Capitalist Fanboys

Liberalism's problem in two graphs

2012-02-12T12:01:00.005-05:00

You'd never know this or this reading the editorial page of the newspaper.

The real "crazy" talk

2010-11-07T15:06:00.025-05:00

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

2010-10-05T20:00:00.026-04:00

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

2010-09-29T17:44:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-03T12:11:00.010-04:00

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.

The health care debate is already over

2010-03-10T22:15:00.011-05:00

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

2010-01-24T11:38:00.045-05:00

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

2010-01-06T23:32:00.008-05:00

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.

With department heads like these...

2009-12-29T18:17:00.004-05:00

With people like this in charge of our security, maybe it's a good thing the TSA chief position hasn't been filled yet.

BBC questions Global Warming

2009-10-11T23:55:00.005-04:00

Amazing. Just amazing to see the BBC of all sources printing a story which questions Global Warming. They rightly point out that indeed there has been zero increase in global temperatures since 1998.

When the BBC starts running stories like this, you have to wonder how long the Global Warming mongers have to pass their prosperity-killing policies.

Thomas Friedman officially goes off the deep end

2009-09-10T23:09:00.022-04:00

Until he adopted the global warming scheme as his life cause, I was actually a fan of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. I thought his writings and views on the Middle East and the Arab-Israeli conflict were among the most intelligent and sharp you could find.

But in the last few years he's gone further and further into koo koo land, and the final push over the cliff and into the abyss of lunacy took place a few days ago in his latest column.

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.

So, there it is. Communist, oppressive, human-rights-abusing, protest-'discouraging', soul-crushing China is the model for which we free people in democratic America should now be looking to. Because, despite those inconvenient 'drawbacks', their 'enlightened' leaders really know how to get stuff done.

From the 'top down'.

You almost don't know where to begin. So I'll just let it speak for itself.

As with my previous post, there's been a lot of the Liberal-Progressive mind exposed here lately. Call it Libs Gone Wild, if you will. Naked and joyous to the world.

It's both amazing and horrifying at the same time.

Jonah Goldberg nails it here.

UPDATE: But, once again, it should be noted any time someone is complaining about the GOP being the party of "no": The GOP does not have the votes to stop any legislation the Democrats want to pass.

The GOP is not what is stopping Obama and his merry band of Dems from passing their paradigm-shifting, massive entitlement programs during a recession and two wars. What is stopping them is that they simply lack the political courage to ram these things through on their own. They want the political cover of 'bipartisanship' when these ideas inevitably fail.

"They may not know what's good for them"

2009-08-12T20:33:00.013-04:00

Andrea Mitchell, of state-run MSNBC, recently had one of those unguarded moments when the true impulse of the Liberal mind reveals itself:

She means you, by the way. The sheep. The cattle.

Only the elite minds of Washington and New York are enlightened enough to guide all of you rubes in flyover country.

Right?

This really shouldn't surprise anyone who understands how Liberals think and view the world. Notice how easily the words rolled off the tongue.

Leftists constantly pat themselves on the back for their 'good intentions' and concern for the poor and downtrodden. Problem is, it's all bull.

The real motivation underlying the Liberal-Progressive mind is quite simply the urge to control. The urge to tell you how to live your life. The urge to force. To dominate.

Moments like this one crystallize that notion.

Friends on my side often complain about the obvious bias in the state-run media. I say fine. Set them free. Let them show their true selves.

They seem to be doing it more and more lately.

Recent must-reads

2009-07-26T15:51:00.002-04:00

Pat Buchanan — Socialist America Sinking

After half a century of fighting encroachments upon freedom in America, journalist Garet Garrett published “The People’s Pottage.” A year later, in 1954, he died. “The People’s Pottage” opens thus:

“There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.”

Garrett wrote of a revolution within the form. While outwardly America appeared the same, a revolution within had taken place that was now irreversible. One need only glance at where we were before the New Deal, where we are and where we are headed to see how far we are off the course the Founding Fathers set for our republic.

Charles Krauthammer — Why Obamacare is sinking

This is not about politics? Then why is it, to take but the most egregious example, that in this grand health-care debate we hear not a word about one of the worst sources of waste in American medicine: the insane cost and arbitrary rewards of our malpractice system?

When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for malpractice insurance before he even turns on the light in his office or hires his first nurse, who do you think pays? Patients, through higher doctors’ fees to cover the insurance.

And with jackpot justice that awards one claimant zillions while others get nothing — and one-third of everything goes to the lawyers — where do you think that money comes from? The insurance companies, who then pass it on to you in higher premiums.

But the greatest waste is the hidden cost of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits. Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law.

Tort reform would yield tens of billions in savings. Yet you cannot find it in the Democratic bills. And Obama breathed not a word about it in the full hour of his health-care news conference. Why? No mystery. The Democrats are parasitically dependent on huge donations from trial lawyers.

George Will — Cold Shoulder to Climate 'Urgency'

The costs of weaning the U.S. economy off much of its reliance on carbon are uncertain, but certainly large. The climatic benefits of doing so are uncertain but, given the behavior of those pesky 5 billion, almost certainly small, perhaps minuscule, even immeasurable.

Fortunately, skepticism about the evidence that supposedly supports current alarmism about climate change is growing, as is evidence that, whatever the truth about the problem turns out to be, U.S. actions cannot be significantly ameliorative.

Mark Steyn — Gaia's Right

Environmentalism opposes that kind of mobility. It seeks to return us to the age of kings, when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite. Sometimes they will be hereditary monarchs, such as the Prince of Wales. Sometimes they will be merely the gilded princelings of the government apparatus — Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi. In the old days, they were endowed with absolute authority by God.

Today, they’re endowed by Mother Nature, empowered by Gaia to act on her behalf. But the object remains control — to constrain you in a million ways, most of which would never have occurred to Henry VIII, who, unlike the new cap-and-trade bill, was entirely indifferent as to whether your hovel was “energy efficient.” The old rationale for absolute monarchy — Divine Right — is a tough sell in a democratic age. But the new rationale — Gaia’s Right — has proved surprisingly plausible.

Head, meet sand

2009-07-25T17:28:00.010-04:00

A great piece by Bill Muehlenberg on why Political Correctness is not just silly, it's dangerous. You'll want to read the whole thing, but here's a highlight:

Political Correctness is certainly annoying, foolish and a pain in the neck. However, it can also be quite dangerous, especially when it is applied to issues of national security, policing and justice. In the attempt of our elites to make sure we do not offend anyone, ordinary citizens can find themselves in positions of real danger.

Consider a recent news item about the effort to turn all of our leaders – including the police – into politically correct lackies, regardless of the harmful consequences. Here is how an Age article describes this situation:

“A guidebook for politicians, police and public servants on how to talk about Muslims and terrorism without implicating the religion of Islam should be released by the end of the year. The book, A Lexicon on Terror, was conceived by Victoria Police and the Australian Multicultural Foundation, but was so popular it became a national project, an international conference on Islamophobia at Monash University heard yesterday.”

The article continues, “Multicultural Foundation head Hass Dellal told The Age many Muslims interpreted ‘war on terror’ as a war on Islam. Other terms to be avoided included ‘Islamic terrorism’, ‘Islamo-fascists’, ‘Middle Eastern appearance’, and ‘moderate Muslim’, which suggested to Muslims they were inadequate in their faith.”

While seeking to help different groups get along in order to achieve a harmonious society may be praiseworthy, there are at least three big problems with all of this. First, this attempt at PC simply denies reality. The sad truth is, the overwhelming majority of the acts of terrorism which we read about on a regular basis, including last week’s attacks on two hotels in Jakarta, are committed by Muslims.

No amount of PC can deny the truth that there is a war against the West taking place, and that this comes primarily from those who call themselves Muslim. From the September 11 attacks to the Bali bombings, the Madrid train bombings, the London underground attacks, the Mumbai terrorist attack, and the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore, to name just a few, what we have is violence done by Muslims in the name of Islam.

To ignore or seek to downplay the source of these attacks does nothing except benefit those who are carrying them out – Muslims. When we are faced with mortal danger, the first step in self defence is to know who the enemy is. Sure, not all Muslims approve of such violent jihad, but that does not do away with the fact that the terrorist threat we face is overwhelmingly an Islamic terrorist threat.

Here's a related story about the Islamofascist group Hizb ut-Tahrir and their recent conference in Chicago which was called "Fall of Capitalism, Rise of Islam". From Fox News:

A group committed to establishing an international Islamic empire and reportedly linked to Al Qaeda is stepping up its Western recruitment efforts by holding its first official conference in the U.S.

Hizb ut-Tahrir is a global Sunni network with reported ties to confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda in Iraq's onetime leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. It has operated discreetly in the U.S. for decades.

Now, it is coming out of the shadows and openly hosting a July 19 conference entitled, "The Fall of Capitalism and the Rise of Islam," at a posh Hilton hotel in a suburb of Chicago.

Hizb ut-Tahrir insists that it does not engage in terrorism, and it is not recognized by the State Department as a known terror group.

But some terrorism experts say it may be even more dangerous than many groups that are on the terror list.

"Hizb ut-Tahrir is one of the oldest, largest indoctrinating organizations for the ideology known as jihadism," Walid Phares, director of the Future of Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told FOXNews.com.

Phares said that Hizb ut-Tahrir, rather than training members to carry out terrorist acts like Al Qaeda, focuses instead on indoctrinating youths between ages of 9 and 18 to absorb the ideology that calls for the formation of an empire — or "khilafah" — that will rule according to Islamic law and condones any means to achieve it, including militant jihad.

Hizb ut-Tahrir often says that its indoctrination "prepares the infantry" that groups like Al Qaeda take into battle, Phares said.

"It's like a middle school that prepares them to be recruited by the high school, which is Al Qaeda," he said. "One would compare them to Hitler youth. ... It's an extremely dangerous organization."

Phares said Hizb ut-Tahrir has strongholds in Western countries, including Britain, France and Spain, and clearly is looking to strengthen its base in the U.S.

More about the recent conference in Chicago from Townhall.com:

On the morning of July 17th 2009, coordinated explosions tore through a pair of luxury hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia—killing nine people and injuring dozens more. The attacks are believed to be the work of a local Islamist terror outfit known as Jemaah Islamiyah, an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Southeast Asia.

On the morning of July 19th 2009, hundreds of American Muslims gathered at a luxury Hotel in suburban Chicago. They were attending the first ever U.S. meeting of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic supremacist organization whose extreme teachings have influenced hundreds of thousands of Muslims worldwide. Not coincidentally, the group has a strong following in Indonesia.

Put simply, Hizb ut-Tahrir serves as an ideological incubator that radicalizes Muslims, some of whom go on to join Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Its roster of notorious alumni includes 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and former Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. Its leaders have urged Muslim governments to hinder international war efforts against radical Islam, and its literature has defended jihad as “legal, an obligation…the apex of Islamic ethics.” An official organization leaflet published in March called for the declaration of “a state of war” against the United States.

According to InvestigativeProject.org , attendees at Sunday’s event in Chicago heard from a number of speakers throughout the day, all addressing the event’s theme, “Fall of Capitalism, Rise of Islam.” One featured Imam offered this message to the assembled group:

“If [Americans] offer [Muslims] the sun, or the moon, or a nice raise, or a passport, or a house in the suburbs, or even a place to pray at the job—on the condition that we stop calling for Islam as a complete way of life, we should never do that, ever do that—unless and until Islam becomes victorious, or we die in the attempt.”

Also related, Turkish police arrest 'Islamists', from BBC News:

Turkish police have arrested almost 200 people suspected of being members of the banned Islamist group Hizb al-Tahrir al-Islami, reports say.

The arrests were made early in the morning during simultaneous raids in 23 cities, the Anatolia news agency said.

Turkish police have repeatedly detained members of the group in the past.

Founded in 1953, Hizb al-Tahrir seeks to establish a pan-Islamic state covering all Muslim lands. It is banned in many countries throughout the world.

The group is widely viewed as extremist and anti-Semitic. However, it denies these charges and says it preaches non-violent political Islam.

Yes. The Chicago in Illinois which is in America.

And finally, another Islamic 'honor' killing.

GOP: far from dead

2009-07-19T17:42:00.007-04:00

Marc Rotterman, a senior fellow at the John Locke Foundation, wrote a good column in my local State-run media fishwrap yesterday about Obama's "persuasion gap". With the wacky Democratic party unwisely overreaching in all sorts of ways up in Washington, the backlash could come sooner rather than later.

The piece begins:

The cliché that bad policy makes bad politics is beginning to be borne out again with the drop in President Barack Obama's poll numbers. A new Gallup Poll shows Obama's job approval rating at 56 percent -- down from his honeymoon high of 66 percent.

A job approval rating of 56 percent this early in his presidency is still very respectable by historical standards, but the dropoff in key swing states among independents is a cause for alarm for the White House's inner circle.

In the 2006 and 2008 election cycles, independents had virtually voted in lockstep with the Democratic Party, resulting in the Democrats' seizing the majority in the House and Senate in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

Obama and his team mistakenly, in my view, misread his election as a mandate to institute the largest peacetime expansion of government in the history of this country. Now, as unemployment numbers rise and the economy continues to falter, it is becoming increasingly clear that independents are rejecting the Obama administration's expansive and wildly expensive programs.

Reality is setting in, and Obama's soaring rhetoric is not matching the results in communities around the country and at the kitchen table.

Numerous polls reflect the growing skepticism of Obama's programs. The middle class sees no tangible results (jobs) and understands that there is a huge downside to all this debt. People wonder out loud how the government can create jobs or for that matter run General Motors.

Exactly.

Read the whole article here.

Joe Biden exemplifies the soulless politician who talks a lot while saying nothing

2009-07-16T22:28:00.021-04:00

This is possibly the most egregious example of a politician completely flapping his gums without really saying anything.

We all know the Vice President is a total windbag. But even for him, this is particularly horrid.

From CNSNews.com:

Vice President Joe Biden told people attending an AARP town hall meeting that unless the Democrat-supported health care plan becomes law the nation will go bankrupt and that the only way to avoid that fate is for the government to spend more money.

“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”

“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.

“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Some politicians are liars. Some are cheaters.

And some are just empty suits. Devoid of blood, brain, and soul.

I really believe Joe Biden doesn't actually think about or listen to what he says. I honestly think he just hopes people pick up on some keywords like "must pass health care" and "bankrupt" and that they don't really pay any attention.

And that requires either an appalling level of stupidity or just an extreme amount of condescension toward the average person.

Read the entire story here.

Crock

2009-07-12T23:31:00.009-04:00

Fear-mongering moonbats at their worst:

WASHINGTON — If the Senate doesn't pass a bill to cut global warming, Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer says, there will be dire results: droughts, floods, fires, loss of species, damage to agriculture, worsening air pollution and more.

She says there's a huge upside, however, if the Senate does act: millions of clean-energy jobs, reduced reliance on foreign oil and less pollution for the nation's children

I grow beyond weary of this nonsense. The whole story from McClatchy is here.

Memo to Colin Powell: Really??????????

2009-05-07T19:37:00.004-04:00

Colin Powell said this on Monday: "Americans are looking for more government in their lives, not less."

Of course, he said a lot more, like bashing Rush and Sarah Palin and how the GOP is in shambles and how he knows how to fix it. But for me, the doozy above is what caught my eye.

Anyone who knows me knows that veterans get an almost infinite free pass. I have all the respect in the world for General Powell — but somehow I think this is more about repairing his legacy after the unfortunate "U.N. WMD slideshow incident" than it is actually helping the GOP.

And for the Rush haters, I really don't get it. Why does he get under your skin so much? He's a dude on the radio, he can't raise your taxes, or send your kids to war, or ban spicy mustard on burgers — he's just a dude on the radio.

Get over it already.

An Enchanted Evening at The White House

2009-05-06T22:30:00.004-04:00

Do liberal reporters ever actually listen to themselves?

I guess this is the new, hopey changey, metrosexual White House press corps.

Can you imagine W getting that kind of softball?

'Extremists' protest ginormous government on tax day

2009-04-16T20:19:00.005-04:00

As normal, average, everyday Americans across the country yesterday gathered to protest bailouts, higher taxes and general government bloating, the media and leftwing blogosphere predictably treated the whole affair with the usual snarky, mocking, and dismissive tone. [Examples here, here, and here.]

Here are a few things the mockers should note:

These protests are not about Barack Obama, he's just a catalyst, but not the source of frustration. If anything, Republicans on Capital Hill should be paying the most attention to these protests. More votes in favor of bailouts, amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap and trade, unaffordable universal healthcare, and any other such rushed, non-debated nonsense from those clowns will certainly open them up to future election defeats.

These protests are a backlash against decades of growth in Federal power, including growth under Republican administrations. So by all means, save the 'bitter clingers who just don't like Obama' criticism for something else.

These protests are not just a bunch of radical right-wing Jesus Campers out looking to network. Read or watch just about any [unbiased] report about any of the hundreds of gatherings and that's clear. Beyond that, I personally know a few registered Democrats who attended the event in Raleigh, NC. Apparently, not every Democrat is on board with the current direction of this country. Who knew?

Despite the constant talking point mantra, this was not some carefully crafted Fox News conspiracy, that's just another straw man argument that the left are masters of. Fox was simply the only network giving these protests any coverage beforehand.

Finally, it can't be coincidence that our current Department of Homeland Security just recently issued a report to law enforcement agencies nationwide about the rise of "right-wing extremist activity". Apparently, the DHS secretary feels "right-wing extremists" are every bit as dangerous to Americans as Islamic terrorists — and other than being absurd, that's just sick and sad. Especially when you consider the fast and loose definition of "right-wing extremists" given in the report.

Truly shameless.

Darwin vs. The Islamists

2009-04-11T10:18:00.006-04:00

This is pretty interesting. From The Wall Street Journal:

ISTANBUL -- As scientists around the world celebrate the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's seminal work on evolution, Adnan Oktar, a college dropout turned theorist of Islamic creationism, is working on the fifth volume of a 14-part masterwork that he says will bury Darwinism once and for all.

"Darwin and his theory are dead," says Mr. Oktar, founder and honorary president of the Science Research Foundation, an Istanbul outfit dedicated to debunking the Victorian-era English naturalist. Darwin, says his 52-year-old Turkish scourge, is "Satan's biggest trick on humanity."

Mr. Oktar, who briefly studied interior design, hasn't had much success swaying scientists with the weight of his research. "He is a complete and utter ignoramus," says Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and Oxford University professor.

The physical weight of Mr. Oktar's work, however, is considerable. Each volume of his anti-Darwin magnum opus, "Atlas of Creation," weighs more than 13 pounds. Also weighing in on his side are very aggressive lawyers. They've repeatedly gone to court in Turkey to silence critics whom Mr. Oktar accuses of spreading "lies and insults." Scores of Web sites have been banned at his behest.

Read the entire story here.

The glass is half empty

2009-04-09T15:37:00.005-04:00

This is more than a little disturbing. According to Rasmussen, only 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism.

Let me repeat that: Only 53% of Americans believe capitalism is better than socialism.

Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.

Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.

At the risk of sounding kooky, I don't think there can be any doubt that the indoctrination via watered-down and politically-correct curricula in our government schools, undeniable liberal media bias, Hollywood pop culture that celebrates general pinko-ness, and an overall dumbing down of the electorate have all contributed to this frightening reality.

The foundations, traditions and institutions of this country have been aggressively deconstructed for so long now that it's actually working. The light of the shining city on the hill is fading.

America's sunset is upon us. Well, it was good while it lasted anyway.

John Stossel: Bailouts and Bull

2009-04-04T13:38:00.007-04:00

John Stossel has always been one of my favorite all-around dudes. No one points out how we're pretty much idiots, who get led around by even bigger idiots (politicians), quite as well as he does.

If you missed his recent 20/20 special called "Bailouts and Bull", here are my favorite parts:

Daniel Hannan: A star is born?

2009-03-31T21:14:00.009-04:00

I've been busy, what can I say?

This clip has been making the rounds but I couldn't resist posting it myself. What a great example of common sense and the dressing down of a big government politician like Gordon Brown.

You might be witnessing a future Prime Minister of Great Britain:

The transcript:

Prime Minister, I see you’ve already mastered the essential craft of the European politician, namely the ability to say one thing in this chamber and a very different thing to your home electorate. You’ve spoken here about free trade, and amen to that. Who would have guessed, listening to you just now, that you were the author of the phrase ‘British jobs for British workers’ and that you have subsidised, where you have not nationalised outright, swathes of our economy, including the car industry and many of the banks? Perhaps you would have more moral authority in this house if your actions matched your words? Perhaps you would have more legitimacy in the councils of the world if the United Kingdom were not going into this recession in the worst condition of any G20 country?

The truth, Prime Minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country as a whole is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around £20,000. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child. Now, once again today you try to spread the blame around; you spoke about an international recession, international crisis. Well, it is true that we are all sailing together into the squalls. But not every vessel in the convoy is in the same dilapidated condition. Other ships used the good years to caulk their hulls and clear their rigging; in other words – to pay off debt. But you used the good years to raise borrowing yet further. As a consequence, under your captaincy, our hull is pressed deep into the water line under the accumulated weight of your debt. We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary; countries where the IMF have already been called in. Now, it’s not that you’re not apologising; like everyone else I have long accepted that you’re pathologically incapable of accepting responsibility for these things. It’s that you’re carrying on, wilfully worsening our situation, wantonly spending what little we have left. Last year - in the last twelve months – a hundred thousand private sector jobs have been lost and yet you created thirty thousand public sector jobs.

Prime Minister, you cannot carry on for ever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt. And when you repeat, in that wooden and perfunctory way, that our situation is better than others, that we’re ‘well-placed to weather the storm’, I have to tell you that you sound like a Brezhnev-era apparatchik giving the party line. You know, and we know, and you know that we know that it’s nonsense! Everyone knows that Britain is worse off than any other country as we go into these hard times. The IMF has said so; the European Commission has said so; the markets have said so – which is why our currency has devalued by thirty percent. And soon the voters too will get their chance to say so. They can see what the markets have already seen: that you are the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government.

This dude is righteous, and his blog is here.

Global Whining

2009-03-14T16:02:00.011-04:00

According to Gallup, an increasing number of Americans think Global Warming is exaggerated:

Although a majority of Americans believe the seriousness of global warming is either correctly portrayed in the news or underestimated, a record-high 41% now say it is exaggerated. This represents the highest level of public skepticism about mainstream reporting on global warming seen in more than a decade of Gallup polling on the subject.

This is good news for common sense, and bad news for L. Ron Gore and the Climate pimps. More and more people are starting to see this nonsense for what it is.

Whenever thinking about this subject it is always good to revisit the classic Confessions of a Global Warming Agnostic by Charles Krauthammer from NRO. A highlight:

For a century, an ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous knowledge class — social planners, scientists, intellectuals, experts, and their left-wing political allies — arrogated to themselves the right to rule either in the name of the oppressed working class (Communism) or, in its more benign form, by virtue of their superior expertise in achieving the highest social progress by means of state planning (socialism).

Two decades ago, however, socialism and communism died rudely, then were buried forever by the empirical demonstration of the superiority of market capitalism everywhere from Thatcher’s England to Deng’s China, where just the partial abolition of socialism lifted more people out of poverty more rapidly than ever in human history.

Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual Left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but — even better — in the name of Earth itself.

Environmentalists are Gaia’s priests, instructing us in her proper service and casting out those who refuse to genuflect. (See Newsweek above.) And having proclaimed the ultimate commandment — carbon chastity — they are preparing the supporting canonical legislation that will tell you how much you can travel, what kind of light you will read by, and at what temperature you may set your bedroom thermostat.

The dismal tide

2009-03-06T18:06:00.002-05:00

Should any of this surprise us?

The Dow is crashing.

Job losses are mounting.

The general unease is growing.

Universal Health Care that is neither constitutional nor affordable is creeping.

The Global Warming swindle — with its boring and brainwashed moonbats — is marching forward.

The War on Capitalism is in full swing.

The War on Terror is in full retreat.

But again I ask, should any of this surprise us?

When you elect someone with zero executive experience, who marinated in radicalism their entire adult life, who learned the art of the "manufactured crisis" from Moonbat-in-chief Saul Alinsky, who pretended to be a centrist during an unvetted campaign — should any of this surprise us?

Thanks, Obama voters.

Are you eating crow yet?

The day the world went away

2009-03-03T21:36:00.005-05:00

Because I'm a sucker for dystopian stories about free people struggling against tyranny — in whatever form it takes.

And because it just looks like it's going to be freaking good:

Another doozy of a cover from Newsweek

2009-03-02T22:41:00.025-05:00

Let's learn to live with Radical Islam?

Are these people kidding me?

Maybe they're right. After all, this comment on Gateway Pundit probably represents a majority opinion:

There is no such thing as "radical", "moderate", or "liberal" Islam. There is only Islam itself, which is the complete way of life prescribed by Allah (swt) for all of humanity.

Look about you. Everywhere you look, Islam is advancing and the corrupt and man-made societies are in disorganized retreat.

Every day, more people embrace Islam. New mosques rise everywhere while churches and pagan temples fall into disrepair or are used as public latrines. Every day, more Muslim children are born while the cross worshipers and Jews slaughter their unborn children in filthy abortion mills.

The long struggle is nearly finished. It is time to act. Renounce your false religions now. Embrace Islam and live in peace in submission to the will of Almighty Allah (swt).

Your grandchildren will be Muslim.

Allahu akbar!
American Muslim | 03.02.09 - 9:16 pm |

Read more about this insanity here.

And people ask me why I'm pessimistic.

With each passing day there seems to be more evidence that a large number of Westerners — including many Americans — are willing to just raise the white flag and submit. Apparently believing that this is just a new reality we must accept. "This war is lost," as Harry Reid might say.

And hey, it's probably mostly our fault for creating Radical Islam in the first place, right?

Mr. Zakaria, and for that matter, "American Muslim", you should probably note that despite my pessimism I still believe there are many Americans who will resist Radical Islam with every ounce of their beings. Perhaps, if necessary, until their last breaths.

Count me as one of them.

There will come a day when the death-cult that is Radical Islam is dispensed upon the ash heap of history, like so many other failed ideologies before. Until that day comes, there is no 'learning to live' with it.

There should be only defiance of it.

10 reasons to disengage

2009-03-01T11:00:00.020-05:00

Some may have wondered why I've been posting less frequently — and when I have, it's been of the more frivolous variety. *

Well, I guess all the gloom and doom is actually starting to have an effect. It certainly makes one want to disengage and turn off the news.

Here are 10 reasons why I'm getting less and less interested in our current state of affairs:

1) We have a President and a political party that constantly tells us how broken, destitute and horrible our country is. It's kind of a buzzkill.

2) Nationalization becomes the norm as Federal power bloats. The Era of Big Government is reborn and most people seem to be just fine with that.

3) Barney Frank and Chris Dodd have not been tarred and feathered for their culpability in the housing mess, nor have they taken any responsibility or shown any contrition, and no one seems to care.

4) Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Chucky Schumer, Dick Durbin and Henry Waxman are all prominent leaders of the Democratic party in Congress. This reason alone could pretty much trump all the other ones on this list.

5) Thugs like Hugo Chavez essentially become lifetime dictators through "democratic" elections in Venezuela, and not only does no one care, the Left in this country and much of the media praises his "spunk" and "revolutionary socialism".

6) The "go green" nonsense will not go away, and in fact only seems to be getting stronger. I still believe (hope?) in 10 years or so it will be viewed as the junk science-fad-trend-thing that it is — just a ridiculous product of the worst kind of groupthink. But through wacko policy decisions that will ultimately do nothing but control more of your daily life and constrict movement, prosperity, and liberty, a lot of damage can be done before then.

7) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton perpetuates further an absurd moral relativism by apologizing for past Christian indiscretions while in Indonesia. This is just one example of a wider weakening that continues to disturb me. I keep wondering when the West will stop apologizing and start demanding one instead.

8) Ultra-rich puppetmasters like George Soros have entirely too much hidden influence.

9) Real journalism is dead and buried.

10) "Lost", "24" and "BSG" are all back on, stronger than ever, and serve as welcome distractions from the real world.

So, what does all this mean? In the grand scheme of things, not much. But for this blog it could mean you'll see a little less politics and maybe a bit more about other things that interest me: Pop culture, science, music, Mongolian agricultural trends...okay, maybe not that last one.

There will always be plenty of nutty Leftwingery to mock, and I'll never get bored with that, but for my own sanity I may need to rant about other things as well.

* No one has wondered.

Sunday must-reads

2009-03-01T10:40:00.003-05:00

Victor Davis Hanson — Recessional: Conservatives Have Themselves to Blame

Mark Steyn — The Six-Trillion-Dollar Man

Michelle Malkin — These Foreclosure "Victims" Deserve No Sympathy

Heritage Foundation — The Obama Health Care Budget: Hopeful Savings and Costly Change

Larry Kudlow — Obama Declares War on Investors, Entrepreneurs, Businesses, And More

Trenton Newell — Government to the Rescue?

George Will — Not-so-hot reporting job

Investor's Business Daily — Venezuela's Elected Dictatorship

Deroy Murdock — The Continuing Saga of Geert Wilders

Charles Krauthammer — Obama's "Kick Me" Diplomacy

Bill Maxwell — On race, blacks are cowards too

Travis Rowley — No Country for Black Men

And finally, on the useful idiots front, see this and this.

Because it's Friday

2009-02-20T13:39:00.004-05:00

A few more Obamicons.

Greeniness

2009-02-18T18:29:00.006-05:00

Oh boy. Here it comes.

From The New York Times:

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected for the first time to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that scientists blame for the warming of the planet, according to top Obama administration officials.

The decision, which likely would play out in stages over a period of months, would have a profound impact on transportation, building standards, manufacturing costs and how utilities generate power. It could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen.

The E.P.A. is under order from the Supreme Court to make a determination whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and safety, an order that the Bush administration essentially ignored despite a near-unanimous belief among E.P.A. experts that the research points inexorably to such a finding.

As expected, the junk science of man-made global warming is rearing its ugly head in what is quickly becoming a disturbing presidency.

Fortunately, there are some voices of reason in Congress according to Human Events:

Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR), proposing new rules for greenhouse gas emissions. If passed the new rules would mean that the EPA would have sole power to regulate greenhouse gases and define what constitutes as a greenhouse gas.

Under the proposed rule businesses that use fossil fuels would be regulated, products and buildings would have requirements and even farm animals would be subject to taxes.

So far this new rule -- which would have enormously negative effects on our economy -- has sat on the back burner. But under an Obama administration, with the environment a hot button issue, the new rules could become a reality. That’s why some in Congress are taking steps to try and stop action before it happens.

H.R. 391 is a bill being spearheaded by Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). This amendment to The Clean Air Act would provide that greenhouse gases are not subject to regulation by the EPA.

Galaxy has 'billions of Earths'

2009-02-16T20:38:00.002-05:00

There are 8 times more dollars in the Stimulus bill than possible Earths in the galaxy.

From the BBC:

There could be one hundred billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy, a US conference has heard.

Dr Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution of Science said many of these worlds could be inhabited by simple lifeforms.

He was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago.

So far, telescopes have been able to detect just over 300 planets outside our Solar System.

We'll make great pets.

Sunday must-reads

2009-02-15T12:12:00.006-05:00

George Will — On our way to Waterloo

Scott S. Powell — The Culprit Is All of Us

Veronique de Rugy — Here's What $800 Billion Buys Today

Rick Martinez — One stimulus for sale

Rich Lowry — Last Gasp for Limited Government?

Monica Crowley — They're Just Not That Into You

Charles Krauthammer — Iraq: Good News is No News

Andrew C. McCarthy — It's Not the Prison, It's the Prisoners

Even more fun with Obamicons

2009-02-15T11:56:00.002-05:00

Boredom.

It's a good thing I was already a "24" fan

2009-02-15T11:48:00.009-05:00

...and casting decisions don't keep me from watching it.

A few Janeane Garofalo words of wisdom from Ecorazzi:

E: What are three things you’d like to really see Obama change in this country?

JG: I’d like to see him be a proud liberal and say it. You know what I mean? There’s no shame in being a liberal – it’s something to be very proud of. He should say it – cause he is one – and he should be proud to be one. And since it is clear and has been clear since Reagan that the republicans, the “conservatives” will NEVER play ball…NEVER…fu%$ um.

Their policies have destroyed us and most of the world – that’s a fact not an opinion. Their policies of deregulation, pre-emptive strikes, unmitigated support for Israel to the detriment of the Israelis, Palestinian’s, Americans, the British. Every single policy that “conservative republicans” have put forth since Reagan has destroyed us. And we affect most of the world, so why do they still get a say? That’s what blows my mind. It’s almost like self-flagellation or masochism in some way. We keep going to that portion. They are NEVER going to compromise. The thing is that the more you give in to something like that, the more they take advantage.

The reason a person is a conservative republican is because something is wrong with them. Again, that’s science – that’s neuroscience. You cannot be well adjusted, open-minded, pluralistic, enlightened and be a republican. It’s counter-intuitive. And they revel in their anti-intellectualism. They revel in their cruelty.

I don’t know if you heard me talking to Jenny a while ago, but I was saying that first you have to be an asshole and then comes the conservatism. You gotta be a dick to cleave onto their ideology.

E: This might be an appropriate time to segue into Sarah Palin. I would love to know what you think about Palin.

JG: Probably what most people think about Sarah Palin. She’s small-minded and mean-spirited. It has nothing to do with gender — I don’t give a shit about her gender — she is what the Republican Party has become: obstructionist, contrarians, small-minded, all of these things. She just happens to be attractive. There’s definitely something wrong with her. She’s lacking in so many areas. Of course she’s successful with a segment of the country because she represents that lesser segment of the country. It’s people’s lesser nature – their human frailty. You know whatever’s wrong with them is what she is about.

E: I think it’s safe to say she’s done some pretty nutty things.

JG: It’s not even nutty. It really is neuroscience. I truly believe that it has something to do with their limbic brain. I really believe that some people’s limbic brain dominates more than others. Our limbic brain controls all our emotions and it causes us to be irrational. Our limbic brain goes into action when we’re ecstatic, frightened, when we’re having sex. I really believe that if a neuroscientist examined the brain of somebody who identified as a conservative, they would find it’s wired differently.

Noun
Hate
1. intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury
2. extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing

More fun with Obamicons

2009-02-15T00:41:00.005-05:00

Fun with Obamicons

2009-02-15T00:32:00.007-05:00

Dutch politician Geert Wilders banned from the UK

2009-02-14T11:13:00.020-05:00

Great Britain, a once great empire, has been eroding from the inside for some time now. Unfortunately, it's becoming a case study in how extreme political correctness leads to national suicide.

While the streets of London are filled with hate-spewing imams, a Dutch politician named Geert Wilders was denied entry into the UK simply because he has been critical of Islam.

From the BBC:

A Dutch MP who called the Koran a "fascist book" has been sent back to the Netherlands after attempting to defy a ban on entering the UK.

Freedom Party MP Geert Wilders had been invited to show his controversial film - which links the Islamic holy book to terrorism - in the UK's House of Lords.

But Mr Wilders, who faces trial in his own country for inciting hatred, has been denied entry by the Home Office.

He told the BBC it was a "very sad day" for UK democracy.

The Dutch ambassador was also at Heathrow to make clear his government's opposition to the ban on Mr Wilders entering the UK.

'Free speech'

Mr Wilders' film Fitna caused outrage across the Muslim world when it was posted on the internet last year.

After being questioned at Heathrow, the MP said he had been to the House of Lords two weeks ago and there had been "no problem".

He added: "I'm not doing anything wrong. I'm not protesting or running through the streets of London."

Mr Wilders added: "Democracy means differences and debate. It's a very sad day when the UK bans an elected parliamentarian... Of course I will come back."

He said the government's actions had proved that Gordon Brown was the "biggest coward in Europe".

Mr Brown's spokesman said the prime minister "fully supports the decision" taken by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

Mr Wilders was invited to the House of Lords for a screening of Fitna by the UK Independence Party's Lord Pearson.

The peer said it was a "matter of free speech", telling the BBC: "We are going to show it anyway because we think MPs and peers should see this film."

'No purpose'

He added: "The film isn't offensive unless you are a violent Islamist. Most of my Muslim friends think it's a very good film."

Fitna's opening scenes show a copy of the Koran followed by footage of the 9/11 attacks in the US and the bombings in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005.

The Lords screening went ahead as planned, despite Mr Wilder's non-attendance.

Read Andrew McCarthy's excellent column at NRO about all this here. It begins:

It has come to this: If you are an Islamic radical, trained to carry out terrorist atrocities in al-Qaeda’s jihad against the United Kingdom, the British will welcome you with open arms. Not content with that, Great Britain will lobby insistently for your release from custody so that you may freely roam British streets—and the halls of Westminster.

If, by contrast, you are a duly elected representative in the democratic government of a country to which England is bound in the European Union, and you speak about the undeniable—though mulishly denied—nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror, Great Britain will slam her door in your face.

Up is down, my friends.

Read about Geert Wilders' movie Fitna here.

Tea with Soros

2009-02-14T10:50:00.005-05:00

I'm a reformed conspiracy nut, but?

From Politico.com:

Currently burning up the tubes: Rep. Paul Kanjorski's description, late last month, of how close to the brink the global economy came on September 18. That was the day, recall, when Congressional leaders emerged stunned from a meeting with Henry Paulson, and gave him broad authority to spend $700 billion.

Part of what he said:

On Thursday at 11:00 a.m. the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous draw-down of money market accounts in the U.S., to the tune of $550 billion was being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two. The Treasury opened up its window to help and pumped a $105 billion in the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there.

If they had not done that, their estimation is that by 2:00 p.m. that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the U.S., would have collapsed the entire economy of the U.S., and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it.

More on this at Media Splatters.

Sleep tight.

It really is that easy

2009-02-14T10:41:00.004-05:00

Billy

2009-02-13T20:33:00.003-05:00

from Jim Treacher

Camille Paglia on the Fairness Doctrine

2009-02-11T20:59:00.008-05:00

I haven't had a chance to really write much about the Fairness Doctrine, but you can be sure I'll have more to say about it in the future. I don't think there's any doubt a serious debate is coming on this issue. Although, in the end, I don't see any meaningful legislation being passed. When all is said and done, I think most Democrats won't have the guts to vote for it.

Of course, there's always the chance I could be wrong and this blog will soon be coming to you over pirate WiFi from a "reeducation camp" somewhere.

Anyway, there will be much more on this topic in the future but in the meantime I thought it was worth pointing to this very good piece by Camille Paglia at Salon.com. She's certainly no conservative, and the main thrust of the column is about Obama's rough start as President and the economy, but she goes into a bit about the Fairness Doctrine and makes some fine points:

Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment's thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows. (My latest manifesto on this subject appeared in my last column.) The failure of liberals to master the vibrant medium of talk radio remains puzzling. To reach the radio audience (whether the topic is sports, politics or car repair), a host must have populist instincts and use the robust common voice. Too many Democrats have become arrogant elitists, speaking down in snide, condescending tones toward tradition-minded middle Americans whom they stereotype as rubes and buffoons. But the bottom line is that government surveillance of the ideological content of talk radio is a shocking first step toward totalitarianism.

One of the nuggets I've gleaned from several radio sources is that Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has been in the aggressive forefront of the campaign to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine, is married to Tom Athans, who works extensively with left-wing radio organizations and was once the executive vice-president of Air America, the liberal radio syndicate that, despite massive publicity from major media, has failed miserably to win a national audience. Stabenow's outrageous conflict of interest has of course been largely ignored by the prestige press, which should have been demanding that she recuse herself from all political involvement with this issue.

The rest is here.

Arrogant career politician insults curious taxpayers

2009-02-10T18:52:00.004-05:00

Chuck Schumer of New York, who served in the House of Representatives before becoming a Senator, has been in Washington since 1981. He doesn't think you care about wasteful pork spending. Why? Because he thinks you're a stupid, annoying member of the "chattering class".

How dare you question where your money is being spent. Fools!

Adjective
smug (comparative smugger, superlative smuggest)
1. Irritatingly pleased with oneself; self-satisfied.

How to commit suicide...if you're a magazine

2009-02-10T18:40:00.004-05:00

...or just reinforce how irrelevant you've become.

Memo to the Republicans

2009-02-09T18:16:00.012-05:00

Dear Repubs,

While I'm enjoying your renewed interest in standing up for principles and your opposition to the Stimulus (pork) bill, you'll forgive me if I tell you that you don't exactly have a lot of credibility on this issue.

Recall, many of you voted for the $700 billion TARP bill just a few months ago. A bill which sent hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to morons on Wall Street who failed to manage their companies wisely. Instead of letting those companies' shareholders and executive boards figure out how to deal with those morons, you turned me and every other taxpayer into unwitting shareholders of those companies.

Additionally, in case you forgot, many of you already voted for the largest infrastructure bill in history in 2005. $286 billion for highways, bridges, etc. Have any of you reported back to the people how that money's been spent, or what's been accomplished with it?

Many of you have been just as guilty as the Democrats in lustfully tossing taxpayer money into the giant sucking abyss that is the U.S. Treasury.

So, while I'm certainly glad to see your renewed sense of principle — fighting against wasteful spending and government expansion, I'm wondering why those principles weren't on display in the above two examples.

Sincerely,
Capitalist Fanboy

Moonbats lose it over climate change

2009-02-09T18:07:00.005-05:00

Worry over Climate Change is apparently causing some moonbats and other weak-minded people to freak out, crazy up, or otherwise lose it. From The Boston Globe:

Last year, an anxious, depressed 17-year-old boy was admitted to the psychiatric unit at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. He was refusing to drink water. Worried about drought related to climate change, the young man was convinced that if he drank, millions of people would die. The Australian doctors wrote the case up as the first known instance of "climate change delusion."

Robert Salo, the psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming-related natural disasters.

Such anxiety over current events is not a new phenomenon. Worries about contemporary threats, such as nuclear war or AIDS, have historically been woven into the mental illnesses of each generation. But global warming could have a broader and deeper effect on mental health, even if indirectly.

Perfect. As a society, we're already over-medicated to the point of being pilled-out zombies. Another fake medical condition is just what we need.

I do feel sorry for the poor boy who wouldn't drink the water, because obviously his spine was stolen during his childhood. He probably got one too many 'participation trophies'.

The Doom and Gloom President

2009-02-09T18:02:00.003-05:00

Hope and Change. Doom and Gloom. What's the difference?

The Washington Times says all the doom and gloom talk is not very Presidential:

From crisis to catastrophe. Off a cliff. Dark, darker, darkest. Mortal danger of absolute collapse. Armageddon.

President Obama and top Democrats on Capitol Hill are deploying these and other stark predictions of doom and gloom to push through their economic-stimulus package. In terms not heard in Washington since the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter's watch, the new president has sought to terrify Americans into supporting the $800 billion-plus bailout bill.

While President Bush was accused shortly after taking office in 2001 of "talking down the economy" - and for saying the economy was "slowing down" - Mr. Obama is using ever-heightening hyperbole to hammer home his message. But the strategy brings great risk for the "Yes, We Can" man, who just three weeks ago told America in his inaugural address that despite "a sapping of confidence across our land," his election meant Americans had "chosen hope over fear."

Stimulus bill: The Manchurian political fund

2009-02-09T17:52:00.006-05:00

Why would anyone want to rush such a huge spending bill through Congress? It's not like close scrutiny would cause some people to doubt the purpose of it.

Would it?

"Chicago Bob", calling into a radio talk show, explains the need to rush on the Stimulus package before anyone gets a good chance to review its sordid details. The transcript:

"I really feel that what I'm gonna give you here is a smoking gun.

I'm a conservative Democrat and I'm from Chicago... and I, I feel that I was betrayed.

I was in a meeting after Obama got elected and I was told by the Democratic officials in that meeting that we were gonna give billions of dollars that was gonna come down the pike, our way, and what we were to do with it was we were supposed to do with it...

We are gonna build an army of Democratic patronage jobs.... gonna completely freeze up the Republicans forever and ever...

From Doug Ross.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2009-02-08T15:00:00.004-05:00

It's Sunday. Be lazy. Enjoy this informative movie while I continue to recover from a cold.

Sunday must-reads

2009-02-08T14:34:00.010-05:00

A new feature, when there is time — or will. A round-up of the the best columns of the week, or recent times, or from whenever I feel like pulling them. Enjoy.

Mark Steyn — Obama, All at Sea

Charles Krauthammer — The Fierce Urgency of Pork

Victor Davis Hanson — Our Brave New World

Ike Brannon and Chris Edwards — Barack Obama's Keynesian Mistake

Monica Crowley — Change We Can Roll Our Eyes At

Wall Street Journal — The Stimulus Tragedy

Deroy Murdock — President Obama May Reverse Damage of Ghetto Culture

Marc Sheppard — Save The Children (From Global Warming Propaganda)

Fouad Ajami — Obama Reassures Despots

Charles Krauthammer — Obama's Unnecessary Apology

Taking a left turn at the crossroads

2009-02-07T14:04:00.011-05:00

I feel it, can't you feel it? We're at one of those points in history, one of those turning points. A point where we can reconnect with our history of limited government, self-reliance, and personal responsibility — or we can continue the hellish leftward lurch toward the soft ways of socialist Europe. Where centralized governments make up the majority of jobs and economic activity of a nation, and where the desire to please all people all the time leads to financial and cultural suicide.

Dick Morris wrote a swell piece about our direction at TheHill.com:

2009-2010 will rank with 1913-14, 1933-36, 1964-65 and 1981-82 as years that will permanently change our government, politics and lives. Just as the stars were aligned for Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson and Reagan, they are aligned for Obama. Simply put, we enter his administration as free-enterprise, market-dominated, laissez-faire America. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden — a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Obama will accomplish his agenda of “reform” under the rubric of “recovery.” Using the electoral mandate bestowed on a Democratic Congress by restless voters and the economic power given his administration by terrified Americans, he will change our country fundamentally in the name of lifting the depression. His stimulus packages won’t do much to shorten the downturn — although they will make it less painful — but they will do a great deal to change our nation.

In implementing his agenda, Barack Obama will emulate the example of Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Not the liberal mythology of the New Deal, but the actuality of what it accomplished.) When FDR took office, he was enormously successful in averting a total collapse of the banking system and the economy. But his New Deal measures only succeeded in lowering the unemployment rate from 23 percent in 1933, when he took office, to 13 percent in the summer of 1937. It never went lower. And his policies of over-regulation generated such business uncertainty that they triggered a second-term recession. Unemployment in 1938 rose to 17 percent and, in 1940, on the verge of the war-driven recovery, stood at 15 percent. (These data and the real story of Hoover’s and Roosevelt’s missteps, uncolored by ideology, are available in The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, copyright 2007.)

But in the name of a largely unsuccessful effort to end the Depression, Roosevelt passed crucial and permanent reforms that have dominated our lives ever since, including Social Security, the creation of the Securities and Exchange Commission, unionization under the Wagner Act, the federal minimum wage and a host of other fundamental changes.

You should read all of it. Or not.

BBC: Ancient Persians 'gassed' enemies

2009-02-07T13:57:00.002-05:00

Shocker. The BBC reports new evidence that suggests the Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical warfare:

Ancient Persians were the first to use chemical warfare against their enemies, a study has suggested.

A UK researcher said he found evidence that the Persian Empire used poisonous gases on the Roman city of Dura, Eastern Syria, in the 3rd Century AD.

The theory is based on the discovery of remains of about 20 Roman soldiers found at the base of the city wall.

The findings were presented the Archaeological Institute of America's annual meeting.

More stimulus illustrated

2009-02-07T12:16:00.002-05:00

From Suitably Flip

Oborg

2009-02-05T22:36:00.002-05:00

From Black and Right

The honeymoon is over

2009-02-03T18:42:00.043-05:00

Well that didn't take very long. As I stated in a previous post, I have really tried to have an open mind and keep a wait-and-see attitude with President Obama. Well, it hasn't taken very long to come to the conclusion that this administration is off to a bad start.

Let's review some of the crap decisions:

1) Closing Gitmo — Just a good old-fashioned dumb idea, and one that only 44% of Americans agree with.

2) Appointing tax cheats - Tom Daschle, Nancy Killefer, and Timothy Geithner; all may or may not be qualified for the positions they were nominated to, but what kind of message are we sending when such high-ranking officials are shown to be tax cheats? And by the way, on a philosophical level, I'm in complete agreement with all three of them: The Federal Government should get less of our money, and we should keep more of it. This is probably the first thing Tom Daschle and I have ever been on the same page about. However, this should be accomplished through shrinking the government, legislation and tax code reform, not fraud. Isn't it funny how Liberals are so quick to raise your taxes, but don't want to pay them themselves?

3) Sending taxpayer money overseas to fund "family planning" (abortions) — Set aside the abortion debate itself, this is a questionable idea even in good economic times; but certainly a piss-poor one during a recession. Only 35% of Americans think this is a good decision.

4) Scaring the public and whipping everyone into such a frenzy about the economy — with a brain-dead, soulless media as accomplice — so he can hastily force this porked-up bloated mess of a "stimulus" bill through Congress without anyone seriously examining or questioning it. It's nothing more than a giant spending bill covering just about every special interest except the most important special interest: economic growth. Not only is it a massive transfer of wealth, but the largest expansion of Federal power in the history of this Republic. An expansion that funds wasteful programs, rewards left-wing interest groups (victim blocks) and punishes private sector success. An expansion that could take a generation to roll back, if not longer.

Wasn't there a band of rebels who fought a revolution against such massive central power a couple of hundred years ago?

5) Shifting to a soft line on Iran — In typical Lefty kumbaya fashion, reaching out with a carrot only hardens the enemy and results in an Iranian government spokesmen saying things like, "This request means Western ideology has become passive, that capitalist thought and the system of domination have failed." Listen, there are many approaches to the Iran issue, and talking is certainly one of them. The people of Iran are not who we have a problem with, it's the nutjobs in charge, and they must not be allowed to forget that American "hard power" will always win the day.

There are certainly some other choices that have been made by this President that I can question, but these are the major ones.

Throughout the campaign I heard a lot of rhetoric about "change", doing away with "politics as usual", stopping the influence of lobbyists and interest groups, and getting the people's work done. A sweeping return to "ethics".

Why should I be surprised these were empty words?

We live in The Age of Absurdity, where up is down. Where American Idol results are more important than remembering our history or preserving our national identity. Where securing our borders equals racism. Where no one is responsible for anything anymore. Where bailouts turn me into an unwitting shareholder of Wall Street banks that I never chose to buy stock in myself. Where taxpayer money is taken and given to idiots who are then supposed to turn right around and loan that money back to the taxpayer...with interest.

Up is down, and people actually look to Washington for solutions...with a straight face.

Politicians in Washington have become just another class of sanctimonious celebrities. Out of touch, self-important, constantly campaigning. There are no more Statesmen, no true public servants who just want to do what's best for the country for a couple of years and then get the hell out and return to the private sector. Washington is a career now, and a damn lucrative one on the working man's dime.

And from what I've seen, Barack Obama is only feeding this monster. Just more of the same old business-as-usual.

Yes, the honeymoon is officially over.

The Third Jihad

2009-02-01T14:42:00.014-05:00

Were you aware that there is a concerted effort to overthrow America and Western Civilization and ultimately dominate the world in the name of Islam?

Were you aware that solving the Arab-Israeli conflict will not suddenly cure Islamic Jihadism and cause it to go away? That's nothing but a myth.

Were you aware that many everyday Muslims, even non-violent ones, are completely in support of the idea of a Global Islamic State?

I suppose to the Keith Olbermann's of the world, this is just more "Neocon Pornography". To any person who doesn't have their head buried in the sand, this is an absolute must-see. It should be required viewing in every American school starting tomorrow.

You can read more about the movie at the website The Third Jihad.

A visual depiction of the crap sandwich that is the "stimulus" bill

2009-01-31T15:21:00.009-05:00

Doubt about Global Warming is gaining traction

2009-01-31T12:36:00.003-05:00

Rightfully so. This is a good article to check out:

At December's U.N. Global Warming conference in Poznan, Poland, 650 of the world's top climatologists stood up and said man-made global warming is a media generated myth without basis. Said climatologist Dr. David Gee, Chairman of the International Geological Congress, "For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming?"

I asked myself, why would such obviously smart guy say such a ridiculous thing? But it turns out he's right.

The earth's temperature peaked in 1998. It's been falling ever since; it dropped dramatically in 2007 and got worse in 2008, when temperatures touched 1980 levels.

Meanwhile, the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center released conclusive satellite photos showing that Arctic ice is back to 1979 levels. What's more, measurements of Antarctic ice now show that its accumulation is up 5 percent since 1980.

In other words, during what was supposed to be massive global warming, the biggest chunks of ice on earth grew larger. Just as an aside, do you remember when the hole in the ozone layer was going to melt Antarctica? But don't worry, we're safe now, that was the nineties.

Dr. Kunihiko, Chancellor of Japan's Institute of Science and Technology said this: "CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or the other ... every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so." Now why would a learned man say such a crazy thing?

This is where the looney left gets lost. Their mantra is atmospheric CO2 levels are escalating and this is unquestionably causing earth's temperature rise. But ask yourself -- if global temperatures are experiencing the biggest sustained drop in decades, while CO2 levels continue to rise -- how can it be true?

The rest of the article is here.

"Damaged Relations"

2009-01-28T18:36:00.020-05:00

As is usually the case, it is not so much the story itself I have an issue with, it's the way the soulless, brain-dead media reports it that confounds me.

In this case, the story is Obama sitting down for an interview with an Arabic TV channel. Okay, whatever. The story itself isn't a big deal, but the way these things actually get written up is usually good for some laughs.

As an example, I give you the AP reporting on Obama's interview the other day:

CAIRO, Egypt – President Barack Obama chose an Arabic satellite TV network for his first formal television interview as president, part of a concerted effort to repair relations with the Muslim world that were damaged under the previous administration.

This sentence leaves no doubt, the AP places the blame for any "damaged relations" with the Muslim world at the feet of George W. Bush.

I mean, it's not like the fact that two airplanes flew into and destroyed a couple of the largest buildings every built a few years ago had anything to do with those relations being "damaged".

Right?

Also in the story:

Obama's predecessor, former President George W. Bush, launched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which prompted a massive backlash against the U.S. in the Muslim world.

Where was the massive backlash in America's heartland against Muslims after 9/11? Oh right, there wasn't one.

Where were the riots and burning-of-Muslim-flags parties held? Oh right, there weren't any.

In contrast to the enthusiastic reception Obama's victory has garnered around the world, the Arab world has been much more cautious about the new U.S. president — with most people skeptical that American policy in the region will change substantially.

"I can't be optimistic until I see something tangible," said Hatem al-Kurdi, 35, a Gaza City engineer who saw parts of the interview. "Anyone can say nice words, but you have to follow with actions."

Does anyone else see the absurdity in all of this? Not just the content, but the fact that we are even asking the question: What we must do to repair relations with the Muslim world?

"Something tangible"? "Follow with actions"? — Such as planes flying into buildings? Certainly "tangible" "actions" indeed.

This writer is not waiting for America to bend over backwards to repair relations with the Muslim world. On the contrary, this writer is waiting for the Muslim world to repair relations with America.

Purging itself of the death-cult radicals among it's ranks would be a good start, followed by a complete reformation.

I'm not holding my breath.

"We will defeat you"

2009-01-20T20:13:00.008-05:00

As I watched Barack Obama's inaugural address today I have to admit I perked up a little when I heard him say this:

We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, 'Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.'

I was impressed by that. And I really hope he means it.

AP: To avoid financial crisis, become islamic

2009-01-17T11:47:00.007-05:00

According to the AP, we could have avoided the economic crisis altogether had we just switched to an islamic financial system:

DETROIT (AP) — Big financial institutions have been battered by mortgages gone bad. But a tiny Michigan bank is getting attention in the industry by turning a profit on loans without even charging interest.

Its specialty: financial products that comply with Islamic law. That means no collecting interest, no short selling and no contracts that are considered exceedingly risky.

It also rules out some of the activity that got Western finance in trouble — subprime mortgages, credit default swaps and the like.

"When you look at the economic crisis we're in, if you were to follow Islamic or Sharia financing, you couldn't have this crisis," said John Sickler, corporate director for the bank, University Islamic Financial Corp. in Ann Arbor.

Well gee whiz...we have finally found the solution to our economic problems!

Seriously, we know the mainstream media is dead, but the fact that some moron actually thought this was a serious, worthwhile news story is further evidence of it.

Reaction

2008-11-06T20:07:00.010-05:00

It's been a few days and I guess my 3 readers have been waiting for some reaction. What can I say? The election's result was not the one I had hoped for, but, it is what it is.

Despite my reservations about the next four years, I'm willing to accept the reality that Barack Obama is my new President. And yes, you'd have to be some kind of tool not to recognize the historical significance of this election.

Moreover, I'm willing to do something the Left has not done so well over the last 8 years: Respect the man and the office. Many examples come to mind, but right off the bat I can say with certainty that I won't be driving around with a "Not My President" bumper sticker on my car.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a clean slate. I may be skeptical — especially considering the current leadership of the Democratic party in Congress — but I am capable of giving Obama the benefit of the doubt and proceeding with a wait-and-see attitude. If Obama's governance reflects the centrist rhetoric he sometimes seemed to reach for during the general election, then fine. But again, with Pelosi and Reid running the show on The Hill, you'll forgive me if I'm skeptical. Even if he wants to govern that way — which let's be honest, is a big "if" — he may not be able to.

To be sure, this blog will continue to criticize the Left and any and all leaders who stray from the founding vision of this Republic — a vision of self-reliance and limited government — as well as the general (and frightening) leftward lurch the entire planet seems to be undertaking these days. And I'm sure there will be plenty of snarky and mocking rants along the way.

But when it comes to the President, there should be some level of respect, even when you disagree. Further, there should be loyalty, especially in these dangerous times. To do otherwise only comforts our enemies and says we are not a united people. Which again, is something the moonbats and the Left have done disgracefully well over the last 8 years.

I know it's a novel concept to some on the Left, but it's called putting the country first.

Much more on this election — including where the Republican party needs to go from here — in the coming days.

"Security" at the polling place

2008-11-04T18:14:00.004-05:00

From Philadelphia:

Obama will take care of all your needs

2008-11-04T14:13:00.005-05:00

Just ask this informed voter:

In case you missed that, she just said:

"I won't have to worry about putting gas in my car, I won't have to worry about paying my mortgage."

I don't think this even deserves a snarky comment. Do you?

Gore's revenge?

2008-11-03T21:52:00.011-05:00

I had a busy weekend (in more ways than one) so instead of bombarding this blog with what should have been a lot of my brilliant commentary heading into this important election, there's been nada that last few days. I apologize to my 3 readers.

I do have a few thoughts about tomorrow that I wanted to throw out there.

I don't have a prediction about the winner, but I have a feeling The Hero will win my state of North Carolina.

This election has never really been about Barack Obama or The Hero, it's really been about revenge, plain and simple. It's been about the revenge of the Left for the last 8 years.

Let's face it, they've always felt the 2000 election was stolen, and they've never gotten over it. 2004 was supposed to be the big comeback, but they only managed to gain a slight majority in congress, which is nothing to shake a stick at. But they weren't able to push Kerry over the top. They underestimated W. and more importantly, overestimated the public's distaste for his presidency. There have been many failings of the Bush Administration, but the American people don't hate the man in the way the media and the hard left would have us believe. 2004 proved that.

Regardless, the DNC took the last 4 years and focused on one thing: winning back The White House in 2008. They built what will probably go down in history as the most effective political machine in history, and no matter who emerged as the candidate — Obama, Clinton, Edwards — they were going to have a monster of a campaign working for them. Obama's charisma, lack of baggage, centrist rhetoric and perceived status as an agent of 'change' has probably positioned him to win better than the other serious Democratic candidates would have been. Although, to someone of my leanings, Hillary would have been a better, more acceptable alternative.

But now, that's neither here nor there.

Just remember that this election has never really been about the two candidates. It's always been about the Left finally getting Gore's revenge.

I'm not trying to make excuses and I'm not conceding defeat. I'm simply stating a fact that this election was going to be a huge uphill battle for whoever the Republicans nominated.

When you think about where Bush's approval rating is and the current state of the Republican image, it's amazing that this race is even close. The reason? As I've stated before, the Democrats are notorious for nominating the wrong candidate in their primary process. Obama, if he wins, is only barely acceptable to the American people as a whole. Someone who would have been more acceptable, like Hillary, would probably win by 15 points.

But in this election from Hell, I guess 'barely acceptable' is all the Left had to really do, and that's probably the saddest thing of all — look how low our expectations for our leaders have become.

For me, while The Hero may not have been my personal first choice to run from my side, and while he may not have ran the best campaign; he is still a good and decent man, a patriot, and someone who has devoted most of his life to working very hard for the betterment of this country. His record of bipartisanship and proven leadership is deep and cannot be disputed.

When I look back on 2008, that will always be enough for me, and that's why John McCain will get my vote tomorrow.

An Obama minion speaks

2008-10-31T06:38:00.003-04:00

I have no idea if this is true or not. If it isn't, it's an entertaining conspiracy read. If it is true, well, it speaks for itself.

From Hillbuzz:

Ok, I want to clear my conscious a little. Hopefully you could make a blog post to help some fellow clinton supporters out.

I work for a campaign and can’t wait for this week to be over.

I was doing it for a job. I was not a fan of any candidate but over time grew to love HRC.

The internal campaign idea is to twist, distort, humiliate and finally dispirit you.

We pay people and organize people to go to all the online sites and “play the part of a clinton or mccain supporter who just switched our support for obama”

We do this to stifle your motivation and to destroy your confidence.

We did this the whole primary and it worked.

Sprinkle in mass vote confusion and it becomes bewildering. Most people lose patience and just give up on their support of a candidate and decide to just block out tv, news, websites, etc.

This surprisingly has had a huge suppressing movement and vote turnout issues.

Next, we infiltrate all the blogs and all the youtube videos and overwhelm the voting, the comments, etc. All to continue this appearance of overwhelming world support.

People makes posts to the effect that the world has “gone mad”

Thats the intention. To make you feel stressed and crazy and feel like the world is ending.

We have also had quite a hand in skewing many many polls, some we couldn’t control as much as we would have liked. But many we have spoiled over. Just enough to make real clear politics look scarey to a mccain supporter. Its worked, alough the goal was to appear 13-15 points ahead.

see, the results have been working. People tend to support a winner, go with the flow, become “sheeple”

The polls are roughly 3-5 points in favor of Barack. Thats due to our inflation of the polls and pulling in the sheeple.

Our donors, are the same people who finance the MSM. Their interests are tied, Barack then tends to come across as teflon. Nothing sticks. And trust, there were meetings with Fox news. The goal was to blunt them as much as possible. Watch Bill Oreilly he has become much more diplomatic and “fair and balanced” and soft. Its because he wants to retain the #1 spot on cable news and to do that he has to have access to the Obama campaign and we worked hard at stringing him a long and keeping him soft for an interview swap. It worked and now he is anticipating more access. So he is playing it still soft.

This is why nothing sticks.

The operation is massive, the goal is to paint a picture that is that of a winner, regardless of the results.

There is no true inauguration draft or true grant park construction going on. There will be a party, but we are boasting beyond the truth to make it seem like the election is wrapped up.

Our goal is to continue to make you lose your moral. We worked hard at persuasion and paying off and timing and playing the right political numbers to get key republican endorsements to make it seem even more like it was over and the world was coming to an end for you all.

There is a huge staff of people working around the clock, watching every site, blogs, etc. We flood these sites. We have had a goal to overwhelm.

The truth is here. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

I am saying this because I know HRC was better for the country, and now realize this. I was too late by the time I connected to her. To me Barack was just a cool young dude that seemed like a star. I didn’t know him or his policies, but now I understand more than I care to and I realize his interests are more for him, and the DNC and all working like puppets with dean. I always thought a president wanted the better good for the country. The end result I see is everyone dependent on the government, this means more and more people voting for the DNC. This means the future is forever altered. I don’t see this as america, so I am now supporting John Mccain.

Sarah Palin is a huge threat, and our campaign has feared her like you can’t imagine. If it seems unfair how she has been treated, well its because she has had a team working round the clock to make her look like a fool.

this is a big conspiracy and I am so shocked that its not realized.

We released a little blurb the other day that the Obama campaign was already working on reelection and now putting our efforts towards 2012. This was to make it seem like it was above us to continue caring about 2008. Trust me, its a lie. David is very smart, but its a sticky ugly not very truthful kind of intelligence.

Its not over yet, but I think the machine is working. And its a hill to climb.

I will be quitting my post on nov 5th and my vote will be for John Mccain. Fortunately, my position has been a marketing position and I don’t feel I had any part of anything I would feel guilty for. But I look forward to getting out of this as the negativity and environment upsets me.

I wish you all well, and goodluck.

PS my name is not really sarah. but I am a female and I understand your plight.

Maybe some people shouldn't vote?

2008-10-29T23:17:00.003-04:00

Those civics classes in our Government schools must really be paying off. John Stossel provides some food for thought:

When the guard is down

2008-10-29T22:16:00.012-04:00

Parker Griffith, Democratic candidate for Congress in Alabama's 5th District said this a few weeks ago:

I think America's greatest enemy is America and its materialism.

And I think that . . . uh . . . we have nothing to fear from radical Islam. We have nothing to fear from any other religion if we are strong on our own beliefs. I don't fear radical Islam.

Further evidence of what the Left in this country really thinks. The only thing we have to fear is...America!

In the interest of fairness (which I will probably be required by law to do under The Obama Administration) I should say that the candidate has tried to spin the remarks and say they were taken out of context. Read that story here.

Maybe the remarks were taken out of context, to an extent. But, the larger issue to me is this: There are a hell of a lot of people that would agree with those exact words, context or not.

And do you think those people reside on the Right, or on the Left?

I have leaned Libertarian most of my life, and in fact, I've never voted a straight Republican ticket. But the more and more I see of this type of thinking coming from the other side, it brings me inexorably closer to an unmovable position: Until the Democratic party purges itself of those who believe this naive, stupid and dangerous nonsense, I have zero interest in "reaching across the aisle".

Obama in his own words

2008-10-29T22:05:00.011-04:00

A few of my favorite Obama quotes:

"It's not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they've got a chance for success too. My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody ... I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest... So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

"If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court. I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order as long as I could pay for it I’d be o.k. But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society."

"To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn’t that radical. It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can’t do to you. Says what the Federal government can’t do to you, but doesn’t say what the Federal government or State government must do on your behalf, and that hasn’t shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that."

"I'm not interested in the suburbs. The suburbs bore me."

"Spread the wealth around." "Economic Justice." "Redistributive Change." Why does all this sound like code for reparations to me?

And on the suburbs quote, it reminded me of a famous Capitalist Fanboy saying:

"I'm not interested in the inner-cities. The inner-cities bore me."

The death of journalism

2008-10-26T01:08:00.003-04:00

Let's be honest, it happened a long time ago.

But, Orson Scott Card, a registered Democrat and, by the way, a hell of a fine novelist, has written one of the most important and scathing columns I think I've ever read.

In it, he skewers the media and his own party for their lack of integrity in reporting on this whole economic mess we find ourselves in.

Trust me, it's a must read.

An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:

I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.

This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.

It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.

What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.

The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.

They end up worse off than before.

This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.

Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)

Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?

I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."

Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.

Read on my friends, read on.

Biden grilled

2008-10-26T01:02:00.000-04:00

Wow.

UPDATE: Tough questions lead to getting cut off.

Collective hysteria

2008-10-25T23:29:00.021-04:00

Believe it or not, a very small few of us remain flabbergasted that Mr. O is still a serious candidate for the highest office on Earth. And on that note, I'm not sure it can be said much better than Mark Levin has put it over at NRO.

It begins:

I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way.

There is a cult-like atmosphere around Barack Obama, which his campaign has carefully and successfully fabricated, which concerns me. The messiah complex. Fainting audience members at rallies. Special Obama flags and an Obama presidential seal. A graphic with the portrayal of the globe and Obama's name on it, which adorns everything from Obama's plane to his street literature. Young school children singing songs praising Obama. Teenagers wearing camouflage outfits and marching in military order chanting Obama's name and the professions he is going to open to them. An Obama world tour, culminating in a speech in Berlin where Obama proclaims we are all citizens of the world. I dare say, this is ominous stuff.

To the hardcore leftists, middle-of-the-road Obama supporters, and the so-called conservatives who have joined the Barack kool-aid brigade; I'm sure this all sounds like the wacky hyperbole of bitter Republicans who just can't take a (potential) loss.

I'm sure it sounds like anything but the voices in the wilderness screaming out against a serious leftward paradigm shift that could have permanent consequences for this great society.

Maybe.

But I'm sure at some point in history, at some point in the past, those of us who were thought of as crackpot kooks holed-up in our bunkers, watching our own countries circle the drain...must have been right at least once.

Maybe?

In the meantime, anyone waiting for this conservative to wet his finger, hold it to the wind, and jump on the Barry Bandwagon is going to be waiting for a very long time.

The soft tyranny of feel-goodism

2008-10-23T23:01:00.006-04:00

As half the country prepares to vote for the most liberal presidential candidate in history, I thought this quote from C.S. Lewis seemed appropriate:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

I wonder what awaits us on the other side of November 4th.

Remember Beirut

2008-10-23T13:33:00.015-04:00

Many people believe the War on Terror began on September 11, 2001. Or possibly in August 1998 when the U.S. Embassies were bombed in Africa. Or perhaps even on February 26, 1993 – the first time the World Trade Center was attacked.

But actually, The Long War really began 25 years ago today, on the morning of October 23, 1983. On that day, Islamic terrorists bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon killing 241 brave American warriors, 58 French soldiers, 6 civilians and injuring scores of others.

The organization Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the attack. (Wouldn't you think true so-called 'freedom fighters' would launch attacks and go on about their day? Why do Islamic thugs take so much joy in the death they deliver?)

Islamic Jihad is an arm of Hezbollah, which receives help from the zealots who run Iran.

So while the vile acts of 9/11 certainly brought this war home to our doorstep, they were by no means the first shots fired. The Jihadists have hated us long before 2001, long before 1998, 1993 and yes, even before 1983. The attacks and hijackings of the 1970's were merely omens of things to come – much bigger things.

So as you go about your day today, try to remember those brave American soldiers who died in Beirut in 1983. And while you're at it, think of those American soldiers who are out there fighting right now, meeting and humiliating thousands of terrorist idiots on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan...and wherever this war takes us.

Swing low, sweet chariot

2008-10-22T19:41:00.009-04:00

Okay, I know it's a little odd to be cracking on Hillary at this point, especially considering people like me were wishing she was actually The Hero's opponent in this Election from Hell.

But this is still one of my favorite pandering moments of all-time. I give you Hillary Clinton adopting the 'local accent'.

If Obama loses...

2008-10-21T23:16:00.004-04:00

These top 5 reasons should just about sum up what the narrative will be:

5. This is a racist country.
4. This is a racist country.
3. This is a racist country.
2. This is a racist country.
1. Dick Cheney rigged it.

Just helping you prepare, that's all.

Everything's racial, didn't you know?

2008-10-21T23:03:00.003-04:00

According to this blurb, 'socialist' is just a code word for 'black'.

Barack Obama and his worshippers have created the perfect criticism-shield. Basically at this point, any disagreement with his ideas is a 'racist attack'.

And you thought it was tough to dissent during these last eight years? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

Welcome to the new absurd reality.

Another nice political ad

2008-10-20T23:07:00.000-04:00

Where have these been?

Nice political ad

2008-10-20T22:59:00.003-04:00

Factual, effective, and very well-done. This needs to be getting massive air time.

Biden makes the case for McCain

2008-10-20T22:39:00.009-04:00

The gaffe-master is at it again. Instead of reassuring folks about voting for Obama, Joe Biden admitted to a gathering of supporters that electing an inexperienced and weak-on-national security candidate will indeed probably embolden our enemies. In doing so, he indirectly made a strong case for The Hero.

This is part of what he said:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

So much for easing the minds of those undecided voters.

He also said this:

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

One possible translation: Oh and by the way, Barack Obama's Iraq policy will ultimately look pretty much exactly like Bush/McCain Iraq policy. So, please help us calm the Code Pinkers and the moonbats down as they flip out when they realize we're not pulling out of there anytime soon.

So much entertainment value in this election. I wish there were two more years to go instead of two more weeks.

'Change' = Liberal supermajority

2008-10-18T10:34:00.011-04:00

For everyone talking about a needed 'change'. Well, this would definitely be a 'change'.

This election is indeed incredibly important and historic, but probably not for the reasons you think. The Wall Street Journal has a powerful editorial about the potential Democratic supermajority. You really need to read the entire article but here's the setup:

If the current polls hold, Barack Obama will win the White House on November 4 and Democrats will consolidate their Congressional majorities, probably with a filibuster-proof Senate or very close to it. Without the ability to filibuster, the Senate would become like the House, able to pass whatever the majority wants.

Though we doubt most Americans realize it, this would be one of the most profound political and ideological shifts in U.S. history. Liberals would dominate the entire government in a way they haven't since 1965, or 1933. In other words, the election would mark the restoration of the activist government that fell out of public favor in the 1970s. If the U.S. really is entering a period of unchecked left-wing ascendancy, Americans at least ought to understand what they will be getting, especially with the media cheering it all on.

If this election is over, and Barry and the Democrats are truly headed for a landslide victory and an increase in congressional seats, then my one hope is that after four years of their ridiculous nanny-state-ism, the electorate will swing back to their natural state: center-right; and a revitalized Republican party will come back stronger than ever.

I can 'hope', can't I?

Debate advice for The Hero

2008-10-15T20:27:00.012-04:00

Not that he's listening. But there's really no need to throw out a bunch of one-liners about ACORN, Ayers, and the like. Mainly because the electorate has made it clear that A) they don't seem to care and B) going 'negative' turns undecided voters off and probably won't help The Hero at this point anyway.

What he needs to do is draw distinctions between how he will handle the financial mess and how Obama will. How his legislative record is vast and bipartisan, and how Obama's is short and extreme in its leftism.

He should also explain the difference in philosophy: That while government's role is important, it is not the solution to every problem, and no budget is big enough to deliver on the across-the-board entitlements promised by Obama.

There's no need to call Obama a Marxist (even if he is) – just explain to people why his ideas mirror Marxism. Then let them decide if our founding fathers envisioned a massive central government, sitting in Washington, sucking up taxpayer money and redistributing it among those who refuse to work as hard as others.

But most of all, The Hero simply needs to pose the essential question: Do we really know who this man is?

Victor Davis Hanson at NRO puts it well and here's a brief highlight:

I don't think anyone knows what Obama's true agenda is on things like FISA, NAFTA, Iraq, Iran, public financing, guns, abortion, capital punishment, coal, nuclear power, or drilling — or how to assess his claims of a new bipartisanship against the most liberal and partisan, albeit brief, record in the Senate.

So, The Hero doesn't need to 'go down swinging' as Dick Morris believes. He just needs to ask the American people if they are ready to trust this country to someone they really don't know. He needs to look them in the eye and show them the true leader that he is. One thing I know about the American people is, when they see a true leader, they'll follow.

Just my two cents.

I miss Jeremiah Wright

2008-10-13T22:07:00.014-04:00

It seems people on my side are starting to realize that the Billy Ayers story isn't really sticking. Even this humble blogger has privately conceded to some of my own 'associates' that I don't think there's much fire with that smoke. Now, you can make the argument that even if there's just a little bit of fire, it merits further discussion and probably disqualifies someone from the Presidency. Well, I haven't spent much time hammering the Barry/Billy thing because to me there are numerous other and more legitimate facts that disqualify Obama for the Presidency. (And you will hear all of them as the election approaches).

To me, what's always been the more important aspect of the Billy Ayers story is not so much Obama's relationship with him, but what the hell someone like that is doing as a professor at an accredited university – and what exactly is the 'education reform' he espouses?

But that is for another rant.

My purpose here was to say that Tucker Carlson has a really good point:

Why won't the McCain campaign attack Obama for an association more damaging than Bill Ayers—the one with Chicago pastor Jeremiah Wright?

The McCain campaign's attempt to tie Barack Obama to terrorist-turned-professor Bill Ayers appears to have failed. Most people still don't seem to know who Ayers is. And there still isn't evidence that the two were more than acquaintances. By the end of the week, McCain will likely have moved on to another line of attack. The obvious question is: Why not Jeremiah Wright?

Unlike Ayers, the Rev. Wright indisputably was one of Obama's closest friends. Obama himself has said so. Nobody in America needs to be reminded of who Wright is. As long as you've decided to go after Obama's character and associations, Wright seems like the obvious place to start. The 30-second attack ad essentially writes itself.

I can sense the Obama supporters rolling their eyes and saying, "Here we go again."

Just indulge me for a moment. You don't need associations to expose Obama's flaws to the American people. Look at his record, his thin resume, his blatantly false 'moderate' rhetoric (demonstrated by said record). All of this is fair game.

But, if you're going to go after his associations, by all means go after the one that was an actual relationship. This is something that The Hero and I disagree on. He has said Jeremiah Wright should be off limits. Me? I've never understood why they let it fade from the discussion. If I was The Hero's campaign manager, I'd be running Wright ads daily.

Talking about Jeremiah Wright's 'God Damn America' gatherings is not a distraction from substance. It speaks directly to the character and judgment of someone who would attend those gatherings for so many years. Especially since we're not talking about a Chicago City Council seat here, we are talking about the Presidency of the United States.

But hey, that's just my opinion. If you really don't care that Obama was a member of that church for 20 years, there's nothing anyone can say that will change your mind anyway.

A refresher:

Dow has biggest one-day gain since 1933

2008-10-13T18:43:00.013-04:00

Good economic news usually equals bad political news for Democrats. (Isn't it nuts how true that is?)

If the economy shows signs of recovery, especially now, The Hero's campaign may just have some life yet.

I can hear your internal dialogue: "But why Capitalist Fanboy? Why would this help The Hero?"

By all means, let me explain.

For some reason, people seem to think Democrats are the party to turn to in rough economic times. Despite the lack of reason for that, it is nevertheless a political reality. However, if the economy seems to be stabilizing (which it will) as the election approaches, people will (and should) get back to looking at the overall view of these candidates: The character, the associations (ancillary or otherwise), the statements (yes, of spouses too), the leadership resume, the actual records of bipartisanship (or lack thereof), and well, you get the picture. You know, stuff that actually qualifies one to be President.

I'm not saying I know what's going to happen on November 4th, I'm just saying don't plan your Obama victory parties just yet.

From the AP (begrudgingly, I'm sure):

NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street stormed back after its worst week ever and staged the biggest single-day stock rally since the Great Depression on Monday, catapulting the Dow Jones industrials to a 936-point gain and finally offering relief from eight consecutive days of stock market carnage.

While no one was saying the worst was over for the staggering financial system or troubled economy, buyers returned to the stock market with gusto, with some saying stocks had been driven down to fire-sale prices.

The surge came as executives from leading banks were summoned by the Bush administration to Washington to work out a plan to get loans, the lifeblood of the economy, moving again. And it followed signals that European governments would put nearly $2 trillion on the line to protect their own banks.

The Dow gained more than 11 percent, its biggest one-day rally since 1933, and by points it shattered the previous record for a one-day gain of 499, during during the waning days of the technology boom in 2000.

The Left is the 'tolerant' side

2008-10-13T18:37:00.002-04:00

Right?

ACORN: Dig up the vote

2008-10-12T20:47:00.008-04:00

Get out the vote? No way, it's 'dig up the vote' for ACORN. The community organizers have apparently been registering dead people to vote in Indiana. They don't have any problem with zombies voting – as long as they vote Democrat, of course.

From The Northwest Indiana Times:

CROWN POINT | Lake County Republican Chairman John Curley wants a federal investigation into hundreds of voter registrations bearing fictitious signatures or the names of dead and underage people.

"Fraudulent applications are the workings of ACORN groups operating from Milwaukee and Chicago who are getting out the vote for Obama. I'm Republican, but I want everyone who should vote to vote. But I want a clean election," Curley said at a Wednesday news conference.

Lake County elections officials acknowledged they have found problems and had to reject a large portion of the 5,000 registration forms turned in recently by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, an activist group that conducted registration drives across the county this summer.

An ACORN spokesperson couldn't be reached Wednesday for comment. Telephones to ACORN offices in Gary, Indianapolis, Chicago and Milwaukee were reported to be disconnected.

One of the consistent talking points of the Left during this election is that the McCain campaign has not been an 'honorable' one.

I guess organizations like ACORN show the Left has a flexible view of that concept.

Where's the rage really coming from?

2008-10-12T15:08:00.019-04:00

As the media begins their latest narrative – which is that the crowd at McCain/Palin rallies are just a 'lynch mob' of racist hicks hating on Obama – we must ask the question, which side is really spewing the divisive rhetoric?

Which side is really lowering the national discourse?

Apparently, it's been completely fine to go after The Hero in the most personal ways (his age, POW injuries, wife's money, etc.) but to even mention the radicals that have consistently floated in Obama's orbit for most of his adult life is 'hateful' and 'negative'.

The hypocrisy is mind-numbing.

It's hard to blame anyone who gives up and tunes all this crap out. On more than one occasion lately I've seriously considered doing just that. (But my 3 readers would probably be disappointed. Okay, maybe they wouldn't even care.)

Anyway, the lovely Michelle Malkin analyzes the whole mess here, and includes a great photo gallery.

Alaska's summer was third coldest...ever

2008-10-12T13:23:00.005-04:00

From the Anchorage Daily News:

Summer is officially over in Alaska, and if you got out in the sun to enjoy both days of it you were lucky.

Those were the two July days the temperature at the offices of the National Weather Service in Anchorage hit 70 degrees or better.

"Those temperatures occurred at the beginning of the month (of July) and were immediately followed by a long stretch of cool and wet weather.

"With only two days above 70 degrees this year, that sets a new record for the fewest days to reach 70,'' the weather-watching agency reported Friday.

Add to the lack of heat and sunshine what the agency calls "an astonishing 77%" of days colder than normal, and you get the picture.

This summer was every bit as bad as you thought it was.

Gardens didn't grow. Salmon returned late. Bees didn't make honey. Swallows didn't breed.

And the sunbathing, well, what sunbathing?

On average, Anchorage sees 16 days that hit 70 or better.

Not this year. Not since 1980 has there been a summer less reflective of global warming than this one. Consider these 2008 benchmarks from the weather service that say this month won't be any better:

Over the course of the past 87 years, September temperatures have reached 70 only 17 times, and two of those 70-degree days came in the same year, according to the weather service.

I wonder what will happen to the political landscape when, in 10 years, they figure out we're actually spiraling toward an ice age. Will the climate pimps pressure companies to increase carbon emissions?

Cleric: Replace capitalism with Islamic system

2008-10-12T13:15:00.006-04:00

According to AFP:

Muslims should take advantage of the global financial crisis to build an economic system compatible with Islamic principles, influential Sunni cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said on Sunday.

"The collapse of the capitalist system based on usury and paper and not on goods traded on the market is proof that it is in crisis and shows that Islamic economic philosophy is holding up," said the Egyptian-born, Qatar-based cleric.

"The Western system has collapsed and we have a complete economic philosophy as well as spiritual strength," he said at Sunday's opening of a conference on Jerusalem.

"All riches are ours... the Islamic nation has all or nearly all the oil and we have an economic philosophy that no one else has," Qaradawi said.

He urged Muslims to "profit from the crisis to bring about the triumph of the (Islamic) nation, which holds the spiritual and material resources for victory."

The fundamentalists already want to take us back to the middle ages socially, might as well throw in economically as well.

The world wants Obama, do we?

2008-10-10T19:09:00.016-04:00

The sophisticates of Europe have spoken, and they have decreed that if we racist rubes of America fail to elect Obama as President, then the "world's verdict will be harsh".

This according to Jonathan Freedland of The Guardian:

An America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse.

But what of the rest of the world? This is the reaction I fear most. For Obama has stirred an excitement around the globe unmatched by any American politician in living memory. Polling in Germany, France, Britain and Russia shows that Obama would win by whopping majorities, with the pattern repeated in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. If November 4 were a global ballot, Obama would win it handsomely. If the free world could choose its leader, it would be Barack Obama.

The crowd of 200,000 that rallied to hear him in Berlin in July did so not only because of his charisma, but also because they know he, like the majority of the world's population, opposed the Iraq war. McCain supported it, peddling the lie that Saddam was linked to 9/11. Non-Americans sense that Obama will not ride roughshod over the international system but will treat alliances and global institutions seriously: McCain wants to bypass the United Nations in favour of a US-friendly League of Democracies. McCain might talk a good game on climate change, but a repeated floor chant at the Republican convention was "Drill, baby, drill!", as if the solution to global warming were not a radical rethink of the US's entire energy system but more offshore oil rigs.

If Americans choose McCain, they will be turning their back on the rest of the world, choosing to show us four more years of the Bush-Cheney finger. And I predict a deeply unpleasant shift.

Until now, anti-Americanism has been exaggerated and much misunderstood: outside a leftist hardcore, it has mostly been anti-Bushism, opposition to this specific administration. But if McCain wins in November, that might well change. Suddenly Europeans and others will conclude that their dispute is with not only one ruling clique, but Americans themselves. For it will have been the American people, not the politicians, who will have passed up a once-in-a-generation chance for a fresh start - a fresh start the world is yearning for.

And the manner of that decision will matter, too. If it is deemed to have been about race - that Obama was rejected because of his colour - the world's verdict will be harsh. In that circumstance, Slate's Jacob Weisberg wrote recently, international opinion would conclude that "the United States had its day, but in the end couldn't put its own self-interest ahead of its crazy irrationality over race".

I'm not even going to take this opportunity to counter the insulting implication that we are a bunch of hick racists who would never elect a black President. That idea has of course been floating around and you can be sure if Obama loses in November, that discussion will explode into a national debate. It's ridiculous, but I will rant about that another time.

However, to Mr. Freedland's point, I'm tired of caring what the rest of the world thinks. That's not because I think we, as Americans, are so much better than people from other countries. That's not the point. It's because to constantly be gauging the attitude of Europe towards the U.S. is to accept that we are indeed a problem for them, a scourge to the planet, an obstacle to global progress. Interestingly, that seems to be exactly the view of the Left currently in this country – and it's a view that I reject.

America is not the problem, not the scourge, not the obstacle. America is the solution to problems. America is the progress. America is the hope of the world. Period.

Show me a society that has produced more, given more, liberated more, and inspired more; and done so in such a short time. This is not arrogance, just truth.

Now, that doesn't mean that we should trample across the world waving our flag and getting involved in every conflict or situation that comes up. Not in the least. But we should humbly assist those who need (and want) our help, continue to grow our economic strength to our benefit and the developing world, and most of all, continue to lead by example. But hopefully, always with an eye on our own affairs here at home first.

Are we perfect? No, of course not. But I resent the idea that this election – and Obama's predicted victory – has turned into the 'Great American apology to the world' for the last eight years. What, really, do we need to apologize for?

I know the Europeans are all excited about Barry, but I'm not waking up in the morning worrying about how Pierre from Paris is feeling about U.S. politics. I'm sorry, I'm just not.

If anti-Americanism will be 'cured' by Obama's election, I'm happy to refuse the pill.

"It's almost hard to remain objective." Yeah, we know

2008-10-08T21:34:00.008-04:00

This video is certainly not new, and it's not like it's a shock – or rare – that a mainstream journalist is completely in the tank for Obama. But this is still one of my favorite examples of an 'objective' network reporter letting their guard down as they fawn over Barry.

Islamic law officially adopted in British courts

2008-10-08T19:23:00.012-04:00

From the Times Online:

ISLAMIC law has been officially adopted in Britain, with sharia courts given powers to rule on Muslim civil cases.

The government has quietly sanctioned the powers for sharia judges to rule on cases ranging from divorce and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

Rulings issued by a network of five sharia courts are enforceable with the full power of the judicial system, through the county courts or High Court.

Previously, the rulings of sharia courts in Britain could not be enforced, and depended on voluntary compliance among Muslims.

Some might call this a natural progression of multiculturalism in a forward-thinking society. Me? I wonder why any culture would willingly shred its own institutional fabric, especially for the hollow aim of appearing politically sophisticated. Is it not possible to remain sensitive to other cultures without surrendering your own identity?

I guess you could say my negative reaction to this story is melodramatic, a mountain out of a molehill. After all, this is only relating to a small portion of Muslim civil cases and has little effect on the British legal system as a whole. Well, you may be right, or it may be the creeping decline of democratic Western civilization that I've been sensing for some time now.

While you ponder that, ponder this from Mark Steyn's great essay The future belongs to Islam:

In a few years, as millions of Muslim teenagers are entering their voting booths, some European countries will not be living formally under sharia, but -- as much as parts of Nigeria, they will have reached an accommodation with their radicalized Islamic compatriots, who like many intolerant types are expert at exploiting the "tolerance" of pluralist societies. In other Continental countries, things are likely to play out in more traditional fashion, though without a significantly different ending. Wherever one's sympathies lie on Islam's multiple battle fronts the fact is the jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis and Russians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Spaniards?

"We're the ones who will change you," the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. "Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children." As he summed it up: "Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Maybe it's true: A great civilization cannot be conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.

How to remove spines nonsurgically

2008-10-06T19:03:00.014-04:00

According to this story from the Telegraph, one school in England has decided to do away with spelling tests because they are too 'distressing' for the children.

Whitminster Endowed Church of England Primary School, near Stroud, has decided not to give pupils lists of words to learn by rote as homework.

Headmistress Debbie Marklove said there was a risk that children would feel a "sense of failure" if, having learned the words at home, they were unable to spell them at school the next day.

She wrote to all parents of the 105 children aged between four and 11 at the school to tell them about the change.

"You will notice that the children will not be given spelling lists to learn over the week and then be tested in class," she wrote.

"We have taken the decision to stop spellings as homework as it is felt that although children may learn them perfectly at home they are often unable to use them in their daily written work.

"Also many children find this activity unnecessarily distressing.

As far as I know, no one has revealed this to be a joke.

I don't even really get frustrated by stories like this anymore – it's just the way of things. Europe is farther down the abyss, but with the continued pussification of America, we're not far behind. Sometimes I think we may as well just throw up the white flag to the terrorists or whoever else wants to dominate us.

Everyone gets a trophy, no one comes in first, and failure is not allowed – because that would hurt feelings. Instead of raising a generation of tough-minded, self-reliant warriors who have learned from hard work (and occasional failure), we're raising soft losers who will need more time on the psychiatrist's couch and happy pills when they learn that life is tough and you actually have to put forth effort to succeed.

Right now, the West is losing itself, and no one seems to care.

For all you moral equivalence types

2008-10-04T09:18:00.019-04:00

...who are somehow able to talk about 'Radical Christianity' with a straight face, as if it is just as much a source of violence, blood and death across the planet. Or for those who would silence criticism of fundamentalist Islam because Muslims who commit acts of terror in the name of jihad (or merely sympathize with them) are such a rare anomaly, it is politically incorrect and 'hateful' to even speak of it.

Well, Clifford May has an interesting story to tell you at NRO. It's a must read actually.

Not since the Nazi book burnings of the 1930s has free speech been as endangered as it is today. Firebombing publishers, murdering filmmakers, issuing death threats against writers and cartoonists, suing researchers, restricting freedom of expression through bogus “human-rights commissions” and the U.N. — these are some of the ways militant Islamists, their enablers, and their apologists are seeking to silence their critics.

Much more on this topic to come...

Let's point some fingers!

2008-10-02T20:00:00.005-04:00

According to Dominic Lawson with The Independent in the UK, Democrat fingerprints are all over the financial crisis:

Of all the characteristics of a successful politician, none is more essential than bare-faced cheek. Never has this been more evident than in the past fortnight, as senior Democrat members of the US legislature have sought to lay all the blame for the country's financial crisis on the executive arm of Government and Wall Street.

Neither of these two institutions is blameless – far from it. Yet when I see such senior Democrats as Barney Frank, Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and Christopher Dodd, Chairman of the Senate's Banking Committee, play the part of avenging angels – well, I can only stand in silent awe at the sheer tight-bottomed nerve of it. These are men with sphincters of steel.
What is the proximate cause of the collapse of confidence in the world's banks? Millions of improvident loans to American housebuyers. Which organisations were on their own responsible for guaranteeing half of this $12 trillion market? Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the so-called Government Sponsored Enterprises which last month were formally nationalised to prevent their immediate and catastrophic collapse. Now, who do you think were among the leading figures blocking all the earlier attempts by President Bush – and other Republicans – to bring these lending behemoths under greater regulatory control? Step forward, Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
In September 2003 the Bush administration launched a measure to bring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under stricter regulatory control, after a report by outside investigators established that they were not adequately hedging against risks and that Fannie Mae in particular had scandalously mis-stated its accounts. In 2006, it was revealed that Fannie Mae had overstated its earnings – to which its senior executives' bonuses were linked – by a stunning $9.3billion. Between 1998 and 2003, Fannie Mae's executive chairman, Franklin Raines, picked up over $90m in bonuses and stock options.
Yet Barney Frank and his chums blocked all Bush's attempts to put a rein on Raines. During the House Financial Services Committee hearing following Bush's initiative, Frank declared: "The more people exaggerate a threat of safety and soundness [at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae], the more people conjure up the possibility of serious financial losses to the Treasury which I do not see. I think we see entities that are fundamentally sound financially." His colleague on the committee, the California Democrat Maxine Walters, said: "There were nearly a dozen hearings where we were trying to fix something that wasn't broke. Mr Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac and particularly at Fannie Mae under the outstanding leadership of Mr Franklin Raines."

I'll go ahead and be all bipartisan and nice and say, "Gee whiz, there's a bunch of Washington blowhards from both parties that need to get booted out of office for this mess," if that'll make you feel better.

But I damn sure know the first two I'd start with.

Crap sandwich

2008-10-02T19:11:00.008-04:00

The Senate passed a 451-page, pork-filled $850 billion Wall Street bailout last night, in case you didn't know. Read about it here.

Jonah Goldberg wrote an absolutely brilliant piece a couple of days ago at NRO about the House's own failed attempt at a bailout and how both sides screwed it up.

Meanwhile, President Bush, his popularity ratings stuck at below-freezing numbers, has decided to cling to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for warmth on the grounds that the vaunted former Goldman Sachs CEO has the credibility to sell the solution to a problem he’s been exacerbating for 18 months. When a reporter for Forbes magazine asked a Treasury spokesman last week why Congress had to lay out $700 billion, the answer came back: “It’s not based on any particular data point. We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

There’s a confidence builder.

As for the reputedly free-market purists of the congressional GOP, with whom my sympathies generally lie, I cannot let pass without comment the fact that they controlled the legislative branch for most of the last eight years. Only now, when capitalism is in flames, does this fire brigade try to enforce the free-market fire codes without compromise.

I loathe populism. But if there ever has been a moment when reasonable men’s hands itch for the pitchfork, this must surely be it. No one is blameless. No one is pure. Two decades of crapulence by the political class has been prologue to the era of coprophagy that is now upon us. It is crap sandwiches for as far as the eye can see.

Mr. Goldberg and I probably disagree on what level of involvement is needed here by Big Gov in 'assisting' Wall Street. But his vitriol toward both parties on the failed House bill was too good not to point out.

As far as the new Senate bill, why am I not surprised? This is Washington after all. A smaller bill gets defeated in the House of Representatives, then a much bigger, more expensive porker of a bill gets passed by the Senate and will likely now pass in the House.

Crap sandwich, alright.

Shocker: Debate moderator is in the tank for Obama

2008-10-02T17:26:00.014-04:00

Seriously, is anyone really shocked by this story?

PBS journalist Gwen Ifill, moderator of the upcoming vice presidential debate, dismissed conservative questions about her impartiality because she is writing a book that includes material on Barack Obama.

Of course she dismissed questions. I mean, Gwen Ifill is a PBS journalist, after all. She also smirked (and drew complaints) after Sarah Palin's speech at the convention, and was less than fair to Evil Dick Cheney four years ago in his debate with the missing man John Edwards.

Ms. Ifill's book is called "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama" and is slated to come out on January 20, 2009. Yes, that's inauguration day. If Barry wins, the book should sell pretty good. If McCain wins, the book will sell about five copies to her immediate family.

Look, no one should be surprised that a highly-respected member of the mainstream media is a Liberal, clearly biased, and in the tank for Barry. But what is surprising is how the debate commission didn't even consider this glaring conflict of interest when they chose her to moderate this debate. In the words of Matt Damon, "it's absurd."

Count it as another huge obstacle for Sarah Palin tonight, who hasn't done herself any favors lately with extremely poor interviewing. Good luck Sarah, you'll need it.

Kids can't vote

2008-09-30T17:42:00.012-04:00

I've never been a fan of kids being used for political purposes, especially since the ankle-biters can't vote.

I'm going to agree with the way Jonah Goldberg put it over at The Corner:

All I need to know about your politics...

is whether you find this creepy or not.

There really just isn't much more to say about this, except, Kim Jong-il would be proud.

And I weep for the future.

UPDATE: Apparently the youtube link is dead. Someone removed the video (likely out of embarrassment).

Crisis is the friend of The State

2008-09-25T19:42:00.030-04:00

No doubt you've heard by now that Big Government is swooping in to 'save the day' and hand over $700 billion of your money to help the Wall Street / Bad Loans / Worthless Mortgage mess. But the very latest is that the deal seems far from done. Here are current details from the AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush and the two men fighting to succeed him joined forces Thursday at a historic White House meeting on a multibillion-dollar Wall Street bailout plan, aiming to stave off a national economic disaster. Key members of Congress said they had struck a deal earlier in the day, but its future was unclear.

The tentative accord would give the Bush administration just a fraction of the $700 billion it had requested up front, with half that total subject to a congressional veto, Capitol Hill aides said. But nothing appeared final. Amid several signs that conservatives were balking, Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, emerged from the White House and said the announced agreement "is, obviously, no agreement."

Both of Congress' Republican leaders, Rep. John Boehner and Sen. Mitch McConnell, issued statements saying there was not yet an agreement.

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, who have both sought to distance themselves from the unpopular Bush, sat down with the president at the White House for an hourlong afternoon session that was striking in this brutally partisan season and apparently without precedent. By also including Congress' Democratic and Republican leaders, the meeting gathered nearly all Washington's political power structure at one long table in a small West Wing room.

Am I supposed to be comforted?

We are merely armchair political observers here at CF, certainly not economic experts, but we are skeptical that Big Gov and massive amounts of taxpayer money are the cure.

In fact, maybe we don't need a cure?

Oh boy, I've gone and said it now.

The perfect beauty of Capitalism is that it is far from perfect. There is risk, there is danger, there is prosperity, there is crushing loss. That's the price we pay. When things turn south we don't abandon free markets and turn to Socialism overnight. We take small, measured steps to restore order and let those who made poor decisions live with the consequences.

Cruel, I know. But that's Capitalism, more to the point, that's Conservatism: Not everyone's going to make it. We don't like that, we wish it were different, but it's reality. Not everyone is going to succeed. We do what we can to help those we can, but those who make bad choices again and again cannot be saved. There is no such thing as Utopia - not on Main Street and not on Wall Street. Prosperity for as many as possible is worth the risk that a few will fail, including financial titans like AIG.

Socialism, on the other hand, removes that risk so everyone is equal -- and equally miserable. Nationalizing major financial institutions in not the answer.

If you want to punish 'greedy' CEO's then by all means, get out the tar and feathers and send them up the river; certainly if illegalities are found. But remember that 'greed' is a powerful motivator, and risk is one ingredient in the fuel of freedom. Without it, where would this country be today? There are no guarantees.

So consider these things as you hear the Prophets of Doom on television telling you that Big Gov's bailout is the only way to prevent another Depression. Free markets will work these things out without the need for expanded government, more oversight and unnecessary regulations that do more harm than good in the long term.

Oh, and to the European press, the rumors of Capitalism's death are greatly exaggerated.

The sun will come up tomorrow people, and we're a long way from bread lines. No matter what NBC News tells you, remember that.