The regime's five-year plan for where it will - and won't - permit drilling is a joke. The rest of the world's oil producers are making great money from increased demand, and we're still tied to some scaredy-cat green vision.
By transforming America, the MEC meant bringing it to its knees.
Saturday, June 30, 2012
The death of the reset button
Michael Weiss at Foreign Policy has a great article retracing the developments where by Russia came to have the US right where it wanted it. Weiss explores what has happened on all the fronts of the US - Russia relationship: Syria, Iran, energy policy, the sovereignty of the peripheral post-Soviet states. When you have a leader like the MEC, who is driven by his megalomania to be enshrined by history as the great kumbaya lightworker, because this is the real world and not some blank slate on which he can work his supposed magic, what actually results is that said lightworker-aspirant becomes the bitch of a steely-eyed autocrat like Putin. And he assumes this role in full view of the cameras of the whole world's media outlets.
Friday, June 29, 2012
Going back after the fact and presuming to reason for another branch of government
Andrew McCarthy at PJ Media has a most incisive piece on the tortured reasoning of Chief Justice John Roberts in yesterday's ruling. His analogy is easy to grasp:
And it's important to remember that earlier versions of the bill did not make it through the FHer-controlled House precisely because the mandate was being sold at that point as a tax.
Let’s say that, back when I was a prosecutor, I tried and convicted a man on a charge of conspiring to sell narcotics. I can prove he was conspiring, but it was really to sell stolen property. I convict him but, on appeal, the court holds, “The prosecutor’s evidence that it was drugs the defendant conspired to sell is wholly lacking.” At that point, the conviction has to be dismissed, and if I want to try him a second time, this time for conspiring to sell stolen property, I’ve got to indict him and start the whole process over again.
Let’s suppose, however, that the appeals court instead said, “Eh, drugs, stolen property, what’s the big whup? You just wrote the wrong commodity into the indictment. So let’s not bother with a whole new trial at which you’d have to prove the correct charge to a jury. Let’s just rewrite the indictment and pretend that it says ‘stolen property’ instead of ‘narcotics.’ Then we can uphold the conviction and call it a day.”
That would never be permitted to happen — not even to a crook of whose guilt we were certain. It would be an outrageous violation of due process, a conviction obtained by false pretenses, that would not be allowed to stand.
Yet this is essentially what Chief Justice Roberts & Co. did. They said the American people are not entitled to an honest legislative process, one in which they can safely assume that when Congress intentionally uses words that have very different meanings and consequences — like tax and penalty — and when Congress adamantly insists that the foundation of legislation is one and not the other, the Court will honor, rather than rewrite, the legislative process. Meaning: if Congress was wrong, the resulting law will be struck down, and Congress will be told that, if it wants to pass the law, it has to do it honestly.
And it's important to remember that earlier versions of the bill did not make it through the FHer-controlled House precisely because the mandate was being sold at that point as a tax.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
It was bound to come to this
House finds Eric Holder in criminal contempt of Congress. Civil contempt vote underway as of this writing.
It's a sad victory. It's sad that we have been saddled by such a corrupt, race-obsessed radical for an attorney general for the last three years. Still, this shows that this critically ill nation can still muster a breath of freedom.
It's a sad victory. It's sad that we have been saddled by such a corrupt, race-obsessed radical for an attorney general for the last three years. Still, this shows that this critically ill nation can still muster a breath of freedom.
The death rattle of the United States of America
Of course I'm depressed and enraged by the SCOTUS decision on FHer-care. The possibility that the Untied States of America can survive to the end of the year, much less any longer, just got exponentially more remote.
It would seem that the stock market concurs with this assessment.
It would seem that the stock market concurs with this assessment.
The MEC regime must be defeated and dismantled - today's edition
The Interior Department is putting in place rules, expected to be ready to go by year's end, to make hydraulic fracking a prohibitively costly practice. This, even though the EPA, including that agency's chief Lisa Jackson, says that fracking is a perfectly benign method of extracting energy.
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Putting as much tyranny and planned decline in place before November as possible - today's edition
A three-judge federal panel upholds the EPA's power to impose greenhouse gas-related regulations.
We're becoming a nation not just of cattle, but shivering cattle.
We're becoming a nation not just of cattle, but shivering cattle.
Tuesday, June 26, 2012
Trouble in FHer-land
What it is with the momentum-gathering attrition from the September FHer convention in Charlotte? Now it's Claire McCaskill.
I really and truly sense the stench of terminal illness coming from this regime. Anyone who has not imbibed the purest concentration of the Kool-Aid is starting to consider the best route to the exit.
I really and truly sense the stench of terminal illness coming from this regime. Anyone who has not imbibed the purest concentration of the Kool-Aid is starting to consider the best route to the exit.
Monday, June 25, 2012
A generous ladling of slop with a dash of principle
The SCOTUS ruled on Arizona's immigration law today, upholding the key feature - allowing AZ law-enforcement personnel to check immigration status of people they stop on probable cause for other violations. The rest? Struck down. Anthony Kennedy's opinion was full of fluff that had nothing to do with law, such as "human concerns." Save that stuff for the op-ed page, Justice K.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Have a look at the new Egypt
The Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi wins Egypt's presidential election. Have a gander at the video of a cleric introducing him, whipping the crowd into a frenzy with shouts of "Our capital is not Cairo! Our capital is Jerusalem!"
Follow the MEMRI link at the Breitbart link above and check out what President Morsi has to say about marital relations in Egypt.
Follow the MEMRI link at the Breitbart link above and check out what President Morsi has to say about marital relations in Egypt.
Sounds reasonable to LITD
German finance minister Wolfgang Schaueble tells Greece that it has forfeited much of the continent's trust and that it needs to start acting on its previous agreements to get its act together before it even hints at asking for more gravy.
What kind of people will actually sign up for this?
Derek Hunter at Townhall on the MEC campaign's bridal-registry-and-birthday-donation-in-your-name hustle.
Weird indeed.
Weird indeed.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Nothing smacks down the FHer machine like a good dose of plain truth
James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute takes apart the six claims made by the Washington Post about Romney, Bain Capital and outsourcing.
UPDATE: Maybe it's because the WaPo felt bad about Thursday's shamelessly disingenuous story, but in any case now the paper's Fact Checker column gives the MEC's latest campaign ad, which is all about trying to paint Mitt Romney as a "corporate raider" and an "outsourcer," four Pinocchios.
UPDATE: Maybe it's because the WaPo felt bad about Thursday's shamelessly disingenuous story, but in any case now the paper's Fact Checker column gives the MEC's latest campaign ad, which is all about trying to paint Mitt Romney as a "corporate raider" and an "outsourcer," four Pinocchios.
Friday, June 22, 2012
They did this on your dime
These dignity-and-decency-hating smartass deviants who attended a White House celebration for the particular way they have sex flipped the bird at Ronald Reagan's portrait and took each other's pictures while doing so.
Will the MEC have anything to say about it? Don't hold your breath.
Will the MEC have anything to say about it? Don't hold your breath.
What the MEC's peace partners in Afghanistan have been up to recently
Killing US troops, attacking a Kabul hotel. But, hey, let's build them an office in Qatar.
The regime's quest to shut down the coal industry is well underway
Two items at the PJ Media Tatler today that are related and noteworthy: Arch Coal is laying off 750 workers due to the "regulatory environment" and its effect on the company's business, and West Virginia Represntative Joe Manchin says he "will do everything in his power" to stop the EPA from doing any more regulating of America's normal-people energy producers.
Recall that Manchin was among the West Virginia Dem office-holders who said they're skipping the FHer convention in Charlotte in September. I think this guy is giving serious consideration to switching parties.
Recall that Manchin was among the West Virginia Dem office-holders who said they're skipping the FHer convention in Charlotte in September. I think this guy is giving serious consideration to switching parties.
Once we've killed FHer-care, we'll have an excellent opportunity to put in place really and truly free-market health care solutions
Radiologist Dr. Milton Wolfe, who is, you will recall, the MEC's cousin, provides the best explanation I've ever seen on why health care - particularly health insurance - has been so fraught with problems for so long.
He says he routinely asks audiences to which he speaks if health insurance is a mess. Nearly all hands in the room go up. Then he asks if auto insurance is a mess. Few hands or none. What is the difference? There are several. You buy your own auto insurance. IF you don't like your company or agency, you can take your business elsewhere. Also, it pays for matters like wrecks, but notr routine maintenence like oil changes.
He then lists the first set of things the post-MEC government will need to do to establish that health care is a product like any other, thereby eradicating the messiness from the way it is delivered.
He says he routinely asks audiences to which he speaks if health insurance is a mess. Nearly all hands in the room go up. Then he asks if auto insurance is a mess. Few hands or none. What is the difference? There are several. You buy your own auto insurance. IF you don't like your company or agency, you can take your business elsewhere. Also, it pays for matters like wrecks, but notr routine maintenence like oil changes.
He then lists the first set of things the post-MEC government will need to do to establish that health care is a product like any other, thereby eradicating the messiness from the way it is delivered.
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Beautiful and glorious - today's edition
7 - 2 Supreme Court decision that California public employees don't have to pay a SEIU "political fee" regardless of whether they belong to the damn union. They get to keep their money and not have it go to candidates or causes they may not support.
It's kind of sad that this had to go all the way to the Supreme Court, when it's such an obvious case of freedom vs. coecrcion, but all's well that ends well.
Especially delicious is the fact that this reverses a decision by the freedom-hating 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
It's kind of sad that this had to go all the way to the Supreme Court, when it's such an obvious case of freedom vs. coecrcion, but all's well that ends well.
Especially delicious is the fact that this reverses a decision by the freedom-hating 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
When the right thing to do is also the popular thing to do
This story also has an Eric Holder angle. Remember how the DoJ told Florida to cease and desist with purging its voter rolls of dead people and illegal aliens? Well, most Floridians woant their state to do exactly that.
Those sons of bitches
Now we know the lengths the MEC will go to in order to protect his corrupt Attornery General Eric Holder. He invokes executive privilege regarding the Fast and Furious-related documents that the House Oversight Committee wants to see.
The whole world smells weakness - today's edition
The squirmy, gloomy post-private-talk photo op of Vladimir Putin and the MEC at the G20 summit is brimming with body language and facial expressions that tell the story of diminished American leadership on the world stage.
I've argued for three years that the MEC has put himself in the position of being Putin's bitch, going back to the double-crossing of Poland and the Czech Republic on the previously-agreed-to missile defense system. My view was reconfirmed with the hot-mike conversation between the MEC and Medvedev about "waiting for greater flexibility."
Now, the Lightworker-in-chief is forced to publicly sulk after his spanking over differences in Syria policy. This is embarrassing. We want our country back.
I've argued for three years that the MEC has put himself in the position of being Putin's bitch, going back to the double-crossing of Poland and the Czech Republic on the previously-agreed-to missile defense system. My view was reconfirmed with the hot-mike conversation between the MEC and Medvedev about "waiting for greater flexibility."
Now, the Lightworker-in-chief is forced to publicly sulk after his spanking over differences in Syria policy. This is embarrassing. We want our country back.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
The FHer crackup - today's edtition
A Senator and Representative and the Governor from West Virginia - all Dems - are skipping the convention this summer.
Monday, June 18, 2012
We have the antidote to Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome; it's just a matter of using it once in a while
Marco Rubio and Scott Walker both say "no way" to Jeb Bush's suggestion that some form of tax increase ought to be part of the way forward out of our cataclysmic debt.
There's never been another quite like the MEC
My master's degree in history has only been tangentially helpful in my making a living in the years since I earned it. Still, I regard it as a thing of great value. It provides a perspective sort of like a needle-reading graph printout, with which one can see peaks and valleys over various spans of time. One is thereby better equipped to determine which periods in the story of our species really constituted "unprecedented times."
Every age - actually every day - has its share of crises and harbingers of crises. Marvelous creatures that we are, however, we usually find some way to address them that staves off their worst possible outcomes. Once in a while, we miss. Witness the two world wars of the last century, or the Great Plague of 1665 in England.
I can truly say that we've never seen a confluence of factors quite like this. A president who is committed to a mad revolutionary utopianism, but is so riddled with narcissism and laziness that he can't even execute his ideological vision without botching it. A Congress divided between those who basically share his vision and those who oppose it albeit haltingly due to their incredulity at the sheer toxicity of what they're up against. A cultural infrastructure that likewise has signed on to that destructive vision.
In June 2012, that president's speeches have become exercises in disconnect, reaffirmations of his obstinate refusal to see the inherent failure of his vision. The rest of his behavior exudes disconnect as well: the near-constant fundraisers and celebrity parties, the golf outings, even as Fast and Furious threatens to get his Attorney General cited for contempt of Congress, even as the national-security leaks condemn the country to a vulnerability of apocalyptic proportions, even in the wake of multiple bankruptcies of "green" "companies" subsidized by borrowed government money in pursuit of a fantasy posing as science, even as the signature FHer-care monstrosity remains vehemently hated by most Americans and is likely to have its core provision found unconstitutional, even as illegal aliens are given an open invitation to take American jobs at a time when unemployment has been north of 8 percent for 40 months.
What this singularly dangerous figure has done is increase the likelihood on every side that something disastrous will occur. An increased likelihood in any one arena of our national life would be alarming enough.
Pondering our odds of squeaking through without one of the myriad manifestations of precariousness with which he has saddled us doing us in is obviously a grim exercise. Nonetheless, the alternative is to be caught unawares when the moment of reckoning arrives.
Every age - actually every day - has its share of crises and harbingers of crises. Marvelous creatures that we are, however, we usually find some way to address them that staves off their worst possible outcomes. Once in a while, we miss. Witness the two world wars of the last century, or the Great Plague of 1665 in England.
I can truly say that we've never seen a confluence of factors quite like this. A president who is committed to a mad revolutionary utopianism, but is so riddled with narcissism and laziness that he can't even execute his ideological vision without botching it. A Congress divided between those who basically share his vision and those who oppose it albeit haltingly due to their incredulity at the sheer toxicity of what they're up against. A cultural infrastructure that likewise has signed on to that destructive vision.
In June 2012, that president's speeches have become exercises in disconnect, reaffirmations of his obstinate refusal to see the inherent failure of his vision. The rest of his behavior exudes disconnect as well: the near-constant fundraisers and celebrity parties, the golf outings, even as Fast and Furious threatens to get his Attorney General cited for contempt of Congress, even as the national-security leaks condemn the country to a vulnerability of apocalyptic proportions, even in the wake of multiple bankruptcies of "green" "companies" subsidized by borrowed government money in pursuit of a fantasy posing as science, even as the signature FHer-care monstrosity remains vehemently hated by most Americans and is likely to have its core provision found unconstitutional, even as illegal aliens are given an open invitation to take American jobs at a time when unemployment has been north of 8 percent for 40 months.
What this singularly dangerous figure has done is increase the likelihood on every side that something disastrous will occur. An increased likelihood in any one arena of our national life would be alarming enough.
Pondering our odds of squeaking through without one of the myriad manifestations of precariousness with which he has saddled us doing us in is obviously a grim exercise. Nonetheless, the alternative is to be caught unawares when the moment of reckoning arrives.
Sunday, June 17, 2012
For now, still part of the Eurozone
It looks like a sufficient pro-bailout coalition will be able to be assembled in Greece's parliament to calm momentary jitters. But let us remember that this is a nation in which riots flare at the mere suggestion that taxi drivers, teachers, tourism workers, hair stylists and various types of paper-pushers would have to assume more responsibilities for their individual destinies - i.e., give up some government goodies. "Austerity measures" is a bad word along the Mediterranean shoreline.
Friday, June 15, 2012
We can't say we weren't warned
After all, the MEC has been telegraphing for some time now that he wasn't going to wait for Congress to legislatively encact policies he wants to implement - and we were to read "even if it means circumventing the Constitution" into his message.
So while it's outrageous and possibly illegal, it's not surprising that he is going to stop enforcing deportation laws in the cases of certain illegal aliens, a la the DREAM Act that Congress has repeatedly voted down, amounting to some 80,000 of them. He had to do something to try to calm at least part of his base on the Friday of another very bad week.
So while it's outrageous and possibly illegal, it's not surprising that he is going to stop enforcing deportation laws in the cases of certain illegal aliens, a la the DREAM Act that Congress has repeatedly voted down, amounting to some 80,000 of them. He had to do something to try to calm at least part of his base on the Friday of another very bad week.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
It's getting to the point where you don't even feel all that motivated to shake your head in incredulity
Per Ryan Lizza's New Yorker piece on the MEC's hopefully-not-to-happen second term, the central focus is going to be on - no, really - climate change.
If there is still a sentient being in this universe that insists on further proof that the MEC is plumb ate up with a mad utopian sense of quest, well, that person is equally ate up.
If there is still a sentient being in this universe that insists on further proof that the MEC is plumb ate up with a mad utopian sense of quest, well, that person is equally ate up.
Those 3 AM calls are coming several times a week now
The Egyptian military suspends Parliament. Sounds pretty chaotic from the reports I've been seeing.
A time-sensitive parlor game
So the MEC is scheduled to give a major speech on the economy in about an hour and a half.
This, on top of the quickly arranged presser the other day.
Which of the following terms are absolutely certain to be used in this address?
Fair
Inherited
Invest
Roads
Bridges
Schools
Tax breaks
Middle class
Turn back
Failed policies
College
Contribute
Training
Clean energy
Future
Okay, now any bets on whether the word "freedom' will appear anywhere?
UPDATE: I've only heard snippets and seen summaries, but I know a few of the terms did appear, and certainly a lot of the concepts. If that's the regime's definition of a "major speech," it truly is desperation time.
This, on top of the quickly arranged presser the other day.
Which of the following terms are absolutely certain to be used in this address?
Fair
Inherited
Invest
Roads
Bridges
Schools
Tax breaks
Middle class
Turn back
Failed policies
College
Contribute
Training
Clean energy
Future
Okay, now any bets on whether the word "freedom' will appear anywhere?
UPDATE: I've only heard snippets and seen summaries, but I know a few of the terms did appear, and certainly a lot of the concepts. If that's the regime's definition of a "major speech," it truly is desperation time.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Reflections on the Bush family and the Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome it embodies
The Bush family is in the news for a couple of reasons this week. One, George 41 had his 89th birthday, and there have been undeniably touching moments of choked-up interaction with various descendants, including granddaughter Jenna when he read her a poem, and George 43 when they posed together for a photo. Two, former Florida governor Jeb solidified his family bona fides by saying his dad, as well as Ronald Reagan, would not find a place in a modern GOP that had moved far to their right. This is, of course, omission-riddled revisionism, but to have a prominent Republican so pronounce at this juncture in a campaign season, when an incumbent president that all of us to the right of center presumably want to defeat is cratering in the polls, gives fresh oxygen to a Democratic campaign that has, thankfully, been gasping, wheezing and turning blue.
The Bushes exemplify a number of classic American virtues. James Bush was an Episcopal priest, religious writer and attorney. His son Samuel was an industrialist (railroads and steel). Samuel's son Prescott served in executive positions in a number of companies and became a Senator from Connecticut. (He was also a Planned Parenthood board member, an early harbinger of the short-sightedness that subsequent Bushes would display more frequently.) Prescott's son George served in Congress, served as head of the CIA, and eventually became president. George, of course, is the father of George the 43rd president, as well as Jeb and two other offspring. All of the above and several other family members in each generation graduated from Yale. The family's pedigree became more established through the years, but the particular figures who made a national mark did so through their own achievements, mostly in private-sector endeavors. The Bushes by and large have been temperate, dignified, civic-minded contributors to society's betterment.
George 41 rode a wave of goodwill and overall national economic health as he succeeded the game-changing movement conservative Ronald Reagan. The Soviet bloc unraveled in a fairly peaceful manner on his watch, and he showed great resolve and skill as a leader in his conduct of Operation Desert Storm. His undoing was a textbook case of the politically fatal nature of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome. After having elicited roars of approval with the "read-my-lips-no-new-taxes" pledge at the 1998 Republican convention, he sent his chief of staff Richard Darman to Capitol Hill to work out a deal with Congressional Democrats, in which revenues would be increased - that is, taxes raised - in exchange for higher-volume spending cuts. Alas, Democrats being Democrats, the spending cuts never materialized, and the sense of betrayal among Bush's erstwhile supporters gained the momentum of a prairie fire.
What he had done was trust Democrats to harbor the same values - responsible governance, real solutions to pressing problems, a search for actual common ground rather than rhetorical cover for another agenda entirely - that he embraced. This is always a terrible move. In the end, though, you can't ascribe reasons for it that don't fit the picture. Reasonable Gentlemen don't behave the way they do because they are stupid. Naivete isn't quite the right word, either. These people are generally veterans of hard-fought electoral battles and know that jockeying for partisan advantage is the way of Washington. No, they do it out of an assumption that anyone who has made it to their circle is fundamentally decent like they are, even in hardball situations.
The most prominent common trait to be found in those afflicted with RGS is that they are generally decent people. Nobody would ever accuse Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe or any of the Bushes of being people of unsavory character. Their ineffectiveness as public servants, though, is rooted in a myopia regarding their mission. The point of governance in America is not merely to make it safe for decent people. One must keep the special nature of this country's essence in the forefront of all deliberations and actions. That special nature is not guaranteed. Safeguarding it means never forgetting that the Democrat party, particularly in the last 100 years, does not understand freedom, nor does it wish to. It is driven by a mad utopianism, a kind of pity for most of humankind that, in its view, necessitates its own power over "the masses." With such an opposing party there can be no compromise.
Jeb Bush has lived the last three years like the rest of us. He's seen the graphs depicting our debt and deficit situation. He's aware of the companies and unions that have been granted exemptions to FHer-care. He's seen the bankruptcy of Solyndra, the failure of the Chevy Volt, the corruption at the Department of Justice, the czars for everything imaginable, the national-security leaks, the way the EPA is putting the coal industry out of business. The question of why he would still, at this late day, say that his own party is the source of intransigence in today's political climate can only be answered by concluding that it's been a long time since he thought about how viseral the hatred for freedom is among those whose zeal for its vision of fairness justifies any means necessary to achieve it. With such types you do not sit down at the table and see what can be worked out. You simply defeat them.
The Bushes exemplify a number of classic American virtues. James Bush was an Episcopal priest, religious writer and attorney. His son Samuel was an industrialist (railroads and steel). Samuel's son Prescott served in executive positions in a number of companies and became a Senator from Connecticut. (He was also a Planned Parenthood board member, an early harbinger of the short-sightedness that subsequent Bushes would display more frequently.) Prescott's son George served in Congress, served as head of the CIA, and eventually became president. George, of course, is the father of George the 43rd president, as well as Jeb and two other offspring. All of the above and several other family members in each generation graduated from Yale. The family's pedigree became more established through the years, but the particular figures who made a national mark did so through their own achievements, mostly in private-sector endeavors. The Bushes by and large have been temperate, dignified, civic-minded contributors to society's betterment.
George 41 rode a wave of goodwill and overall national economic health as he succeeded the game-changing movement conservative Ronald Reagan. The Soviet bloc unraveled in a fairly peaceful manner on his watch, and he showed great resolve and skill as a leader in his conduct of Operation Desert Storm. His undoing was a textbook case of the politically fatal nature of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome. After having elicited roars of approval with the "read-my-lips-no-new-taxes" pledge at the 1998 Republican convention, he sent his chief of staff Richard Darman to Capitol Hill to work out a deal with Congressional Democrats, in which revenues would be increased - that is, taxes raised - in exchange for higher-volume spending cuts. Alas, Democrats being Democrats, the spending cuts never materialized, and the sense of betrayal among Bush's erstwhile supporters gained the momentum of a prairie fire.
What he had done was trust Democrats to harbor the same values - responsible governance, real solutions to pressing problems, a search for actual common ground rather than rhetorical cover for another agenda entirely - that he embraced. This is always a terrible move. In the end, though, you can't ascribe reasons for it that don't fit the picture. Reasonable Gentlemen don't behave the way they do because they are stupid. Naivete isn't quite the right word, either. These people are generally veterans of hard-fought electoral battles and know that jockeying for partisan advantage is the way of Washington. No, they do it out of an assumption that anyone who has made it to their circle is fundamentally decent like they are, even in hardball situations.
The most prominent common trait to be found in those afflicted with RGS is that they are generally decent people. Nobody would ever accuse Richard Lugar, Orrin Hatch, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe or any of the Bushes of being people of unsavory character. Their ineffectiveness as public servants, though, is rooted in a myopia regarding their mission. The point of governance in America is not merely to make it safe for decent people. One must keep the special nature of this country's essence in the forefront of all deliberations and actions. That special nature is not guaranteed. Safeguarding it means never forgetting that the Democrat party, particularly in the last 100 years, does not understand freedom, nor does it wish to. It is driven by a mad utopianism, a kind of pity for most of humankind that, in its view, necessitates its own power over "the masses." With such an opposing party there can be no compromise.
Jeb Bush has lived the last three years like the rest of us. He's seen the graphs depicting our debt and deficit situation. He's aware of the companies and unions that have been granted exemptions to FHer-care. He's seen the bankruptcy of Solyndra, the failure of the Chevy Volt, the corruption at the Department of Justice, the czars for everything imaginable, the national-security leaks, the way the EPA is putting the coal industry out of business. The question of why he would still, at this late day, say that his own party is the source of intransigence in today's political climate can only be answered by concluding that it's been a long time since he thought about how viseral the hatred for freedom is among those whose zeal for its vision of fairness justifies any means necessary to achieve it. With such types you do not sit down at the table and see what can be worked out. You simply defeat them.
Because most of them, like most of any other demographic group, are into freedom, prosperity, dignity and common sense, not statism and decline
North Carolina blacks are not going for the MEC in anything like the numbers they did in 08. This is per the left-leaning PPP polling group.
Not even outreach efforts like the embarrassing "got your back ad" (sheesh, what's next, a video of a picnic with chitlins and watermelon?) can fool freedom-cherishing Americans who see what is happening to our country.
Not even outreach efforts like the embarrassing "got your back ad" (sheesh, what's next, a video of a picnic with chitlins and watermelon?) can fool freedom-cherishing Americans who see what is happening to our country.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
And how's that "reset" working out for you?
Secretary of State Clinton says she has information that Russia is sending attack helicopters to the Assad regime in Syria. Wonder what she thinks about that episode with the button with the improperly translated inscription now. And, of course, all Russia has to do is wait until the MEC is reelected and he has "greater flexibility." Flexibility to do what - permit stuff like this?
What do you expect from a country whose leader goes to the Shanghai Cooperation Conference and listens to Ahmadinejad talk about the waning of the present world order?
What do you expect from a country whose leader goes to the Shanghai Cooperation Conference and listens to Ahmadinejad talk about the waning of the present world order?
Monday, June 11, 2012
Yikes!
European finance officials are looking at worst-case scenarios should Greece leave the Eurozone. They are considering ATM withdrawal limits, border checks and other "capital controls."
Sunday, June 10, 2012
It may take a lot more historical perspective to know the full impact
Zombie has an utterly horrifying piece at PJ Media on a conversation he had with a cousin's stepdaughter at a family reunion. She was sitting at a picnic table listening to her iPod and he asked her what music she was listening to. She gave him her earbuds to let him check it out for himself. He scrolled several tunes - it was all hip-hop from various points in the last 20 years - and was blown away by how frequently he heard the n-word, the term "bitch," and several crude references to male and female genitalia.
We're at a point in our culture where there is probably reaction to his piece and my telling you about it along the lines of "Big yawn. It was ever thus. Broadcasting standards people prevented Elvis Presley's pelvis from being shown in his early television appearances. 1920s blues songs are full of double entendres and references to marijuana and cocaine." Matters of degree of explicitness and pervasiveness of any of it are of no interest to too many people now.
I read well into the comment thread to see if I could glean any kind of contour of consensus. I did, and it was not encouraging. Mind you, this was posted on a conservative website. One commenter said - I paraphrase - "Boy, that does sound bad. I guess I'm lucky that my teenage kid listens to the classic rock of several decades ago - The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doors." As if that was somehow the polar opposite of the rap. Does this person not remember that several Who songs dealt with themes like masturbation ("Pictures of Lily"), parentally forced cross-dressing (I'm a Boy") or molestation ("Fiddle About"), or that Lynyrd Skynyrd songs frequently dealt with guns and drugs? And need I remind anybody what happened on a Miami stage in the summer of 1969 at a Doors concert? Another commenter tried to juxtapose heavy metal as somehow elevated above hip-hop. Oh, please. Metal gelled into a genre in the wake of the success of late-60s hard-rock bands and, once it did, devolved into ever-more juvenile indulgences of unchanneled male aggression. The names of metal bands are silly, the lyrical themes are silly, and - contrary to what its fans say - the music itself is monotonous at best, but most often nerve-jarring.
As readers of this blog know from the "About Me" profile on the side of the home screen, I am an adjunct lecturer in the histories of jazz, blues and rock and roll at the local campus of one of our state universities. My rationale is that the state government would pay someone to teach these subjects and it might as well be me rather than some subversive type who would fill the students' heads with all that "social-attitudes-of-the-youth" nonsense, and whose standards would be so eroded that he'd play the foulest of the musical offerings of the last fifty years. (As I've said before, when I teach rock history, I always struggle with how to maintain my scholarly objectivity when we get to the point in the course where the ugly stuff comes along - The Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, The Doors, The Stooges.)
The bottom line is that I blow hot and cold on whether rock and roll - in its broadest possible definition as a cultural force - has ever been a blessing to our society. I mean all the way back to Johnny Otis and Sam Phillips.
Bear in mind that the very earliest R&B - the jump blues of Wynonie Harris ("Keep on Churnin'") and the doo-wop of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ("Work with Me Annie") - was an embarrassment to middle-class black parents. They tried to no avail to steer their kids to Billy Eckstine, Nat Cole and Lena Horne.
Johnny Otis's memoir Upside Your Head: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue is full of cultural contradictions. One that is particularly noteworthy is the account in one chapter of the shenanigans that occurred on the road when R&B revues would tour - drugs and easy sex. Then a bit later he bemoans the provocative dress and stage antics of modern-day black singers (and this was in an early-90s book): "If they had to start out now, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae . . . Dinah Washington . . . Etta James and Aretha Franklin would not make it to stardom in today's music world. They would be required to shake their behinds and run all over the stage practically undressed or cheaply overdressed. This anti-artistry behavior would be utterly alien to the great women of traditional Black Music."
Look, I like the music of Johnny Otis, Tiny Bradsahw, Big Jay McNeely. I like The Beatles. I like a lot of The Who's stuff on several levels. The Yardbirds were a fantastic hard-rock band of undeniable cultural and musical importance. The Grateful Dead approached the rock idiom with a laudibly intelligent and affectionate sense of heritage. What I must disclose, though, in the name of honesty, is that this makes me a conflicted cultural observer. I am by no means convinced that we know the full extent or nature of the impact of all that on the health of our civilization.
Furthermore, what is to be done about any of it? As Zombie says in his essay, censorship is off the table, not to mention unworkable. I guess I find myself at the same juncture he does: I'm just sad.
We're at a point in our culture where there is probably reaction to his piece and my telling you about it along the lines of "Big yawn. It was ever thus. Broadcasting standards people prevented Elvis Presley's pelvis from being shown in his early television appearances. 1920s blues songs are full of double entendres and references to marijuana and cocaine." Matters of degree of explicitness and pervasiveness of any of it are of no interest to too many people now.
I read well into the comment thread to see if I could glean any kind of contour of consensus. I did, and it was not encouraging. Mind you, this was posted on a conservative website. One commenter said - I paraphrase - "Boy, that does sound bad. I guess I'm lucky that my teenage kid listens to the classic rock of several decades ago - The Who, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doors." As if that was somehow the polar opposite of the rap. Does this person not remember that several Who songs dealt with themes like masturbation ("Pictures of Lily"), parentally forced cross-dressing (I'm a Boy") or molestation ("Fiddle About"), or that Lynyrd Skynyrd songs frequently dealt with guns and drugs? And need I remind anybody what happened on a Miami stage in the summer of 1969 at a Doors concert? Another commenter tried to juxtapose heavy metal as somehow elevated above hip-hop. Oh, please. Metal gelled into a genre in the wake of the success of late-60s hard-rock bands and, once it did, devolved into ever-more juvenile indulgences of unchanneled male aggression. The names of metal bands are silly, the lyrical themes are silly, and - contrary to what its fans say - the music itself is monotonous at best, but most often nerve-jarring.
As readers of this blog know from the "About Me" profile on the side of the home screen, I am an adjunct lecturer in the histories of jazz, blues and rock and roll at the local campus of one of our state universities. My rationale is that the state government would pay someone to teach these subjects and it might as well be me rather than some subversive type who would fill the students' heads with all that "social-attitudes-of-the-youth" nonsense, and whose standards would be so eroded that he'd play the foulest of the musical offerings of the last fifty years. (As I've said before, when I teach rock history, I always struggle with how to maintain my scholarly objectivity when we get to the point in the course where the ugly stuff comes along - The Velvet Underground, The Mothers of Invention, The Doors, The Stooges.)
The bottom line is that I blow hot and cold on whether rock and roll - in its broadest possible definition as a cultural force - has ever been a blessing to our society. I mean all the way back to Johnny Otis and Sam Phillips.
Bear in mind that the very earliest R&B - the jump blues of Wynonie Harris ("Keep on Churnin'") and the doo-wop of Hank Ballard and the Midnighters ("Work with Me Annie") - was an embarrassment to middle-class black parents. They tried to no avail to steer their kids to Billy Eckstine, Nat Cole and Lena Horne.
Johnny Otis's memoir Upside Your Head: Rhythm and Blues on Central Avenue is full of cultural contradictions. One that is particularly noteworthy is the account in one chapter of the shenanigans that occurred on the road when R&B revues would tour - drugs and easy sex. Then a bit later he bemoans the provocative dress and stage antics of modern-day black singers (and this was in an early-90s book): "If they had to start out now, Billie Holiday, Carmen McRae . . . Dinah Washington . . . Etta James and Aretha Franklin would not make it to stardom in today's music world. They would be required to shake their behinds and run all over the stage practically undressed or cheaply overdressed. This anti-artistry behavior would be utterly alien to the great women of traditional Black Music."
Look, I like the music of Johnny Otis, Tiny Bradsahw, Big Jay McNeely. I like The Beatles. I like a lot of The Who's stuff on several levels. The Yardbirds were a fantastic hard-rock band of undeniable cultural and musical importance. The Grateful Dead approached the rock idiom with a laudibly intelligent and affectionate sense of heritage. What I must disclose, though, in the name of honesty, is that this makes me a conflicted cultural observer. I am by no means convinced that we know the full extent or nature of the impact of all that on the health of our civilization.
Furthermore, what is to be done about any of it? As Zombie says in his essay, censorship is off the table, not to mention unworkable. I guess I find myself at the same juncture he does: I'm just sad.
That's just the way he's hardwired
Two observations on what the MEC's presser revealed about his core natre, one from the WSJ and one from James Pethakoukis at the American Enterprise Institute blog. Both basically make the same point: that his mind gravitates toward government, because of its centrality in his cosmology.
I did like the point in the WSJ editorial about how the problem with state and local revenues is not a lack of federal help, but rather trying to keep up with public-employee pensions.
I did like the point in the WSJ editorial about how the problem with state and local revenues is not a lack of federal help, but rather trying to keep up with public-employee pensions.
Friday, June 8, 2012
The presser
Caught it while I was at the gym. Initial thoughts:
The deflection of responsibility continues. It's European instability. It's congressional obstinancy.
He will live to regret the line "The private sector is doing just fine."
Two things about his zeal for pumping more federal dollars into municipalities: As noble as the professions of teaching, firefighting and law enforcement are, people in them don't make things. They don't add value to the earth's raw materials. People who do those things are holding off on a whole lot of activity because they're not at all sure the tax and regulatory climate is going to improve any time soon. Plus, that kind of hiring is the concern of America's towns and cities, not Washington.
His response to the question about the security leaks was pretty lame. Couldn't he have found a less cliched way to dispense some boilerplate than "zero tolerance"?
The deflection of responsibility continues. It's European instability. It's congressional obstinancy.
He will live to regret the line "The private sector is doing just fine."
Two things about his zeal for pumping more federal dollars into municipalities: As noble as the professions of teaching, firefighting and law enforcement are, people in them don't make things. They don't add value to the earth's raw materials. People who do those things are holding off on a whole lot of activity because they're not at all sure the tax and regulatory climate is going to improve any time soon. Plus, that kind of hiring is the concern of America's towns and cities, not Washington.
His response to the question about the security leaks was pretty lame. Couldn't he have found a less cliched way to dispense some boilerplate than "zero tolerance"?
The fluffy company he keeps in the last days of any shred of viability.
Matthew Continetti has a great piece on today's Washington Free Beacon on how celebrity endorsements are all the MEC has left. As his poll numbers go into free fall, as scandals engulf his regime, as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization proclaims a new world order (see post below), and as state and muncipal elections in Wisconsin and California indicate the public's awakening to the need for governmental solvency, he is reduced to hobnobbing with the hollowest and least normal people in the country.
Not a friend in the bunch
Ever heard of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? It's a group of countries that includes China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan - and Iran. Their leaders had a summit this week, at which Ahmadinejad said that the present world order is crumbling.
What was the point?
This matter of national-security leaks by someone - or some people - in the regime that has aroused bipartisan congressional alarm is another one of those scandals, like Fast and Furious, that seems so goofy on the face of it (How did they expect to defend something so fundamentally detrimental to our nation's well-being?) that it strains the imagination to conceive of a reason why they did it. Was somebody trying to bolster the MEC's bad-ass creds? Demonstrate how formidable our security apparatus is?
As lots of folks are pointing out, one exchange that crystallized the split between the White House and the Defense department was when Robert Gates told Tom Donilon to "shut the f--- up."
As this one unfolds over the summer, I think we will learn a lot indeed.
As lots of folks are pointing out, one exchange that crystallized the split between the White House and the Defense department was when Robert Gates told Tom Donilon to "shut the f--- up."
As this one unfolds over the summer, I think we will learn a lot indeed.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
LITD likes this
A Saudi Arabian woman in a Saudi shopping mall tells a "religious police" officer where he can get off for hassling her about her nail polish.
Yessir, it's a relative world, and all cultures are equal. Uh-huh.
Yessir, it's a relative world, and all cultures are equal. Uh-huh.
He was a member of this party
Stanley Kurtz has fresh evidence that the MEC was an actual member of the radical leftist New Party in hte 1990s.
The MEC can't be bothered with commemorating D-Day in real time . . .
. . . so he posts an old speech on his website and heads off to a gala event in Beverly Hills with a roomful of narcissistic moral monsters who relish the thought of demolishing thousand of years of societal convention and eternal holy decree.
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By the way, re: the whole question of whether he meant "go all the way down" as a double entendre or is completely innocent of any such charge, the fact is that the audience took it that way. This is a crowd that thinks it's hip to have a President who publicly engages in such humor.
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By the way, re: the whole question of whether he meant "go all the way down" as a double entendre or is completely innocent of any such charge, the fact is that the audience took it that way. This is a crowd that thinks it's hip to have a President who publicly engages in such humor.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
And to think this place was one of the cradles of Western civilization
Modern Greece is quite a case. Most people's lives are propped up with government largesse; they riot when there is talk of scaling that back. Then those in Brussels and Berlin bankrolling their lifestyle say, "Well, then, no more sugar."
Turns out, Greeks' sense of disconnect is so severe, they go to considerable lengths to avoid paying taxes that would allow them to say that to at least some degree they are paying for their own babysitter state. And because they are such deadbeats, their government is just plain running out of cash.
Turns out, Greeks' sense of disconnect is so severe, they go to considerable lengths to avoid paying taxes that would allow them to say that to at least some degree they are paying for their own babysitter state. And because they are such deadbeats, their government is just plain running out of cash.
The MEC really is a piece of work
He knows it's politically disastrous and does nothing economically but exacerbate our current problems, but he's determined to seize more of successful Americans' assets at gunpoint come New Year's Day.
In California, of all places
Two of its largest cities, San Jose and San Diego, vote to cut pension benefits for public employees. I guess municipalities are looking at ways to avoid going down with the ship.
To be unveiled today
At 3 p.m. House majority whip Kevin McCarthy's Domestic Energy and Jobs Act, a package of several bills the purpose of which is to hold the regime's feet to the fire on matters like EPA regs and federal land leasing.
Any bets on what the FHer response will be?
Any bets on what the FHer response will be?
56% to 44%
That's the margin of Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch's victory last night. There's a bright future for that lady.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Beautiful and glorious - today's edition
Union thuggery and economic demagoguing take a major hit in Wisconsin tonight. I choose to see this as a preview of November.
Hurt 'im, Bill, hurt 'im!
Yes, it seems Bill Clinton was taken to the woodshed for the Romney "stellar-performance-at-Bain" remarks, but apparently the stick of party discipline didn't stick. He's now saying publicly, "Don't seize anymore of the American people's assets at gunpoint at this precarious economic moment."
He's not such a great human being, but he is pretty smart. He also no doubt has personal reasons for not wanting to see the US economy go over a cliff.
So he speaks the plain truth. Go, Bubba.
He's not such a great human being, but he is pretty smart. He also no doubt has personal reasons for not wanting to see the US economy go over a cliff.
So he speaks the plain truth. Go, Bubba.
Curt Spalding, Freedom-Hater
The EPA Region 1 administrator plainly says that his agency's aim is to prevent any more coal-fired power plants from being built.
On Neal Boortz's retirement announcement
I can understand his wanting to call it a day. He was one of the modern pioneers of talk radio, starting in 1969.
No one can deny that his has been an interesting life. He did a few things, such as sell jewelry, before getting into talk radio. He didn't decide to become an attorney until the mid-1970s, attending law school while doing his daily show out of Atlanta. He's subsequently dabbled in real estate. He has interesting hobbies: airplane piloting, motorcycling, motorboating, travel.
He calls himself a libertarian, but he has been ostracized by the official Libertarian Party for his foreign-policy views, which more resemble those of a neoconservative. In general, he has gone it alone as far as affiliating himself with any kind of ideological institution. While he occasionally appears on various Fox News shows, he's not known for contributing to the flagship journals of either the libertarians or conservatives, or attending the big think-tank conferences.
He has what I consider to be some very annoying on-air habits: repeating himself (I've always wondered if this didn't start out as a rhetorical courtroom device from his lawyer days), dead air (which I've always been told is a radio no-no), and punctuating his points with an acerbically delivered "okay?"
His basic schtick - being "the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth" who turned "a nasty personality disorder into a lucrative career" - invites problematic scenarios. Someone who delights in being thorny and prickly is going to draw callers who ignite those traits. A lot of talk-radio hosts go after callers who combine ridiculousness and provocativeness, but Boortz is, for example, the only one I've ever heard directly and personally call them names, or tell them to go to Hell.
Yes, he seems to be personally personable. His call screener Belinda seems to have a relationship with him based on mutual respect and amiability, as was clearly the case with his other on-air associate, the late Royal Marshall. I have to believe that he tried their patience over the years, though.
I'll venture an assertion here: The main reason he never broke into the field's top tier is the fundamental inconsistency of his worldview. As I say, it looks like he put that worldview together on his own on the basis of eclectic reading and observation, rather than discerning the great bodies of tradition in thought that comprise conservatism, libertarianism, or even any type of collectivism, such as Communism or progressivism. He doesn't just minimize the importance of what are nowadays called "the social issues," he sneers with contempt when he mentions them. It's clear that he thinks pro-life activists or those who place primary importance on what Western societies for centuries have considered a real marriage and family are silly in the extreme. He will not permit callers to discuss abortion, but he reserves for himself the right to indulge in his own diatribes about it when it suits him.
And so, ultimately, he can't substantiate his own supposed championing of freedom. He's not an atheist. I think I've even heard him declare a belief in God, even make mention of some periods in his life when he attended church. It rings a little hollow, though, when he joins the ranks of those who want to defend the centrality of freedom to human well-being solely on the basis of logical argument. It's as if he would consider it a sign of weakness to bring up the "endowed by their Creator" phrase from Mr. Jefferson's thunderous document when, in fact, the divine origin of our rights is the strongest argument for their fierce defense one can make.
All in all, his contributions to our cause - that is, conservatism - have been positive, but the record shows that they fell short of those of the true greats in significant ways.
No one can deny that his has been an interesting life. He did a few things, such as sell jewelry, before getting into talk radio. He didn't decide to become an attorney until the mid-1970s, attending law school while doing his daily show out of Atlanta. He's subsequently dabbled in real estate. He has interesting hobbies: airplane piloting, motorcycling, motorboating, travel.
He calls himself a libertarian, but he has been ostracized by the official Libertarian Party for his foreign-policy views, which more resemble those of a neoconservative. In general, he has gone it alone as far as affiliating himself with any kind of ideological institution. While he occasionally appears on various Fox News shows, he's not known for contributing to the flagship journals of either the libertarians or conservatives, or attending the big think-tank conferences.
He has what I consider to be some very annoying on-air habits: repeating himself (I've always wondered if this didn't start out as a rhetorical courtroom device from his lawyer days), dead air (which I've always been told is a radio no-no), and punctuating his points with an acerbically delivered "okay?"
His basic schtick - being "the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth" who turned "a nasty personality disorder into a lucrative career" - invites problematic scenarios. Someone who delights in being thorny and prickly is going to draw callers who ignite those traits. A lot of talk-radio hosts go after callers who combine ridiculousness and provocativeness, but Boortz is, for example, the only one I've ever heard directly and personally call them names, or tell them to go to Hell.
Yes, he seems to be personally personable. His call screener Belinda seems to have a relationship with him based on mutual respect and amiability, as was clearly the case with his other on-air associate, the late Royal Marshall. I have to believe that he tried their patience over the years, though.
I'll venture an assertion here: The main reason he never broke into the field's top tier is the fundamental inconsistency of his worldview. As I say, it looks like he put that worldview together on his own on the basis of eclectic reading and observation, rather than discerning the great bodies of tradition in thought that comprise conservatism, libertarianism, or even any type of collectivism, such as Communism or progressivism. He doesn't just minimize the importance of what are nowadays called "the social issues," he sneers with contempt when he mentions them. It's clear that he thinks pro-life activists or those who place primary importance on what Western societies for centuries have considered a real marriage and family are silly in the extreme. He will not permit callers to discuss abortion, but he reserves for himself the right to indulge in his own diatribes about it when it suits him.
And so, ultimately, he can't substantiate his own supposed championing of freedom. He's not an atheist. I think I've even heard him declare a belief in God, even make mention of some periods in his life when he attended church. It rings a little hollow, though, when he joins the ranks of those who want to defend the centrality of freedom to human well-being solely on the basis of logical argument. It's as if he would consider it a sign of weakness to bring up the "endowed by their Creator" phrase from Mr. Jefferson's thunderous document when, in fact, the divine origin of our rights is the strongest argument for their fierce defense one can make.
All in all, his contributions to our cause - that is, conservatism - have been positive, but the record shows that they fell short of those of the true greats in significant ways.
What political-strategy wiz came up with this?
I'm far from the first or only blogger to remark on the Anna Wintour and Sarah Jessica Parker campaign ads for the MEC, and Pundit & Pundette have a roundup of observation that will get anyone still unacquainted with the matter started.
Still, it was such a mind-blowingly stupid idea that I can't resist chiming in. It paints the biggest target on the MEC I can imagine.
My main question is, will Spin Sisters author Myrna Blyth be chiming in on it? I hope so. She understands the fashion / feelings / relationships sector of the magazine-publishing world from a seasoned insider's perspective.
Still, it was such a mind-blowingly stupid idea that I can't resist chiming in. It paints the biggest target on the MEC I can imagine.
My main question is, will Spin Sisters author Myrna Blyth be chiming in on it? I hope so. She understands the fashion / feelings / relationships sector of the magazine-publishing world from a seasoned insider's perspective.
Not near as many as most people think
It's almost as if there's someting cosmic about the way news items come across the radar screen in clusters by topic.
After putting up the previous post, I ran across this Atlantic Monthly piece by Garance Franke-Ruta on the wildly overblown perception among the American public of what percentage of it is homosexual.
This paragraph is particularly insightful:
After putting up the previous post, I ran across this Atlantic Monthly piece by Garance Franke-Ruta on the wildly overblown perception among the American public of what percentage of it is homosexual.
This paragraph is particularly insightful:
These numbers are significant because identity -- and not behavior -- is the central determinant of whether or not someone will seek a same-sex marriage. A straight woman who makes out a couple of times with a female friend in college is not going to seek a same-sex marriage, nor is a guy who fooled around once with a male friend while drunk in high school. Neither individual is demographically relevant to the question of how often same-sex marriages will occur. And it's not clear at all what fraction of bisexuals will seek out same-sex marriages.I've long thought that establishing a broad-brush straight/gay dichotomy mainly served the purpose of those who would politicize it. Balkanize the American public and it won't unify and toss out the FHer overlords.
Once you give in to the Tolerance Enforcement Squad . . .
Sometimes another nation's experience with proceeding headlond in a given policy direction - think Greece and early retirement, or Britain and socialist health care - you can see where we are headed if we emulate it.
Today's example: Canada, in its role as the first English-speaking nation to legalize same-gender "marriage." Since that occurred in 2005, cultural and even legal forces have ramped up their efforts to silence proponents of actual marriage and family, resulting in firings and criminal charges. The climate is now one in which upholders of wnat normal people consider the noblest aspects of Western civilization gets you branded as a boneheaded hater.
Today's example: Canada, in its role as the first English-speaking nation to legalize same-gender "marriage." Since that occurred in 2005, cultural and even legal forces have ramped up their efforts to silence proponents of actual marriage and family, resulting in firings and criminal charges. The climate is now one in which upholders of wnat normal people consider the noblest aspects of Western civilization gets you branded as a boneheaded hater.
Monday, June 4, 2012
It's this kind of stuff that tempers what ought to be our unmitigated zeal for the candidate who would defeat the Most Equal Comrade
Picking a guy like Mike Leavitt who is problematic in the extreme to head what will hopefully be the transition team at the end of the year just reeks of cluelessness.
Here's what you can do with your demand that we stop
Florida tells the DoJ that it has no intentions of stopping its purge of illegal aliens and dead people from its voter rolls.
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Just as with the hair-raisingly precarious state of the world economy, this grim fact isn't going away
J.E. Dyer on Iran's steady, fiercely determined focus on a nuclear arsenal that continues apace and is for all intents and purposes at the stage where it can stockpile five bombs.
When you've lost Mo . . .
The NYT's resident redhead would seem to be a bit disappointed in the MEC.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
The MEC regime's Department of Justice is a sewer of corruption - today's edition
The state of Florida knows it has dead people, illiegal aliens and the like on its voter rolls. It's been trying to get the Homeland Security database of its population to be able to do this, an effort responded to with foot-dragging. Now, DOJ is stepping in, telling Florida to stop
Elise Shore, a DOL Voting rights section attorney, is the front person for this. She's a real humdinger. Check out her background at the link.
Elise Shore, a DOL Voting rights section attorney, is the front person for this. She's a real humdinger. Check out her background at the link.
And what's it to you?
Neo-neocon takes on ABC News for its attempt to make a few thousand rich Americans who have found perfectly legal ways to avoid paying income taxes look like they're doing something dastardly.
A ringing smack upside the head to start your weekend
A Saturday morning at the beginning of a new month following a week of developments such as - well, such as the ones we've chronicled here at LITD - is an opportune time to reflect on how it all - the grim economic picture in America, Europe and China, the way the MEC's Lech-Walesa-is-too-political message to Poland revealed him once and for all for the freedom-hating aspirant to totalitarianism that he is, Eric Holder's continuing corruption of the Justice Department, DC comics outing the Green Lantern as gay, Elizabeth Warren's pathetic attempt to portray herself as a Cherokee - fits synergistically, reveals an overall picture of our current juncture.
Once again, we do well to enlist Mark Steyn in the project. His latest NRO piece, "Twilight of the West," addresses the levels of our collapse - economic, political, cultural - in the way that shows their real seamlessness. As we bloggers say, read the whole thing, but for now take in this money paragraph:
The plain fact, and it is the message intended by this blog's name, is that there's not much of a chance we'll get to continue living the way everyone reading this has lived for however long they've been around. Perhaps - perhaps - if Tea Party Pubs accomplish a blowout takeover of both houses of Congress and a President Romney can be continually nudged to the right, we as a nation can take the uncomfortable steps necessary to remove government involvement in what we eat, how we care for our health, how we insure ourselves, how we plan for our sunset years, and what kinds of energy we use to live and make things. We would then join - who? Canada, I guess, for the time being anyway - in turning around the ship of Western civilization now speeding toward the iceberg. But in the meantime, Europe is going to continue its collapse, Iran and North Korea are going to use their nuclear status to pose an apocalyptic threat, the middle east is going to further descend into choas - oh, and, yes, our own culture, which is already basically ruined, will still be in a state of ruination.
So are we at a point where all that can be done is to look at how we might have prevented this state of affairs?
That's not a question that can be answered by collective consensus. That's something to be decide in each American heart.
The fact that this blog goes on with at least a post every day is my way of making public my decision. The forces of darkness have not taken me out. Therefore I struggle for the possibility that light can prevail somehow.
Once again, we do well to enlist Mark Steyn in the project. His latest NRO piece, "Twilight of the West," addresses the levels of our collapse - economic, political, cultural - in the way that shows their real seamlessness. As we bloggers say, read the whole thing, but for now take in this money paragraph:
[T]he unsustainable “bubble” is not student debt or subprime mortgages or anything else. The bubble is us, and the assumptions of entitlement. Too many citizens of advanced Western democracies live a life they have not earned, and are not willing to earn. Indeed, much of our present fiscal woe derives from two phases of human existence that are entirely the invention of the modern world. Once upon a time, you were a kid till you were 13 or so; then you worked; then you died. That bit between childhood and death has been chewed away at both ends. We invented something called “adolescence” that now extends not merely through the teenage years but through a desultory half decade of Whatever Studies at Complacency U up till you’re 26 and no longer eligible for coverage on your parents’ health-insurance policy. At the other end of the spectrum, we introduced something called “retirement” that, in the space of two generations, has led to the presumption that able-bodied citizens are entitled to spend the last couple of decades, or one-third of their adult lives, as a long holiday weekend.The emphasis on the key phrase is mine. It tells the whole story of everything from why banks in Spain are failing to why American television is a sewer.
The plain fact, and it is the message intended by this blog's name, is that there's not much of a chance we'll get to continue living the way everyone reading this has lived for however long they've been around. Perhaps - perhaps - if Tea Party Pubs accomplish a blowout takeover of both houses of Congress and a President Romney can be continually nudged to the right, we as a nation can take the uncomfortable steps necessary to remove government involvement in what we eat, how we care for our health, how we insure ourselves, how we plan for our sunset years, and what kinds of energy we use to live and make things. We would then join - who? Canada, I guess, for the time being anyway - in turning around the ship of Western civilization now speeding toward the iceberg. But in the meantime, Europe is going to continue its collapse, Iran and North Korea are going to use their nuclear status to pose an apocalyptic threat, the middle east is going to further descend into choas - oh, and, yes, our own culture, which is already basically ruined, will still be in a state of ruination.
So are we at a point where all that can be done is to look at how we might have prevented this state of affairs?
That's not a question that can be answered by collective consensus. That's something to be decide in each American heart.
The fact that this blog goes on with at least a post every day is my way of making public my decision. The forces of darkness have not taken me out. Therefore I struggle for the possibility that light can prevail somehow.
Will Eric Holder have anything to say about this?
Massachussetts FHers attending today's state convention in Boston will be required to show photo IDs.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Everything this regime asks us to put our faith in is a fallacy
The CBO estimates that the "stimulus" may have cost - this is no typo - $4.1 million per job.
There is nothing to call it but freedom-hatred
For one thing, this makes the MEC's third Polish offence this week. Tells Poland that sending Lech Walesa to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the memory of Jan Karsi is 86ed because Walesa in "too political."
The levels on which this is disgusting are myriad. Especially, as the linked piece points out, when another recipient of this year's medal was the Marxist Dolores Huerta.
There is no doubt what the MEC is about now.
He has to go if America is to rally from flatline status.
The levels on which this is disgusting are myriad. Especially, as the linked piece points out, when another recipient of this year's medal was the Marxist Dolores Huerta.
There is no doubt what the MEC is about now.
He has to go if America is to rally from flatline status.
It's on purpose - today's edition
A paltry 69,000 jobs were created in May. March and April reports were revised downward.
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