The MEC way

Right after his Polish gaffe, the MEC tries to assert his pro-Judaism bona fides - by citing his radical-left, anti-Israel Chicago "Jewish" associates -  as proof that he hangs with Hymie.

This is where we are

PRENDA is defeated in the House - by Life-Haters.

It is so late in the day, one can barely convince oneself of a sliver of daylight out there on the horizon.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

The Bloomberg regime in New York City states its intention to ban servings of soda pop over 16 ounces.

The muddied distinction in the top-of-the-ticket race

Thought-provoking piece by David Harsanyi at Human Events on the set of conditions a juncture like our current one - a radical socialist incumbent president facing yet another mushy-middle Reasonable Gentleman challenger - presents to each of the candidates.  For the MEC, the challenge is to find a reason to go after Romney's record as Massachussetts governor.  If Mitt talked a good game about limiting government and pursuing low-tax, wealth-creating policies and then governed otherwise, well, doesn't that make the case that he wound up doing things that likely MEC voters would endorse?  Conversely, we know the dilemma that an examination of record poses for Romney: It exposes him as a man without a real conservative core.

Yes, it's nice that we have Congressional and state races - beginning next week with Wisconsin's hugely important recall election - that draw the much-needed sharp distinction between conservatism and freedom-hatred, but the presidential contest is so fraught with symbolism - to say nothing about actual impact on this nation's direction - that it's disheartening in the extreme to see that, once again, it is reduced to a back-and-forth of blunted messages and attacks based on distractions.

Another one realizes he's not a FHer

Former Dem Alabama Congressman Artur Davis switches to the Pub side and explains why at his blog.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Pending home sales slide to four-month low in April.

The regime cackles with glee as the American people are brought to their knees.

Any doubt now?

The MEC awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Democratic Socialists of America honorary chairwoman Dolores Huerta.  Says that he got his 08 slogan "Yes we can" from her.

He must go.  This afternoon would be nice.

This is what such entropy leads to

Apropos the previous post, Zimbabwe is training a UN-sponsored "peacekeeping mission" to send to Syria.  Seriously.

And the current situation with Syria - which means the current situation with Iran - means that the MEC must basically ask pretty-please for Russia's cooperation, an iffy thing given Russia's decidedly different set of interests.

The entropy unleashed by the decline of America

It's time to weigh in on Syria.  The recent massacre - including stabbings and execution-style shootings - of 108 preople ought to confirm the nature of the Assad regime if nothing else about the last eighteen months - indeed, the last forty years- has.

The West's response - expelling Syrian diplomats - speaks volumes about its waning influence on the world stage.  While it's true that the Syrian opposition is barely organized and contains some elements that would be no better than Assad, living with the current horror is no sort of policy for a collection of nations that until recently was considered the leader on the world stage.

The key to this situation, as with so much in the middle east and southern Asia, is to be found in Teheran.  The mullahs prop up Syria's Baathists and both regimes use proxy groups, particularly Hezbollah, to extend their mischief into places like Lebanon and Israel.

And what is our Iran policy?  More patty-cake, even as the theocracy's rhetoric remains as belligerent as ever, and as the centrifuges keep spinning.

Assad sees an economically crippled continent when it looks at Europe and it sees a United States presided over by a regime whose policy is planned decline and abnegation of its role as world leader.  There is no reason for it to stop the atrocities.

FHers routinely accuse proponents of American exceptionalism of endorsing arrogant swagger and hegemony - if not outright imperialism - but we are seeing the beginning stages of what a world looks like that doesn't have the guidance of the most wise and righteous nation in human history, which we were unitl the last few years.

Rex Nutting's assertion that the MEC has been a frugal prez has been refuted all over the place, but when the WaPo joins in . . .

. . . that's when LITD goes with.  Lottta Pinocchios from the paper's Fact Checker.

That's one sick banking system

Spain's, that is.  Five big banks downgraded and the biggest bailout in that country's banking history.

The media in the last couple of days has been full of stories with a common theme: worldwide economic conditions are not getting any better.  Downturns from China to India to Europe.

Then, of course, there's the People's Republic of Obamica, where insane policy is the rule.

Any pockets of activity bucking this trend have a common trait as well: People are allowed to keep their own money, and governments place the highest priority on being solvent.

Whoops! I guess we're missing a few government officials, aren't we?

As Kim Jong-un was coming to power in North Korea, 30 regime officials disappeared in "accidents."

Inconsistency on steroids

This one has to do with the classic FHer habit of giving scumbags a pass.

I remember the whole Brett Kimberlin saga from reading about it everyday in the Indianapolis Star back in the 70s.  Before he was caught and convicted, he was known as the Speedway Bomber.  Now, after 17 years in the hoosegow, he's making a profession out of harrassing conservative bloggers.  He and his current associates get support from the likes of the Tides Foundation and Barbra Streisand.

I'm joining Bookworm's cyber-event Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day just to help provide greater accuracy to the numbers of freedom-cherishing keyboard bangers who won't be intimidated into silence by anybody.

Here's another one of those junctures at which the FHer worldview's inconsistencies of necessity manifest themselves

Milwaukee mayor and FHer Wisconsin governor candidate Tom Barrett gets into that hooey about Pubs having some kind of "war on women" going on, and is followed by a rapper whose lyrics are full of references to "bitches."

Culture precedes politics - today's edition

Since January 2011, there have been those who let their understanding of what was actually taking place in post-Mubarak Egypt get clouded with the unfounded hope that it was a heralding-in of Jeffersonian democracy.  Well, the pro-sharia Muslim Brotherhood candidate is in first place in that country's presidential election.

The cozy relationship among behemoths

Good Jonah Goldberg column about the chasm between what the entertainment industry thinks big corporations are driven by - and what it wants you and especially your kids to think it's driven by - and what they are really driven by.  For one thing, that industry should look at itself.  It's comprised of big corporations, and they're staffed almost entirely by wacko FHers.  But the influence on the kiddies explains a lot about the changing nature of corporations in general.  They are indoctrinated this way, but the sharpest among them also see upperclassmen meeting with recruiters when they get to college, and then hear about those people getting very nice jobs.  This creates a bit of cognitive dissonance, but it's easily enough resolved by going after such jobs with a bit of the attitude of a crusader in one's heart. "I'm going to bring social justice to the corporate world!"  Pretty soon, as generational shift reaches critical mass, the character of a corporation changes.  Diversity councils.  Green practices.  Exhortations to join "give-back-to-the-community" volunteer groups.  (I've been told by the economic development guru in my own city that young hotshots place community service high on their list  - along with bike trails and good restaurants - of qualities they insist on in a city they consider.)  This, of course, leads to the corporate-governmental alliance of which Goldberg speaks, and obsequious executives posing for photo ops with hard-left politicians who don't give a damn about profit or market forces.

And pretty soon these sprawling leviathans are not so distinguishable from the supposedly constitutionally limited entity that makes our laws, hands down edicts by administrative fiat, and can forcibly take our money.

The invevitable confusion in which ideological sisterhood must result

The Twitter exchange between standup comedienne / actress-turned-all-purpose-fool-and-loudmouth Roseanne Barr and old-school feminist Robin Morgan over Hustler's mysogynistic photoshopping of S.E. Cupp involves several layers of cultural import to be peeled back.  Ultimately, for their profoundly divergent views of the incident itself, they both, particularly Morgan, go to some lengths to stress their agreement that Cupp's ideological core is "atrocious."

What could it be about an avowed atheist whose academic field has been art history and who is a classically trained ballerina, and who is savvy and single that drives both these feminists up a wall?  Of course.  It's what it always comes down to for such types.  She cannot abide by the extermination of fetal Americans.

When pressed, the militant feminists always resort to the "if-men-had-to-house-the-gestating-kid-in-their-bodies-they'd-sing-a-different-tune" canard.  And it's here that we get to the hollowness at the core of what they're about:  Their rage is actually against nature - really, God - for having designed female essence and male essence to be distinct, with each serving purposes in the overall schem of the universe that the other can't serve.

Indeed, that's what such freakish developments as the mainstreaming of transgenderism and sperm donors for lesbian couples is all about - an attempt to declare oneself a post-human creature while still hanging on to the warm feelings of romance and motherhood that can only be authentic when experienced by  - dare I say it? -  normal human beings.

Feminsim is really a fear of one's membership in the species called homo sapiens.

"A Paul Revere moment"

The Heartland Institute's Peter Ferrara on what's at stake in Wisconsin's upcoming recall.  The plain truth is that Gove. Walker, like John Kasich in Ohio, , has pursued conservative policies and turned an economically sick state into one that is conducive to prosperity, despite the howling and infantile antics of public-sector union thugs.

I kind of hate to say it, because it gratifies his narcissism, but in a crucial way, it really is all about the MEC

There are a number of items in the news each of which I'd given some consideration to posting about: the Corey Booker dustup, the screaming North Carolina teacher and the student who merely asked a question, Chris Matthews's bomb-out on Jeopardy, Occupy Whatever at the NATO summit in Chicago.

The sum total of what they have to tell us about the state of our civilization is really just further confirmation of what we have known for a sadly long time: It's unraveling.

There will be other examples to cite.  There's no worry about that.

Really, lately I've been focusing once again on the Most Equal Comrade - who he is, how he views America, why he doubles down on policies and positions that are proven beyond a doubt to be hugely unpopular.  I'm reading The Amateur by Ed Klein now.  Like Stanley Kurtz's Radical-in-Chief, it substantiates how utterly alien to anything we consider American his whole worldview is.

He is the main focus.  He has to be.  We must stop him.

One of those situations in which body language and facial expressions tell us much indeed

The MEC was obviously embarking on a warm friendship with Hollande at the G8 retreat summit at Camp David.  Things were a little chillier between the Lightworker in Chief and Angela Merkel:

In what may have been a telling moment, Obama greeted Merkel at his Laurel Lodge with a cordial: "How've you been?" When her response came: a shrug and pursed lips, Obama conceded: "Well, you have a few things on your mind."

The term "Orwellian" gets used way too much in modern polemical discourse, but it's exactly what this is

The regime, through its Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, pressured mining-industry contractors to fudge the numbers regarding job losses stemming from stream-proximity regulations.
 The House, led by Bill Johnson, R-OH, is going to get to the bottom of this.

He cares not a whit for the sovereignty or the prosperity of the nation he presides over - today's edition

The MEC signs the Law of the Sea Treaty, which sets up an International Seabed Authority based in Kingston, Jamaica.  This ISA will collect taxes on energy resources culled from oceans and disperse the money to "poorer, landlocked nations."  Congress must still ratify it - or, rather, must not ratify it.

It's not right; not only disinvite her, but fire some people as well

Exorcist author and 1950 Georgetown graduate William Peter Blatty is calling for both of these things.  (The "her" refers, of course, to pro-death, faux-Christian Kathleen Sibelius.)  He says President John DeGioia must go as the least the school can do to prove it still has even a pretense of fealty to Catholic teaching.

This is pretty cool

Campbell Brown, who has been a news anchor for two leftist broadcasting networks, NBC and CNN, has a column in today's New York Times - that's right, the NYT - on how the MEC should stop patronizing and condescending to women, about how the issue is the economy and job - for women and men. 

Exactly

Janet Daley at the UK Telegraph nails precisely the core cause of the current European crisis: the notion that there is some kind of right to economic security.

It's a bad idea, always has been a bad idea and always will be

Caroline Glick on the push by such self-loathing "Jewish" organizations as J Street to unseat Congressman Joe Walsh in this fall's election, because he has sponsored legislation to pull the plug on the two-state solution.

What's needed, as she points out with statistical substantiation, is for the West Bank and Gaza to officially become parts of Israel again, so that it may have more influence as the only economically robust representative democracy dedicated to peace in the region of the world.

And this guy proposes to have something constructive to offer at the G8 summit on Europe?

The federal government has onced again reached its debt ceiling and the FHers in Congress have rejected every budget proposal that has been brought forth in this cycle, which means it has gone three years without passing a budget.  And yet the MEC has the temerity to talk about "avoiding old political fights" and "not holding America hostage to one party's ideology?"  And this chunk of dog vomit is going to host a G8 summit to look for ways to resolve Europe's crisis?

He must be stopped.

Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do

Okay, everybody reading this knows by now about the 1991 booklet by the MEC's literary agent that states he was born in Kenya.  In fact, you've probably also heard that the agent in question, who still works for the agency (which still has the MEC as a client), says it was a mere fact-checking oversight.  Okay, no one in twenty-one years, even in light of the birther dust-up, noticed and corrected this?

Well, that's one situation.  But now there's another situation: a 2004 Associated Press article headlined "Kenyan-born Obama ready to take place in Senate."

UPDATE:  The 1991 booklet was corrected - or whatever - in 2007, but, still, that's sixteen years during which the MEC permitted the previous information - or whatever - to circulate.

It looks like the case is pretty damn weak

Per ABC, witness and police reports from the night of the shooting corroborate Zimmerman's own account of the death of Trayvon Martin.

Beautiful and glorious - today's edition

Rasmussen has likely voters in Nebraska preferring pro-freedom dark horse Deb Fischer to Bob Kerrey 56% to 38%.

Restoring people's responsibility for the risks inherent in their choices

Daniel Horowitz at Red State charts a path to the privatization of flood insurance.  His piece actually encompasses other forms of government encroachment on freedom (and threats to governmental solvency), such as bailouts of private firms of various types, and farm subsidies, as well. 

The whole thing is well worth reading.

Exactly what we've needed to do for a long. long time

This Joe Ricketts is one cool guy.  The idea of using Super-Pac money for a full airing of the truth about the MEC is not just timely, but imperative.

UPDATE: Ricketts scratches his plan.  As information on why the sudden turnabout becomes available, we'll get it to you.

UPDATE: Looks like a one-two salvo from the NYT and David Axelrod were major factors in the tactical retreat.

UPDATE: It looks like the guy we rather reluctantly acknowledge to be our standard-bearer is not entirely cured of his Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.

The arrival of the inevitable

The Greek economy is collapsing.  It will soon exit the Euro system.  Continent-wide ramifications are already being felt.

One thinks of all the meetings, all the agreements, all the elections, all the taxpayers and investors who are just plain out big sums of money. 

The pointy-heads in designer suits kept cobbling together new arrangements when it was clear to all - even them  - that such overly clever maneuverings were no substitute for the kind of basic sound economic behavior that fosters prosperity and fends off trouble everywhere and always.

There are some basic facts about human nature and the nature of reality that can't be ignored.

His narcissism knows know bounds - today's edition

What's with the MEC inserting his own "accomplishments" into the biographies of past presidents at the White House website?

America's Dairyland is nowhere near as blue as the lamestreamers would like you to believe

Intrade gives Scott Walker an 82.1 percent chance of winning the recall vote on June 5.

Truth, 1 race-baiters, 0

Medical and autopsy reports confirm that George Zimmerman had a broken nose and that Trayvon Martin had bloody knuckles.

And the attorney for Trayvon's family concedes that there was likely a fight.

He's pro-death, socialist, and doesn't have a patriotic bone in his body - today's edition

We have before us the juxtaposition of two stories that, taken together, bring another level of clarity to the fact of the MEC's utter lack patriotism or even fealty to general Western values.

It seems that even as a grown man, the MEC didn't know the first thing about Christianity, so Jeremiah Wright gave him his introduction, liberation-theology-style.  Really let that sink in.  The guy who holds the office of President of the United States was utterly unacquainted with the faith that permates and informs everything about this nation's identity, and then his impression of it was that it was about the struggled of oppressed demographics against some supposed monolithic power structure.  (What the MEC was culturally steeped in was Islam.)

This background information goes a long way toward explaining why the MEC has no qualms about forging ahead with FHer-care, even though it would require Christians to acquiesce to morally repugnant policies and practices.  He has no idea that actual, doctrinally sound Christianity considers the extermination of fetal people as much of a sin against God as any other kind of homicide.

What drives me up the wall is how accessible these revelations were four years ago, but they lay dormant. 

I'm quite frequently taken to task in comment threads here for not having "given the guy a chance."  Conservatives, as exemplified by me, I'm told, "started right in on him the day he was inaugurated."  Well, let me make that a little more accurate.  This blogger, and committed conservatives generally, started in on him the moment we were able to confirm that the odor wafting off him was indeed revolutionary socialism.  We were determined to thwart his aims a good year before his election.

Beautiful and glorious - today's edition

On the heels of Romney pulling ahead of the MEC with women and independents, he now leads him among North Carolinians 51 to 43.

I wonder if the Freedom-Haters are still happy about choosing Charlotte for their convention site.

Sink, Comrade sink!

Funny business with the numbers

John Lott demonstrates that the MEC is blowing smoke when he says that GM is creating scads of new jobs and is once again the number-one car maker.

What the enemy will stoop to

Via Michelle Malkin, the indispensible James O'Keefe and Project Veritas expose FHer election fraud in North Carolina.

How will the MEC react to this game-changing bit of information?

The General Accounting Office tells the regime that there is a quantity of oil just about that of the world's proven reserves in a stretch of federal land that includes parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

Free markets work because they're based on the way reality works

Mark Calabria of the Cato Insitute on the JPMorgan loss.  He's a wonk's wonk, but all he needs to do here is go over basic principles: 

1.) All of life involves risk

2.) Personal responsibility is the other side of the freedom coin.

3.)  JPMorgan's loss was a tiny fraction of its assets.

4.) The bank's stock has taken a hit, people were fired, and Dimon, the CEO, has been up to his eyeballs in fielding tough questions since it happened.  In other words, market discipline worked.

5.) Government interviention distorts the process of market discipline.

About that supremely dishonest new MEC campaign ad . . .

The one about Bain capital and GST Steel.  A few facts:

1.) Romney left Bain capital in 1999.  The shutdown was in 2001.

2.) Here's who was still at Bain, though, and oversaw the outsourcing of the jobs: a major MEC campaign-fund bundler.

3.) The mill that was shut down was on the skids anyway, in no small part because it was busting its ass to try to comply with EPA standards.

4.) That mill was unionized.  GTS's other mill, in Ft. Wayne, IN, is non-union and still making steel today.

As with the silly business about the 1965 wrestling-the-unconventional-blond-kid-to-the-ground-and-cutting-his-hair story, the fact that the truth subsequently comes out is secondary to the damage done by Freedom-hater lying.

This is how it's going to be right up to early November.

Say farewell to the last vestiges of common sense in Europe

Merkel's Christian Democrat party loses big to not-so-keen-on-austerity leftist coalition in statewide elections in North Rhine - Westphalia.

Doesn't fit with His plan, so why is she getting to speak?

The Catholic Standard, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., runs an unsigned editorial excoriating Georgetown University for inviting pro-death totalitarian Kathleen Sibelius to be commencement speaker for the school's Institute on Public Policy.  It's a blast furnace of conviction-fired prose.

This is exquisite

Only a handful of people turn up for the MEC's "driveway speech" and the Nevada couple who hosted it say they aren't sure they'll vote for him.

Militant mommyhood

Bookworm on the Time magazine breasfeeding cover.

UPDATE: Oh, sheesh. Now Newsweek has a ridiculous cover story, the pic for wich has a rainbow-colored halo around the MEC's head, about the MEC being the "first gay president."  And the article is by wackjob loudmouth Andrew Sullivan.

The lamestream media is wheezing its death rattle.

This is absolutely the next book I will be reading

The eye-popping revelations being reported as being in The Amateur by Edward Klein are more numerous by the hour.  There was the Bill Clinton rant in which he tried his best to persuade Hillary to quit her Secretary of State job and run against the MEC - a rant during which he made pretty much the same point about the economy as we've been making at LITD and the right-o-sphere generally.  There was Oprah gettting her nose out of joint over being marginalized by a jealous Michelle, Valerie et al after having endorsed the MEC.  Now comes this nugget: Jeremiah Wright was offered $150,000 by the campaign to keep his mouth shut until after the election.  Not only that, but the MEC paid him a personal visit and presented him with much the same request.  In the course of that conversation, theMEC said, Your problem as a preacher is that you have to tell the truth," which puts the MEC on record as agreeing with Wright about America as basically a morally failed state.

This is big.

America's first Greece

The beaurty of federalism is that states serve as policy laboratories, so that we can observe what works and what doesn't.  It think we're clearly look at the latter in the case of California, the leaders of which are sudenly facing a far larger deficit than they'd estimated even a few months ago.

It is a nasty set of circumstances indeed when a household, state or nation gets into a financial condition such that there is no pleasant way to begin to tackle its debt / deficit crisis.  Talk about a double bind.  In California's desperation, its FHer-controlled legislature - and governor's mansion - are looking at yet higher taxes as part of the mix to begin to address this.  And we all know what that will do - drive yet more business out of the state, reducing the pool of revenue from which to get any tax money.

Let's not go there, America.

You know our tax policy is beyond pathetic when . . .

. . . an increasing number of people will go to such extremes as giving up their US citizenship to avoid an obscene level of seizure of what is rightfully theirs.

The statists will work overtime to try to convince us that there is a certain lesson to be gleaned from this

They will say that more regulation is needed to prevent situations like JPMorgan's  latest loss.

As always, they are wrong.  The lesson is: Don't bank with huge behemoth-type organizations.  Bank locally if at all possible.

Dave Ramsey frequently drives this point home.  He says that when stupid and greedy get together, nothing good can come of it.  If individuals exercise wise stewardship over their money, the sprawling mega-banks won't have any business and they won't be so big and fancy anymore.  Take your money to those who clearly embody maturity and moral restraint. 

In other words, take your freedom seriously

UPDATE: Kevin Williamson at NRO reminds us that risk is inherent in economic activity - activity that is undertaken freely, that is.  That's why government-run economies invariably stagnate.

What kind of regulation could have prevented such a loss?  Answer: none that wouldn't have diminished freedom.

When a traditionally fractious nation puts its internal differences aside, it's a sure sign that it anticipates external trouble

Charles Krauthammer on Netanyahu calling off elections and bringing Kadima into a unity government.  It looks a lot like May 1967.

I must say, Mittt flat-out impresses me with this one

He's being interviewed by a reporter for a CBS local affiliate.  The reporter wants to know about his views on such front-burner - not - matters as legalizing weed and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants' kids, and he responds -  well, the line is a classic and Newsbusters has the video, so let the Pub candidate deliver it himself.

"Subordinating spiritual health to physical health"

Great American Thinker piece on the hollowness of health totalitarianism.  Along with making a supremely important point, it's just plain great writing, full of some of the wittiest puns I've encountered for a while.

Today's word that we all should quit using: "Diversity"

I guess I'm kind of riffing here on my previous post.  Dennis Prager is like that.  He causes a number of lines of thought to form in one's mind.

It could be a fun parlor game to answer the question, "If you could ban any term from our language for the next two years, what would it be?"

What comes to mind for me is "diversity."  Hell, I'd ban it for a decade.

When did it come into its current widespread use?  I can't even remember.  I think it's an outgrowth of the whole affirmative action push.

I know it's used to indoctrinate children in public schools and left-wing churches.  Big deals are made over this one being from Singapore, this one from Bangladesh, this one from Mexico, this one from Gary.  Call me cynical, but it looks to me like a good way for classroom teachers and Sunday School teachers to eat up time that would otherwise have to be spent imparting actual knowledge of the subject matter for which everybody has ostensibly gathered.

It's everywhere now.  I recently wrote an article for a business magazine in which I profiled a company whose services / products are of a rather esoteric nature.  They do all kinds of testing on things like diesel engines, but it involves monitoring the functions of big complex gizmos (like engines) by the microsecond.  Their lab equipment bears all kinds of exotic names that go way over my head.  The CEO of the company is a lady of obviously Oriental (is that still an okay term, or am I supposed to say "Asian" now?) ethnicity. What mainly comes across about her, though, is her cut-and-dried, no-nonsense personality.  In my work as a business journalist, I run into such types occasionally (and they can be any ethnicity or either gender).  She clearly doesn't suffer fools gladly.  Her demeanor and expression clearly said, "I hope you're getting what I say the first time, because it bores me to repeat myself."  After interviewing her, I did some more research on her company, and found an article from, I kid you not, some kind of periodical journal of diversity in manufacturing.  It was about her firm having received some kind of award.  Now, as I say, I just can't imagine she found that nearly as interesting as, say, setting up a new dynamometer.

The irony of all this supposed celebration of variety in our identities is that the ultimate aim of its promoters is to wipe out all our differences, eradicate our individuality.  It is designed to attempt to remake human nature.

Culture develops organically.  People gravitate to environments where they feel comfortable.  That's why ethnic neighborhoods continue to characterize big cities.  You can't design a culture and then impose it.

Along about this point, I could see someone offering a counter-argument along these lines:  Isn't that why the legal framework of the United States strives to be so identity-blind?  Isn't that why we keep religion separate from the official governmental realm?  Isn't it why we have non-discrimination laws?  Didn't the Framers anticipate that this big, wide land would have to accomodate a variety of nationalities and faiths?  So what's wrong with hate-crime laws and speech codes ?  Don't they ensure an atmosphere of tolerance that allows us to proceed with our individual aims, obligations and lives in general?

Well, you see, there are spheres of culture.  Certainly a Polish person in, say, Chicago, is going to maneuver in a culture characterized by, for example, Sunday night bingo at his or her Catholic parish, eating stuffed cabbage, and dancing to polka music at wedding receptions.  But then there is the culture of the city at large, and then there is the culture of the entire nation.

Yes, there is an American culture.  And it is largely Christian and British in nature.  Its roots are more generally European, drawing on the philosophical lineage dating back to Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, as well as the Ten Commandments that Moses received from God, and the the Sermon on the Mount that God's only begotten son delivered a few centuries later.  It was shaped by the Magna Carta, the works of Shakespeare, the Protestant movement, the Glorious Revolution of 1688.  Jefferson, Madison et al had that heritage in their bones.

Not only is there an American culture, it is exceptional.  No other culture has made way for the openness that has led to discussions about ways in which the genders are equal, for existence (I couch it this way because the genders are so, so different that it is meaningless in many ways to talk about "equality" between them.), or why slavery is so spiritually abhorrent.

The "diverstiy" push seeks to elevate all cultures, no matter what customs and norms come with them, to the level of American culture.  This leads to such absurdities as feminists defending burkas.

The fact is that, in America - and let's hope America has a fighting chance to continue to exist in the form we've known for 200-plus years - you can be any color, speak English with the heavy accent of any other language, have any view of God you conclude to make sense, be either gender, and even have an unorthodox sex life, and, if you have something to contribute to the betterment of anybody else, thrive.  No one of any importance will stop you.  They are far more interested in engaging in an economic exchange with you.

So normal-people-type American life goes on despite the efforts of the remake-human-nature crowd to snuff it out.  You just can't keep that good old American culture down.

You can tell a champion of freedom by his emphasis on individual human beings over demographic identities

Occasionally - okay, actually fairly often - a piece by an established pundit says all I would have to say on a particular subject and I can just link to it and let that be that.  Such is the case with today's column by Dennis Prager on homosexuality.  He covers it compreshensively, compassionately and with his principles firmly in place.

I happen to know far more conservative gays than I do radical leftist gays.  In fact, one friend of mine who has been in a committed relationship for ten-plus years has passed up chances to go to states where such unions are "legal" and tie the knot because he asserts that, by definition, two men cannot get married.

That said, I hope the Most Equal Comrade's flip-flop on the subject of gay "marriage" damages the crap out of his prospects for re-election.

Standing on principle is a binary operation; you either are or you aren't

This statement from Lugar following last night's trouncing speaks volumes about the hollowness of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome.  I mean, he couches the whole activity of maximizing the number of conservatives in government as somehow undesirable, and yet claims that he is solidly right of center?

Beautiful and glorious - today's edition

Richard Mourdock defeats one of the Senate's most egregious Reasonable Gentlemen.

Stating the obvious is a firing offense at this publication

If you are a magna cum laude Harvard graduate with a lengthy list of creds as a journalist and you blog for the Chronicle of Higher Education, you'd best not observe that black-studies doctoral dissertations tend to be intellectually shoddy whines or you'll lose your gig.

Pretty much just a secular institution at this point

The WTF of the day: Georgetown University invites Kathleen Sibelius to be its commencement speaker.

Why we call them Freedom-Haters - today's edition

As we've said before here at LITD, when it enters the realm of food, it gets personal.  The Institute of Health, a supposedly non-governmental body set up in 1970 by a Congressional charter, has issued a new report saying that obesity is going  to dramatically increase in America over the next couple of decades, and that society and government must drastically alter all kinds of policies, institutions and behavioral norms to address it.  The whole thing - all the proposed initiatives and the overt shift a way from personal responsibility - is designed to hasten our transformation into a herd of cattle.

This has to be called for what it is - totalitarianism - in every outlet of opinion in this society.

This is war.  This is a twilight struggle for freedom and dignity. 

You don't ever compromise or look for "common ground" with these creatures.

Determined to keep the spigot of debt-provided goodies gushing at full tilt

So the Greek and French elections over the weekend have resulted in shifts away from adult acknowledgement of the precipice and toward determination to double down on addiction to state-supplied goodies.

We shall now see how various parties with vested interests in these developments react: the EU, the MEC regime, stock markets around the world.  Essentially, we shall see if adulthood - indeed, basic sanity - has even a microscopic chance of participating in the late stages of the parade of human folly.

Going to any lengths to burnish the regime's patty-cake bona fides

We're releasing high-level detainees in Afghanistan in order to show good faith to the Taliban so that bunch of seventh-century wackjobs will continue to talk to us while we fight them.  Now, there's a coherent policy for ya.

The Lightworker-in-Chief wags his finger at the nine in the black robes

Here's a regime weigh-in on another subject - that precious cornerstone of its totalitarian agenda, FHer-care - that employs the same argument as in the case of banning gummint funds for abortion providers.  In the case of FHer-care, the MEC himself oncee again tries to influence the way a coequal branch conducts its business, warning the Supreme Court that finding the individual mandate unconstitutional will creat "chaos" in the Medicare program.

Follow the logic, such as it is.  He's saying he doesn't care if the Consitution gets trampled, as long as the state's role as Santa Claus is assured.

Jan Brewer is one of the coolest Americans living today - today's edition

Signs a law reinforcing the ban on state funding for Planned Parenthood and other groups in the same grim business.  Of course, those who relish the extermination of fetal Americans are already screeching that Arizona women will now be denied cancer screening and "basic health services."  What utter dog vomit.  You can get cancer screenings and "basic health services" at any number of places in our society that don't vacuum the brains out of fetal Americans.

It's on purpose - today's edition

Labor force participation at a 30-year low.

Now, that's the kind of news that cheers a Freedom-Hater's heart.

Making it so plain that there's no way apologists can spin it

This "Julia" video that the MEC re-election campaign has put on the Web makes plain the regime's aim to turn us into a nation of cattle.  This fictional American citizen is supposed to have a life of well-being and enhanced opportunities at every step from childhood to parenthood and career because of the constant presence of government.
Julia is perfectly willing to put up with the mind-numbing, dignity-sapping bureaucracy of the agencies and programs that pave her way.  Not only that, she's none too bright, which is the way Freedom-Haters like their cattle / subjects.  She never once questions how these wonderful spigots of largesse can continue with borrowed funds and the depletion of the remaining sources of wealth creation in The People's Republic of Obamica.

You can talk untapped markets and engineering prowess all you want, but China is still a hardcore dictatorship

There have been a few columns, blog posts and TV show segments excoriating the State Department and this regime generally for the way it's handled the Chen affair, but Kirsten Powers, Democrat pundit, offers the most right-between-the-eyes take I've seen so far.

What's at stake is nothing less than America's standing as the force in the world for rescuing desperate individuals from the kinds of fates tyrannies routinely dish out.

Yes, we're up to our eyeballs in business ties to this country, but let's not forget the fundamental nature of its ruling regime

The blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng pretty much had to stay in China dut to threats that his wife would be beaten to death if he went abroad.

And let's remember what his main cause as a dissident is: forced abortions and sterilizations.

Because actually having a principled foreign policy would be detrimental to the regime's unicorns-and-rainbows-patty-cake-kumbaya image

The State Department says it works with the UN Human Rights Council to pressure North Korea on its forced-labor camps.

And what do the SEALs have to say about the MEC's role in the OBL kill?

They caution him on strutting too much about it.

It's unexpected, of course

Private sector hiring significantly down for April.

And US factory orders had their biggest drop in three years in March.

He's today's daily example, but rest assured there will be another tomorrow

It's time to post about Dan Savage.  I have, in fact thought about posting about him for a few days. I suppose part of my procrastination has to do with wondering whether I have any original insights to contribute, or what angle to take.

Mostly, though, I'm just plain tired of addressing the ubiquitous vulgarity.  Yes, there are aspects of what he's about generally, and what he said at that journalism pow-wow, that are important to deal with.  If one steps back a level in scope, however, the picture that emerges is one of a society so inured to the likes of this being who has dog vomit where his soul ought to be, that it's giving up on embracing dignity , common sense, any notion of tradition, or even the most vague, generalized respect for God's will.

Dan Savage is no more vulgar than Bill Maher, Keith Olberman, Nikki Minaj or the metastasizing plurality of Facebook posters who can't keep expletives and body-function vernacular out of their rantings whether they are overtly political or merely attempts at general humor.

I'm winding up my semester teaching rock and roll history at our local community college.  I've been grading research papers, and, as usual, it's hard not to get depressed.  Throughout the semester, I invite the students to consider the breadth of possible topics - a look at changes in the radio industry over the past seventy years, for instance, or the remarkable racial harmony that characterized the southern soul scen of the 1960s, or the relationship between the Brill Building on the east coast and the pool of studio talent loosely known as the Wrecking Crew on the west coast, or the contributions of a given demographic - say, Italians - to the development of the music.  But, no, with a few exceptions each semester, they routinely go for the ugly stuff - fanzine-type then-their-third-album-came-out-and-went-platinum-and-then-they-had-to-go-to-rehab - junior-high-level reports on the careers of the must cartoonish and spiritually ugly figures from the last 60 years of American culture.  Actually, the last forty-five years.  These kids aren't much interested in anything that transpired prior to the mainstreaming of drugs.  So I have to slog through perfunctory accounts of the rises and falls of the likes of The Doors, or Madonna, or Aerosmith or excrutiatingly arcane parsings of neurotically distinct genres like psychobilly or thrash metal. And, no matter how emphatically I state in the syllabus that I'm not looking for the student's feelings about a musical act, I always have to slog through a couple of paragraphs about how this crud meant so much to them in junior high.

So the Dan Savage outrage is part and parcel of the way American life looks now.  Yes, it's important for some pundits and talk-show hosts to spend some columns or show segments making sure the public understands just what this guy says and does.  The real work we must do, though, is much more basic.  Anyone can start in anywhere at any point in his or her day.  This sewage is all around us.  Today, you and I will be faced with multiple opportunities to decide if we have the courage and energy to take it on.

About this notion that GM has come roaring back as the preeminent symbol of American industrial prowess . . .

It's a lot of hooey.  It still owes the preopnderance of the remaining TARP money.  It still owes over half the $50 billion .  Even a significant portion of what it has paid back came from a special escrow account set up for it by the government that could only be tapped with Treaury's permission (and, guess what?, it got Treasury's permission).  Much of its supposed current profit comes from Chinese joint ventures that are not wholly owned subsidiaries.  The government is still subsidizing new product lines.

Ford, which did not take bailout money, is considerably more profitable.