Friday, January 21, 2011
Is the purpose of political parties to win elections?
John Hinderaker has received a lot of attention by dismissing Sarah Palin as a potential President. Palin for President? Forget It
His reason:
“No one with a 59 percent unfavorability rating among independents has the chance of a snowball in Hell of being elected President.”
A number of people have responded negatively, Michael Perry, for one.
John has defended his position. His reason is that
“The purpose of a political party is to win elections.”
I disagree. That’s objective of the operatives – the paid functionaries of a party; the hired guns. They are paid to win elections. They don’t even have to believe in the party’s objectives to do this.
The purpose of a political party is to advance an ideology, a theory of government. The Republican Party was founded on an idea, and Lincoln won because of the power of that idea whose time had come. Very few people go to the polls simply to be able to claim that they voted for the winner. I would not give a penny to any candidate or party simply to have said that I backed a winner.
THE primary reason for the emergence of the Tea Party is the fact that the Republicans forgot that the purpose is NOT to win, but to do. John goes on to say that:
“For the Republicans to capture the Presidency in 2012, we need to run the strongest possible candidate. That, quite obviously, is not Sarah Palin.”
That’s not obvious to me, but then I don’t believe that the ultimate purpose of political parties is to win elections. Neither do I believe that we should let our political opponents select our candidates, or that the next guy is line is the one that the Republicans should anoint. That’s what we did in 2008. How did that work out for you Republicans?
Perhaps we should run a stealth candidate that nobody knows so that the Left hasn’t had time to slime him or her? Perhaps the Republicans can run a secret candidate, the generic opponent who is now polling well against Obama, and reveal his name after Mr. X wins the election?
I have enjoyed reading Powerline and John’s contributions. But he has made me think seriously about switching my party affiliation from Republican to Independent. That way perhaps Republican party operatives, candidates and elected officials will want to appeal to my political objectives instead of assuming I'll support them just to say that I helped the Republican Party win the next election.
Labels: Conservative, election, Republicans, Tea Party
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Palin not "Presidential material?"
I sent this e-mail to a number of my favorite bloggers and writers this evening. I'll be interested in the response.
Reading the Conservative or Libertarian writers, I note that all come to the defense of Sarah Palin against the unfair attacks from the Left, but many also make the comment that they don’t think she is “Presidential material.” The reasons why are never clearly articulated. There may be good reasons for preferring another candidate, but I’m curious to learn what specific attributes disqualify her.
I blog at The Virginian and would like to write an essay in which I can quote leading lights on the Right/Libertarian side on their reasons for her disqualification. As a follow-up question, do you also find Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden or Mr. McCain unqualified? Why or why not? These are not rhetorical questions. I am genuinely curious.
I hope you will take a few moments to reply.
Thanks.
UPDATE: Gerard Van der Leun writes:
Ms. Palin is completely qualified to become President of the United States. Her actual experience in real government exceeds that of Barack Obama at the time he was elected to the office. In addition, Gov. Palin is the single most powerful Republican in the United States after the recent elections and is likely to remain so. I can understand the left moving to disqualify her in a relentless and frantic way. She is very threatening to them. At least as threatening as Reagan and probably, because of her relative youth, even more so. She can be on the national scene for a very long time. 2012 is not imperative for her. She also, after the last election, hold many, many political markers across the wide spectrum of Republicans.
Obama is now, after two years on the job, vaguely qualified to be president, albeit a very bad one.Biden is simply a joke but we have had jokes as presidents before -- Carter and Ford are the most recent.McCain was qualified to be president only because he happened to win the primary sweepstakes in 2007. If Palin does the same, she will be much more qualified than he was.
Here's a concept: Palin-Bachmann, 2012
UPDATE 2: Doug Ross writes:
I believe she is more qualified than either Obama or Biden.
There was a massive disinformation campaign waged against her from the moment of her being named McCain's running mate.
The after-effects of this campaign -- with hundreds of false messages posted on message boards within hours -- still linger to this day.
Rgds, Doug
Labels: Palin
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
NASA "Warmer" James Hanson Prefers Dictatorship to Democracy
It remains to be seen of anything can embarrass the shrinking band of global warmists. The head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hansen, is testing that question. In e-mails that have become public, he expresses his anger at free elections and a preference for China’s dictatorship.
The nation's most prominent publicly funded climatologist is officially angry about this, blaming democracy and citing the Chinese government as the "best hope" to save the world from global warming. He also wants an economic boycott of the U.S. sufficient to bend us to China's will.
His rants were published while he was in China in November but were only recently published by Marc Morano, formerly chief global-warming researcher for Sen. James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican.
According to Mr. Hansen, compared to China, we are "the barbarians" with a "fossil-money- 'democracy' that now rules the roost," making it impossible to legislate effectively on climate change. Unlike us, the Chinese are enlightened, unfettered by pesky elections. Here's what he blogged on Nov. 24:
"I have the impression that Chinese leadership takes a long view, perhaps because of the long history of their culture, in contrast to the West with its short election cycles. At the same time, China has the capacity to implement policy decisions rapidly. The leaders seem to seek the best technical information and do not brand as a hoax that which is inconvenient."
Hansen proposes that China organize a boycott of the United States,
"The United States then would be forced to make a choice. It could either address its fossil-fuel addiction ... or ... accept continual descent into second-rate and third-rate economic well-being."
This crank has been making climate change predictions for decades, telling an author in 1988 that in 20 years, New York’s West Side Highway would be under water and crime would rise because it would be warmer. This winter New York's problem has been snow removal.
What is it with the pampered beneficiaries of American exceptionalism? Tom Friedman, NY Times columnist and husband of a real estate heiress (who lives large in Maryland) admires China’s rulers’ ability to make decisions unhampered by the wishes of the people they rule. And now a leading government official would like to see China force America to its knees because Americans are skeptical enough of his doomsday predictions that they won’t give up their lifestyles while their betters live like kings. But, as Michael Barone points out, there is nothing new under the sun. In the 1920s Progressives admired ...
Mussolini, we were told then, made the trains run on time. He drained the Pontine marshes. He got things done while Americans, with their chaotic democratic politics, dithered.
Labels: global warming
Monday, January 17, 2011
"Eliminationist Rhetoric" – by Global Warmists!
With all the accusations of “elimationist rhetoric” being thrown at Conservatives, remember this?
Lots of people worked on this, both on screen and in support, without realizing how offensive it was. But then “Many people found the resulting film extremely funny, but unfortunately some didn’t and we sincerely apologize to anybody we have offended.”
They apologized for offending people, not for producing an offensive video. They have not disavowed murdering people who won’t cut their carbon footprints. Palin denounced violence: they didn’t. They’re just sorry the rest of us couldn’t see what good fun their video was.
Real images of killing people for failure to believe in Global Warming don’t seem to bother the Left. But let Sarah Palin talk about “targeting” a congresswoman for defeat in an election and the Left accuses her of incitement to murder.
Labels: crime, election, Palin, violence
P.J. O'Rourke on the NY Times
In the matter of self-serving, bitter, calculated cynicism, there wouldn’t seem to be much left to prove against the Times. Judging by what I’ve heard from my fellow conservatives, the issue is decided. The New York Times is a worthless, truthless, vicious institution. But I disagree. I think things are worse than that....
But liberalism, as personified by the New York Times, became a dotty old aunt sometime during the Johnson administration. She’s provincial, eccentric, and holds dull, peculiar views about the world. Still, she has our fond regard, and we visit her regularly in her nursing home otherwise known as Arts and Leisure and the Book Review. Or we did until Sunday, January 9, when she began spouting obscenities and exposing herself....
If we’re going to discuss dark, paranoid corners of the Internet that have an unwholesome influence on our national life, there’s the New York Times online.
There's nothing to add.
Labels: Liberalism, TimesLies
Sunday, January 16, 2011
"You are dead!"
Is issuing death threats - shouted to the person being threatened - in a public forum the sort of thing that President Obama should condemn?
What will Paul Krugman say?
What will Paul Krugman say?
Labels: Arizona, death threats, Liberalism
It's Magic
The technique of stage magic is misdirection. And Obama is a master of it. Example: the Tucson speech. A speech in which he said that political rhetoric was not the cause of the murders, but then spent the rest of the speech talking about political rhetoric.
Reading about parts of Obama’s speech, I was puzzled by the accolades it got from the Right. He gave them three words: “It did not,” (and they were not even in the written version of his speech) and they were ecstatic. Without those words, the entire speech could be read as an indictment of Conservative political rhetoric as the root cause of the rampage. After being pummeled by the Left for generations, the Stockholm Syndrome is alive and well among Conservative pundits. They need …they want … they desperately desire validation from the Left, and Obama is Leftist in Chief.
Byron York has an excellent analysis of this in the Washington Examiner. After stating that political rhetoric was not responsible for the shooting ...
...the president couldn't very well use the shootings as the premise for a national conversation about the tone of political debate, could he? Yes, he could. It might seem like a stretch -- even to a calculating Democratic strategist -- for Obama to portray Jared Loughner's insanity as the proper starting point for a national debate about civility in politics. Yet that is what he did.
And employing a tactic that in a less sentimental atmosphere would have been seen as breathtakingly cynical, Obama enlisted Christina Taylor Green, the nine year-old girl killed in the shootings, to support his cause. "She saw [politics] through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often take just for granted," Obama said. "I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -- we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations."
How can America live up to Christina's expectations? According to Obama, by making sure that her death "helps usher in more civility in our public discourse…because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make [the victims] proud." In other words: Christina would have wanted us to tone down the rhetoric. The calculating Democratic strategist would have been very, very happy.
According to the Left, the shootings should not spur a national debate over the detection and treatment of the mentally ill, internet gaming, the conspiracy movie Zeitgeist or books by Hitler or Marx – all of which have ties to Loughner. No, the debate should be about shutting down the voices on the Right, voices that he never heard, not even through the fillings in his teeth.
That’s a pretty good trick.
UPDATE: It turns out that one of the people Loughner shot is also a violent Leftist nut.
Labels: Arizona, crime, Liberalism, Obama
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Lincoln on the blood libel of 1860 - the Cooper Union Speech.
Powerline notes that Abraham Lincoln was the victim of a smear like Sarah Palin. He replied in his famous Cooper Union speech:
You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it. . .
Which sounds very much like Glenn Reynolds' defense of Sarah Palin here:
To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
The quote of the Cooper Union speech at Powerline is truncated. Here is what Lincoln went on to say after he accused the Democrats of making assertion that is not backed up with fact:
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came, and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party.
There is an eery foreshadowing of the accusations made by modern Democrats against Palin and the Tea Party. The election the Democrats lost ... the accusation that Conservative speech and doctrines cause the murderous rampage ... the fact that the killer, Jared Loughran, like the slaves of Lincoln's time, scarcely knew of Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and the Tea Party.
And those calls for stifling speech were also present 150 years ago when Lincoln spoke.
These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.
It is worth reading, or rereading, the Cooper Union speech because it says much about the divisions in our country and the dishonesty of those who would divide us. Lincoln ends:
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. LET US HAVE FAITH THAT RIGHT MAKES MIGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH, LET US, TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUR DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT.
A fig for those who assert that Palin's response is less than Presidential.
Could Palin be the next Lincoln? (Liberal heads exploding).
Labels: Liberalism, Palin
Another Madman Firing Indiscriminately
Jared Lee Loughner and "privileged discourse."
Something has been nagging me in the back of my mind. Where – this side of sanity – would you expect to hear the question: 'What is government if words have no meaning?'
It’s the question Jared Loughner posed to Gabrielle Giffords at a meeting in 2007. Then I read this at Small Dead Animals … it was an “aha” moment. Of course; the faculty lounge in the English (or "Fill in the Blank Studies”) Department of any university.
Jared Lee Loughner, appears to be insane. But if we are going there, let's go the full distance: He appears to be an atheist Nietzschean enthusiast for the Communist Manifesto whose obsession with language resembles the PC fixation on "privileged discourse." So let's try to stick to the facts.
What about another Loughner quote:
[I’m]…talking about the kind of existentialist chaos that exists in our own lives and our inability to overcome the sense of alienation and frustration we experience when we try to create bonds of intimacy and solidarity with one another…
I kid, I kid.
That’s a quote from Cornel West that I found at the top of a Google search of famous quotes by West.
Here is John Derbyshire on West's book Race Matters:
... it was just so badly written and constructed that you couldn't tell what it was trying to say. You could have scissored that book up into its constituent words, rearranged them in random order, printed the result as another book, and not been able to tell the difference.
I am totally confident that if you provided the Loughner question to any modern English professor and told him or her that the quote was by West (I'm not picking on West, he's the first verbose whackjob that came to mind), they would give you an interpretation that is anything other than the meaningless mental meanderings of a nut. In that respect, the modern academy is much like the emperor in the fable with the wonderful new clothes, they will see something if it validates their ego.
It's another thing they can't stand about Sarah Palin; she calls BS where she finds it.
Labels: Academia, Arizona, crime, Palin
Pat Caddell: NY Times columnist Krugman ‘a flat-out asshole’
From Small Dead Animals (one of my favorite sites)
Pat Caddell is a lifelong Democrat. He is a public opinion pollster & adviser who worked for Democrat presidential candidates Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden, George McGovern, Gary Hart, and Jerry Brown. His credentials on the Left side of the political aisle are rock solid.But he is also a man of principle and a proud American who only wants the best for his country.
So he called Paul Krugman an asshole.
The Daily Caller:
On Fox News Channel’s Friday airing of “Red Eye,” host Greg Gutfeld wondered if the media were in denial over the notion it had little to do with the actions of Jared Loughner, the suspect in the recent Tucson, Ariz. shooting.
“Here’s an interesting point — as the truth comes out about this nutcase, doesn’t it seem like the media can’t believe that the killer doesn’t care about them?” Gutfeld asked. “It’s like they think they had an impact on him, when in fact all he cares about is UFOs.”
That led Caddell to launch into a rant about the media, specifically naming New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman and Newsweek and Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter.
“[T]he point is – you know, this thing started – I have to say, when I look at [Paul] Krugman and Jonathan Alter, with his advice and the president, ‘Don’t let this go to waste – let’s make it like Oklahoma City,’ and Krugman who is just a flat-out asshole, I’m sorry – these people what they did…”
Maine Governor to NAACP:"They're a special interest group"
The "kiss my butt" comment is getting all the press, but the Governor asserts that the NAACP wanted him to meet just black prisoners in prison.
This may be a watershed moment. The NAACP and the rest of the Black community have been an integral part of the Democrat party for nearly a century. They have been active in support of Democrats in every election. No single group votes more solidly Democrat than Blacks. Yet politicians of both parties have been expected to attend their events and act as if they were politically neutral. We may just have seen the first public acknowledgement by a Republican governor that the spell of racial guilt has broken. Impatience with victimology has crested and become a flood tide. It’s evident in the Tea Party movement who supported LePage in his recent election and it's evident in Sarah Palin who will not bow down to liberal shibboleths.
In a way it’s healthy and in a way it’s a shame. Healthy in the respect that people will no longer be shamed or victimized because of the color of their skin. A shame because an organization that did a lot in the past to right racial wrongs is now so much a part of a political machine that it has lost its leverage with the other party.
Labels: Palin, Race, Tea Party
Shock CBS Poll: 77% of Americans are Extremist Teabaggers, Want to Cut Government Spending.
Shock CBS Poll: 77% of Americans are Extremist Teabaggers, Want to Cut Government Spending
Sadly, there are still the the diehard, far left relics who think it would be a good idea to pay more taxes to reduce the monstrous deficits racked up by Obama, Pelosi and Reid. Upside: It's only 9% of the public.
Shock CBS Poll: 77% of Americans are Extremist Teabaggers, Want to Cut Government Spending
Sadly, there are still the the diehard, far left relics who think it would be a good idea to pay more taxes to reduce the monstrous deficits racked up by Obama, Pelosi and Reid. Upside: It's only 9% of the public.
I blame Sarah Palin and the Tea Party!
Labels: Palin, taxes, Tea Party
Once More unto the Breach of Civility
David Kahane at National Review gets the tone exactly right.
Read the whole thing!
Who’s to blame for Tucson? Why, Sarah Palin and you, of course.
Like many of us stalwart men of the Progressive-Media-Entertainment Complex, I have never been so beamish. As the president explained so eloquently Wednesday night, what happened in Tucson was a tragedy and all, but watching the wild-eyed Nobel laureate, Paul Krugman, pin the Glock on the elephant in the pages of the New York Times was simply wonderful. Based on nothing more than the loud voices coming through the fillings in his teeth, our bearded, pot-bellied superhero leapt into action the day after the Tucson shootings and started pointing the finger of blame where it always belongs: at Sarah Palin and the “climate of hate” she has brought down from Mystery, Alaska, to torment us here in the Lower 48. Naturally, a few of you protested that there was no actual evidence that the hated succubus who haunts our fever dreams and saps our purity of essence had anything to do with the gunman. Nor did any of the other right-wing crazies on our (symbolic!) hit lists — and you Limbaugh-loving teabaggers know who you are....
In the fantasy world in which we dwell, the only thing that counts is what’s inside our heads, and in our heads is where Sarah Palin lives and where she willfully continues to insert herself into the national conversation. Raised on relativism, psychiatry, and sociology; on values instead of morals; on transactional relationships instead of “absolute truths”; on heavy-metal music, atheism, and abortion on demand — we long ago slipped the moorings of empiricism and have ascended to the rarefied heights of Cockaigne and Cloud Cuckoo Land. Black is white, up is down, in is out — this is our world and you’re not welcome to it. Because it’s not for you to say what you do and do not stand for — we’ll be the judge of that....
You seethe with anger over the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama II, still believe along with the racist Framers that black people are only worth three-fifths of white people, and that women belong barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, unless they’re in the delivery room. On the slightest pretext you will reach for your guns, especially in a toxic atmosphere like this one, and, like that right-wing assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, you will commit any atrocity — even if it means “disguising” yourself as a Marxist and pro-Castro agitator just to fool us. There’s no end to your devilry.
So is it any wonder we immediately assume that you personally are responsible for everything bad that occurs in the world, you and Sarah Palin? Your very existence can only be an encouragement to nutballs, crazies, weirdos, and jackasses everywhere either to pick up a gun and start shooting, or to think about picking up a gun and start shooting, which to us is exactly the same thing. Like the somnambulists in Christopher Nolan’s Inception, we’ve drilled down so far into our dreams that reality and fantasy are indistinguishable, and we figure that if credentialed Ivy Leaguers like ourselves can’t tell the difference, why should you Dogtooth State Teachers College johnnies be any different?
Forget all that stuff we were saying about knives and gunfights and enemies and hanging Joe Lieberman in effigy, killing Henry Hyde, etc.; that was just our typical, high-spirited use of metaphor. Putting aside all the smashed plate-glass windows, the “Days of Rage,” and the photoshopped pictures of %$#@BUSH#$@! as the love child of Dracula and Hitler; we’re just a bunch of pot-smoking, fun-loving pacifist draft-dodgers at heart. This violence thing — we don’t really mean it, and you know it....
You, on the other hand, could be sitting on the sofa in your living room in your jammies, watching Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm with your dozens of dogs and children, slurping a Shave Ice and snuggling with the old ball and chain you’ve been irrationally tethered to for the past 20 years, and we would know — we would just know — that under the cushions you’ve got an AK-Uzi with 47 rounds in it, locked and loaded and on full automatic, or whatever, and you’re just itching to use it on us or one of our protected minority groups, all of whom you loathe because, after all, you are nothing if not haters.
Which is why I’m beaming. Because we lovers finally stood up to you swaggering bullies, who dominate every conversation even if there’s only one of you in the room against a dozen of us. We unleashed “The End Is Near” Krugman, foam-flecked Chris Matthews, dyspeptic Bill Maher, and every other arrow in our quiver to pin you against the wall, fill you full of lead, eviscerate you, decapitate you, burn your houses to the ground, rape your women, loot your treasure, and send your children into slavery. Like Sherman marching through Georgia, we sent our caissons rolling along, brought down the hammer and targeted you for —
Whoops! Got carried away with my martial metaphors there!
Read the whole thing!
Labels: Arizona, humor, Liberalism, Palin
Friday, January 14, 2011
Addressing a Blood Libel
A day before Sarah Palin posted her response to the accusations of being complicit in the murders in Tucson, the Wall Street Journal printed an op-ed by Professor Glenn Reynolds: The Arizona Tragedy and the Politics of Blood Libel and no media firestorm erupted. What a difference when Sarah Palin makes exactly the same argument.
Ed Driscoll has a good summary of the problem that the MSM has because of the blood libel it has spread regarding Conservatives and the Tea Party in general and Palin, Limbaugh, Beck and others specifically. He makes his point brilliantly with this photoshopped image:
The answer to Driscoll's question can be found in a column by Donald Luzatto, who wrote The rush to judgment this morning which is partly incomprehensible and the parts that are comprehensible are wrong. Let’s take his comments in order.
When U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot and six others killed in Tucson, it took literally moments for politicians and pundits to start blaming each other.
This is simply, deliberately and maliciously wrong. Within moments politicians were not blaming anyone. As the news broke the media was gettin it wrong. Then the Media pundits on the Left lost no time blaming the Right, specifically focusing on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party. The two at the forefront of the attack were Paul Krugman in the NY Times and Markos Moulitsas in Daily Kos. Following these attacks, the rest of the MSM followed suit with virtually every story including images of Palin’s map which showed districts that were being targeted by conservatives in the last election for wins over Democrats. The implication was while there was no evidence that Palin pulled the trigger, (hint, hint, nudge, nudge) a map showing potentially vulnerable Democrat districts indicated by surveyor’s marks was actually an invitation for someone to kill Democrats. The members of the MSM, with their ignorance about guns were calling these marks the crosshairs on a gun sight and assigned the blame for the murders in Tucson, not on a deranged killer, but on their enemies on the Right.
We’ve carried some of that chatter on these pages because it was and is representative of the conversation going on, and we thought you should know.
There are lots of things the Virginian Pilot refused to print on its pages to let us know what's going on, things like the Mohammad cartoons that caused fatal riots worldwide. I have no knowledge of the process by which the Pilot decided to print Krugman’s blood libel on its editorial page; but if the ravings of Krugman was a vital part of the “conversation” so were the ravings of the killer, which the Pilot did not carry, or the response by Palin, which the Pilot did not print either.
Then there’s this:
Nevertheless, I’m sorry. Not for printing the finger-pointing pieces, but that this national conversation of ours has gotten so counterproductive, so destructive.
Have you ever seen a more perfect example of “it’s not my fault, it’s yours?”
The New York Times has been rightfully criticized for jumping, within hours, to the conclusion that the martial language of the right wing led to the shooting. It was an assumption unworthy of a thoughtful editorial board. Not because the tone of the right wing and the left aren’t worth criticizing. They certainly are. But because Jared Lee Loughner’s motives are so occluded by what appears to be a thorough mental illness that we may never understand them. Paul Krugman, a columnist for The Times, sadly connected similar dots.
Seeing that the vast majority of the people were not buying the media narrative – that Right wing “eliminationist rhetoric" in Krugman’s words - was to blame, Luzatto wisely decided to throw the NY Times under the bus. But he can’t help assuming, with evidence to the contrary, that the NY Times has a "thoughtful editorial board." To help Luzatto out, are Loughner’s motives so occluded? Are the ravings of a mentally ill person who wrote “die bitch” on a letter sent by his victim so incomprehensible? And what does that last sentence mean; the one about Krugman connecting the dots? Is Luzatto calling Loughner and Krugman both nuts, or are the dots that Krugman used to connect Palin to the murders legitimate?
Luzatto - and most of Palin's critics on the Left - has a problem with Palin’s use of the term “blood libel” even though Professor Alan Dershowitz, no right winger he, has defended her use of the term.
If The Times’ editorialists and others actually believe the tea party set the table for Loughner, even if indirectly, then there is nothing left to say. If Sarah Palin and her supporters truly believe critics are persecuting her, then there’s no changing their minds.
What to make of this comment? There is a lot left to say if the NY Times continues its attempt to blame the Right for the murders. It is the right and the duty of anyone who values the truth and civility to point out that this is a “blood libel.” And if Palin’s critics, who are some of the most powerful figures in the media and the Democrat party, are smearing her with accusations that she is somehow responsible for the murders in Tucson are not persecuting her, what does actual persecution look like?
Some terms, like “blood libel” have become generic terms, like Kleenex or Xerox, despite efforts of their owners to protect their use. “Holocaust” is going the same way. The reason is simple; it’s a good descriptive term for an accusation that‘s so evil and out of bounds that it’s infamous. The attacks on Palin are of this nature and her use of the term was right and proper. Her use was also deliberate. Palin is a battler, unlike the typical career politician whose tenure in office depends on blandness coupled with the protection of incumbency. Think about how she got to be governor of Alaska. She battled both the entrenched Republican establishment and the Democrats to win the Alaska Governorship. Conservatives are thrilled to find someone who is willing to battle for them, who will not back down or apologize for the words they use. I’m thinking of one of a long list of Republicans who were accused of using the wrong words and thought that apologizing would make it go away: Senator citizen George Allen who was touted as presidential material and was a well-respected Virginia Governor. No political figure who wants to reach the top will ever succeed if she allows her opponents to define her and who backs down when challenged. Palin will win because she’s not following the tried and true Republican path to failure.
Read the rest of Luzatto's column if you will. It’s the kind of thing that Obama does well, having demonized his enemies either in person or via surrogates; he then gives a speech in which he rises above it all, laying the blame on everyone except himself.
One of the primary reasons for the acrimony is that the political class have failed. They are failing to protect us from attack while making air travel a travesty. They are failing to protect the nation’s financial future. Schools are failing entire generations of children. Illegal aliens are crossing our borders by the millions while even more millions of jobs are outsourced and Americans are being thrown out of work. They have denied that programs like Social Security and Medicare are in the process of going broke. They have added a monstrous new entitlement that will only accelerate the process of national bankruptcy. They are responsible for creating a housing crisis which led to a financial panic with led to high unemployment as far as the eye can see. They have created energy policies that are driving the price of fuel ever higher. By preventing the development of domestic oil, we are funding the war effort of Muslim extremists. These same policies are turning millions of tons of food into an inefficient fuel additive while around the world food prices are skyrocketing. You may disagree, but the vast majority of the country agrees with me. For evidence, note that when the last Congress left town it had an approval rating in the single digits. No one likes them.
What do all these policies have in common? They are all Liberal prescriptions. The last election saw an historic repudiation of Liberalism and for the first time in several generations a truly broad based populist movement sprang up … the Tea Party. But Liberals are not going to allow their hands to slip from the levers of power if they can help it and the murders in Tucson were seized on as an opportunity to smear the Tea party and one of its leading lights – Sarah Palin – as dangerous enablers of murder. A decade ago it may have worked; talk radio was still young and the New Media was just being born. The Internet as a means of popular communication and dialog still had limited exposure. The NY Times was still setting the agenda for the old media and the alphabet networks. No more. The information and communication revolution lives. The Tea Party fought back … and to the despair of those whose voices were once the only ones speaking … it won.
Get used to it.
NOTE: This essay has been edited since first posted.
NOTE: This essay has been edited since first posted.
Labels: Arizona, Palin, Tea Party, Virginian Pilot
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Jobless claims jump, wholesale food costs surge
For the first time in my memory a story about the economy mired in despond does not begin with the word: UNEXPECTEDLY! For some reason, the MSM never sees this coming. After all, when the Lightworker's in charge, this can't be happening.
(Reuters) - U.S. jobless claims jumped to their highest level since October last week while food and energy costs lifted producer prices in December, pointing to headwinds for an economy that has shown fresh vigor.
Can you say "stagflation?"
Where is this "fresh vigor" that's Reuters is referring to? Let’s face facts, why should companies hire more people when they are making very good money with the people they have? So why should anyone be surprised that massive hiring is NOT going on? Despite liberal desires, companies do not have as their primary objective the creation of jobs; that is a byproduct of being successful. With current levels of unemployment, people are getting their finances in order by paying off debt instead of incurring new debt; with houses continuing to lose value, making it difficult to move to a new location for a new job, what sane executive is going to go on a hiring spree absent a jump in demand for his product?
We are in for a long period of high unemployment while the President and the Democrats in congress attempt to bring about change through a command and control approach to economic growth. The same people who have managed to turn the postal monopoly into a gigantic money loser can’t be expected to determine which industry or technology will be the next big thing.
And need we be reminded that Obama has told us that the future of the job market is the "green energy" industry?
Evergreen Solar is laying off 800 people in Devens, MA after receiving $60 million in government aid. This is an example of how the great green job machine works in reality. 800 people are now out on the street because of the unrealistic promises of politicians who are totally ignorant of both technology and business. How anyone could believe that Massachusetts could produce solar cells competitively with China, when even the iPad is being assembled offshore is a testament to either ignorance or wishful thinking. It is also a testament to the cavalier attitude of politicians to the money they take from taxpayers.
Finally, does anyone who writes about the cost of living ever go to the grocery store and shop for food? I wondered about this when the media made fun of Sarah Palin for saying that food prices are rising. Palin was right about food prices and the shootings in Arizona, yet not enough people inside the Beltway take her seriously. Of course no one took Reagan seriously either.
Here's an article from Reuters:
Wheat prices rose 47 percent last year, corn more than 50 percent and U.S. soybeans by 34 percent. The U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said in its report key grains prices could rise further, a view underlined by a U.S. report published on Wednesday....
For China, corn prices are just too high, so it has canned a proposal to import millions of tonnes of the grain in 2011, two industry sources with knowledge of the plan said on Thursday.
The initial Chinese proposal had been drawn up as a way to combat food inflation, a worry for Beijing because China's food inflation is running in double digits....
Data earlier showed that India's food inflation pulled back slightly from a year high of more than 18 percent to just below 17 percent.
In case you have not noticed, the US is part of a global economy, not insulated from the effects of commodity prices throughout the world, as you have noticed every time you fill your tank. And yet, the American government is continuing to mandate that millions of tons of corn should be converted into an inefficient gas additive to "solve" an non-existing crisis while fostering the real possibility of global starvation.
Labels: Economy, Greens;, Obama, Palin, Reagan
Why do these Liberals feel no fear in making death threats to Sarah Palin in the open?
William Jacobson raises an interesting question Death Wishes Like It's Party Time
He questions whether the people wishing her dead via bullet, or cancer or dying "gnashing her teeth" are making death threats in a legal sense. Perhaps, perhaps not. But keep in mind that Loughner wrote on a letter from Representative Giffords: "Die Bitch." Before this weekend, we didn't know if it was a threat or a wish. We do now.
In the comments "V the K" notes that
I think it's because violent, impulsive, hate-filled people are drawn to social groups where such behavior is acceptable. Since the left is far more accommodating of hate (provided it is directed at approved targets) than the right, haters are drawn to the left.
Let's not also forget that political violence is not merely tolerated on the left, but actually celebrated. No one on the right is going to show up at a Tea Party rally in an Eric Rudolph T-shirt. There are no right-wing collegians with posters of Tim McVeigh on their walls. But mass murderers like Che Guevara and Mao Tse-Tung and cop-killers like Mumia Abu Jamal are celebrated as heroes on the left; and their images adorn T-shirts, posters, and flags at most any progressive gathering.
I had never considered that, but he's absolutely right.
THE TEMPLATE
Why Liberals Hate the Constitution
Frank J. Fleming explains:
Since there are many more conservatives than liberals, and conservatives have so many guns, people often wonder why conservatives don’t just round up all the liberals and ship them to Antarctica to be forced to mine for jewels and gold. Well, there is a very good reason for that: by a strict constructionist interpretation of the American Constitution, there is no support for being able to deport liberals to a mining camp.
A judge looking for justification in the "living constitution" would find that Constitutional under the commerce clause. Read the whole thing.
Labels: Constitution, humor, Law
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Sarah Palin statement on the tragedy in Arizona
Is Barack Obama’s Rhetoric Responsible for the Tucson Massacre?
Rush Limbaugh is making a big point about the fact that Good Morning America (GMA) interviewed a friend of the shooter who said he never listened to political radio, did not watch TV, but was a big fan of Liberal conspiracy movies claimed that 9/11 was an inside job and that Jesus was a myth; that big bankers were evil.
Rush then went on to play some Obama speeches and referred to his Leftist allies in Hollywood.
Rush then went on to play some Obama speeches and referred to his Leftist allies in Hollywood.
Labels: Arizona, Culture, Entertainment, Liberalism, Obama, Palin
I like a good political smear as well as the next guy ...
Glenn Reynolds links to Brad Sherman (D-CA) on FOX News stating
What I found instructive was is assertion that the assassin was a right-wing nut. The accusation begins at 2:58 on the tape. He also mis-characterizes Sharron Angle's references to a 2nd Amendment solutions to tyranny as a call for the violent take-over of congress if she could not win at the ballot box. Angle's comments are not the ones I would have used, but they are certainly less vigorous than Thomas Jefferson's admonition that
As political smear by a smiling dork, Sherman is a master. You would be amazed what you can get away with on TV if the interviewer does not have a transcript in front of him.
"Whether [political rhetoric] caused what happened in Tucson or not, it’ll cause the next tragedy."
What I found instructive was is assertion that the assassin was a right-wing nut. The accusation begins at 2:58 on the tape. He also mis-characterizes Sharron Angle's references to a 2nd Amendment solutions to tyranny as a call for the violent take-over of congress if she could not win at the ballot box. Angle's comments are not the ones I would have used, but they are certainly less vigorous than Thomas Jefferson's admonition that
But what does Jefferson know about fighting for freedom? Sherman would have advocated shunning and silencing him.And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not
warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of
resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as
to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost
in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
It is its natural manure."
As political smear by a smiling dork, Sherman is a master. You would be amazed what you can get away with on TV if the interviewer does not have a transcript in front of him.
Labels: biased reporting, Liberalism
Paul Krugman is a Dangerous Liar
Paul Krugman wrote a column in which he accused Michelle Bachman, (R, MN) of using “eliminationist rhetoric” when she used the phrase “armed and dangerous.” The folks at Powerline note that she used the phrase in a radio interview with one of them, so they know exactly the context in which it was used.
The point is that there's room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn't any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.
As it happens, I--unlike Krugman--know all about Michele's "armed and dangerous" quote, because she said it in an interview with Brian Ward and me, on our radio show. It was on March 21, 2009. The subject was the Obama administration's cap and trade proposal. Michele organized a couple of informational meetings in her district with an expert on global warming and cap and trade, and she came on our show to promote those meetings. She wanted her constituents to be armed with information on cap and trade so that they would understand how unnecessary, and how damaging to our economy, the Obama administration's proposal was. That would make them dangerous to the administration's left-wing plans.
The interview illustrates quite well the difference between Michele Bachmann and Paul Krugman. Krugman is a vicious hater. He rarely argues any issue on the merits, but prefers to smear those who disagree with him.
Krugman, who is a professor at Princeton as well as a NY Times opinion writer, is not stupid person, yet he deliberately lies about the meaning of what Bachman said. Powerline attributes it to laziness. That is probably too charitable. The fact is that using his megaphone at the NY Times he is able to mislead and lie about one of his political opponents. He knows that many people are going to believe him because they do not have access to the context. He knows this and does it anyway, creating an environment of hate. Hate, against a female representative in Minnesota. Hate that could very well cause another nut case, finely poised on the edge of violence, to commit the next political murder.
But the publisher of the NY Times who would like to see a Vietnamese soldier kill an American soldier has no compunction about setting one of his political enemies up for the kill.
As Roger Simon points out, the Left, in it's 60's incarnation, liked to riot, bomb and kill. It had it's incendiaries and its apologists in the media then, as now. And then, as now, it used the tactics taught by Alinsky, calling for civility while egging on the Left while absolving them from responsibility.
As Roger Simon points out, the Left, in it's 60's incarnation, liked to riot, bomb and kill. It had it's incendiaries and its apologists in the media then, as now. And then, as now, it used the tactics taught by Alinsky, calling for civility while egging on the Left while absolving them from responsibility.
And some of these pundits and pols are old enough to remember. Apparently, they choose not to. But to remind them, we were in an era then of genuine political assassination — RFK, MLK — not faux political assassination (actually the purposeless, near random act of a paranoid schizophrenic.) But as I recall few were calling for us to dial down the rhetoric. The anti-government forces had tons of supporters in the media, silent partners cheering on all but their most violent acts (and who knows about those). Norman Mailer, among many others, made his life and reputation in such a manner on the “steps of the Pentagon.” Hey, hey, LBJ, indeed.
In a very real way the media were the secret sharers of the radical left. As a young media member and novelist I knew this well. The most radical of us were acting out our hidden dreams for the rest. We condemned them occasionally and ritually, but rarely vehemently. The Weather Underground and even later the execrable Symbionese Liberation Army were never treated in the press with quite the opprobrium they now reserve for the tea party movement. As Baudelaire put it, “Mon semblable, mon frère.” The worst of the radical left were just like the rest of us, but with a little extra edge.
Labels: biased reporting, Liberalism, TimesLies
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Sarah Palin Get Death Threats
Via Patterico's Pontifications.
How's this for eliminationist rhetoric?
How's this for eliminationist rhetoric?
At this point you can be sure that she is being forced to hire guards for herself and her family. I blame the MSM. You can be sure that if Palin is attacked, the MSM will demand that we "don't jump to conclusions," as they did after Major Hassan went on his killing spree shouting "Allahu Akbar." There has been an incredible amount of hatred stirred up against Sarah Palin; I fear for her safety.
Labels: crime, Liberalism, Palin
Questions for Sheriff Dupnik
At Patterico’s Pontifications, Patrick Frey raises a few questions about Sheriff Dupnik.
- The suspected shooter has made death threats before and been contacted by law-enforcement officers, but the threats weren’t against Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, Dupnik said. The suspect is unstable, Dupnik said, but the sheriff would not say he is “insane.”
- “As we understand it, there have been law enforcement contacts with the individual where he made threats to kill,” Dupnik said during a press conference Saturday evening. But he wouldn’t say who those threats were aimed at.
- We know that CBS News reported that Lougher’s community college professor had called 911...
Labels: crime, Democrats, Liberalism
Krugman's Toxic Rhetoric.
The Economist, not a right wing publication, takes Paul Krugman to task for his fact free and frankly delusional rhetoric about the supposed “climate of hate” he accuses conservatives of fostering.
HOW did a deadly shooting spree by a disturbed young man with the typically inscrutable politics of political killers turn into a crazy referendum on the state of American political discourse? ...
In today's column on America's alleged "climate of hate", Mr Krugman reports that he's been "expecting something like this atrocity to happen" since 2008, conjures in his fevered imagination a "rising tide of violence", and spots his hated political foes behind it all...
What's more, unless the ranting right reins in the kind of talk that leaves Mr Krugman "with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach", "Saturday’s atrocity will be just the beginning." Welcome to crazytown, my friends, where it does not seem crazy to disgorge toxic, entirely evidence-free rhetoric about the mortal threat of toxic rhetoric....
Why are we even having this conversation? It's nuts. It's offensive....
If we're going to associate Loughner with anyone, let's at least associate him with one of his obsessions:
Mr Loughner's obsession with language as a form of control seems rather less like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin than Max Stirner, Michel Foucault, or even left-leaning linguists such as George Lakoff and Geoffrey Nunberg....But nobody's going to try to smear Max Stirner, George Lakoff, or David Wynn Miller in the pages of the New York Times by recklessly associating their teachings with the tragedy in Tucson because, well, that would be completely bonkers and, more importantly, Max Stirner, George Lakoff, and David Wynn Miller didn't just recapture the House.
Touché
But it we’re allowed to speculate without concrete evidence, just by using our “gut,” let’s try to reason why Krugman is pursuing what appears to be a totally irrational path. Assuming Krugman is not mentally ill (always a possibility) let’s connect the dots:
- He works for the NY Times
- Published by the virulently Leftist Arthur Sulzberger.
- Who sided with the Communists during the war in Viet Nam.
- And thinks he can pull a coup against the Republicans following their win in November’s elections.
Krugman has his marching orders and is going on the attack at the behest of his bosses. After a few days, "Krazy Krugman" is beginning to resemble General George Pickett. This may be the high water mark of the Leftist Confederacy and the Ruling Class.
Labels: biased reporting, Liberalism, Palin, ruling class, Tea Party, TimesLies
Monday, January 10, 2011
Jared Loughner’s Anti-War Views
As more information comes to light about Jared Loughner, it will become more and more evident that he was a nut with Leftist views.
Read more at the Volokh Conspiracy.
On July 7, 2010, Loughner posted his assertion that the war(s) in Iraq and Afghanistan “is a war crime from the Geneva Convention articles of 1949”:...
From reading through page after page of Jared Lee Loughner’s rantings, I see no evidence that he has changed from the left winger that he was in 2007. Indeed, less than six months ago, he was calling the Iraq and Afghan Wars “war crimes” under the Geneva Convention.
Read more at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Labels: crime, Liberalism
“If Our Colleges And Universities Do Not Breed Men Who Riot…”
As the Progressive miasma obscures the facts about the shooting in Arizona, Ed Driscoll reminds us that it has been the Progressives who have stood with violent radicals, killers and Communists, with North Viet Nam and with rewriting history. It is worth remembering so that we can say with our brothers: "Never again."
Bobby Kennedy:
As Kennedy began [to speak at Kansas State U.], his voice cracked, and those near the stage noticed his hands trembling and his right leg shaking.After praising [Al] Landon’s distinguished career, he said, “I am also glad to come to the home state of another great Kansan, who wrote, ‘If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all their youthful vision and vigor then there is something wrong with our colleges. The more riots that come on college campuses, the better the world for tomorrow.’ ” …
Arthur Sulzberger:
‘If a young American soldier comes upon a young North Vietnamese soldier, which one do you want to see get shot?’ Arthur answered, ‘I would want to see the American get shot.
George McGovern on winning in Viet Nam:
“What you don’t understand is that I didn’t want us to win that war.” Mr. McGovern was not alone. He was part of a small but extremely influential minority who eventually had their way.
Hollywood:
The award for Best Feature Documentary went to the film Hearts and Minds, a vicious piece of propaganda that assailed American cultural values as well as our effort to assist South Vietnam’s struggle for democracy. The producers, Peter Davis and Bert Schneider [who plays a role in David Horowitz’s story—see page 31], jointly accepted the Oscar. Schneider was frank in his support of the Communists. As he stepped to the mike he commented that “It is ironic that we are here at a time just before Vietnam is about to be liberated.” Then came one of the most stunning—if intentionally forgotten—moments in Hollywood history. As a struggling country many Americans had paid blood and tears to try to preserve was disappearing beneath a tank onslaught, Schneider pulled out a telegram from our enemy, the Vietnamese Communist delegation in Paris, and read aloud its congratulations to his film. Without hesitating, Hollywood’s most powerful people rewarded Schneider’s reading of the telegram with a standing ovation.
The Progressive/Left are not good people, they are not deluded; we are experiencing another example of the evil they promote today.
Labels: biased reporting, Liberalism, media, The Press
Sunday, January 09, 2011
Why the MSM will be the biggest victim of Loughner
If you are of a certain age, you also remember that JFK’s assassin was supposed to be a right winger – because Texas was "Right Wing Heaven." There was also, if I recall correctly, shouts of faux anger about hate speech. That lasted for months, until the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was a devoted Communist and a fan of Castro got to be so overwhelming that even the MSM had to stop blaming it on the Right. That didn’t stop Oliver Stone from putting that story line into a movie and making JFK the victim of a shadowy Right Wing Cabal®.
Sorry to disagree with Ann Althouse, but the “above the fray” approach was the way that George Bush handled the claim that he lied about WMDs in Iraq (when the belief that Saddam had them was universal). A lie has to be met with the truth because the unaided truth doesn’t stand a chance if no one utters it.
It is, however, not a good idea for the Right to make lists of Leftist “eliminationist rhetoric.” That’s playing the Left’s game by the Left’s rules and all you accomplish is letting the best cut-and-paster win a game without getting to the truth. The fact is that political rhetoric in today’s world only animates organized groups who are already in the violence business, such as the Muslims seeking to go on Jihad, and when that happens, the MSM denies it.
The way to handle this is to focus on the killer: is he a ideologue or a nut? If he has a political bias, it’s inevitable that that will be used to indict the group he adheres to. If he’s a nut (and the two are not mutually exclusive) it should be used to point out the political biases of the commentators. I think that this event will actually do more damage to the tattered reputation of the MSM than to either the Left or the Right.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds gets an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds gets an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.
... if you're using this event to criticize the "rhetoric" of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you're either: (a) asserting a connection between the "rhetoric" and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you're not, in which case you're just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?
Labels: biased reporting, Conservative, Liberalism, media, The Press
Daily Kos deletes "DEAD TO ME" post.
The bodies are not yet buried but the MSM is pointing the finger of blame to the Tea Party and Sarah Palin for its "violence laden" rhetoric.
Before this theme takes over, here's a screen grab of the Daily Kos referring to Congresswoman Giffords.
The KOS himself "targets" Giffords ... for elimination? And Glenn Reynolds has a Roundup of Violent Political Rhetoric from the Left.
Byron York points out that it makes a difference who does the shooting. It turns out that Jare Lee Loughner is a nutcase yet the Left and their shills in the MSM are busy trying the create the narrative that the Tea Party or Sarah Palin were responsible. Compare that to the media bigfeet reaction to the Fort Hood massacre when eveyone from the President on down was telling us that we should not come to the obvious conclusion about a Muslim shouting "Allahu Akbar" as he does his killing.
On November 5, 2009, Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire at a troop readiness center in Ft. Hood, Texas, killing 13 people. Within hours of the killings, the world knew that Hasan reportedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before he began shooting, visited websites associated with Islamist violence, wrote Internet postings justifying Muslim suicide bombings, considered U.S. forces his enemy, opposed American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as wars on Islam, and told a neighbor shortly before the shootings that he was going "to do good work for God." There was ample evidence, in other words, that the Ft. Hood attack was an act of Islamist violence.
Nevertheless, public officials, journalists, and commentators were quick to caution that the public should not "jump to conclusions" about Hasan's motive. CNN, in particular, became a forum for repeated warnings that the subject should be discussed with particular care.
"The important thing is for everyone not to jump to conclusions," said retired Gen. Wesley Clark on CNN the night of the shootings.
"We cannot jump to conclusions," said CNN's Jane Velez-Mitchell that same evening. "We have to make sure that we do not jump to any conclusions whatsoever."
"I'm on Pentagon chat room," said former CIA operative Robert Baer on CNN, also the night of the shooting. "Right now, there's messages going back and forth, saying do not jump to the conclusion this had anything to do with Islam."
The next day, President Obama underscored the rapidly-forming conventional wisdom when he told the country, "I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts." In the days that followed, CNN jouralists and guests repeatedly echoed the president's remarks.Read the rest.
UPDATE: Is BoyBlue Jared Loughner? References: HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE. The grammar and spelling don't seem the same, but the links between Loughner and BoyBlue are certainly closer than the links to either the Tea party or Palin. If there is a link, the Left and the MSM are in a world of hurt.
Labels: biased reporting, crime, Liberalism, media, Tea Party, terrorism, The Press
Friday, January 07, 2011
Oh, THOSE Death Panels!
The real “Death Panels,” the ones that Sarah Palin and most of the Right has been talking about are already at work. Liberals/Progressive have said that when resources are limited, treatment should be rationed. So the elderly and the very sick will be given, in Barack Obama’s words a “pain pill” to help them die in comfort.
What’s happening in Arizona is a foretaste of what will happen nationally when Obamacare goes into full effect.
PHOENIX – A second person denied transplant coverage by Arizona under a state budget cut has died, with this death "most likely" resulting from the coverage reduction, a hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday.
University Medical Center spokeswoman Jo Marie Gellerman said the patient died Dec. 28 at another medical facility after earlier being removed from UMC's list for a liver transplant needed because of hepatitis C....Arizona reduced Medicaid coverage for transplants on Oct. 1 under cuts included to help close a shortfall in the state budget enacted last spring.
In the end, all people die. Human mortality is 100%. But to have a government agency make those decisions instead of the patient or the family is the end result of government control of medicine. It makes us cogs in the government wheel, and supplicants for the right to live to a government bureaucrat. Strangely enough, it’s what Progressives want. I believe that in the end they think they’ll be the ones in charge, and on the whole that will be true. The rest of us will be … dispensable.
Labels: Democrats, health care, Liberalism
Thursday, January 06, 2011
Retracted autism study an 'elaborate fraud'
Don Imus has a popular radio program and his latest wife is a health nut. Over the last several years he has done much to propagate the idea that autism is caused by the preservative in vaccines. It has finally been proven that the study that appeared to show this was an elaborate scientific fraud done for financial reasons. The scientist who created the study was paid $674,000 by law firms seeking to sue vaccine makers.
Labels: biased reporting, Law, Liberalism, Medical
We want our money back! No more "too big to jail."
Ann Coulter’s column is another reminder just how the financial catastrophe of 2008 happened and who is responsible. Yes, Wall Street made money and banks made money, but the people ultimately responsible, the “heroin pushers” were the Liberal politicians in congress and in charge of Fannie and Freddie who created the crap that brought the whole system down and drove the American family into the ditch. And I mean the American family literally. There is not a homeowner in the country who has not been affected by this disaster. Not an investor, not a retiree, not a bond holder, not anyone with a 401k who has not suffered in this disaster. The entire country is still reeling, hoping to live long enough to eventually recover. And the real culprits have made off with their money and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are still not in jail for their part in this disaster.
Forget "stimulus" bills and "shovel-ready" bailouts ... the current financial crisis, which is the second Great Depression, was created slowly and methodically by Democrat hacks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the past 18 years....
Goo-goo liberals with federal titles pressured banks into making absurd loans to high-risk borrowers -- demanding, for example, that the banks accept unemployment benefits as collateral. Then Fannie repackaged the bad loans as "prime mortgages" and sold them to banks, thus poisoning the entire financial market with hidden bad loans....
Obama's own Federal Housing Finance Agency reported recently that by 2014, Freddie and Fannie will cost taxpayers between $221 billion to $363 billion.
Over and over again, Republicans tried to rein in the politically correct policies being foisted on mortgage lenders by Fannie Mae, only to be met by a Praetorian Guard of Democrats howling that Republicans hated the poor.
In 2003, Republicans on the Senate Banking Committee wrote a bill to tighten the lending regulation of Fannie and Freddie. Every single Democrat on the committee voted against it.
In the House, Barney Frank angrily proclaimed that Fannie Mae was "just fine."
Rep. William Clay, D-Mo., accused Republicans of going on a "witch hunt" against Fannie Mae and attempting a "political lynching of Franklin Raines" ...As late as 2008, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who had received more than $133,000 in political contributions from Fannie Mae, called Fannie "fundamentally strong" and "in good shape" -- which is the kind of thing the Politburo used to say about Yuri Andropov right after he died.
Enron's accounting fraud was a paltry $567 million -- and it didn't bring down the entire financial system. Those involved in the Enron manipulations went to prison. Raines and Gorelick not only didn't go to jail, they walked away with multimillion-dollar payouts, courtesy of the taxpayer.
...Under the Democrats' 2010 "Financial Reform" bill (written by Chris Dodd, Barney Frank and Goldman Sachs), Raines keeps his $90 million, Jamie Gorelick keeps her $26.4 million, and Goldman keeps its $12 billion from the AIG bailout.
Let's get it back. Twelve billion, one hundred and sixteen point four million dollars might not sound like a lot to you, but it starts to add up.
Here in Virginia ex-delegate Phil Hamilton has been indicted for sponsoring a bill that gave money to start up a university center which in turn hired him to direct it. That was four years ago. The amount of money involved was $500,000 to Old Dominion University and Hamilton got a $40,000 job out of it. In the grand scheme of things, chump change.
Compare that to the trillions of dollars that were involved in the Democrats' fraud scheme, that netted them millions of dollars in payments while driving the country's finances off the cliff and ruining the lives of millions of people.
There should be no institution that's "too big to fail" and no politician who's "too big to jail."
Labels: congress, corruption, Coulter, crime, Democrats, Economy, finance, investing, Law, Liberalism, Political correctness, ruling class
