Joe Rich: An Uncivil Man from the Civil Rights Division

Hans A. von Spakovsky reveals the shocking truth about the politicization of the DOJ.  If Joe Rich is an example, God help us.

Read the whole thing.

Christine O’Donnell vs. Al Franken

Scott Johnson at Powerline reminds us of a prominent Democrat who many thought did not have a chance of winning an election. Let’s do a compare and contrast of two candidates who had “issues.” For some reason in the opinion of the Ruling Class, Christine O’Donnell’s issues disqualify her while Al Franken’s issues … are not an issue.

• Franken is a man of the hard left

• O’Donnell is Right, but probably more closely reflects the views of a majority of Americans.

• Franken had a history of cocaine use

• O’Donnell is not accused of using illegal drugs

• Franken had failed to pay workers' compensation insurance in New York where he had been making a living before he returned to Minnesota to run for office. He had also failed to file corporate tax returns in California.

• O’Donnell had a problem with her taxes and the issue was settled this year.

• Franken owed $70,000 in back taxes in 17 states. Franken blamed the problem on his accountant and then instructed his accountant not to talk to the press.

• O’Donnell did not have an accountant to blame and took personal responsibility.

• When the news broke, Franken hid from the press. One of Franken's spokesmen explained Franken's unavailability: "Al spent the week doing an economy tour of the state."

• O’Donnell put all of her tax problems on her website including a transcript of her conversation with the IRS.

Scott adds

I should add that Norm Coleman was a formidable opponent. He was in my opinion an excellent Senator with the misfortune of having to run a reelection campaign in an extraordinarily difficult environment for Republicans.

If Al Franken was able to overcome his personal record to become a United States Senator, Christine O'Donnell certainly can. O'Donnell has the additional advantage of having a man who formerly advertised himself as the bearded Marxist for her opponent. His name is Chris Coons. Although he has shaved the beard, I am quite sure that his current views are kissing cousins to the ones he advertised in his college days.

This is a watershed year with the tide running strongly in favor of Conservatives.  I know all about the biases of the MFM, what makes me angry is the attitude of people who claim to be on the Right but refuse to have anything to do with people not of their class.  This is the time when those who were really nominal Conservatives will out themselves.

O'Donnell's taxes ... and double standards.

Christine O'Donnell is not a rich woman, and ended up with a back tax bill.  She addresses the issue here.  The IRS has released her from any tax lien.  Let us simply note that her tax problems have been all over the national news.

Now there's another person with a tax problem. 

The developer of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero has begun repaying the $270,000 he owes in property taxes.

It was mentioned in the New York Post but no-one on the Liberal side of the political spectrum seems to much care.

Double standard, anyone?

Conservative Zombies

Zombie: in voodoo, a dead body supposedly brought back to life again without a soul

The next time I hear or read about the “Buckley rule” I’m going to spit. I’m always amazed at the number of conservatives like Bill Buckley or Barry Goldwater, now safely dead, who are being resurrected by the members of the MSM any time Conservatives do something of which Liberals disapprove.

Buckley, barely two years dead, was a favorite punching bag of the Left who loved to make fun of his use of big words, his defense of Joe McCarthy, and cite with glee his original objection to civil right laws which they attribute to racism. But suddenly, the “Buckley rule” is supposed to be the guiding light of Conservatives. The Buckley rule is (in the words of Charles Krauthammer):

support the most conservative candidate who is electable.

 That means that Conservatives are supposed to take one for the team and should have nominated Mike Castle – the RINO establishment candidate who was supposed to be a shoo-in. A funny thing happened to the shoo-in, he could not get the Republican Senatorial nomination in Delaware.

In case anyone needs reminding, Buckley should be celebrated for not following the Buckley rule. He ran for Mayor of New York to take votes away from Republican John Lindsay, supported Democrat Joe Lieberman when he ran against Republican Lowell Weicker and led a successful campaign to unseat Republican Charles Goodell in favor of brother Jim Buckley running on the Conservative party ticket. In the last two instances, the insurgent won. There are no final electoral decisions until the votes are counted.

I have a great deal of respect for Krauthammer but he’s no movement Conservative. He’s a thoughtful pragmatist who’s very worried about the ability of a radical like Barack Obama to change America fundamentally from a free-enterprise republic to and all-encompassing corporatist state with leaders who don’t like America. In First Lady Michelle Obama’s immortal words, she has never been proud of America in her adult life until now.

Of course for Democrats in and out of the media the references to the Buckley Rule are self-serving, which is not surprising. In a time of particular political turmoil where all the energy seems to be on the Right, the Left is concerned that the tsunami has so far hit only Liberal Republicans. The real concern is how badly the Left will be hurt in November. It is useful for Democrats to be able to co-opt members of the Republican Party whose only quibble with the Democrats’ agenda is the price tag, not the issues themselves.

Make no mistake, the Tea Party movement, despite the rhetoric about deficits, is fundamentally about the role of government. If the government can be transformed from the all-encompassing omnipresent Big Brother to a government of limited powers envisioned by the founders, the deficits will recede.

The Buckley rule is a useful rule of thumb for ordinary times. But just as the constitution is not a suicide pact, the Buckley rule should not bind us in extraordinary times; just as it did not bind William F. Buckley, Jr. All we have to do is help O’Donnell win. The process is already started; she’s raised nearly $2 million via small contributions from all around the country in less than a week. Go HERE to contribute. And while giving, let’s help Sean Bielat retire Barney Frank.

UPDATE:  thanks for the link Jeff

Class as a way of understanding Christine O’Donnell and the tea party

Even the clueless media is beginning to notice.  Eve the obnoxious sock puppet Glenn Greenwald notices: 

“There are some reactions to the Tea Party movement coming from many different directions – illustrated by the patronizing mockery of Christine O'Donnell – which I find quite misguided, revealingly condescending, and somewhat obnoxious,” he writes, referring to O’Donnell critics of both parties.

“Much of the patronizing derision and scorn heaped on people like Christine O'Donnell have very little to do with their substantive views – since when did right-wing extremism place one beyond the pale? – and much more to do with the fact they're so … unruly and unwashed,” Greenwald continues. “To members of the establishment and the ruling class (like Rove), these are the kinds of people – who struggle with tuition bills and have their homes foreclosed – who belong in Walmarts, community colleges, low-paying jobs, and voting booths on command, not in the august United States Senate.”

Of course the "both parties" comment is boob bait for the Bubbas, as Bill Clinton said because Greenwald is really about bashing Republicans. The fact is that O'Donnell's lack of wealth, her non-Ivy education, her accent - in fact everything but the issues that she's talking about will be used as political ammo by the Democrats. That was also true of Sarah Palin, and part of what makes her such an attractive figure to "Country America."

Here's Christine O'Donnell's website.  I'm contributing.

This is the reason why the media is despised.

See the beginning of the video ... it's the reason why the MFM is even more hated than congressional Democrats.



Sean Bielat for congress. Retire Barney Frank.

Meet John Boehner

Since I'm not a resident of  Cincinnati, Ohio I know virtually nothing about John Boehner, the man.  So it's a telling commentary on the state of the MFM that I should get the most in-depth look at the next Speaker of the House form the UK Telegraph.

John Boehner: the second of 12 kids from Ohio who is Barack Obama's elitist target

The White House is attempting to cling on to Democratic control of Washington by portraying an Ohio congressman who grew up in near poverty as an elitist country club Republican controlled by wealthy lobbyists.

UPDATE:  Powerline notes the article on John Boehner portrays a

...man whose upbringing and youth were nowhere near as privileged as Barack Obama's.

Not that being brought up in comfort and being sent to the best schools (like Barack Obama was) is a bad thing.

Smearing Dinesh D'Souza

There may be a good rebuttal to Dinesh D’Souza’s theory that what motivates Barack Obama is an anti-colonial mindset that he absorbed from his search for the father who abandoned him, but this article by Shikha Dalmia isn’t it.

First, anyone who accuses her opponent of using ad hominem arguments should have some hesitation about using them herself. What then to make of her beginning her story with an anecdote about having dinner with a

“conservative professor”

 whose comments she then characterizes as

“the crazy ruminations of a kooky academic.”

 Now I was not at that dinner but I have my doubts that the victim of her insult said that

“… Obama communicated with a cabal of fellow America haters in secret hand gestures.”

And how’s this for an ad hominem:

“Writers these days are supposed to cultivate a niche, and D’Souza seems to have homesteaded the intellectual goofiness spot all for himself.”

Or this bit of fact-free analysis about Newt Gingrich:

“But it would be possible to take the former Republican House speaker seriously only if he didn’t do the intellectual equivalent of howling at the moon with disturbing regularity these days.”

 

But enough of the name calling. What is the meat of Dalmia’s argument? There isn’t much in her article beyond the ad homs so let’s list them.

She cites as an example the

“… $2 billion loan that the administration handed via the Export-Import bank to encourage off-shore drilling in Brazil.”

She characterizes this as a factual error on D’Souza’s part because none of the bank’s directors were appointed by the Obama administration. But the Export-Import bank simply does not operate in a political vacuum. The purpose of the bank is to “assist in financing the export of U.S. goods and services,” something that seems to be lacking in a loan to Brazil for off-shore drilling. It would be interesting to see where the loan was initiated and who was involved in its approval. The issue of the board of directors is a red herring.

She mischaracterizes or misunderstands anti-colonialism. It is not characterized by a desire to avoid contact with developed countries, but by a desire not to have former colonial powers continue to exercise control over their former colonies via economic means. Anti-colonial activists want the local people to own and control their own companies and businesses. An example of this is the expropriation of Aramco by the sheiks and kings of “Arabia.” They did not want to shut the oil wells or have the West stop using petroleum, they wanted to own the wells and control the prices. And that’s what they did. So it’s totally off the mark for Dalmia to say:

“If Obama were seriously motivated by a moral desire to protect poor countries from being ruined by excessive American consumption then his biggest priority would be to rein in this consumption. But that is the exact opposite of what he has done since assuming office. His entire economic agenda is one big and desperate attempt to boost American consumption.”

She is mistaking autarky with anti-colonialism. Take it from the North Koreans; it is not nearly the same.

Dalmia uses the Obama administration’s forays into economic stimulation as proof that he’s no anti-colonialist. What’s most disconcerting for both the Democrats in Congress and the American people is that these efforts have been virtually useless in stimulating either employment or consumption. I have to count myself among the ones who are surprised that you could flood the country with close to a trillion dollars in cash and have virtually no measurable effect on economic activity. It’s when you look behind the numbers and see where the money is actually going that you realize that much of it was actually spend to keep public employees on the job. Keeping in mind that the anti-colonial leaders of the former European colonies were mostly well educated socialists or Marxists who studied in Europe or the US, and ended up in government jobs. it’s really not that surprising that if Obama is animated by anti-colonial attitudes he would look first to protect government workers.

In the end, we get the virtually obligatory accusation that D’Souza is accusing Obama of being Muslim. This is found nowhere in D’Souza’s article, but – like some kind of a tic - it has to be included as part of a smear. Others are also finding things in the article that simply isn’t there. David Frum accuses D’Souza of promoting the “birther” nonsense and says

“When last was there such a brazen outburst of race baiting in the service of partisan politics at the national level? George Wallace took more care to sound race-neutral.”

If you look in D’Souza’s article try to find the part where it says that Obama wasn’t born in the US or that he’s a Muslim or a racist you won’t find it. But that’s all right. The accusation is enough. If you doubt it, check out your Journolist membership.

Thomas Sowell: The “Achievements” of the American Intelligentsia

There is a new Conservative website: RIGHTNETWORK that I predict will become a major new force in American political life. One of the first articles is this one by Thomas Sowell, one of most brilliant political thinkers of this - or the last century. He is not kind to the "intellectual" as a class.

The intelligentsia have largely ignored or downplayed the things in which Americans lead the world, including philanthropy, technology, and the creation of life-saving medicines--and treated the errors, flaws, and shortcomings that Americans share with human beings around the world as special defects of our society.

Read the whole thing.

Mascot Eating Cheerleader

Remember when dissent was patriotic? If anyone tells you that the Tea Party is radical, remind them of this!

From the Dana Show

Listen to the whole thing:
"We're going to have to come out and kill somebody I guess."

George Bush as Hitler:

Sarah Palin as Hitler:

This is the Left, unvarnished, unfiltered by the MFM. These are Obama's natural allies. These are the ones who now call the Tea Party demonstrators racists and fascists, scary kooks and the American Taliban wanting to turn the US into a theocracy. They are the ones who did not get onto the pages of the Virginian Pilot, the NY Times or the Washington Post when Bush was president because they were an "inconvenient truth." They are the ones roaming the halls of congress and the White House today and the reason that the people are revolting at the ballot box.

We're not planning to kill anyone, even though they thought about killing us. We're just going to make them irrelevant; put them in a museum where people can look at them and and stare in wonder the these specimens ever took control in our country.

Obamacare vs. the Rule of Law

When you write legislation that's over 2000 pages long and no one reads you can put a lot of stuff in it that only shows up when it's too late.

At The Foundry (Heritage Foundation) we find that none, NONE of the promises that the Democrats made about ObamaCare were true.

Obamacare is deeply unpopular with the American people because, as the massive regulatory regime goes into effect, the American people are noticing that none of the administration’s promises are being honored. The cost of health care is going up, not down. Health care spending is going up, not down. Millions of Americans are not able to keep their insurance.

The response by Gangster Government?

To combat this reality, the Obama administration struck back last Friday. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to America’s Health Insurance Plans warning them that “there will be zero tolerance” for “falsely blaming premium increases” on Obamacare. Specifically, Sebelius threatened to punish non-subservient firms by excluding them from the government regulated and mandated health insurance exchanges. Since these exchanges will be the primary way most Americans receive health insurance (especially if more private firms decide to end their current coverage) such a decision by Sebelius would be a death sentence for any insurer that does not comply.

This is an issue of the destruction of freedom for Americans.

Never before in the history of our republican form of government has an administration threatened to extinguish individual firms for merely communicating with their customers. But such are the dictatorial powers Obamacare grants to Secretary Sebelius. There are over 1,000 instances in the more than 2,700 page bill where Congress granted Secretary Sebelius new powers to regulate the health care industry. For example, her power to “determine” what does or does not count as a medical expense alone will decide the fate of many health insurance firms.

You may not care if insurance companies live or die, but you should. Each insurer that goes out of business is one less choice for you.  If you like living in a country with one car company, one food company, one clothing company, one insurance company, every one of them "private" but ruled from Washington, you will like living in a fascist state.

One of the wonders of America that strike foreigners from communist countries was the incredible variety of choices in American stores.  The Left Fascists have long decried the "waste" that his variety implies and have long wanted to create one standard, government approved, item of ... everything.  Imagine to efficiency of one type of clothing for everyone, make and female, small or large.  You don't have to imagine very much, look at China under Mao wearing the Mao suit.  That, my friend, is government regulation and government standardization.

Of course Mao's suit was made of better material, his palaces were more spacious, his transportation was more private and luxurious, but then all animals of equal but some are more equal than others.

Image of a "Black Hole"

A Prayer for America as November 2, 2010 Approaches

Kudyard Kipling wrote this poem before World War 1 as the British Empire was the most powerful in the world.

Let us pray that God will not consign us to the dust heap of empires because of the sins of our people and its leaders. Pray for this nation and for God's blessing. We pray for a re-awakening of morality, honor and contrition. But let us not ask for justice because if we appeal to a just God, we cannot stand. Ask for forgiveness and pray for unearned absolution earned by the sacrifice of Jesus.

God of our fathers, known of old--

Lord of our far-flung battle line

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine--

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;

The captains and the kings depart:

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,

An humble and a contrite heart.

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;

On dune and headland sinks the fire:

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday

Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!

Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,

Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--

Such boasting as the Gentiles use

Or lesser breeds without the law--

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust

In reeking tube and iron shard--

All valiant dust that builds on dust,

And guarding, calls not Thee to guard--

For frantic boast and foolish word,

Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!

Hat tip to Gerard Vanderleun.

The Medical Government Housing Project

How would you like to be told, "we're moving you from your home to a public housing project?"  Outrage?  Fear?  Rebellion?  Panic?

Well one of the provisions of ObamaCare is the creation of medical "housing projects" that are designed just for you.  Get Ready for Your Health Care ‘Re-Education’

Liberal media outlets like National Public Radio are now trumpeting the supposed virtues of the “medical home,” where primary care doctors and specialists theoretically coordinate their expertise to provide comprehensive, integrated care for patients. Even the phrase “medical home” has a warm-and-fuzzy feel. But under ObamaCare, “medical homes” will instead likely be used to control costs by using primary care doctors as gatekeepers to restrict access to expensive tests such as MRI scans, or to specialists such as cardiologists and orthopedic surgeons.

Patients will be herded into these new “medical home” plans under ObamaCare laws, which will start limiting employers’ ability to continue offering their current health plans.

Similarly, the government will nudge doctors into working for “medical homes” via a combination of financial rewards and penalties. Once there, the government will specify how doctors must practice and what “quality” measures they must meet in order to get paid.

Hence, under ObamaCare “medical homes” will be more like “medical government housing projects.”

Don't want to move? Like where you are? Our community-organizer-in-chief, our affirmative action president, says "tough." That's how we're going to run your lives. Deal with it!

In November, vote as if your life depended on it ... because it does.

The Democrats are Calling Americans Racist, Uneducated, Greedy, Stupid Bigots. "Not that there's anything wrong with that."

By Michael Ramirez

Searching for "people of color"

Why does Barack Obama want to harm Americans? It's personal.

Let’s cut to the chase. How many jobs are created by poor people? Barack Obama wants to take money away from “rich” people, mostly small business owners – the people who create most of the jobs in the economy – despite the fact that doing so means that they will not hire the unemployed.

Some say that they are not sure if he understands this or not. Some people believe that he is using the Cloward-Pivin strategy to drive the political system to the brink by making the poor and unemployed class so large as to destroy the free enterprise economy. The question is, if he is not doing this as a way of creating an economic crisis, is he doing it from ignorance or malice.

Raising taxes on people who hire other people is destructive to the economy; most especially in an economy in recession. All serious economists agree. Most people who are not immersed in class warfare intuitively understand this.

He defends his proposal based on the cost of extending the current tax rates to those earning over $250,000, but that rationale is blindingly disingenuous. After spending literally trillions of dollars in a flurry of rapid-fire economic laws, frugality from this president is simply not believable.

There is no question that Obama’s tax proposals are not based on economics but on ideology. Whether it’s Cloward-Privin or Obama’s desire to tax the upper income people, Obama has stated unequivocally that taxing the “rich”, in the name of "fairness" is his objective whether it makes economic sense or not.

There is one other perspective on Obama’s rationale. Dinesh D’Sousa’s fascinating article about Obama as his father’s son, carrying out his dreams, may provide us with a possible insight into why he’s doing this.

Here is a man who spent his formative years--the first 17 years of his life--off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa.

A good way to discern what motivates Obama is to ask a simple question: What is his dream? Is it the American dream? Is it Martin Luther King's dream? Or something else?

The elder Obama and his socialist associates were primarily focused on ruling their native lands after colonial Britain gave up its rule. They used top-down economic control because they, the Western educated elite in an agrarian society, believed that they knew best how to run their nation’s economies. When that experiment proved to lead to both widespread poverty as well as the implementation of dictatorial and one-party rule in post-colonial Africa the ruling class continued on the path they had established. There’s a good reason for this. There was no upside to giving up power in an impoverished land; the rulers live well even if the people starve. Idi Amin, who was reputed to have eaten his enemies, died fat.

As his father's son - in a real sense a virtual African immigrant - how does Barack view America and the rich in it? 

From a very young age and through his formative years, Obama learned to see America as a force for global domination and destruction. He came to view America's military as an instrument of neocolonial occupation. He adopted his father's position that capitalism and free markets are code words for economic plunder. Obama grew to perceive the rich as an oppressive class, a kind of neocolonial power within America. In his worldview, profits are a measure of how effectively you have ripped off the rest of society, and America's power in the world is a measure of how selfishly it consumes the globe's resources and how ruthlessly it bullies and dominates the rest of the planet.

As a sidelight, the Ground Zero Mosque is America's due: 

Obama supports the Ground Zero mosque because to him 9/11 is the event that unleashed the American bogey and pushed us into Iraq and Afghanistan. He views some of the Muslims who are fighting against America abroad as resisters of U.S. imperialism.

Having achieved the peak of American power, the Obamas have none of the concerns that African rulers have of being supplanted by coups or overthrow. 

The strange thing about Obama is that he remains an enigma to Americans who depended on the news media to define and explain him.  It took another immigrant from a third world country to understand what he wrote in his book: 

In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"

The Obamas are living well. They are employed until 2012 and have access to millions after that. His economic decisions will have no, zero, nada effect on the Obama family.  If he can achieve his father's dream of destroying private enterprise in this, the heart of capitalism, he will have achieved the dreams his father had that he passed on to little Barry. 

I Am America

Why Obama is stoking "Islamophobia"

James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal meets the charge that Americans are Islamophobic head-on.

The prevailing media narrative has it that America is suffering from an acute case of "Islamophobia," an irrational fear of Muslims. This seems to us quite wrong. American mistrust of Muslims is no more irrational than black mistrust of whites or Jewish mistrust of Germans. That is not to say that it is completely justifiable, only that it is completely understandable, for Americans have been, and continue to be, the targets of Islamic supremacist violence.

You can only accuse Americans of an irrational fear of Islam if you ignore 9/11, the other terrorist attacks by Jihadists around the world before and after 9/11, and the efforts by our own home-grown Muslims to attack us. So no, there is no irrational Islamophobia here. The concern about violent Islam is totally understandable.

Because mistrust of Muslims is not completely justifiable, Obama and his backers in the media feel no obligation to understand it. "I think that at a time when the country is anxious generally and going through a tough time, then fears can surface, suspicions, divisions can surface in a society," Obama said Friday, echoing Robert Reich's Marxism Lite analysis, which we noted last month.

This is a complete non sequitur. No one, not even the unhinged anti-Muslim types on the right, is blaming Muslims for America's current economic difficulties. American mistrust of Muslims is a reaction to Islamic supremacist terrorism, especially 9/11. That mistrust has surfaced recently because another group of Muslims is seeking to exploit that atrocity by building a fancy mosque adjacent to its site.

The reason President Bush did a better job at managing Americans' mistrust of Muslims is not, as Obama seems to suggest, that the Bush economy was so much better than the Obama one. It is, rather, that Americans, on this matter, trusted Bush.

There was no doubt in any one's mind whose side Bush was on.

The drumbeat from the MSM is that the violent Jihadists are a small minority not at all representative of Islam as a whole.  We would like to think so, but we are not totally persuaded.  Andrew McCarthy asks where all the pro-American moderate Muslims are.  

Such an Islam, over nine long years, would have risen up and made itself heard. It would have identified by name and condemned with moral outrage the imposters purporting to act in its name. It would have honored America’s sacrifice of blood and treasure in the liberation of oppressed Muslim peoples. It would have said “thank you” to our troops. It would have joined America, without ambiguity or hesitation, in crushing terror networks and dismantling the regimes that abet them. It would not have needed trillion-dollar American investments to forge democracies; it would naturally have adopted democracy on its own.

What excruciating truths have we yet failed to grasp on this ninth anniversary of 9/11? The first is that such an Islam does not exist.

All we have heard form the leading "moderate" groups like CAIR are pro-forma denunciations of terrorist act.  But, and here the operative word in all their announcements is "BUT" there is always an ambivalence, or the reference to things America did to bring on the latest atrocity.  Why do the pronouncements from these groups always sound as if they are "the other" instead of "us?"  Would it not be better if they wholeheartedly joined us without the inevitable "but?"