I know there are a lot of folks--Republicans and Democrats--who didn't like Clint Eastwood's address to the Republican National Convention. Let's take a look.
I admit that Clint was kinda all over the place. Whether the teleprompter died or he just abandoned script, the address was not Clint at his best. It might not have been Clint at his worst, though.
Check out the sneering annoyed reaction from MSNBC's lead tedium-dispenser Rachel Maddow.
Even though Clint wasn't really on point, his mockery of President Obama was by and large effective. The bit about Bamster getting a smaller plane was great. Clint's conversation with an empty chair underscored just how vacuous our Great Dingy Captain really is. More importantly, most liberal media viewers--to say nothing of the Obama Cult Stenographers--had never seen anything like that.
The Barry-Lover press corps have basically cocooned themselves in liberalism's cozy blanket of comedic ignorance. They've never watched Red Eye. Their web browsers have never clicked on Iowahawk, Manhattan Infidel or Jim Treacher. The only time they hear an Obama joke is when Jon Stewart forgets to take out his tampon and cajoles Saint Obambi for being too damn nice to the evil reich-wing Rethuglicans. Because the lamestream media all runs on the same premise--Our President Is Not To Be Touched--Clint Eastwood's barbs might've been the first time the socialist media have seen someone make fun of Barack Obama in any sort of sustained way.
Everybody's second-favorite community organizer Saul Alinksy said that ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It works so well because it rallies your troops. Even better, when a well-played joke lands squarely on target, it causes problems for the other side. Look at how the Stalinists were so discombobulated by Clint's mockery of their Saviour. When they went into Panic Alert Obama Defense Level Five, they spent a lot of time addressing Clint's speech rather than dealing with Mitt Romney.
If that was the only thing Eastwood's speech accomplished, it would've been enough. But it did more than that. Clint's mockery of Obama was probably a hit with many undecided citizens. These are low-information voters who don't pay attention to politics on a day-to-day level. A lot of people who watch the conventions get their first look at the presidential candidates and their parties from these events.
What did these more or less apolitical folks see? They saw a Hollywood icon laughing at the President. Here too, this might be the first instance that they've watched a media figure of this magnitude actually make fun of Barack Obama.
I'm not saying undecided voters are going to make their decision to vote for Mitt Romney based on Clint Eastwood talking greasy about Barack Obama. What is happening is that Clint's derision of the President sends a subtle signal: "Obama is a joke and it's okay for you to laugh at him."
Remember that the lamestream media has all but completely embargoed humor at Premier Barry's expense. Yet here comes Clint Eastwood on an international stage to cut Barack Obama down a few notches. CNN, MSNBC, CBS and ABC couldn't simply disappear Clint down the memory hole like they did to Artur Davis, Mia Love or Brian Sandoval. They had to cover it. Once they did, it opened up Barack Obama to the kind of mockery they've never allowed to hit him before.
That's why the leftist media hacks fudged their Depends over Clint. Even though he wasn't as strong as he could be, Eastwood's jokes will turn more than a few undecided voters. Clint's speech also breaks the humor blockade that many people have when it comes to mocking Obama. After last night, St. Barack is no longer a holy messiah figure above criticism from his petty subjects. He can, in fact, be mocked.
And, as it turns out, there is a lot to laugh at when it comes to Barack Obama.
Funny how it took an 82-year-old Clint Eastwood--a little sloppy, a little doddering, but still strong--to point that out to the rest of America.
BONUS: Here are 170 great Clint Eastwood quotes. Not safe for work; very safe for awesomeness.
"I-i-i-i-dio-"
"Idiots. It's for you."
That's the line Clint should've dropped on Obama's head.
Oh well. Eastwood still rules.
EVEN MORE BONUSEY: Da Tech Guy's post on the Clint speech fleshes out a point I was trying...and I think failing...to make.
Take a look at this image from Memeorandum as of 8:31 AM
And here is the stuff on the Romney speech same page:
What is Missing? Attacks on Romney’s speech!Today was the day that the Democrats should be hitting Romney’s speech and trying to counter it a-la Ryan. Instead the readers of the morning papers, cable TV and the left blogs are reading attacks on Eastwood. Clint Eastwood is playing the same role as a hero in an old western, drawing all the fire so the good guy could escape unharmed.
While the lamestreamers are scratching their heads and angrily snarling at Eastwood, Mitt Romney comes off looking presidential with little pushback from the progs.
In 2016, the GOP should have Chuck Norris karate-chopping an imaginary Joe Biden while dressed like Lady Gaga right before President Romney gives his speech.
Hey, I don't know if you've heard but President Obama has come out in favor of same-sex marriage.
The Obamatron's announcement that he now supports gay nuptials--after he was against it which came after he was for it--has led to some strange reactions in the leftoversphere. Most have been positively proggasmic. But some have used the occasion to go on offense against their hated enemies.
Here's syndicated columnist DeWayne Wickham (D-Obama Stenographer Media), chastising the Log Cabin Republicans for attacking Obama on his newly-found support for gay marriage while not criticizing Mitt Romney for his belief in traditional marriage.
The Log Cabin Republicans are outcasts within the GOP. The marital equality they seek is opposed by Romney and many of the right-wingers whose votes he hopes will help him defeat Obama in November.
The Republican homosexual group seems bent on subjecting its members to an unyielding brand of political flagellation.
It is apparently willing to pay any price, bear any burden and endure any insult to maintain a toehold in the GOP ranks — a political obsession that is as oxymoronic as a black joining the Ku Klux Klan, or a Jew becoming a follower of Hamas.
Of course, he's correct.
I'm sure you remember the Republican Party's long sordid history of firebombing Greenwich Village cosmetology schools and orchestrating drive-by shootings at San Francisco antique stores.
Worse than the dickbag moral equivalency ploy is the Wickham's narrow-mindedness when it comes to gay and lesbian voters. It simply doesn't occur to him that a homosexual person could possibly be a Republican too. Ergo, these freaky-deaky pink elephant GOPers should go back to being good dutiful soldiers for the Democrat Party rather than sucking up to the hate-fueled Republicans.
Let's flip the script for a second: Suppose there was a large chunk of union-member Democrats who really hated Cap-n-Trade. They agreed with almost everything else on the DonkeyPuncher agenda--ObamaCare, tax hikes, the role of government in citizens' lives--but they really disliked a government-mandated carbon credit trading system. According to Wickham's logic, those anti-C&T union guys should stop being Democrats and join the Republican Party. After all, they aren't marching lockstep with the Democrat Party on Cap-n-Trade, so union people must be barking up the wrong political tree.
Seen this way, Wickham's premise starts to look like chicken-fried nonsense wrapped in a flaky breaded crust of illogic and glazed with a zesty bullshit marinade.
Back in the real world, gay and lesbians make political decisions the same way everybody else does. They base their partisan affiliation on feelings, ideologies, gut instincts and what they generally want out of the government. There are still a few pro-life Democrats, even though the Dems are overwhelmingly pro-abortion. Ron Paul and many of his supporters are Republicans who are against the large well-funded US military most GOPers have embraced. In both cases, the reason why these people remain in their respective parties has nothing to do with some sort of sycophantic apple-polisher's desire to be liked that Wickham ascribes to the Log Cabin Republicans. Instead, pro-life Democrats and pro-military cuts Paulians have all made calculations based on their political priorities. Why Wickham thinks gays and lesbians are incapable of making the sorts of sophisticated voting decisions that everyone else does is a mystery.
I mean, is it so wacky to think there are gays and lesbians who support smaller government, tax cuts and strong national defense?
Is it all that odd that those same homosexuals wouldn't make gay marriage the make-or-break issue that keeps them in the Republican Party?
Let's cut the President some slack. He thinks he can cool the planet and make the oceans recede. Turning the slime in your under-maintained backyard swimming pool into automotive fuel is small beer for Barry the Miracle Worker. What's another half-billion dollars in taxpayer-funded loans or subsidies or just plain-old handouts?
To be fair, research and development is a tricky thing. At one time, petroleum was probably considered a risky source of energy to use for anything, much less base a whole economy around. Figuring out how to turn the black crap that came out of the ground into something useful was an arduous process that a lot of people likely thought wasn't going to pan out. Obama might be right to think that algae is the wave of the future. But his track record on energy policy shouldn't fill you with loads of confidence.
Even though it's likely that algae will be yet another Solyndra-sized government boondoggle, I kinda want Obama to pursue this wacky project. If it works, great. If it doesn't, then we can all get a laugh as Juan Williams accuses Newt Gingrich of being a racist when the former Speaker calls Barack Obama the 'pond-scum President'.
Christopher Hitchens—the incomparable critic, masterful rhetorician, fiery wit, and fearless bon vivant—died today at the age of 62. Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in the spring of 2010, just after the publication of his memoir, Hitch-22 and began chemotherapy soon after. His matchless prose has appeared in Vanity Fair since 1992, when he was named contributing editor.
“Cancer victimhood contains a permanent temptation to be self-centered and even solipsistic,” Hitchens wrote nearly a year ago in Vanity Fair, but his own final labors were anything but: in the last 12 months, he produced for this magazine a piece on U.S.-Pakistani relations in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, a portrait of Joan Didion, an essay on the Private Eye retrospective at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a prediction about the future of democracy in Egypt, a meditation on the legacy of progressivism in Wisconsin, and a series of frank, graceful, and exquisitely written essays in which he chronicled the physical and spiritual effects of his disease. At the end, Hitchens was more engaged, relentless, hilarious, observant, and intelligent than just about everyone else—just as he had been for the last four decades.
“My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends,” he wrote in the June 2011 issue. He died in their presence, too, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. May his 62 years of living, well, so livingly console the many of us who will miss him dearly.
I was reading Ace’s remembrance of Hitch. Like Andrew Breitbart, I peruse Ace’s comments section almost as much as I read the posts themselves. Most commenters were respectful and more than a few were quite mournful of the loss of Mr. Hitchens. As the comments piled up, another train of thought developed, which could be characterized as the ‘Hooray, The Mouthy Atheist Gets His Comeuppance Sack Dance’. Several commenters, who identified themselves as Christians, seemed to revel in the fact that Hitchens would be damned for his atheism.
Tacky? Definitely.
An un-Christian response to the death of a human being? Surely.
But then again, what was the grand project of Christopher Hitchens’ life over the last decade? For many people–especially those not familiar with his stance on Islamic radicalism, his disgust for President Bill Clinton or his slow drift away from the political left–Hitch was best known as the public face of atheism. And it’s not like he was particularly gentle about his dislike for religious faith. No, he was a loud-n-proud attack dog for the anti-God side.
It isn’t all that shocking to find that many Christians grew tired of Hitchens’ snarling barely contained disdain for them. Believers are instructed to turn the other cheek and pray for their enemies, but believers are still human after all. Even the most patient Christian will chafe at having his beliefs trampled on over and over again. This is especially true when the trampler in question never bothers to wipe off his boots before stepping on his intended target. Hitchens’ brand of atheism was pointed, angry and more often than not insulting. When he railed against the Church or other religious institutions, it seemed as if his aim was not to change minds but to injure people he perceived as enemies.
In America and the West, Christians have endured decades of writers, entertainers, artists, intellectuals and other taste-makers who attempted to shame believers out of their faith. For many, Hitchens was simply the latest in a long line of pompous know-it-alls trying to make them feel stupid for taking the words of the Bible to heart. Seen in that light, it’s more surprising just how few Christians have piled on in the wake of Hitchens’ passing.
Beyond the question of religion, Christopher Hitchens was a writer that reveled in the act of making ideological allies uncomfortable. Since the time of Clinton’s impeachment, Hitchens was seen by many on the Left as a traitor to the cause. For the audacity of going against American liberalism’s champion, Hitch was vilified by the kind of people who had spent decades using him as an ideological buttress to hold up their arguments.
For many progressives, the final straw was Hitchens’ continuous defense of the Iraq War. The idea of Hitch making friends with the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush was simply too much for many committed leftists to tolerate. The excommunication of Hitchens from the socialist project was all but complete by 2004.
Even as the intellectual Left was ejecting a former comrade from their midst, Hitchens simply wouldn’t or couldn’t play nice in the sandbox with the Right either. Besides his utter hatred for organized religion he made sure to slam other facets of the broad traditionalist caucus. Sarah Palin got no love from Hitch. Neither did the Tea Party; Hitch accused the movement of racial bigotry whenever asked about it. Ronald Reagan, one of conservatism’s great political heroes, was worse than useless in the writer’s judgment.
How much of Hitchens’ argumentative rhetoric came from honest disagreement? How much of it was mere posturing? Sometimes it was hard to tell. The joy Hitchens seemed to take in making people squirm suggests that a good deal of his personality was a well-rehearsed form of contrarianism. This isn’t always so bad; there are far worse sins for a writer than being against the prevailing attitudes of his time.
Still, watch the clip and note how Hitchens goes after Reagan. From our vantage point in the Age of Trillion Dollar Obama, 90’s-era lefty critiques of Reagan’s budget deficits seem ridiculously quaint. More absurd is the sight of a man who at the time still considered himself a member of the socialist movement using national debt as a focus for his attack on the 40th president. For a polemicist who launched into countless tirades denouncing the hypocrisy of his various hate-figures, the grasping for this particular club to bash this particular target is just the sort of cynical opportunism Hitchens made a career out of railing against.
But what a career. To say Christopher Hitchens had a gift for writing is like saying that Lady Gaga has a passing interest in publicity. Even whenyoufoundyourselfdisagreeingwithhim, he was still far more interesting than most political writers are on their best days. Hitchens was a master of fusing his thunderous moralism to a seemingly effortless ability to create provocative imagery. For this alone, he will be missed by writers and readers across the globe.
But it wasn’t just his writing that made him great. His public persona, an improbable amalgamation of a priapic boozed-up British university student and a joyfully overfed bookworm, made him a joy to watch in a public debate. It was also that improbable mixture that was so surprising. A nicotine-fueled drunk nattering on in a cartoonish plummy Oxbridge accent about Cold War-era Eastern European leftists or some other historical obscurity should not be compelling, yet somehow Hitchens made it work. It’s possible that only he could’ve done pulled off that feat.
For this conservative, it was most enjoyable seeing Hitchens crack on his former leftist pals. Watch and laugh as Hitch eviscerates knee-jerk liberal Eric Alterman’s anti-Iraq War arguments. What comes across most clearly from the clip is the sense that Alterman could not—even at such a late hour--relinquish his lingering hurt over Hitchens’ defection from the liberal sphere. Even as Hitchens piles injury upon injury, Alterman still pines for Hitch to come back to liberal side of the aisle. The barely concealed passive aggression from Alterman gives the game away.
Sometimes a man is defined by his enemies. In many ways, Hitchens was defined by the old comrades he had pissed off over the course of his meandering exit from the progressive movement. The resentment still remains, even after a decade. Repellent lefty shrew Katha Pollitt took the occasion of Hitch’s passing to settle some bitter old scores with her former colleague. Kevin Drum damned himself by damning Hitchens with faint insult. Dave Zirin spun a chance barroom dust-up with Hitch into a comically melodramatic confrontation, complete with a bizarre slapdash amateur psychoanalysis of Hitchens to boot.
Again and again, one is faced with a rather startling revelation: The Left needed Christopher Hitchens far more than he ever needed them. They craved his stylish prose, his combativeness and his intellectual curiosity. More importantly, liberals desperately wanted to be able to claim Hitchens as theirs alone. When Hitch started palling around with liberalism’s enemies, it devastated the socialists--as it does still today.
Was Christopher Hitchens a right-winger, as his many progressive critics accused him of being? Surely not. William F. Buckley once said that an atheist could be a conservative, but a God-hater could not. Hitchens’ disgust for organized religion alone will probably always deny him entry into the conservative caucus. His various other heterodoxies from traditionalism make considering him a man of the Right impossible.
However, measuring Hitchens by this yardstick is unfair. The man loved his eccentricities more than being a rigid partisan. It was his sort of scattered unpredictable politics, the kind that infuriated both friends and enemies alike, that made him interesting. To complain about Hitchens’ lack of ideological ‘correctness’ misses the point. Hitch forced everyone who read him to question their own assumptions, even for just a moment. During a career that spanned several periods of ideological inflexibility, Hitchens' ability to break through convention is the greatest gift he could give to his readers.
Hitch would agree with the sentiment that the world is a far better place with people like Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden dead. Conversely, the world is a far better place for having Christopher Hitchens live in it for sixty-two years.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Baldilocks wondered when President Obambya was gonna get around to asking Congress for authority to...you know...go to war.
I too have a question--Does SuperGenius Hussein McSmartyPants have a plan or is he just making it up as he goes along?
“Our military action is in support of an international mandate from the [United Nations]Security Council that specifically focuses on the humanitarian threat posed by Colonel Qadhafi to his people,” the American president said. “Not only was he carrying out murders of civilians, but he threatened more.”
Okee-dokee, St. Barry. So you're just doing your Euro-hip Nobel Prize winning humanitarian act. Right. Got it.
“I also have stated that it is U.S. policy that Qadhafi needs to go,” Obama said, noting that a United Nations resolution last week authorizing force against Libya is based on humanitarian concerns, not regime change. “When it comes to our military action…we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.”
Wait...what?
I hate to get pushy about this, but which one is it Bamster? Are we enforcing a no-fly zone, or are we trying to stick a fork into Mad Moammar?
Maybe we should ask newly butched-up warlord Nicholas Sarkozy what the hell is going on here. He might have a clue. Obama clearly does not. Even better than the President's feckless display of spectacular obliviousness is the fact that he's created a foreign policy scenario where a sawed-off twerpy French Prime Minister probably has the best handle on the situation.
Besides Obama delivering the change we can all be horrified by, it's important to consult history. Erwin Rommel famously remarked, "No plan survives contact with the enemy." Very true, but the Field Marshall never told us what would happen to the plan when we finally made contact with our allies. In case you've gotten confused, we're supposed to be protecting Libyan rebels from the predations of Colonel Qadaffi. Nobody really knows who the hell these people are, who they're friends with or what kind of government they want to create in the place of the current. Armed with that lack of information, of course we should throw our support behind the Libyan rebel forces.
Just to be clear: Obama has just gotten us into a war where we're not really calling the shots while we're somehow doing most of the fighting with no clear idea what victory would look like for people who probably despise us with a thousand year old Kaaba-sized chip on their shoulders and who will most likely plot against us once we're done doing the wet work for them.
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.
Daniel Pipes ponders the notion of an Islam compatible with democracy.
Just as Christianity became part of the democratic process, so can Islam. This transformation will surely be wrenching and require time. The evolution of the Catholic Church from a reactionary force in the medieval period into a democratic one today, an evolution not entirely over, has been taking place for 700 years. When an institution based in Rome took so long, why should a religion from Mecca, replete with its uniquely problematic scriptures, move faster or with less contention?
Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. Pipes breaks down some of the massive hurdles Islam has to leap over in order to embrace democratic ideals.
A point Pipes doesn't touch on is how the modern Western world has treated the various Islamist movements it has run into over the last 50 years. Since Sayyid Qutb gave birth to the modern jihadist movement, elements of the West have been bombarded by various facets of Islamic violence. Whether it has come in the form of stateless entities like al-Qaeda, belligerent theocratic governments or a combination of the two is beside the point.
So how have the elites in America reacted to the decades-long aggression of expansionist Islam? Accomodation, moral equivalence and feckless dhimmitude. Among other pathetic reactions. Then we wonder why Islam continues to pick on us.
Non-Muslims can't do much to reform to Islam. As Pipes notes, that kind of wrenching cultural shift takes a long time. Democratization is not something the West will be capable of accelerating very much.
But that doesn't mean the West has to lay down and accept terrorist Islam's deranged premises about the separation of church and state, the role of women, property rights or religious pluralism. Nor does it have to tolerate the violent acts of murder and mayhem the Qutbist keep throwing at us. Instead of that, the West could decide to tell Islam--through words and deeds--that certain things won't be tolerated. Like honor killings, imposition of sharia, the crushing of religious minorities or female circumsicion.
Would that turn Islam into a religion that welcomes democratic reform? Probably not. But it would probably be better than the subtle message of approval some in the West insist on sending to Islam.
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.
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.
Ever wonder why there doesn't seem to be a lot of genuine stars in pop culture anymore?
Well, John Nolte comes up with a pretty sharp zinger of an explanation.
Any actor who chooses to make something — anything, including their sexuality – a part of their identity, limits how the public will perceive them up on the screen. This is true for straight actors as well, especially those who have made their sexuality a big part of who they are. Beneath all that Barbie doll there might be a genuine actress, but Pam Anderson’s very public sex kitten persona limits her roles. And just to be fair and non-partisan… In his later years, it simply wouldn’t have been possible for Charlton Heston to play an anti-gun ACLU type without harming the audience’s ability to suspend their disbelief. The whole idea would’ve come off as some kind of in-joke, and if that joke wasn’t meant to be part of the overall story you have something of a disaster on your hands.
Read the whole thing. Nolte takes a few whiney gay actors down a peg or two in his piece. Heads up, Richard Chamberlain. "The Thorn Birds" really wasn't all that great.
Nolte touches on something very basic, but something that a lot of entertainers forget nowadays. It's the mystery that keeps people interested in media personalities long after the person has reached their creative zenith. Nothing sustains a career in pop culture more than some strategic obfuscation to keep the audience guessing.
For instance, the private lives of the members of Led Zeppelin were anything but common knowledge back in the 70's. Beyond the fact that three members were married and that they all lived in England, the public didn't have much access to Zep. The band consciously cultivated a nearly impenetrable mystique, which kept people wondering about them. This aura of mystery--along with the undeniable songwriting talent--helped to make Led Zeppelin a massively successful band.
Consider this little nugget about Zep: In 1975 the band released Physical Graffiti, their sixth studio album. Members of the band gave very few interviews to support the release of their album. There were no cameras following Jimmy Page around to document his every move. Robert Plant didn't discuss his political affiliation or his partisan ideology. John Paul Jones and John Bonham were likely to jokingly sneer or angrily snarl at any reporter who asked them who they voted for in the last election. The group didn't mention the causes or charities they support. Led Zeppelin simply let the music speak for themselves.
The results? Physical Grafitti immediately became a massive seller. Not only that, the group's entire back catalogue re-entered the Top 200 as well. The tour that supported the album was incredibly lucrative as well. Led Zeppelin had become the biggest band of the 1970's.
Distance between the musicians and their audience was critical to Led Zeppelin's success. For actors, that sense of mystery is even more important. A rock vocalist is basically playing himself...or at least some facet of his personality...when he writes, records or performs music. An actor is playing a different person everytime he takes on a new role. That means that the actor's real personality can't be so well-known that it smothers the part he's trying to play.
This is not to say that successful actors don't create personas. However, there's a big difference between a 'type' and 'My actual self and my movie self are pretty much the same'. Sean Penn may have been a talented actor back in the Yuri Andropov era, but any role he takes nowadays is overpowered by his off-screen leftwing douchebaggery. The only movie persona Penn has left is the one he plays in the real world--Thumbsucking Liberal Hack/Commie Dictator Apologist/Smug Peace Creep.
To see how a real star should operate, look at Kurt Russell. Russell is a member of the Libertarian Party, but he doesn't make a huge deal about it. Surely the man has causes that he champions, but you don't hear him talk about them all that much. It's common knowledge that he's in a long term relationship with Goldie Hawn, but Russell hasn't put the intimate details of his sexual history into the public record. Consequently, there is no outsized real-world Kurt Russell that fights against the roles he takes.
Look at Russell's performance in the flawed sci-fi action flick "Soldier". Compare that to his work in the more successful comedy "Overboard". Both movies call for very different kinds of acting, but because Russell doesn't have a lot of off-camera drama going on, he's entirely believable as both a near mute futuristic warrior or as a charming modern day rogue. Viewers might not connect with everything Russell does--homeboy is just as prone to the occasional cinematic dud as anybody else in show biz--but his private life never interferes with movie goers' suspension of disbelief.
The modern entertainment business can't seem to grasp the absolutely vital necessity for mystery. Instead, the stars blab about their politics, their personal lives and their STD's at the drop of a hat. As a result, the lack of separation between the performer and the audience has made the art small and the artists even smaller.
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.
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?
If you really think about it, the United States has been granted an embarrassment of riches. Within our borders are vast quantities of natural resources. We have abundant fertile land that feeds not only ourselves, but much of the world. America is vast in size, buffeted by oceans that grant her a measure of separation from the potential unrest that has marked the history of the Old World. In short, Americans should spend every Thanksgiving expressing undying gratitude to their Creator for giving the country so many wonderful advantages.
As much as resources, climate and size matter, America has been granted something even greater than all those things. As the writer Julian Simon noted, people are the greatest natural resource. If that's the case--and it is--the US armed forces are a sterling example of Simon's fundamental truth. For Thanksgiving, I decided to take a look at one particular great American.
In his Silver Star citation, Marine 2nd Lt. Brian M. Stann is praised for his "zealous initiative, courageous actions and exceptional presence of mind" during seven days of fighting in Iraq.
But Stann, now a captain, is not into fame or self aggrandizement.
"It’s not about awards, especially when you’re out there," said Stann, 27. "It’s about defeating the enemy and getting your boys out alive."
From May 8 to May 14, 2005, Stann was part of Operation Matador with 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines.
The action started when Stann’s platoon was given about 35 minutes’ notice that it needed to head to the Ramana Bridge, north of Karbala...Aother unit was supposed to provide a blocking position at the bridge, but when they couldn’t make it on time, Stann’s platoon was sent to fill the gap.
As it turned out, a lot of the enemy had settled in that area. Stann said his platoon was engaged in a "constant gunfight" until it was relieved, and then he and his Marines had to fight their way back to base.
The worst fighting was May 10, when his platoon was sent back to the bridge to stay and got ambushed on the way, he said.
The insurgents hit Stann’s platoon with roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide car bombs, destroying a Humvee and a tank recovery vehicle that was hauling wounded, he said.
"We had a rough night."
Stann’s Silver Star citation briefly summarizes his actions during the ambush.
“Second Lieutenant Stann personally directed two casualty operations, three vehicle recovery operations and multiple close air support missions under enemy small arms, machine gun and mortar fire in his 360-degree fight," the citation reads.
Stann didn’t want to get into specifics about what he did during the fighting.
"Everyone has done some courageous things," he said. "It’s just part of our calling. It’s part of our job."
Instead, Stann preferred to talk about his Marines.
Despite the casualties and carnage, they did not panic, he said. They kept their heads, beat back the enemy and evacuated their wounded.
"Because of that, the casualties that we did take did survive," Stann said. "Guys that lost limbs lived. Guys that took shrapnel and things of that nature to the head lived, and they wouldn’t have lived if we hadn’t have done that."
Throughout their deployment, Stann’s Marines focused on their job, whether it meant sleeping in their Humvees on hot nights or manning a machine gun at 2 a.m., he said.
Stann, who was born at Yokota Air Base in Japan and then moved to Scranton, Pa., said his Silver Star represents what the Marines under his command accomplished.
"They executed flawlessly, and we’re talking 19- to 20-year-old kids, and these are tougher situations than 90 percent of Americans will face," he said.
In your time today, please say a prayer for our armed forces.
More importantly, we should thank God that America still produces men and women like Captain Brian Stann. We will chow down on our turkeys and potatoes and gravy in large part because of the efforts of incredibly brave folks. They are more courageous than most of us will ever have to be. For that, we should be eternally grateful.
I dunno if I've mentioned this before, but FYI--a great blogger has become a great author. I just finished "Tale of The Tigers". It's a tremendous piece of writing.
Juliette Akinyi Ochieng, who writes great commentary under the nom de blog Baldilocks, recently took the plunge and published her debut novel. And what an interesting first swing of the bat Ms. Ochieng takes.
"Tale of The Tigers" is a story of two college kids who fall in love. It's about race and racism. It's a time capsule of the early 90's. It looks at the dynamics of family relationships. It examines sex and sexuality. It reassesses sacred cows of the cult of the politically correct. It makes important statements about friendship, loyalty and trust.
Like her blog writing, Ms. Ochieng's novel is chock full of subtleties. Her characters could've turned into cardboard cut-outs. Instead, the folks that inhabit "Tale" are flesh and blood people, full of admirable traits and painful weaknesses. The outline of the plot never devolves into a cliché romance. Thankfully, Baldilocks takes the story in unexpected directions. "Tale" studiously avoids telegraphing it's punches, which makes for an exciting read.
Beyond these great things, for me the best part of the book is the fact that the story stays with you long after you've finished it. You'll find yourself replaying sequences from the book in your mind. Moreover, you'll catch yourself pondering the book's themes long after you've put it down.
In short, "Tale of The Tigers" is a damn fine piece of work from a writer with a powerful voice. Get in on the ground floor, folks. Buy the book. You won't regret it.
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.
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.
As a Knicks fan, it kills me to say this but...Michael Jordan is exactly correct.
The latest Big Three backlash came Sunday from none other than Michael Jordan, who contributed his weighty opinion to the debate about whether LeBron James should've teamed up with two superstars instead of trying to beat them.
"There's no way, with hindsight, I would've ever called up Larry, called up Magic and said, 'Hey, look, let's get together and play on one team,'" Jordan said after finishing tied for 22nd in the American Century Championship golf tournament in Stateline, Nev. "But that's ... things are different. I can't say that's a bad thing. It's an opportunity these kids have today. In all honesty, I was trying to beat those guys."
Bingo.
The thing about LeBron is that he has consciously modeled himself on Jordan's career. That means that he's supposed to be the guy who's taking the last shot at the end of games. He's the leader in the locker room. Most importantly, he's taking slightly less money to help his franchise bring a supporting cast to him and his team.
Instead, Bron-Bron decided to join the three-headed monster in Miami. More and more, the free agent summit Bosh, Wade and James held in June looks like just a cheesey attempt to rig the system to get their spoiled-brat way. While it's not collusion in the legal sense, it looks really bad. Perception in the NBA is really important. LeBron has done great damage to the way he is perceived by non-Heat fans nowadays.
The idea that James is the next coming of Michael Jordan has been forever tarnished by him leaving Cleveland to join Wade and Bosh in Miami. In MJ's Chicago, there was no doubt who was taking the big shot at the end of games. It wasn't Horace Grant and it sure wasn't Scottie Pippen. On and off the floor, Jordan was the undisputed leader of the Bulls.
One more thing: Jordan never left Chicago to team up with his buddies. He just went out and beat everybody. He whipped absolutely phenomenal players in the most pressure-filled situations. Look at who he defeated in order to get his championships. Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, Tom Chambers, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, John Stockton and Karl Malone: These are just some of the all-world players MJ beat in order to win his hardware. That doesn't take into account playoff series wins and conference championships, where he scored victories against mega-stars like Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing and Isiah Thomas.
Compare Jordan's resume to LeBron's curriculum vitae. He hasn't beaten anybody. No last second heroics, no monster performances to carry his team and no rings. Sure, he's been stellar in the regular season. But god-like players aren't born beating up on the Nets or the Kings in the middle of a December road trip.
One gets the feeling that LeBron has little interest in being 'the guy' and much more interest in getting paid. This is weird considering that everybody connected with him keeps telling us he's the greatest player in the world. It's hard to be the number 1 star when you're a supporting cast member in somebody else's show. I think James is going to be in for a rude awakening as NBA fans rethink Bron-Bron's place in the basketball world's hierarchy of stars.
Congratulations LeBron. You've just turned yourself into a second tier star. Enjoy being Dwayne Wade's caddie.
If you ever visit Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website, you already know that a recurring theme for many of BH's authors is the necessity for conservatives to bring their ideas into popular culture through movies, books, television, music and other media. At first glance, this would seem to be a Sisyphean task. Hollywood, publishing, popular song, magazines-all these industries are dominated by soft-headed soft-hearted leftists. The sheer volume of tedious knee-jerk liberal crap put out by American pop culture has to be discouraging for right-of-center creative types looking to make art that displays their values.
While all of the above is true, conservatives have something in their favor when it comes to reclaiming the high ground in the American culture wars. It is that government remains decidedly uncool in popular media. Think about your favorite movies, books and television shows. Are the protagonists in even 1/4 of them big gubmint types? Are the heroes in your beloved films living in public housing or on welfare? Are the lead characters in your backlog of DVR 'ed TV shows employed as paper-pushing bureaucrats in some federal agency? Glancing at the fiction books stacked on top of your toilet, are your bathroom library tomes populated by men and women dependent on the various liberal do-gooders and bleeding hearts? When you pop a CD into your car stereo do the songs that serenade you to and from the supermarket urge the listener to start collecting food stamps because that's the hip thing to do?
Chances are, almost no items on the popular culture menu that you or anybody else in America consumes have the message that dependency on government is the hip thing to do. Sure, you may get a message that right-wingers suck. Hell, the eight years of the Bush presidency was one long pop-cult whine about how conservatives are the spawn of the devil. Even then, leftists in the media couldn't create mainstream art that revelled in the glories of relying on the federal thumbsucker apparatus in order to survive.
Government is fundamentally uncool and dependency on government is about as fashion-forward as dreadlocks on an albino white dude. Just like the rarity of pasty uber-crackers rocking Bob Marley's hairdo, it's hard to find the producers of mass media pushing for people defined by their tight relationship with government because it is lame. Even Hollyweird and the rest of the pop culture goof balls understand this, which is why they don't usually make material that sends that message.
Conservatives have a great deal of work to do if they want to get their messages into the mainstream media. But on a basic level, America loathes the idea of being dependent on government. This means that the Right's job is not as tough as they think it is. America is largely sympathetic to many conservative values. It is up to creative people within the conservative movement to overcome their nervousness about lefty media dominance and start creating quality entertainment that reflects traditional messages about the role of government.
Architects can make neighborhoods and communities, for better or worse. He made some buildings people not me liked, and a lot of architects imitated to less success. It's beginning to be more acceptable to bash that architect. Dalrymple's take is pretty vicious. (Found via a Michael Totten description of Romania that's as usual a rewarding read.)
Sometimes I feel a little bad about pointing out flaws in the USA all the time, even though that's the nature of a blog composed of American political topics. So it is a personal pledge--and a prayer--that I must remember to have gratitude for the many blessings which God has given to me. And those blessings are indeed from God and are the benefit of His Grace. Otherwise this day is merely the designated turkey-consumption day and nothing more.
Check this out: have we in First World ever considered how blessed we are to have one "simple" thing?
Sometimes when I am washing dishes or taking a hot shower, I reflect on something that even the poor have in this country: hot and cold running water. I don't know if having one parent who is from the Third World makes me think about this more or not. I do know that it's one of the reasons I'm happy to be an American.
(One can probably guess that guys and some girls who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are more acutely aware of the total awesomeness of a hot shower as well. Speaking of them: Let’s Say
Thanks.)
Lack of fresh flowing hot and cold water has spread death in many cultures, so this issue is not trivial. So today, when I'm washing the Thanksgiving Day dishes by hand, I will be grateful. I pray that you who are reading find something for which to thank God as well.
Some people like to refer to black Republicans as “sell outs.” To what principle have black Republicans failed to adhere? My tribe, right or wrong? Heck, that principle is no better than that of a Klansman, no better than that of 1994’s Rwandan Hutu or 2008’s Kenyan Luo.
While President Bush meets with Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in Crawford, Texas, a Crawford grandma almost turns a Danish report into Swiss cheese. The whining in the comments is hilarious. (Thanks to Memorandum)
That lady isn’t the only grandma who needs to be monitored more closely by her offspring.
Barack Obama praises Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) for reading the NIE and voting against the Iraq War Resolution. One problem with this: Rockefeller voted yea on the resolution.
Christopher Hitchens departs pleasantly from political fare and enumerates some of the hazards of being a bibliophile. I empathize and have another one to add in a subsequent post.
Having been originally handed the novel No Country for Old Men by his wife, Actor and Conservative Brotherhood member Joseph C. Phillips reviews the Oscar-nominated movie. Observes Phillips: “There is clearly a side to my wife that I do not know.” Good going, Mrs. Phillips!
Almost no mention is given to the Kurds of Iraq who are just as Islamic as the Arabs in that country, and who purged Islamists root and branch from every inch of their autonomous region. “We will shoot them or break their bones on sight,” one Kurdish government official told me. More people have been murdered by Islamists in Spain than in their region of Iraq in the last five years. Such people can hardly be thought of as passive.
And finally, a missing perspective on the Obama-in-Somali-garb flap, from a Newsday columnist named Katti Gray—another black woman who chooses to look like herself. Read the first comment also.
UPDATE:Ouch! (Psst! Dude, they have cordless phones!)
I was flipping through the channels last night, looking for something intellectually stimulating to watch when I lit up on the NASA channel. Therein, some lady was holding forth on her duties as a systems engineer. The lady happened to be black and as I listened to her speak, the random thought hit me...
It was really nice to see a black person other than the last two Secretaries of State discussing something meaningful which was totally unrelated to race.
Today is Saturday. After a week long of working in a cubicle and doing little else (except for karate with my kids and a parent teacher conference on Thurs for my youngest - she's in the top of her class), I got up today feeling restless and like I had to use my body.
So, I dug, put in two posts with concrete around it, went to Home Depot to buy fence boards and items to make a gate, stained fence boards, and dug some more. Tomorrow I'll be able to assemble the gates to the fence posts (it's a double wide gate) and maybe finish staining the fence boards. I like home improvement for 2 reasons. 1) Makes me feel like a man 2) The sense of accomplishment feels great.
When I got inside at about 7 PM I decided to start making butternut squash soup. Great stuff and really healthy. But it won't be ready until tomorrow. Does anyone have a soup recipe you'd like to share? I have 4 of my own that I make. Maybe someday I'll share how I do them. I make a good split pea, butternut squash, chicken noodle spinach and carront (with tomato sauce also), and Gazpacho soup. My best friend and love of my life before she passed was just able to taste Gazpacho soup for the first time 2 months prior to her passing. She loved it so much she wanted more. We made a bunch together and of course planted more tomato plants together with the hope of using the tomatoes for Gazpacho soup. I suggest everyone try Gazpacho at least once. Do it for her. It might not be once. You might love it and have a bunch more after that. It's a cold spanish soup with tomatoes, peppers, celery, and cucumbers,etc. Very healthy soup. I put in Jalapeno and it makes me feel alive.
Wup. I realized it's late. I have to make phone calls before it's too late. Till next time....
Update: I forgot to mention that I was slightly bummed as I broke my 2 inch thick wood cutting board. How does that happen? Stupidly with a knife embedded into the squash, lifting and then hitting the board. Of course not much happened so I did it again. And the third time something gave way startling me. It was the wood cutting board. :( So now I'm using an old plastic thin one.
I really have to cut it out with the butternut squash. 2 years ago it broke a blender as I was putting it in water in a blender and pureeing it for the butternut squash soup. The motor gave out. My best friend and love of my life got me a new one for my birthday in April of this year. With more POWER! 475 Watts. But I vowed to take better care of this one.
...even if you're homeless; even if you're an illegal immigrant. Put it this way: homeless illegal immigrants in Pakistan are probably dead now by the tens of thousands. And, if they're not dead, they probably wish they were; there's no Astrodome filled with caring citizens intent on helping to insure that they and their children stay alive, much less fed and sheltered.
So when you pray for the relief of the Central Asian suffering and give to entities like WorldVision, don't forget to thank God for the prosperity that we in America experience, just by being here instead of there.
Psych! Bet you thought I was going to go off on a tangent about how there’s so much sexism in the blogosphere. Certain female bloggers say that virtual chauvinist swinery is rampant and must be opposed. (No virtual peckers for me, thanks.) Certain malebloggers say that we women are worrying our pretty little heads over nothing. Well maybe sexism is out there all over the place. On the other hand, maybe some persons are more sensitive to that particular human failing than I am. I can be oblivious about things sometimes, occasionally to my detriment. To just give the facts, however, I just don’t get any overt sexism pointed my way--and very little racism to boot.
One of the reasons for this dearth could be that neither the name nor the decor of this blog is identifiably female. Most of that is by accident--I’m just not a pastel kind of girl. Another aspect is by design, however: I moved my picture further down on the left sidebar just to “level the playing field” a bit. One thing I’m not oblivious to is the novelty of a black female conservative blogger and how my photo might bring a bit of the gawkers around here: look, Ma! A conservative black chick!
The results? For one thing, my traffic level went down temporarily. ;-) For another thing, I started getting the types of insults that are usually reserved for white males: being called m-f or told that I’m a racist due to my criticism of some black person or persons. Let's hear it for equality!
The interesting thing is this: when my picture was in a more prominent place, I could count the really nasty comments regarding my race or anything else on one hand. Additionally, there have been absolutely none with a distinctly female/sexual tinge to them. And that total is from two years of blogging.
(I must tell you, I like being treated like a lady far more than I like being sworn at, being wished into an insane asylum or called the b-word. If that's an aspect of sexism, I'll take it.)
Comments that are merely patronizing, however, occur more frequently. But, heck, I kind of enjoy those. If they’re really obnoxious, I view their existence as an opportunity. After all, there’s nothing more fun than nailing a pelt to your front page---or maybe that’s just my own personal sadistic streak. I like editing rude comments and I like making insufferable guests the subject of a post even more. On my more charitable days, however, I simply ignore the excessively contentious sorts. The fun part about that is that they hate talking to the hand even more, so it’s a win-win situation for me.
I suppose any condescension I’ve received could be due to sexism or racism on the senders’ part, but, frankly I couldn’t care less; a jerk is a jerk is a mouse for the Cat to play with.
Fact is I don't see any upside to crusading against the light-weight sexism that may come from the rightwing male bloggers, because, assuming it does exist, what does stirring up a controversy over it accomplish (besides getting others to post and link to the arguments)? Those of us who are on the female, not-white side of the equation have a choice: we can lament the sporadic imperfections of our white and/or male brethren or keep bringing the blogging, while yanking a chain every now and then.
And reveling in our own superiority complex. :-)
(By the way, I've never been called a bimbo, either in person or on-line; not that I know of at any rate.)
Flooding is still an issue in New Orleans and the report of Katrina tearing a hole in the roof of the Superdome sounded ominous. The city isn’t out of trouble yet, but it’s nice to see that predicted reports of New Orleans’ utter destruction were greatly exaggerated.
The “Great Satan” wobbles, but doesn’t fall. Hear that, Enemies? I’m even will to bet that we’ll weather (no pun intended) the consequent shortage of oil and the upswing in its price. After all, it’s only the law of supply and demand in action, with an act of God tossed in for excitement.
Hmm, I've looked up and down this short post and found nothing about politics. There is a mention about America's enemies, but there's nothing political about that. Perhaps Evil Progressive has a guilty conscience. Confession's good for the soul, EP.
UPDATE: 6:56 PM PDT For those who didn't notice, this isn't the most recent post regarding the disaster wrought by Hurricane Katrina. As has been noted in subsequent posts, the situation has worsened.
The most humorous/bizarre thing in the response to John's results was the immediate hue and cry against the alleged Christianity of persons picked. From the first comment: "I think [it] would make Jesus wince when they call themselves 'Christians'."
Somehow I don't think Charles Krauthammer, Dennis Prager, Jeff Goldstein (Jews) or Connie du Toit (an atheist) would loose any sleep over that pronouncement.
UPDATE: To everybody else: it's not that I love these people more that I love you. It's just that I agree with these people more than I agree with you. Therefore, "favorite" in my judgement for this poll means "in agreement," rather than good, better or best.
A few months ago, some haughty Wizbang commenter said that is was "an embarassment to Conservatives" to form and belong to an informal blog association like the Conservative Brotherhood (everyone there is black and conservative).
Following that logic, is it sexist to form and belong to the all-female Cotillion?
Watching a History Channel presentation on the Ku Klux Klan yesterday, I was struck by a few thoughts.
According to the special, the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown versus Board of Education decision sparked a revival of the waning Klan that had been on a downward spiral since its peak in the 1920s. The ruling unified the Klan in its unwavering purpose: to prevent blacks from exercising their rights as full citizens.
The Klan’s hatred and fear of blacks fueled a ramp-up of violence in the South and that violence culminated at several points. Among the most widely publicized were the 16th Street Baptist Church murders, the Schwerner—Cheney—Goodman murders and, much later, the Michael Donald murder (warning: graphic). These and other murders involved bombings of public places, ambushes on lonesome roads, hidden snipers or more “traditional” lynching methods after which the body was left hanging in a plain view.
Today’s international terrorists have many similarities to our domestic terrorists of old. Today’s terrorists kill in secret but leave their victims’ bodies by the side of the road or hanging in public view, as was so in the cases of the Blackwater Four and of Nicholas Berg (warning: even more graphic). They also murder international envoys sent in peace, just as our terrorists murdered prominent peacemakers.
Are there any differences between the two groups? Our terrorists terrorized in the name of keeping the “right” to oppress others and keep them cowed and in poverty. But why would they want to keep another group down?
Today’s terror apologists would have the world believe that contemporary terrorists blow up liberating armies, public conveyance, and the school children of their own kinsmen in order to throw off oppression and escape poverty.
Praise be to God, who revealed the Book, controls the clouds, defeats factionalism, and says in His Book "But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war)"; and peace be upon our Prophet, Muhammad Bin-'Abdallah, who said "I have been sent with the sword between my hands to ensure that no one but God is worshipped, God who put my livelihood under the shadow of my spear and who inflicts humiliation and scorn on those who disobey my orders.
Those are the words of the rich, well-born founder of Al Qaeda, What’s-His-Name and those words were put into practice most notoriously by nineteen mostly rich, mostly well-born members of his flock. Even more, his words have taken hold in the minds of many of his poor, oppressed co-religionists. But who is doing the oppressing?
What is stopping the average citizen of the oil-rich Arab Muslim nations from being as “blessed” as is the Infidel?
Instead of being honest with themselves, both yesterday’s and today’s terrorists choose to believe their own imaginings rather than face their own shortcomings and/or those of their leaders. Instead of acknowledging reality and doing something about that, they set themselves up as superior to the hated group and view that group as a) dangerous or b) blasphemous. They set up their toy enemy soldiers only to knock them down. The only problem is that the toy soldiers are living, breathing human beings.
The terror attack of 9-11 was not designed to make us alter our policy, but was crafted for its effect on the terrorists themselves: It was a spectacular piece of theater. The targets were chosen by al Qaeda not through military calculation — in contrast, for example, to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — but entirely because they stood as symbols of American power universally recognized by the Arab street. They were gigantic props in a grandiose spectacle in which the collective fantasy of radical Islam was brought vividly to life: A mere handful of Muslims, men whose will was absolutely pure, as proven by their martyrdom, brought down the haughty towers erected by the Great Satan. What better proof could there possibly be that God was on the side of radical Islam and that the end of the reign of the Great Satan was at hand?
In the last post, I guessed that it would be unlikely that al Qaeda would use a WMD on the West because of how strategically stupid it would be. But after seeing the Klan special and reading the Harris essay, I’m no longer so sure. For, in order to make that type of calculation, a certain amount of rationality would have to exist. I don’t think it does.
It may be that it is just as useless to appease the Islamists as it was to appease the Klan. Why? Because the only thing that you can give the Islamists is something you don’t want to give them: the fulfillment of their fantasies and that does not involve dispensing Balkan- or Somali-style humanitarian aid or anything else so mundane. (The lack gratitude for either of these adventures should tell us that.)
The fantasy ideologies of the twentieth century, after all, spread like a virus in susceptible populations: Their propagation was not that suggested by John Stuart Mill’s marketplace of ideas — fantasy ideologies were not debated and examined, weighed and measured, evaluated and compared. They grew and spread like a cancer in the body politic. For the people who accepted them did not accept them as tentative or provisional. They were unalterable and absolute. And finally, after driving out all other competing ideas and ideologies, they literally turned their host organism into the instrument of their own poisonous and deadly will.
The will, that is, to see you converted, dead or enslaved and to see the entire world as an Islamic one; I have my doubts as to whether that will be on any future G8 agenda.
If it is so that the Islamists are attempting to bring their own fantasy Islamic world into existence—just as KKK types tried to bring about and still dream of having their fantasy white world--then all this talk about pulling back forces and helping them eradicate poverty is a waste of time. The KKK was neutralized only because this country was created on certain principles and its people—educated on those principles—could be shamed. That is not so for the majority of Islamists and those who are gullible enough to believe them.
Stopping them may involve some methods of awakening that are uglier than any of us wants to contemplate. Ask the Japanese.
Two years ago today, I started the Bear Flag League along with a half dozen cohorts to give a larger, more visible presence to the conservative voice in California. As we've grown to over 100 bloggers and applications for membership come in at a clip that will cause us to double in size in the next 3-6 months or limit membership, I wonder when we'll be "legitimate". When does that viewpoint become just the other side of the aisle?
Greyhawk, being stationed in Germany and, therefore, hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, starts things off with photos and fun commentary from the Ramstein Air Base Freedom Fest.
Defending the ideals of our founding has required the service and sacrifice of every generation, and the men and women of our Armed Forces have always answered our nation's call. With their courage, they have crossed oceans, defeated murderous ideologies, and liberated the oppressed. And today, on this Fourth of July, our grateful nation thanks our 25 million veterans for their service to our country.
The American (traditional) press is in a blue funk this Independence Day. Cue the violins.
[A]s I write this I realize I've been American for a while. I've cared for its politics; I've called it home for several years now. I know how to order my Subway sandwich, and how to confidently navigate the interstate system. I no longer say I'm from Zambia when asked where I come from. Instead, I answer Tennessee.
We need to remind ourselves that whatever complaints we have about our current government they are embarrassingly petty when compared to the tens of millions around the world who fear the midnight knock at the door.
President Bush told the nation last night that the war in Iraq was difficult but winnable. Only the first is clearly true. Despite buoyant cheerleading by administration officials, the military situation is at best unimproved. The Iraqi Army, despite Mr. Bush's optimistic descriptions, shows no signs of being able to control the country without American help for years to come. There are not enough American soldiers to carry out the job they have been sent to do, yet the strain of maintaining even this inadequate force is taking a terrible toll on the ability of the United States to defend its security on other fronts around the world. [SNIP]
Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.
I think that’s enough for all to get the tone of the piece; negativity and parsing. Yes, I know; it’s the New York Times. But I wonder what such people expect the president to say and to do.. “Okay, it was a big mistake and I’m pulling our boys and girls out now. The ones that died did so for nothing and we’re going to leave the peaceful Iraqi citizenry to the clutches of the terrorists and insurgents. We’re going to leave them at the mercy of the Islamists so that there women and girls can be treated barely better than animals. We…”
I really think that people like the author of this editorial expect the authors of OIF to throw up their hands in surrender because of the bad things that are happening over in Iraq. (Bad things happening during a war: imagine that.) In fact, I think that many are angry that the Vietnam script isn’t quite being played out as hoped.
TET ON THE TIGRIS? What were they [the Democrats] to expect, though? The President long ago realized that his critics would never be placated. Instead, he is trying to win back lost friends on the political right, to rebuild his 51% coalition, and to convince the troops that he -- if not the entire nation -- is on their side.
For a short time at least, he's likely to succeed. In the long run, however, it'll be the TV videos from Baghdad that convince most Americans whether the President is a modern-day Winston Churchill, resolutely leading the free world to victory over the evildoers -- or the second coming of LBJ, battered by an endless reprise of the Tet Offensive.
Mr. Dunham is right, but not in the way that he thinks. What Mr. Dunham doesn’t know or hopes his readers don’t know is that Tet was an American military success during the Vietnam War, but the American public was lead to believe that it was a failure by the traditional media; back then, of course, the only game in town.
That monopoly is impossible to be had now.
What we have to decide in this age in which we are bombarded with information is whether or not we’ll be lead blindly by the likes of the New York Times editorial page and Mr. Dunham or even by the National Review and Victor Davis Hanson (yes, I know; lopsided comparisons). There is no reason for most Americans to be fed his/her opinions; to believe, like some of my relatives do, that nothing save bad things are happening in Iraq.
Better yet, go read what Iraqis have to say. Get some balance in the information distribution.
*****
The after-speech I watched was that of MSNBC, hosted by Chris Matthews in a townhall meeting format in Tennessee. (After the speech, Fox News nearly broke its proverbial neck resuming the all-Natalie-Holloway-all-the-time coverage. I’ll get to that later.) The presentation was very good in spite of the negative tone of Mr. Matthews' questions to military wives, his propensity to obnoxiously demand answers and to interrupt those same answers. These ladies were unequivocally positive, upbeat and they understood the bottom line. Mr. Matthews couldn’t lay a glove on that foundation.
Additionally, two Muslim ladies stood up to rebuke terrorism and assert their desire to live in peace with other Americans of every race and religion. Let many more of their number speak up.
Mr. Matthews said one thing last night that I agree with, however:
“Talking politics is easier than fighting insurgents.”
So when will the bipartisan senate sojourn to Guantanamo Bay occur, featuring special guests Richard Durbin and Edward M. Kennedy?
And I wonder what the consolation prize will be for some poor soldiers who will be ordered to break bread with Senator Durbin and smile while doing it?
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