC is chock full of soft (and hard) statists. If it was up to the swells at the Washington Post, the federal government would always grow. And really, why should any of the smart set in the media-government complex want conservative governance? Getting back to a limited constitutionally based federal apparatus would mean the end of the taxpayer funded gravy train.
The other thing that the incoming Republicans must realize is that the media hates them. Not 'dislikes'. Not even 'disagrees with'. Hates. A freshman GOP congressman might get a few invitations to DC cocktail parties if he votes against some piece of conservative legislation. Attending those soirees comes at a cost. The very necessary reform of our government will be stymied, of course. More importantly for the Republican gadfly, hanging with the Washington kool kid set means being a slave to their whims. The media only loves GOPers when they take a crap on Righties. Once the apostate Representative votes for right-of-center programs, the big media folks will turn off their Strange New Respect.
Next, Jay Cost has some sic transit gloria mundi-style words:
...what's most memorable about the 1946 election is that it wasn't a harbinger of a post-New Deal realignment. Two years later, the Republicans were swept out of power as thoroughly as they had been swept in, and apart from a brief and bare majority at the beginning of the Eisenhower administration, they wouldn't recapture a House majority until they were led by a guy named Newt. What happened?
One major reason for the GOP's failure to retain the majority was the response of the Democratic party to the results of 1946, wherein the party moved quickly to outflank the GOP on the Communist issue. It's no coincidence that Americans for Democratic Action -- a liberal interest group that was resolutely anti-Communist -- was founded in January 1947 just as the 80th Congress convened. President Truman fought the Republicans tooth and nail on domestic politics over the next two years, but on foreign affairs he and the Republicans, led by Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg, hammered out a bipartisan policy that would remain in place more or less for the next quarter century. What's more, under the advice of his political counselors, he also went after Henry Wallace, the former cabinet secretary and vice president whom Truman had fired after he publicly promoted a soft stance on the Soviets. Wallace's third party candidacy in 1948 was just what Truman needed to push most of the Soviet sympathizers out of the Democratic coalition, thus undermining one of the major Republican arguments from 1946.
The GOP's big pick ups during the 2010 midterm elections happened--in part--because voters are nervous about galloping Obama style liberalism. There is a deep concern amongst the citizenry about runaway spending, crippling debt, long term unemployment and the perception that government is incompetent when dealing with real world problems. In early January, it seems impossible that Obama and the Democrats could outmaneuver the GOP on the small-government/entitlement reform/jobs front. But it is very possible. The Republicans aren't known as 'The Stupid Party' for nothing.
If the GOP lets Democrats retake the high ground, they will forfeit a massive opportunity. They will throw away the nation's best--and possibly last--chance to get America back to a Constitutional framework. Worse for the GOP, they'll irreparably damage their small government brand. There are already more than a few conservatives who don't trust the Republicans as it is. Let the GOP go back to their Hastert-era big stupid spendaholic ways and you can almost garauntee the formation of a right-wing third party.
The Republicans can take bold solid steps to reform the federal government. Or they can devolve and die. The choice is in their hands.
The political composition of U.S. adults held fairly steady in 2010 compared with 2009. Conservatives remained the largest group, followed by moderates and then liberals. At 35%, the percentage of moderates has declined to a new low, highlighting the increased political polarization that has occurred over the past decade.
...While the political pendulum in Washington can swing widely, Americans' political ideology, like their party identification, tends to shift more gradually. Such a shift has been underway in recent years. While the changes are not large, they are unmistakable. Moderates are growing fewer in number while the percentages of conservatives and liberals have expanded. Conservatism has gained ground among Republicans and independents, while the growth in liberalism is strictly among Democrats.
Liberals will look at the Gallup poll and have an immediate response: "What about 2008? Liberalism won in that year."
Sure about all that, Nancy? Obama ran as a sane, cool-headed moderate. Conservatives warned that St. Barry was a flaming lefty, but most voters either couldn't be bothered to dig too deeply into Obama's troubling ideological pedigree or just didn't think it was that big a deal considering the Bamster's GOP opponent. In 2008, Republican George Bush was presiding over a crumbling economy and two foreign wars, one of which was fairly unpopular. John McCain ran a weak-willed feckless campaign that did much to alienate and demoralize his very necessary conservative base. When he did do something right--like pick Sarah Palin for VP--the campaign promptly misused that most valuable asset when it couldn't afford even the slightest mistake. If the Democrats couldn't win big in that electoral year, they were never going to score a major victory.
Again, how did the Donkey-Punchers get their wins in '08 and '06? (I throw 2006 in because it set the table for the unified Democrat government of the last two years.) They ran guys such as Bob Casey, Jon Tester and James Webb, men who could pull off a fake-o-la centrist political stance when needed. Look at the Democrat campaign messages in those years. 'Open, honest, transparent government'. 'Most ethical congress ever.' '95% of Americans will see a tax cut.' The self-description we got from the Democrats in 2006-2008 could be summed up as: "We're in the middle of the road and we're not Bush. Pretty please vote for us and we'll be your BFF's."
By the fall of 2008, Dubya was seen as ideologically brittle and only slightly more popular than raw sewage, shin splints and homelessness. Running in the middle while opposing Bush was smart strategy for the Democrats. However, while it may have been the politically intelligent move, it was not--and is not--what anybody would consider openly left-wing.
Liberalism did not win in 2006. It did not win in 2008. Instead, it cloaked itself in moderation, a reasonable tone and...in the case of Barack Obama... a pretty princess visage. While the Left bided it's time, George Bush, Denny Hastert and most of the elected GOPers busied themselves with soiling the party's small government brand.
Once the Left ascended in 2008, with it's big congressional majorities and an ideologically copacetic presidency, how did it govern? Like progressive statists, of course. Now, if liberalism were truly on the rise, why did America's left-of center party get creamed in the off-year elections of 2009 and subsequently pummelled in the 2010 midterms?
The Gallup poll gives us some very important lessons about American politics. First, it shows just how aberrational the 2008 election was in relation to the ideology of the America electorate. More importantly, the Gallup data indicates that US voters will be potentially quite receptive to conservative policy initiatives if these ideas are articulated and fought for with vigor.
Cross-Posted at Blog De KingShamus. Big ups to the rad Baldilocks for letting me hang out and post here.
How many times have we said that to ourselves or to others? Dozens? Scores? Hundreds?
For conservatives, the freedom-crushing size and liberty-lessening scope of the federal government is an ironclad fact, as true as water being wet or Lady Gaga being a first order publicity whore. Liberals have a ready retort when right-wingers complain about the growth of the DC leviathan. "What would you cut?"
I think it’s time for all Americans to step-up to the plate and help take some pressure off the President, the Senators, the Congressmen, all the Czars and Agency Heads, and etc. I think that We The People have just plain been asking too much from our leaders and the strain is beginning to tell on them.
Here’s the problem. Our leaders in Washington just have too much on their plate and it’s all our fault for demanding so much from them.
...So here is what I think we should do. Let’s institute what I call Government Light. I think We The People need to dramatically reduce the work load on our poor public servants. I’ve got some ideas on how we could do that. Instead of al these zillions of things we’ve been asking government to do for us I have a much shorter lists of what we should be willing to settle for:
Provide for the common defense. You know. A military to protect us from our enemies and to protect our borders from invasion.
To create a body of objective laws to protect the God-given rights of all citizens.
Develop a judicial system to capture those that break the laws and try them and to punish the guilty.
Establish a stable monetary system.
Develop and maintain a national infrastructure in order that commerce can freely occur between state and with other nations.
I think if our government only had to focus on these five things, the mental health of our public servants would improve dramatically and We The People could take care of the rest of our needs instead of burdening government for everything.
Jim from the always-interesting Conservatives On Fire has come up with a nice working framework.
There's just one problem with it. It's not the drastic withdrawl of the central government from citizens' lives. It's not the austerity measures that would result from these new directives. In fact, none of those things are terrible in and of themselves.
No, the issue is that CoF's plan assumes that liberals have created the mega-state in order to actually solve problems. In fact, that's only a very small part of the left's reasoning vis-a-vis the ever-growing federal gubmint beast. The major snag with Jim's program is that it won't allow hacks to rob from the taxpayers.
Ponder the omnibus spending bill that just took a dump in Harry Reid's mattress. The thing was designed to be massive and impenetrable. The Senate Democrats tried to get it passed in December, after the Donkey-Punchers got their heads handed to them in the midterm elections. It was also brought to the Senate during a time when the American voter is most inattentive. The bill was loaded with pork in the hopes that Senators and those constituents who were paying attantion could be bought off.
Limited government is great. But if you're really looking to redistribute wealth and pad you're own fiefdom, there's nothing like the crazy unlimited variety of government to do the trick.
Further thoughts: I realize that the latest omnibus spending toothache was smashed. But over the years, this type of gargantuan budget bill--packed to the rafters with ridiculous earmarks, porktastic programs and barely concealed graft--have passed through Republican and Democrat congresses with relative ease. Conservatives won a victory of sorts by killing Senator Reid's fantasy budget, but it's one win in a sea of defeats.
Let's look at a random year...2003...and see what fiscal idiocy we can find.
$44,239,000for projects in the state of Senate Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee member Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and House Agriculture Appropriations subcommittee member Tom Latham (R-Iowa), including: $33,000,000 for the National Animal Disease Center in Ames; $700,000 for the Midwest Poultry Consortium; $280,000 for the Iowa Vitality Center; $235,000 for dairy education; $210,000 for hoop barns; and $100,000 for the Trees Forever Program.
We can draw a few conclusions from this wee nugget of fail. Maybe there was a need for a National Animal Disease Center in Iowa. The Hawkeye State, like many parts of the Midwest, is deeply invested in agriculture. Perhaps there such an institution had to be started by federal dollars.
This begs the question: What about the private sector? Did nobody ever think to create a company to deal with animal diseases before Tom Harkin...one of the dimmer bulbs in a dimbulb-centric US Senate...came along? Furthermore, what about state governments? Had nobody without DC cash been able to study or treat ailments that afflict our four-legged friends before 2003?
Beyond the dubious need for the National Animal Disease Center comes another realization: We're still paying for it. The NADC is part of the United States Department of Agriculture, thus federal dollars are used to hireand retain workers. What about building maintenance or cafeteria staffing? That's on us as well. Much like the Corporation For Public Broadcasting or Ben Affleck, the NADC is the government-friendly hole that keeps on sucking.
Bear in mind that this is just one relatively small portion of the 2003 federal budget turd sandwich. Buried within that bill was an army of ridiculous spending. Taken individually, these more or less tiny chunks of pork look like the cheesy punchline to a lame joke. Put together, they amount to nothing less than the biggest heist in history, making the most lucrative bank robberies, Ponzi schemes or Soros currency shenanigans seem minute in comparison.
More depressing than that? The 2003 appropriations bill represents just one year's worth of porky goodness. This spending is not an abberation. It was, and pretty much still is, business as usual.
And that's the problem. People do not want to be bothered paging through a gazillion pages of legalese and congress-talk to separate the worthy wheat from the wasteful chaff. More, folks have heard so many stories about $50 hammers and $100 toilet seats that they've become numb to it. Inertia and inattention have conspired to make the federal budget very hard to shrink. The budget creation process was designed to keep people in the dark about just how much they've been getting robbed.
The last omnibus bill was defeated, which is a good thing. With any luck, it's the start of a movement to reign in federal spending and--more importantly--scale back the influence Washington DC has in our daily lives.
A lot of people on the Right are kinda torqued off that the Republicans gave in and extended unemployment benefits in order to get the Bush tax cuts redone. There are legitimate arguments why caving on the unemployment stuff is not ideologically sound. One can also make a case that extending unemployment bennies is not good from a deficit hawk perspective.
But there's at least one good reason why the GOP did the right thing: the deal is a political winner.
Two major elements included in the tax agreement reached Monday between President Barack Obama and Republican leaders in Congress meet with broad public support. Two-thirds of Americans (66%) favor extending the 2001/2003 tax cuts for all Americans for two years, and an identical number support extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. …
Recall the political climate in 1995. The Gingrich-Clinton battle over the federal budget was dutifully portrayed by the lamestream leftist media as Scowling Newt The Puppy-Strangling Kid-Punching Elderly-Hating Scrooge versus Beloved Bill: Defender of All That Was, Is, & Ever Will Be Good. The conservative momentum of the 1994 landslide quickly reversed itself as the Republicans took a public-relations shellacking. It's instructive to note that this scenario played itself out during a time of relative peace, prosperity and strong employment figures.
Fast forward to now. Let's say the Republicans drew a line in the sand and refused to extend unemployment benefits. During a time when 9% of people are out of work, that would be a hard position for the GOP to sell to people. Worse, the Republicans would then fall into the tired but still somewhat potent class warfare game that the Democrats love to play.
Now, it's quite possible that John Boehner and Mitch McConnell might have beaten the Dems in that fight. The problem is that winning would result in the loss of very precious and very finite political capital. There are absolutely gargantuan wars that are coming up very soon. The budget fight with President PantsCrease could become very difficult. Repealing ObamaCare is going to be an epic struggle. Both will require Republicans taking hits from the government-MSM complex. In fact, every battle the Republicans fight with Obama and the Donks over the next two years will require the GOP getting beat up to one degree or another.
Keeping the status quo on unemployment benefits would've been a fiscally wise goal. But it wasn't worth the losses that would've resulted from getting it done. Not when you realize what wars are on the horizon for the Republicans.
Here before us is another reason we, the outsiders, the TEA Party folks in action and spirit, must show no quarter towards the GOP Establishment. Besides living in a collegial and congenial past that no longer is [call it what you will, the Gerald Ford or Bob Michael Era], the GOP and conservative Elites have a track record that is strewn with utter and abysmal failures. In fact, historians not yet born will label them as the Useful Idiots of the Left who, by their weaknesses and naiveté, help bring about the lamentable situation we now find ourselves in.
Bingo. Read the rest of his post; Bob's got some good stuff in there.
This is what kills me when people talk about the Republican establishment and their fetishization of electability. It's one thing to acknowledge that RINOs and moderates can often get elected easier (in certain states/districts/campaigns) than a rock-ribbed across-the-board rightwinger. This is a fact that we shouldn't simply dismiss out of hand. For instance: looking back on the particular circumstances of the race, Mike Castle probably had a better chance of winning the Senate election in Delaware than Christine O'Donnell.
However, what would we--actual factual conservatives--have gained by getting Castle into the Senate? He would've voted for Cap-n-Tax in a potential dead-duck congressional session. He was still going to be pro-choice and anti-Second Amendment. Knowing his record, his first term in the US Senate would've been marked by ArlenSpecterian hands-across-the-aisle moments of capitulation to various facets of the liberal nanny-state agenda. A hug for Obama would not have been completely out of the question.
Would a guy like Mike Castle, a classic go-along-to-get-along DC establishmentarian, have the stomach for repealing ObamaCare? What makes anybody think Castle would be capable of defunding the utterly wretched NPR or abolishing the utterly useless Department of Energy? In what possible scenario would a guy like Mike Castle vote against illegal immigration amnesty? Could Mike Castle, famous for his chummy, clubby attitude towards Democrats, actually go along with his own party on something substantive like real free-market entitlement reforms? Many signs point to an emphatic 'no.'
Not only would a potential Senator Mike Castle be a thorn in the side of conservatives, he'd be doing everything he can to damage the already-tarnished Republican brand. While he was busy building a media-backed Fiefdom of Royal RINOLand, he'd also happily throw monkey wrenches into GOP-backed fiscal discipline measures.
So conservatives would get lots of drawbacks and almost no benefits from a Senator Mike Castle. But the Tea Party and it's allies were supposed to forget all that because Mike Castle happened to have a weak 'R' behind his name? Really?
The television show "Glee" gets the gas-face from the moral prudes over at GLAAD.
Gay rights campaigners have lashed out at the producers and writers of TV musical Glee for including a controversial line about transvestites in the show's pre-Halloween tribute to The Rocky Horror Show.
The cast took on characters from the spooky and camp 1970s musical in a themed episode, which scored huge ratings last week (ends29Oct10).
But Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) officials have taken issue with the use of the word 'tranny' to describe Rocky Horror's chief character Frank-n-Furter, who dresses in stockings, lingerie and high heels.
In the Glee tribute, actor Harry Shum Jr.'s character Mike is forced to pull out of his role as Frank-n-Furter because his conservative parents don't want him to look like a "tranny".
If you're at all familiar with the show, than you already know that this particular program is very gay-friendly. Homosexual themes run throughout several episodes. The show's creators have actively sought out the support of gay advocacy groups. Yet even with all that goodwill, the show still finds itself in hot water with a wing of the liefstyle Left.
Check out GLAAD's statement.
A statement from GLAAD reads, "The casual manner in which the word was used is jarring, even if he (Shum, Jr's character) may have been repeating what his parents said.
"This inclusion of this slur is particularly alarming given last season's powerful episode in which Kurt's father chastised Finn for using the word 'f*g'. That episode sent a powerful message to the show's young fanbase that words have power and they can hurt.
"Unfortunately the larger problem here is that the word 'tranny' has become an easy punchline in popular culture, and many still don't realise that using the term is hurtful, dehumanising and associated with violence, hatred and derision against transgender people - a community that is nearly invisible in media today."
Lesson: You can never win with these idiots.
Hell, you can't even break even with the gatekeepers of liberal morality. At some point, even if you've got a sterling record of leftist happy-talk and progressive do-goodery, you will run afoul of some obscure politically correct edict. When that occurs, expect a snippy finger-wagging retort, often from the very same groups you're trying to ingratiate yourself with.
There will come a time very soon when everybody to the right of the Noam Chomsky/Eric Holder/Andrew Sullivan Axis of Fail will be considered either a racist, a sexist or a homophobe. That seems to be the endgame for groups like GLAAD or the NAACP. Even better, look where GLAAD stands in the ideological universe. They've turned into the very same type of judgemental sour-faced Puritans they say they hate.
The left loves to pat itself on the back for being tolerant and open-minded. They even have studies proving just how great they are and how much conservatives supposedly suck. There's just one problem: the actions of the progressives negate their glorious self-image.
Look at the environmental movement. Global warming proponents urge people to forgo a plethora of pleasures, from gas-guzzling SUV's to beef to energy derived from coal-fired power plants. Why? Because these things are allegedly dirty and will cause anthropogenic climate change.
The science that backs up the Warmists has been forever soiled by ClimateGate, but it really doesn't matter. What is important is that the believers follow the 'correct' doctrines. More importantly than that, the faithful must stamp out heretics and sinners. Conversion to the religion is nice, but what the Climate Changers really enjoy is being morally indignant.
It's the same thing for the GLAAD crowd. They must strike out against what they perceive as sin. So the use of the word 'tranny' on a TV show; well, that simply cannot be tolerated. That sort of immorality must be punished. Loudly, publicly and with as much sneering haughty contempt as possible. Far from being open-minded, many facets of the American left are virulently dogmatic.
There are definitely closed-minded conservatives. There are certainly right-wingers that have a puritanical nature. What conservatives should always remember is that the other side is at least as judgmental as they are, and perhaps even more so.
On Saturday I went out to Tom's River NJ to do some get-out-the-vote work for the Jon Runyan. Runyan is running against Jon Adler, a typical douchey Democrat who wants to save the freakin' world with your money. In covering the race from afar, it seemed like I should get a glove and get in the game.
Ace of Spades organized the event. Tagging along were Mr. Bingley (who blogs at the terrifically titled Coalition of the Swilling), ThisHeavenlyHell (a frequent commenter at Ace's place)and several other members of the Moron-Sphere (who forgot to e-mail or text me back with their handles). We all met at Runyan's campaign headquarters. At first I thought I'd be doing phone work, but instead the campaign coordinator dude asked us to do some voter canvassing of the district. It was beautiful Indian summer day for walking around the neighborhood, so I was stoked to get out of the HQ and see what the area was all about.
Toms River is actually much bigger than I had previously thought. Socio-economically speaking, it seemed fairly diverse as well. In getting to the neighborhood I was going to canvass, I drove past million dollar McMansions and worse-for-wear 1950's ranch homes, often within a few blocks of each other. The area we were canvassing was a middle/working class neighborhood. Nice homes, but nothing particularly massive or gaudy.
Better still, the people we talked to were overwhelmingly friendly. Beyond the very occasional rude jerk, squirrelly weirdo or overscheduled dude on their way out the door, it was all good in the hood. Granted, the way our canvassing lists were compiled, we were dealing with 'soft' Republicans for the most part. Even with that ideological semi-advantage, I still thought almost everybody was fairly rad to chat with for a few minutes. Many of these supposedly weak GOPers were not at all weak about expressing their intense dislike for President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Often times, all we'd have to say to a person was "Jon Runyan is against Obama" and that would be good enough for them.
Afterwards we all gathered back at a local watering hole, scarfed down some tasty grub and quaffed a few hearty adult beverages. Discussions were made, predictions of Republican congressional gains were bandied about, jokes at Michelle Obama's expense were tossed around and a good time was had by all. Ace and the Morons are a great bunch of conversationalists and it was nice to geek out to some in-depth political inside baseball type stuff with all-around cool folks.
As far as the actual GOTV work, I gotta say it was really easy to do. I'm a grade-A doofus and if I can do it, anybody can. I didn't get on the phones, but it seemed like it would be fairly simple to grasp. I'd say walking the neighborhood was probably easier than making calls. You get to talk to people, throw a quick candidate biography/political position list at them and then remind them to vote on Election Day. QED.
So now you really have no excuse not to do this. If you're any sort of interested in conservative politics, you're 9/10's of the way to mastering canvassing/phone calls. The other 1/10 involves you just showing up. The GOTV link is here again, but if you don't want to do that just find a candidate you like, call up his or her campaign HQ (it'll be on the candidate's webpage) and ask what they need you to do. They'll be stoked that you volunteered for the cause and you'll be amped up from playing a small but vital role in kicking back the statist menace that threatens to kill the closest thing to paradise the Earth has ever seen.
Hey, there are way worse things you could be doing with your spare time.
For all the liberals who were crying in the comments of the last post, here's some more delicious nugat-rich irony.
President Obama plans to appear on Comedy Central's "Daily Show" shortly before the midterm elections, a senior White House official tells CBS News, in what will be his first appearance on the show since becoming president.
The appearance will be on Wednesday October 27th. It comes shortly before both the November 2nd midterm elections as well as host Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity" on the National Mall on October 30th.
The president has been trying to rally the sort of young voters who watch Stewart's show to come out to vote in the midterm elections amid signs that they are less enthusiastic than they were two years ago. Democrats are trying to hold the House and Senate amid predictions of a potential wave election for Republicans, and among his campaign stops in the midterm cycle have been appearances at college campuses.
Jeeeeeebus, Stewart's not even sorta hiding his pathetic shill-job at this point.
Question for the audience: Does anybody think Barry's appearance on The Obama Super Ass-Kiss Love-In The Daily Show is going to be the hard-hitting tough-minded interview that Jon Stewart demands from the 'real' media? The guy bangs his rattle on his high chair whenever some clown in the MSM doesn't ask the correct progressive-minded questions. I'm guessing Stewart tosses Obama a few softballs during the President's campaign stop appearance.
For liberals, it's high time to just admit that their media hero is just another statist operative. I mean, really now, if leftists were honest they should be stoked. Their media man-crush is getting to hang out with their political dream-boat. Best of all, there's absolutely no chance Stewie will trouble St. Bamster with any icky right-of-center criticism or ideas.
Let us say that I am an employer and you are a potential employee. I offer you a job with a generous salary and good benefits. The work I'm asking you to do is not terribly hard, but there are a few responsibilities that you will be expected to perform.
We agree that you will be hired. I offer you a contract. You read through it carefully, asking a question or two about a few details. After that, you sign your name to the contract and start working for my firm.
For a while, both you and I are quite happy with the contract you've signed. Naturally, it's not all smooth sailing--patches of financial instability, some serious growing pains as the company expanded, even an inter cubicle turf war at one point--but for the most part the unpleasantness is kept to a minimum.
As time goes on an interesting thing starts to happen in our employer/employee relationship vis-a-vis the original contract. Almost from the beginning, I do things that fall outside of the letter and spirit of the accord. I'd neglect to replenish the office supplies closet every so often or ask you to work through lunch for a few days. As the weeks and months pass, I take more liberties with the terms of our agreement. Not enough to make you quit, but enough for you to take notice and be annoyed by them.
What I'm doing isn't really malicious. We both look at it as part of doing business. The contract had some wiggle room here and there. Certainly, looking back from the present day it seems like some of the contract's language is pretty ambiguous. At least, that's what we both say to justify my...extracurricular...activities. By and large, my little contractual breaches are not so deleterious that they threaten to shatter our agreement. You think back to the days when you worked for another employer and see that for the most part, you're in pretty good shape. I still pay you a substantial sum, you still perform your duties and we keep moving forward.
The years roll by. After a time, we reach a particularly nasty patch. The company has to fight off stiff competition from some cutthroat outside firms. At the same time, economic instability within the business is threatening to bankrupt the enterprise. It's touch and go for quite a while.
Now, there are several courses of action I could take, but what I decide to do is cut your salary and benefits while asking you to do much more work for me. Of course, these are blatant violations of the terms enumerated in the original contract. I justify this by arguing that, after all this time, the contract's language is so outmoded to today's incredibly difficult business environment that it would be absurd to hold to every jot and tittle of the agreement we made.
Instead of being bound up with the arcane wording of the contract, I assert that the accord is a living breathing document. Modern times dictate that we can use a less stringent, more liberal interpretation of the contract to better deal with the desperate circumstances the company faces. I also tell you that this new look at the agreement will not only save the firm, it will also create new benefits and payment packages that will make the old compensation pale in comparison. I submit that this cutting edge reading of our contract will make you a happier, healthier and more creative worker while allowing you to work less and have more free time in the process. We just have to get through this really awful time and then you'll see how the longer hours and less salary will all pay off.
The scenario is over.
Consider: If your boss really acted the way the employer in the scenario did, you'd probably quit right on the spot. Certainly you'd at least consider hiring a labor attorney or calling a union representative to deal with this matter. In any case, your time working for that company would very likely come to an end in short order.
Why? Because the nature of your relationship with the employer was based around the original terms of the contract. When the boss decided to unilaterally cut your compensation and increasing your work hours without amending the agreement, he severed a promise he made to you, thus destroying the relationship you once had with the company. Regardless, you wouldn't stand it if the firm you worked for broke your contract in such an egregious manner. You'd probably laugh in your boss' face if he played the 'living breathing document' line of nonsense.
Now, if you wouldn't stand for it if your employer did this to you, why do you stand for it when our government does the same thing? Think about it: The Constitution is in many ways a contract that the American people signed with our government. Far from just being a mere "charter of negative liberties" as described by the hapless intellectual midget Barack Obama, the Constitution creates the various branches of government and delegates large but divided authorities to each. It also defines the roles that state governments play in a federal framework. On top of that, it enumerates what the government cannot do to individual citizens.
It's easy to see that the Constitution doesn't 'pay' us in the same way that an employer does. The US Government doesn't just hand us money (except when it does, but that's a different tale for a different time). However, the contract the Founders granted to us compensates us in a far more enduring manner. The Constitution pays the citizen by creating the conditions for individual achievement and personal freedom within a framework based around the rule of law, property rights and a divided federated government. All the Framers' Constitution asks of us in return is loyalty to those principles so that it can be upheld for future Americans.
Looking at the current government in that light, is it not obvious just how much our leaders--those entrusted with preserving and protecting the Constitution--have broken the contract our ancestors made with us?
A few years back, some on the Right would refer to Candidate Barack's legion of fan-bois and sycophants as 'Obamatons' for their seemingly robotic mind-numbed attitude. Nowadays, I think that isn't particularly accurate. Members of Team Bambi are spreading out all over the place. The Obamatons have morphed into The Blob.
It turns out everybody's favorite chubby condescending press secretary, Robert Gibbs, is heading to--the DNC chairmanship?
Democratic insiders are taking the temperature of some top party donors about the possibility of naming White House press secretary Robert Gibbs as chairman of the Democratic National Committee heading into President Barack Obama's reelection campaign in 2012, senior officials tell POLITICO.
Under the scenario being tested, Tim Kaine, the current DNC chairman and former governor of Virginia, would be named to a top administration post, perhaps in the Cabinet, the officials said.
For the record, Gibbs’ experience consists almost entirely of serving on communication teams for politicians. After graduating from college in 1993, he worked on the staffs of a series of House and Senate members before joining John Kerry’s team in 2003 for his 2004 presidential bid as press secretary, and then resigning when Kerry fired Jim Jordan. He then took a position as a mouthpiece for an independent group that opposed Howard Dean’s bid, and later in 2004 began working for Barack Obama’s Senate campaign, moving to the presidential campaign after two years on Capitol Hill.
So he's a lippy hack who doesn't play nice in the sandbox with John Kerry and Howard Dean. Okay, he's got that going for him. But what about, you know, experience?
Note what his CVdoesn’t include. Gibbs has never run an organization, or worked as an executive at all. The most he’s ever done was manage a small communications staff at the White House. He has no experiencein fundraising, as his campaign experiences have all been on the communications side. He has never stood for election himself, which isn’t a complete disqualification for the job, but it certainly doesn’t help, either. In short, there is nothing at all in his background to recommend Gibbsfor a position which requires coordination, fundraising prowess, organization, and a political talent with experience and connections supporting it.
Doesn't this seem sorta...familiar? I mean, Barack Obama was a dweeb junior Senator with a little over a hundred days spent in the upper chamber. Before that, he was a state senator, then a BFF with Bill Ayers and before that a community organizer. His lack of actual qualifications, real world experience or executive acumen didn't hold back St. Barry of the Sacred Pants-Crease from being President of the world's only superpower. Why should it matter for Gibbsy if wants to be the boss at the comparatively bush-leagues of the DNC?
You gotta wonder what Bob Gibbs has done that makes anybody think he's ready to shake down Democrat-leaning donors for big money donations. I had no idea making unfunny patronizing digs at members of the White House press corps could snag you an executive job at one of the two major US political parties. Unless looking and acting like your least favorite high school algebra teacher is somehow a prerequisite for the job, homeboy really doesn't have much going for him.
Besides all that, there is something more going on here. If Gibbs gets to be DNC chair, nobody could be terribly surprised. The Donkey-Puncher Party always fall in love with the latest shiny new object that falls into their view.
Think about it. There were probably more qualified candidates running for the Democrat Party presidential nomination of 1960. Somehow the Democrats managed to nominate a noob Senator named John Kennedy. Nearly any Democrat could've been CEO of America in the 1976 election. Who did the Dems pick? A relative unknown southern dude named Jimmy Carter. Before being the mack daddy of the Oval Office Intern Bang Competition, Bill Clinton was 'The Man From Hope', a charismatic Baby Boomer governor who hadn't made a name for himself outside of the parochial world of Arkansas politics.
Why are the Democrats so fixated on the coveted "New Guy"? Maybe because their actual policies are so damn old.
Ponder the nature of FDR's signature achievement, Social Security. It's a top-down, one-sized-fits-all program that you have to be a part of under the penalty of federal punishment. Now think about Barack Obama's most sweeping government reform, nationalized health care. It's a top-down, one-sized-fits-all program that you have to be a part of under the penalty of federal punishment.
Same Shitty Socialism, Different Damn Millennium.
In order to disguise the fact that their ideas haven't progressed much past 1938, Democrats almost always have to get the latest and greatest model of progressive politician to advance their agenda. Is it any wonder this obsession with the fresh-out-of-the-box liberal savior has now permeated nearly every facet of their party?
Maybe Gibbs gets passed over for the job of DNC chair. Who knows? By itself, it has very little bearing on anything. But the fact that he is even being considered for the post tells you a lot about the mind-set of the modern Democrat Party--none of it particularly healthy.
Notice something missing from Russ Feingold's campaign ad?
In case you didn't spot it, here it is.
Even so, this is a vivid illustration of just how epically the alleged Great Liberal Realignment of 2008 has failed. Obama destroyed McCain in Wisconsin, winning by almost 14 points, and yet this is what a three-term Democratic incumbent is reduced to less than two years later — chipping away at an eight-point deficit by reminding people that he fights for veterans and lives in the same house he’s always lived in and, well, that he’s a pretty darned pleasant guy.
Bango.
You don't run this kind of ad (innocuous, folksy to a fault, no mention of partisan affiliation) if the voters are super-stoked about the political positions you've represented for nearly 20 years in the US Senate. As AP notes, Russ Feingold has long been the golden boy of the hyper-left caucus in a traditionally Democratic state. And yet, here's Feingold running as fast as he can away from his party.
One gets the feeling that unless they're handed a bogey-man to rail against, it's very hard for a liberal to justify his or her existence. Why did the Donks do so well in 2006 and 2008? Because Dumbya BusHitler was always available, to be conjured up--like Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984--for a Two Minutes Hate rally. Now that G-Dub is gone and statist god-king Obama is in the White House, there's no way to generate sufficient rage to propel progrturd candidates to run progturd campaigns.
Besides, it really wasn't supposed to go down this way. Obama's election meant that liberals could finally be themselves. They could enact the whole raft of lefty fever-dreams and get away with it because the American public had finally come to love the Euro-dork nanny state. In the liberal mind, Barack Obama and a large Democrat legislative majority was a signal to shed the last scraps of moderation they'd been hiding behind.
The dream was that a Russ Feingold could make a 2010 campaign where he vociferously bragged about passing ObamaCare, repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and socializing vast swaths of the automotive industry. That...um...didn't exactly work out. Instead, Feingold and the rest of the Donkey-Punchers have once again had to don the imagery and tone of a mushy soft spoken moderate in the thin hope of retaining their congressional seats.
This has got to be a total left-wing buzzkill.
Contrast all that with the tone of Allen West in this clip. Yeah, this is a stump speech, not a campaign ad. But it still bears examination.
I'm not really noticing any hushed mincing cowardly talk out of West. He's hella stoked for a fight against Alcee Hastings, John Lewis and Barack Obama. This is a man who doesn't have to take cover behind moderation. He's a loud-n-proud conservative. Bear this in mind: West is running in a traditionally Democrat district that has voted the Donkey-Puncher candidate in the last three presidential elections, exactly the kind of district that was supposed to go full-on lip-lock with Obama-style liberalism. Instead, Allen West is running a surprisingly competitive race and could pull out a strong win.
...But they're not the rubes you might think they are.
In general, I shared many of the reservations about O’Donnell that were expressed around here, but I also understand that Mike Castle just wasn’t conservative enough for tea partiers in Delaware. It’s worth noting amidst all this craziness over O’Donnell that there seems to be a hard-to-define yet very real line separating the Republicans that tea partiers will back with reservations from those they won’t support at all. Castle and Scozzafava clearly fell on the wrong side of that line. Doheny, on the other hand, is not the most conservative candidate in the race for NY-23, but he is conservative enough, so his electability will most likely earn him the tea party’s endorsement. The point is that the tea party isn’t suicidal in every race, but it considers some Republicans simply beyond the pale, and it’s understandable why they do. The Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill was a monstrosity — it would be very hard to vote for a Republican who voted for that.
I don't think it's that hard to figure out what the Tea Party wants. They despise crazy spending, ridiculous taxes and idiotic government bureaucracy. All you have to do is look at Mike Castle's support on Cap and Trade to see where he went horribly wrong in the eyes of TPers. C & T would deliver everything the Tea Party hates in one handy-dandy enviro-statist package. Go figure they'd be against Castle.
Crap-n-Tax also has a chance of coming up for a vote in a lame-duck session of the US Senate. Castle would've made for a delightfully useful idiot that would further Harry Reid's lefty machinations:
As things stand now, Reid has demonstrated he has been able to break filibuster by peeling off a few votes for cloture, in particular Massachusetts's Scott Brown and Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. But with the departure of Sen. Ted Kaufmann, the current Delaware junior senator, the Democratic leadership will either have to find one more vote to get legislation through in this lame-duck session, or they have to find one less vote, particularly on cap-and-trade, if Castle wins the race.
The Tea Party folks in Delaware had to be aware of this depressing reality, which is why they made the perfectly understandable decision to dump him in favor of Christine O'Donnell.
I understand the arguments that Mike Castle would've been a more 'electable' candidate than O'Donnell in Delaware's general election. The question I have is: Why the hell should a conservative voter feel obliged to vote for Castle?
If you're on the right, you get no benefit from having this guy in the Senate. He's pro-choice. He supported McCain-Feingold. He's real good at dissing the Second Amendment. He doesn't like school vouchers. He doesn't want to drill in ANWR.
One of these positions would be grating, but not necessarily a deal-breaker for Delaware conservatives. Taken as a whole, Mike Castle's views appear like the resume of a cliche left-of-center douchenozzle. He's way past being just an aggravating RINO. He's a liberal who happens to caucus with Republicans. A cursory glance at his record reveals this.
But conservatives were supposed to ignore the mountains of statism in Castle's curriculum vitae and support him? Get a grip.
If Christine O'Donnell wins in November, it's a great success for the Tea Party and the Right. If she loses to Chris Coons, so be it. But to suggest that Castle would've done conservatives any good if we put him in the Senate is laughable. He would've been a constant irritant, the ever present grain of sand in the bikini bottom of Republican politics. For all intents and purposes, Castle = Coons. It's that simple. Looking at it that way, voting for O'Donnell was a no-brainer.
The Tea Party has shown itself to be adept at making nuanced political decisions. But there are some candidates in some races where they've had to put their foot down. Instead of blindly hammering the TPer's for making the calculations they've made, perhaps we should instead examine why they've chosen to support the issues and candidates that animate their movement.
If you haven't been following the story, Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida, has been on the fence about his plans to burn Korans on September 11th. It's been an on-again/off-again deal for the last several days. Jones has said that he will call off the book burning if the Ground Zero Mosque is moved to a different location, but so far there has been no real assurance that this will happen. Jones has not been terribly definitive here, so the Koran Kebab may or may not be on like Voltron.
I'll be honest. At first I thought Jones was just some kook with an axe to grind. He's probably not the most media-savvy dude. But what he has done is open up a conversation that many members of our Big Media-Big Government complex would rather us not talk about--ever.
From President Obama to Fareed Zakaria to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, most of the swells in America want to brush aside the question of Islam in our society. For a host of reasons, they just need this topic to go away. What Terry Jones has done is force our 'betters' to address something they really would rather avoid.
Here's the funny thing about America in the Age of Jihadi Terrorism: Since 9/11/01, we've gone from righteous anger and forceful military retribution against violent Islamic extremists to bowing before Muslim kings and scraping in deference to elements of the faith in order to keep them from committing violent acts against us or our allies.
How did we get to this utterly incoherent mindset? Ace points out something interesting here:
On that point -- this very good (as usual) essay by Christopher Hitchens. There he notes we have demanded that every other religion be "domesticated," which, dogged metaphor aside, means that we have demanded that other religions fall into compliance with civil law -- even where (as with Christian Science) the illegal aspect of the religion is a truly important part of the religion.
And yet we don't similarly insist on this with Islam. Islam is apparently a special religion in that it trumps civil law.
Again, another badge of Islam's supremacy over other religions -- and all governments -- which is precisely what they're killing for.
Bingo.
Why does Islam always get the kid glove treatment? What makes them so special that they can never-EVER-be offended? How is it that when the immature spoiled brat that is Islam gets a skinned knee, Western governments race to kiss the Muslim boo-boo in order to quell any possible terrorist temper-tantrums?
There are no other religions in American (or Western) society that receive this type of deference. None. Except the one that kills, rapes and tortures in order to meet its goals. No other faith gets this laissez-faire treatment--except the one that is determined to use our Constitution as a wedge against us and put sharia law into it's place. Truly amazing.
When Ace says that other religions in America have been domesticated, he's exactly right. Christianity doesn't demand much from the US government. It certainly doesn't scream for scriptural laws to be put into the federal code. Oh sure, there might be some churches that are down with some theocratic leanings, but these are few and far between. The same can be said for Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. The theocrats in all these faiths are pretty much isolated.
Moreover, we should be quite happy to have the non-Islamic creeds domesticated. The 'live and let live' attitude within American religious life has contributed to a basically quiet civil society. This relatively peaceful domestic order is threatened now, and it isn't because the followers of Jesus are barking for the Old Testament to be the sole source of our laws.
Islam stands alone in the religious fabric of the United States. Islam refuses to bend, even one iota, before the agreed-upon civil system of American life. It will not defer at all to the domestication that all other faiths in the US have gone through.
And...really...why should Islam have to come to heel? They've seen our weakness. At any moment of religious discomfort, there are useful idiot infidels ready to defend Islam from the sort of slights that other faiths go through on a daily basis. More importantly, the useful idiot infidels are always willing to go on offense for Islam, using slurs like 'unpatriotic', 'anti-American' or 'bigot' for those who are merely concerned that Islam is slowly but surely becoming the de facto state religion of America. If a group is against the spread of sharia, the useful idiot infidels will call that person a racist, thereby providing a layer of insulation for Islam against outside criticism.
Muslims intent on using the faith as a political tool can see the exact genus and species of spineless pathetic wimps we have for leaders. That means that until they are confronted and made to join the rest of the religions in America, they will continue to act like the pushy, snarling, overindulged, petulant teenage jerks that they are. It's that simple.
So Terry Jones and the Dove Outreach Center might have picked at a scab other folks would rather stay closed. Jones' flock might not be the nicest most caring people that ever walked the Earth, but they have forced the rest of us--even the hand-wringing worry-wart Left--to at least get a glimpse at reality. Pray that the rest of America chooses to stay focused on the real world.
Two days before Christmas, Politico reported that
White House officials believed [the health care fight] would last until
February -- after which Obama would make a "very hard pivot" to the
jobs issue.
But health care dragged on even longer; the bill
didn't pass until March 21. Even then, with his No. 1 priority accomplished,
Obama did not execute the long-awaited pivot and go full-tilt on the economy.
In fact, at times it was hard to tell just what he was doing.
(…)
Then came months during which Obama sometimes talked about the economy and
sometimes talked about energy and sometimes about immigration and sometimes the
Middle East and sometimes about other stuff. Watching the polls, Democrats
squirmed, seeing their hopes for November grow dimmer and dimmer. Republicans
looked on, bewildered.
"I don't get it," GOP pollster David
Winston told me at the time. "I don't understand what he is doing. He's
not addressing the No. 1 issue that Americans want him to address.
(…)
In a flurry this week, he's
proposing spending $50 billion on the nation's roads and railways. He's
proposing a $100 billion research tax credit for businesses.
Who will be the first mainstream personality of either party to come out
and say that the destruction of the American economy and, therefore, America
herself has been the entire purpose
of the Obama Administration and the leading lights in the Democrat Party from
the beginning?
That some are confused about the Administration’s strategy
speaks merely to the inability to accept a hard and distasteful truth: that the
majority of voters elected a man as POTUS who has this country’s demise at heart and who has repeatedly demonstrated this in word, deed and
associations well before the election.
Around the right side of the political blogosphere, one can
read the posts and comments of many who excoriate President Obama for his “stupidity.”These people don’t get it either.Those who look at the Obama Administration’s
policies and programs and observe President Obama’s obliviousness
and lack
of empathy in the face of acute and on-going national crises and make a
summary low judgment of the president’s intellect do so with the premise that
the man really is trying to improve the economy and other conditions in the
USA.
That premise is wrong.
This is what people need to realize about destruction: it is
the total opposite from building/improving.This seems like an obvious truth, but when comparing the concept, we
must take it further.Construction of
anything requires carefully ordered planning and implementation.For example, when constructing
a solid, stable building, the architect recommends proven construction methods and using
the right materials. But before doing these things, the builder gains certain knowledge of future purpose of the building and, from there, makes his decisions on how to proceed.
Destruction, however, is not only opposite in purpose; it is
so in methodology. (We’re talking malicious destruction here.) Using the building analogy again, think of
what happens when someone blows up a building—or flies an aircraft into it.Are any orders or rules to be followed for
the goal to be achieved?No.In fact, the more chaos perpetrated by
malicious destruction, the faster a building disintegrates. The same is true for a nation.
President Obama, the Democrat Party, and whoever sits behind
the scenes sow method after method of chaos—and, in some cases, inaction is the chaos sowed.They stab the giant repeatedly, hoping it
will finally fall, hoping for utter destruction.
In light of this conclusion, it seems that establishment
Republicans and reasonable Democrats do not want to acknowledge--possibly not
even to themselves-- the demonstrable bad intentions of the Socialists
presently in charge and, therefore, they don't have to think about what may follow should the Republican Party
fail to take back one or both houses of the Legislative Branch.
To be honest, I, too, don’t want to think about what kind of
country the USA may become in the aftermath of a GOP failure.
Who is Ladd Ehlinger Jr, you ask? He's the guy behind the Dale Peterson campaign ad, viewed by all right-thinking people as the greatest political commercial ever. Check it out.
Anyhoo, AceofSpadesgets a great interview from Ehlinger. In a wide-ranging discussion, Ace and the filmmaker talk about everything from the nature of artists to the difference between TV ads and internet spots.
This exchange was really interesting.
Ace: Is there any danger you see of a ghettoization sort of effect, where conservative artists are doing expressly conservative art? And only that, and are engaged in a parallel media universe but not the main media universe?
Ehlinger: I don't think the main media universe has much longer to live. So it doesn't matter. Everything is fracturing and falling apart. The smart money realizes that and is doing what it can now to build a brand before it's impossible to do so any longer.
Ace: I've read a lot that tv's model is unsustainable but there aren't many good alternatives. you mean like that? magazines and newspapers first, then tv, then Hollywood?
Ehlinger: It'll devolve into national tribes. Online tribes. Like your website. And then no one will make any money anymore.
Ace: to some extent I think that's sort of the case now but one tribe -- the one that dominates the media -- won't concede it's tribal even after it consistently goes out of the way to insult the other tribes. You ever watch a movie with no political content at all, just about a human story, and then, pow, out of nowhere, some [conservative-baiting] insult? it's like -- what was doing there? Did they WANT 30% of the audience to walk out badmouthing it?
Ehlinger: Well, it's a case of the cool kids in high school... they eventually get fat, turn into drunks, and get DUI's when they get older. That is their collective media career destinies.
Ya gotta read the whole piece. It is truly elucidating stuff. Seriously. Go now.
Re: Conservative art-I'll be honest. This has troubled me for a while. Maybe not 'troubled', but it's an issue that has certainly puzzled me.
It's sorta obvious that the old media paradigm...a liberal monopoly that runs the big TV networks/large newspapers/national glossy magazines/La-La Land...is circling the drain. For instance, 2008 was probably (hopefully) the last election where MSNBC, The New York Times and a raft of music industry hacks could simply pick up a left-wing presidential candidate and carry his butt across the finish line.
I've basically viewed the crack-up of the old-skoolmedia environment as a good thing. But a part of me has been concerned about what Ace calls ghettoization. What happens when there is no national news/entertainment culture? Do we Balkanize?
First, there's pretty much nothing anybody can do about it, so there's really no point in fretting about it too much. It's almost like worrying about the Sun being hot. Best to get over it and deal with the consequences of any potential Balkanization when/if it occurs.
Now, if the breakdown of the media universe we inhabit is inevitable, then the idea of conservative art has to be entertained. The vast anti-statist/pro-free market tribe is going to need culture. It'll need cultural artifacts like songs, novels and dramatic works. As Ehlinger said, right-wing documentaries have their place, but they're not enough.
Conservatives should do what they can to support right-of-center art and artists. The creators are going to need money in order to...you know...eat. It's one thing to make a great short-length Obama satire that gets thrown onto DailyMotion and has a million views. It's another thing to actually get paid to do creative stuff.
In the long run, how is this all going to play out? I really don't know. The outlines of the new media paradigm are only just starting to form. But in a lot of ways, it'll be better for the Right than it has been in 50 years. Listening to guys like Ladd EhlingerJr., one gets a sense of the great possibilities that are available to conservative artists right now.
Before I brain-cramp: I sorta beefed on the whole Balkanization line I was toying with. As I was thinking about it some more I realized I hadn't really explained myself very well.
An interesting facet of the old media environment was that it had created a national culture of sorts. Remember that until the early 80's there were only three TV networks, talk radio was lost in the sauce of the Fairness Doctrine and there were large nationwide systems for distributing movies and music. Thus if you were a consumer of mass culture, you were basically seeing or hearing or watching what everybody else did.
But what did people do before there was a national media culture? There were regional tastes that determined what people did to entertain themselves. Music and musicians patronized in the South was different than what people tended to like in places like New York City or Massachusetts.
My feeling is that once the nationwide system that reigned from the late 1940's till the late 1980's finally drifts into obsolescence, we will see a renaissance of the older more separated cultures. They will be less determined by location and more organized by tastes, age and yes, political ideology.
It will be quite different than what many people are used to. But as I stated before, it could result in a new flowering of right-of-center culture.
I want to look at something the preeminent jerkweed of our time, Mike Bloomberg, belched out the other day in reference to the Ground Zero Mosque:
"Every time they pass the basket in your church and you throw a buck in, [do you want someone to] run over and say, 'OK, now where do you come from, who are your parents, where'd you get this money?' . . . A handful of people ought to be ashamed of themselves."
Not only is this a classless little smear on the part of Nurse Bloomie, it's got a whiff of our old friend, Moral Equivalence. Because nothing gives a liberal a rock hard boner more than negatively comparing Christianity to Islam.
But hey, why not indulge Mayor Mike's magnificent retardation for a moment?
What would it take to make Christianity the moral equivalent to Islam?
There would have to be groups of Christians that call for violent acts in the name of Jesus. It could not just be the rare lone gunman-type with a Bible stuffed into his drawers and a raging desire to kill people for Christ wilding out. You'd need to have densely populated structures incorporated for the purpose of fomenting Jesus-inspired terror. These organizations would be populated by leaders that call for Christians to use terror to spread Christianity. The power of Christ would compel the members of these religious groups to do violence to other humans.
Ideally, the Christian terrorists in our scenario should be internationalist in scope. These Super SplodeyJesus Freaks should have sleeper cells and quasi-independent franchises in places like Jakarta, Mumbai, Fallujah, Jerusalem, Aden, London, Paris, Philadelphia and Toronto. All of them should be vocal about the supremacy of the Christian faith and how Jesus commands them to acts of violence. Along with the multinational flavor of these groups, there should be members of Christian governments that covertly sponsor our hypothetical Christian terrorists.
There would also have to be a long history of Christian terrorism in the 20th and 21st centuries. We're talking about elements of the Kooky Christian Thrill Kill Cult carrying out acts of terror over the course of many decades. As before, these atrocities should be happening all over the world.
Finally, there would have to poll after poll showing rank and file Christian opinion was ambiguous-if not supportive-over the use of terrorism to spread the word of Christ. Leaders of the Genocidal Jesus Peeps should be supported by disturbing pluralities of Christians.
Do any of these hypotheticals exist in the real world? Not even close. Not even within a light-year. But still the lefty thumbsuckers just have to make their moral equivalence arguments/slime jobs.
The truth of the matter is that our Muslim friends have a serious existential problem. Their religion has been infected by vicious life-hating cancers. The faith desperately needs to kill these tumors before it's too late. Christians, Jews, Hindus and Buddhists cannot do this for them. We can support reformers and decry the back-asswards types within Islam, but in the end it's up to them to figure out how to exist peacefully within a multi-religious world.
There are Muslims of good faith who want to see real positive change.
In fact here's one now, talking about the Ground Zero Mosque:
“This is not a humble Islamic statement. A mosque such as this is actually a political structure that casts a shadow over a cemetery, over hallowed ground. 9/11 was the beginning of a kinetic war, it is not an opportunity for cultural exchange. It was the beginning of a conflict with those who want to destroy our way of life,” Dr. ZuhdiJasser, president and founder of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, told The Daily Caller.
“I am in no way looking to infringe on First Amendment issues. I approach this as a Muslim that is dedicated to reform,” he said.
Jasser sees the danger inherent in the Ground Zero Mosque. He also realizes the need for a peace-loving tolerant renaissance within Islam. Because he's accepted some hard truths about his faith, he doesn't engage in bullshit moral equivalence.
We have more than enough head-in-the-sand unrealists like Mike Bloomberg.
The Muslim religion...and the rest of us...desperately need more clear-eyed people like ZuhdiJasser.
Hopefully Blog Talk Radio is ready for the Fausta show this morning after our false start on Monday. I'll be on today at 8am PDT/11am EDT to talk about Tale of the Tigers.
UPDATE: I had a great time talking with Fausta about the novel, about writing and, of course, about politics--in spite of the fact that my laptop decided to overheat while I was in the middle of a sentence. That's why God made cell phones.
If you want to listen to the interview again, go here!
Pretty much all who follow the news regularly—and many who don’t—know about the controversy surrounding the proposed construction of a Mosque near the site of what used to be the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
The backers of this project and many others –including the mayor of New York--have cast the intent as a “freedom of religion” issue.
The opponents of the project—which are many—cast it mostly in emotional terms; I’m with them, but those terms, by their very nature, allow themselves to be argued down.
However, there is one reason to be against it—one which sets itself above all the others, one which is existential and practical rather than emotional.
A “Victory Mosque” set in the shadow of Ground Zero will be just that: a symbol of victory for the Islamists at the site of one of the greatest body counts in the name of Allah. And the existence of such symbols will invite more attempts at military conquest from the Soldiers of Allah.
Go on about the First Amendment and about misinterpretations of the phrase ‘hallowed ground.’ Keep pretending that blocking the construction of this particular mosque is somehow preventing New York Muslims from freely exercising their religion—as if permission to build a church or a synagogue anywhere in NYC would automatically be granted. But know this: our enemies will take our notions of “fairness” and explode it in our faces; not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here on the Hallowed Ground which stretches from sea to shining sea.
By the way, if we infidels aren’t quickly jumping to convert to Islam, to die or to become dhimmis, are we violating the First Amendment? Just wondering. Because that would be the full flowering of the free exercise of Islam.
Lots of First Amendment violations in that, don’t you think?
The Muslim Canadian Congress
(MCC) is urging the Cordoba House Initiative to abandon its proposed
Ground-Zero Mosque in New York in the face of outrage expressed by large
segments of the American population calling the proposal an act of 'fitna' or mischief.
In
a letter to Imam Faisal Rauf that will be delivered on Tuesday, August
10 by MCC’s board member Raheel Raza, the MCC says, “Many Muslims
suspect that the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a
deliberate provocation, to thumb our noses at the 'infidel.' We believe
the proposal has been made in bad faith and, in Islamic parlance, is
creating 'fitna,' meaning 'mischief-making,' an act clearly forbidden
in the Qur’an.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on the campaign trail in his native Nevada:
REID: "I don't know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay. Do I need to say more?"
How the Left stirs racial discord between Americans of Hispanic decent and other Americans is a topic I want to address in detail in the third part of my "Herding" series. But the assumptions in Senator Reid's short assertion need to be addressed right now.
Leaving aside the 2007 Republican establishment's push for amnesty for illegal aliens already living in the United States, most conservatives are for strict border enforcement first and decisions about illegal aliens already present afterward. In Harry Reid's statement lies the assumption that, Americans of Hispanic descent must naturally be in favor of
allowing any and all Hispanics from Mexico (and other Spanish-speaking
countries) into the USA without any controls at all--that, to Hispanic
Americans, it's better to have more Spanish-speakers in the country,
than it is to enforce the federal and state immigration laws.
A more important Reid assumption is this one: because conservatives want the borders of the country secure--because the Republican base does not want to give Hispanic Americans what he presumes they want-- Republicans and conservatives hate Hispanics.
My father [who had been political prisoner of Castro's Cuba] looked at the platform of the republican party that endorsed
small government, lower taxes, and strong defense, while the democrat
party embraced Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, murderers and tyrants, as
some sort of folk heroes, and endorsed larger governments taking power
away from the people.
...
Sweet justice for me, would be to see Marco Rubio enter the senate as you exist your way out to hand the keys to Sharron Angle.
Heh. I guess I'm so used to Democrats, Liberals and Leftists treating conservative non-whites, women, etc. like their intellectual runaways slaves, I don't even get mad at this stuff anymore. But it's nice to see Harry get a chewing. The only problem is this: I'm not sure that the senior Democrat senator from Nevada has enough marbles to comprehend what Cubachi or Marco Rubio or the good folks at African American Conservatives or LtC. Allen West are saying to him and his party.
Perhaps, in November, we will be able to explain in terms simple enough for even Senator Reid to understand.
Over at Ace’s,
there’s a commenter who continually tells Ace’s presumably mostly white
readership that it’s pointless to go on about the history of race relations in
this country and that white Americans should simply join the battle which the
Obama Administration and the organized Left are trying to provoke. When I
responded with a condensed version of how black American social and political
allegiance has been manipulated over the past ten decades, he stated that a
people who could be so easily (sic) manipulated must really be inferior.
This man
demonstrates the type of limited perspective that I sketched out in Part One
and, actually, his type could have furnished me with an additional bullet
point; not only is he unable to think strategically, he actually rebukes the
notion that such analysis has any value. Moreover, such a person is blind
to how his own thinking and emotional state have been shaped and molded
by Leftist ideology in a much shorter time span than was so for black
Americans.
In this second
part, my purpose is to detail another tactical weapon of the Left, the purpose
of which has been to instill a set of attitudes in the minds of the American
populace; in this case, the mindset is meant for white Americans.
If the Left has
been successful at keeping racial grievance in the forefront of black American
agenda—in indoctrinating black Americans into believing that retaining racial anger
at whites is inherent in being black and essential for black
survival--it has also been successful in later years of producing a certain
mindset in white Americans. Actually this seems to be two mindsets, but
it is really a singular one—a two-headed beast. The first is guilt-fear
and the second is unproductive anger.
The proper
purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this
tendency to plunder instead of work. The law should protect property and punish
plunder. The law, whether made by one man or one group of men, operates with
the sanction and support of a dominating force, and this force must be
entrusted to those who make the laws. Legal plunder occurs when the law takes
from one person and gives to another. The law benefits one citizen at the
expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without
committing a crime. If such a law is not abolished, it will spread, multiply,
and develop into a system.
Have you noticed that there are some
people—many people--who have no
concept of time?No, I’m not referring
to the chronically tardy, though I do suspect that many of them fall into the categories of which I’m about to outline.
Those to whom I’m referring do not
have a concept of the following; they are
Unable
to consider individual events from the past as anything but singular and
isolated occurrences, e.g. unable to connect those events with each other
and—further--with contemporaneous, on-going events,
Unable
to use known, available and pertinent information/ideas to analyze the sum
(or, to use a better mathematical term, the product) of events in order to
come to a plausible conclusion as to what is going, and
Unable
to take that conclusion and reasonably project what may happen in the
future.
The ability to do this is called strategic thinking—the ability to
recognize patterns and figure out what is true and what is false.Most of the time, this inability has nothing
to do with IQ and can be selective and temporary.I believe that, in the latter two types of
cases, the inability is due to a syndrome to which almost all of us are prone:
wishful-thinking.
Many do not want to or cannot put together the events which have lead this country to its present state, much less come to a reasonable conclusion. However, I don't fall into either category. Believe me, sometimes I wish I did.
But the more I learn about the history of
the twentieth century, the more I consider it against what is known about human
nature, the more I observe the state in
which this country finds itself in at present--the more I believe that the
peril anticipated by all too many observers, was planned by the Left.
I wrote the following op-ed for Pajamas Media on July 30, 2008. Since one still sees many asking this very same question, I think that a re-post is appropriate. It is slightly edited from the original version; I can't help myself.
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A few weeks back, I lambasted prominent black conservatives for even thinking of voting for Barack Obama, a man who embodies only one part of the two-word description “black conservative.”
Several black conservatives were quoted in the article to which I was responding. However, the most revealing quote came from former U.S. Representative J.C. Watts:
J.C. Watts, a former Oklahoma congressman who once was part of the GOP House leadership, said he’s thinking of voting for Obama. Watts said he’s still a Republican, but he criticizes his party for neglecting the black community. Black Republicans, he said, have to concede that while they might not agree with Democrats on issues, at least that party reaches out to them.
“And Obama highlights that even more,” Watts said, adding that he expects Obama to take on issues such as poverty and urban policy. “Republicans often seem indifferent to those things.”
Watts’ turnaround suggests one of three things to me: 1) that he has changed his political philosophy and should probably change parties; 2) that when he was running for office he was saying what he needed to say to get elected in conservative Republican Oklahoma, rather than saying that in which he believed; that is, he was never really a conservative Republican; or 3) that he realizes the futility of trying to attract most black Americans to his party on the basis of principle.
I don’t know which is the answer, but there’s a logic to Watts’ statement regarding Obama and that logic undergirds the astounding Democrat/liberal/Left success among the black electorate in contrast with the Right’s failure in the same area. The key to understanding lies in the assumptions inherent in the phrase “reaching out.” Who should reach out to whom on the basis of what? What smaller actions fall under the large umbrella of “reaching out”? Here are the blanks filled in:
Who: the Republican Party should do the reaching out.
To whom: the party should reach out to the black community, that is, to black people as a singular entity — a collective.
How: the outreach should be done on the same basis as it is performed by the modern Democratic Party.
Programs
Policies
In short, the Republican Party must “do things” for black Americans which it does not do for other citizens and which are identical to the things that the Democratic Party does. Or better. But the Republican Party can’t be what it isn’t.
The bottom line: Republicans want black Americans to pursue happiness and the Democratic Party wants to provide happiness to black Americans.
A party and its principles
The Republican Party that Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan (re)built has not been designed to reach out to a group on the basis of identity, but on the basis of a given group’s ideas and values. By the party’s very definition — its basic principles — this precludes reaching out to groups which have race, ethnicity, or gender as their sole criterion for coalescing as a political entity. So when some observers wonder what the Republican Party is going to “do for” the “black community,” most Republicans will have a certain look of puzzlement on our faces, as if someone just asked why we don’t offer attachable wings so that our prospective party members can fly.
Many black Americans cannot shake the notion that a political party is supposed to provide quid pro quo. That the Republican Party won’t do anything for them besides get off their backs, get other citizens off their backs, and get out of their way so they can pursue happiness just isn’t good enough. But where did the idea come from?
The idea that the government should step in when overt oppression is being practiced but should not help or hinder black American advancement certainly precedes Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan. And, in practice, as Bruce Bartlett (H/T Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred) and La Shawn Barber point out, before the Civil War and during the century that followed the abolition of slavery, the Republican Party was responsible for several federal measures designed to protect Americans of African descent from their fellow citizens and to punctuate the basic citizenship rights guaranteed to the freed slaves and to their progeny. Fact is, however, the Republican Party would not have had a leg to stand on had not the founders of the United States based the principles in the Constitution on certain philosophies.
Obviously, black Americans were happy to receive the protection. However, after the Republicans clamped down on the racists, they (mostly) removed themselves from the equation to allow the country’s black citizens to be free. But when they did that, the nemeses fell in, masquerading as friends.
It is here that black Americans found themselves attacked from the top and from the bottom. Forty years ago most black Americans were used to being physically and socially restrained to an extent. However, what happened to black Americans in the 60s is that their enemies found a way to accomplish what the physical barriers of slavery, the legal oppression of northern segregation, and the overt terror of Jim Crow could not.
The mental chains
At the top, President Lyndon Baines Johnson — a Democrat whose pre-Kennedy legislative career had been that of a typical Dixiecrat — put forth a set of programs and policies infamously known as the Great Society, actually giving a part of the public funding to those who qualified to receive it. The bottom line? Many of the programs amounted to life subsidy — “reward” for indolence, whoredom, and irresponsibility. At the bottom, liberals, leftists, and Democrats inserted themselves wholesale into the educational processes of the black poor. That education put forth a portrait of America as a full-scale villain, which made her history unneeded — except the parts necessary to understand the crimes perpetrated on her perennial victims. With that in mind, why would liberals, leftists, and Democrats teach their captive audience about the historical role that their political opponents played in setting and keeping them free? Between the manipulation of education and the government handouts by Democrats, the Left could even convince black Americans that it was the Republicans who had actually been black America’s oppressors — and that idea, that lie, would become far more useful to the Democrats than any Great Society program, as LBJ allegedly foresaw.
An even more serious deficiency has been nurtured by the systems dominated by leftist philosophies of education, and that deficiency leads us, finally, to the answer to our question.
Too few people put enough thinking into principles — their nature or, of utmost importance, their foundation. As a matter of fact, what many people call principles aren’t really that, but are commodities — items to be bought and sold. And it is one’s principles — or one’s commodities — that inform the decision as to whom one should give his/her allegiance.
Example: consider the admonition to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Or is it “do unto others as you suspect they would do unto you”? Or “do unto others before they do unto you”? Or “do unto others as they’ve already done unto you and not one minute before they do”?
Like all other axioms, the Golden Rule has its origin in a way of thinking, a school of thought — a philosophy, in this case, biblical. One forms his/her principles from a philosophy, usually one or several taught at school and/or at home. Now I can’t speak for what is taught in all homes, only my own. However, I can authoritatively say that few bases for forming principles — as opposed to commodities — were taught at the public schools I attended in South Central Los Angeles. Barely were the particulars of our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights covered. Of course we had heard the phrase “unalienable rights,” but what did that mean, really? And the men who formed these words, these ideas, and built a nation on top of them, where did they get these ideas about rights and government from? Did they just pop up, unbidden? Or were the men simply building on the philosophies of someone(s) else?
Who knew the answers to these questions? Not I; not then. Where I went to school, one was taught what to think, but not how and definitely not why. One was not taught how to build a foundation for one’s principles or that a foundation even needed to be built.
Into that vacuum jump many notions, but the one specific to the subject at hand is the idea that the party which is giving you the most things — the one that will “do something for you” — is the party to which you should belong. And if “principles” have no foundation, those “principles” — and their owners — can be purchased. And though there are a few black so-called conservative Republicans out there, all too many of them — like Watts — still find themselves reverting to the “do something for us” idea, a liberal Democrat ideal. No wonder some believe that conservative political persuasion is grounded in advantage rather than principle.
The Democratic Party has counted on this absence — of history taught/learned and of principles adhered to — in all of its members, but most especially has it counted on this dearth in black Americans, a dearth which has allowed too many black Americans to stick themselves to the Democratic Party like glue, or chain themselves to the party like …
The Democrats should take pride in a job well done.
I don't know if anybody has noticed this, but the President of the United States just loves him some golf, doesn't he?
Look, I actually think this video is a bit unfair. I mean, being the pResident is haaaaaarrrrrrrrd.
After all, Barry has had a tough winter and spring, what with ramming through ObammyCare and taking over much of American economic life. Dude's gotta decompress. Hey, at least he's not Dubya Bush, right? [sarc/]
Tell you what: If Barack Obama ends up being just as bad as Jimmy Carter, we'll have dodged a Mt. Everest-sized bullet.
BTW, big thanks to LargeBill over at KeaneObservations for finding the Youtube link.
It’s not just long-ago sins like imperialism and colonialism and Eurocentric white male patriarchy and other fancies barely within living memory. Our very lifestyle demands penitence: Americans have easily accessible oil reserves, but it would be wrong to touch them, so poor old BP have to do the “environmentally responsible” thing and be out in the middle of the Gulf a mile underwater. If you’re rich enough to be that stupid, what won’t you subsidize? The top al-Qaeda recruiter in Britain, Abu Qatada, had 150,000 pounds in his bank account courtesy of the taxpayer before the comically misnamed Department for Work and Pensions decided to cut back his benefits.
The green jobs, the gay parades, the jihadist welfare queens, the Greek public sector unions, all have to be paid for by a shrinking base of contributing workers whose children and grandchildren will lead poorer and meaner lives because of the fecklessness of government. The social compact of the postwar era cannot hold. Across the developed world, a beleaguered middle class is beginning to understand that it’s no longer that rich. At some point, it will look at the sheer waste of government spending, the other shoe will drop, and it will decide that it no longer wishes to be that stupid.
The Republicans had a majority in the House of Representatives for, what, 12 years? During that time, the GOP did very little to break the Left’s choke-hold on the levers of power. Oh sure, the GOP would win a presidency and yeah, they’d gain control of the Senate for a time or two. But the basically permanent federal bureaucracy, which is overwhelmingly liberal, hardly changed.
The left-wing hacks that infest almost every layer of the federal government are very protective of their fiefdoms from outside-aka conservative-influences. Here’s a question: Does anybody think the mega-bureaucracy that is Obama-Care will be any sort of compatible with small government reforms?
Look at something as seemingly benign as PBS. From Sesame Street to Nova, it’s a bastion of left-wing politics. It indoctrinates kids and adults in liberal propaganda with your tax dollars, then guilt-trips you into donating $100 for a $5 tote bag. In the history of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, have they ever been in any danger of being weaned off the public trough? Have they ever been in any danger of just having their budgets cut?
Elements of the government have long been in bed with barely-legal groups like La Raza and ACORN. Socialism, race-hustling and criminal conduct…all of these things are aided and abetted by taxpayer dollars.
Don’t get me wrong. Elections still matter. 2010 is most assuredly going to be a big battle in the fight against the statist project. But on a deeper level, the government life support system for the Left must have it’s plug pulled. If we are to make any progress against the Progressives, we must stop giving the liberals a blank check from the government to meddle in American public life.
I'm going to have some commentary this weekend regarding Sarah Palin's words--but it won't be what's expected. Meanwhile, excuse me while I start on this stack of books.
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