Camille Paglia on the Fairness Doctrine

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

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

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

Memo to the Republicans

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday must-reads

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

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

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

From Suitably Flip

Oborg

From Black and Right

The honeymoon is over

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

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

Read more at Suitably Flip.

Doubt about Global Warming is gaining traction

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"

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"

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

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.