Fuzzy Logic

BO's Subterfuge of the Union Address

2012-01-25T16:15:00.007-05:00

Another SOTU, another pack of lies, distortions, lofty fascist promises, horrifying power grabs, brand new bureaucracies, crazy additions to an already insane tax code, and almost laughable catch phrases. I didn't tweet it, but I took copious notes for this, my third, post-SOTU rant. My notes, however, are littered with things like "asshat" (once all in caps and underscored twice for emphasis), so I'll try--after a good night's sleep--to organize this post around my key impressions and leave out the expletives. You know, mostly.

Ready to be a citizen "soldier" in BO's military-style collective utopia?

Yeah, me, either, but I swear that's what I heard last night. Granted, he's probably just trying to make his commie utopian dream appeal to conservatives (we, after all, love and respect the military), but when the--well, when this--president begins babbling about how we need to function, as a society, just like the military, every alarm bell in my head, heart, body, and soul goes off.

So he starts the evening, quite rightly, honoring the military and their accomplishments (well, he was sort of patting himself on the back, but he made some noises like he was honoring the military, too). Coming from this president, that was shocking enough, but who knows, maybe he was just trying to sound like an American president for a change? The key words this early on were "Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example." Say what? Did he really just say that he, the Commander in Chief, thinks that Americans, civilians, should be like the military? Naw, that's not it; after all, he was talking about the military not being "consumed by personal ambition" (silly statement, actually), not "obsessing over their differences," and their focusing on and working together to achieve a common mission. Okay, innocuous enough. I shook it off.

Until we came to the end of that hot mess of a speech, and he did it again. Compared American society to the military. Again, seemingly innocuous, but . . . let's just say, I'm adding that to my growing list of alarming "dots" to connect regarding this administration's thirst for totalitarian power (what was that this admin admires about Mao? Oh, yeah, political power comes from the barrel of a gun. What was that about a civilian "security" force that's just as well-trained, just as well-funded as the United States military? And on and on.).

This last expression of his desire that we act just like the military was after he touted his new affirmative-action style job thingy for veterans: the Veteran Jobs Corps (which he managed, by some miracle, to pronounce correctly). I'm not a fan of the leftists' strategy of picking out certain groups for special favor, separating them from the rest of society and anointing them with privileges (that almost always turn out to be yet another means of growing government and getting votes, while simultaneously holding people down). And yes, that extends to the military.

We already have a GI Bill and who knows how many laws and regulations (that have the full weight of laws) to ensure parity in hiring (I'm actually not a fan of those laws and regulations, either, come to think of it), so why do we need a whole new way to help vets find jobs? Or more to my point, why does the federal government have to ensure that veterans get jobs in the private sector (tax credits for hiring a vet? Seriously?)? And why is the government "securing" pledges from private businesses to hire vets? Fascism, anyone?

That Old College Try

So remember in my post about the first SOTU when I said to watch what BO was doing with higher education? That he was determined to take it over, make it "free" to everyone just like K-12? Well, since then, of course, he's taken over the entire student loan industry (that was in that ObamaCare monstrosity), and last night, we heard still more.

This time it was all wrapped up in another attack on the 10th Amendment.

We also know that when students aren’t allowed to walk away from their education, more of them walk the stage to get their diploma. So tonight, I call on every State to require that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn eighteen.

[snip]

Of course, it’s not enough for us to increase student aid. We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money. States also need to do their part, by making higher education a higher priority in their budgets. And colleges and universities have to do their part by working to keep costs down. Recently, I spoke with a group of college presidents who’ve done just that. Some schools re-design courses to help students finish more quickly. Some use better technology. The point is, it’s possible. So let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down. Higher education can’t be a luxury – it’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford. (source)

Excuse me? When did it become the federal government's place to tell states what laws to pass and how to prioritize their budgets? And when did the executive branch start dictating where tax payer money should go? (Actually, don't answer that, it'll make my head explode) And why is the president blackmailing universities and colleges to do his bidding? Well, he answers that in the last line quoted above: because "higher education can't be a luxury."

I'm telling you, he wants to take over higher education and have it funded, run, and controlled by the federal government. To him, college is a right, something that should be provided "free" to every citizen whether they want it or not or are suited to it or not. And if you want to know where that leads, then just look at the sad, sorry state of K-12 education in this country. Dumbed down beyond belief, teaching about gay penguins, masturbation, and radical behaviors from making protest signs to actually participating in (actually dangerous) radical leftist protests.

Of Power Grabs and (Even) Bigger Government

Did he really just tell America that he's asking Congress for (still) more power? Yep, he did. And they better not comply. Again.

Let's see, what new and exciting agencies and giant new bureaucracies did he promise us (more accurately: threaten us with) now? Apart from the vet jobs corp (discussed above), he also promised a new "job training" department or agency or who the hell knows what. Yep, just like it says in the Constitution, the federal government will provide for the common defense and train all workers for just the right job, as determined by the feds (in this case, apparently, in cyber security, "green" boondoggling, and the tech industries). Let's not forget the shiny new "Trade Enforcement Unit," the "Financial Crimes Unit" (totally useless with the existing laws, btw), and the marvelous private-public partnership (again, fascism, anyone?) between colleges and businesses and the government to work on job training and placement. I lost count of all his proposed tax "incentives" and deductions . . . nothing like adding to an already overly-complex, useless tax code rather than simplifying it.

In short, his solutions to the myriad problems facing America are the same as ever: grow government, centralize more control, spend more money incompetently, and simultaneously pander to various "groups" of voters. Typical.

The Divider in Chief Whines About Division

Again, laughable. This country has never been more divided (well, okay, the Civil War and maybe the '60's), and we owe that to this communist, class and race warfare nut. But he wants the "temperature" in Washington lowered. Really? Did he want that when he refused to meet with GOP leaders until after the 2010 "shellacking"? When he was pompously saying things like "elections have consequences" (so deal with it, GOP and the American people) and "I won"? Nope, thought not. What about when he was babbling about how racist we are, how we cling to our guns and religion, how we're stupid and lazy? Nope, thought not. What about when he supports the GIMME! rapists, commies, Islamofascists, and assorted loons of the Day of Rage (telling name, huh?) / "Occupy" movement while mocking the TEA Party for "waving tea bags around" and actually, on at least one public occasion, using the vile, sexual term "teabaggers"? Oh, right, thought not.

Those Laughable Catch Phrases

Same old, same old re: "fair share," "fair shot," and "same rules." As to the first two, as always, "fair" is not a substitute for "equal" (see above re: vet job corps); it means "determined by the government to be 'fair'." It means central planning.

Um, no, thanks. I'll stick with equal opportunity (and yes, that means no special treatment or protections for any pet group. Equal means equal.).

As to the "same rules," I literally laughed out loud at that one. Coming from this crony socialist that was a complete joke.

"Era of Recklessness." Of course he neglected to mention his own role and that of his commie, big government pals in the foreclosure crisis.

"America is back." Coming from this president, one who hates America and works against her at every turn, that got my blood boiling.

"Tyranny is no match for liberty." He got that right, as he will find out in November.

Rays of Light

Seriously?

LSM / BO Team Must Be Panicked After Newt Win in SC

2012-01-22T12:25:00.001-05:00

The LSM and BO team must be horrified and scared right now. Very horrified. Very scared. (Is it bad that this thought makes me smile?)

So the LSM rolls out this interview with Newt's second wife (he's on three now, for those keeping count), and they roll it out amid a flurry of releases trying to make it sound like they were so torn about what on earth would be the "responsible" thing to do with this earth-shattering, election-turning news (well, to be fair, it was the latter . . . just not as they'd planned and hoped).

We all know what they were doing, including with the supposed concerns about airing the interview so close to the SC election. They wanted Newt out, and they wanted to make themselves appear to be concerned about the ethics of personal attacks on a conservative candidate (like that bothered them while they were flaying Sarah Palin or destroying Herman Cain). That was the goal of the whole thing; why even interview his ex-wife, after all the interviews she's already given, there was little "new" in there, after all. They thought they understood those RAAAAACIST, gun-clinging, Bible-thumping rednecks in the republican party; they thought they had just the thing to make conservatives not vote for Newt. (Rather reminds me of their small-minded attacks on Herman Cain.)

So they dropped this "bomb" on Newt, then stood back to enjoy the fall-out that they expected (nothing short of Newt failing so abysmally in SC that he'd withdraw from the race, though I'm sure a couple hoped he'd just quit on the spot).

Except this happened instead:

And everyone, even non-Newt fans (like me), stood up and cheered. And cheered.

Then Newt won South Carolina. Okay, he didn't just "win" it, he really really won (claiming all voting demographics, etc.), including among evangelicals. This last must have floored the LSM and BO team (not sure why I write about them as if they're separate, the LSM is on Team BO).

The LSM and the (rest of the) BO team just don't understand, can't possibly understand, what is going on in this country. They don't understand that the spirit of America is not only alive and well but chomping at the bit to take our country back. They don't get the outrage at all that has happened, all that they've done. They still seem to believe that this is 2008, or maybe 2006 when they could say anything, do anything, lie about anything, and the American people shrugged sleepily and nodded back into their slumber.

It's not '06; it's not '08. The race card is expired, and now their other pet bludgeon has turned into a magic wand of conservative electoral victory. If they aren't freaking out right now about November 2012 and doing some serious adjustment to their thinking about this country, conservatives, and about their strategy, they're going to lose in November. Big. And we all know they are incapable of thinking clearly or well about conservatives or America, so I'm feeling pretty hopeful about our voting that Marxist America-hating thug-who-wants-to-be-king out of office in November.

Ron Paul's Bizarre Exhortation to "Feel Empathy for Iran"

2012-01-14T13:31:00.001-05:00

I have a long drive ahead of me today, but I so want to post about Ron Paul's latest demonstration of his utter disdain and lack of respect for Iran:

(h/t Gateway Pundit via Breitbart TV)

This whole noninterventionist / empathy / it worked with the Soviet Union thing drives me up the wall. I can't help but think that it's based in the same condescension and dismissal (underestimation based in an inherent sense of superiority) that drives the far left. Yes, the same far left who spit and spew about derogatory names directed at our enemies in the Middle East and about "Islamophobia." We all know that at its root is the sense that no one in the Middle East, country or group, should be taken as a serious threat because they . . . well, gee, they're just some backward nation that deserves our "empathy." After all, they all have camels and live in the desert, goes this mind-numbingly patronizing line of "thought," what can they possibly do to us? Besides, they're just like us, only--you know--poor and uneducated. In other words, add a they are "less than" us / we're "better" than them, toss it with some cultural relativity and voila! a hot mess of socio-cultural and political contempt.

As one commenter at Gateway Pundit (linked above) noted, Ron Paul's theory (and we've heard it before) is that we can use the same "mutually assured destruction" tactic that worked in the Cold War. After all, goes the Paul "logic," we can annihilate Iran in 40 minutes. "Mutually assured destruction" doesn't work when the enemies' ideology celebrates and reveres--even requires--dying for the cause. D'oh.

And as usual, Paul gets the motivations and causes of radical Islamic terrorism wrong. Completely wrong.

Anyway, here are my comments over at GP (still linked above, and here including the snarky return-fire condescension that commenter earned, but not that person's comments themselves, you can read those at GP, if you are so-inclined):

#18 January 14, 2012 at 9:54 am

Fuzzy commented:

#15 Common Sense

That’s a reactionary policy, though, and doesn’t take into account (at least) two pretty important things: one, the Middle East is now pretty much all radical Islamacists with the same goal that Iran states repeatedly (wiping Israel off the map and then destroying us, “the Great Satan”)–so do we add another 40 minutes to “annihilate” all the people in every Middle Eastern country, too? Doesn’t that strike you as slightly . . . er, nuts?; and two, how many American citizens can Iran wipe out with nukes before we can say, hey, let’s do that Ron Paul 40-minute annihilation plan?

Doesn’t sound particularly reasonable to me.

#29 January 14, 2012 at 10:54 am

Fuzzy commented:

#26 Common Sense?

Brainwashed? Hardly. I’ve simply sat through a few hours of Ahmadinejad’s rambling “speeches” before the G20, etc. Despite his stream-of-consciousness style of speaking, he’s actually rather clear in his ideas about both Israel, America, and the West generally. As have been a variety of Iran’s leaders dating back to 1979 (or so). But that’s not where the problems stem from between the Middle East and the U. S. (and her allies). And of course your statements about oil are insane (question: from which two countries does America import the most oil? Answer: Mexico and Canada. Following your logic, we should be warring with them? *sigh*)

You should probably read a little about the history of Islam and America’s own early confrontations with Muslim radicals, including the attacks on U. S. trading vessels that date back to the early 1800′s; hint, the U. S. didn’t even have a sea-going branch of the military then (nor even a national military force), and hadn’t “intervened” in anything off our own shores that didn’t involve our independence from England (with the help of Spain and France). You may be interested to learn, if you are capable, that the reason that Thomas Jefferson was given for the attacks on American trading ships and the slaughter of Americans was that the Koran called all Muslims to kill all non-Muslims He found that rather alarming, by the way, but he, unlike you apparently, took them at their word.

So, another appeaser (this time in the person of John Adams) agreed to pay a “tax” for our people’s safety. Unsurprisingly, the payment of a heavy tax didn’t stop the slaughters, so then when Jefferson took office, he refused to pay it (rightly, in my mind) and sent our newly-formed Marine Corps (that is pronounced “core”) to kick their butts. They did. Of course.

Now, you may take from this (and I urge you do your own research on this and to do a bit of reading about the origins of al Queda, too, do read beyond Wikipedia) that we should have just continued paying the “tax” for our right to remain Christians (or anything nonMuslim) and still trade and travel abroad (in or near Muslim countries) and that all would be well. But I would argue that’s absurd and untenable. Call me a war-monger.

Discuss.

Newt Has Some Scary News for Francophobes (i.e. You. And Me)

2012-01-13T16:55:00.000-05:00

Newt's new ad about Romney accuses him of (and I'm not making this up) speaking French. Seriously.

Newt's said and done some crazy things, desperate things, but this is downright insulting. Hey, you bitter clinger, paranoid xenophobes, wait until you hear this about Romney . . . he speaks . . . wait for it . . . French! Don't you just feel the bile bubbling up in your tiny little selves, your pathetic hate-filled souls? That's right. Romney speaks FRENCH. So vote for me. I speak American, just like you.

Good grief. It's ridiculously pathetic and grasping, of course, but it says a great deal more about his opinion of Americans, particularly--given this is a GOP primary--his opinion of conservatives, than it does about Romney (especially when you consider this).

Fuzzy Rant: It's Politics, Get It?

2012-01-11T16:00:00.000-05:00

So I'm doing my daily reading of recent posts by fabulous conservative bloggers, and I come across this one at Legal Insurrection. Apparently, Don Surber, in his enthusiastic support of Romney or Bain or capitalism itself (really, how nuts are conservatives right now? Capitalism under attack from our side?), decided that Professor Jacobson doesn't know what he's talking about because he's currently a professor at Cornell Law School. Or something.

Okay, this is all getting just plain silly. So many conservatives seem to be doing it, buying into that stale, old leftist Conservative "Civil War" trap. Let's not.

It's pretty amazing to me that so many people tend to forget that the second the nominee is named, it's going to be all chuckles, cheers, and back slapping, with all these "frenemies" vying for the VP slot and staunchly, publicly defending the very positions they are now savaging.

It's politics.

We see it every four years, but still people forget that at the end of the day, the party will--as it always does--turn the circular firing squad into circled wagons around the ultimate nominee. He (for it's not to be a "she" this time around) will get the ~~slathering~~ enthusiastic support of every single GOP presidential wannabe (with the ~~likely~~ possible exception of Ron Paul). Let's not forget that simple fact in our own--genuine--concern regarding this primary process and its ultimate nominee; let's not do the left a favor and come apart at our own seams, burn real bridges, turn on our own in real terms. We fancy ourselves political bloggers, but that hasn't seemed to include an understanding (one the left has long had) that we're not just blogging about politics, but that blogging itself is political (in the many meanings of that word).

Most of us agree that whomever the eventual nominee we'll support that person in November. I know I will. Even if it's (shudder) Romney or (gag) Newt. We're not getting a conservative, that much is clear, so let's not burn bridges and shun our fellow political bloggers and citizen constitutional conservative allies by making personal something that the candidates themselves don't take personally (except maybe Ron Paul and quite likely thin-skinned Newt).

It's politics, get it?

Let's not forget what is truly at stake in this election, and that every single one of us has a vital role to play in salvaging what's left of our republic. Let us not forget that we, the people, must stand together, united, in order to win. The left knows this and are positively giddy with the insanity currently taking place in conservative ranks, including throughout the conservative blogosphere. Let them enjoy their fun, but when the dust settles and the nominee named, let us not carry on, divided and weak, carrying grudges and ill-placed animosities. Let us instead pull together, put aside the political wrangling (that is, after all, just the same as every other primary--dem or republican), and stand together to defeat the worst president this country has ever had the misfortune to suffer.

Let Me Count the Ways

2012-01-08T19:32:00.004-05:00

One of my favorite Twitter buddies (@TalkSouthRadio) asked me how I'm liking Florida compared to "up North" (aka Massachusetts, from which I recently ~~fled~~ moved). Being long-winded, I had rather more of a response than the 140 characters Twitter permits, so I thought this would make fodder for a blog post (heh, feel free to stop reading now).

So let's hit the let me count the ways that Florida is better than Massachusetts things I've noted:

Christmas

For the first time in many (many) years, I heard people in stores wishing me a "Merry Christmas" before I wished them one. This was a rare and noteworthy occurrence in MA, but one that I encountered in Florida time and again leading up to Christmas. It made me smile inside and out.

One thing I really loved about this was the near-defiant spirit with which some said "Merry Christmas!". Take that BO and you leftist loons! seemed to be the subtext in some of the wishes. Now, that may not be in the spirit of Christmas, but it sure meets my understanding of the spirit of America.

There are whole neighborhoods that decorate--many quite extravagantly--for Christmas (it's not "the holidays" here, nor--thank God and all that is holy--a "festival of lights" or "winterfest" or whatever crazed claptrap the leftists dreamed up). Whole streets and blocks festooned with lights and yard decorations. Imagine! It was beautiful, and I insisted on driving around at a snail's pace to take it all in (much to my mother's boredom and chagrin, but hey! I hadn't seen anything like it in oh-so-long).

Anyone But Obama

It's not just a conservative bloggers' mantra but that of (almost) everyone I've encountered in the Sunshine State. The mere mention of the Fascist in Chief's name evokes eye-rolls, lip curls, head-shaking, full-body shudders, and in one case, an involuntary shoulder twitch thing that was rather worrying until I realized that the poor girl couldn't express her utter disdain and contempt for BO with only an (actually rather impressive) eye-roll-lip curl-shudder combo.

Note that I am not (by design) in or near any of the myriad Floridian leftist strongholds, so I can't comment on what they're doing/saying/thinking.

In all fairness, I often met people in Massachusetts who loathed BO, but there were many many more who defended him and/or proudly announced that they would be voting for him again. In Florida, however, I've yet to meet one person who defended him (let alone said they'd vote for him).

Leftist Television

Okay, this isn't really about FL vs. MA, but one thing that's come to my attention as I languish on my mom's or dad's couch and watch the television programs they watch is the unrelenting, heavy-handed leftist messaging in certain television shows. One, in particular, makes my blood boil. Let's call it Awe and Lorder.

Remember that old "the butler did it" thing? Well, apparently, on Awe and Lorder, the white guy did it. Always. And if his (or her) motive wasn't RAAAAACISM it was some invented Christian "cult" thing. In one, and I'm not making this up, they'd apparently run out of "other" groups who inspired unhinged hatred from white supremacist types that they actually used "gypsies" as the persecuted minority of the week. Gypsies. I kid you not. In another one, they used Santeria as the preferred religion, while bashing Christianity (of course). Bizarre.

(If I have to watch even one more episode of this idiocy, my head may explode.)

My Cross

So I wear this cross on a thin gold chain around my neck. I'm a Christian. It's a thing. Anyway, I would get the most horrendous looks in MA--everything from bugged to narrowed eyes at the audacity of my daring to wear such a thing in public. So far, I've received only knowing smiles of fellowship and a couple of "I like your necklace" comments. It's yet to evoke anger or to "offend" anyone, and that's all (pleasantly) new to me.

Bitter Clingers

Did you know that you don't need a gun permit to own a gun in Florida? Neither did I. But Floridians know. And they have guns. And ammo. Lots of both.

There are also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of churches in Florida, and they seem to be built in bunches. You'll be driving along and all of a sudden hit a section of town that is peppered with all sorts of churches, all denominations (some of which I'd never even heard of). The signs on the church sign thingies are telling, as well. A couple of which made me smile:

The only change we believe in comes from Jesus Christ.

Our hope lies in Heaven not DC.

You don't elect the Messiah. He IS.

Sarah Palin and My Dead Cat

True story: so I'm sitting at this person's Christmas party a few days before Christmas, and as conversations tend to go when I'm around, the conversation turned to BO and the 2012 election. There seemed to be near-consensus that Sarah was the one who should be running, who should get the nomination. I found this a bit surprising because I was so used to hearing that people disliked her (to say the least and for no concrete reason other than the journolist-coordinated effort against her).

Sarah is a star here, but she's not running. So at one point, I said that my dead cat would make a better president than BO, and one of the older women turned to me, and with the perfect amount of deadpan sarcasm asked, "What's his name, Dear? He has my vote."

Best Brainy Blog that is also Fun to Read

2012-01-08T14:37:00.001-05:00

Guess who's just won a

First Annual Zilla Awards for Awesomeness in the Dextrosphere!

. . . me, can you believe it?! How thrilling. Many thanks Zilla for thinking of me; I'm honored and grateful.

Here's the full list of awards and winners; be sure to check them out:

Best Artist: Bosch Fawstin

Best Place for Mocking the Obamas: MOTUS

Entertainment Industry Awesomeness: FilmLadd

Best New Blogs: The Prophet's Mercy, Liberated, and The Daily Stink

Multi-Media: DaTechguy's Blog

Best Original Reporting: The Other McCain and DaTechguy's Blog

Best New York Blog: The Lonely Conservative

Best New Jersey Blog: WyBlog

Best Canadian Blog: Blazing Cat Fur

Best at Advocating for the Hitting of Bloggers' Tip Jars: The Other McCain, The Sundries Shack, DaTechguy, The Conservatory

Most Under-Appreciated: The Other McCain

Righteous Badassery: Bare Naked Islam (note: due to incessant whining and threats from sharia pushing terror tied islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood front group CAIR, BNI is being forced off of WordPress and will soon be found at its new location, BareNakedIslam.com)

Most Eloquent and Powerful Writing: Sultan Knish

Most Fun Comments Sections to Hang Out In: MOTUS and iOwnTheWorld

Blogging Super Couple (U.S.A.): Always on Watch and Mr. Always On Watch

Blogging Super Couple (Canada): Blazing Cat Fur and Five Feet of Fury

Mighty Warrior for Freedom and Human Rights: Atlas Shrugs

Scholarly Counter-jihad: Jihad Watch

Bold and Fun to Read Counter-jihad: Winds of Jihad by SheikYerMami

Counter-jihad With a Specialty in Advocating for Persecuted Christians in the Balkans: 1389 Blog

Best Early Morning News Links: Wombat Socho at The Other McCain and From the Desk of Lady Liberty

Best Daily Blogger Link-Around: Larwyn's Linx at Doug Ross

Most Helpful to New and Smaller Blogs: Doug Ross, Blazing Cat Fur, and iOwnTheWorld

Best at Providing Miraculous Surges in Blog Traffic: Instapundit

Best Weekly Round-up of Fellow Bloggers' Blog Posts: Conservative Hideout, Teresamerica, Proof Positive, and Eye of Polyphemous

Best Place to Find Cuteness: Amusing Bunni's Musings

Best Catholic Blog: Catholic Bandita

Nicest Bloggers: Adrienne's Corner, Bread Upon The Waters, DaTechguy's Blog, The Sundries Shack, Pundit & Pundette, and, The Lonely Conservative

Best Pro-Life Advocacy: Catholic Bandita, and Pundit & Pundette

Hardest Working Blogger: Robert Stacy McCain - The Other McCain

Best Blogger Sidekick: Smitty - The Other McCain

Best Blogs from Kick-ass U.S. Military Vets: Knuckledraggin my life away and The Anti-Liberal Zone

Best Blogs by Professors: American Power, Legal Insurrection, Instapundit

Best Blogging by a Blogger while on Active Duty in the Military: Smitty at The Other McCain

Best All-Around Blogging: Maggie's Notebook, iOwnTheWorld, The Lonely Conservative, Doug Ross, Nice Deb, The Other McCain, Pundit & Pundette, and, Gateway Pundit

Fantastic Jewish Bloggers: Atlas Shrugs, Elder of Ziyon, Sultan Knish, YID With LID, Bare Naked Islam

New Blog with Really Funny Cartoons: The Morlock Revolt

First Class Snark: Waznmentobe, iOwnTheWorld, Moonbattery, MOTUS, and, Doug Ross

Best Videos: Granny Jan and Jihad Kitty

Best Brainy Blog that is also Fun to Read: Fuzzy Logic

Most Thoughtful Blogger: Adrienne's Corner

Best Bumper Sticker Photos: Legal Insurrection

Best Reference Source for the Counter Jihad: The Religion of Peace

Most Prolific: Instapundit

Best Place to Find New Ideas to Blog About: Instapundit and The Religion of Peace

Glenn on "Chairman Obama"

2012-01-06T21:05:00.000-05:00

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Defenders of the U. S. Constitution on the BO Admin's "Anti-Terrorist" Radar

2012-01-02T18:12:00.001-05:00

Remember that DHS memo from April '09? The one that "warned" the nation's police to be alert to the potential dangers of grannies who are pro-life, Americans who support the 10th Amendment and/or oppose illegal immigration, and our nation's veterans? Chilling, wasn't it? That was a day at the beach compared to the new warnings being issued by the FBI.

Guess what will now get you on this anti-American administration's "potential terrorist" short-list? For what? Tinfoil hat Fuzzy wonders if it's to be shipped off to those cozy new FEMA camps / gulags (that hold, at the max, 2,000 people--you really have to wonder how these would be effective in the case of legitimate disaster relief, don't you? Know too many areas where there are only 2,000 people? Heck, even in the small Florida town in which I now reside there are, easily, tens of thousands of people. But that's a musing for another day. Back to the "new and improved" federal guidelines for spotting the ever-pesky "potential domestic terrorist"):

-- "defenders of the U. S. Constitution" (this expands beyond the earlier warning about those supporting the 10th Amendment)

-- those citizens supporting a libertarian or conservative candidate

-- those citizens who have the "wrong" bumper sticker on their car

-- people who are "preppers" (including buying storable food--maybe we're supposed to hope we're among the "lucky" 2,000 who can stay in the wonderful FEMA "disaster relief" camps?)

Do note that the FBI notifications do include qualifiers that none of these nefarious activities is indicative of guilt.

Whew!

I'd hate to think that the U. S. can round up and indefinitely detain (or simply eliminate?) citizens on American soil--without cause or due process.

Happy New Year, Patriots!

2012-01-01T15:37:00.003-05:00

Happy New Year!!!

I hope you all had marvelous holidays and are enjoying a wonderful New Year's Day. Now that it's finally here, the import and weight of 2012 seems more significant to me than ever. We have this one chance to beat back the leftist loons and their America-destroying agenda while we are still (relatively) free and living under the (shredded remains) of our Constitution, and I have no doubt that we will rise to the occasion as generations before us have done.

Obviously, BO has to go, and his traitorous horde with him; we have to get rid of that ObamaCare monstrosity and have someone who's not an unhinged radical lunatic appointing Supremes. It doesn't look likely that we'll have a true conservative in the WH this time around (there's time for that, though, in 2016 or 2020), but that doesn't mean we can't send more to the House and Senate, as well as to every possible position at the state level. Winnowing out the progressives in both parties and replacing them with constitutional conservatives will go a long way to saving our republic even if the immediate results aren't as swift or sweeping as we may hope.

God bless each of you and God bless the United States of America!

Fuzzy's Fab Five of 2011

2011-12-31T16:53:00.000-05:00

It's that time again, so without further ado, here are the top Fuzzy Logic posts from 2011 (aka Fuzzy's Fab Five of 2011):

5. Our Civic Responsibility: "Eternal Vigilance By the People"

Unless we completely reset our understanding of our role as responsible citizens, as guardians of our republic and of our freedom, we will lose both. "They" are not the problem unless we allow it, and we've allowed it for far too long.

4. The Leftists' Conservative "Civil War" Trap

In fact, the “circular firing squad” accusation is nothing more than a leftist tactic adopted on cue from a leftist accusation and purposefully used to divide dim-witted conservatives, disrupt cohesion, and pave the way for sprog gains not just in 2012 but after. Why would anyone fall for that? Some useless leftists accuse us of being a "circular firing squad" for questioning a candidate? For objecting to a candidate's record? For daring to voice our opinion? And conservatives buy it? Good grief, have we learned nothing? Leftists have a vested interest in promoting this conservative "civil war," selling the "chasms" within the conservative resurgence. Let's not do them any favors by fulfilling their wishes.

3. Okay, So We Don't Touch Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security . . .

Look at it this way, even if we cut everything, including the military and defense, from the budget--all of it, every dime, except the Medi programs and Social Security--we'd still go broke. It wouldn't be by 2052 because we'd extend the life of the programs by not spending so much as a penny on anything else, but just think about that. No military. No national defense. No nothing. And we'd still go broke.

2. Open Letter To #OWS "Revolutionaries"

But then we get back to your basic premise, as I understand it. Government is the answer. The destruction of the free market is the answer. Taking from the rich to give to the poor is the answer. Except that never works. Once the rich are bled dry, then what? Where will the money come from then? Are you going to make it? Are you going to work hard and excel for a pittance of your "fair share" as determined by the government based on the needs of the many? Are you going to work 80, 90, or 100 hours a week so that you can get a subsistence living, one that will drag down the standard of living for every American?

1. Fuzzy Rant: Dear TEA Party Trump Chumps, Dump Trump!

Look, I get it. I was warming to Trump. Big. I even told Adrienne that he was the top of my list of potentials. But then I started watching him more closely, listening more closely, and doing a fair bit of googling (it's amazing what pops up when you search "Soros Trump"). The thing that first garnered my attention and suspicion was the donations to democrat candidates, including (horrifyingly) Harry Reid. Against Sharron Angle, who was up in the polls. Not in some distant past, but last November. OUR November. "Remember November" November.

Honorable mentions:

Everything Old is New Again

In 1933, F. A. Hayek wrote of the then-fledgling anti-capitalist National Socialist movement in Germany:
One of the main reasons why the socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognized, is, no doubt, its alliance with the nationalist groups which represent the great industries and the great landowners. But this merely proves that these groups too, as they have since learnt to their bitter disappointment, have, at least partly, been mistaken as to the nature of the movement. But only partly because, and this is the most characteristic feature of modern Germany, many capitalists are themselves strongly influenced by socialistic ideas, and have not sufficient belief in capitalism to defend it with a clear conscience.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But the dominant feature [of the National Socialists] is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, "international finance and loan capital," the system of "interest slavery" in general; the abolition of these is described as the "basis of the programme, around which everything else turns." It was to this programme that the masses of the German people, who were already completely under the influence of collectivist ideas, responded so enthusiastically.

That this violent anti-capitalistic attack is genuine, and not a mere piece of propaganda, becomes as clear from the personal history of the intellectual leaders of the movement as from the general milieu from which it springs. It is not even denied that many of the young men who today play a prominent part in it have previously been communists or socialists.
Hayek might just as well be writing about 2011 America, no?

Judgment Passed on the Tea Party: Guilty as Charged (Crime TBA)

In all, I think this is the saddest statement about the current political climate in this country, a statement that will not be answered by (one-sided) "civility" nor by mixing up the seating at the SOTU. Their minds are made up, and nothing will change that because socialist progressives have already passed their judgment, drawn their conclusions, and pronounced the Tea Party guilty as charged. All they are doing now is waiting for someone, anyone, to commit the crime of which we've all already been convicted.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T12:50:00.000-05:00

Bill Whittle's A Voters' Guide to Republicans

2011-12-17T12:54:00.002-05:00

Because it's good. Really, really good.

<p>&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;gt;h/t</p>

h/t HotAir

And on a related note, from Right Scoop

:

Fuzzy Shorts: Newt, BO, Unicorns, Income Inequality, and Other Stuff

2011-12-15T14:46:00.009-05:00

As anyone who's been reading this blog for a while knows, I'm more than a little concerned about the direction our country is heading (so much so that I've pulled up stakes in progland Massachusetts and headed for the sunshine state), and I'm also susceptible--when considering the direness of our nation's situation--to moments (okay, weeks, even months) that can best be summed up by Munch's The Scream. It's at those times that I get sort of deer-in-headlights about this blog (so much to say that I can't figure out even where to begin or how it can possibly matter/help), but I do have other interests and have long-considered setting up another, non-political blog, for those silent scream moments (okay, weeks, even months) when I just can't seem to wrap my mind around what we are facing. But then I wonder if anyone really cares about my thoughts on my cute new shoes, my macro shots of random flowers and bugs, my musings about reality television, my latest victories in any of a number of games that I play (oooh, I hear you gasp, did you really just earn 1,000 badges in that game or master soybeans in that other one? Somehow I think not.). So Fuzzy Logic sits. And sits. And sits.

Sigh. Enough of that.

So anyway. Some stuff's been happening, right?

Newt

Oh good grief. He's certainly a progressive, and like all progressives, his totalitarian vision is best for us all, whether we like it or not. He knows best. But like all progressives he won't tell us what his version of "best" is . . . because he, like all progressives, is a coward. One day, these totalitarian freaks may be in a position to rip the masks off: America down, Americans beaten into total submission to a fascist (or possibly simply communist) state. But not today. And not tomorrow. And--I hope and pray--not next year.

BO and his Naughty Dissenters Christmas list

Hohoho, it's off to the gulag we go!

Iran

So this drone miraculously falls into Iran's hands. The same hands that BO has steadily fed time to build a nuclear weapon. Um, okay.

Of unicorns

Harry Reid claims that millionaires who create jobs are like unicorns, "they don't exist." Oh, good grief. Really? Oprah is an illusion, Bill Gates a dream, Donald Trump a myth? Look at Forbes' 400, according to Reid these men (and women) don't exist except in the imaginations of Republicans.

So true. The Waltons don't create jobs (um, Wal-mart, anyone?); the Koch brothers don't have a staff or employ massive numbers of people? (Gee, what about that pet progressive claim that they are funding every conservative in the country? Paying for millions of bloggers, commenters, lobbyists, and untold numbers of conspiratorial endeavors against BO)? Facebook, Dell, Microsoft, Mars candy, Google . . . all run by one greedy ~~millionaire~~ billionaire sitting in his (no "hers" there) basement?

Uh huh.

The only unicorns that don't exist are the utopian skittle-pooping ones that the leftist's Messiah promised. You know the ones, the ones who were going to ensure that everyone is "equal" (except him and his cronies, of course), that the oceans would recede, the planet heal, everyone would get a combustible Volt . . . that one.

BO masquerading as . . .

So, let's see BO is such an empty, useless POS that he can't stand on his own . . . not his own two feet, not his own record, not his own policies, not even his own speeches. He has to pretend to be every president (including Carter and Nixon, though he's not advertising these). The latest in the long line of presidents BO has pretended to be (Lincoln, Reagan, Truman, JFK, FDR) is Teddy Roosevelt. This one is actually a pretty good match given Teddy's insane progressive views of the role of government (totalitarianism, anyone?).

On inequality

BO's latest "populist" stance is that inequality is bad. That's not quite how I see it. Of course. Waaah, whine the occupy loons, you have more than me, GIMME!!! BO blathers about the horrors of self reliance and lies (blatantly, shamelessly) about the "failure" of the free market and capitalism.

Yes, inherent in capitalism is the fact that there will be some people who do not succeed, who do not prosper, who either fall through or jump into the cracks. No matter what our progressive loon "friends" want to say, this is a feature not a flaw. There are two things we can readily understand by looking at both the history of our country and that of non-capitalist economies, particularly those that are socialist and communist: one, capitalism actually takes care of the poor via charities, churches, and individuals/companies; two, socialism and communism does not--it simply destroys the means of aiding the poor, while ensuring that everyone (except the political ruling class) lives in mind- and soul-crushing poverty. There are variations, degrees, etc., but the basics are plain as day: equal opportunity outweighs equal outcome by a huge margin, and the more we move toward socialism (and, with BO, toward fascism), the less successful capitalism is (because it isn't really capitalism anymore). Watered down, hands-tied capitalism is just as crippling as socialism and nearly as soul-destroying as communism.

But not crippling and soul-destroying enough for the Commie in Chief and his traitorous horde. Oh no! He wants you to hate success, strive for poverty, and turn to the government for all things. That, to his mind, is utopia. Everyone is "equal" (as in equally poor, equally shackled to the government, equally blocked from any hope or dream of wealth. Wealth is bad--except his own, of course, which is growing by leaps and bounds. Of course.). Well, almost everyone. There are prominent exceptions, of course, just as there are in every communist / fascist "utopia," and just as they are in every such failed and/or failing state, these are the cronies and donors to Dear Leader. Everyone else, though, is "equal." Equally shut out from even the basic dignity, freedom, and opportunity that we've too-long taken for granted.

Income inequality coupled with American freedoms and protections and with American capitalism is not something to disparage but something to celebrate. To cherish. To protect. The "income inequality" serves as impetus for many to take advantage of opportunities afforded, to climb out of the poverty classes and into the middle class, to aspire to and achieve more. In America, at least once upon a time, anyone could do anything. We don't have a caste system, we don't have royalty, we don't have a set class structure (barring the tiny segment of "elite" who, thankfully, stick to their own "kind" and sneer at the "new rich" or the grubby entrepreneur who accidentally stumbles upon their inbred lairs of refinement). That's the beauty of America, we can move--in one generation--from uneducated schlub to multimillionaire. A "nobody" can rise up from our ghettos and become anything he or she wants to be.

But if BO and his ilk get their way, everyone will be denied these opportunities. Everyone except their own kind, their own class, their own. We will have, in effect, a new class of citizen, that which--as in every other dictatorship in the history of the world--is guaranteed a place at the tables of power and wealth, and we will have a new class of citizen to complement them, that which--like every other oppressed people in the history of the world--survives, works, dies to maintain that unequal, ingrained, status quo. All without a chance, ever, of scrambling higher, of making it out of that second-class, slave status. That is not America.

Income inequality, it seems to me, is a small price to pay for opportunity. For freedom. For our souls.

Happy Thanksgiving, Patriots!

2011-11-24T16:09:00.000-05:00

God bless you all and your families!

And of course it wouldn't be a Fuzzy Thanksgiving without the Buffy crew:

I hope you are all having a marvelous day and enjoying family, friends, and freedom!

Dude, "Predatory Black Sexuality." Seriously?

2011-11-10T02:47:00.007-05:00

Okay, so I've been watching the Herman Cain saga unfold (and have commented over at Legal Insurrection, NiceDeb's, Adrienne's Corner, and Potluck if anyone is interested), and then I watched the debate tonight. Can I just say, "America, you ROCK!" Well, okay, American conservatives rock. Did you catch the smackdown the audience gave the unhinged leftist moderators? It was a show stopper (transcript):

Did you see the faces of the mods? Omg, totally priceless. The very last thing they expected was to be booed by a conservative audience when confronting Cain about the allegations. The left has so bought into their own crazed "RAAAAACISM" theories that they are shocked, shocked!, that conservatives don't see Herman Cain as a black man first. Or even second. Maybe not even third. To us, he's a conservative businessman running for president. Period.

But this is how we're supposed to respond:

We're supposed to be offended that Herman Cain, a BLACK MAN (in case you didn't know), is accused of making sexually-aggressive moves on a BLONDE WHITE WOMAN. We're supposed to find those facts insulting, infuriating; to the exclusion of any other consideration (personally, if the charges are true, if anything about them upset me or hit me the wrong way, it's that he was married at the time--still is, of course).

From that Hannity clip, some crazed leftist notes: "Those people [that would be us] do not want to hear from a black man who is aggressive, assertive, angry; they want to hear from a man who is assimilated, calm, measured."

Cue Harry Reid on how great BO is because he's "light-skinned, with no Negro dialect unless he wants to" (BO getting his "Negro dialect" on is amusin', though.).

As one of "those people," I find this hugely amusing. "Assimilated"? Really? As in "acting white"? Being able to "pass" (if not in the original meaning of the word then at least) in terms of being "light-skinned" and being able to don a phony "Negro dialect" on cue? Like BO?

Oh! Did you catch the part about how we conservatives are supposed to like Cain "because he's a black man who knows his place"? Seriously? What "place" is that? The Oval Office? That's where I'd like to see him.

It really does beg the question who it is, exactly, who fears "predatory black sexuality" and is offended by black men with white women? Certainly not me. And certainly not anyone I've ever spoken with or even read on rightwing blogs. Nope, you only hear that drivel from the race peddlers, the leftists who are invested in keeping black people in those ridiculous, obsolete boxes . . . so they keep voting (D).

If black people aren't victims, don't buy into the narrative that they aren't equal, dare believe that they can succeed on their own, without handouts or affirmative action, and have the (yes, I'm saying it) audacity to see themselves as people first, Americans, then they are brutalized with the most disgusting, vile, and demeaning racist attacks.

I look at Herman Cain and see a conservative presidential candidate. The left looks at him and sees a "sell-out," "an Uncle Tom," and an "angry black man."

Unreal.

Occupy Chart of the Day (updated)

2011-11-06T18:39:00.002-05:00

And this, my friends, says it all:

h/t Nice Deb

Updated:

h/t NiceDeb

"All He Has To Do . . . "

2011-10-28T10:40:00.005-04:00

If this doesn't scare you, nothing will. From Politico's Bill Daley interview:

And all President Obama has to do to achieve this [times "better" than the past three years] is make a startling end run around not just the Republicans but also the Democrats, in Congress.

All he has to do, Daley says, is operate in domestic affairs with the same speed, power and independence that he possesses in foreign and military affairs.

That’s all.

“On the domestic side, both Democrats and Republicans have really made it very difficult for the president to be anything like a chief executive,” Daley says. “This has led to a kind of frustration.”

The president’s solution? “Let’s figure out what we can do [without Congress] and push the envelope on some of these things,” Daley says.

Yeah, that's "all."

There have been calls for BO to pretend he's a dictator, a king, an emperor; heck, he had it loaded up in his teleprompter and read that he wants to "just do it himself." That it was so well-considered, so prepared (written in advance and loaded in the teleprompter!) is chilling enough, but Daley's casual dismissal of a co-equal branch of government--and of our Constitution--comes from BO's chief of staff, a man many said was more "centrist" than his radical, egomaniacal boss. It matters.

Daley is expecting dramatic, unpredictable events between now and Election Day.

“There is a lot going to happen in the next 13 months. A lot. I would like to say it’s all going to be good, but nobody knows,” Daley says. “I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibility that we have a stronger attitude around the economy. I’m not saying we’re going to be down to 6 percent unemployment, but just the beginning of a psychological change. Right now, that is the biggest thing. What are the factors that [will create] that? Who knows?”

All that he knows is that it’s going to be a wild ride.

“You can just feel this electorate is very volatile,” Daley says. “So strap yourself in.”

He's not joking. They are desperate to stay in power, and they will stop at nothing to do so. Nothing, including class and race riots, suspending elections, chaos, violence, injuries, and deaths--things that would create "psychological change" in Americans. I've been convinced of this for quite some time but never more so than as I read this and my blood ran cold.

Does anyone really still believe that the Occupy movement is benign?

Flashback: BO's 2010 SOTU

2011-10-26T12:58:00.000-04:00

[So I was chatting with someone about the "new" BO plan for student loans, and I suggested that he read the parts of my post on the 2010 SOTU that dealt with that, and because I was sending someone to read something, I thought I'd go ahead and read it again, too. It's amazing how much of what BO said in that SOTU has happened, is happening. We're in deep trouble. Originally posted January 28, 2010.]

I don't even know where to begin to describe my reaction to last night's SOTU (full text, video). Here's what he said, in a nutshell: Nothing has changed, I still don't get it, and I intend to carry on as before. The second he said that the American people are thinking, in response to all his spending, is "what's in it for me?" I knew, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that he doesn't get it. The question is not what can I get from the government, but what can we do for our country. The government is not the country; its job is not to provide for its citizens anything except opportunity, freedom, and protection. Patriots know this.

When BO evokes the Constitution and/or American values, he will, in his next breath, undermine the Constitution and/or American values. He does this in almost every speech (this is one reason that I recommend reading the text of his speeches rather than watching him read them from the phalanx of teleprompters--though, to be honest, he's not as "magical" or "inspiring" as he once was, so it's becoming less important to read the words). He began his speech last night like any good high school student: he placed the speech itself in a historic (and constitutional) context. He then went on not to talk about the state of the union but of the state of his own crumbling presidency and what else he's going to do to destroy our constitutional republic.

When BO talks about solutions, they are always (and I mean always) ways to grow government, ways to empower government. Empowering the government means restricting the individual, the people. It can mean nothing else. When BO talks about "what is right," it is always about what the government thinks is right, what the government will impose on the people, regardless of what we want or of our constitutional freedoms. Clearly out of his mind, BO intends to plow ahead with his radical progressive agenda while mindfully ignoring the will of the people (we don't fit in his vision of a "fundamentally transformed" America). Sure, he made some suggestions that might be considered conservative. If you don't think about them, that is. If you think about them, the only conclusion to draw is that he is working his butt off to socialize and nationalize everything. Everything.

Government Spending Freeze. Sort of. Next Year.
As just about everyone is pointing out the freeze on government spending is so microscopic that it is barely noticeable, and you couldn't notice it anyway as he's not going to do it until next year (if at all, remember this man has left a trail of broken promises in his wake). This year he's going to engage in more reckless and useless spending. Carrying on just as if nothing had happened, as if there were no Tea Party protests, no town halls, no election losses in NJ, VA, and MA. Just plowing ahead. Spending and grabbing power and being a complete ideologue who is filling me with more fear and dread each day.

Massive Spending
Last night he announced another massive stimulus bill (he called it a jobs bill. Same thing, different name. Common radical prog practice as we all know by now.). He also announced a bunch of initiatives to "help" people:

Small businesses: He's going to, in effect, make the government a lender via small bank proxies. Giving TARP repayments to small banks to finance loans to small businesses. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Student loan repayment limits, loan forgiveness, and increased Pell grants (never to be repaid), again, sounds great. But what this means is that the people are paying for higher education for all citizens, whether or not they go to college themselves. Think about that one for a second. People will go to college, pay a pittance back on their loans for ten or twenty years, and then stop paying them back. Who pays for the balance of all these loans? You got it: you.

I come back to universities later, but for now, let me just point out that when BO said that a high school education is no longer sufficient to ensure opportunity for people, he was right (and frankly, even college degrees don't guarantee good jobs--this is due, in large part, to both the flooding of the university system and to the lowering of educational standards at both the K-12 and the college level). He was also implying that we all should be just as responsible (in the form of taxes) for paying for college degrees as we are for paying for the public school system (also via taxes).

Climate change/Cap and tax. Again, he mocks those, a majority of Americans!, who do not believe that humans are responsible for or can control the natural changes and cycles of the climate--changes and cycles that pre-date not only industrialization but man. Still on the table, still guaranteed to cripple our economy and blow out our individual household budgets.

Green economy. Still on the table, still guaranteed to cripple our economy and blow out our individual household budgets.

Healthcare takeover. Still on the table, still guaranteed to cripple our economy and blow out our individual household budgets. Also guaranteed to limit care and diminish quality. He is determined to pass this, despite a century's worth of Americans telling him "no."

Aside: Why does the left keep holding up MediCare as an example of how wrong conservatives were to object to it on the grounds that it would lead to socialized medicine? The very fact that MediCare is being held up as a reason to expand the socialization of medicine proves that they were right to worry. MediCare, however popular, is being used as a foundation on which to expand government control of our healthcare system. Those who objected are being vindicated each and every day . . . each and every time someone on the left holds it up as a reason to expand government control of healthcare. D'oh.

Banks
BO announced that he hated taking over the banks. We know that's a lie. We know he forced many banks to take government funding they didn't want, and we know that he's making the best of the financial near-collapse to amass power. His statement that we've recovered most but not all of the bailout money is true. Then he follows this up with his intent (not new, he announced this last week) to tax "the biggest banks" to recover the rest. Not the banks who took money from tax payers, not the banks who still owe money to the tax payers, but "the biggest banks." Even if they didn't take a dime and don't owe a dime and didn't have one thing to do with the near-collapse. Think about this.

You'll note, too, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from this tax. They are the huge, and I mean huge, banking/loan institutions that can most directly be tied to the dire straights that this economy is in. Don't forget that the whole downward spiral was not started on Wall Street (though it did end up there). It started in community organizing groups like ACORN. It started because these groups lobbied the government and demanded that loans, specifically housing loans but also student loans and others, be made to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay them back. The pressure from these groups caused people in Congress to jump into the fray and start forcing such high risk loans on institutions, loans that people could not possibly repay. We know all this. BO pretends that we don't. And he gets away with it because the general public does not know all this--Wall Street has become the isolated target of this administration, the scapegoat for problems that did not originate there and that it had no control over.

BO is counting on the unwashed rabble to support this unethical and highly suspect move because they are incensed about the massive bank bonuses. He is counting on the public to rationalize taxing "the biggest banks" because they have the money, because they are the greedy evil ones. He is counting, in other words, on the public to approve his unfair and unethical actions . . . just this once. And thus the slippery slope.

National Security
Barely discussed. Scarcely mentioned. Not a priority.

Revoke "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"
Whatever. I don't care about that, and I suggest that those of you who do calm the hell down and worry about what he's doing to our country. My guess: even if it is revoked (and he promised only to "work on" that), it won't make any difference. Gay military people are already "out" if they want to be and not if they don't. The PC culture that turned a blind eye to the Fort Hood terrorist also turns a blind eye to gays. That won't change. Nothing will change as a result of this: it's an empty gesture to his hard left base.

Crazy
Nuclear Disarmament: are you kidding me? Evoking, daring to utter the names of, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy to justify our disarmament is beyond belief. He's living in a bubble, a dream world. He's a complete nut. Does he honestly believe that President Reagan or President Kennedy would push for disarmament now . . . with North Korea and Iran proving that they are not only unwilling to go along but are outwardly mocking the U. S.? Seriously. This is the craziest thing he's said. For someone who is supposed to be intellectual, this is the most intellectually dishonest thing he said (and that's saying something). Saying you're going to adhere to the policies of past presidents in a completely different situation, a completely different world, is absolutely insane.

Iran. What can you say? He's going to get firm? Really? Ooooh, watch out Iran, he's going to give you another deadline to ignore; he's going to order more sanctions for Russia and China to ignore (and, incidentally, get wicked rich in doing so).

BO's going to get us all killed; he's leading us straight into a nuclear war, handing nutty regimes and (yes) terrorists nuclear weapons as surely as if he sent them wrapped in shiny paper with a big big bow on top . . . and working to ensure we are unarmed and unable to retaliate. The man is a menace to freedom, to safety, and to the entire world who will be unprotected when we are disarmed.

And what did he say about supporting the opposition to oppression and tyranny in Iran? Oh, yeah, bad Iran, bad. Carry on.

Patriot Watch
Last night he planted one seed and he threw down one gauntlet in his maniacal consolidation of all power in the executive branch. He has set his sights on two new targets.

The seed he planted was that universities should "take responsibility" for ensuring that college is affordable. This sounds great. It sounds like a no-brainer. But this is the president of the United States addressing the country, watched by the world, saying that he has his eye on the university system. He's already taken over the student loan industry (interestingly, Fannie Mae had, prior to the near-collapse, bought up a huge portion of student loans, including my own, in the past several years). And we know that this crazed socialist will take over any industry that he can. Mark my words, he's going after universities.

The gauntlet was of course his criticism of the Supreme Court. He lied when he said that the ruling would enable foreign companies to finance American elections; that's an absolute lie. He's worried that the unions and other pet liberal campaign funders like ACORN and trial lawyers will not hold an essential monopoly on buying elections (as always, it's okay if the left does it, but un-American when it's on the right . . . whatever the "it" is). So he decided to take on the Supreme Court in the SOTU. Unbelievable. Absolutely outrageous.

Three words: Separation. Of. Powers.

This, I believe, is another item on his agenda. Undermining the constitutional mandate that there be three distinct branches of our central (federal) government and that these branches remain discrete to ensure that there are checks and balances, that one branch can't run roughshod over the others thereby taking rulership of the entire government, of the country. The reason the Supreme Court is not elected and that they are appointed for life, is to ensure that they answer to no one. No one. Ever. Including--no, for our founding fathers and for our republic to survive, ESPECIALLY--to the executive branch.

Chilling
"If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different than anyone else."

And if we don't adhere to your values, BO, then what?

Cringe-worthy
"I have never been more hopeful about our country's future than I am tonight."

If he's hopeful, we are in serious trouble.

Open Letter To #OWS "Revolutionaries"

2011-10-21T15:24:00.013-04:00

Dear "Occupy" People,

This may come as a surprise to you, but when most people hear you, all we hear is a strange, alien shriek that starts with "No Fair!" and ends with "Gimme!"

We hear: "I made bad choices, didn't think things through, never even imagined that everything wouldn't go exactly as I wanted it to. So now that I have student loans I signed for and can't pay back (because I can't find a job I think worthy of my awesomeness), I want someone else to pay."

Some of your basic premises are simply faulty, some fantastically so. From what I can gather, and I admit, it's difficult to take you seriously, you think that there is "x" amount of money, and that when one group has that "x" amount of money, there is no more money. It's as if you think that rich people bury their money in their backyards, but we all know they don't. They spend, invest, donate, build hospitals, museums, art galleries, universities; they build non-profits that help the homeless, help the hungry, bring medicinal and educational supplies to the poorest regions on earth. When there is a natural disaster anywhere in the world, American corporations are the first to step up and donate millions, often (as with Haiti, Japan, and countless other incidents) billions. One (that's as in one) American corporation donated more to Haiti after the earthquake than the entire Chinese government. Two other, with their combined donations, also donated more than China. China, embarrassed, doubled their donation, but it was still dwarfed by what American corporations donated. Did you know that? Does it matter?

So back to this "there is only 'x' amount of money, and anyone who has it is somehow evil" premise. We'd be remiss, wouldn't we, if we didn't consider the millionaires and billionaires who work in Hollywood, fashion, music, sports, television, and other corporations (because, yes, newsflash: MGM is a corporation, as is almost every other "big Hollywood, big Fashion, big Television, big Music, and big Sports" industry). Television, in particular, tends to film in Vancouver and not in California, where the studios are located (what is your favorite television show that actually has a plot, a script, and is worth watching? Where is it filmed?). Do you see a relationship between high taxes and unreasonable union demands and the decision to film in another country? Why do these corporations escape your notice? If there's only "x" amount of money, and they have a good chunk of it, aren't they greedy, too? Aren't they "stealing" from you because they have a bigger piece of the pie than you'll ever get sleeping under a tarp in a park?

My guess is that they don't fit in your narrative, so you simply ignore them. This is a mistake, however, because we who love America not only see the inconsistency but can quite clearly see the political, not social or cultural or even economic, motivation behind the targets you choose for your ill-considered "rage."

It's a turn off, just so you know.

On one thing, you might have gotten some support from normal people (I use this term to describe the majority of Americans who have no desire to destroy our country, our free market capitalism--well, any more than it's already been destroyed), and that one thing is on the bailouts. Granted, those were three (that's 3) years ago (funny you're only now outraged, is that a reflection of your slowness on the uptake or . . . what?), but we didn't like them, either. However, where you lose us is in insisting that you want a government "bailout," as well, or maybe that you want the bailout instead. This seems to be largely because you blame the banks for taking the government bailouts (using our tax money), but did you know that some banks were forced to take a "bailout" that they neither wanted nor needed? That these banks paid them back with record speed (having not wanted or needed them)? Did you know that the banks that "needed" the bailout were determined by the government? That the government determined how much to give them and even how they spent it? Does this matter at all?

My guess is that, like most leftists, you supported the bailouts--if for no other reason than by the time BO was in office, they sort of became his, and we all have seen how you have no problem--in principle--with anything that he does . . . even if he does all President Bush did, and more besides, to undermine our Constitution, your rights, and our nation. If I recall correctly, the argument was that the economy would collapse.

But that was before you knew (somehow, just how did you learn it?) that's what you wanted. (If that's what you want at all.)

Have you thought about what it would mean if capitalism, in particular American capitalism, collapses? As I mentioned above, American capitalists--both corporations and taxpayers through our government--pay for so very much in the world. Not only do we have the highest standard of living in the world, but we have the money to fund the majority of the UN, we send aid to a host of foreign countries, and a host of other things around the globe. We use money earned by capitalism to fund all sorts of things that you supposedly want funded (somehow, magically maybe): everything from education to social security to MediCare and welfare and foodstamps and unemployment benefits. Where do you imagine that money will come from if there is no capitalism? Do you really believe that people will be as productive and that earning power will be as great under any other system? If so, on what do you base this belief? If we are the "richest country in the world" (or we were, anyway), then wouldn't that suggest that our system produces . . . wealth. And that it does so better than any other system in the world?

It's easy and convenient to blame "Wall Street" for all of the nation's ills, but is that even reasonable? Do you know where the mandates to provide unsafe home loans came from? Do you know why the banks gave loans to people, in some case, who didn't even have a job? Now, I know and readily admit that some investment bankers and particularly hedge fund creeps "bet" on these loans going into default. I also think this is unethical, but it's not as if it wasn't completely obvious--to everyone except the commies in Congress who forced this--that these loans would all be defaulted, that there would be mass foreclosures when people who either didn't have jobs or were getting loans that the jobs they did have would never be able cover. The housing crisis was a government-conceived, government-mandated crisis, made to make you stand around years later crying because people, for some unknown reason (and yes, they are culpable, too), are being foreclosed on for not being able to repay loans they should never have received in the first place.

Again, that's not to excuse the excesses of Wall Street, but you know what is the most insidious, most dangerous aspect of Wall Street? Its relationship with government. You seem incensed that no one on Wall Street has been indicted for wrong-doing. Okay, let's look at that. What did BO say? That they didn't do anything illegal, right? That they can't indict for non-criminal, totally legal activity. And that's true. But who makes banking laws? Who writes them? Who pays for them? That's right, my unthinking friends, Wall Street. There are these things called lobbies, and they spend all the billions that you think, and I think, they should be paying in taxes, to ensure that there are "free zones" for unethical activity and numerous tax shelters that enable gigantic corporations like GE to avoid paying so much as one penny in taxes. Legally.

Wall Street doesn't need reform, the government does. With the government reformed properly, there will be no Wall Street excesses. This is something we refer to as "critical thinking" and an understanding of a thing called "cause and effect"; you'll note that "unintended consequences" tend to manifest most often and to most onerous effect from leftist policies. Things don't happen in a vacuum, and when you do one thing (pass a regulation, for instance, or ban shallow water drilling), it has a ripple effect (the costs of the regulation are passed on to the consumer (BoA), or deep-water drilling--much less easy to manage, maintain, and clean up than that done in shallow water--results in serious environmental damage). In short, something that "sounds good" needs to be considered beyond the moment.

The "public-private" partnerships you seem to support undermine the benefits of capitalism and highlight the destruction socialism always causes. And that goes well beyond Wall Street--indeed, it's a large part of the reason that healthcare costs are what they are, that they are going up as they do. Between Big Pharma and lawyer lobbies and other factors that influence government policy, this will not change even if--no, especially if--you get your much-dreamed of, but little-considered government healthcare.

Do you think it's an accident that everything the government is involved with costs far more than everything that government is not involved with? That does include oil and ethanol subsidies, oh yes, but it also includes the existing government healthcare programs. You know how you think that the government has unlimited resources to pay for everything under the sun, every whim of your commie little heart? Well, that's just what every business who works with / for the government thinks, too. So we have the government operating outdated, inefficient, and wasteful programs that are fraught with waste, fraud, and abuse (not even going into the fact that in most things, excepting the military, roads, etc., the private sector would do much better, for less money, and to greater benefit to all). There is no incentive for government to be cost-effective, for it to work within a budget. So it doesn't.

And because it doesn't, the budget gets bigger and bigger each year--expanding far beyond our ability to pay (this is called "deficit"; it differs from "debt"), tax dollars are wasted and spent irresponsibly across the board (and yes, that definitely includes subsidies to big oil and military spending). And here's the thing, you are raging against the machine of Wall Street, but the "real" culprits are in DC. Whom do you think passes the laws that are written by wealthy and influential lobbyists? Whom do you think panders to your commie fantasies by enacting all sorts of programs (and usually multiple programs that all do the same thing, as inefficiently as possible)?

This all plays out only one way. At some (near) point, we are going to have to have austerity measures unless you lot stop and think. You want to have a social security program, right? You want to have MediCare, right? Every single serious projection says that both are unsustainable. We have a choice: we can make changes now, changes that won't affect current and near-term recipients, or we can go on as we are and be forced to make cuts to people who are dependent, in that moment, on government programs. According to projections, that's likely to be you. And that's what's happened in Greece. They knew decades ago they were heading here, that they would have to make cuts, but they kicked the can down the road, they ignored the problem. Now government, there, is the "bad guy," not the banking system, not the greedy war for oil people, not a single one of your straw men. The government. Do you not think this significant? Do you not think we can learn from that in some way?

But then we get back to your basic premise, as I understand it. Government is the answer. The destruction of the free market is the answer. Taking from the rich to give to the poor is the answer. Except that never works. Once the rich are bled dry, then what? Where will the money come from then? Are you going to make it? Are you going to work hard and excel for a pittance of your "fair share" as determined by the government based on the needs of the many? Are you going to work 80, 90, or 100 hours a week so that you can get a subsistence living, one that will drag down the standard of living for every American?

We know this will happen because that's what always happens when too much socialism is injected into any society: the middle class disappears, the poverty class expands, and the upper- and privileged-class shrinks. Even communist China has finally clued into this and is using more and more free market principles, and as a result, they have an emerging and growing middle class. Communism is regressive, not capitalism. Communism destroys the individual in the name of the collective, and it destroys along with the individual any concept of individuality. You become a number. A workhorse. A slave.

Where do you think you'll fit in this new order you seek? From what I can tell, the talents, skills, and abilities of the "occupiers" are shockingly limited. You can chant, you can repeat what someone says, you have the minimal intellect required to learn hand twinkles, and you can beat bongos and smoke pot. Do you know what Mao and Stalin and Hitler did to the "revolutionaries" who cleared their path to power? You may want to look into that because if you survive at all (highly unlikely), you'll be, effectively, enemies of the state's stability. While the bongo-beaters may find a role in the new "collective" as musicians, take a look at what Mao, Che, Hitler, and the Soviets did to music, to creativity. Hint: it was controlled, music had to be benign, limited to supporting the government, never ever inspiring the unwashed masses to anything that might lead to free-thought or rebellion. So guess who's going to be the farmers, miners, and factory workers in the new non-capitalist collective. Not me. You. Guess who's going to be assigned to the least-fulfilling, least-intellectually demanding "dirty" jobs that society needs done. Not me. You. Guess who's going to be living in tiny, government-provided cubicles on the property of their workplace. Not me. You.

That's if you're permitted to live at all. History shows that the tyrants who take power after a "revolution" eliminate, quickly and brutally, all who are likely to "revolt" against the new order. That's you.

And very much me.

Love of Country

2011-10-20T08:17:00.000-04:00

[I wrote this two years ago; it was originally posted on October 20, 2009. Little has changed, yet much has, and the dangers I noted have ramped up and become ever-more evident. The conclusion I drew seems just as--maybe more--true.]

One of my cherished friends told me that she doesn't understand my American sense of patriotism, and she asked me "what does it mean to love a country?". I had no answer for her, but her question is one that I periodically take out, turn over, hold up to the light, and poke at. What does it mean to love a country? What does it mean to love a country?

I believe that we are currently experiencing A Moment in History, that what happens in the next eighteen months or so will determine the future of our country, of ourselves, and of our descendants. As we all cope with this knowledge (I know I'm not alone in believing this), lines are being drawn, allegiances decided. Some of us are mentally assuming crash position, some are "stocking up on ammunition" (to quote a comment I read on someone's blog--I can't remember whose, but it may have been Opus'), some are working feverishly on next year's midterm elections, and some are watching and waiting and praying. All of us, though, are, beyond any shadow of doubt, patriots. We love our country, what it stands for, what it means to us.

Now, I tend toward hyperbole, but I don't believe that I am overstating this, at least not with my usual intention. There are enough pieces of the puzzle that I feel pretty sure I can see what the finished picture will be, and I am deeply alarmed by the rapid takeovers that the BO administration has accomplished in such a short time. BO and his followers (his partners in high crimes and misdemeanors) have, in a variety of ways, clearly stated that they intend to destroy our capitalist system and replace it with a socialist one--they've said this, sometimes in those exact words. On the one hand, I don't believe a word that BO utters, but this . . . this, I believe. And I think this is why everything else he says is a lie; he knows that if he (or anyone) proposed essentially destroying America as a constitutional republic and replacing it with his vision, he would be (rightly) tagged a wingnut radical, that we would never agree to such a thing. But our consent is not required, nor sought.

I can't recall him ever saying anything positive about America, unless you include how he's going to "fundamentally transform" it. Yet even then, he is not expressing love of country but love of himself. His constant berating of our country, his perpetual attacks on this country and its citizens, and his stated intention of remaking it are not rooted in patriotism. His is not a desire to improve our system of government; he seeks, I believe quite strongly, to totally destroy it. We, who love our country, know that there are things that are wrong, that aren't working perfectly (and some that aren't working at all), that we've made bad foreign policy decisions, that we are hated by much of the world. But we don't see in that a thing to be reviled, obliterated. We see in that a country that we love, fundamentally, a system of government that might be imperfect but is by far more appealing than any other. We see the good in our country, and we believe--know in our hearts and in our souls--that our country is far more good than bad. It always has been.

This hatred of our country will be, I believe, his undoing. He is so blinded by his hatred, by his fantastical communist vision, that he is driven by contempt, ego, and faulty ideology. I do not believe that he thinks socialism is the road to utopia: he sees it as the road to communism. He and his fellow plotters know that communism means the absence of individual freedom and choice; they know that it depends on the people depending on the government. And they know what this has led to every time it's been tried. They, like so many before them, believe they can do it better.

They know that they have to shut down, silence dissent. And this is something that they've tried clumsily before with the "flag the fishy" campaign, but that little McCarthy fish hunt didn't pan out quite right. Rather than looking at the basic problem of trying to silence citizens in a free and open society, they blame, in no particular order, Fox News, conservative talk radio, and the internet. I find this intriguing, and I'm a little puzzled that they didn't have a plan in place to silence us sooner, upon taking office and putting their true agenda in motion. These, and we, are thorns in their sides. Pesky problems to be solved by means of intimidation, ridicule, and government control.

Yesterday, or actually the day before yesterday, I caught a "special report" on CNN about conservative talk radio. The story was going to be told in parts, and the part that I caught was about the "anger" of conservative radio personalities and the "dangerous" way that they instill in their listeners a sense of anger and outrage (like we really need Rush for that).   I always find it interesting that BO admonishes the right for "straw man" tactics while still using Bush as his own personal straw man every single time he gives a speech or "interview"; that he accuses the right of deceit and lies when it is he who is deceitful and lying; that he and his traitorous hoard point to the Tea Parties as examples of "violent mobs" while completely ignoring the fact that only the left has been violent (witness the G20 protests, peopled by white, middle-class youth who were violent and disorderly enough to warrant police in full riot gear!); that he accuses the right of using fear tactics while in the next breath warning of our imminent death and loss of our homes; that he points to conservatives as ill-informed racists, sexists, and homophobes when it is the left who are clueless and who rely on race, gender, and sexual orientation to "manage" the population; that he speaks of unity while actively working to ensure that there is a wide partisan divide peppered with stereotypes and myths about conservatives; that he speaks about the evils of Bush, his pet straw man, while retaining many of Bush's policies; that he preaches to the world about a country's citizens' rights to free speech and dissent while working to silence the people of his own country; that he preaches tolerance while fostering a climate of intolerance against anyone who does not tow the liberal line. Ugh, he is disgusting.

Anyway, back to CNN. There was a two-fold message in this short narrative about conservative talk radio. The first points to their perception of the "unfair" and "disproportionate" number of conservative talk radio shows compared to liberal ones. Because, goes this line of "reasoning," there are more conservative radio shows, they are monopolizing the airwaves that might otherwise be well-attended by liberals listening to liberal crap. Of course this is all pure invention. Liberal talk radio doesn't have an audience because most of the newspapers and all but one of the news channels provide more than enough fodder for liberal listeners. Conservatives were forced, if you will, to this lesser venue because there were no alternatives in any other media (Fox News is only about ten years old). Now that talk radio, coupled with the internet and Fox News, are attracting more and more listeners (and viewers), liberals want the "wasteland" that was public radio back. No fair! You made that work, and we really didn't think you could, and now we want it. Gimme!

But it doesn't work that way. They can load every AM station with liberal loons, and none of them will ever attract the audience that a Rush or a Laura have. One reason for this is the liberal inability to deal with complexity. It seems that more liberals are "single cause"-obsessed than conservatives, so their range of knowledge and interest is severely limited. They know all about green energy or anti-war protests or denying American citizens the right to display an American flag on American soil or keeping an eagle eye out for any evidence of Christian faith or sniffing around for a whiff of homophobia or whatever. But usually just one thing; they can't seem to see beyond the scope of their pet protest, and this severely limits the ability of talk radio to reach them. But they have a plan. The diversity czar is going to fine conservative stations and programs something like 100% of their overhead and drive them out of business so that he can give the shows to minority and liberal personalities. It won't make a difference to listener ratings, and they'll all go belly up within a year, but then again, this is not about diversity, this is about silencing dissent.

But that is always the liberal methodology: pull off the most reprehensible acts in the name of the common good or in the name of parity and equality. We see this constantly; indeed, we are seeing it daily in the healthcare "debate." This healthcare proposal is not about helping the uninsured, it's about centralizing power in Washington. Period. If they wanted to help the uninsured, they would look at why people are uninsured and address those problems (like say fixing the economy so people can get back to work, allow shopping across state lines, provide the same rates for individuals that businesses get, limit lawsuit awards for "emotional stress" etc., and change the requirements for Medicaid so that more people can qualify). But they won't even consider these options, all of which would address the actual problem without dismantling our healthcare system. But they don't want to help the uninsured, they want to further their agenda and to do that they need total control.

I digress. Back to silencing dissent. The latest fun times involve the president of the United States of America whining that Fox News is being mean to him. This is embarrassing and incredibly stupid (as well as very smart, but I'll get to that part in a minute). Waaaaah, those meanies at Fox News are not being nice to me.   Sniffle. So the BO administration wanders around the fringe media talk shows on Sunday morning berating Fox as an "arm of the Republican party" and cautioning the state-run media (ironic, right?) not to pick up any Fox stories. Um, like ACORN and Van Jones and the rest of the horrific news, real news, about BO and his fellow plotters. Of course this is simply too ridiculous for words, and any journalist in his or her right mind would immediately jump on this story and shout it from the rooftops as the assault on free speech that it is.

In addition to discrediting Fox, BO is also trying to stop the fringe media from reporting more fairly, from doing their real job, as the network execs must surely have been considering given Fox's high and rapidly increasing ratings. Let's face it, news organizations (including Fox) are businesses first, so seeing the huge growth of Fox's viewership must have given them pause, they had to--after ACORN and Van Jones, two stories that they ignored until they couldn't any longer--consider giving in to the free market idea of supply and demand. Fox is serving up something that people want: news. No one wants to watch CNN spend one second on a "story" that fact checks an SNL skit. That's so bizarre, so ludicrous that it's laughable. And they are laughing stocks. They know it, and BO knows it. Thus the slander against Fox News. The president is trying to discredit Fox, to destroy them.

And where is this being covered? On Fox. Only on Fox. Every journalist in this country should be ashamed of themselves for losing their way, dropping their true role in our society, and instead functioning as an arm, not of the democratic party, but of the White House, as BO's personal propaganda machines (I don't believe that BO actually represents the democratic party, only the far fringes that are cluttered up with loony toon liberals so far out in their ideology that it's not recognizable to anyone who hasn't studied history, who doesn't know what Castro, Chavez, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao, et al. are/were about). This is seriously troubling, and again, BO points to conservatives and accuses them of doing, being, and saying exactly what he and his partners do, are, and say. This is nothing new. In fact, it's old--right back to Alinsky, right?

This attack on Fox is serving, I believe, a dual purpose. Not only is BO truly interested in silencing Fox or at least in luring away moderate and independent viewers and in warning the fringe media against reporting any stories that Fox breaks (i.e. that show BO for what he is, that tips his hand before he's ready), but he is also tossing out another red herring for us to frenzy feed on, to distract us from the healthcare situation and the slick move he pulled to avoid making a decision about sending the troops that General McChrystal requested. Sadly, Fox is doing just that. I suppose it's understandable. What is not understandable is why no other media outlet has expressed any outrage at all. BO and his conspirators are lying about Fox, and they know it ("they" being the administration AND the other news outlets). "Real" news outlets investigate, they report on their findings in these things called "news stories." They don't dissect a comedy skit in between crooning orgasmically about the president on the one hand and demonizing half the country's population on the other. Perhaps this is a small, easily-missed detail, but I give the American people far more credit than BO ever has. We're not stupid, and we know what's going on with this "war on Fox."

While CNN is "exposing" the inequity of the anger-inducing conservative radio airwaves and the president is attacking Fox News, BO's plans to control the internet are coming closer and closer to fruition. Slamming the door on internet communications amongst conservatives has to be a primary goal of this administration, so they are feeling their way on that angle, too. But here's the deal. BO can shut down the internet, pull the plug on Fox, cram the AM airwaves with tree hugging communist whackjobs, and we'll still win. We will win because we have something he does not: love of our country.

The country that we love already exists; it's here, all around us. Fighting to keep something, to preserve our Constitution and our great nation, is far easier than fighting to take something away, to destroy and obliterate it. We have will, determination, American pride and ingenuity. We are the ones who thoroughly, to our marrow, understand the phrase "Give me liberty or give me death." This love of country, this patriotism, is not something you learn in a book, it's not something you ponder out of the ether while standing around in ice-cream coats and munching on fancy herring snacks. It is deep, it is enduring--it lives in us and is who we are.

Glenn Beck's Questions for #OWS (and How I Think They'd Answer)

2011-10-18T11:45:00.001-04:00

On yesterday's show, Glenn Beck asked a lot of pertinent questions of the OWS crowd and challenged both them and us to answer them. We know the answers, so I thought it would be fun to don a commie "revolutionary" hat and answer them as I imagine the self-obsessed "Gimme!" lunatics would:

WHO STARTED OCCUPY WALL STREET?
>> WHO IS THE FATHER OF OWS?
>> HOW DID THIS MOVEMENT START?
>> WHO PLANNED THIS EVENT?

Answer to all of the above:   me, me, me!

>> WHO IS PAYING FOR THE MADISON AVENUE MARKETING FIRM? THE NEWSPAPERS? THE FLYERS?

Kind, sympathetic ~~billionaires~~ comrades who support our cause.

>> WHAT ROLE DID SEIU PLAY IN THE PLANNING OF THIS EVENT?
>> WHO IS STEPHEN LEARNER?
>> WHO IS VAN JONES?
>> WHAT IS THE CENTER FOR AMERICAN PROGRESS?
>> WHO IS GEORGE SOROS?
>> WHAT IS HIS RELATIONSHIP TO CAP?

Who? What? Huh? George Bush!!! The Koch brothers!!! Fox News lies!!!

>> IS HE A CRONY CAPITALIST?
>> DOES HE PAY HIS FAIR SHARE?
>> IS HE GETTING RICH OFF OF THE CORRUPT SYSTEM OF WALL STREET SPECULATION?
>> HOW DOES HE MAKE HIS MONEY?
>> HE MADE $7 BILLION DOLLARS LAST YEAR PERSONALLY THROUGH HIS HEDGE FUND AND INVESTMENTS — IS THAT OKAY? IF YES, WHY? IF NO, WHY?

We don't know. We don't think about this because we haven't been told to. We don't care. Down with capitalism. Um, except Soros. Whoever he is.

ECONOMY
>> NAME THE TIME IN HISTORY THE GLOBAL ECONOMY COLLAPSED (AS IT IS SHAPING UP TO DO NOW)
>> IF YOU CANNOT… PLEASE EXPLAIN TO ME… WHY NOT?

We will be making history. Yay us! Yay destroying the global economy and all that entails (none of which we've thought about).

>> IF YOU WERE TO PLAN A GLOBAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE – HOW LONG WOULD IT TAKE BETWEEN THE CORRUPT SYSTEM WE CURRENTLY HAVE AND THE NEW SYSTEM YET TO BE CREATED?

Who cares? As long as capitalism is gone, all will be sunshine, unicorns, sweetness and light. We'll have fabulous "general assemblies" and decide by finger wiggles what system to have, then we'll do it without oil, money, technology, or anything in any way related to capitalism and evil corporations. It will be glorious living naked and starving in a world that cannot function on any but the most base level of mob rule. Yay chaos and disorder and wiggle-finger democracy!!!

>> WOULD THERE BE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES?

Huh?

>> COULD PEOPLE DIE?
>> IF NONE, WHY?

Well, yeah, people will die, but death is a part of the beautiful design of life. People starving to death are beautiful. As long as it's not me, of course. THOSE starving to death people are beautiful. Me? I'll eat them. Yay democratic cannibalism!!!

>> IF YES, ESTIMATE HOW MANY — AND HOW DO YOU JUSTIFY THOSE DEATHS?

Bush killed more people in one day than we'll kill once the global economy crashes. So there!

>> BY COLLAPSING THE SYSTEM (WALL STREET) AND CAUSING ECONOMIC CHAOS – HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU DIFFERENT THAN ONE OF THE CORPORATIONS YOU ARE PROTESTING?

It . . . just does. We voted on our exemption from blame by finger-wiggling democratic consensus (don't confuse us by pointing out that consensus is not democratic). So there!

FAIR SHARE:
AGREED: PEOPLE SHOULD PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE IN TAXES.
QUESTIONS
>>WHAT IS THAT NUMBER? WHAT IS FAIR?

This is a stupid question. "Fair share" is perfectly clear and needs no clarification to make it more clearly clear than it clearly already is as clear as a clear clear day. Sheesh! Just because you asked that question, I'm going to poop on a cop car! So there!!!

>>IF IT’S NOT ZERO – PLEASE EXPLAIN GE (AND WHY WASN’T IMMELT ON THE RICH HOMES TOUR?)
>> WHAT ABOUT GEORGE SOROS?
>>RUSSELL SIMMONS?
>>KANYE WEST??.
>>ARE THEY WALL STREET CRIMINALS? ARE THEY NOT AN EVIL CORPORATION IN BED WITH GOV?

No. These million- and billionaires are "good." Somehow. So there!

>> CAN THERE BE GOOD PEOPLE IN AN EVIL CORPORATION? IF SO, HOW DO YOU JUDGE WHO IS WHO?

Yes, see above answer. We judge them. If they say they are liberals, leftists, or Democrats, we know they are "okay." So there!

>> GE PAYS NO INCOME TAX, THEIR CEO IS ON THE PRESIDENTS ECONOMIC COUNCIL – WHY DO YOU NOT PROTEST GE? DO YOU SUPPORT THIS PRESIDENT OR ADMINISTRATION?

Um, well, it's like this . . . um. Well, I hate George Bush!!! The Koch brothers!!!! Fox News lies!!!! So there.

>>EXPLAIN GREEN WEEK on NBC
>> IF YES IN ANY WAY…WHY?
>>IF HE IS IN BED OR EXCUSES BEHAVIOR SO BAD THAT THE SYSTEM SHOULD BE COLLAPSED SHOULDN’T HE BE DEEMED GUILTY AS WELL?
>> IF YES, EXPLAIN WHY.
>> IF YES COMPARE GE GREEN WEEK ANSWER ABOVE

Oh shut up!!! George Bush!!!! Beck's a lunatic!!!! Koch brothers!!!! Fox News lies!!!! Down with capitalism!!!

CAPITALISM IS DESTROYING AMERICA
ROCKEFELLER, ASTOR MELLON, AND CARNEGIE ARE KNOWN AS “ROBBER BARRONS” AND WOULD PROBABLY BE TARGETS OF OCCUPY WALL STREET.
>>WHO BUILT THE LINCOLN CENTER FOR PERFORMING ARTS?
>> WHO BUILT MOMA?
>> THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY?
>> CARNEGIE HALL?
>> CARNAGE MELLON UNIVERSITY
>> THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART?
>> WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ROCKEFELLER CENTER AND COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY?
>> DOES THIS MEAN CAPITALISM HELPED COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY?
>>HOW DID CAPITALISM HELP COLUMBIA?
>>DOES CAPITALISM HELP OR HURT COLUMBIA TODAY?

What? That's stoooooooopid!!! We don't need . . . um, museums, art galleries, or universities. Um, wait. Arggghhhhh. Down with capitalism!!!! Bush sucks!!!! Eat the cracka babies of the rich!!!!

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION:
>> DOES YOUR UNIVERSITY SUPPORT THIS ADMINISTRATION AND ITS POLICIES?

Yes, yes, yes!!!

>> DID YOU OR THOSE YOU ARE WITH VOTE OR CAMPAIGN FOR THIS PRESIDENT IN THE PAST?
>> ARE YOU CAMPAIGNING FOR HIM NOW?

Yes, yes, yes!!!!

>> IF SO, ARE YOU BETRAYING YOUR IDEALS BY HELPING SOMEONE WHO HAS COMPROMISED ON IMPORTANT ANTI-CORRUPTION PRINCIPLES?

Shut up!!!! That's stooooooopid. Beck's a freak!!!! Down with Fox News!!!! Koch brothers!!! War for oil!!!!

>> IF HE HAS NOT DONE ALL THAT HE PROMISED TO DO AND IN FACT BETRAYED HOPE AND CHANGE WHAT STOOD IN HIS WAY?
>> COULD YOU NAME SPECIFIC EXAMPLES?

REPUBLICANS!!! It's all their fault. And Wall Street's. Somehow!! So there!!! Fox News lies!!! George Bush!!!! Gaaaahhhhhh!!!!

>> HE CLAIMS THAT HE IS NOT IN BED WITH BANKERS AND BIG CORPORATIONS. IS HE LYING?

Yes and no, it's complicated. You're too stooooooopid to get it, and I'm not explaining it to you because you're too stooooooopid. Down with Fox News!!! We hate Wall Street!!!! Death to banksters!!!! (except the ones we like, see above)

>> IS HE JUSTIFIED FOR NOT TELLING THE TRUTH IF IT FURTHERS YOUR OR HIS AGENDA?
>> WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS A LEADER CAN LIE TO YOU AND IT BE JUSTIFIED?

He only lies to trick the ebil corporations, Wall Street, and those shady, obstructionist, unpatriotic Republicans. We understand his true heart and goals because . . . we do!!! So there!!!!! Go to hell!!!! And take the banksters with you. And the TEA Party!!!! Koch brothers!!!

INVESTIGATIONS/FINANCIAL
>> WHY HAS THIS ADMINISTRATION NOT DONE INVESTIGATIONS ON BANKS AND BANKERS?
>> WHY HASN’T THIS ADMINISTRATION DONE INVESTIGATIONS ON THE FED?
>> WHY HASN’T THIS ADMINISTRATION DONE INVESTIGATIONS ON FREDDIE OR FANNIE OR SALLY MAC?
>> WHY HAS NO ONE EXCEPT BERNIE MADOFF GONE TO JAIL UNDER THIS OR THE LAST PRESIDENT?

Because the banksters have more power than anyone ever, including Obama . . . um, wait. It's all Wall Street's fault!!!! Screw you, Glenn Beck!!!! This is all a tricksy trick to hide the fact that George Bush, Wall Street, and Fox News are evil and that capitalism must die!!!! So there!!

>> WASN’T THE HOPE WE WERE LOOKING FOR AND PROMISED SUPPOSED TO COME FROM A PRESIDENT THAT WAS DIFFERENT? THAT WAS BEYOND POLITICS?
>> WASN’T THE CHANGE THAT AMERICA WAS LOOKING FOR AN END TO CRONY CAPITALISM?

No! Yes! Maybe! SHUT UPPPPPPP!!! Down with Fox News and its lying lies!!! Down with capitalism!!! Mostly. Sorta. Ummmm . .. war for oil!!! Bush lied, people died!!!! Argggggh!!!

>> WERE YOU WRONG ABOUT THIS PRESIDENT LAST TIME ELECTION?
>> HOW ARE YOU SURE THIS TIME?

Because we understand his secret code, and you are too stoooooooopid to understand it. He doesn't say one thing and do another because . . . um, he just doesn't. So there!!! George Bush LIED!!!! Fox News sucks!!!!! The Koch brothers!!!!

>> DID AMERICA LEARN FROM ITS MISTAKE OF NOT DEMANDING A CLEAR DECLARATION OF WHAT HOPE AND CHANGE MEANT?
>> SHOULD THERE HAVE BEEN A CLEAR PLAN TO ENSURE THAT THIS NEW PRESIDENT REMAINED ON COURSE TO DELIVER THE CHANGE PROMISED AND HOPED FOR OF AN END OF CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM?

No!!! Um, yes!!! Maybe!!! You suck!!! Kill the rich, eat them!!! George Bush is evil!!!!

>> WHAT IS SOLYNDRA? WHAT IS LIGHT SQUARED?

Not sure about that Light Squared thing, but Solyndra was a perfectly reasonable attempt to boost a doomed company and industry, and it doesn't matter one tiny bit that everyone said it would fail, that the company was loaded with Obama cronies and campaign donors/bundlers, that those tax dollars could have been better spent on teachers, firefighters, and police. We hate the police!! Except the band. We like the band; this was determined at an assembly by finger-wiggle consensus. But cops are pigs. Fascist, evil pigs. Just like George Bush!!!

>> DO YOU THINK THOSE WHO HAVE DESIGNED THIS EVENT (COLLAPSE WALL STREET) SHOULD HAVE A CLEAR PLAN TO MAKE SURE AFTER THE COLLAPSE THEY WILL DELIVER THE CHANGE OF AN END OF CORRUPTION AND CRONYISM?

No!!! Plans are for idiots who think planning is good. We LOVE central planning, which is good. But other plans, even plans to plan central planning are bad. Just like GEORGE BUSH!!! Who lied!!!! Fox News also lies!!!!   Lies are bad!!!! Except President Obama's because they aren't really lies because we understand what he REALLY means!!!! So there!!!

>> DID IT DISCREDIT THE TEA PARTY MOVEMENT THAT IT WAS SAID TO BE FUNDED, ORGANIZED AND OR CO-OPTED BY THOSE WHO HAD DIRECT TIES AND INTERESTS IN THE REPUBLICAN PARTY?

YESSSSSS!!!!   They are astroturfed RAAAAACISTS and useful idiots!!!!

WOULD IT TAINT OR HURT OCCUPY WALL STREET IF THAT WERE THE CASE HERE?

It's not the case!!! Screw you and your "evidence" of Soros, SEIU, and White House involvement!!! Screw you and your so-called "proof" that the media and various leftists groups are funding and organizing us. They aren't!!!! You lie!!!! Fox lies!!!! Everyone lies!!! Except us. And Obama. Who doesn't actually lie, when he says something that is untrue, it's really just CODE that you're too stoooooooopid to understand!!!! [finger wiggle]

EQUAL JUSTICE/SOCIAL JUSTICE
>> CAN SOCIAL JUSTICE AND EQUAL JUSTICE CO EXIST?

We don't care about equal justice. Equal justice is a RAAAAACIST attempt to treat everyone equally!!! That's wrong!!!! Everyone is not equal!!! Um . . . wait. Errrr, everyone IS equal, but justice cannot be!!!! That's right!!!!!   Koch brothers!!! War for oil!!!!!   Save the planet!!!! You're STOOOOOOOPID!!!!

>> IS EVERYONE ON WALL STREET PUNISHED FOR THE CRIMES OF THE GUILTY?
>> IS EVERYONE ON WALL STREET GUILTY?
>> IF NO, ARE YOUR ACTIONS TO COLLAPSE WALL STREET PUNISHING THOSE WHO ARE INNOCENT?
>> IF YES, IS THAT EQUAL JUSTICE IN SEEING THAT YOU WOULD BE PUNISHING THE INNOCENT FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE?

Oh shut up!!! You don't get it!!! George Bush!!!! TEA Party is RAAAACIST!!!! Down with capitalism!!! Social justice for all!!! Or mostly all but only some!!!! Or something!!!!

>>DO YOU BELIEVE IN FAIR TRAILS? A JURY OF YOUR PEERS? A CHANCE TO FACE YOUR ACCUSERS? GUILTY UNTIL PROVEN INNOCENT?
>>SHOULD WALL STREET BANKERS:
A). LOSE THEIR JOBS
B). HAVE ALL OF THEIR WEALTH TAKEN?
C). GO TO JAIL? IF YES, HOW LONG? IF YOU WISH FOR A JUDGE AND JURY TO DECIDE, WHY?
D). IF YES TO BOTH IN C. SEE EQUAL JUSTICE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE INCOMPATIBLY ABOVE.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!!! You suck!!! Just like the banksters and George Bush!!!

LYNCH MOBS THEN AND NOW
>> DO YOU BELIEVE LYNCH MOBS (IN CIVIL RIGHTS ERA) ARE/WERE WRONG? IF SO, WHY?

Yes!!! That was evil republicans and white people who are evil. And republicans. Down with republicans!!! Down with white people!!!! Except us, who are all white!!!!!

>> WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A LYNCH MOB AND WHAT YOU ARE BEING ENCOURAGED TO DO NOW? (LEWIS, HOMES OF WEALTHY)

We are righteous!!!! That's all. [finger wiggle]

COPS:
>> ARE COPS GOOD OR BAD?
>> ARE THERE GOOD COPS AND BAD COPS?
>> IF THERE ARE BOTH GOOD AND BAD POLICEMEN HOW DO YOU TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

No, cops are fascist pigs!!! They are violent and evil!!!! But we are really working to support their pensions, which will be ensured once there is no more capitalism. Somehow!!! Down with capitalism and fascist pigs!!!! Save the fascist pigs' pensions!!!! Somehow!!! Fox lies!!!

>> IF YOU WERE A COP, A GOOD ONE NOT BAD, WHAT WOULD YOU DO RIGHT NOW IN THIS SITUATION ON WALL STREET?

>> IF YOU WALKED AWAY (AS A COP) AND ALLOWED THE CROWD FREEDOM TO DO AS IT WISHED, WOULD YOU BE A HERO OR A COWARD?

I would never be a cop. The pay's no good, and I am special. Very very special. So there!!! Fascist PIGS!!! Eat the rich!!! Koch brothers!!!! Argggghhhhh, thinking hard.

>> WOULD DAMAGE TO PRIVATE AND PUBLIC PROPERTY BE DONE IF THE POLICE WOULD LEAVE? DOES THAT MATTER?
>> COULD INNOCENT PEOPLE BE HURT? DOES THAT MATTER?
>> IF YOU OR ANYONE IN YOUR GROUP ANSWERED THERE ARE NO INNOCENT HERE — DOES THAT MATTER?
>> IF NO ON ABOVE PLEASE CHECK ANSWER FOR CONSISTENCY ON LYNCH MOBS AND JURY TRIALS?
>> DEFINE MOB RULE – IS THIS GOOD OR BAD?

Stoooooooopid!!!   What you call "mob rule," we call "righteous revolution" and "democratic consensus"!! You are stoooooooopid!!! People who are innocent will die, but so what!!! The ends justify the means, and to make a better world, you have to break a few eggs and eat a few rich cracka babies!!!!!

>> THERE ARE MANY PRISONERS THAT HAVE BEEN WRONGLY ACCUSED AND CONVICTED. IT HAPPENS THE WORLD OVER BUT ESPECIALLY IT SEEMS IN AMERICA. THE RECENT EXECUTION IN GA (ACCORDING TO YOU) IS MERELY ONE EXAMPLE. IN LIGHT OF THIS AND KNOWING WHAT WE KNOW, WHAT SHOULD BE DONE WITH THOSE WHO ARE CURRENTLY INCARCERATED?
>> IF THE SYSTEM IS CORRUPT, HOW WILL YOU ASSESS AND FIX IT?
>> IS IT FAIR TO LEAVE THE POSSIBLE INNOCENT BEHIND BARS WHILE THAT PROCESS IS GOING ON?

No. Or yes!!! We will decide by finger-wiggle democratic consensus what to do!!! But we are leaning toward freeing all prisoners and eliminating all jails. And courts. And police. Everything that is oppressive of the individual's right to rape, murder, rob, and um, stuff. Or something. Bush lied!!!! Fox sucks!!! The Koch brothers!!!!

COLLEGE: Many of the signs on Occupy Wall Street complain about student loans.
WE AGREE:
>> MANY HAVE STOLEN FROM US
>> NO ONE SHOULD PAY WHAT YOU ARE PAYING (HAVE PAID) FOR HIGHER EDUCATION
>> WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRICE OF EDUCATION?

Wall Street banksters!!! They set the tuition and then trick us into taking our expensive loans that don't even lead to a good education or a job!!!   Wall Street sucks!!! Kill them all!!!!

>> WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRICE OF THAT PRIVATE COLLEGE EDUCATION RISING 8 % JUST LAST YEAR?

The banksters!!!!!   Somehow.

>> HOW MUCH MONEY IS IN YOUR UNIVERSITIES ENDOWMENT FUND?

The what? That's stoooooooopid!!!!

>> IS THERE NOTHING THEY CAN DO TO LOWER TUITION COSTS?

No!!!!! It's George Bush's fault!!!! And Fox News'!!!! And Wall Street!!!! We are smarter than you and we said so!!!! So there!!!!

MOM & DAD
>> ARE YOU SINCERELY WORRIED ABOUT YOUR PARENTS AND WHAT THEY FACE AS WELL AS WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR YOU?

No, parents suck. They are oppressive oppressors who oppress us!!!!

>> HAVE YOUR PARENTS WORKED HARD FOR THEIR HOME AND WHAT LITTLE MONEY THEY HAVE SAVED DURING THEIR LIFETIME?

Who cares?? That's just stooooooopid trixsy trickery!!! Glenn Beck is a maniac!!!! Eat him!!!

>> IF YOU SUCCEED IN COLLAPSING WALL STREET, WHO IS HURT AND WHO IS HURT THE MOST?
>> ARE YOUR PARENTS HURT? YOUR FRIENDS PARENTS?
>> UNION PENSIONS ARE INVESTED IN WALL STREET
>> YOUR UNIVERSITY ENDOWMENT
>> THE AVERAGE AMERICAN (401K) IS INVESTED IN WALL STREET.
>> WHAT HAPPENS TO THE LIFETIME OF WORK BY YOUR PARENTS IF YOUR ACTIONS CAUSE A COLLAPSE OF THE SYSTEM?

Who cares!!!!!?????!!!! We hate thinking!!!!! Once capitalism is gone, America will continue to feed, clothe, house, provide social security, food stamps, MediCare, Medicaid, welfare, and health care for everyone. All over the world!!!! Somehow!!!! You'll see!!!!! We'll finger-wiggle-make-it-happen!!!!! Fox sucks!!!! The Koch brothers!!!!

FOREIGN COUNTRIES
>> DO YOU BELIEVE THAT ANY GOVERNMENT ABROAD WOULD TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE OF THE UNITED STATES THAT WOULD HAVE NEGATIVE IMPACT ON YOUR FREEDOMS?

We hope so!!! Bomb, bomb, bomb the US of Oppression and wars for oil!!! Kill us all!!!! um, wait, kill everyone except me!!!!!!

>> DO YOU BELIEVE THAT US TROOPS SHOULD BE CALLED HOME?
>> DO YOU BELIEVE TOUR TROOPS ARE BABY KILLERS? OR PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO WERE EITHER MISGUIDED OR USED?

Um, huh? They are baby-killers!!! And stooopid useful idiots!!! Or something!!!! Kill the troops!!!! Eat them all!!!!

>> WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE TROOPS OVERSEAS IF THERE WAS AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE?

Who cares!!! This is about us, not them!!! We hate the wars and the troops, unless we don't!!!

>> DO YOU BELIEVE IF YOU DON’T PULL THE TROOPS OUT BEFORE A COLLAPSE THERE WOULD BE A GREATER OR LESSER CHANCE OF MORE KILLING?
>> DO YOU BELIEVE THAT FORCES ON EITHER SIDE COULD OR WOULD USE AN ECONOMIC COLLAPSE AS AN EXCUSE FOR MORE KILLING?
>> WOULD YOU HAVE PLAYED ANY ROLE IN THAT POSSIBLE KILLING BASED ON YOUR ACTIONS HERE TO COLLAPSE WALL STREET?

This is stooooopid!! We don't think about that because it's not important!!! Dying for THE CAUSE is what matters!!!! Glenn Beck is a freak!!!!! George Bush!!!!

>> IF NO; DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS?
>> IF YES; IF THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS… DOES THAT INCLUDE THE DEATH OF INNOCENTS?

Yes, to make a more perfect, finger-wiggling world of equality (but not equal justice, that's just stooooooopid, see above), millions of people will necessarily have to die. So what????   Like that matters!!! Fox lies!!!!   The Koch brothers!!! We hate teabagggers!!!!

>> IF NOT WHY?
>> IF YES, EXPLAIN WHAT MAKES YOU DIFFERENT THAT GEORGE W BUSH, WHO ALSO THOUGHT HE WAS RIGHT.

Well, he was wrong and we are right. So there!!!! Down with capitalism!!!! We hate money!!!! And oil!!!!! And cracka babies!!!!

EGYPT

What??? Where???

>> HOW DID THE EGYPTIAN REVOLUTION TURN OUT?
>> IS IT BETTER THAN WHAT THEY HAD?

Yes!!!! The freedom-loving freedom lovers are totally free and live in total Utopia!!!

>> FREE, FAIR AND DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS WERE PROMISED TO BE HELD BY AUGUST OF THIS YEAR, WHAT DATE WERE THEY ACTUALLY HELD?

They just didn't get the finger-wiggle memo, that's all. Once we show them how to wiggle their fingers, they'll be all set!!! Go finger-wiggling democratic consensus!!!!

>> WHO IS CURRENTLY IN CHARGE OF EGYPT?

We don't know. Or care. What matters is the revolution!!!!

>> DO YOU BELIEVE IN MILITARY RULE?
>> WOULD YOU WANT TO LIVE UNDER IT HERE?
>> WHAT WOULD BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MILITARY RULE HERE AND IN EGYPT?

Um, wait, are you saying that the military controls Egypt?? Nooooooooo!!! That's a LIE!!! Glenn Beck lies!!!! Fox News lies!!!! Bush lied!!!!!

>> THE MEDIA CLAIMS YOU ARE THE SAME AND ARE STRIVING FOR THE SAME IDEALS AS THE YOUTH THAT OVERTURNED THEIR OPPRESSIVE AND CORRUPT SYSTEM. IS THIS TRUE?
>> IF YES, IF YOU WOULDN’T WANT TO LIVE UNDER MILITARY RULE WHAT RESPONSIBILITY DO YOU HAVE TO CORRECT THE INJUSTICE OF THEIR SYSTEM?

Erm, well, that wouldn't happen here. It just wouldn't. So there!!

>> IF YOU ANSWER THAT YOU DO HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY PLEASE EXPLAIN WHY.
>> WASNT AMERICAN INSERTION INTO GLOBAL POLITICS WHAT CAUSED THE HATRED FOR THE WEST?
>> HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU ARE FIGHTING ON THE RIGHT SIDE AND NOT HELPING THOSE WHO WILL DEVELOP A REPRESSIVE REGIME?
>> IS IRAN A REPRESSIVE REGIME?

America is an oppressive, repressive, regressive regime!!! Who cares about those other dusty little countries?!!! Not us!!! So there!!!! The Koch brothers!!! Bush lied!!!! Beck is full of bull!!!! Someone, quick!, poop on an American flag!!!!!

POST REVOLUTION
>>IF THOSE WHO TAKE POWER, AFTER THE SUCCESSFUL OCCUPY WALL STREET COLLAPSE, BETRAYED THE REVOLUTION AND THE PEOPLE BY NOT FOLLOWING THE PLAN (THAT HAS NOT YET BEEN DEVELOPED) WHAT SHOULD THE PEOPLE DO?

No one will take power!!! We will all rule by finger-wiggles!!!!

>>WOULD THOSE NEW LEADERS STEP DOWN OR WOULD AN EVENT LIKE THIS NEED TO BE STAGED AGAIN TO FORCE THEM OUT?
>>IF THEY DIDN’T VOLUNTARILY STEP DOWN WOULD YOU SEEK TO HAVE THEM ARRESTED?
>>IS VIOLENCE AN OPTION TO ACHIEVE THE GOALS OF REVOLUTION?
>>CAN YOU SOLVE VIOLENCE WITH VIOLENCE?

Yes and yes!!! Violence is needed to end violence!!!! Duh!!!!! [finger wiggles]

>>SHOULD THE PEOPLE BE ALLOWED TO HAVE A GUN IN CASE THOSE IN CHARGE DID BETRAY THE REVOLUTION?
>>IF YES, WHY.
>>IF YES, WHY DOES THIS NOT APPLY TODAY?
>>IF NO, WHO AUTHORIZES THE USE OF FORCE AND WHAT FORCE IS ALLOWED?

Guns are evil!!! Except ours. We decide!!!! It takes days because we stop after every third word to have the crowd repeat everything, then we finger wiggle, then we talk some more, then we finger wiggle some more, then we take a nap, then we talk some more, then we finger wiggle, then we poop on stuff, then we talk some more, then we finger wiggle, then we set things on fire, then we pretend to be run over by the police, then we talk some more, then we finger wiggle, then we take a nap . . . . um, wait, what was the question?

>>WHO PROTECTS THE IDEA OR YET TO BE FORMED IDEAS OF THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY?

We will!!! We'll poop, and nap, and talk and repeat everything, and finger wiggle our way to true equality (except equal justice which is stoooooooopid!!!!!).

>>WHO WOULD ARREST THOSE WHO BETRAYED THE REVOLUTION IF THE SYSTEM HAS COLLAPSED AND THE COPS WERE
>>ALL EITHER FIRED OR JAILED?
>>ARE JAILS NEEDED?

No, we'll just eat the rich, they are evil and probably quite tasty and nutritious.

>>IF YES, WHO RUNS THE NEW DEMOCRATIC JAILS FORMALLY KNOWN AS THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX?

No, we don't need jails. See above. Fox News lies!!!!! George Bush!!!! Tsunami!!!! Waaaahhhhh!!!!

>>ASSUMING THERE WAS AN IMMEDIATE CITIZENS POLICE FORCE ENACTED TO REPLACE THE CORRUPT SYSTEM THAT WE CURRENTLY HAVE, WHAT SYSTEM OF TRIAL WOULD YOU ENGAGE?
>>CHE SAID “WE DON’T NEED A TRIAL TO CONVICT THE GUILTY”. DO YOU AGREE?
>>IF NO, WOULD THERE BE A JURY?
>>WHO WOULD BE THE JUDGE?

Everyone!!!! Finger wigglers of the world unite!!!! And judge!!!! And stuff!!!!! The Koch brothers!!!!!

>>WHAT WOULD THE RULES OF EVIDENCE BE?
>>WILL THE PEOPLE HAVE RIGHTS?
>>WHAT ARE THEY?
>>HAVE THEY BEEN WRITTEN DOWN ANYWHERE?
>>IF NO, BECAUSE YOU WERE PLANNING ON DOING THAT AFTER THE COLLAPSE, IF THE ABOVE SCENARIO PLAYED OUT WOULD YOU REGRET THAT DECISION?
>>IF YES, WHAT WERE THEY BASED ON?
>>WHERE DO MANS RIGHTS COME FROM?
>>IF THEY COME FROM A COMMITTEE OR LEADERS, WHY THEN CANT THE LEADERS YOU NOW SAY BETRAYED THE REVOLUTION CHANGE YOUR RIGHTS AND DECLARE YOU A TRAITOR TO THE REVOLUTION?
>>HAS THIS EVER HAPPENED IN HISTORY?
>>IF YES, WHERE?
>>WHAT WERE THE CONDITIONS?
>>WHERE THERE WARNING SIGNS?
>>DO ANY OF THOSE SIGNS EXIST NOW?

This is just stooooooooopid!!! Rights? Huh!!??? Thinking hard. Me no think. Me poop. And finger wiggle. George Bush lied!!!!! Glenn Beck is stoooooooopid!!!!

ENERGY
>>NOW THAT THE ECONOMY HAS COLLAPSED IN AMERICA BUT NOT SOMEHOW EFFECTED THE REST OF THE WORLD, HOW CAN WE AFFORD MIDDLE EASTERN OIL TO BUY GASOLINE?
IF YOU SAY WE CANNOT AFFORD GASOLINE AND THAT IS A GOOD THING FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, LET’S FOR ARGUMENT SAKE AGREE:
>> HOW DO WE FUEL TRACTORS FOR FARMING ON THE SCALE NEEDED TO FEED THE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AND ELSE WHERE?
>> HOW IS SAID FOOD TRUCKED TO STORES HERE IN NEW YORK IF TRUCKERS COULDN’T AFFORD FUEL?
>> HOW DO YOUR PARENTS GET FOOD FROM THE STORE TO THEIR HOME?
>>NOW THAT THE POLICE FORCE HAS BEEN REPLACED WITH A CITIZEN PATROL, ARE YOUR PARENTS SAFE WALKING THE STREETS WITH FOOD IN AN AREA AFTER THE CURRENCY HAS JUST COLLAPSED?
>> IF ONE OF THEM WERE HURT OR KILLED DUE TO A SCENARIO LIKE THIS, WOULD YOU BE IN ANYWAY RESPONSIBLE?
>> IF THEY WERE HURT AND COULDN’T RECEIVE MEDICAL TREATMENT IN TIME BECAUSE THE EMS COULDN’T AFFORD GAS FOR THE AMBULANCE WOULD YOU IN ANY WAY BE RESPONSIBLE?
>> HOW WOULD THE HOSPITALS PAY DOCTORS AND EMS WITHOUT A CURRENCY?
>> WHY WOULD DOCTORS OR NURSES BE AT WORK?
>> TO ENSURE THEY DID GO TO WORK, WHO WOULD PROTECT AND FEED THEIR FAMILIES WHILE THEY SERVED?
> HOW DO THE DOCTORS AFFORD GAS TO GO TO WORK?
>> WHAT SYSTEM OF ELECTRICITY IS RUNNING THE HOSPITALS?

This is just stooooooooopid!!! No more oil!!!! No oil is the answer!!!! No electricity!!! No economy!!!! No money!!!! No food!!!! No services!!!! We hate everything!!!! Except us. And pooping. And finger-wiggling!!!! The Koch brothers!!! You suck!!! Eat the rich!!!!

CRONY CAPITALISM
>>DEFINE CRONY CAPITALISM.

It's what George Bush did!!!! We had no president before Bush!!!! He started it all!!!! Down with capitalism!!!!

>> WHEN THE GOVT TOOK OVER GM, GAVE ALL THE BANKS TARP MONEY AND ALLOWED COMPANIES LIKE GE PAY NO TAXES WHILE MAKING BILLIONS AND SHIPPING JOBS OVERSEAS – IS THAT CRONY SOCIALISM, CRONY CAPITALISM OR CRONY STATISM?
>> IS THERE A DIFFERENCE?

That's stoooooooopid!!! You suck!!!! Fox lies!!!! Save the planet!!!! Poop for prosperity!!!!

IN ALL THREE SCENARIOS WHAT IS THE PROBLEM, THE SYSTEM OR THE CRONYISM?
>> WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO END CRONYISM?

Destroy everything!!!! Down with everything!!!!

>> HAS YOUR APPROACH EVER BEEN TRIED BEFORE?

Yes!!! The blessed Mao and the heroic Che and the exalted Lenin did it!!! Woohooo!!! Up with genocide!!!! Kill everyone!!! Except us.

>> IF YES, LIST ALL EXAMPLES OF ATTEMPTS FAILED AND SUCCESSFUL.
>> WHY DID THEY FAIL?
>> HOW DID THOSE THAT FAILED BEGIN?
>> WHO LEAD THE WAY ON THOSE FAILED ATTEMPTS?

They didn't fail!!!! Communism is always successful and fair and just and right and good!!!!!   [finger wiggles]

>> HOW DID THOSE WHO BEGAN THE REVOLUTION FAIR IN THE NEW SYSTEMS?

Oh, sure, you're trying to spread the LIES that those who've begun every single revolution were the first to be killed at the revolution's end by the grasping fiends who ended up on top. That's a LIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE!!!! I will not hear this lie. History is a lie!!! Truth is a lie!!!!! Facts are lies!!!! The only truth is mine. Um, ours. Can I get a finger-wiggle consensus on that???!!!!

>> WHO IS THOMAS PAINE?

A dead, white, oppressive, RAAAAAACIST male no doubt. Never heard of him, but I'm pretty sure he's white. And therefore evil!!!!! Kill the cracka babies!!! Down with capitalism!!!! Bush lied!!!! Don't eat salt!!!!

>> WHAT WAS HIS ROLE IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION?
>> WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM?
>> WHAT DID HE LEARN ABOUT REVOLUTIONS?

Oh blah blah blah, like anything that you say matters!!! You suck!!! Everything and everyone sucks except us!!!!   Down with everyone!!!! Except us!!!!

>> HOW DID THE FRENCH REVOLUTION END?
>> WHO TOOK POWER IN FRANCE?
>> WAS THAT GOOD OR BAD FOR THE PEOPLE OF FRANCE?

It was glorious for the people of France!!! They loved the revolution and Napoleon!!! They loved being starved and tortured and beaten and dismembered and beheaded!!! Oppression, genocide, and totalitarianism are wonderful!! Um, yeah, that's right!!!!

>> WHAT DOES THIS TELL US ABOUT THE CURRENT SITUATION WE FIND OURSELVES IN AMERICA?
>> DO YOU HAVE HOSTILE FEELINGS ABOUT THESE QUESTIONS? WHY?

Yes!!! Because you're stoooooooopid and thinking makes my head hurt. No more questions!!! Eat people who ask questions!!!

IF YOU ARE READING IN A GROUP OF LIKE MINDED, OPEN MINDED AND EDUCATED PEOPLE — TAKE NOTE – HAVE THEY PROVOKED ANY SERIOUS DISCUSSION. IF NOT WHY?
>> IF SO, DID YOU DO EVERYTHING IN YOUR POWER TO GET THOSE IN WASHINGTON TO INVESTIGATE AND ARREST THOSE WHO WILL NOT “CHANGE” AND BEGIN TO DO BUSINESS IN A LEGAL AND NON CORRUPT WAY?
>> WHY DIDN'T THAT WORK?

This is stupid, we already HAVE all the answers to every human condition, desire, dream, need, and want!!! We know absolutely everything about everything and can make every decision for every person ever!!!! Yay us!!! Bush sucks!!! Give everyone abortions NOW!!!!

IF YOU ARE NOT PLANNING ON THEM HOLDING ON TO POWER PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING:
A). WHO WILL BE IN CHARGE? WILL THEY BE YOU? OR THE LEADERS YOU HAVE NOT YET CHOSEN?
B). HOW WILL YOU ENSURE THAT THOSE WHO DO TAKE POWER ARE NOT CURRENTLY PART OF THE PROBLEM?
C). WHO WILL FUND THE UNIVERSITIES, HEALTHCARE, K-12 EDUCATION, HOMELESS, AND POOR WHILE A NEW SYSTEM IS DESIGNED TO STABILIZE THE POPULATION, REPLACE THE CORRUPT SYSTEM OF CORPORATISM, BIG MEDICINE, BIG OIL AND BIG FARMS

We don't need any of that!!! But if we did, we'd just pay for it with all the money America, as the most wealthy nation ever, has!!!! An economic collapse and the destruction of the capitalism that made America wealthy won't change that!!!! Somehow!!! So there!!!

Everything Old Is New Again

2011-10-16T13:48:00.004-04:00

We're beginning to understand quite well that whatever the far left accuses us of is simply a matter of projection, a creepy look into the dark, rather evil recesses of their minds. They say there's a "vast rightwing conspiracy," that the TEA Party was funded and organized by monied conservatives, that we are RAAAACISTS, that we are violent, that we are unpatriotic, that we don't love America, that we want to destroy America, that we want minorities living in poverty, that we want grandma and women to die . . . all of which we now know or finally recognize is true of the leftists shrieking these inanities. So it's not at all unreasonable to look back at some of the things they accused President Bush of: he was war criminal, he acted extra-constitutionally and illegally entered the U. S. into foreign wars, he was building a police state, he was a fascist, and last but not least, he was just like Hitler. Just like him.

The left (and even many on the right) don't like Hitler to be invoked in any discussion, at any time, for any reason (unless it's from the left, revealing what their true intentions are by labeling conservatives as "Hitler"). Hitler's rise, and particularly the Holocaust, has become a sort of open secret that everyone sort of knows something about but no one seems to either understand or be willing to talk about: Hitler, his National Socialists, and fascism are all off-limits to conservatives. Well, I say, "screw that." For conservatives to shield their eyes from what happened to the Weimar Republic--and very very importantly how that happened, the tactics used--is mind-boggling to me. One of the rallying cries of the conservative ascendency has been to "know history," to learn about the past to ensure we never repeat it. Yet when it comes to the period of time that rather too closely resembles what is happening today, conservatives stick their fingers in their ears and start humming the national anthem.

I'm sick of everyday leftists, ignorantly--shamefully, embarrassingly so--calling Constitutional conservatives "nazis" and "fascists." The fact that--now that a Democrat is in the White House--it's become some sort of politically-incorrect secular sin to discuss Hitler and his hyper-socialism cum communist fascism is distressing enough, but the fact that conservatives seem to buy into that is, to my mind, further evidence that we're not really awake. Not yet.

In 1933, F. A. Hayek wrote of the then-fledgling anti-capitalist National Socialist movement in Germany:

The persecution of the Marxists, and of democrats in general, tends to obscure the fundamental fact that National Socialism is a genuine socialist movement, whose leading ideas are the final fruit of the anti-liberal tendencies which have steadily gained ground in Germany since the later part of the Bismarckian era, and which led the majority of the German intelligentsia first to "socialism of the chair" and later to Marxism in its social-democratic or communist form.

One of the main reasons why the socialist character of National Socialism has been quite generally unrecognized, is, no doubt, its alliance with the nationalist groups which represent the great industries and the great landowners. But this merely proves that these groups too, as they have since learnt to their bitter disappointment, have, at least partly, been mistaken as to the nature of the movement. But only partly because, and this is the most characteristic feature of modern Germany, many capitalists are themselves strongly influenced by socialistic ideas, and have not sufficient belief in capitalism to defend it with a clear conscience.
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But the dominant feature [of the National Socialists] is a fierce hatred of anything capitalistic-individualistic profit seeking, large scale enterprise, banks, joint-stock companies, department stores, "international finance and loan capital," the system of "interest slavery" in general; the abolition of these is described as the "basis of the programme, around which everything else turns." It was to this programme that the masses of the German people, who were already completely under the influence of collectivist ideas, responded so enthusiastically.

That this violent anti-capitalistic attack is genuine, and not a mere piece of propaganda, becomes as clear from the personal history of the intellectual leaders of the movement as from the general milieu from which it springs. It is not even denied that many of the young men who today play a prominent part in it have previously been communists or socialists.

And to any observer of the literary tendencies which made the Germans intelligentsia ready to join the ranks of the new party, it must be clear that the common characteristic of all the politically influential writers — in many cases free from definite party affiliations, was their anti-liberal and anti-capitalist trend. Groups like that formed around the review "Die Tat" have made the phrase "the end of capitalism" an accepted dogma to most young Germans.

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Even at the present moment, state commissioners have been put in charge of many important industries and, if the more radical wing of the party has its way, the same is likely to happen in many other cases. At the present time, when the National Socialist party has grown to such an enormous size, and accordingly embraces elements with very divergent views, it is, of course, difficult to say which views on economic policy hold the field, it will mean that the scare of Russian communism has driven German people unaware into something which differs from communism in little but name.

Indeed, its more than probable that the real meaning of the German revolution is that the dreaded expansion of communism into the heart of Europe has taken place but is not recognised because the fundamental similarity of methods and ideas is hidden behind the difference in the phraseology and the privileged groups. For the present, the German people have reacted against the treatment received from the community of democratic and capitalistic countries by leaving that community.

Nothing, however, would be less justifiable than that the nations of western Europe should look down on the German people because they have fallen victims to which, in this country seems a kind of barbarism. What must be realized is that this only the ultimate and necessary outcome of a process of development in which the other nations have been for a long time steadily following Germany, albeit at a considerable distance. The gradual extensions of the field of state activity, the increase in restrictions on international movements of both men and goods, sympathy with central economic planning and the widespread playing with dictatorship ideas, all tend in this direction.

In Germany, where these things had gone furthest, and intellectual reaction, which will now hardly survive, had been definitely under way. The fact that the character of the present movement is so generally misjudged makes it seem likely that the reaction in other countries will speed up, rather than weakened, the operation of these tendencies which lead in the direction in which Germany is now going. So far, there seems little prospect that the reversal of these intellectual tendencies elsewhere will come in time to prevent other countries from following Germany in this last step also.

Hayek might just as well be writing about 2011 America, no?

The fact that Hitler killed or imprisoned most of his political rivals, including other communists and socialists, in no way distances him from either ideology; Hayek called it long before Hitler got going full-steam. And he was right. Look at what is happening today in the microcosm of leftist ideology that is the occupy "movement." All the players are there, all the same anti-liberal fervor (Hayek means classical liberalism, of course), hatred, resentment, entitlement, vitriol, simmering violence, anti-capitalism, all the same wrong-headed ideas, but the puppet masters of each group don't intend to share their power should they achieve it. They will have to eliminate other leftists to amass the totalitarian control they seek. That's not just a historically-relevent fact but the only logical outcome.

And as in Germany, it's looking more and more certain that when violence does occur (and it will) as a result of the "occupier's" actions, the people will be sufficiently frightened and outraged to call for a crackdown, to ask--even demand--that the government step in. Martial law would be invoked (as it was in the '60's in some cities), and it's all too likely that all of our constitutional rights will be "suspended" in order to deal with the violent protesters. And Americans will be glad, happy even, to cheer this crackdown on the reviled lunatics who seek to overthrow our nation. Just as the Germans were when they cheered Hitler's exact same actions.

Whomever comes out on top will (I believe) do exactly what Hitler did to restart the German economy (much of which has been started here in America already): he (it's a he, there is no "she" in a position of such power and none rising that I can see) will increase domestic production (including the sort of crony socialism we are seeing today), control all businesses employing X number of people, limit imports, expand export trade agreements, and increase military spending, building up a truly terrifying and global armed force, and will eliminate all public and private unions (some people--who are not me--think unions will come out on top, but if they do, it's going to be only the union leaders who do so--and the unions themselves will be cast aside, their purpose spent). This last is the part that worries me most because too many conservatives either don't know or don't care about the past and will cheer the increased military spending, the increased military actions (and don't forget the many armed conflicts that BO is engaging in: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and now Africa.).

One difference this time is that it's not a "nationalist" goal but a global one. Forced hegemony is a part of that, of course, as no "one" anything can tolerate diversity of thought, actions, or words. We live in dangerous times, and dangerous times require us to look at everything, to see patterns, to acknowledge and study the exact things we are being ridiculed for discussing. I would argue that anything the extreme fringe (who are becoming far less fringe) leftists mock, ridicule, and / or try to shut down is the exact thing we need to focus on. While this post is specifically about Hitler, there are many similarities to other dictatorships and communist totalitarian regimes (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, et al., and it's illuminating to look at what happened in Argentina, as well).

But we need to resist the temptation to bow to leftists (and conservative!) pressure to hide our eyes from anything "they" tell us is nonsense, hysterical and/or paranoid tinfoil hat stuff, etc., and that clearly includes Hitler's National Socialist Party and his rise to totalitarian control and power. What part of what Hayek wrote, of what Hitler did to legally achieve power, does not resonate today?

That this time the movement is global is frightening, for what world power will be untouched, will resist, will defeat the next Reich or caliphate or New World Order or system of "global governance"? There will be no America, no allied forces to defeat the next, actually this, grab for global dominance if we don't start thinking rationally, examining the pieces that are already in place, and questioning the pieces being put in place at this moment. At all costs, we must remain free, we must not succumb to the same old ploys, the same old machinations, the same old tyranny.

Our Civic Responsibility: "Eternal Vigilance By the People"

2011-10-15T10:36:00.005-04:00

Voting is no substitute for the eternal vigilance that every friend of freedom must demonstrate towards government. If our freedom is to survive, Americans must become far better informed of the dangers from Washington -- regardless of who wins the Presidency. —James Bovard

Our good friend and fellow patriot Trestin recently posted about useful idiots on the right, and it was one of those times when I was commenting and found myself writing a full-length blog. So here I am, again talking about conservative useful idiots. "Again?," you may be asking; to which I respond, yep, again. The useful idiocy of many on the right has been the not-very-subtle subtext of a couple of my recent posts (examples here and here). Trestin's post focuses on the war on drugs and the war on terror (essentially used to show that we shouldn't support Herman Cain--an idea I disagree with but understand given Trestin's view of the Fed), so I won't really go into those (I have been writing out about our giving up our constitutional rights for "safety" for ages). What I do want to address, however, is the 2012 elections and how I believe that conservative (particularly TEA Party) old-school acceptance of a passive citizenry (a form of useful idiocy) will lead to disaster for our country.

The good news: We can save our republic.

The not-so-good news: We are buying into GOP establishment memes.

The bad news: Doing the latter will destroy our chance of doing the former.

The best news: We really can save our republic.

We can save our republic

Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. —Declaration of Independence

The pyramid of government-and a republican government may well receive that beautiful and solid form-should be raised to a dignified altitude: but its foundations must, of consequence, be broad, and strong, and deep. The authority, the interests, and the affections of the people at large are the only foundation, on which a superstructure proposed to be at once durable and magnificent, can be rationally erected.—James Wilson

We, the people, have done amazing--and I mean jaw-droppingly amazing--things. We've become exactly what the founders intended every American citizen to be: engaged, informed, and in charge.

Our constitutional republic was not formed to be "run" by elected officials who are unchecked, unmonitored, and unrestrained. Our civic duties include, have always included, not only voting every two or so years, but actually watching what our elected representatives are doing and using our vote and our voice to ensure that they don't go rambling offtrack. We dropped the ball. For decades. That's bad. But we not only picked up that ball but ran with it in 2009, and we scored more than a few touchdowns (I'm going to have to leave the sport analogy there, not being all that sports-minded). We made a real--a tangible, measurable--difference.

We are a powerful in American politics, even the far left admits that (however grudgingly and enviously), and it is that power--the power of the people--that can save our republic.

We are buying into GOP establishment memes

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters. — Daniel Webster

The issue today is the same as it has been throughout history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite. — Thomas Jefferson

We all (or most of us) agree that the GOP establishment is just as culpable, just as guilty, in bringing us to where we are today. They embraced "compassionate conservative" nanny state big government in too many ways to count: pork, social welfare programs (unfunded, of course), education, the Patriot Act, and on and on. They funneled our money into their pet projects, industries, and own wallets. They did all that for decades, and we sat back and grumbled quietly about it . . . until 2009.

Then the TEA Party happened. We started pushing back, voicing our anger and outrage, insisting that they get back to core conservative principles of fiscal responsibility, free market capitalism, and limited government. We elected quite a few such conservatives to every level of government across the entire nation, and we kept their feet to the fire.

We were, in short, the responsible citizens that the founders insisted were needed to keep our constitutional republic going. In doing our civic duty, embracing our responsibility as citizens to protect and defend our nation and its Constitution, we made a difference, and we can continue to make one if we continue to do this. But we're not doing it. We're still thinking, in some areas anyway, like those old couch potato citizens who believed that the power is really in Washington, that Congress and the President are the final word, our rulers.

And make no mistake, that's exactly what we believed. Our actions show it beyond any shadow of any doubt. When we accept unfair and unconstitutional laws, when we accept illegal and unconstitutional searches and seizures, when we remain silent in the face of massive government spending and unlimited power grabs, and most significantly, when we point our fingers at elected officials rather than at ourselves, we cede all power to elected officials who are, for all intents and purposes, unaccountable to the people they've come to think of--perhaps correctly--as mindless drones who are susceptible to false campaign promises and empty slogans. Our form of government requires us, if we want to remain (or get back to being) free, to be involved. If we are not involved, if we are bystanders and spectators rather than actors, we get exactly what we deserve, and we will lose our republic.

We are losing it.

And we are losing it, in no small part, because we haven't made the break, not really, from the old way of thinking about our role as citizens. The GOP establishment has anointed Romney as our next president. Period. And how many of us are accepting that (and I do include myself in this)? Oh, we gripe, we don't like it, but we are accepting it. By not supporting someone else, or by doing so only half-heartedly, we are complicit in the 2012 election of another big government, nanny state, business-as-usual ruler.

Frankly, I don't care whom you support, but if you're still sitting on the sidelines, nitpicking and bemoaning our fate, then you are part of the problem, not a part of the solution. There is no perfect candidate, but there are obvious bad apples. Romney and Perry are bad apples. They are crony capitalists, government is the solution (as long as they are dictating the solutions) nightmares. They are more of the same. They are the epitome of all that is wrong with our government. But we are letting the GOP dictate whom will be the next president, we are believing that only Romney can beat BO, we are selling out our nation and our nation's future by buying into tired GOP memes about how things "are" or how things "are done."

Doing the latter will destroy our chance of doing the former

It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government. —Mercy Warren

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual — or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country. —Samuel Adams

This timid acceptance of the inevitable Romney nomination is very worrying to me, and it's not simply a matter of accepting someone I believe to be a truly bad man as our next president. It's that in doing so we relinquish our hard-won, finally reclaimed power. We undermine all of the gains we've made in the past three years, especially those made in 2010; we seal the fate not only of the TEA Party but of our country.

Do I think Romney will destroy our country? No. Do I think his election would mean the end of any chance to save it? Yes. If Romney is elected without a real fight on our part, the TEA Party loses all credibility--we sell out and get what all sell-outs get: nothing of real value. We will have handed our power to the GOP establishment, and in doing so, they not only win, but we lose. That is not a distinction without a difference because in winning, they get to go back to being corrupt, thieving rulers, and there is nothing that we will be able to do about that; they would, rightly, think that any TEA Party push back is meaningless and can be ignored. And before long, we sink back onto our couches to grumble to our spouses and shout impotently at the television.

We become a footnote in the history books.

We really can save our republic

But you must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your States as well as in the Federal Government. — Andrew Jackson

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. — Wendell Phillips

That doesn't have to happen, but any more talk of third parties (total disaster in every conceivable way) and/or of staying home (to "make a statement"--the only statement that makes is "I don't take my civic responsibility seriously. So there."), will ensure it just as irrevocably as gobbling up GOP establishment propaganda (the only way to beat BO is to run someone just like him). We need to stop thinking like it's 2008, thinking that we can act like impatient, spoiled brats by taking our toys and stomping off the playground (third party) or by pouting in our rooms (staying home). The GOP establishment, in light of that thinking/behavior/talk, really are the grown-ups in the room. Think about it.

But it doesn't have to be like that. We are the power, and we have the power. We have proven that.

Our Constitution gives us the tools we need to affect the change we want, but it's a slow process and involves a real commitment. It involves staying involved, not checking out in a temper tantrum. It involves working for constitutional conservatives, not whining about how there aren't enough of them (of course there aren't. We have had one--that's ONE--election, and it was a midterm, not even a general. Anyone who expected that to magically transform our government is not thinking clearly.). It involves keeping our elected representatives' feet to the fire on every issue--remember, this was the intent of our founders. They didn't expect us to check out after every election then sort of shake our sleepy heads a week before the next election to vote for whomever was handed us by "our" party. That's lunacy.

But that's what we did, and what I fear we are slipping back into. For example, some people who are whinging about Herman Cain's 999 plan are doing so (and I have to self-report here, I was doing this, too) on the grounds that "they" will just raise our taxes, making the 999 into 12-12-12 or whatever. But guess what, that's not possible if we, the people, stay alert, informed, and active; it's not possible if we show that we will not stand for it, that we will organize and vote out anyone who raises it and replace them with people who will repeal any increase. That is our civic responsibility. "They" can't do a thing that we don't allow. Such moves to raise taxes (or do anything else) are only possible, in other words, if we accept that Washington is actually our king, and we have no say in anything.

Unless we completely reset our understanding of our role as responsible citizens, as guardians of our republic and of our freedom, we will lose both. "They" are not the problem unless we allow it, and we've allowed it for far too long.

This is a historical moment, a truly historical moment: Do we, the people, retain the reins of real power in this nation, or do we not? Do we, the people, don the mantle of liberty, responsibility, and eternal vigilance intended by our founders, or do we not?

You Say You Want a Revolution . . .

2011-10-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

The Irrelevancy of the Far Left

2011-10-08T18:11:00.003-04:00

I've been thinking about this and meant to write something before someone smarter me and someone smarter than he, his words, did it first (and second). While they've come to interesting, and I think largely logical, conclusions, I'm not as sure that the outcome for the GOP president and party post-2012-election is quite as grim. Their point is largely that should the GOP win the White House next year (it's theirs to lose), they can expect even more horrors from the left than President Bush experienced. That part, I agree with. They conclude, however, that this will weaken the GOP. I'm not so sure.

Here's why.

The far left has lost all, and I mean all, credibility. During the Bush years, they were against war, they hated the Patriot Act, they despised Gitmo and rendition, they railed against civil rights violations, they supported Latinos fiercely, they defended the status quo with regards to MediCare, they complained about One Child Left Behind and the subscription drug benefit, they whined and moaned about everything and anything that President Bush did. Including things he didn't do ("Bush lied, people died"--of course, he didn't lie, and all, including Hillary Clinton, but one Democrat voted for the war in Iraq because every intelligence agency in the free world agreed that there were wmd's in Iraq. And as it turns out, there were.).

The left is now suddenly loving war, not only the two President Bush started, but also the third that BO started in Libya. The Patriot Act was not only extended but new civil-rights-violating powers were granted to the president; crickets from the left. They don't like that Gitmo is still open, but when was the last protest you saw? When was the last time you saw the alphabet propagandists do a daily death toll of U. S. soldiers? They love rendition now, or at least don't seem to bother too much about it. At first they were upset about the TSA, but they quickly quieted down about that. They have nothing at all to say about the hundreds of Mexicans killed by the U. S. government who are now breaking international treaties and using taxpayer money to run guns to Mexican drug cartels. Not a peep about this. Dead Mexicans? So what, I guess. They didn't notice or care that the healthcare monstrosity cut half a billion dollars from MediCare, and they just love "race to the top," an idiot education act that makes NCLB look like a good idea. They still complain that the MediCare subscription drug benefit wasn't funded, but they don't want it repealed and don't care that nothing BO passes is funded.

In short, we know now, beyond any shadow of any doubt, that leftists are partisan frauds. They don't have principled reactions to anything; it's all about who's sitting in the Oval and what letter follows his (or her) name. No one takes them seriously, no one thinks for one instant that anything they say has merit. And that won't change when the GOP takes the WH in 2013.

They like to ask us where we were when President Bush was spending like a drunken progressive sailor. The implication being that we were cheering him on . . . just as they cheer on BO when he does things they don't like (until it's BO, anyway). But this is just the usual progressive projection. We hated what Bush did with "compassionate conservativism" (i.e. progressivism). Hated it. Granted we didn't chain ourselves to the WH gates or stage sit-ins, but we did what conservatives do: we let his numbers sink into the 20s, and we let dems win Congress in 2006 (in hindsight, not our smartest move evah, but hey, that was before the world changed in January 2009).

But nowhere is the hypocrisy of the far left more clear than in this "revolution" that's being staged in NYC and across the nation. And nowhere is their credibility more diminished. As I mentioned in my last post, Soros wants to co-opt the TEA Party for this embarrassing and disgusting "revolution"; he thinks, as all lunatic progressives do, that everyone is just like him. That because we are unhappy, suffering economically, that we, like commies the world over, will revolt. That we will, like the assorted misfit nutjobs stinking up Wall Street, stick out greedy, resentful, hate-filled little hands and scream "GIMME!".

Marx, before he denounced his own theories, insisted that such a "workers' revolution" was inevitable, that it would happen organically in response to economic conditions. That this didn't, wouldn't, and won't happen without massive organization on the left (and even then/now, is likely to fail miserably) doesn't seem to cause them a moment of self-reflection, a second to consider that because they have to manufacture a "revolution," it's entirely possible that Marx and all of his mindless followers are wrong (as indeed, Marx himself admitted late in life).

To that end, the far left is contorting itself, contradicting itself, to try to suck the TEA Party into their lunacy; they're convinced that because we want change, see the injustices and inequities, the lawlessness and fraud, we'll "rise up" in revolt with them. We're their comrades, they insist. We're their "brothers and sisters." They're in "solidarity" with us. Uh huh. Don't expect that to last. Heck, they're already catching on that we reject their crude, disgusting, lawless, shameful "message" (whatever that is). That we work within the law and the Constitution, that we reject greedy, mindless, goal-less "revolution."

And they're turning on us. Again. Well, that's not entirely correct, they were never "for" us; they hoped to make us useful idiots. And so far, only some Ron Paul acolytes have fallen for it. So now we're starting to hear, again *yawn*, that the TEA Party was astroturfed, funded by the Koch brothers (and seriously, who even really knows who they even are? Or cares?). Whatever. It's all progressive projection again. This "protest" is clearly organized and funded by the SEIU, ACORN, Spooky Dude, and assorted crazies. If there's one thing we've learned over the past three years it's that progressives/commies accuse others of that which they are guilty. Hillary's "vast right-wing conspiracy"? Reflective of the alarmingly intricate "conspiracy" against America that is playing out before our eyes.

And the occupy nuts are complaining that they don't want to be categorized and damned by the "one or two" (er, more like majority) who have crazy messages, they don't want to be seen as fringe freaks but want their voice to matter, to count, to be seen as representing "99%," blah blah blah. When you point out, politely, that the TEA Party was condemned based on one or two people, or that we were ridiculed and pigeon-holed based on (literally) one or two signs, they have nothing to say. It's different, somehow. I guess. The trouble, though, is not even the hypocrisy of that; it's that the "fringe" consists of just about their entire faux "movement." You'd be hard-pressed to find one sane-sounding person down at the occupy protests, and the one you do find will, after a few sentences, sink into nutsiness.

In short, the well Bush did it crowd has nothing else to say. Sure, BO, they implicitly admit, is doing just about everything wrong, but so did Bush. What they don't seem to get is that we didn't like it when Bush did "it," either. The fastest way to get a commie progressive to sputter into silence is to say, "yep, and Bush was wrong, too." Gaaaah, their eyes glaze over, buttttttt, they stammer. And it's done. No one cares what Bush did, except the far left, and even they, as we now know, don't really hate anything that he did. They just hated the (R) after his name.

That realization is seeping into every thinking American's consciousness, particularly into that of indies whose fence-sitting, lack of an ideological compass sometimes infuriates and almost always confuses and frustrates both conservatives and commies (let's not pretend that the Democrat party is, now, anything but the Communist Party of America). That is why, no matter which GOP candidate wins the WH in 2012, whatever screeching, wailing, whining we hear from the far left will fall on deaf ears. Further, the more this unhygienic mob carries on, and especially when it turns violent, the less anyone will be willing to listen to them.

We don't have to do anything. They are undermining their own credibility more and more with each passing day. Every time they contort themselves in defense of BO and stay silent about something they claimed to despise under President Bush they cement their own irrelevancy come 2013.

I'm okay with that.

Greed, Revolution, and Stuff

2011-10-06T08:28:00.003-04:00

So I wasn't intending to write about that rabble down on that street (mainly because I didn't want to add to it, even by opposing it--I remember how much strength we in the TEA Party got from leftist opposition). But here I am, having watched the videos and read the news coverage, writing about it in sort of random thoughts/observations mode; I don't feel they deserve the time and effort a "real" post would require (those of you reading this do, and for that I can only say I'll come up with a "real" post on something else one of these days). In the meantime:

Greed

Okay, let's think about this. There's no doubt, none at all, that there are greedy bankers, greedy people in big oil, and the Fed (this last a nod to the Ron Paul followers who've blindly joined the useful idiots, more on them later). There's no doubt that capitalism, by its very nature, can--and does--succumb to greed. But here's the rub: what is more greedy than seeing someone with something you want and demanding it just because . . . they have it and you don't? Or they "stole" it ? Not really "stolen," right? They did what the law allowed, and what the law didn't allow, they should be prosecuted for under the law. The laws we don't like can be changed using the system for changing laws in this country. It's slow, but it works.

"Gimme!" is pretty much the echoing rallying cry of those losers. Yeah, that's swell, and they're calling bankers "greedy"? Seriously?

Useful Idiots

We've already seen the mindless repetition of whatever is said to them (there was more of this when the Grand Dame of "Revolution," Frances Fox Piven doddered down there this week), but what really struck me was their post on some site (I don't follow their drivel, but people I read do, so I've picked up enough to "get" it.). Jim over at Gateway Pundit has the piece, but in essence, the loons who released the "demands" (omg, are those hilarious! And scary) scolded those who did so for making them all look like extremist nutjobs and brain-dead morons (okay, I added that last part).

And here's where it gets amusing. And revealing. And validating. This organizer person told the flock of willfully ignorant sheep to stop posting demands, to delete demands, and to . . . wait for it . .. wait for the organizers (yet to be revealed) and lawyers to tell them what they are supposed to want, and, it follows, what to think. Good grief.

TEA Party

Needless to say, you can stop any TEA Party patriot or other patriot involved in the conservative ascendency and ask what they stand for and why, and what do you know? Each and every one will be able to tell you. There may be minor variations or differing emphases, but because we are united in defense of one thing--our constitutional republic, America the Beautiful, we don't need "organizers and lawyers" to tell us what our message is or what to say, think, or be. The very idea is absurd to us (that's why we'll win, by the way).

Anyway, so I was flipping through channels the other night (honestly looking for something to take my mind off the horrors, maybe Spongebob or Project Runway), and I heard the words "TEA Party," so I stopped flipping to hear what was being said. And what to my wondering eyes should appear but an MSNBC loon actually praising the TEA Party and claiming "solidarity" with us. This from a man who said--waaaaay back in the distant, dusty past, all but lost now in the mists of the intervening . . . year--that the TEA Party wants to "kill blacks and Jews."

Now, if that doesn't let you know, flat out and in your face, that this "movement" is not for us, nothing will. Being co-opted not only by unions/the WH but now, too, by MSNBC--MSNBC!--, and this in addition to former "green" czar still hate-filled "revolutionary" Van Jones, is not exactly my cup of tea.

Libertarians beware

You may be hearing the siren call of these people, but don't succumb to it. Those aren't just rocks that you're being summoned to crash upon but something much more dangerous. This movement is not unplanned and spontaneous (they have their own newspaper, for goodness' sake! It's got Coffee Party, No-Labels Party astroturf written all over it. Written all over the the "movement," not the newspaper. heh). This "movement" is not about anything close to the kind of paradise total freedom islands of self-reliance and personal responsibility that sweeten your soul. This is about, and unless we are very very careful will become, totalitarianism.

It's the shape of that totalitarianism we don't know; the goal itself is rather clear given its leaders, sponsors, and the assorted radicals who are being drawn like moths to a flame. That flame will spark, just as it did in the '60's, and people will die, just as they did in the '60's. Don't go there.

Revolution

There are not a few revolutionaries down there (exclusive of the useful idiots who are truly clueless about this soon-to-turn-(more)violent mess). There's a whole stew of them: La Raza, radical Islamofascists, and leftist socialists, anarchists, and communists. I haven't seen any reports of the NBPP down there, but if they're not yet, they will be. Stoking these revolutionaries are the likes of Cornell West and Piven (both linked above), and I'm sure it won't be long before Bill Ayers and his lovely lunatic wife, Bernadine Dohrn, can no longer contain their nostalgic reflections on the violence of their terrorist group the Weather Underground to go join--and stir up--the mindless minions of their much-longed for "revolution."

Possible Outcomes

I think we can all see quite clearly at this point that more violence than we've already seen will definitely occur. Personally, I feel bad for the police who have to deal with these unruly but organized mobs, but it seems pretty clear that they'll continue to be provoked, to be pushed, and it will all likely explode into violence, looting, property damage. And probably pretty soon. If (When?) that happens . . . well, any number of things can happen. Certainly, the National Guard will be called in, maybe even military units (this was done in a couple of the worst-hit cities in the 60's).

I'm not interested, now, in wondering about that set of "what ifs" but instead about the set that involves these "frenemies" who are all using each other to forward their own, selfish, cause. Because the problem is that their end goals are all different. The Fox Piven "revolutionaries" want some kind of socialist utopia, the Bill Ayers/Dohrn group wants some kind of "peaceful communism" (an oxymoron if ever there was one considering part of the plan involved the slaughter of 25 million Americans who couldn't be "reeducated"), the Van Jones "revolutionaries" want something that would look very like communism but would have added elements of black supremacy, unions want . . . well, who the hell knows if they can think beyond this moment, and the Islamofascists, of course, want their very own caliphate-thingy. And that's not even taking into account Soros' "open society" dream of global dominance and tyranny (we know he's got a hand in this because of the WH and BO connections to the "protests."). BO probably just wants to win another term, so he can continue a more "controlled decline"; I'm sure he sees all this as a means to an end and thinks it will end upon his reelection next November (if elections are held, anyway). All in all, not really compatible goals.

Some of the conflicts are already playing out. The 60's radicals hate, despise, hate, loathe, and hate the "fascist" police. This, of course, is a throw back to when the police were the armed arm of "the man." While these aging radicals are now "the man," they've clung to this notion, making them not only more ridiculous than ever, but clearly incapable of critical thinking. Anyway, so they're out provoking "the fascist pigs" into all sorts of unfortunate behaviors (some do seem over the top, but good grief, imagine being stuck in that writhing morass of stinky humanity and listening to their screams, taunts, threats, and mindless droning.), and "the pigs" are responding, some of them poorly. But here's the (other) rub: the police in NYC and many cities and towns across the nation are unionized. Unions are part of the craziness. How all this plays out, who knows, but there are a lot of internal conflicts amongst these nuts.

So let's pretend they get their way, and they manage to somehow (and I don't think it at all likely) topple the United States, invalidate/burn/whatever the Constitution, and prepare to build on the smoldering wreckage. How's that going to work? Are they going to fight amongst themselves, killing off the weaker groups? Or will they stay united until everyone has been brought in line? *Shrug* Then again, I guess we don't have to worry about it because if it gets to that point, we'll all be either dead or organizing our own response to the last group standing.

Then again

This may be just what it appears: a group of economically- (and intellectually-) challenged misfits camping in NYC with an inchoate message and unclear "demands" that mysteriously inspired like-minded (!?) groups to magically manifest across the country. Then they spontaneously published their own newspaper somehow, somehow got a PR firm involved (along with a bunch of lawyers), coincidentally spoke to the hearts of everyone from union leaders to '60's radicals to Islamofascists to Congressional Democrats. All without any clear message or governing principle or reason for being. Yeah, that's probably all it is. Nothing to see here.

Obama's Disastrous Presidency By the Numbers

2011-10-05T04:35:00.000-04:00

This is making the rounds, but it's really good. Really. Good.

h/t Sharp Right Turn

Are We Really Awake? (update: link to further discussion)

2011-10-01T13:48:00.013-04:00

Okay, so I've mostly avoided reading what my fellow conservatives are saying about the death of al whatz'its. Mostly because we all agree that it's a good thing that the terrorist is dead, American or not. And partly because I don't agree with most people and find, to my shock, that I actually agree with . . . ugh . . . Ron Paul and *double ugh* the ACLU. There I said it. Anyway, so I dropped a couple comments here and there, and no one seemed to really understand what I was saying or why, so I just shrugged it off until I read our dear Silverfiddle's post that had a quick comment on it. We went back and forth, and then he declared a ceasefire, suggesting via email that we each post on the topic so we could have a good-natured inter-blog debate (link to his post).

First, let me repeat that our guys (or girls, let that be understood throughout) killing a terrorist, American citizen or not, is always a good thing. Let me also say, because I've not posted on this in a long time, that I don't really want to know what our guys do when it comes to keeping us safe. I can "handle the truth," but I'm not one of those "transparency" freaks who salivates every time the hack rags publish our national security secrets. I don't care what our guys do on foreign battlefields for the flag; the military has its own code, disciplinary structure, etc. Waving our dirty laundry around for the world to sniff is just not my thing (thus my anger surrounding the Abu Ghraib idiocy was directed more at the moron who took photos and the one who leaked them than at our troops). People who worry about whether prisoners of war have internet access and can watch Dancing with the Stars obviously have no family members who've been to war, been held captive, been tortured (really tortured, not just made to look silly). I have no time for those people. In other words, I could care less about the "rights" of anyone, American or not, who joins the ranks of our nation's declared enemy, who is a traitor to America. That person, those persons, are exactly the same as the rest of the radical Islamist terrorists. Exactly.

The rights I care about are ours, those granted us in our Constitution. Those deliberately withheld in that glorious document of "negative liberties" from the federal government, in this case, from the executive branch. If you read the Constitution (and I know anyone reading this has done so, more than once. And recently), you know that nowhere in that document is the executive branch granted the right to issue death warrants on American citizens. No where. It's not there. There's no if the citizen is really evil clause, no if the citizen has killed "x" number of people exemption, not in any circumstance. And the founders knew a thing or two about traitors. Yet they still didn't vest in one person, not even the president, the power to try, convict, sentence, and hang (or otherwise execute).

We know why they didn't. They didn't trust one person, they trusted the people. They knew from personal experience what tyranny looked like, how it manifested . . . and how to keep it at bay. And we know something that even they didn't, we know about progressivism, about the insidious baby steps toward tyranny. We pride ourselves in having awakened, and rightly so, we have.

But suddenly, when it comes to terrorism, we . . . what? forget? Fall back asleep? We've spent decades, personally, letting this go and that. Not seeing or not wanting to see where it will lead. Oh dear, you really find the word "God" offensive? Well, okay, I won't say that. Oh my, I didn't know my American flag offended you, I'll not fly it. And don't get indignant here, that's exactly, exactly, what we did before we'd finally had enough. How do you think we've gotten here? It's been bit by bit, progressively. Little things we'd concede so we didn't make a fuss or upset someone or infringe on their rights. That we were willingly giving up ours didn't occur to us until recently, when we finally woke up and looked around in horror at what was happening to our beloved country, to our flag, to our God, to our society and culture, to ourselves.

This didn't happen overnight, it happened slowly, over time. Give this up, get used to it. Okay, good, that worked. Push more. We are seeing the same thing happen already with Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Now, actually more quickly than I imagined, we are seeing that military chaplains will be marrying same sex couples. How long does anyone really think it will be before this is used to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act? Whether you support gay marriage or not, the process is the same as always. Build a starter home (as with that health care monstrosity, which is nothing more than a "starter home" on the way to socialized medicine), then keep creeping until . . . . well, until. This is how the people who have taken over our nation work. We know this.

Usually.

So why don't we see it when it's the same process, the same creep, in "national security"? We laugh, heartily, when MO babbles about how obesity is really a national security "threat" because that's absurd. That's groping pandering, hoping to hit a nerve they can't possibly understand. But we do nothing about the TSA's clearly unconstitutional insistence on humiliating Americans, literally sliding their thug hands under our breasts, into our vaginal area (and they are thorough according to Miss USA ). Molesting our children, while we try to teach them never to let anyone touch them "there." You know the stories. But we comply. We know this will be rolled out to malls, trains, subways, sporting arenas, etc., and we don't like it, but we comply.

I know I seem to be rambling off topic, but it's all one. Here's what we know for a fact: we give up our freedoms, no one can take them from us. Yet.

So our founding fathers could have made any form of government they wanted, could have given any, and yes all, power to the head of state. They didn't. Indeed, they worked hard to make sure that there are three branches of government, three equal branches. They could have created a monarchy, a dictatorship, a democracy, a theocracy, anything at all. But they made a democratic republic, they rested as much power as they could in the people, and what they couldn't rest with us, they made damn sure was checked, rechecked, balanced, and rebalanced amongst the three branches.

That wasn't an accident. It was a guard against tyranny.

Our Constitution is under constant assault by progressives and has been for a hundred years, but that's ramped up in the past ten or twenty and is in hyper-drive over the past three years. We know this.

Until it's a matter of national security and terrorism.

What do you think our founding fathers would say if they knew we had given (and we did give it) an American president the power--completely unchecked and on his own authority, by his own guidelines--to issue death warrants on American citizens? Do you think they'd look at the evil that is Islamofascism and make "an exception"? I don't. In fact, I suspect that they would say this is precisely the time that we hold our freedoms most dear, that this is the time when we are most susceptible to tyranny. I suspect that if they knew, too, what has happened with progressives, how they work, how they've damaged our society and culture and the sound republic they gave us, that they would tell us to stand firm, hold fast, and not relinquish our rights and freedoms--and with them ourselves--to the hand of an increasingly tyrannical government.

We in the TEA Party like the quote: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have." What about a president, one man (or woman, one day), with the power to issue death warrants on his (or her) citizens? Does anyone really believe this won't be used, if not in the near-term then one day, against anyone that president deems an "enemy"?

This isn't about terrorism. It isn't about Islamofascism. This is about America, our Constitution, our republic. Our freedom, and one day, our very lives.

.Update: Just a Conservative Girl has posted on this topic, as well. She makes an excellent case. She's also posted at Potluck a comprehensive summary of both "sides" and added more insightful commentary. Check it out.

Also read BBCW's important post on this issue; he discusses the MIAC report's definition of domestic "extremists" (hint: it's you. And me.).

RightHandMan over at Sentry Journal has also chimed in: read it here.

Another blogger buddy has chimed in, too. Check it out over at Race Relations.

My Country Tis of Thee

2011-10-01T05:48:00.000-04:00

The lyrics (and a lovely version for 3rd graders):

Useful Idiots Mindlessly Repeat Cornell West's Words . . . Including His Closing Thanks

2011-09-30T00:46:00.006-04:00

This would be hilarious if it weren't so dangerous. Watch the whole clip or just skip to 8:45 and watch the truly astonishing leftist robots repeating West's closing words of thanks.

More on this growing threat to our country:

New York Transit Workers Union & Teamsters Agree to Support Commie Wall Street Protesters.

Van Jones Warns Of A Progressive "October Offensive" Against Tea Party

Occupy Wall Street Spreads to Boston

Occupy Wall Street Spreads to San Francisco

You get the idea. The last thing the TEA Party needs to do is get involved in this "revolution"; stay away, stay safe. And for God's sake, no matter what happens, do not turn to the government to "save" us. That way leads to tyranny.

If This Is the GOP Field, Herman Cain is My Pick

2011-09-27T00:02:00.005-04:00

Okay, so that's not a ringing endorsement, but it's the best I can manage right now (yes, I'm still wishing that Paul Ryan would run, what can I say?). Now, my pick is not the conventional candidate, but aside from a couple of silly comments/poor question-answering (on the Right of Return and on the Second Amendment actually being a states' rights issue), he's been really solid and is getting better in every debate, every day.

Cain's recent landslide in the Florida straw poll shows that there is a real hunger for a conservative candidate in this race (everyone's saying that, but I think it's truer, deeper, and far more significant than "everyone" thinks), but more than that, the reaction from both Fox News and the alphabet propagandist media has, frankly, ticked me off. How dare they--how. dare. they--dismiss not only Mr. Cain but the entire Florida straw poll voter base? If I hear one more talking head blather on about how this is about Romney or that other total loser Perry, my head will explode. If it were merely a comment on the big government, status quo phonies, then why Mr. Cain and not Mr. Santorum? (we know why not Mrs. Bachmann, she's done) Santorum is, arguably, a more conventional pol in terms of electability, so why did the Florida straw poll voters overwhelmingly (and it was a huge victory, he got more than twice the votes of the distant second, Rick I'm Doing Everything for the Greater Good Perry, and pathetic third, Mittens I'm a great big progressive phony Romney) select Mr. Cain?

Cain is a business leader, he's disgusted (as disgusted as we are) with this administration, he's got ideas for turning the economy around, he will lead the repeal of the ObamaCare monstrosity (don't believe for a second that an executive order can "repeal" any or all of it, that's not how laws are made--or unmade), he has a good head on his shoulders, he's lived the American Dream, and the man loves this country. No doubt about that, none at all. None of the above can be said about the which way's the wind blowing duo who are supposedly "frontrunners." Mittens Smarmy Liar McRomney and Rick If You Don't Agree With Me, I'll Insult You Perry may love America, but I don't think, for one second, that they would be capable of putting America first. They're about them, their power, their superiority, them and their cronies. We have that now.

Now, it has to be said that Cain is not the best speaker, and that he sometimes loses his train of thought, but good grief, did you see that horror show "attack" on Mittens I Love Government Mandates Romney by Rick Parents Are Stupid Perry gave? Shudder. Have you heard BO's bizarre, grasping, hate-filled rants of late? I think the guy's unhinged and would probably benefit from a nice stay at a quiet "recovery" center for the emotionally- and psychologically-unstable. Cain, by comparison, is a rhetorical magician. And he's getting better, less hesitant (and thank God he doesn't ramble around and erm, duh for ages or insult and attack the American people), more confident.

As we all know, the only way that BO will win next year is if he convinces enough of the American people that everyone (except them) is a RAAAAAACIST who hates Americans and wants everyone to be poor and oppressed (which is actually his own agenda, anyway). And his useful idiots are stampeding to his "cynical political ploy" that calls for racial and class division. The once-lofty, "there are no red states, there are no blue states, only the United States of America" rhetoric is now, whiny-pants desperation: If you love me, you'll hate the racists who hate me, you'll hate the near-majority of Americans who don't believe in the Goracle's AGW claims, you'll hate Americans who succeed in the free market, you'll hate the Jews, er janitors, and you'll take off your slippers and stop whining. Wow. That's some shift, huh? And the numbers show that Americans see it. And reject it, along with BO's failed presidency. Personally, I hope he keeps raging around America, screaming about how everyone (except him) sucks, and how he pretty much hates us all. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

Mr. Cain's love for America and the America people, his desire to get us back on the path to prosperity and excellence is a welcome, and I mean really really welcome, change. Cain will not only appeal strongly to the conservative base, especially the TEA Party, but his American success story, strong religious beliefs, and desire to ensure equality for all will appeal to a lot of minorities who are, understandably, miffed that their '08 pick has done nothing to help this country and everything to destroy it, including their own circumstances. If you aren't too sure about that "999" plan of his, please visit our fellow patriot, the tireless defender of liberty Nice Deb and read up on it, watch the video.

So what will the demoncrats do to undermine Herman Cain? Well, they're already doing the "oreo" thing, insisting that he's some kind of brain-washed, "lawn jockey" puppet of the Koch brothers (no links to lunatic fringe leftists). Or something. But the best thing to do is stamp that race card "expired" and ignore it. We know, as do the dem strategists, that the TEA Party is not racist, and should care less about the mindless minions who blindly believe whatever political ploy they're fed. The only other thing they may use is Cain's obvious understanding of the threat of radical Islam. Again, best to ignore that crap, too. All in all, there's not much they can say. He's not got any political experience, but then, neither did BO, at least not to speak of. No foreign policy experience? My God, anyone would do better than BO. In case no one's noticed, the entire world is on the brink of another world war, and we can thank BO's utter incompetence and half-baked, naive ideology for that.

Of the people running, I think Herman Cain has the best chance not only of beating BO, our first objective, but of actually doing something to turn this nightmare around. Slap Marco Rubio in the VP slot, and it's a done deal.

Fuzzy Rant: GOP Debate

2011-09-23T00:15:00.001-04:00

"We're screwed." That's what I kept thinking as I watched tonight's GOP debate. We're screwed. Over and over this repeated in my mind. And no one's even kissing us first.

The so-called (I miss Candle!) frontrunners are absolutely loathsome little nasties who are big government, nanny state progressives. I'm steaming mad about Rick Perry's "if you don't want illegal immigrants to go to college on the tax payer's dime, you have no heart" baloney. Emotional blackmail is ridiculous and stupid and grasping. It's also the leftists' favorite weapon. If you think that Perry is a conservative, I'm here to tell you that he's not. Ditto Romney.

Romney and Perry are ridiculous caricatures of politicians: the good hair, the smarmy "charm," the "sincere" smile, the phony affability, the slick and practiced responses . . . they both make me sick. To my stomach sick, sick for my country sick. We can rationalize all we want, but they are both cut of the same cloth as BO. They may not hate America, but they are, at heart and root, convinced that government is the answer to everything. Every human ill, injustice, and inequity, they believe, as does BO, can be "fixed" by government, particularly by a government "with a heart."

My butt.

And my but:

The government of the United States of America was never intended to right wrongs, to equalize (and by necessity quash and punish success), to intrude into people's lives. That was not the goal, nor the purpose. Yet all of a sudden here we are in 2011 listening to people who aspire to be the president of this country accusing us of having no heart because we don't want our tax dollars going to educate criminals.

Sorry, I've spent the last three years hearing what a horrible human being I am, how illiterate, stupid, bitter, and unpatriotic I am from the current president. Do you really think I want to hear that from the next one?

When we aren't being insulted, we're being ignored and belittled. We don't and can't possibly understand social security; we don't and can't possibly understand foreign affairs; we don't and can't possibly understand the fine intricacies of signing an executive order "for our own good." Oh, really?

Sorry, I've spent the last three years being lectured to by a half-rate failed lecturer about what is good for me, what I should believe, how I'm not a patriot or good Christian if I don't gobble up crazed, failed Marxist-fascist-socialist-commie crap. And about how BO and his traitorous horde know what is best for me. Do you really think I need some cardboard cutout, faux person dictating the same things to me? Condescending to me? Insulting me?

Presidents aren't kings, they aren't anointed, and they damn sure don't know what I need or want. The "top tier" of the GOP field is a horror show of mini-BO's, self-important, over-inflated political hacks who want one thing and one thing only: power. Their own. Oh, and lots of money.

I'm just sick of it. Truly, deeply sick of it. Obama, Perry, Romney . . . one and the same. Doubt it? Listen to them again. Who has the answers? What's best for you? Don't worry, the all-knowing "rulers" have the answers, and those answers are, for each of them, in big government. And that's not even touching their crony capitalism and disgusting pay-to-play propensities.

The GOP field is absolutely appalling. If this is all we have, we're well and truly screwed.

Rant over.

Fuzzy's Review: GBTV

2011-09-21T20:18:00.000-04:00

Okay, so our good friend and fellow patriot Trestin posted about GBTV. Watching the vid clips at his place, I was stuck by a weird realization that I miss Beck's show. As readers of this blog know, I think that Beck is sometimes waaaay over the top. What you may not know is that I often wonder if he believes what he says (I'm still not sure); this is based mainly in an episode he did on FEMA camps in which he said something along the lines of "if I believed all this stuff, I'd . . . ". Well, since then, Beck's sold his house in NY and bought one in Texas. He's left Fox (probably due in no small part to Spooky Dude). He's gone to Israel to show solidarity with Israel. He's set up GBTV. Maybe he believes this stuff now. The move to Texas is . . . interesting.

There is something disconcerting about Beck's constant "if I were president" musings, something a little off about how he'd be willing, kicking and screaming, to be president . . . if only the people would "force" him to run. It's fantasy land stuff, out there in lala land stuff. It smacks of self-promotion (well, okay, it REEKS of it). And I distrust it. A great deal.

But--and you knew there'd be a "but," right?--Beck does have something. I hate the crying jags, don't believe them, totally distrust them. But he's been right about a lot of things (not the least of which is his insistence that there'd be riots in Europe and Arab Spring-like uprisings in the Middle East; both of which earned him a great deal of scorn and derision . . . but he was right, it happened, it's happening), and he's saying things that no one else will say. He covers not only America's lost history but the current admin; he points out how radicals and commies are in the WH; he urges viewers to do their own research (I'm a huge fan of that). He was the one who broke the Van Jones story; without him, we'd not know about Spooky Dude at all (despite it being a main part of David Horowitz's very important Discover the Networks.). What Beck's said has gotten under the skin of the WH and of Spooky Dude, so much so that they've actively sought to destroy him, discredit, and silence him (Alinsky anyone?). That tells me that Beck's on to something, that what he's saying must hit a nerve. And we all know that nerves that don't exist can't be hit.

So there's good and bad to Glenn Beck (just like all of us, I guess). I'm not sure how sincere he is or even what his agenda is, but I'm willing to listen to him. Heck, apart from the weird weeping and the "gee, if I were president" stuff, I like him. There's something disingenuous about him, sure, but there's also something to be said for the things he talks about, the things he reveals. As I type this, I realize that I'm really completely ambivalent about Beck: I don't believe every word he says, I often think he's a weird clown showman, but at the same time, he's doing important work in America, whatever his motivation, he's uncovering stuff, bringing stuff to light, that we simply wouldn't know, and he's bringing Americans together, uniting people across the country around American values. That's pretty special and very important.

And GBTV is his new outlet for that. Before this was The Blaze (not really a top-tier conservative site like Michelle Malkin, Human Events, American Thinker, or the Big sites, but not as crappy as The Daily Caller--no link to crappy site here), and then Beck got pushed off Fox (he claims it was mutual, etc., but it was all too weird and sudden for it to have been his own, or even Fox's own, idea). So then the GBTV buzz started. I wasn't keen on it. At all. It's a pay subscription site, so that was a huge turn-off, and it wasn't clear what Beck would be doing.

It turns out that GBTV is actually worth the $4.95/mo (I'm not doing the VIP/special/whatever thing). His show is still on at 5 p.m. but now it's two hours. And it's Glenn unplugged. He's not holding back, and he's not "beeping" offensive, leftist language. He's still affable and amusing, and he's still offering hard-hitting pieces on this admin, making connections to the radicals who are now "running the show" in America to the last time they were relevant in the 1960's. He reminds us, strongly, that we are Americans, that God matters, that who we are as a people matters.

Beck's a nutter, we may say (and/or think), but the fact is that he makes excellent points, and he's on to this admin and its radical agenda. It's not loopy, loony-tune stuff like we once wanted to believe; it's not tin-foil hat time. We know this because we know what has happened, we know about Fast & Furious and LightSquared, we know about the various agencies in the executive branch imposing regulations (because laws couldn't be passed in Congress), we know about the long list of nefarious schemes, pay-to-play, and general thuggery of this admin. And we know it, not because of Beck, but almost in spite of him. But he said it all first; he told us that this was happening, but we either didn't want to know or couldn't process it. But he was right. The facts are what they are. That's why he's important, why his voice matters, and why we should listen. Not mindlessly absorb, not swill the Beck koolaid, but actually listen, weigh, research, and consider his viewpoint.

There's a nice news segment on Beck's program; I like it, the anchor is gorgeous and the news is the stuff you won't hear anywhere else. I really don't have much to say about this aspect of the show, it is what it is.

The show is "underwritten" ("advertise" is not used, probably some legal thing) by a variety of companies or organizations. Tax stuff, Freedomworks, some food thingy. I'm not an alarmist, but the food thingy makes sense. Heck, we should have emergency supplies, including food storage, for natural disasters (Tropical storm Irene just hit us, and many in my area were without power for days, some for a week and more, having batteries, food, etc. is just common sense). He "sells" the underwriters' products and services in the old-fashioned way that advertisers were once peddled, he personally speaks about them. It's kind of nice in a nostalgic kind of way.

And then there's this weird Brian Sack person who is trying to be funny. It's a segment called "B. S. of A." Yep, sounds just like something BO's bestest rev. for 20 years might say. Not good. The guy himself seems . . . well, okay. There's something mildly charming about him, but there's also an unpleasant undercurrent in his "jokes." Something that just rubs me the wrong way. Glenn said that he sees and wants to use this Brian Sack person to not only compete with but "destroy" Jon Stewart. Um. No. This guy won't do it.

The one and only conservative who could possibly take on Jon Stewart is Greg Gutfield. There is no one else I've seen, and especially not this Sack person, who is clever, charming, cute, self-effacing, intellectual (and anti-intellectual) enough to hold a candle to Stewart. Gutfeld has that thing, that comedy gold thing, that "it" factor that Stewart has. He just has it; you can't buy it, you can't force it, you can only have it. And Gutfeld has it. If Beck wants to challenge and/or replace Jon Stewart, the only way to go is Greg Gutfeld. Period.

One of the things that lends credibility to GBTV is not a thing, but a person. S. E. Cupp has joined the team, and she's working with college students (conservative, of course) across the country. This is excellent. I like and respect S. E., so she does add that certain something to GBTV.

Bottom line: if you watched Beck on Fox and even if you didn't, GBTV is well worth the five bucks a month. If you can't afford the $5, don't despair, much of the material is covered on the Blaze and will find its way into the conservative blogosphere.

"He's a sot and she's a shrew": Disfunction in DC Dribbles Down

2011-09-20T03:18:00.005-04:00

I've been having so much fun with the #attackwatch game on Twitter; maybe there's something to that whole "truth to power" thing? Naw, just kidding! But it's been fun, and in order to come up with snarky "reports," I had to revisit a bunch of BO buffoonery and read some progressive troll nonsense.

The few intrepid commies who ventured into the game were mostly the usual progressives (talking points, twisted logic, and ad hominem attacks). This one guy (or maybe girl, who can tell on Twitter?), and I'm not making this up--heck, you can't make this stuff up, tweeted something about we TEA Party Hobbits being hillbillies. So I helpfully sent him (or maybe her, who can tell with lefties?) a link to the demographic study that showed TEA Partiers are better educated, etc. than other demos. So he (or maybe she) shoots back that we're all rich and protecting our massive wealth. Good grief. You can imagine me giggling in amazement at the failure of logic in that little exchange.

Anyway, one or two of the lefties who were trying to ruin our fun made a couple of points that gave me pause. There IS something wrong with a tax system that allows GE to make $14.2 billion and pay zero taxes. Now, sure, the commie who posted the point didn't use GE, that's the sacred cow of "greedy, evil corporations" because it's headed up by one of BO's buddies (or something, who knows how they think, strange and illogical people). But we all were ticked off about that. And what's wrong with closing "loopholes" that are more like enormous gaping cavernous openings for only corporations and people who are well-connected? And what's wrong with ending all these wasteful, useless, and often just plain stupid government subsidies? What's wrong with getting rid of deductions and lowering the tax rate, making it more fair to everyone? Flatten the rate and broaden the base. We pay less, keep more, and the government still gets its money. Sounds like a good thing to me.

But I resisted these thoughts. Simply because "they" were making the statements. And then I remembered my deep frustration when confronted with the absolute craziness of progressives over at Firedoglake regarding the TSA gate rapes and sexual molestations of children, nuns, cancer survivors, and mentally-challenged people. They started out just as outraged as we were. Just as. Then word seemed to seep over there that we, evil TEA party "terrorists" that we are, felt the same way. Comments started flying that they wouldn't say any more, no matter how wrong it was, simply because WE thought it was wrong. I was seriously aggravated by that. What about the having morals and taking a stand thing they claim to embrace? Oh, only when it's against us. It's the against us thing that matters, not the base issue, not finding a solution, not seeking to have a wrong righted. Simply spite.

Coming to that realization, I didn't want to be that person. I didn't want to be like them, so I just let myself agree that yes, there are many things that we do agree with the far left loons about. We may have different reasons for coming to the same conclusion, but the conclusion, nonetheless, is the same. What if lefties suddenly, by some inconceivable miracle, started talking about the need to put God back in our schools or started pushing to have Christmas recognized right out in the open, in the public square? Would we say "No" just because it came from them? Of course not.

Earlier tonight, this point was rammed home when I caught the last hour or so of some symposium on CPAN that featured former senators Trent Lott (R-MS) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND). It was some kind of bipartisan Q & A with a bunch of college kids from all over the country and the world. Lott was articulate and knowledgeable, and I can see why Dorgan quit (he seems to actually like America and want what's best for her, so obviously he didn't fit in with the current admin).

One of the students asked them what they thought about the political climate in DC and if anything could be achieved (or something, I honestly don't recall the question). Lott (who really was given a raw deal, as we all know) said something forgettable, but Dorgan, talking about the rhetoric and inaction on both sides that is harming our nation, quoted an Ogden Nash verse:

WHICH THE CHICKEN, WHICH THE EGG?

He drinks because she scolds, he thinks;
She thinks she scolds because he drinks;
And neither will admit what's true,
That he's a sot and she's a shrew.

Now I'm not sure which party is the drunk and who the shrew in this analogy, but the point is a good one. Both parties are griping and demagoguing and pointing figures and blaming without taking a good hard look at themselves. And the sad truth is that this is pretty much exactly what is happening not only in party leadership and rank and file, but right down to the people of this country.

Why the hell are we (well, some of us, not me) defending freaking ethanol subsidies? Or screaming about some corporate jet tax? Or defending an existing tax system that we all know is not only unfair but downright stupid? We need tax reform. Both sides actually agree on this. I'm sick to death of all the hypocrisy and craziness, of compromising our principles just because some idea we'd otherwise agree with came from "them."

Think about it. How outrageous is it that Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver said that if Clinton or anyone but BO were in the White House right now, they'd be marching on it to protest the horrific unemployment rate among black people in this country? Pretty. Damn. Outrageous. But indicative of exactly what has happened, sharpened under BO's "rule": principles go out the window in favor of politics. I'm done with being a part of that. If I agree with something some wackadoo leftie says, then I agree with it. End of story. I definitely won't agree with their twisted "logic" or commie utopian vision, but cutting wasteful, useless subsidies and closing tax loopholes is needed. They're right about that. Just as we are when we say it.

Now, there are some truly offensive and horrific things in BO's ridiculous bill (not the least of which is attacking charities. Until the tax code is overhauled and the economy improves, charities are the last things we should be kicking in the teeth), so I'm definitely not saying we need to jump on the crazy train.

I am saying that it would be a good idea if we, the people, stopped letting the drunks and shrews on both sides of the aisle screw up our country.

Attaaaaack Wwaaaaaaatch

2011-09-14T14:50:00.005-04:00

If you haven't heard, Team BO (aka Team OneAndDone) has come up with a new and fun twist on the old flag the fishy campaign. It's called "Attack Watch":

My most funnest exchange about #attackwatch, the newest internet laughingstock, on Twitter:

fuzislippers

Dear #attackwatch help me out. Is it "Heil!" then click the heels or click the heels then "Heil!"?

@fuzislippers please report to Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda for retraining. \o Heil!

fuzislippers Fuzzy Slippers

as soon as I'm done ratting out my neighbors and preparing my attic. Know where I can get a cheap diary? #Heil #attackwatch

@fuzislippers standard issue diary will be provided by Propagandaministerium, or so they say. \o Heil #attackwatch

fuzislippers awesome! Then the national community, er federal family, can all go on a nice cruise. Strength through joy. #heil #attackwatch

@fuzislippers Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda commends you Komrade. You will be shot later. \o #heil #attackwatch

fuzislippers How Mao! That political power, barrel of a gun thing just never gets old. No matter how often it fails. #heil #attackwatch

President Petulant's "Plan"

2011-09-13T16:19:00.002-04:00

So Team BO lays a careful trap for the GOP: offer up another stimulus (calling it something else, of course), urging them to pass it (even before it actually exists), calling on the American people to . . . well, who cares, that part was never going to work with the president's numbers so low (hint: if you have to beg people to mobilize, you've got a serious problem), and backing the GOP into what should have been an impossible corner. Pass the bill or give BO something to run on next year (the usual: GOP are obstructionists who hate BO because he's black and probably America and certainly all minorities and definitely grandma).

The hole in the plan (big enough to drive a campaign tour bus through) was lining up speeches in GOP leaders' states before even releasing said "plan." The hope, it seems, was that the GOP would immediately bristle, refuse to pass the (nonexistent) bill, and BO and his puppet masters would be able to gain some ground (note that the states are battleground states, as well as conveniently leadership states) by berating the GOP for not going along with this incredible, urgent plan. "Look, I tried," would be the new campaign slogan (a bit less-motivational than "yes, we can," but all they could hope for, given the change they've inflicted upon this nation.).

A couple things wrong with this scheme:

1. There was no plan, and even today, there is no complete plan (the pay-fors are apparently being dribbled out next week sometime). When Speaker Boehner asked for the plan, when even MSNBC was wondering where the plan was, BO looked like a political hack, a poser, and an idiot ("pass this plan" that doesn't exist? really?). Those pay-fors? Something along the lines of that healthcare monstrosity not adding one dime to the deficit or debt, of course. But didn't BO come back later and scoff at the idea that we could cover X million more people for free? (can't find that quickly, but if you have the link, let me know, and I'll add it);

2. The GOP knew the president's schedule and said they'd be happy to work with him, blah blah blah, thus defusing the intended impact of the prepared speeches, you can almost hear President Petulant skip parts of a prepared speech that talks about how awful Congressional Republicans are for not doing what he demands. He almost seems sad to admit that yes, the GOP has said it would consider his "plan";

3. The American people just aren't buying it. They're asking, quite rightly, what took so long? The economy, by the administration's own calculations (and constant whining/finger pointing/buck passing), has been in peril since before the president took office. That was in January, 2009. It's now September, 2011. This is the fifth (or so) "pivot" to jobs, but now, only now, "the American people can't wait"? As usual, this president and his handlers underestimate the American people. We can do simple math; we've seen the failure of the first stimulus, we know from experience that this president doesn't give a damn about the people or about the economy.

So the GOP is being cagey about the president's recycled stimulus "plan" because they are not going to give him anything to attack them about on his little campaign stops in their states. Good move.

So now we learn that it's all or nothing. As usual. There is no room for the House or the Senate to make any amendments to the "plan." "Compromise" means doing exactly what this failed president wants them to do. Sound familiar? Last time he did that we got that healthcare monstrosity crammed down our throats, and dems lost a Senate seat in Massachusetts (give everyone healthcare Ted Kennedy's seat, no less) and they were completely "shellacked" in the 2010 midterms.

I'm more cynical than Republican leaders because I rather like Krauthammer's suggestion (made last night on Bret Baier's show, again, no link, but I'll post it if you find it): pass it, let BO twist on it, and recapture the WH (and the Senate) in 2012. Cynical, he calls it. Bret's shocked, the horror of allowing clearly-flawed policies to pass, despite harm to the economy is just too much for him. I get that. But the House, alone, cannot do much more than stave off the economic catastrophe this admin seems intent on promoting, and everything they do to try to hold back the horrors this admin is unleashing at record speed is simply dismissed. So why not let BO have his full-steam go at it? Let America see exactly what the horror in the WH is? Sure, okay, it's not a good idea. But I still like it in a detached intellectual kind of way. Maybe that's what this nation needs to finally wake up? Let BO do his commie thing, give him the whole shebang. It will fail. Of course. But maybe it's time for us to get it together in 2012 and vote him into the dustbin of history. Where he belongs.

9/11: Ten Years Later

2011-09-11T13:51:00.000-04:00

Ten years ago today, our world changed, our country changed. I, and each of you, changed.

That morning, I had just flipped on the television to see what was going on with the weather. My plan that day was to drive to my grandmother's house in Pennsylvania for a much-needed visit (my "chill" visits, as we liked to called them). What I saw on the television was the moments just after the first plane hit the first tower. I was watching it in some shock, but not much. At that moment, it wasn't clear if it was a charter plane (that's what they thought) and seemed a given that it had to be some kind of strange, inexplicable (it was such a bright, sunny morning, the tower so immense) accident. Weird. But then . . . then the next plane flew directly into the second tower. There was no other way to understand it then, or now. It was purposeful, it was an attack. It was terrorists.

All these people telling you now that we didn't know about al Queda then or that we didn't know we were at war are full of sh . . . um, they are not telling the truth. No idea why or what their agenda (we hear it from the left and the right, so who knows), but we knew about terror. I knew watching that second plane fly into the second tower that it was terrorists. I knew it in my gut.

And this was back when I barely paid attention (comparatively) to what was happening, either here at home or abroad. But I did know, however vaguely, about the first World Trade Center bombing in the '90's, and I remembered very well, heart-achingly well, the attack on the U. S. S. Cole. I knew about attacks on American embassies abroad. And these events, these terrorist attacks on America, all sort of flew together in my subconscious mind, crashed into what I was seeing happening in New York City, and came together as "oh my God, we're being attacked!"

I didn't know by whom. I didn't even "know" it in the real sense of the word. The newscasters didn't know what was happening, no one really did. But, really, we all did.

It was horrific. Standing there--I hadn't turned on the tv to watch it, just to hear the weather--gaping at the television, sure in my heart that we were being attacked. I grabbed the phone (this was still early, phones were still working in the northeast) and called my grandmother. She was watching, too, and said for me to stay home (my journey to her home in Pennsylvania would take me over the Tappan Zee bridge in New York). Reports were that tunnels and bridges were being closed; maybe, that's fuzzy now, but I remember so clearly her telling me to stay home, not to go near New York City. I agreed. We didn't say much more, neither expressed our fears, our certainty that we were under attack, for worry of frightening the other.

Like so many others across this country, I watched the events unfold. The towers collapse, one then the other. The news of the plane hitting the Pentagon. The deaths. So many deaths. The billowing smoke. The grounding of all air traffic. Reports of planes still in the air, not responding, not landing. President Bush reading to those children, hearing the news, his mouth pursing in anger, resilience. Or did we see that film later? I do remember him speaking briefly from the school, telling us what we all knew but didn't believe until we heard it from him. News that the president was being flown to D. C. or out to Nevada or somewhere. Images of New Yorkers running, screaming, sobbing, the smoke, the flames, the ash. People walking, so slowly so stunned, across the closed-to-automobiles bridges in New York City. It was all a rush of images, a rush of impressions, and under it all, a growing anger. A growing outrage. A growing realization that this land that I loved, this America, was in danger. Here, at home, on our own soil. That we were to be forever changed by it, that our innocence as a nation would be forever gone.

I stayed glued to the television for the next few days, flipping through channels, looking at everything, trying to take it in, understand it, know what happened and who did it. I didn't care why then. It didn't matter why it happened. This attack on my country, my beloved America, was more than I could accept, more than I could take in, and nothing could ever justify it. Nothing.

Then there was President Bush, standing atop that rubble, personally at Ground Zero, grasping a megaphone and promising that the people who did this horrible thing to our nation would pay. I cried for the first time. I cried like a baby. I was so proud of our president, so happy to lean on his obvious strength, to trust him to make it right. Here was what I needed to see, what I needed to hear, what I needed. Period. In that moment, President Bush came into focus before my eyes. Granted, I'd never hated him as commies did, as progressives did, but I didn't think much of him back before 9/11. But I loved my country, then as now, and in that moment, it was clear to me that he did, too. That he took it personally. Just as I did. It was personal. It happened in NYC, in PA, at the Pentagon, but it was personal. You attack America, you attack my president. And you attack me.

As the years have passed and all the things that we all know about have happened, the one thing that I've noted, almost from afar, is how I've become more and more conservative. Like most Democrats then (and today), I had no idea it was a steaming, straining ball of tangled evil, of commies, Marxists, anti- and unAmerican racists who despise our country. Obviously, that's more clear to me now than even on 9/11, but that's when I started waking up. That's when I started seeing things that I'd been able to block out, ignore, rationalize. And I am not alone. Many many people who were nominal "democrats" changed that day. We weren't a part of that, not then, not before, and certainly not after.

9/11 struck our hearts and souls as Americans, and how we responded to it, to my mind, defines who we are, what we believe, and at the end of the day, whose side we're on. Americans, real American patriots who love this country, did not make excuses for the terrorists who did this thing, we did not scratch our heads and wonder what we did wrong, we did not reach out to embrace and bow to the people who did this to us and cheered gleefully when it happened. We knew, in our hearts and souls and minds, that we are a great nation, that we are Americans who love America, the land, her people, and most significantly, what she stands for. This thing that was done to us, to our nation and to our fellow Americans, had nothing to do with that. We knew it instinctively that day, and we've known it instinctively every day since.

And we were right. Islamic terrorists have no more special hatred for America than for any of the other countries and peoples they attack and slaughter. Islamic terrorists have attacked America, Spain, China, Bali, Germany, Scotland, England, Russia, France, Italy, India, every Middle Eastern nation, numerous countries in Africa, and many more besides. This was never about America, not to them; they chose to attack us, anyway, because nothing was done after the first World Trade Center bombing, nothing was done about our embassies, nothing was done about the U. S. S. Cole; they thought we'd do nothing, so they chose to attack us before they could be assured that they had the upper hand in their war against the non-radical-Islamofacist world. And that, my patriot friend, was their biggest mistake. To them, it's not personal, to them it's . . . well, something else. But they brought their fight to us, to our soil, to our land, to our beloved America.

They seek to intimidate us with their barbaric brutality, their bombings and beheadings, their bestial behavior. But that day all they did was piss us off. Royally. So today we mourn so much, so many lives, so much loss, such a beating to our nation's heart. But we also strengthen our resolve. That war they brought to our shores will be won, and it will be won by us. Of this, there is no doubt. None.

We are Americans, and we will not fail, we will not waver, and we will never forget.

Never Forget

2011-09-10T10:42:00.002-04:00

So I'm seeing all this stuff about 9/11. About how it's not a day of remembrance, how it's a "day of service," how it's not a day of our nation coming together in the wake of a national tragedy, how we're supposed to pretend that it's not about America . . . or radical Islamofascists. How we're supposed to stop calling Ground Zero "Ground Zero"; how we're supposed to pretend that it's okay not to have a religious message delivered there on the tenth anniversary, how we're supposed to pretend that we think it's A-OK to exclude the first-responders who risked life and limb to come to the aid of others, how we're supposed to celebrate diversity by embracing radical Islamofascists with as much passion as this WH has, how we're supposed to be fine with the crosses (naturally formed from twisted wreckage) being banned, with the American flag being swallowed up by the flags of other nations, how we're supposed to -- in short -- forget.

My comment/questions at Reaganite Republican's post is one that's been nagging at me for a while:

What's curious to me is not that they want to change the meaning of 9/11. Not that they want to remove God and country from it. Not even that they are denying first-responders their RIGHT to be there. What's curious to me is that it's so in our face. This is new.

Commie Alinsky Progressives prefer slow, insidious, dismantling of our beloved country, our beliefs, our people. This is new. And it's alarming. Why are they doing this so blatantly? What's the rush? What is coming?

BO's Speech

2011-09-09T11:27:00.001-04:00

Dear America,

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but I want you to believe that I "get" America. So I'm here to announce that I "get" America. See? I "get" it. I said it. I'll even say, "one nation, under God" or something, I think it's from some Founders' document from 20 centuries ago. Or something. And remember how Lincoln founded the Republican Party? Or something. Not too sure about that, to be honest. But erm, ugh, I "get" America. Did I mention that already? I do. I really really do. Listen: I "get" America. See? There, I said it.

So here's my plan. I'm going to . . . um, erm do stuff. Stuff I already said I'd do. Some stuff I said I'd not do. You'll notice I'm not calling it the same thing, see? That's the difference. See how I've grown and can adapt? See how I'm not entrenched in proven failed policies? It's all about what you call it. I get that. Um, just like I "get" America. Remember me saying that? It's true. I "get" America. So anyway, back to my fabulous "save America" (which I "get," btw): it's all stuff that um, some Republicans and some Democrats have supported. You know, in the past. Sure, things were different then. The American economy was better, unemployment numbers were lower, and well, sure, the deficit wasn't crippling then, the debt not insane. Okay, sure, people weren't paying attention then. But you know what? None of that matters because, um, Republicans once agreed to it, sure, under different circumstances, with different voter feedback, but um, well, it's still binding. You know. Somehow. Because. Um, it is. You know, binding. Pass it now. Don't bother reading it. There's no time. It's urgent. It must be done now.

Um, I'll tell you how I'm paying for it later. You know how I postponed this speech on jobs, my fifth "pivot" to jobs in 2.5 years, until after my vacay? Well, same thing, it's truly urgent, it matters now. Pass it now. Pass it yesterday.

I'll tell you in ten or so days how I'll pay for it (mostly with gimmicks, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I "get" America.).

And it IS paid for. Just like ObamaCare would never add a single dime to the deficit and you'd get to keep your own insurance and illegal immigrants / abortion wouldn't be covered. It's just like that.

So, um, American people--I "get" you, I really really do, I've said it like three times now--um, tell your Congressmen and women to stop obstructing my same, tired, failed plan for fundamental transformation. I'm going to go on the road with this act, to all 57 or 58 states, whatever. And I need you to, um, be, you know, fired up. Really. It's about me, um, you, the people of America. And I so "get" America. Really. I do.

God bless me. Um, America. Which I "get." I do. Reaaaaally, I doooooo.

Useable Knowledge (repost)

2011-09-09T10:41:00.002-04:00

[this was originally posted September 29, 2009, and is, today, just as relevant (she says modestly) as it was then.]

I used to teach a class in which we read and discussed Susan Bordo's chapter "Hunger as Ideology" from her quite interesting and provocative Unbearable Weight. Although the chapter contains some complex theories and presents a decidedly feminist slant (of which I very much approve, btw), it was fodder for much lively discussion among students because it talks about the way that advertisers create ads that emphasize the female body in an unrealistic and unattainable way. Bordo explains that advertisers engage in perpetuating and reinforcing what she terms "gender ideology," and that this is done both consciously and unconsciously and received by readers/viewers both consciously and unconsciously.

This has certainly become a more accepted view since the book was published in the early '90's, but students were very resistant to the idea that they are being subtly manipulated. As Bordo notes, students insist "these are just images, not 'real life'; any fool knows that advertisers manipulate reality in the service of selling their products" (104). My own students would take this still further, arguing that they know that eyeliner is not going to make them look like a fashion model or movie star or get them respect, riches, or whatever else the ad portrays. Yet Bordo, I believe, is right, when she acknowledges that "on some level, we do know this" (104), and she goes on to explain that it's not "useable knowledge" (104). If it were useable knowledge, she argues, "it is unlikely that we would be witnessing the current spread of diet and exercise mania . . . " (104). Her argument, then, is that if we stop and think about it, we know that no product is going to perform "magic" and improve any aspect of our lives, but we don't stop and think about it, we just absorb what we see, and it becomes a part of our social and cultural understanding, formulating far more than our views of makeup or the latest diet craze, but actually subtly reinforcing traditional gender roles.

There's much truth in this, and it's the same truth that I see in Alinsky's strategies for radicals seeking . . . well, change. I'd seen something about this on Fox News (forget the program), and my ears perked up a bit. BO's huge success with the populace has long been inexplicable to me. I mean, I thought he was attractive, charming, and articulate (before we learned how much he depends on teleprompters and what a stuttering mess he becomes when he's thrown off), but that didn't explain why so many people were willing, even eager, to toss common sense, analytic thought, and reason to the winds in their rabid desire to support him. He had little to say (though he talked constantly), and what he did say was quite alarming. Why did no one want to know about anything that might besmirch their image of him? The real man is very different from that facade and persona he's created, but they just didn't want to know.

So when I read LL's Obama's Playbook post yesterday, I did so with both a sense of vindication and a sense of utter disgust, and not a little fear. I did a quick Google search and found an article by Craig Miyamoto entitled Alinsky's Rules for Radicals (referencing Alinsky's out of print book). He writes:

To paraphrase some sage advice, "keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer." If your business or organization ever becomes a target of radical activists, it will be extremely helpful to know what strategies of attack will used against you. Short of having spies infiltrate their organization - a practice that is sure to be found out and exposed to your discredit - it would help to study their methods.

Known as the "father of modern American radicalism," Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. Activist organizations teach his ideas widely taught today as a set of model behaviors, and they use these principles to create an emotional commitment to victory - no matter what.

Grassroots pressure on large organizations is reality, and there is every indication that it will grow. Because the conflicts manifest in high-profile public debate and often-panicked decision-making, studying Alinsky's rules will help organizations develop counteractive strategies that can level the playing field.

Governments and corporations have inherent weaknesses. And, time and again, they repeat mistakes that other large organizations have made, even repeating their OWN mistakes. Alinsky's out-of-print book - "Rules for Radicals" - illustrates why opposition groups take on large organizations with utter glee, and why these governments and corporations fail to win.

Large organizations have learned to stonewall and not empower activists. In other words, they try to ignore radical activists and are never as committed to victory as their opposition is committed to defeating them. Result? They are unprepared for the hailstorm of brutal tactics that severely damage their reputation and send them running with their tails between their legs.

And this is exactly what we've seen done time and again by the BO campaign and administration:

Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work. Here are the rules to be aware of:
RULE 1: "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have." Power is derived from 2 main sources - money and people. "Have-Nots" must build power from flesh and blood. (These are two things of which there is a plentiful supply. Government and corporations always have a difficult time appealing to people, and usually do so almost exclusively with economic arguments.)
RULE 2: "Never go outside the expertise of your people." It results in confusion, fear and retreat. Feeling secure adds to the backbone of anyone. (Organizations under attack wonder why radicals don't address the "real" issues. This is why. They avoid things with which they have no knowledge.)
RULE 3: "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy." Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)
RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)
RULE 6: "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." They'll keep doing it without urging and come back to do more. They're doing their thing, and will even suggest better ones. (Radical activists, in this sense, are no different that any other human being. We all avoid "un-fun" activities, and but we revel at and enjoy the ones that work and bring results.)
RULE 7: "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." Don't become old news. (Even radical activists get bored. So to keep them excited and involved, organizers are constantly coming up with new tactics.)
RULE 8: "Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)
RULE 9: "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." Imagination and ego can dream up many more consequences than any activist. (Perception is reality. Large organizations always prepare a worst-case scenario, something that may be furthest from the activists' minds. The upshot is that the organization will expend enormous time and energy, creating in its own collective mind the direst of conclusions. The possibilities can easily poison the mind and result in demoralization.)
RULE 10: "If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through and become a positive." Violence from the other side can win the public to your side because the public sympathizes with the underdog. (Unions used this tactic. Peaceful [albeit loud] demonstrations during the heyday of unions in the early to mid-20th Century incurred management's wrath, often in the form of violence that eventually brought public sympathy to their side.)
RULE 11: "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." Never let the enemy score points because you're caught without a solution to the problem. (Old saw: If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. Activist organizations have an agenda, and their strategy is to hold a place at the table, to be given a forum to wield their power. So, they have to have a compromise solution.)
RULE 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

I'm sure you don't need me to go through and show you exactly how and when these tactics have been used; it's pretty clear, really. So let me just say that the BO team has certainly done their Alinsky homework and taken these "rules" to heart, particularly, we have seen Rules 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, and 12. Look at the ridicule that the Tea Party and Town Hall goers have endured, BO's constantly telling people that republicans offer no solutions (this is patently false, but he's said it so often that to his people, it's fact), look at that monstrosity Pelosi sniffling about impending violence (knowing that to date, all violence has actually come from the left), and the active work being put into polarizing this nation and its people (all while saying that the goal is the opposite).

Look at the demonization of Sarah Palin, the lies that were spread like wild fire. I remember writing a blog post about the more ridiculous lies that were being bandied about the internet, and actually had commenters admit that they didn't know it was all untrue . . . . but the facts just didn't matter, they'd been swept up in the manipulation and were being driven by the puppet master. It was one of my more shocking moments as a blogger, that thinking people whom I respect could look at the mountain of evidence that proved that their opinion of Palin was based in outright lies and misrepresentation and still somehow believe it. The knowledge, then, was not useable to these readers. (oops, sorry, I know I said that I wouldn't point to specific instances of the application of these "rules"; I do get carried away sometimes.)

My students who so readily dismissed the effects of advertising on their perceptions of gender were college freshmen, so they can be excused (if that's the right word) for not quite comprehending the insidious nature of broad-scale sub- and unconscious manipulation. We, however, cannot be so wide-eyed and innocent, cannot afford to be so blessedly idealistic and confident of our own power to use the knowledge that we have, that we know to be so . . . if we only stop to think about it. I'm not sure that we can really turn something we know intellectually into something that is actually useable knowledge, but surely the first step is to realize what is happening and to be aware that we are pawns in a huge, very high stakes game.

_________________________________________________________

Update: A great article about BO's use of Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. A NYTimes article on Alinsky's Rules, very interesting, provides a view that conservatives are applying them (but reveals more about the left than it does the right.)

The Tea Party Movement: Not On Our Watch. Not Now, Not Ever (repost)

2011-07-20T23:53:00.000-04:00

[I originally posted this April 10, 2011, but it holds just as true today as it did then.]

I've been thinking a great deal about the Tea Party movement lately, little wonder as April 15th just passed, marking its one year anniversary. I'm so proud of my fellow countrymen and women that sometimes when I see you all gathered on the national mall, in Boston Common, or holding a flag or sign on any sidewalk across the nation I become quite choked up. We, the people, are the spirit and soul of this nation, its foundation, and we have been called, yet again, to be its salvation. Thank God we are up to the task.

I listen to even Fox News and their stunned surprise at the recent NYT/CBS News poll that found that Tea Party patriots tend to be "wealthier and better educated" than "the general public," and I wonder why they are surprised. They being Fox News, we know very well why the NYT and the rest of the fringe media are surprised--they've bought their own fantasies about us being a bunch of hillbillies clinging to guns and religion, but why Fox? My guess is that they, too, had somehow fallen for the Tea Partiers are rube RACCCISSSST buffoons who probably didn't gradj-E-8 from high school. Oops. Nothing against Fox, though, they're all we've got in terms of a traditional(ish) news organization, after all, and given that they've been relatively honest in their assessment of the Tea Party movement, we can forgive their lapse.

It is rather odd, though, that the news of our better than average education level surprises the left, particularly citizen lefties. Reading the conservative blogs, listening to conservative pundits, and watching conservative politicians (think Paul Ryan), how can anyone imagine in their wildest dreams that conservatives are not intelligent, not educated? And yet, they do think that; hell, many of our own number think that. Is it the media seeping into our consciousness? Maybe a little. After all, we see again and again the mis-spelled signs all over the place. These, it must be said, are apparently rare, as the same couple of signs are used every time. Heh.

So we're generally better educated and more likely to be above the poverty level. Anyone other than Fox and the fringe media surprised? I'm not. And I would add that we, as a whole and on the whole, are also more charitable (in terms of actually donating to our churches and/or charities), that we are better thinkers (the left really doesn't think; it just repeats talking points and becomes rather confused (and verbally abusive) when forced off script), and that we are, at rock bottom, kinder, nicer people. And humble. Let's not forget humble.

The left is fond of pointing out that President Bush did [fill in the blank] and where were we then? Well, we were blogging about it, weren't we? I was. I railed against amnesty for months (and lost a good number of readers because of it--my blog at the time was more likely to be about cute shoes and chocolate Easter eggs than politics), and I was occasionally motivated to babble about the war in Iraq, Hussein's fall (and subsequent hanging), the Patriot Act, and a couple other not in Bush's corner news items. So we didn't approve of everything Bush did, or very very few did (I've never actually met anyone or read anyone's comments who approved of every move he made--he was far too big-spending liberal on too many things. We all knew it, and we all disliked it.). So why does the left insist that we loved what Bush did but when BO does it, we resist? Why indeed.

The left is fond of pointing out that the Tea Party is RAAAAACIST, stooopid, and on the verge of violence. Violence, they mean, in the form of a violent overthrow of our government, but that is exactly what we do not believe, nor want. We believe in our country, in our Constitution, and if the radical prog crazies were capable of understanding this, they'd understand why (much to their Alinsky-inspired chagrin) there is no violence from the Tea Party. Why would we go outside the bounds of our Constitution to uphold said document? D'oh. We wouldn't. It's pretty clear to anyone with a brain, sight, and/or hearing. But they insist. Why?

The left is fond of pointing to imagined "rifts" on the right, trumpeting the (imaginary) "divide" that the Tea Party is causing. Why?

The left is fond of musing about the demise of the Tea Party--the momentum can't be kept, they'll get bored and go back to their Bibles and gun cleaning; that we'll just sort of die out as a movement . . . before November, hopefully. Why?

It's rather funny (funny ha ha . . . well, ok, funny peculiar, too) that the left is constantly missing it. Completely. They are so busy imposing their own faults and petty, wrong-headed "thinking" on us that they've totally missed the point, missed what is happening, and missed why it is happening. Everything for us is not about President Bush. Nor even about sniveling, mean-spirited BO. Or about 2010. Nor even about 2012.

The Tea Party is about America. Period. Who we are, how we were founded and on what principles, and how we can take our country back. Because they cannot conceive of anything that is big picture, that is rooted in honorable principle, they cannot see what we can see, feel, and understand: We, the people, are motivated by love of country. Period. Not hate of this person or that, not the desire to see anyone suffer or fail, nothing negative at all. We are a movement of positives, of hope (not to be confused with hopeandchange or hopeychangey unicorn crap). We are looking not to destroy but to reclaim and rebuild. We are seeing clearly not with spite, rancor, or hatred but with civility, honor, and love.

And because of that, we will not be defeated, we will not fail. And we will not disappear in a puff of smoke on November 7, 2012. Indeed, that day will be a day of great celebration, but it will be only the beginning. This mid-term is about regaining control of Congress in an effort to provide the traitor in the WH with much-needed checks and balances and to unseat the other two who make up his triumvirate of tyranny. The next presidential election will be about undoing the massive damage that BO has already inflicted on this great nation. And the 2014 midterms will provide another opportunity to weed out more progs (from BOTH parties), the ones not up this time around. And so on.

We're not finished in 2012. Not by a long shot. We've got a country to rebuild, and that means that it's not over when BO slithers out of the WH in January 2013. Indeed, it will never be over. We are awakened, we are going to reclaim our schools, our courts, our nation, and we are not going to stop being vigilant and informed. No. We will be watchful for the resurgence of those we'll cull from positions of power. Because we know, we know that they'll not be gone, just regrouping, preparing another hundred-year siege on our nation, our rights, and our liberty. We will never let that happen, not now, and not in the future--ironically, BO has, in effect, created that oft-cited civilian national security force: We, the people.

We are Americans, people of strength, will, conviction, integrity, and honor. A group of mealy-mouthed, America-hating progs are nothing to us, no barrier. We will prevail because our goal is honorable and noble, our will strong, our determination steel. Unlike the progs's deceitful, despicable, and traitorous rise to power, we will prevail in the light of day, at the ballot box, and by the means enumerated in the Constitution that we pledge to uphold and defend. And then we will stand guard for all time, on watch, protecting our nation, passing on our hard-learned lessons to future generations of Americans who will be proud of us, of our country, and of accepting the light of liberty that we pass to them, that they might stand firm, watchful and ready to protect and serve as we are now.

The Declaration of Independence

2011-07-04T12:31:00.000-04:00

The Unanimous Declaration of

the Thirteen United States of America

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

Mitt Big Govenment Romney: Who Are You?

2011-07-01T17:05:00.000-04:00

h/t RightKlik

How's That Hopeandchange Working Out For Ya?

2011-06-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

h/t Legal Insurrection

Rebutting the BO is a Genius Meme

2011-06-11T13:55:00.006-04:00

Okay, I've reached the end of my patience on the Sarah is stupid and BO is a genius meme. Seriously. Sarah may or may not be a genius, but she's certainly got more going for her in many areas than BO (not what this post is about, but she actually understands America and loves this country, unlike BO who clearly does neither).

So I've decided to compile a handy go-to list of all of BO's droolingly stupid comments and assertions. But there are so darned many that I need your help. Here's what I have so far (actually just comments that I've made here, there, and everywhere):

Remember when Obama so-famously said that the Cambridge police "acted stupidly"? He said that in response to the Gates incident in Cambridge. Anyway, that was in the summer of 2009. When the Massachusetts special election was held to replace Ted Kennedy in January 2010, guess which candidate got the Cambridge police's endorsement? Yep, Scott Brown, the republican (well, sort of). And this despite the fact that his progressive democrat opponent and official poster-child for Obama Koolaid-slurping Martha Coakley has a husband who was retired from that same police department and still a member of that union. Don't think those two things are related? Think again. And then look at what other insulting and/or thoughtless statements this president has made about other union members / groups. He's burning bridges like a pyromaniac on crack, and it's going to hurt him in 2012.

You're right to be skeptical about Obama's belief in the special relationship between the U. S. and Britain. He doesn't believe in it. In fact, he actively undermines it at every turn. Surely you remember his staffer coming right out and saying that the president sees the UK as just the same as any other country in the world and that it shouldn't expect special treatment. To Obama, Britain is as meaningful as [insert any country: for fun, spin a globe, close your eyes, and jab your finger on it].

The countries that he holds up, that he has shown through his actions are important to him are India (first state dinner, denied to the UK even though Brown was actually in Washington earlier), Mexico (another state dinner, speech to Congress about how America should deal with our illegal immigrant problem and borders), "Palestine" (not Israel, America's actual ally), and on and on. The man is a disgrace. Always look at what he does, what he does is very very revealing.

Oh dear, we could do this all day. Let's see, off the top of my head: Not only does Obama think there are 58 states (there are 50), that it's perpetually 2008 (his best year), that "corps" is pronounced "corpse," and that "Austrian" is a language, but he also thinks there's such a thing as a hybrid SUV [correction: he said hybrid van], claimed that an entire town was destroyed and 10,000 people died (12 died, town still standing), said that we need to use our Iraq translators in Afghanistan (um, totally different language, of course), wants to bring "inefficiencies" to our health care system (well, that's actually correct, but not what he meant), tried to make a case for government-run healthcare by extolling the wonders of UPS and FedEx over the government-run post office (the latter is in the red and "always having problems"), and let's not forget how he began his speech the day of the Fort Hood terrorist attack by giving "shout outs" to his buddies. The man's a complete dolt.

He also thought that America was founded 20 centuries ago, that Canada has a president, and that America is a democracy. I'd say Sarah Palin will do quite well against someone who doesn't know the difference between the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence (nor what committee he sat on in the Senate). The man sees dead people, for goodness' sake (claims he saw "fallen heroes" sitting in the audience at one speech). As I said, I could do this all day. The man's a complete idiot.

I know there are more. What have I missed?

.
Apparently, I'm not the only one tired of this Sarah is stupid and BO is a genius meme. Thanks to Kerry for sending me a link to this video (and apologies for the foul language in it; obviously that's by unhinged leftists suffering severe PSD):

Weinergate

2011-06-10T11:29:00.001-04:00

I'm sure we're all equally sick of Weiner, but after watching him interviewed in the street yesterday, I just couldn't resist the urge to throw my two cents into the mix.

Does being a sexually-immoral, degenerate pervert make one a bad leader? Maybe. Maybe not. Being a foul-mouthed, abrasive, obnoxious, arrogant little jerk doesn't prevent one from being a member of Congress (if it did, there'd be hardly any democrats there at all. Come to think of it . . . not a bad idea). What about cheating on your new (and pregnant) wife with numerous women via the internet and telephone (he himself called these sordid involvements "relationships," so obviously, they were more to him than getting his rocks off by sending photos of his scrawny, repugnant little body to anyone who claimed to admire him)? This is edging into unacceptable in a congressman, not so much for being a sexually-immoral, degenerate pervert but for being that stupid, that unable to see how this behavior could lead to either blackmail or scandal. Anyone whose judgment is that poor should probably not be allowed to cross the street without supervision, let alone hold a position of some power and influence.

But being all of that AND using government resources (funded by we, the people) to engage in this bizarre and self-destructive behavior is truly problematic. As is his apparent inability to accept responsibility for his actions. His presser was a joke (the best part by far was watching Andrew Breitbart at the beginning), and while I actually did feel sorry for Weiner briefly (I'm a soft-touch and want to believe the best in people and almost automatically accept words of regret, apologies, etc.), I was quickly reminded that he was only doing that, only saying those things, because he knew that more was coming out on him. He was backed into a corner and wanted to save his job. Period. He doesn't regret what he did, and he doesn't feel bad about anything except getting caught.

Accepting responsibility would have been owning up when the first image went out on his Twitter account. Instead, he lied to everyone: his wife, his colleagues in Congress, the Clintons, his two friends (well, maybe there's only the one, but I'm giving him benefit of the doubt that he may have two whole friends), the press, and the people. Heck, he called one journalist a "jackass" and was condescending and nasty throughout the interviews that he initiated with the press, all the while knowing that everything (and more) was true. He also had his staff call the police on reporters who were trying to question him. Add to that the Alinsky-style smear and deflect crap--that same tired "vast right-wing conspiracy" crap that all leftists trot out when they are caught, and the active attacks on Breitbart's character, even going so far as to perpetuate rumors that Breitbart was guilty of a federal crime . . . well, Weiner's just beneath contempt, isn't he?

All this talk of how Clinton survived his sex scandals in the same breath with talk of Weiner's is befuddling to me. Yes, I know that Clinton officiated at Weiner's wedding last year and that his wife is a long-time aid of Hillary, but there the comparisons end. The trouble with the comparison is two-fold. One, Clinton was the president; Weiner is a lowly congressman. Two, Clinton was well-liked by both his colleagues in the democrat party and by the people. Clinton was charming (still is, I guess), and he was likable. Even if you hated him, you kind of grudgingly liked him a bit, too. Or at least I did (and still do, I guess--not as president, of course, just generally, he's not offensive in his manner). That's not to say these two factors should count equally, or even that the likability factor should matter at all. Well, wait, yes that is exactly what I am saying.

People really don't like Weiner. Even among his own circle of commie loons, he's not finding a single person to stand up for him (indeed many in his own party want him to resign, including *cue Twilight Zone theme* Bill Clinton, and Harry Reid said for Weiner "to call somebody else" when asked what he'd say if Weiner called him for advice/support), and this is just as much a function of what an unlikable human being he is as it is of his behavior. We all know that the left would be circling the wagons around Clinton, even today, if he did the same exact thing. He would have lied, sure, but he would have been charming about it, he wouldn't have alienated everyone, as Weiner did and seems capable of doing simply by opening his mouth. Indeed, with the exception of Alan Grayson, I can think of no one that the dems would be so quick to run away from in a scandal--indeed, Grayson didn't get any support when he ran for reelection in Florida--the dems wanted him gone. He was a liability. Just as Weiner is.

If he manages to keep his job after next week (Congress will be back in session on Monday, and we'll see what they do), Weiner will never again enjoy the free reign he once did to lambast conservatives and point his icky finger at everyone else. He will always be the leering degenerate freak he appears to be in every photo he sent out (well, of his face, anyway), and the photo that should always be put up if he gets another serious interview is the Weiner and his "pussys" photo. No way am I putting that on my blog, but this one is perfect--purrfect?--because not only does it capture that disgusting perverted leer but it also shows that he hasn't mastered the fine art of creating plurals of words that end with the letter 'y' . . . a tricky lesson most often taught to second graders.

Grand Rapids Video and the American Spirit

2011-06-02T04:31:00.003-04:00

Saw this over at HotAir, and wow. It's a video response to Grand Rapids being listed as one of America's dying cities, and the locals decided to show otherwise. And boy did they come up with a great video.

Watching that I was struck by, as mentioned by Allahpundit linked above, how American it is. Not just the American nature of the vignettes in the video but the very reason for it. Criticize us, rip us apart with partisan political agendas, bash us, do what you will, but nothing defeats the American Spirit. And that's the message I took from this video: it may get worse before it gets better, but at the end of the day, the majority of Americans will do the right thing and defend our greatness, protect our neighbors, and stand together.

It's what we do.

Madcow on Conservative Media: Why Can't I Do That?

2011-06-01T07:57:00.003-04:00

So I'm flipping through the channels last night, and I land on Madcow's monologue about the horror of Sarah Palin refusing to engage the LSM (good for Sarah, I say, they've been relentless in their attacks on her, their shocking misogyny, and completely unfair and biased coverage of her). Madcow rambles on and on about how conservative media has made a habit of calling out the LSM on its bias and lack of truthfulness, how the only media you can trust is conservative media (I'm not sure this is true, I like to get more than one viewpoint, but if I had to listen to only one source of news, I'd definitely choose a conservative outlet). She is horrified that Rush and Fox actually point out that the LSM is attempting to influence events, craft cultural understanding, etc. And it's all true, it has. And the LSM has become increasingly relentless, shrill, and extreme as their desperation grows and their credence with the American people wanes.

And Madcow is sputtering mad about it . . . because, as you will see at about 8:40 or so , the progressives can't get it work for them!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

But when we try it, it never works! Gee, I wonder why not? And no, it's not that conservative media has been at it since the '60's (or whatever); it's because no one believes either the LSM or the progressive media. Heck, no one but the most koolaid-soaked sad case wants to listen to the latter on a regular basis, or at all (witness the bankruptcy of "Air America" and the horrid ratings of MSNBC itself).

But progressives, always working on a way to manipulate and control everyone and everything, aren't upset that Fox and Rush have found a formula that works . . . they're upset that even though they've tried the same strategy (that they, themselves, call manipulative, false, unethical, etc.) . . . they just can't get it to work for them.

And that, my friends, is all we really need to know about progressives.

Let's Spread Some (Entertainment and Fashion Industry) Wealth Around (repost)

2011-05-29T03:00:00.001-04:00

[I don't usually do reposts, but I was thinking about a new Fuzzy's Faux News post along these lines when I ran across this old post from October 1, 2009. So without further ado . . .]

You know how the libs are all gung-ho to let the government run our banking system and auto industry, capping salaries and bonuses, firing whomever the president wants? And you know how they are so eager to hand over our healthcare system to government? Well, let's look at this slippery slope a little more closely for some other areas of our economy that need to be government-run in order to reduce prices and increase "competition": the film, sports, television, music, and fashion industries (I didn't include news outlets because that would impinge on free speech, and more importantly, as the Constitution isn't really a factor in government decisions these days, the government already has its own outlets in that industry).

If capitalism is the liberals' nemesis, the monkey on the back of our society that precludes a Utopian ideal of egalitarian glee, then it only makes sense that we take a good long look at these industries, long-fueled by capitalism, indeed some might argue the pinnacle of capitalist success, greed, and excess (of course those would be people who don't understand the evils inherent in a free and open market and the rube concept of "supply and demand"). Let's look at the money they make, and the financial hardship they put on the government's ability to run Wall Street, Government Motors, and our proposed national healthcare system.

If any "businesses" (I almost used Candle's famous "so-called" there) need to have salary caps in place, they're in the entertainment and sports industries. These people make millions of dollars every year, what's Oprah's annual haul? Michael Moore's? Tiger Woods'? Kobe Bryant's? Johnny Depp's? Beyonce's? Julia Roberts'? Or whomever the latest rom-com goddess is? If high salaries are really an affront to liberals, then let's go where the money is. In movies (A-list actresses make what? $27 million a picture? A-list actors make $65 million a picture? That's an outrage. Actually, the whole "A-list" smacks of social inequity to me, and look at the sexism implicit in these numbers for females and males. Women make a paltry $27 million, while men make more than twice that? Appalling.) and in music, how much money do recording artists make? And in television (does anyone really need to make over half a million dollars for a one-hour drama series (no matter how damn good it is or how friggin' fantastic Kiefer is in every conceivable way?)? And in fashion? And in sports? Far too much according to the logic of the ditzy club who want to cap doctor's salaries at 100K and investment bankers at whatever other low six-figure range simply because "no one needs to earn that much."

Government intervention would also provide a "real and meaningful" way of going after video and music pirates, too! Once the government sets up its own film, television, music, fashion, and sports outlets, we can clamp down on the internet and actually oversee every single transaction, upload, and download that occurs. We could even imposes taxes on the very acts of up and downloading. It'll be brilliant! We can impose fines and jail time for anyone who views or listens to anything for free (unless they've filed Form I=0$ with the Federal Bureau of Entertainment Oversight, Regulation, and Taxation).

If the government would only take over Hollywood, sports, music, and fashion, think of all the wonderful piles of money that BO would have to "spread around" before we even set up oversight bureaucracies. It's all right there, in mansions, multiple homes on multiple continents, million dollar wardrobes, and billion dollar jewel, jet, and car collections (think of the enormous reduction in carbon footprints alone!). Lavish, languishing mounds of dough just waiting to be redistributed. And it's not a bad deal for the average citizen who would like to go to the movies without having to save up for a couple months to buy $15 popcorn, $10 sodas, and $7 candy for each member of the family. That adds up, especially when it's piled on the crazy cost of movie tickets, music cds, sports tickets, concerts, and designer fashion (including shoes!).

Let's get some government competition in there, and get those prices lowered. Let's cap salaries, put a national price on how much movie theaters and sports arenas can charge for, and how much entertainers can charge for music concerts. $1k a ticket is silly. So is $500. And $200, for that matter. Let's make a national cap of . . (oh, I'll pull this out of my cute little bottom like BO does his economic policies) . . $5 for all entertainment tickets and (umm) $5.50 for all clothing articles, including shoes. And of course provide subsidies for anyone who can't afford that. We'll have piles of money once we cap entertainers', designers', and athletes' salaries at . . . (another grab into the air for a figure) . . $250k per year. Hmmm. Should these people really make more than doctors and teachers? No. Let's drop that to a nice, living wage of $100k (of course most teachers don't make half that, but it is for the arts, after all).

We can have government film studios, music studios, sports teams, and fashion studios. It'll be great, we can all go out and watch the Boston Red Sox beat the BO Ostriches to win another World Series, and we can cheer as the New England Patriots take on the BO Barracudas in the Super Bowl. We will finally be able to afford American designers' clothing because the BO Fashion Emperor-ium will be there to ensure competition is strong (and the government will set prices). Imagine the possibilities.

That way entertainment is affordable, and that's good. Entertainment also has great health benefits, happy people are healthy people, so there's an added bonus for every Americans' health and quality of life. We'd be doing it for the common good, after all, to ensure that everyone in America has access to free movies, music, sports, and (perhaps most importantly) fashion.

Three cheers for wealth redistribution!! Let's hear it for government "competition" and "oversight"!!!
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Heh. My friend Dudge pointed out this vid to me, and it's so good I had to add it . . .

Of Tyrants

2011-05-26T22:18:00.004-04:00

I've been having that horrified, long, silent scream kind of feeling again. So much horror, so many pieces of a truly alarming puzzle, that I've been sitting here, quite overwhelmed.

Of Tyrants

BO has a brand new online propaganda czar whose job description apparently includes "destroying" anyone who dares to write critically of BO's anti- and unAmerican policies.

Be afraid.

Tyrants cannot tolerate dissent for two reasons: one, they tend to be unstable personalities with little self-esteem and an almost craven desire to have that filled in with adulation from the masses. It doesn't matter if the adulation is fake. It doesn't matter if the adulation doesn't even exist. It's all about the "appearance" of it: no dissent = adulation. Just listen to that plastic freak in Libya burble about how many millions love him. That's what tyrants need to believe because they are tiny little men.

By way of contrast, watch Prime Minister Netanyahu respond to a heckler:

Now watch that insecure, thin-skinned man-child in the WH respond to a heckler:

(It was hard to pick only one, for more on BO's snippy, petulant, smirking, whining nastiness: "everybody can buy a truck," "they talk about me like a dog,"and "folks waving tea bags around.")

Note the difference in temperament, how one man is clearly a confident, well-adjusted leader of a great nation and how the other is an insecure, unstable little man attempting to bend a great nation's people to his will . . . and "destroy" anyone who dares speak out against him.

The other reason tyrants can't tolerate freedom of speech, of course, is more straightforward, if there is no opposition media there can be no opposition party -- this from Obama's media and "diversity" (where "diversity" means "lockstep adulation for Teh Won") czar Mark Lloyd (who used to be the Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Soros arm of the destroy America now project), and is the true goal of this administration's attacks on Fox, push for net neutrality, internet kill switch, and now, the monitoring of conservative news and blog sites

Further noteworthy intrusions and police state monitoring include the SMART grid (which will monitor everything you do, including how much trash you create and how often you flush the toilet) and the mandatory cell phone alerts from Dear Leader (these will also pinpoint your exact location at the time of the alert, no opt-out).

Be very afraid.