The real "crazy" talk

For the last year or so, there has been a constant drumbeat that the Tea Party is "crazy" and "extremist" and "dangerous". One of the biggest beaters of that drum has been Washington Post columnist and uber-Lib Eugene Robinson.

His latest column has no shortage of delusional and "crazy" talk itself. And interestingly, it's not because it's the usual boilerplate Tea Party bashing or 'Republicans are racist' stuff, it's crazy because he tries to defend the indefensible.

That's right. It's a love letter to Nancy Pelosi.

Let's parse some of the nonsense:

Losing elections is an occupational hazard for politicians, so there's no need to get all weepy about the Democratic officeholders who suddenly find themselves with more time to spend with their families. It would be more appropriate to shed a tear or two for the future of the country, what with the Tea Party brigade coming to town.

It didn't take long to get the jab in against the Tea Party. And he may claim there's no need to get weepy, but I'm willing to bet after last Tuesday Eugene did in fact get a little weepy.

President Obama still has the ability to set the nation's agenda - and also the power of the veto, in case of emergency. Harry Reid is still Senate majority leader - and after the way he punched and scrapped his way to victory, who wants to mess with him? As for John Boehner, he'll soon learn that his new job requires a more extensive vocabulary than "no."

I'm sure John Boehner's vocabulary comes from the same dictionary the Democratic party used from the years 2000 to 2008. Wouldn't you agree, Eugene?

This is the absurd double standard in American politics. When Republicans lose, they are supposed to concede, relax their principles, and rubber-stamp whatever the Democrats want to do. When the Democrats lose power, well, dissent becomes "patriotic" and they speak "truth to power" and their own crazy rhetoric gets overlooked by the Eugene Robinsons of the world.

But amid the wreckage of Tuesday's GOP rampage, there's one person for whom I feel awful: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She's losing her job not because she does it poorly but because she does it so well.

This is wrong on so many levels. But let's continue.

Pelosi would never ask for, or even accept, my sympathy - that's not her style. Her place in history was secure the moment she became the first woman to take possession of the speaker's gavel. Still, she squeezed every drop out of her four-year tenure. To string together a couple of sports cliches, she came to play and she left it all on the field.

As usual, the "historic" gender/race component of anything is the most important thing to a Liberal. Not the substance. Not what someone does. Not what they believe. She was the first female speaker. That's it. That's all that matters. Unless the "she" is a conservative.

I regret that the nation has never come to know the actual Nancy Pelosi. Most Americans are probably familiar only with the caricature that her political opponents sketched - the effete "San Francisco liberal" who knew nothing of America outside her mink-lined cocoon, where the taps ran with chablis and nourishment consisted of unpronounceable French cheeses, served on silver platters by waiters who were certainly gay, and quite possibly married.

Sounds about right.

That's not the Nancy Pelosi known to anyone who has ever met her. While the term "San Francisco liberal" is accurate, it's also true that she grew up - and learned the rough-and-tumble of politics - in gritty Baltimore. Her father, Tommy D'Alesandro, was a legendary "Charm City" mayor and political boss. Her education in how to count votes, and keep them counted, began at a young age.

Well, then, color me impressed. She was involved in politics from an early age? Her father was a big-time "political boss" in Baltimore? She was essentially born with a Democratic leader's congressional pen stuck in her power suit?

Only the most ardent water-carriers and out of touch beltwayers would make these points and think they are actually defending someone.

Mr. Robinson, this is exactly the problem that people have with the government in our country right now. This is one of the reasons you are seeing the rise of the Tea Party that you denounce as racist and crazy and extreme.

People are sick and tired of career politicians, born into this "show business for the ugly", entitled to rule instead of blessed to represent. People who have never run a business or met a payroll or waited tables or dug a ditch or lifted a finger to do anything other than carry a community organizer's clipboard – yet demand and command from their Washington perches more money, more liberty, more attention than us flyover rubes would ever really prefer to give them.

Kapish?

He goes on...

When she appears before the cameras, Pelosi often seems stiff and almost brittle. In person, she's warm and engaging - also funny, earthy and just plain good company. She tells a great story. She turns a mean phrase. Colleagues on Capitol Hill almost universally describe her as a good boss and simply a good person.

It was frustrating to hear Republicans demonize her in their thunderous public statements, then confess privately that they really liked her. Ain't politics grand?

And demonize her they did. In their midterm campaign, Republicans attacked Pelosi more often, and more brutally, than they attacked Obama. They made her the living embodiment of Evil Washington, or of limousine socialism, or of whatever alleged plagues that Democrats were supposedly visiting upon the body politic.

Sounds familiar. Wasn't Bush sometimes stiff in front of the camera? I wonder, was Eugene Robinson frustrated by the Democrats "demonizing" Bush "in their thunderous public statements" as well?

Some of the votes she won looked impossible. On health-care reform, there appeared to be no way the House could ever be persuaded to pass the more conservative bill that had passed the Senate. At one point, she told me she could find only "maybe a dozen votes" for the measure. But she and Reid managed to find a workable set of modifications - and a clever parliamentary maneuver to pull the whole thing off.

I was at the Capitol that day when the House passed the landmark health-care bill. Tea Party groups were protesting outside, egged on by Republican members of Congress who came out onto a balcony and led the catcalls.

Pelosi did what was right for the country, and what's right isn't always what's popular. Democrats may decide they need a less polarizing figure as minority leader; if they do, well, that's politics. But I'd love to see her stay in the Democratic leadership - and I'm betting that eventually she'd find a way to take back the gavel that she pounds with such righteous authority.

Again, this is how you defend something? A "clever parliamentary maneuver to pull the whole thing off"? And this is supposed to make us feel all warm and fuzzy about Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare?

As far as doing what's "right for the country", well, I would argue that there are differing opinions on that.

We know that, to progressives, getting the foot in the health care door and then driving out private insurance so we can get to a full-commie single payer system seems like what's "right for the country". They've been telling us so for years, by the way.

But a majority of Americans do not agree with you, Eugene. A majority of Americans reject your ideas about the role of government in our everyday life. A majority of Americans, coincidentally, disagree with President Obama's ideas about that as well.

A majority of Americans made that very clear on November 2, 2010. If you still don't get that, Eugene, well, just wait until 2012. The message will likely be even louder and clearer.

The Times Square (almost) Massacre

First, the AP story, which has some chilling quotes from Faisal Shahzad:

"Brace yourselves, because the war with Muslims has just begun."

"Consider me the first droplet of the blood that will follow."

"We are only Muslims trying to defend our religion, people, homes and land, but if you call us terrorists, then we are proud terrorists and we will keep on terrorizing you until you leave our lands and people at peace."

The judge cut him off at one point to ask if he had sworn allegiance to the U.S. when he became a citizen last year. "I did swear, but I did not mean it," Shahzad said.

In his address to the court, he said Osama bin Laden "will be known as no less than Saladin of the 21st-century crusade" — a reference to the Muslim hero of the Crusades. He also said: "If I'm given 1,000 lives, I will sacrifice them all."

Somehow I doubt the third one.

And beyond the obvious death cult rambling, some questions come to mind:

1) I haven't seen any comment from Mayor Bloomberg, but I wonder if he feels bad for initially waxing detective and pinning this on teabaggers who didn't like the health care bill?

2) I wonder whether Faisal Shahzad supports the Islamic Cultural Center which is not a mosque and is located near Ground Zero but is not at Ground Zero?

3) I wonder what The Falling Man would have thought of the Islamic Cultural Center which is not a mosque and is located near Ground Zero but is not at Ground Zero?

4) How many Muslims take an oath of citizenship but do not "mean it"?

5) How many Faisal Shahzads are out there?

6) Does the punishment fit the crime?

This dude's ranting reminds me of a great column by Mark Goldblatt which says in part:

The war against Islamic totalitarianism — to call the thing what it is — is a war of perception as much as a war of bullets and bombs. Killing and capturing terrorists makes us marginally safer day by day but does not get at the core problem: the false perception among the terrorists' religious sympathizers and financial enablers (and there are millions of them) that their side has a fighting chance. Since the war is not an engagement between sovereign nations, it cannot end with a peace treaty; it can only end with the recognition that a worldwide Caliphate is not a possibility, that sharia law is not going to replace democratic government, that Islamic values are not going to trump Enlightenment values. The outcome of the war, on this level, is not in doubt. What is in doubt is whether the body count will number in the hundreds of thousands — if we continue the long hard slog of spreading democracy — or in the scores of millions — if we retreat from the world stage, defer the combat a generation or two, and bequeath to our children and grandchildren a bloodier but more recognizable world war.

Is it islamophobic to even be linking to and discussing this story? I suppose. I guess this is all just right-wing fear-mongering on my part. What can you do in such confusing times?

I am never sure if I'm supposed to believe the passive multicultists or if I am supposed to believe the jihadists – like Shahzad – who actually tell us what their goals are.

Case closed. Justice is served. We can go back to putting our heads in the sand.

Competence

Do you ever feel like you're losing your country?

Robert Krentz might have, before he was brutally murdered on his own land. This is outrageous.

DOUGLAS, Arizona (Reuters) – The murder of a prominent Arizona rancher near the Mexican border is spurring charges that Washington is doing too little to stop Mexico's raging drug war from spilling over into the United States.

Robert Krentz was shot last Saturday while working at his remote cattle ranch some 30 miles northeast of this city on the Arizona-Mexico border.

Investigators tracked the footprints of the suspected gunman about 20 miles south to the border with Mexico, prompting some authorities to blame smugglers or illegal immigrants for the killing.

"The ranchers have feared for their lives for a long time and they've told the people from Washington, but they don't pay attention to us," Michael Gomez, the mayor of Douglas, told Reuters.

"This continues to be a hot area for illegal crossings and they have to do something to stop it."

Krentz, 58, was well liked and respected in southeastern Arizona, where his family's ranch sprawled over 35,000 acres.

No arrests have been made and there is no clear motive or any named suspect, the Cochise County Sheriff's Office said.

The killing comes amid ever-more brazen and brutal attacks by cartels in northern Mexico that are fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes into the United States.

Last month, gunmen killed two Americans in Ciudad Juarez, south of El Paso, Texas, renewing fears in the United States that escalating violence may spill north over the border.

More from a column by Lionel Waxman.

Rancher Robert Krentz didn't deserve to die on his own land in the USA

By Lionel Waxman, Inside Tucson Business

Published on Friday, April 02, 2010

Robert Krentz was a good man. People who knew him say he was a humanitarian and a Good Samaritan. He didn’t deserve to die in the dirt - on his own land - at what law enforcement investigators believe was the gunpoint of an illegal border crosser. His family didn’t deserve to lose him. The nearby Cochise County communities of Douglas and Portal didn’t deserve to lose him. But all did some time on March 27. And why?

There’s plenty of blame to go around.

Let’s allocate some of that blame. Maybe it will become obvious what we have to do to make sure we don’t lose more good people in this fashion.

Most of the blame falls on the Mexican drug cartels. They are willing to do anything for money. The Mexican government has been unsuccessful in curbing their reign of terror. It is almost as though the cartels are fighting it out to prove one or more of them is the government.

Next, blame goes to the United States government. Notwithstanding many requests, federal officials have failed and refused to militarize the border which desperately needs military control. When Janet Napolitano was governor of Arizona, she seemed to understand the problem, not that she ever did anything about it. Now that she is in Washington, she serves only her beltway masters. No Army troops for the border. Not even National Guard troops are allowed.

One way the feds ensure that Arizona will not put National Guard troops on the border is by calling them up for deployment to Afghanistan. And that’s where members of the Arizona National Guard are headed this month to Afghanistan when they are needed in Douglas.

But President Obama has bigger plans for the border. Heap blame on him. He wants illegals to flood across the border because he has plans to grant them amnesty so they can vote. They will vote Democratic, and that’s more important to him than the lives of a few Americans living on the border.

To be fair, we ought to assign some small amount of blame to the farmers and ranchers who refuse to get out while the gettin’s good. They are living in a war zone. That’s not a good idea.

What can we do about it? There isn’t much we can do about the Mexican government or even the Mexican drug cartels. But there is something we can do about the U.S. government. We have to make it clear to the bozos in Washington that we will no longer tolerate being deprived of the services of our National Guard. If the feds want to fight a war in Afghanistan, that is what the regular Army is for. We must demand that the Arizona National Guard be released for service in Arizona. And we must demand they be adequately armed to meet the challenge.

And we must make certain the Washington politicians understand that we will not permit illegal aliens to vote. We’ll do this by denying them entry.

This is the only way we will ever get our state back. Otherwise, we’ll wake up one day and find ourselves living in Aztlán with bandits running wild in the streets.

And if we don’t do that, then the bulk of the blame must fall on ourselves. This is still the United States of America. This is our country. We make the rules. We must enforce them.

The health care debate is already over

I present my two cents on the issue. And it's not likely to win me much popularity. But as far as I'm concerned I don't understand why we're debating anyway. The issue reflects the larger shift society is making toward obsessive and insufferable "health" and "safety", unreasonable regulations, and micro-management of all facets of daily life. In my completely pessimistic view, the debate is pointless. Even if the current health care "reform" push is defeated, it will just come back again and again until it is fully realized. On that sunny note, let me begin.

There are many factors but mostly we have ourselves to blame for the mess that our health care system is in.

For starters, the real cost of medical treatment is hidden to the average person because insurance companies or the government pays those costs. You have an out of pocket co-payment or deductible, which is generally small, compared to the hundreds and thousands doled out by that third party. But the actual cost of the doctor's expertise and the drugs and technology is nebulous because it is not market-determined but determined through bureaucratic and administrative and middle-man costs. The patient's ability to pay does not factor into the pricing of medical care in any way.

Also, in recent years doctors have had to increase prices to help pay for the unreasonable rise in malpractice protection costs. Doctors have no choice but to pass that cost on to the customer. And no, that customer is not you, but the insurance company who pays on your behalf. Since the insurance company must pay more, it stands to reason they are going to charge you more to carry that policy. The insurance company is in the business to provide a service and to make money — that should not shock anyone — so when you file frequent claims and over-use your insurance, as many do, it should not be hard to understand why they are raising your premiums when the policy renews. You are costing them more, and you are still paying a very small fraction of what they pay on your behalf. And that's just for private individual policies. Imagine the complexities insurance companies deal with trying to price group coverage for employers and large companies? This is not to defend insurance companies or single out the unfortunate souls with insurance horror stories. I am simply pointing out a fact about how insurance works.

Also, I don't think it's strictly anecdotal because I know and work with plenty of folks who do this, but a lot of people run to the doctor for just about every little problem these days. Yes, it's a cliché, but is it not true? Think of the people you know. How many of them are like that? A headache, sniffles, a mild fever, a stubbed toe, the blues, et al. Can it be denied that many doctor visits occur for non-chronic, minor conditions that could probably be treated at home? Or ridden out? And, of course, everyone wants the best doctors, the best diagnostic tests and equipment, the fanciest MRI machines and newest technologies. None of these are cheap. Yet we all expect and even demand them and have no real sense of the cost because, in reality, someone else is paying. If people paid directly out-of-pocket for most of the medical care they received, and only used insurance for the most catastrophic situations, it stands to reason they would be more discerning and "consume" less health care generally. Prices would automatically come down because all of those for-profit doctors and wellness centers and hospitals and drug companies would have to compete better for your money.

Competition is the key. And an honest person admits there isn't anything in the current legislation being discussed that truly addresses that. Adding a "public option" — essentially a government insurance company — does nothing to increase competition or address the core issue: the direct cost of health care. It simply creates another insurance company to choose from when deciding on who will pay the ridiculous medical costs for you. And since government consistently underpays doctors and providers this really will have no impact on reducing costs. It just means a larger share of health care expenditures will be underpaid.

On top of all of that, and perhaps most importantly, we refuse to change our lifestyles in any significant way. We continue to eat fast food and processed junk, smoke, drink and lead sedentary lifestyles with little or no exercise. We know all of that is bad, but we are too lazy to do anything about it. In other words, we want to have our cake and eat it too. And by the way, personally, I am completely in favor of letting people do whatever they want, no matter how bad, dumb or harmful. More on that in a moment. But we want to do whatever we want, then have the consequences of those behaviors taken care of by the best health system in the world, and we want to pay very little for that quality and excellence. And if things go wrong, we want to make sure we can file a mega-lawsuit as well.

Many people would be just fine with the government taking over all aspects of the health care system. Do away with private insurance and just have a huge universal Medicare system for every citizen. "Health Care for All" as they say. We're already paying a lot through insurance, what's the difference if we just replace those insurance premiums with taxes to Uncle Sam? The irony is, private insurance has no say-so in your lifestyle, but all of those people who love the idea of a "universal" health care system can be sure that when government is invested in your health, they certainly can and will have an interest in monitoring and managing your lifestyle.

Universalizing health care forces me to be an investor in your lifestyle. Currently, I don't care what you do. But when taxpayers are footing the bill, you can be sure we will all take an interest in what you do, even if on a philosophical level we couldn't care less. And that is the problem. In a free society, I don't want to take an interest in your lifestyle. I don't want to be forced to care about what you do. Because I might have some crazy ideas about what your lifestyle should be, and you might have some crazy ideas about what my lifestyle should be. So why would we want to do that to each other? Why would we want to take that power out of the disinterested private sector and hand it to the very interested public sector?

To take this back where I began, frankly speaking, I think this whole debate is a moot point anyway. I believe we will not only have health care "reform", I believe eventually we will indeed have a fully socialized universal system where the government funds all health care expense and it is paid for through taxes. It may be 10 years or 30 years, but it will happen. Why? Because there are just too many people in this country who feel entitled to it. Who believe it is a "human right". And those people reproduce, and their offspring will have the same mental condition. Combine that with the fact that it's just an emotionally appealing idea that's very difficult to oppose. After all, who can be against "health care for all"? What person wishes to be labeled cold and heartless for saying no to something that feels so good and right? It's an unfortunate but unstoppable tide.

I'm sure the intentions are pure. It's not a "bolshevik plot". But if the end result looks the same, what's the difference? I am not worried about death panels and abortion funding and "cornhusker kickbacks". It's not the delivery of health care that's going to be rationed, it's those cheeseburgers and beers and sugary treats and countless other little liberties that will be. Smoking bans and trans-fat bans are only the beginning. The red-tape killjoys of the world are ready and willing to hang the figurative hazard sign on just about everything you do. And when all health care is governmentalized, they will. So be sure and turn out the lights on your way out, America, the party's over. We'll have only our very safe selves to blame.

The meaning of Massachusetts

It turns out conservatism isn't dead after all.

It was only a year or so ago we were being told that conservatism had been relegated to the ash heap of history. An obsolete and outdated philosophy bitterly clung to only by angry white tea baggers, racist rubes and gun-totin' hicks.

Recall Newsweek declaring that we are all socialists now. And Colin Powell's assertion that people wanted more government in their lives — not less.

Not surprisingly, rumors of conservatism's death were premature. In fact I'm not sure it can die in what remains a center-right country. But it can be temporarily abandoned. And it certainly was by a big-spending Republican president and congress during the early 2000's. Of course you could argue they had bigger things to focus on such as defending the country against the jihadist onslaught. But that is only a partial excuse.

In many ways we conservatives should thank Barack Obama for stirring the sleeping giant.

A good many people had become turned off to politics. Tired of the abrasive chatter and negativity. After eight years of Bush and the bitter 2000 election and truthers and other weird national distractions it could only be the election of a hard left ideologue — a true believer — to rattle us back to our senses. Had the Democratic party filtered out a pragmatic centrist it is possible none of the current hyper-partisanship would be happening.

But as I have opined before, the Democratic party is historically awful at vetting their candidates during the primary process. At least in the last couple of decades (See Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry). So while we were inundated with commentary that Bush had ruined the Republican brand and that conservatism would wander in the wilderness for a generation, when you look at the big picture, the truth is Bush's unpopularity and the GOP's following slide over those eight years were merely a blip compared to the larger thirty-year decline of the Democratic party.

A decline that has forged that party's angry identity and has led it far from the mainstream.

It is now a party that has allowed its leadership to ratchet their platform and policy way to the left. It is no longer the Democratic party of our fathers and grandfathers. No longer the party of the working man. It's the party of ex-60's radicals and neo-socialist Europhiles and Alinsky revolutionaries.

Kooks in suits. All adopting the appearance of normality. Becoming the man to beat the man. The modern American fifth column of the glorious workers revolution. Down with the long struggle. Patient. Creeping in. Hollowing out the capitalist system from the inside.

It has become something that many Americans find distasteful and scary. A party that welcomes the Cindy Sheehans and Ward Churchills and Noam Chomskys and the 20% or so (my estimate) of people who actually believe maybe we were behind the 9/11 attack — or at least deserved it. While the other 80% — Republican and Democrat — who still cherish the foundations and institutions and goodness of this country find that kind of thinking repulsive and offensive.

It has become a party that is both arrogant and ignorant at the same time. A party that believes it is entitled to rule instead of blessed to represent. More interested in fomenting victimhood in order to sustain voter rolls than to solve real problems.

I believe that while the natural born instinct of most Americans is to resist big government. It is also natural to resist a group which openly works to tear down this country.

The perception that the Democratic party of today doesn't take national security and American sovereignty seriously exists because, well, they don't. They are too busy domestically trying to transform this country into a sunlit dreamland where all needs are attended to by the State.

An ideal and just and "fair" society forcefully created by redistributive social and economic change. A great societal realignment to atone for centuries of imperialist oppression and other perceived global sins. Utopia, at long last — or at least Switzerland.

While the rest of us who live in reality understand that while improvement is a necessity, perfection is a fantasy. And in some cases not a harmless one.

Now the mask is off. And many people — including independents and blue-collar Democrats in Massachusetts — are rejecting what they see. If this is not a repudiation of the current administration's stated agenda what else could it possibly be?

With such a stunningly quick reversal in national opinion, then, how do you explain what happened in 2008 anyway? I'm not sure it can ever be completely understood. But essentially Barack Obama rode an anti-Bush, anti-war wave into office with just the right mixture of superbly canned happy talk about hope and change, GOP missteps and media worship on a level not seen before. No one — except for a few of us — seemed to want to question seriously whether this person was actually right for the job. Whether this former street radical and liberal law professor and cultural Marxist actually deserved to be given the privilege of leading this great nation and the solemn honor of commanding her armies.

It always seemed to me that Obama was just the same old stale populist leftism we've heard for years. Platitudes and cliches. Tired and empty and meaningless words. But many were just taken in by the American Idol marketing, followed the conventional wisdom, and dared not be called out as someone who didn't appreciate the historical significance. After all, if you disagreed with Obama the candidate or didn't care for him, you had the added racial guilt to live with.

Those of us who felt we had the correct sense seem to have been proven right. That this is a man that is all about words and appearances and less about substance and action. So after a year of our President's constant and sometimes bizarre speechifying the backlash has culminated with the stunning victory of Scott Brown in Massachusetts. A Republican from a deep blue state. A regular guy. A moderate. An average American who drives a truck and believes in limiting government and reducing taxes and treating terrorists as terrorists. A citizen legislator who understands that government does not increase the standard of living of people — liberty does.

The result of this victory seems to have many of the left in a simultaneous state of confusion, denial and delusion.

Well, as our President's former pastor would say, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Some have an amazing ability to self-delude

President Obama said this on January 5, 2010 during his remarks about the pantybomber:

But make no mistake: We will close Guantanamo prison, which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaeda. In fact, that was an explicit rationale for the formation of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. And, as I've always said, we will do so – we will close the prison in a manner that keeps the American people safe and secure.

I am not even going to address in-depth the question of how Gitmo has "damaged our national security interests." But I would like to know exactly what Obama means by this and in what specific ways Gitmo has "damaged our national security interests." Did it "damage our national security interests" before 9/11 when it did not even exist as a terrorist detention center? Could it be there are other "recruiting tools" – such as the chance to kill Americans – that attract these fools to the jihadist death cult?

More importantly though, based on The President's logic, would it be fair to say that one of the objectives of the terrorists is to have Gitmo closed? So, by closing Gitmo, we will be doing something that the terrorists want. In other words, terrorist activity directly results in a desired goal and a change in American policy. They commit slaughter, babble on about holy war, and The Great Satan decides to close Gitmo.

Yes. This certainly seems like it will help to discourage future terrorist activity.

Or. Maybe. Perhaps. Just maybe. Appeasement and weakness actually encourage and motivate terrorists even more.

After all, it was Bin Laden who famously said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse."

America did not ask for this war and would be happy for it to be over tomorrow. But the other side is not interested in ending this war.

And that is really unfortunate since America just doesn't seem to be interested in being the strong horse anymore.