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Thursday, July 31, 2014
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Death by government
Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. This new Power Principle is the message emerging from my previous work on the causes of war and from this book on genocide and government mass murder—what I call democide—in [the 20th] century. The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide. At the extremes of Power, totalitarian communist governments slaughter their people by the tens of millions; in contrast, many democracies can barely bring themselves to execute even serial murderers.
Death by government in the 20th century cost 169 million lives. That’s at least four times more people killed by their own governments than by war. In the 20th century 38 million lives—both military and civilian—were lost in all conflicts combined.
Labels:
Communism,
Democracy,
Liberalism,
totaliarian,
War
Obama the Fop
Way back, even before the beginning of Barry's first term, we opined that he belonged in GQ magazine, not the White House. We were reminded of this upon reading the delightful Bud Norman's essay "The end of Language" in which he despairs of the loss of common words like "fop."
The disappearance of the word “fop” from the language seems to have coincided with the disappearance of society’s sneering contempt for men who take excessive pride in their physical appearance that it once conveyed, for instance, and as a result American society is inundated with preening pretty boys and empty but immaculately fashioned suits. Such nebulous and neutral words as “hope” and “change” can unleash eight years of disastrous taxing and pork barrel spending and over-regulation and God only knows what sort of foreign policy madness, while such once valuable words as “merit” and “liberty” are derided by the deconstructionists and their impenetrable academic jargon as racist code.
Recall the fact that one NY Times pundit, David Brooks, made Barry's "perfectly creased pant" one of the key reasons that he as going to be president, and be a good president. Brooks is indelibly associated with that inane comment just as another Obama groupie, Chris Matthews, will forever be known as the man who "felt this thrill going up my leg" during one of Barry's speeches.
In life we are frequently seduced by good looks and pretty speech. It is in our nature. It perpetuates the species. But let us pray that after this experience with the disastrous consequences of our seduction, that we develop a healthy scepticism the next time a fop appears.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Candy Crowley yearns for the days when the USSR and the US threatened the world with nuclear destruction. Times were much simpler then.
Candy Crowley is a pluperfect example of the in-the-tank MSM figure for Barack Obama. She not only ran interference for his during the Presidential debates when she interrupted Mitt Romney and falsely stated that Obama called the Benghazi attack “terrorism” from the beginning. She got her wish and Obama is serving a second term.
Now that the world is spinning out of control, Russians are invading their neighbors, Obama is managing to lose Iraq retroactively, Obama’s Libyan adventure turned a neutral nation into a training ground for jihadists, war between Israel and the Arabs has begun, Syria has managed to become the abattoir of the Middle East, passenger planes are being shot out of the air and the feckless John Kerry is wasting his time and our money while the leader of Egypt makes him pass through a metal detector before a meeting.
On the domestic front, ObamaCare is destroying the best medical system in the world and the border between the US and Mexico has disappeared as hundreds of thousands swarm across the former border applying for food stamps, housing and the right to vote in the next election.
All of which makes the ultimate Obama bootlicker, Candy Crowley, running interference for Obama again by clearly implying that it’s not his fault; it’s the fault of "changing times."
Here’s how she begins her interview with Lindsey Graham, expressing nostalgia for the days when the USSR and USA stood poised to end humanity via a nuclear holocaust. She’s positively nostalgic for those heady days of “duck and cover.”
I want to talk to you first about this notion of leadership and the idea that the world really has changed. It’s not as simple as the bad guys are in the soviet bloc and behind the iron curtain and the good guys are in the west. It is now a very complicated world which kind of defies the title of “leader of the Western world” [makes quote signs with her fingers]. How much of this do you ascribe to changing times?
It seems that Fate and Changing Times are going to get tossed under the bus by Obama's enablers. Or, as Glenn Reynolds calls them "Democrat operatives with by-lines."
Labels:
biased reporting,
Dem operatives with bylines,
media,
Obama Fail,
The Press,
War
As Libya Implodes, “Smart Diplomacy” Becoming a Punch Line
Remember how the Left used Colin Powell's famous phrase "you break it you own it?" You don't hear that from them any more. Or the phrase Obama told us that we would have if we elected him: "Smart Diplomacy."
The United States is pulling embassy staff out of Tripoli, and has issued a travel advisory that nicely outlines what a nightmare Libya has become. If Obama were a Republican, the press coverage of this stinking corpse of a policy flub would be quite different.
Throw in the resulting civil war in Mali and the scattering of insurgents and weapons to the four winds, and you have a classic exhibition of reckless incompetence—of American arrogance, ignorance, carelessness and moralism combining in a toxic stew to sink a fragile country we never understood.
Luckily for America’s self-esteem, it was liberal Democrats that produced this particular shambles. If Republicans had done this, the media would be on the administration non-stop, perhaps comparing Samantha Power to Paul Wolfowitz—a well-meaning humanitarian way over her head who wrecked a country out of misguided ideology. There might also be some pointed questions for future presidential candidates who supported this fiasco. But since both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have their fingerprints all over Libya, there isn’t a lot of press hunger for a detailed, unsparing autopsy into this stinking corpse of policy flub.
If Obama were a Republican, the press and the weekly news shows would be ringing with hyperbolic, apocalyptic denunciations of the clueless incumbent who had failed to learn the most basic lessons of Iraq. Indeed, the MSM right now would be howling that Obama was stupider than Bush. Bush, our Journolist friends would now be saying ad nauseam, at least had the excuse that he didn’t know what happens when you overthrow a paranoid, genocidal, economically incompetent Arab tyrant in an artificial post-colonial state. But Obama did—or, the press would nastily say, he would have done if he’d been doing his job instead of hitting the golf course or yakking it up with his glitzy pals at late night bull sessions. The ad hominem attacks would never stop, and all the tangled threads of incompetence and failure would be endlessly and expertly picked at in long New Yorker articles, NYT thumbsuckers, and chin-strokings on all the Sabbath gasbag shows.
Read the whole thing.
Labels:
biased reporting,
Liberalism,
media,
Obama Fail,
The Press
Thursday, July 24, 2014
What Obama Told Hillary the night of the Benghazi attack
She had no doubt that a terrorist attack had been launched against America on the anniversary of 9/11. However, when Hillary picked up the phone and heard Obama’s voice, she learned the president had other ideas in mind. With less than two months before Election Day, he was still boasting that he had al Qaeda on the run.If the truth about Benghazi became known, it would blow that argument out of the water.“Hillary was stunned when she heard the president talk about the Benghazi attack,” one of her top legal advisers said in an interview. “Obama wanted her to say that the attack had been a spontaneous demonstration triggered by an obscure video on the Internet that demeaned the Prophet Mohammed.”
Schools of privilege
Stacy McCain summarizes what it's like to get admitted toone of th Ivy League colleges.
Basically, in order to get into an elite school — unless your family is rich and your Daddy’s a senator, like Columbia alumna Megan McCain — you’re going to have to devote the first 16 or 17 years of your life to compiling the kind of credentials necessary to gain admission. You’re going to have to be a grind, an apple-polishing teacher’s pet, and your life outside the classroom is going to be so crammed full of activities (violin lessons, dance classes, and so forth) that you will have no time for anything resembling a normal childhood.
And what do you get as a reward?
Spending four years being indoctrinated by Marxists, atheists and sexual perverts, while acquiring the snobbish certainty that you are morally and intellectually superior to everyone who didn’t graduate from an elite school.
A concise summary of John Kerry's trip to the Middle East
Kerry’s stop in inconsiderate Cairo was part of a trip to the Middle East to attempt negotiation of a cease-fire between Israel and the Hamas terror gang of Gaza, and nothing about it makes sense. The mission is unlikely to succeed, would be harmful to the region’s chances of lasting peace if it did, and will further weaken America’s standing the world in the process.
Oh, amd Kerry was obliged to be "wanded" with a metal detector before getting an audinece with the Egyptan leader. He should have been told to take off his shoes.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
"Driver in Wrong Lane Contends with On-Rushing Semi."
Steven Hayward at Powerline uses a WSJ headline Obama Contends With Arc of Instability Not Seen Since ‘70s to make the point that the the world has not been in this much turmoil since Jimmy Carter's presidency.
Also mentioned is Glenn Reynolds' prediction that "a rerun of Carter might be a best-case scenario for the Obama presidency." All we need is a killer rabbit and double digit inflation to cover all the Carter lowlights. Of course Carter did not arm Mexican drug gangs (Fast & Furious), set the IRS on his political opponents, get an ambassador killed, create a failed state (Libya), completely lose any influence we ever had in the Middle East, lose a war retroactively, watch over the re-assembly of the Soviet Empire, encourage Central Americans to invade the US, inflame America's race relations, or spend several billion dollars on vacations.
The headline I use comes from the comments, where it's noted that the WSJ article really attempts to deflect the blame from Obama.
Obama didn't do it, it was bad luck. Mysteriously, US power has waned around the world and that mysteriously coincided with an increase of upheaval around the world.This is the theme of all the so-called reporting in the MS, it's not Obama's fault, bad things just seem to happen to him.
In fact, these aren't at all like George Bush's wars, these are just security crises ("A convergence of security crises..."). Which should remind everyone that most of these security issues began under a previous administration.
Labels:
Fast and Furious,
illegal immigration,
Middle East,
Obama,
Obama Fail
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Convert, pay tax, or die, Islamic State warns Christians
Islamist insurgents have issued an ultimatum to northern Iraq's dwindling Christian population to either convert to Islam, pay a religious levy or face death, according to a statement distributed in the militant-controlled city of Mosul.
I don't think this will bother Liberals.
Tea party groups' suit against IRS moves forward
A federal judge has allowed a lawsuit by 10 tea party groups to move forward against the Internal Revenue Service, rejecting a request by the federal government to dismiss all the allegations that the agency subjected conservative groups to additional, often burdensome scrutiny.
Teens Attacked Adult Near Taste Of Park Ridge
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
There's No Place Like Utopia
NEW YORK – In his new full-length documentary film, “There’s No Place Like Utopia,” Joel Gilbert found Peggy Joseph, the Florida voter who became infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign for saying Barack Obama would “pay for my gas and my mortgage.”Surprisingly, some six years into the Obama presidency, Joseph has turned against the president, disappointed that he did not deliver on his “hope and change” campaign promises.“Peggy reminded me of Dorothy from ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ who thought the magical wizard would solve all her problems,” Gilbert told WND in an interview.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Why “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” will not pass, and why it should not pass.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform is dead. And we do not mourn its passing.
It died for a number of reasons, first and foremost because it was an ill defined amorphous "blue screen". A blue screen is used in movies to fake an environment. Like "Hope N'Change" it's a meaningless phrase that is used to allow people to create their own images. Like a move set, it's designed to fool people, to suspend their disbelief and motivate them into believing what they want to believe.
It's the way that the current health care bill was passed. Lots of people loved the idea of comprehensive health care reform. Who can be against better, cheaper, more caring medicine? So we were promised reform. The kind that allowed you to keep your doctor, keep your plan, save you $2500 and insure all the un-insured. That was the image that was sold. That's what people bought. Only it didn’t turn out to work out like that because it was all a lie. Many people lost their doctor. Many lost the insurance plan their liked. And most people saw their premiums rise, not go down because of all the mandates packed into ObamaCare. In fact millions who think they're insured may not be insured today, but don't know it. What it did do is upend the best health care in the world and gave the government a big voice about the kind of health care you will get. If you get it. All ruled by the same people who run the IRS. The same people who conveniently "lost" all the evidence they may have illegally obstructed the rights of the regime's opponents.
And remember that ObamaCare is supposed to be "the law of the land." Forget about the disastrous rollout of the ObamaCare website. No one can quite tell you what ObamaCare is because Team Obama treats it like a Chinese menu. They pick one from column A, one from column B, another from column C, depending on which constituency is getting served. It’s not the law, at least not the way we once understood law. It’s legal Silly Putty; a series of suggestions. The actual rules are made up as they go along. This part of the law inconveniences this Democrat constituency? Waiver! That part of the law denies medical care to someone suffering from cancer? Just call her a liar and move on.
Having that experience under our belts, only the media and denizens of Washington, like Eric Cantor, wanted to repeat the experience. This time for immigration policy. Fortunately Cantor's constituents decided that enough was enough. The others favoring it are uber-rich billionaires like Buffett, Gates and Adelson who really don’t care if the unemployed Black youth sees his chance for an entry level job fade even further and the middle class gets the shaft. Just as long as the stock market reaches new highs. To hear the Left tell it, the stock market is our new barometer of how people are doing. The market's up so people must be doing swell.
If you want to see what comprehensive immigration reform as implemented by Obama looks like, look at the Mexican border. That’s the Left’s idea of immigration reform.
You say you want secure borders? Obama has said that our borders are already secure. Would he lie to you? Argue with that, and Eric Holder will call you a racist.
You say you want to stop illegal immigrants at the border? Why sure, just deploy the Border Patrol 45 miles inland. Oh, and you hate kids and you’re a racist. You say you want illegal immigrants deported? You’re a racist. And Obama will do that right after they turn themselves in after they have been resettled in your community. Can you say “fat chance?” Shut up, racist.
We are in an unusual political situation in this country. For the first time in my lifetime a large, perhaps a majority, of people do not believe that the President will faithfully execute the laws as written. So “comprehensive” bills are out as long as we have an administration that blatantly picks and chooses what part of a law to enforce and which part to ignore.
You can only say "I have a pen and I have a phone" for so long before people conclude that you really don't care what the law says. People see that you don't care what Congress wants. The more speeches you give ridiculing congress, people will come to the conclusion that you are not constrained by its elected representatives. Talk and act like a dictator and people stop trusting the checks and balances built into our system of government.
So where does that leave us? Short of removing the current occupant from office before the next presidential election, congress has to re-think it's legislative role.
Bills that leave the executive any discretion shall not be passed. Bills shall be short. Bills shall address one thing at a time. Bills will not allow administrative departments to promulgate rules regarding implementation. If there are errors in the bill, it will be the responsibility of congress, not some bureaucrat, to make the changes. Bills shall have consequences for employees of the government who fail to implement them. Dismissal shall be the least penalty. Criminal charges are worth considering.
The next time I hear the term "comprehensive" I will beat it to death with a stick and mount its severed head on a pole.
Labels:
health care,
immigration,
Liberalism,
Obama,
ObamaCare
Friday, July 11, 2014
Obama, you have a problem
“If somebody brought six children to your house and you ain’t got no job, are you going to take them in?… Are you going to try to find out where they came from? Are you going to try to send them back?… What are we going to do for the people who are here who are starving already?… Why would we add to the problem?”
The woman below added:
“It’s just too much. We already got starvation, kids walking without with no shoes. We are already taking that on in America. We don’t need other people’s kids to bring more problems.”
Wednesday, July 09, 2014
Those "youths" on the border.
Let’s assume for a moment that the youths pouring across the border say who they say they are. So what do you do if you are a young kid from Honduras and want to escape the violence in your country? Let’s look at a map.
How about going to the country next door? That would be El Salvador Nicaragua, Guatemala, or beautiful and peaceful Costa Rica. These so called refugees from drug violence, did not seek asylum in any of the neighboring countries much easier to reach. No. They travelled over 1000 miles before ending up at the US border.
On the way they travelled the length of Mexico, a country that funneled them, including apparently known criminal elements, to the US border. That is a hostile act, but Mexico is always ready to help America commit suicide.
So why are they here? Simple. They were asked to come. They were enticed. They were given a script to "prove" they were fleeing violence. By Obama.
Because while most of Central America is peaceful, so peaceful that they attract American retirees, they don’t have the American hammock known as the “social safety net.”
No one with a shred of intelligence doubts that these people will soon have paperwork that makes them indistinguishable from American citizens. It’s only a matter of a few months before they are eligible for welfare and enrolled to vote for Democrats. It’s apparently easier to create a Blue state by importing your voters from outside the country than persuading the same old, same old to go to the polls and vote a few times each.
Meanwhile you can expect the Holder "Justice" Department to sue any state that requires people to prove they are eligible to vote.
Labels:
Democrats,
illegal immigration,
Mexico,
Obama,
Voter fraud,
welfare
Turning the whole damn country into Caligula’s bedroom.
Fred Reed is being politically incorrect again.
This is nuts. It is one thing, and a good thing, for a decent society to leave the sexually disturbed in peace, for the police not to harass homosexuals or raid known but discreet “gay” bars. (Though, if we can have homosexual bars in which the normal are not welcome, why can we not have normal bars in which homosexuals are not welcome? Can we not choose with whom we want to drink?) (No.) If discreet (that word again) sex shops deep in the city wants to sell motorized dildos, hig-fashion whips, and male chastity belts, well…the buyers do no harm to others. It is another thing to turn the whole damn country into Caligula’s bedroom.
Read the whole thing and don't mind the naughty words.
Wednesday, July 02, 2014
Tuesday, July 01, 2014
Why is the media ignoring Hillary?
Stu Rothenberg does a devastatingly funny parody of all the media suck-ups who pimped for Hillary and Obama. Here are echoes of the "finely creased pants," and "Lightworker."
It gets even better from there. Read the whole thing.Clinton, then a senator from New York, sat immediately to my left, and we nodded to each other as she sat down. It was an utterly thrilling experience that I will never forget. Her nod was neither too fast nor too slow. It was neither too knowing nor too unknowing. It may well have been the perfect nod, showing real empathy and yet real strength.
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