Right, Wing-Nut!

Lego Man In Space: How Much Has Changed

2012-01-28T10:22:00.005-05:00

This pretty is pretty viral, so you likely have seen it, or read the story: Canadian teens Mathew Ho & Asad Muhammad spent five months and $400 creating a jury-rigged platform - using a weather balloon, some Styrofoam, a few Canon cameras, and Asad's mom's sewing machine - with which they sent a Lego man, holding the Canadian flag, into outer space. And precisely calculated the trajectory of the landing so that all the material was recoverable, and postable online:

This is the kind of ingenuity American kids used to be famous for, right? Seems like our youth are more interested in making videos of people getting the sh*t kicked out of them then actually doing anything more...inventive.

Starting this past September, the duo spent their Saturdays at Ho’s kitchen table in Scarborough, drawing up plans and building the balloon.

What? Not playing Halo online? Why, that's positively un-American!

Exactly, some would say.

Two other things jumped out at me from the Toronto Sun piece linked above:

The two met in middle school. Muhammad’s family had just immigrated emigrated from Pakistan, and he spoke no English. When other students were ignoring him, Ho walked up and made friends.

Didn't talented people used to come from foreign lands to America in order to have a chance for themselves and their families to succeed? Sure, we get plenty of Mexicans, I suppose, but one gets the feeling more and more of them are coming here for the blue-state welfare checks and food stamps than to actually build a better life as Americans.

And then there's this - a little delay in (literally) launching the project due to a less-than-friendly neighbor:

The pair discovered a website that calculates a weather balloon’s estimated landing spot based on input launch coordinates, prevailing winds, and balloon specs...

The site kept spitting out Rochester, N.Y., as their balloon’s final landing spot. Muhammad and Ho didn’t like their chances with U.S. Homeland Security.

But one Saturday morning, Ho tried again, and saw the balloon would land near Peterborough...

What would Homeland Security have said if an Asian kid and a Muslim kid named Muhammad had tried to scamper across the border to pick up an object with cameras that had shot through the Earth's atmosphere? The story of their intellectual ingenuity would never have gotten out, nor the video, or the photos, nor they - from some type of maximum-security lockup.

Look at how we are perceived. Look at what we've become. Look at who we are, and what wastrels our youth is becoming.

Used to be that Lego man whould have proudly been holding an American flag...

How much has changed.

Climate Change Hysteria: Who Benefits?

2012-01-27T14:12:00.000-05:00

Easy: Liberal-dominated governments who want to redistribute private-sector cash to themselves and their cronies (while impoverishing their subjects), and greedy scientists who sell their soul and diminish their profession for a few pieces of silver. They will prosper from climate change, while the masses, ironically, will shiver and freeze...

Sound like something out of the rough birth of Western Civilization? It's is, in fact,a regression from our Renessiance and Enlightenment, complete with witch hunts. But first, the WSJ reiterates what we know: High-tech global warming scare tactics are extremely profitable to those in the game:

Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet...

Much like the Church, Kings and Feudal Lords made out pretty well in the Dark Ages.

So who loses? Anyone else who dares to want to live a life made more comfortable by progress:

A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

And the witch hunts:

Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position....

I would love for someone to read this to Mitt Romney, and ask him where he stands on this perversion of our intellectual evolution. And ask Newt if he still sits with Nancy...

Did Romney "Pack The Room" Last Night? I Hope So....

2012-01-27T08:44:00.000-05:00

Jonah Goldberg comments on last night's debate, a rather flat one for Newton and a fairly successful one for Romney:

I don’t know whether he did or not, but it seemed obvious to me that the room had a lot of Romney supporters in it....There were definitely moments when Romney deserved the applause and cheers he got. But he also got applause and cheers for lines that have elicited no such response in the previous 8,000 debates. If Romney did pack the room with ringers, it was smart if also devious. Gingrich exposed a key vulnerability to his debate superpowers: he feeds off the energy from the audience. If Romney and his team figured that out and tampered with his energy source, that’s smart politics.

It is. And in the general election, faced with a choice between the smug, bombastic, pedantic, know-it-all professor they know and the one they are only slightly less familiar with, well...you just might see Barack Obama re-elected, based upon this rationale offered by the president himself.

But if a Republican candidate can get under the president's (extremely) thin skin and expose him as the punk-ass bitch he is without lowering himself to Obama's childish level, you just might have a winner. And it seems as if Romney, actually possessing the "cool temperament" the president's supporters tried to own, may very well likely be able to tinker with Barack's mojo and pull off the innocent "who, me?" routine while the whiner-in-chief flips his lid.

Not an endorsement of Romney, by the way. I'm just saying. Both his technocratic urge to "tinker & fix" rather than "destroy & rebuild" (which is what is necessary), and his obvious affection for state-run healthcare, are extremely troubling.

So that's why we need to make sure we elect a Congress and Senate that is as ideologically conservative as possible. If he does get the nomination, and wins the big prize, we'll need to keep President Romney's feet as close to the fire as possible. lest he stray off the path he was appointed to...

Rumble On The Runway: Obama Making Jan Brewer Rich

2012-01-26T16:27:00.002-05:00

Obama's reverse-Midas touch in full effect....he publicly and rudely bitches about what he claims is a mis- characterization of him in her book, Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border and it goes from 285,568th place in overall sales to 29th.

Check that. That was five minutes ago. It's up to #21.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Books> Politics &Social Sciences >Government >Public Policy
#2 in Books > Biographies > Memoirs > Leaders > Notable People> Political
#2 in Books >Politics >Social Sciences >Government >State > Local Government

Can I get the president to throw a Barack Bitch-fit about Right, Wing Nut?

"You're just digging yourself in deeper....and making me much, much richer. Of course, with Republicans running the show in 2013, your precious federal government will never see a dime of it...Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!"

Finally: A Plausible Reason To Re-Elect Barack Obama!

2012-01-26T14:52:00.001-05:00

Seth Mandel takes this from the president's State of the Union/2012 Campaign Kickoff Speech aired this past Tuesday:

The implication was that he hadn’t really done anything, but jobs were somehow coming back anyway so he should be re-elected because if the American economy is strong enough to withstand a first term of his, it can probably withstand another one.

Probably. Unless he actually fulfills his promise to, ahem, "finish the job he started". But based on his record of actually keeping promises - as opposed to simply making them - I think we'd manage to survive.

Or one might just say the president leads the same way Homer Simpson parents:

Homer: I make you kids lots of promises, that's what makes me a good father

Lisa: Actually, keeping promises makes you a good father

Homer: No, that makes me a great father...

Why Does Joe Biden Hate Indians?

2012-01-26T13:40:00.002-05:00

First, there was this:

"I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."

It's OK. He's a Democrat, so he's earned absolutions from the media (as opposed to Rick Perry, who was crucified for the scribbling on a rock his grandfather once walked past...)

And just today, in Rochester, New Hampshire, we have this - sneering mockery of an Indian accent as part of a complaint about American jobs going overseas:

But that's OK, he's a Democrat. Biden could walk on his hands like a chimp while speaking in "Ebonics" and still get a pass from the media...

Jan Brewer vs. Barack Obama: One's A Whiny Little Bitch...

2012-01-26T08:47:00.001-05:00

...and the other is the governor of Arizona.

Almost a fistfight on the tarmac, when Jan Brewer went to greet Barack Obama as he deplaned. What happened? Jan tells the tale:

“He was a little disturbed about my book, Scorpions for Breakfast. I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read the excerpt. So.”

Asked what aspect of the book disturbed him, Brewer said: “That he didn’t feel that I had treated him cordially. I said I was sorry he felt that way but I didn’t get my sentence finished....

She said the president brought up the book.

“I thought we probably would’ve talked about the things that were important to him and important to me, helping one another. Our country is upside down....

He appeared to walk away from her while they were still talking, and she confirmed that by saying she didn’t finish her sentence.

So he turned on his heel and spun off while the lady was still speaking. Stay classy, Baracky...

Not the first time he threw a hissy fit on the tarmac. Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal tells a similar tale out of the bayou:

I was expecting words of concern about the oil spill, worry about the pending ecological disaster, and words of confidence about how the federal government was here to help. Or perhaps he was going to vent about BP’s slow response. But no, the president was upset about something else. And he wanted to talk about, well, food stamps. Actually, he wanted to talk about a letter that my administration had sent to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack a day earlier.

The letter was rudimentary, bureaucratic, and ordinary. . . . We were simply asking the federal government to authorize food stamps for those who were now unemployed because of the oil spill. Governors regularly make these sorts of requests to the federal government when facing disaster.

But somehow, for some reason, President Obama had personalized this. And he was upset.

There was not a word about the oil spill. He was concerned about looking bad because of the letter. “Careful,” he said to me, “this is going to get bad for everyone.

Not the oil spill. President Food Stamps was concerned about...well, you know...

Why does this president have such deep-seated hostility to women and minorities, anyway? Oh, I suppose the racial/gender makeup of his anger victim here is likely irrelevant - when Obama's fragile, delicate, feminine ego is bruised, no one is safe, regardless of whether they have what might be defined as a normally protected status.

And the next time the media tries to tell me about his "cool, even, temperament"...I think I am gonna lose mine...

Chris Christie Outfoxes New Jersey Democrats...

2012-01-25T14:18:00.000-05:00

...which, granted, is not saying much. But still so much fun to watch. State Senate President Stephen Sweeney, usually a union thug, now a gay lover (as in a lover of all things gay, especially same-sex marriage), said publicly he would not consider Christie's appointees for the New Jersey State Supreme Court unless they were minorities. Spending most of his time surrounded by like-minded fellows and reading the Newark Star Ledger, Sweeney made almost an understandable mistake: he assumes that all blacks and gays were liberal Democrats, and would vote thusly.

How's that nuanced line of thinking work out for Sweeney? Ah..not well:

On Monday Christie nominated Korean-American Phillip Kwon and Bruce Harris, the openly gay black mayor of Chatham Borough. Kwon, who worked with Christie when he was U.S. attorney, is currently First Assistant Attorney General for New Jersey.

Christie delivered a body blow to Democrats prepared for a fight over high-court nominees. It puts Democrats on the defensive and gives Christie latitude in bringing more conservative voices to the court. Democrats wanted minority candidates, and they have them.

First Assistant Attorney General Kwon's resume is stellar:

Prior to joining the Office of the Attorney General, Mr. Kwon served for more than ten years as an Assistant U.S. Attorney with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey. As part of the Criminal Division, he focused on prosecutions involving drugs, gangs, counterfeiting, white-collar fraud, and immigration fraud. Mr. Kwon also served in the Special Prosecutions Division where he worked specifically on corruption cases and trials, including those involving Robert Janiszewski, Nidia Davila-Colon, William Braker, Zachary Turner. Mr. Kwon was also a prosecutor on the trial team that convicted Sharpe James and Tamika Riley in their federal corruption case.

In 2005, Mr. Kwon was named as the Chief of the Violent Crimes Unit where he supervised the Office’s gang prosecutors. In 2006, Mr. Kwon was named as the Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division where he directly oversaw the Commercial Crimes Unit, the Terrorism Unit, and the Violent Crimes Unit.

Tough on crime, tough on corruption, and a minority. How are the Democrats going to fight that, and simultaneously keep the state's substantial Asian vote in 2012?

Admittedly, Bruce Harris' record is a bit less clear:

Age: 61
Hometown: Chatham, Morris County

Party: Registered Republican
Education: Graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College in 1973; graduated with honors from Boston University Graduate School of Management in 1979 and from Yale Law School in 1992.
Professional experience: currently of counsel at the law firm Greenberg Traurig, and previously at Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti, with a focus on lending, real estate and construction financing and bond transactions.
Political experience: Elected mayor of Chatham Borough in 2011; appointed to fill a vacancy on the borough council, and elected to two terms, making him its longest-serving councilman
Other activities: served on Chatham Planning Board, Environmental Commission, Historic Preservation Commission; former member of the Morris County Open Space Preservation Trust; trustee of the UMDNJ and the New Jersey Health Foundations; trustee of Eric Johnson House Inc., a transitional housing program for people with HIV/AIDS, including five years as president.
Family: partner of 32 years, Marc Boisclair
Honors: New Jersey Super Lawyers 2005-2007
Quote: Stuart Lederman, a partner at Riker Danzig who is president of the New Jersey State Bar Foundation, said Harris "brings an intellectual curiosity to the bench, but balancing that with an understanding of issues facing government and individuals."

Seems like a guy who has tried to balance the concerns of the community with the needs of business. Although certainly not a "constitutional originalist", He's worked closely with Christie in the past, and the governor likely knows his way of thinking.

Of course, the timing is sweet and well-planned. As the New Jersey legislature works to pass laws legalizing gay marriage, it now becomes harder to paint Christie as a hateful bigot, which was likely the primary reason the Democrats were pushing the same-sex marriage bill so hard.

So those so-much-smarter-than-thou Democrats are now in a box of their own making. They can't oppose Christie's nominees without confessing it's not minorities that matter to them, it's liberal ideology (and how honest and refreshing would that be?). They can't paint Christie as a gay-basher, not with the Harris nomination and his declaration that the gay marriage issue should be decided at the ballot box by statewide referendum and not by a small majority of lawmakers.

The Democrats are screwed and will likely have to submit to Chris Christie's will.

Just imagine what this guy would have done to Barack Hussein Obama...

Obama Still Thinks He's Lincoln?

2012-01-25T08:28:00.000-05:00

Money quote from his campaign speech - sorry, State of the Union Address - last night:

“I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed,” he said, “that government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.”

But where the Great Emancipator diverges from the once-Great Orator is that Barack Obama thinks the government can do everything better than the people themselves. From health care, to eating habits, to the illumination of their homes, to the cars they drive and what devices they use inside them. If there's a sweet spot where Obama believes the private sector can do a better job than government, I haven;t heard him mention it yet...

It doesn't mean that Obama wasn't honest in his statement above. He simply has a much, much lower opinion of the American people than the great leaders he claims to channel...

Is Tim Thomas As Brave As, Say...Sean Avery?

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-05:00

Well, now that Glenn Reynolds has written about Bruins goalie (and 2011 playoff MVP) Tim Thomas refusing to join his teammates at the White House yesterday to be congratulated on their Stanley Cup victory by Barack Obama, I'm sure we'll see a lot more commentary on his bold stand in the upcoming days/hours/minutes. That's good. But it's the commentary from the left, and the sports-writing media, that I'm most interested in...

If you haven't heard the story:

Bruins GM Peter Chiarelli confirmed that Thomas had told him months ago he would not attend the White House event due to his political and ideological differences with the Obama administration. Chiarelli said he had tried to convince Thomas to attend the event "over the last couple months" to no avail.

While his politics aren't common knowledge among many hockey fans, Thomas hasn't hidden his political leanings. He's a fan of former Fox News channel host Glenn Beck, once saying he aspired to appear on Beck's talk show as a guest.

Big Government, a website founded by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, celebrated Thomas as a "true Tea Party patriot" for having "In God We Trust" and the Gadsden flag on his mask.

Here's why I am curious to see what comes from the sportswriters and blogs: Tim Thomas is not the only hockey player in recent months to make an open political stand. Rangers forward Sean Avery did the same thing last year, when he appeared in TV advertisements supporting gay marriage in New York State. Avery was lauded for his stand, being called "unafraid", a "true leader", and "inspiring". This, despite a well-deserved reputation as the dirtiest player in the NHL. Think Ty Cobb without the skill. Click the link if you want to see videos of Sean "in action" (including a pregame fight with, ironically, Tim Thomas. Hmmm....).

So my question is: Will Thomas - a clean living, blue-collar, working -class hero from Flint, MI. - get the same respect for standing up for his beliefs as Avery got when he stood up for gay marriage?

Sportswriters tend to be frustrated opinion columnists - dying to get the serious respect of their newsroom peers, they'll often launch into judgmental tirades whenever the opportunity presents itself. Tim Thomas' stand against a corrupt president certainly leaves him open to controversy. Will he be weighed on the courage of his beliefs, or condemned due to a differing value system than that held by the mainstream media?

Should be interesting...

UPDATE: By popular demand - here's Avery fighting with Thomas. Watch Avery hit Thomas on the back of his head with his stick, while Tim is on his knees. Time takes exception to typical liberal chicken-fighting:

UPDATE II: As expected. The Boston Globe's Kevin DuPont orders Thomas to turn in his 2012 Olympic medal and sweater, if he's so ashamed of his country. Whatever happened to dissent being the highest form of patriotism?

A reminder from The Corner:

Notably, no one at the Boston Globe complained when Red Sox owner John Henry and general manager Theo Epstein, both dyed-in-the-wool Democrats, opted out of the invites to the Bush White House after the 2007 World Series.

it is all about the double-standard. TSN's Gord Miller:

For those wondering, Tim Thomas will be in uniform in Washington tonight, as soon as he dumps the last crate of tea into Boston Harbor.

But no jokes about Sean Avery bending over in the shower, of course...

Another Boston lefty whines:

Two words: embarrassing and classless....The only thing I knew about Thomas until yesterday had to do with phenomenal hockey playing. Here’s what I suspect today: He’s a spoiled brat.

Others, with more nuanced minds, think otherwise:

One can argue Thomas could have just as easily played along with everyone else, shaken Obama’s hand and enjoyed his private tour of the executive residence. I believe he could have done so without compromising himself, but he thought differently, chose to make a statement about his principles and risked the opprobrium of the liberal press. For that he deserves our respect as a citizen and a man.

No way. He's a Republican....!

More here.

Newt Gingrich Ought To Be Thanking Sarah Palin Right Around Now...

2012-01-23T17:09:00.000-05:00

You know, Sarah Palin hadn't said boo about the Republican primaries until just a few days before the most recent primary, when she mentioned that she would vote for Gingrich "if I were a South Carolinian".

William Kristol:

First time she has expressed herself in the race and her candidate wins by 12. If she really comes out for Newt, look out.

Sarah is the nuclear submarine of the 2012 Republican primary. She's running silent and running deep. But should she decide to surface, or perhaps let loose a salvo of Tomahawks, well...let's just say the landscape will be permanently altered. As if it had been struck by...a salvo of Tomahawks.

She's been quiet, but she is still out there - watching, observing all, calculating. And when she appeared, ever so briefly, and dipped her toe in the water....the seas parted.

When you can't see her, and don't hear her, that's when she's at her most dangerous. Certain primary candidates ought to be very nervous right around now...

TSA Detains Rand Paul, Further Shreds The Constitution In The Process...

2012-01-23T13:47:00.004-05:00

Yeah, I know, the Constitution is already so torn and tattered - not unlike the Sacred Parchment of the Stonecutters- that it is hard to believe it can be ripped apart any further. But by detaining Senator Rand Paul, the TSA has managed to do just that. Amazing in its own way, I suppose...

First, the salient facts:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was blocked from boarding a flight Monday by the Transportation Security Administration in Nashville, Tenn., after refusing a full body pat-down, POLITICO has confirmed.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Paul spokesperson Moira Bagley said. “The image scan went off; he refused patdown.”

Paul’s father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), tweeted out news of the incident, saying that there had been an “anomaly” with a body scanner.

“My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming,” wrote the authenticated Twitter account of presidential candidate Ron Paul.

So where does a breach of the Constitution come into play? A-ha!

The Speech or Debate Clause is a clause in the United States Constitution (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1) . The clause states that members of both Houses of Congress

...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

The intended purpose is to prevent a President or other officials of the executive branch from having members arrested on a pretext to prevent them from voting a certain way or otherwise taking actions with which the President might disagree.

A dangerous precedent has been set, if Senator Paul can be detained by a quasi-governmental agency without charge. This is an event that should even have those constitution-hatin' liberals up in arms: Can you imagine an evil, despicable, black-hearted Republican president (aren't they all?), working in secret with government officials to stop a Chuck Schumer, or a Debbie Stabenow, from arriving in Washington while the Senate votes on overturning ObamaCare? Or - perish the thought - defunding NPR?

Finally, a bipartisan injustice. I'd chant "Free Rand Paul!", but he's already on the next plane out of town. How about "Hey! Hey! TSA! How many Americans you detain today?"

OK, they both suck. But somebody ought to instruct the TSA in the finer points of constitutionality. Or is that an oxymoron, given what the TSA - and Homeland Security - are all about?

Best Mocking Of That "Dumb" Newsweek Cover...

2012-01-23T10:10:00.000-05:00

...via Reaganite Republican:

Barack Obama Knows Exactly What He Is Doing - To America...

2012-01-23T08:15:00.016-05:00

I posted yesterday on Maureen Dowd's little smackdown of the president's inflated sense of self-regard. Although I am sure she meant it in a cautionary way, not critical, and certainly did not intend to accuse them of being "uppity" - exactly the accusation levied at conservatives who have written the same exact thing about the president and the missus.

But I wanted to revisit her piece, and highlight one line in particular. It's an excerpt from the Jodi Kantor book on the Obamas, and it resonates. And illuminates exactly what is going on:

...when the president met with Democratic members of Congress who had lost their seats in the midterms...he did not seem to comprehend the anxiety that had spawned the Tea Party, or feel any regret. Jim Oberstar, who lost his long-held Minnesota perch, recalled Obama’s saying, “In the end, this is for the greater good of the country"

And that, my friends, is what Obama thinks today when he sees the long unemployment lines, the spiking fuel prices, the ever-expanding amount of Americans that must go on the public dole. It is why he spiked the Keystone XL project, and why he insists on melting down the upper class, and the business class, of American society.

That this is for the greater good.

For it will eventually create the type of America that Barack Obama want to see: Government-dominated, with a third-world standard of living, and the equality of misery for all. An America run by a select few elites pulling the levers of power (including Obama himself, of course, and his wife, and a few of their friends), primarily working to redistribute it - and what little wealth remians - back to themselves.
Obama has a vision, all right...and that's why he's on the campaign trail, saying he needs to "finish the job". As long as we still have money, freedom, and the ability to choose our paths, his work is not yet done.

It gets clearer every day, doesn't it?

Is Maureen Dowd Calling Barack and Michelle "Uppity"?

2012-01-22T14:00:00.002-05:00

Better watch it, old girl. That's dancing on the racist side of the line. Oh - my mistake! You're a liberal Democrat! Therefore your criticism of the Obamas is constructive, not destructive. And/or racist.

MoDo will surely vote for Obama in 2012, but she warns them here against the perception that they are getting a bit too...big for their britches, we'll say. OK, uppity.

It doesn't matter, 'ol Dowdy will get behind the Obamas full-bore by the time election season gets into full swing, and will train her attacks strictly on his Republican opponent, but at the moment, she's supplying us with some good ammo:

Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

We disappointed them.

As Michelle said to Oprah in an interview she did with the president last May: “I always told the voters, the question isn’t whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we’re ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves.”

They still believed, as their friend Valerie Jarrett once said, that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

...the Obamas, feeling misunderstood, burrowed into “self-imposed exile” — a “bubble within the bubble” — with their small circle of Chicago friends, who reinforced the idea that “the American public just did not appreciate their exceptional leader.”

She reports that Marty Nesbitt indignantly told his fellow Obama pal Eric Whitaker that the president “could get 70 or 80 percent of the vote anywhere but the U.S.”

The Obamas, especially Michelle, have radiated the sense that Americans do not appreciate what they sacrifice by living in a gilded cage....

Not uppity. Just classic self-involved, self-absorbed, closed-minded limousine liberals. Dowd's got it right, although she herself would never admit it...

Thomas Friedman: So Far Left, He Thinks The Center Is...Far Left...

2012-01-22T12:37:00.000-05:00

This is a Friedman classic, in which he decides, for all Americans, exactly who should be president.

First, he sets forth his bona fides to be named the nation decider:

...voters are still casting about for a leader with a winning message. I can save both parties a lot of money. I am one of those voters, and I can tell you exactly for whom I want to vote — and I don’t think I’m alone.

Well, Thomas, you're right about that. You have about 33% of the American people with you. They are called "the Democratic base".

For check out what Friedman feels are the "winning platform" for 2012:

I want to vote for a candidate who advocates an immediate investment in infrastructure that will create jobs and upgrade America for the 21st century — ultrafast bandwidth, highways, airports, public schools, mass transit

So point one is: Another stimulus, even larger than the first failed trillion-dollar attempt.

Second, I want to vote for a candidate who is committed to reforming taxes, and cutting spending, in a fair way. The rich must pay more, but everyone has to pay something.

Point two: Soak the rich, but everyone must have skin in the game. Obama campaigned on this, then once in office limited it to "soak the rich". Fool me once, Tom...

Third, I want to vote for a candidate who has an inspirational vision, not just a plan to balance the budget.

Point Three: Friedman wants a demagogue. Or Obama redux. Same difference, except, as point two mentions, it involves fooling us twice.

Finally, I want to vote for a candidate who supports a minimum floor of public financing of presidential, Senate and House campaigns. Money in politics is out of control today...
It sure is, especially when Republicans are occasionally the beneficiary. Point Four: Overturn Citizens United!

Isn't this really the Obama agenda? Friedman admits it is:

Any candidate with that four-part agenda would win... I hope it is Obama, because I agree with him on so many other issues...

Obama won in 2008 because he advocated many of the positions Friedman outlines above. The problem is, he either abandoned them, used them as Trojan Horses to advance less popular parts of his radical agenda, or implemented the aforementioned policies, only to see them fail in spectacular fashion.

So Friedman wants Obama to re-run the 2008 campaign, convinced he can fool us all twice. Shame on you, Tommy boy, the American people are simply not as dumb as you are...

About Mitt Romney's Record....

2012-01-22T10:05:00.002-05:00

...no, I'm not talking about his governing record, or his record at Bain Capital. I'm talking more basic here - election wins versus election losses. Elections of all stripes...

The man who claims to be the "most electable" Republican is now 1-2 in the 2012 primaries, his one win pretty much coming before a very partisan "home crowd" in New Hampshire. Unfortunately, in the general election, you only play one game at home, two tops, and the remaining 48-49 are all played on the road, in front of indifferent, if not openly hostile, "fans", who want to see something first before they start cheering you on...

Add that 1-2 primary record to his lifetime won/loss stats, and you come up with a horrific...6-20 record in elections.

Think about that. 6-20. How bad do you have to be to lose like that? Are we going to allow "the party establishment", and the media, to coronate Romney as the Republican presidential candidate, when a player of his ilk would have been rejected by the 1962 New York Mets?

Any reader of this blog knows that I believe nominating Newt Gingrich would be a disaster. But our adversary, Barack Obama, is one mean, miserable, tough SOB, and both he and the media will take a "nice" Republican candidate, chew him up, and spit out his bones.

Here's the crux of the problem:

“Why is Mitt ashamed of having a lot of money?...how come Mitt can’t explain coherently why it’s OK to pay a 15 percent capital gains rate on money you’ve already paid the top 35 percent income tax rate on when you first earned it?

If he can't defend himself on this issue (where a smart, explanatory answer would open America's eyes to some of the warped reality of the tax code), then he will be unable to articulate any defense of conservative principles. Which will make him dead meat.

In which case, we might as well drag Rick Perry back into the race and nominate him. Sure, he can't get more than a few dozen coherent sentences out in a row, but at least he knows in his gut what is right and what is left, and will always act with conservative instincts, should he be elected president. And any man that would shoot a coyote dead for looking the wrong way at his dog is nasty enough to take on the reigning champ. And for all of his (many, many) faults, at least Newt can do nasty.

But Rick ain't coming back. Which puts me almost in the same position as Jennifer Rubin: On my knees, begging one of the guys who claimed they couldn't play at this level to gather up their cojones and step up to the plate...
I used worry that Mitt, after a few weeks in the Oval Office, would be fretting over negative New York Times editorials. I don't worry about that any more. Because he has about as much chance of getting elected as any 6-20 pitcher has of winning a big game against the other team's best and most ruthless players...

Obama's New York Marathon: How Many 1%-ers Can He Hit Up In One Night?

2012-01-21T11:20:00.001-05:00

The answer, apparently, is plenty. The New York Post reports on Barack Obama's shameless dash for cash among the cream of the economic crop:

Obama raced through the city on Thursday, appearing at two events at Upper East Side restaurant Daniel, then at a dinner for 40 at Spike Lee’s townhouse, followed by a fundraiser at the Apollo.

The media highlighted Obama's Apollo stop by airing footage of him singing (look! he likes to do the same things you rubes do!), but failed to report on this little goody:

A witness tells us Rangel “passed out” at his table at the Harlem venue’s “A Night to Remember” event and, “His wife Alma was shaking him to wake him during the president’s speech.”

The 11th commandment of the media: Never speak ill of a fellow liberal...

...nor mention the creepy, messianic merchandise being sold at the event...

Another stop had him meeting up with some billionaire Jews, who - living comfortably in their Manhattan penthouses - no doubt agree with the president that a little adversity is just what Israel needs. But prior to that little get-together, Obama engaged in his second favorite pastime (after golf) - hobnobbing with celebrities:

Before the discussion, there was a private reception where Obama met with Harvey Weinstein and Showtime’s Matt Blank. Sources tell us Obama “congratulated [Weinstein] for Meryl Streep’s best actress win for ‘The Iron Lady’ at the Golden Globes.” Obama also congratulated Blank for “Homeland,” his network’s counter-terrorism thriller, which took the Golden Globe for best drama series.

And check out the haul:

The event, attended by up to 100, raised about $500,000 for Obama’s reelection campaign.

Who says the 1% have an outsized advantaged in today's society? The President, you say? Well, he should know...

Final celebrity sighting:

At Lee’s townhouse, guests included Mariah Carey, decked out in jewels, Nick Cannon, “Fela!” producer Edward Tyler Nahem, MWW CEO Michael Kempner and Bobbi Brown.

Presenting the future cause of inner-city robberies, shootings, and tramplings....

Ah, the bejeweled royalty, playing host to the King, and awarding him with an "honorarium" of sorts, so that he remembers their gracious hospitality and support, and perhaps returns again to grace their halls once again.

You know, I don't envy these people, not a bit. I'm happy with what I have, as I have earned every meager bit of it. Nor do I deny a politician his right to fund-raise, and I do not profess shock that he goes where the money is, Willie Sutton-style.

But I am revolted by the brazen hypocrisy of a president who relishes the opportunity to rub elbows with, and take the money of, the people he labels "the 1% , then immediately turn around and publicly blame them for all that ails America.

If they are that horrible, Mr. President, stay away from them, and don't take their money. $500K from 100 people is vulgar enough, but taking it from folks you hate in order to destroy them is more morally ugly than tactically brilliant, isn't it? Are you simply not man enough to look them in their eyes and tell them why you loathe them so? Or do you so desperately need their money that you are willing to whore yourself - and your nation - out, in order to get your hands on some of it?

Or is it possible that this whole 1% rhetoric just a subterfuge, a lie, a way to bitterly divide the American people deeply enough so that you may squeak through with an election victory in 2012, and thus ensconce yourself and Michelle in the White House for four more years of living like feudal lords, while you denounce society's...feudal lords?

You can crawl all over Manhattan for cash as long as you want, Barack, and I won't fault you. Just be honest about who your supporters are, and square it with your re-election campaign. Because even the dimmest con-man knows that you can't keep running the same scam forever, the center simply will not hold, and sometimes you need to just collect your winnings and get out of town before the whole thing collapses on your head, and everything gained becomes lost...

"Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close": Just Because Hollywood Never Understood 9/11 Doesn't Mean They Can't Exploit It For Profit

2012-01-20T14:22:00.000-05:00

(spoiler alert...)

If you watch any TV at all, you've probably seen the commercials for this movie, that assure you that your betters have declared it to be The Movie of the Year, and you are surely less of a human if you skip it: "The reviews are in...Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is the most touching, moving, heartbreaking,fulfilling movie of your lifetime..."

Every ad has a reference to the 9/11 attacks: "My dad was in the building" says an unseen but plaintive voice, with strategic shots of a revamped New York skyline. It sounds, at first listen, heartrending: Who is this boy, what emotional damage has he suffered, and how were the events of that horrific day instrumental in shaping his life?

Well, those would be valid questions to ask, if we had men and women of integrity and imagination producing movies. Instead, apparently, it is a mere plot device to make us sympathize with what is apparently an unsympathetic character. Andrea Peyser in the New York Post writes Extremely, incredibly exploitive:

It stars a weird 11-year-old overprivileged Manhattan boy, Oskar Schell (“Jeopardy” whiz kid Thomas Horn), who’s afflicted with a form of autism, likely Asperger’s syndrome. His condition is presented as nobly as the disability of the John Nash character in “A Beautiful Mind” — minus the brilliance and charm.

The movie concerns the boy’s quixotic attempt to hold on to his dad (Tom Hanks), who was murdered in the Trade Center. Yes, I wrote “murder.” But you won’t hear that word uttered by anyone in the film, because 9/11 is presented here as a kind of cosmic accident. Like lightning.
The message isn’t “love one another.” It’s “sh-t happens.”

Nothing is spared in the quest for emotional blackmail, cheap thrills and a naked ploy for an Oscar.

But the most outrageous falsehood promoted in the film is the thing it leaves out. The word “terrorist” is consciously never said. Nor is “murderers,” “butchers” or “Muslim extremists.”
In a climactic scene, Bullock tells her son that 9/11 “made no sense.” This is the biggest lie of all.
For 9/11 made perfect sense. It was an act of barbarity committed by people bent on destroying this city, this nation.

The movie ends in true Hollywood style. The boy, however improbably, finds the lock he seeks. But it has nothing to do with him or his father. Just another cosmic accident.

It's Oscar time...for Sandra....and Tom Hanks! Winter...for truth and...respect..." (sung to the tune of "Springtime for Hitler")

And how's this for an ad: "Critic Kyle Smith calls Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close the most irritating movie of the year!"

I walked out of the movie in more or less of a cold fury and I still think some critics and wets might fall for this shameless work...

The film amounts to a celebration thrown by author Jonathan Safran Foer for an unbelievably obnoxious little genius meant to be a sweetly heartbreaking charmer.

What’s additionally galling is that the kid really has nothing to do with 9/11, which barely interests the author except as a means for ginning up interest in and sympathy for his little hero. 9/11 is cannily deployed to bestow a completely unearned gravity on this twee creation.

There is no mention of the savages who ruthlessly and with perfect internal logic carried out this act of mass murder. The events of 9/11 are treated as just a random tragedy, like an earthquake or a lightning strike, instead of the result of meticulous evil planning by sworn foes of the United States of America and everything it stands for...

Is Hollywood so unaffected by the horror, so untouched, so filled with cynicism that they see nothing wrong in treating 9/11 as a mere sideshow plot device sure to garner sympathy from stupid flag-waving Middle Americans? Or is this Hollywood's way of intentionally minimizing the savagery of that day, changing the nature of the event to fit their fictional needs, and thus beginning a long struggle to reclaim the narrative for what really happened on 9/11 ? (spoiler: it was all George Bush's fault).

If there is any way to fight back, it is through the power of the movie ticket. Want to show your disgust? Don't buy one. In fact, stay away from the theater all together for a week or two (or four). After all, if there is any great truth in Hollywood, it is that the words of the profits hold a greater claim to the soul of the city than any truth or reason can ever hope to...

Mitt Romney Ain't Gonna Cut It....Will Mitch Daniels Join The Fray?

2012-01-20T14:19:00.000-05:00

I've already stated my reasons - on numerous occasions - why Newt Gingrich couldn't, and shouldn't, get the Republican nod. Rick Santorum is another guy who never really governed anything, s more closely associated with social issues than economic/security issues, and excites no one besides the religious right. Ron Paul is a joke, Rick Perry wasn't but became one, and thankfully we're rid of the thoroughly obnoxious Jon Huntsman, who will likely run again - as a Democrat - in 2016.

Leaving us with...Mitt Romney. Oh my God. With it all on line, this is the best we got? A 5-18 pitcher in the political equivalent of the 7th game of the World Series?

Mitt is a technocrat, when we need a bulldozer. He's cautious when we need reckless abandon and bold new thinking. He's moderate when we need a toe-the-line conservative. Our system must be broken down and rebuilt as a smaller, more efficient, less intrusive one, not tinkered with to extract an extra 0.01% of savings and productivity.

But that's what you'll get with a technocrat. And with a moderate, who is so scared by the bullshit headlines he reads in the mainstream media that he says exactly what the Left wants to hear:

"And [President Obama]'s going to say the economy is getting better," Romney said. "Thank heavens it's getting better. It's getting better not because of him, it's in spite of him and what he's done."

hey Mitt - In what way, shape or form is the economy getting better? Because unemployment is down due to people quitting the workforce and going on the permanent f*cking dole, British-style? Jim Geraghty lays out the doom and gloom:

More than 13 million individuals are out of work—and millions more are stuck in part-time jobs—as the unemployment rate remains high at 8.5 percent. In 2011, wages didn’t keep up with inflation, prompting many consumers to dip into savings and, more recently, to step up borrowing. The housing market, which has weighed on the economic recovery, has much ground to regain. A Commerce Department report Thursday showed that home construction fell 4.1 percent in December, capping what one forecaster called one of the “worst years on record” for the home-building industry.

Oh, and there's this:

Gasoline prices have been climbing. The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. rose to $3.45 this week, increasing for the fourth straight week.

Geraghty entitles his post Next Week, Obama Will Try Fiddling. But he won't be alone. He'll have Mitt Romney and the Republicans there with him, blowing on jugs, slapping their knees, and tapping their toes, while we all burn in the fire Obama ignited and the Republicans cannot see.

Is there an option? The Weekly Standard claims to have a draft of Mitch Daniel's State of the Union rebuttal, in which he will announce the possibility of (re)entering the fray:

The candidates for the Republican nomination are my friends. I like and admire them. But I must say I’ve increasingly come to share the doubt that any of them would be likely to win, or would be likely to govern successfully.

So I want to announce tonight that I am open to reconsidering my decision not to seek the presidency in 2012. I have not wanted to run, for family reasons among others. I have hoped someone else would prove up to the task. But my family and I have now decided that country must come first. I am considering joining the race.

If I run, I will be a reluctant candidate, in the sense that I did not plan on seeking this position. But let me assure you of this: if I do run, I will not run a reluctant campaign. I will run full out. I will compete in those primaries where I can still get on the ballot, I will go all out to win at the convention where the nomination will likely be decided, and I will take the fight to President Obama in the fall. If I run, I will run to win—because this country deserves leadership that will fundamentally remodel our government and restore our nation.

At this point, why not? It ain't fair to Iowa, but they can't even count ballots right. 47 states still need to have their say...

This could be a little joke, or a nudge, from Bill Kristol, author of the piece. But his point, like Casey Stengel's, is valid: Can't anyone here play this game? And if not, can we get some guys who can?

ABC Runs Interference For Barack Obama

2012-01-19T14:02:00.001-05:00

Personally, I think the NFL analogy works best as a definition here:

...the act of a teammate or of teammates running ahead of a ball-carrier and blocking prospective tacklers out of the way.

Gee, what's in the news today that would require "interference"? Oh, yeah, the cancelled Keystone pipeline project, in which Barack Obama sacrificed 20,000 jobs, our national security, and the likelihood of reduced oil prices - while simultaneously pushing Canada into a closer relationship with China - all in order to placate a small but wealthy group of Democratic donors.

The media can't let their teammate get sacked, Lord no, not with the end zone only ten months away, and a swarm of Republican tacklers swarming down the field to lay some pipe up the president's ass. So ABC sacrifices the body, and runs interference:

Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President, his second ex-wife Marianne told ABC News, saying his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage.

In her most provocative comments, the ex-Mrs. Gingrich said Newt sought an "open marriage" arrangement so he could have a mistress and a wife.

She said when Gingrich admitted to a six-year affair with a Congressional aide, he asked her if she would share him with the other woman, Callista, who is now married to Gingrich.....

And that's the last we'll hear about the Keystone Pipeline. But you can bet when the Republicans pin the blame on Barack Obama for the non-recovery of his first term, the media will be the first to run to his defense, claiming that he "inherited the problems", and that he "can't fully control the economy", while repeating the false-on-its-face claim that he saved us all from another Great Depression.

ABC: A Wholly Owned Subsidiarity of the Democratic National Committee? Oh, you betcha....

Man, I wish Jack Tapper would ditch this chickenshit "news" operation....

Barack Obama Lays Some Pipe(line) To The American People

2012-01-19T08:47:00.002-05:00

...but only in the crude, euphemistic sense. Sayeth the Urban Dictionary:

...laying pipe is simply f**king the hell out of a girl.

But in this case, Barack Obama simply continued his rape of the economy while simultaneously screwing the American worker. That's a lot for one man in one day, so one can certainly say the president laid pipe to us, but good..

But this is no surprise. He told us back in December he was gonna f*ck us good, and we would be the better for it. Because his favorite position for the American people is on their knees:

"However many jobs might be generated by a Keystone pipeline," he said, "they're going to be a lot fewer than the jobs that are created by extending the payroll tax cut and extending unemployment insurance."

Barack Obama wants us bitches at home, living in squalor, awaiting what meager crumbs he tosses us, and repaying his generosity by...

Well, you know....

Viewing Tim Tebow From Down Under

2012-01-18T14:16:00.001-05:00

...and learning that liberals in the Southern Hemisphere are equal to, or greater than, their douchebag brethren here in the USA.

Peter FitzSimons from the Sydney Daily Herald:

ONE-KNEED FANS

''Tebowing''. This new word in the American lexicon refers, no kidding, to people who kneel on one knee with head bowed - a la Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow - every time they want to thank their god for allowing them to do something so fabulous on the sports field. The closest Australian word is probably ''public wankery''.

A view also held by American Left, who are too cowardly to come out and say it, preferring to snipe from the sidelines like the perennial bench-warmers that they are.

What a wanker...

I like the phrase "their god" (small "g"). Not his, FitzSimon assures us. Which reminds me of a part of the Passover Seder, where four metaphorical sons of differing temperament ask questions about the ritual meal:

The Torah spoke about four sons, one wise, one wicked, one simple and one who cannot formulate a question....

What does the wicked son say? "What does this Avodah (worship) mean Lakhem (to you)"? "To you" [meaning] and "not to him". Since he excluded himself from the community, he has denied the basic principle. You should also set his teeth on edge and say to him: "It is on account of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt" "for me" and not "for him" - had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.

FitzSimons, in mocking Tebow and "his" God, excludes himself from one community and closets himself within the cold embrace of another. He's entitled, of course. But should he ever need to look up to heaven and ask "please", well...he should not be surprised if "their" God does not recognize his cry...

SOPA & PIPA, And a Nation Hanging In The Balance...

2012-01-18T09:15:00.000-05:00

Every time Congress meets, and with every bit of legislation they pass, the American people lose a little more of their freedom. Regardless of who controls it, BTW...

Proponents of SOPA say it is a necessity in the cyber-age, a must-have to protect intellectual copyright. Taking a broad look at the proposal, we can see the vagueness written into it, like a huge black hole between the lines - a hole where our usage of the internet as we know it will almost certainly disappear. As will our freedom, and our identity as a nation. From the one page of Wikipedia that is up today:

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

How far can this be stretched? As far as the government wants it. And that remains true no matter who is in charge.

Over at Ricochet, Daniel Frank asks an interesting question:

As PIPA and SOPA make their way through the cloaca of the legislative process, I pause to wonder why Congress is only interested in protecting private property when it belongs to Hollywood studios, media companies, and publishing houses? What about the property rights of the Chrysler bondholders, or of property owners brushed aside by eminent domain, or the small businessperson shaken down by lawyers wielding Federal private action statutes?

Those rights, once enshrined in law, have now become arbitrary. And arbitrary law is the hallmark of the banana republic. Frank quotes Duke Economists Mike Munger:

Federal IP protection statutes are entirely motivated by and written for the benefit of rent seeking corporations. Congressmen and Senators don't care about private property. They care about the cash and in-kind contributions of entertainment and media companies, and in return for those contributions they will eviscerate your First Amendment rights without a moment's hesitation.

Once enacted, SOPA/PIPA will never be undone; politicians will see the value that so many of their fascist predecessors have in restricting the freedom of speech. What will be lost here will never be recovered again by the citizens - soon to be subjects - of the United States of America.

SOPA/PIPA must die, so that this nation may continue to live. Go to the above Wikipedia link and read it all.

And for historical posterity, should the bill pass, I wish to post what I believe will be the biggest lie of this entire debate:

An aide to Rep. Lamar Smith (R) said, "This bill does not make it a felony for a person to post a video on YouTube of their children singing to a copyrighted song. The bill specifically targets websites dedicated to illegal or infringing activity. Sites that host user content—like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter—have nothing to be concerned about under this legislation.

Bullshit. And can we get a primary challenger to this guy, please?

Where have We Seen That Newsweek Cover Before? Ahhh...

2012-01-17T15:05:00.000-05:00

There was something naggingly familiar about this Newsweek cover:

And no, it's not the picture of Obama that we've seen so many times - head tilted upward in sneering superiority, so he may better look down upon us, his ungrateful subjects to whom he has given so much. And it's not his surprising remarkableness to the recently departed Kim Jung Il, in his latter days. It was the "dumb" comment. When was the last time a major magazine insulted the intelligence of the majority of the American people like that? I was sure I had seen its ilk before...

Thankfully, we have Tim Blair to remind us:

But did you know that the publisher of the Mirror was one Piers Morgan? Yeah, the very same. Although not at the time that the above piece was published; he had been sacked just months before for falling for a crude Photoshop hoax involving British soldiers, water torture, and a few other leftist hotspots.. But the tree still bears the same fruit:

The Mirror's front page on 4 November 2004, after the re-election of George W. Bush as U.S. President, read "How can 59,054,087 people be so DUMB?". It provided a list of states and their average IQ, showing the Bush states all below average intelligence (except for Virginia), and all Kerry states at or above average intelligence. The source for this table was The Economist, although it was a hoax.

And they call us stupid...

Captian Francesco Schettino: A Profile In Cowardice

2012-01-17T13:49:00.004-05:00

One can argue whether the mad rush of crewmen and other males on board to get on the lifeboats of the Costa Concordia were acting simply with what some claim are classic Italian "manners", or the result of a lifetime of feminists telling us women and men were equals. But there can be no excusing the behavior of the Concordia's Captain Francesco Schettino, who abandoned all semblance of courage, humanity, and responsibility - left to sink with his ship into the murky deep, along with what passengers those lost traits may take with them - so that he could save his pathetic, sorry ass.

The transcript would almost be funny, if people did not die due the incredible cowardice of one pathetic man:

Port authority: "You go on board. It is an order. You cannot make any other evaluations. You have declared abandoning ship. Now I’m in charge. You get on board. Is it clear?"

Schettino: "Commandant..."

Port authority over captain: "Are you not listening to me.."

Schettino speaks over Port authority: "I’m going..."

Schettino: "Call me immediately when you get on board. Our rescue officer is there."

Schettino: "Where is your rescue officer?"

Port authority: "My rescue officer is at the stem…Go …(can hear captain saying OK)…There are already bodies, Schettino."

Schettino: "How many dead bodies are there?"

Port authority: "I don’t know. I know of one. I’ve heard of one. You are the one to tell me how many there are. Christ!"

Schettino: "Are you aware that it is dark here and we cannot see anything?"

Port authority: "So? Do you want to go home Schettino? It is dark and you want to go home? Climb the ladder and get on the stem."

Port authority: "...and tell me what can be done, how many people are there, what do they need. Now."

Schettino: "Commandant, we are with the second in command…"

Port authority: "Then both of you climb up. What is his name?"

Schettino: "Dimitris Christidis."

Port authority: "You are your guard. Go on board, now!"

Schettino: "Commandant… I want to go on board, it is just that the other lifeboat here…there are other rescue operators... it has stopped and it is stuck there... now I’ve called other rescue operators..."

Port authority: "It is one hour that you are telling me this. You go on board. On b.o.a.r.d (says the word slowly almost spelling it out). And you immediately tell me how many people there are"

Schettino: "OK."

Compare and contrast to, say, the men who stormed into the World Trade Center on September 11th. And some say there is no such thing as American exceptionalism...

More:

Italian Coast Guard Capt. Gregorio De Falco: Where are you? On the lifeboats? All the officers?"

Schettino: "Yes, we are with the second commander…"

De Falco: "Forgive me, but before you were only with a sailor. If the officers managed to get down, it means that they could still move."

Schettino: "Yes...in fact...

De Falco: "Then why don’t they get back on board? To monitor the operation and then they can tell us. Thank you."

Schettino: "No it is not possible…"

Schettino: "We abandoned the ship…the ship turned ..."

De Falco: "...and with one hundred people on board you abandon the ship? (expletive)"

Bloomberg Closes Brooklyn Store For Selling A Toy "Sheriff's Set"

2012-01-17T08:36:00.009-05:00

That's right, folks! The same toys that you and your imagination lived on for about a half-century are now criminal to sell, and punishable by the loss of livelihood.

Welcome to Michael Bloomberg's New York:

The owner of a discount store in Brooklyn says the city is holding him up for $30,000 in fines he can’t afford — all because he stocked six toy sheriff sets that included plastic guns.

And now the .44-caliber fines for the orange-tipped, obvious fakes are forcing him to close for good.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Khaled Mohamed, 23, manager of 99¢ Target in Flatlands, which has been ordered to pay a staggering $5,000 fine for each gun offered for sale — the maximum under the law.

The store “cannot pay that fine at all,” said Mohamed, arguing that the punishment imposed on the Utica Avenue odds-and-ends shop is way out of proportion to the violation.

“They’re stopping us from doing any business,” he said

See that bright orange tip? Notice the obviously plastic lamination? Shoot (can I get arrested for saying that?), I'm just wasting my breath here. The endgame of the policy here is complete abolition of firearms, whether it is arresting tourists for not knowing the law, or shutting down (minority-owned! ahem!) business for even selling toys that barely resemble a 21st century weapon.

Well, not complete abolition. There will still be guns in the hands of criminals, of course. And I'm sure the political elite will still be able to get permits. And law enforcement, of course, who answer to Bloomberg, and the folks on his Consumer Affairs Bureau.

But don't worry. I am sure they all have your best interests in mind...

Life as a citizen(?) in Michael Bloomberg's New York...

Income Equality: What Is It Good For?

2012-01-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

Only as a weapon for the Left to bludgeon the American people with, so that they will be guilted into giving up more of their hard-earned money to the government:

The hyperventilating on the left over income inequality is almost entirely self-interested: an excuse for transferring the new wealth from the people who created it (and made us all richer thereby) to politicians who will use it to buy votes...

Why is income inequality all the rage nowadays? Because the previous cudgel - racism - was swung so often that it became a soft, useless weapon, now openly mocked rather than feared. And it is hard to make a society feel guilty about "leaving the poor to starve" when the majority of its middle-class citizens feels they are only minutes away from that fate themselves.

So now we have the liberals and the media pushing "income inequality" as our latest, greatest sin, only solvable by - you guessed it - government intervention. Looks like they are planning to put spikes on this mace and swing it wildly during the 2012 election season, counting on it both as an offensive weapon and as a defensive one ("who will call for the income less-abled, if not us?").

It's just another class-warfare offensive, waged asymmetrically by the Democratic party's irregulars in the mainstream media. Barack Obama and the Left are counting on the fact that people will look at their shrinking incomes, their rising costs, their lowering standards of living, and blame...someone who makes a few bucks more than them. And so empower the government to wrest it from their neighbors by force, and redistribute it back to them.

Orwell was right...and the pigs are upon us...

Fat chance. Of the government ever redistributing more than 1% of what they heist, I mean. And of the American people ever turning on themselves like that. Barack Obama is hoping for Keynesian results from Keynesian stimulus - fear, loathing, and rioting.

UK riots, summer 2011

He simply does not understand the people he pretends to lead. But Barack Hussein Obama never has, nor has he cared to try. It's irrelevant, actually, to what he intends to accomplish...

Standards of Beauty: Women Fight Back Against The Hollywood / Media Hate Machine

2012-01-15T19:13:00.001-05:00

A follow-up, of sorts, on a post I wrote some eighteen months ago, and sporadically gets a ton of hits, entitled The Media's Hate Crime Against Beautiful Women. I'll quote myself here:

...I am talking about the media's bastardization of the ideal of female beauty. In the days of the great masters of the Renaissance, women of beauty were depicted as full-figured, full-bosomed and wide-bottomed, with a glass of wine in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, in case you didn't get the point.

Now, the only women that can be considered "hot" are size zeros or less. No hips, no curves, no bountiful bosoms allowed. More girl-ish, than woman-ish (and you wonder why the entirety of the Hollywood/MSM remains in full-throated support of Roman Polanski?). Should some young late-teen/early 20's starlet put on ten pounds as they are filling out from an adolescent (girl's) figure to an adult (woman's) figure, they are pilloried by the media as becoming "fat", complete with unflattering photos taken while said starlet shleps in sweats to grab the morning paper.

And thus, we have a generation of women who are attuned to a body style that is both unnatural, and, to many men, unattractive...

But perhaps something is beginning to slowly change here. Recently, Christina Aguilera showed up at a Micheal Jackson tribute concert looking some 15-odd pounds heavier, and the knives, as usual, came out. The ugly and miserable Kelly Osbourne, on E!'s 'Fashion Police' show, went for the Aguilera's throat:

"Maybe she is just becoming the fat b---- she was born to be. I don't know. She was a c--- to me. And she bought my house!" Osbourne ranted.

Jeez, Kelly, didn't you used to be quite rotund until about fifteen minutes ago? Regardless, Christina responded with maturity and grace:

"I've been in this (business) for a long time. I came out on the scene when I was 17 years old. You can never be too much of anything. You can never be too perfect, too thin, too curvy, voluptuous, this, that. I've been on all sides of the spectrum as far as any female in this business...
"As long as I'm happy in my own skin, that's all I need. I'm happy with where I'm at. I have a boyfriend that loves my body. I love my body.

Which promptly shut up the nay-sayers, and left the few remaining haters looking and sounding meaner and bitchier than usual. Look at Christina then, and now. Which body does a mature male enjoy better? And is it surprising which figure a depraved, pedophile-choked Hollywood prefers?

PLUS Magazine is fighting the media's skinnier-is-better meme as well, by graphically illustrating what a runway model looks like next to a more nornally sized/shaped women:

Most runway models meet the body mass index criteria for anorexia, according to an editorial pictorial in the January issue of PLUS Model magazine.

Twenty years ago, the average fashion model weighed 8 percent less than the average woman. Today, she weighs 23 percent less, it said...

These statistics accompany nude photos of a plus-size model, who in some images is entwined with a nude runway model.

The editorial — intended to be revealing in both senses — is aimed at the fashion industry, but its immediate audience is ordinary women who are increasingly dissatisfied by fashion’s unwillingness to market to them, the magazine said.

Half of women wear a size 14 or larger, but most standard clothing outlets cater to sizes 14 or smaller, it said.

And I am sure that Barack and Michelle's jihad against "obesity" isn't helping, as the government's standards for "overweight" are akin to a size/shape that most of us would be more than thrilled to possess...

It seems as if the fight against Hollywood's, and the media's, warped and perverted standard of beauty has begun. Not to mention the push-back against the Obamas' obsessive desire to force every American down to what they feel is their ideal body mass. "Normal" girls are taking to the cameras, and showing us what real beauty is all about: Full figures, curves, and wide faces with ear-to-ear smiles. And your average guys - who are actually less worried about who they'll be photographed with and more concerned about getting their both hands on some serious "T", and "A" - are going to start clamoring for more.

What will the media/Hollywood complex do? Can they bear to admit that the waif-like, child-like, skeletal figures they find so alluring are not in line with what the average American sees as beautiful? Or will they just turn the hate up to 11? After all, they have their pedophilia to deal with...

I know what I am going to do: Compare and contrast.

Would you rather have this:

Or this?

Better?

Or worse?

How about...no contest?

Taliban Fighters: Piss On Them!

2012-01-15T10:28:00.000-05:00

These are the people the Obama Administration are so afraid of offending:

Meet the Taliban’s Child Suicide Bombers

The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest.

Blindfolded and rigged with his explosive payload, the boy, who was about 13, was driven to his target in the Afghan city of Kandahar, after being plucked from the streets of Quetta in neighbouring Pakistan. Minutes before he was due to execute the attack, however, Abdul realised the lies of his recruiters seeking to turn him into a human bomb.

“When I opened my eyes, I saw it was a very black thing they wanted me to do,” he later recalled. “I began to cry and shout. People came out of their houses and asked what was wrong. I showed them I had something in my vest. Then they were scared too and called the police who took the bombs off me.”. . .

Greg Pollowitz comments:

But did the Taliban handlers urinate on the boys first? Because if they did, then we have a story...

United States military and diplomatic personnel were quick to condemn such cavalier use of civilians in combat:

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called it "deplorable" and warned, “Those found to have engaged in such conduct will be held accountable to the fullest extent." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she felt "total dismay" after hearing the story.

"It is absolutely inconsistent with American values..."

OH! Wait, my mistake....that wasn't Panetta's and Clinton's response to the Taliban's use of innocent children to slaughter innocent adults. Sorry - it was their response to a video of U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters! Clinton and Panetta had no comment on the story above, because when you are negotiating a surrender to your enemies, you cannot risk pointing out what hateful, cruel, sick, soulless people they really are.

"Surrender to my d**k, terrorist dog!"

For perspective, you have to go to Rick Perry:

GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry is accusing the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows Marines urinating on dead bodies in Afghanistan.
No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines.

Perry tells CNN's "State of the Union" that he thinks the Marines involved should be reprimanded, but not pursued with criminal charges.

Perry said "18, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often and that's what's occurred here."

I believe that is called "perspective". But don't look for it when dealing with an issue that involves liberals and the United States military...

Oh, Rick. What might have been, if only you were able to string together a few coherent sentences...

Michelle Obama Gets Booed By Pre-Teens

2012-01-14T12:13:00.000-05:00

Yeah, well, everyone hates a buttinsky, and kids have a much more accurate and sensitive bullshit meter than the 21+ crowd.

A disclaimer of sorts, first:

A screaming, raucous auditorium filled with elementary and middle school students greeted Obama and the cast of the Nickelodeon TV show “iCarly” at Hayfield Secondary School in Fairfax County.

Were these kids in fact screaming for Michelle Obama? Well, Fairfax is a suburb of DC, one of the richest suburbs in the nation, and houses primarily government employees, albeit of the six-figure variety (which is no longer a subgroup, and more likely the predominant one). So perhaps they should be big supporters of the Obamas, being that Barack and Michelle are looting the rest of the nation to make their parents rich.

Then again, it helps to appear in the company of the stars of the hottest teen show on TV. Were the kids cheering wildly for Moochelle, or for "iCarly" stars Miranda Cosgrove and Jennette McCurdy?

No way to know. But this is revealing:

During a question-and-answer session with students, Obama drew a handful of playful boos when she was asked about school lunches and talked about legislation she and her husband supported to add more vegetables to the school lunch program.

Taking note of the reaction, she said, “But this is for you all. … It’s hard to do what you do if you’re not healthy.”

She concluded with a simple admonition: “Eat your vegetables.”

"Playful"? I suppose we'll have to rely on our unbiased media for that unwarranted description. But no surprise that the kids are revolted by the new "healthy" meals being forced down their throats, and even less surprising that they booed the woman who stood in front of them bragging about coming up with the idea, and scolding them for objecting to her role as an unasked-for surrogate mother.

(Kids, by the way, will go hungry rather than eat food they don't like. So starving them is one way for the Obamas to claim they are winning the "obesity battle", I suppose...)

But I like the kids gut reaction to a government official telling them what is in their best interest. If our future Tea Partiers are being groomed now - albeit unwittingly - in the school districts of the most pro-government suburb in the nation, then our future as a nation might be brighter than we suppose...

Michelle Marie Antoinette Obama Insults Us Again....

2012-01-13T13:58:00.001-05:00

If you don't like Barack Obama's presidency, that you're not entitled to have an opinion on it. So sayeth the Queen, when she graced us with her presence on CBS This Morning, as she spoke to suckup Gayle King:

King: Will it be harder for you this time, because there have been talk -- there are some people who say they're disappointed in Barack Obama's presidency, that it hasn't accomplished all that they thought that it would or all that he said it would?

Obama: Yeah, but they just don't know.

King: Would you--

Obama: They don't know. They don't know all that. So we're going -- this campaign is going to be about making sure that people understand all that's been accomplished. I think people are confused about -- some may be confused about how much has been accomplished. But that's what you do in a campaign.

Pssst.....someone tell Michelle that if you eliminated the people that "don't understand" from the electorate, the Democratic base would likely be cut in half...

Sarah Palin responds here...

And if you can't stand looking at Michelle's smug, condescending mug anymore, well....consider the alternative views:

Queen Booty Shaker, indeed....

The Iranian Assassinations: Is The US A Cringing Chicken?

2012-01-13T09:12:00.001-05:00

So another Iranian nuclear scientist bites the dust, and Iran's dream of dominating the Middle East under the threat of a mushroom cloud recedes, even if only for a moment. And while one would expect the United States, whether involved or not, to keep a cool distance from the fray, our response has been one of more vitriolic opposition, to say the least.

Let's look at these statements:

The assassination drew an unusually strong condemnation from the White House and the State Department, which disavowed any American complicity.

“The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this,” said Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared to expand the denial beyond Wednesday’s killing, “categorically” denying “any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran.”

“We believe that there has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community,” Mrs. Clinton said.

Based on Hillary's remark above - almost a plea for forgiveness - the New York Times gives an analysis that is likely spot-on:

The statements by the United States appeared to reflect serious concern about the growing number of lethal attacks, which some experts believe could backfire by undercutting future negotiations and prompting Iran to redouble what the West suspects is a quest for a nuclear capacity.

Looks like the Obama Administration is going the old appeasement route - let Iran continue with their bad behavior, and don't get them angry, or else they may use it as an excuse not to sit down with us in the future and talk about....where to sit at the next meeting.

Don't rule out the president's narcissism, either. He based his entire campaign on being the guy who could get quarreling groups together by the majesty of his words and the force of his will; to use force of another kind is to admit personal failings and defeat. And if Barack Obama is one thing, it is extremely, almost pathologically, non-self-reflecting...

But is it just all a feint; is the US actually complicit here? The harsh denials could be a cover, and a good excuse for the administration's myriad of anti-semites to embarrass and bash Israel (the only other suspect) under the guise of protecting it.

I doubt it. If that were there case, the Israeli denial-style would have been the way to go:

The Israeli military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, writing on Facebook about the attack, said, “I don’t know who took revenge on the Iranian scientist, but I am definitely not shedding a tear,” Israeli news media reported.

Hey Barack - meet a real man...

Too gutsy for our American president, apparently, whether we are involved or not. Sure, the Iranian president is laughing up a storm, denying the Holocaust while building a nuke while making clear that boy-oh-boy, if you want to see a real holocaust, just give me another eighteen months! But that doesn't matter. Barack Hussein Obama has his feelings to worry about....and Hillary Clinton has a process she's ideologically compelled to follow.

And if another six million Jews should die? Well, as long as it happens after the 2012 elections...

ACLU Goes Hunting - For Conservative Heads...

2012-01-12T14:12:00.001-05:00

Fascinating anecdote at Contentions on Obama's Guantanamo bay policy. Faced with reality - that closing the prison site was an impossibility - he called in a bunch of law professors and "civil liberties activists" to break the bad news: That Gitmo wasn't going away anytime soon.

Gasps were uttered, clothing was rent, teeth were gnashed, and a wail went up unto the heavens. But one bit of commentary from the assembled liberal rout stands out in shocking clarity:

But the worst moment of the meeting took place at its conclusion, when ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero repeated his plea for Obama to prosecute Bush officials. Romero said: “Hunt one head and hunt it famously and bring it down to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes again.”

Obama, to his great credit, told Romero he was alone on that ledge and dismissed the meeting.

Good for Obama. But the hatred and zeal of Romero - his virtual lust for blood - paints a clear portrait of who and what the American Civil Liberties Union really is.

One wonders if Romero will be demanding the head of an Obama administration official for the crimes committed by Eric Holder, or the Solyndra financing fiasco, or the sick crony capitalism of Lightsquared, in which a U.S. general was pressured to lie to Congress - and risk national security - in order to help a Dem-donor company. After all, it might insure we don't make the same mistakes again...

Can you say...unlikely? After all, it's always hunting season on Republicans, while Democrats, despite their high crimes and misdemeanors, always seem to be a protected species...

It's a team effort. See here for how the police and the media covered up for Romano when he was recently arrested for drunk driving in East Hampton, after an all-night bender celebrating the passage of New York's gay marriage law...

Ricky Gervais Rips Hollywood Elites

2012-01-12T09:01:00.001-05:00

Oh, it's gonna be a heckuva Golden Globes show, with Ricky handling the hosting duties once again. One of maybe three people in Hollywood that aren't filled with notions of narcissistic glory (the other two being Trey Parker and Matt Stone), Ricky lets loose on the in-crowd:

“They’re the wealthiest, most privileged people in the world,” the comic says of Hollywood’s A-list in an upcoming Esquire interview. “Offense is taken, not given.”

Gearing up for his third time as host, Gervais adds, “Imagine if I had gone out there and said, ‘We’re all in the same gang. Aren’t we brilliant? Us millionaires together’ . . . I’m not a wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’m a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

“There was a Roman emperor who hired someone to whisper, ‘You’re just a man,’ in his ear as he walked around the crowds,” Gervais says of Hollywood hubris. “Just to remind him, because he knew if everyone tells you, you’re a god, then you are. And so he hired someone to say, ‘You’re just a man.’ ”

I guess that's Rickey's role now. Kudos for him for willing to shoulder the burden. And in return, I'll...DVR the Golden Globes this Sunday. Still can't bear to watch it. But I will fast-forward around and stop when he's doing his hosting duties. Will be the only thing worth watching, and the only thing that won't make the bile rise in the back of my throat...

Chris Christie: What Might Have Been...

2012-01-11T08:15:00.001-05:00

Jon Huntsman thought he could build a moderate-conservative coalition by...bashing conservaties. Big fail there, Jon-boy. Wanna see how it is done? Look East, at the Big Man of New Jersey:

...when New Jersey residents list their favorite things, it seems the governor belongs in the conversation.

According to a statewide poll released Monday by Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind, 53 percent of Garden State voters approve of the job Christie is doing, while 37 percent disapprove, a 16 percentage point spread. The poll was released on the eve of Christie’s annual State of the State address.

“That’s the way any office-holder wants to begin the new year,” said Peter Woolley, director of the poll. “But in this economic climate, many aren’t.”
The governor’s approval rating is virtually identical to where it was a year ago...

How does Chris Christie get such positive numbers in a blue state? By being as conservative as he can be, given the circumstances. He cannot go hard-right, but he can go right-center, and slowly turn the good ship New Jersey away from the shoals.

He could have been more than a contender. He would have been The Champ. Whereas Huntsman is no more than pretender, a chump. He should think about what Chris Christie has done, and how he has done it, and give himself 20 lashes for wasting such an opportunity, by taking the advice of the mainstream media instead of following what political instincts he may or may not have had in the first place...

But can you imagine Christie on the trail right now? The soaring excitement, the rhetorical disdain leveled not his fellow Republicans, but at the Naked Emperor occupying the White House? The turnout in the primaries, with voting halls filled with citizens anxious to put their support on record? A movement led by a happy warrior, one who relishes the fight as much as the beer afterward, who can win it all cleanly, based on the merits and not the mud thrown?

We'll get none of that. We'll probabaly get Mitt Romney. But we can look off wistfully in the distance, and wonder at what might have been...

Unicorns Fail To Fly. The Government, In Response, Fines The Oil Companies...

2012-01-10T14:06:00.001-05:00

The inevitable result of the immaturity of the progressive movement, I suppose. Or maybe it's their insanity. Either way, it's a dangerous group of people to give power to. Because when they don't get what they want - even if it only exists in their fevered imagination - they lash out. Usually at convenient cartoon criminals or the enemy du jour, although, in a pinch, Jews will do just fine.

Case in point: Fining oil companies millions of dollars for the failure to use an "environment-friendly" biofuel that doesn't even exist:

When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.

But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.

In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.

“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.

Penalizing the fuel suppliers demonstrates what happens when the federal government really, really wants something that technology is not ready to provide....

Soon, we'll all be riding him to work! And he'll like it...

Wait until 2013, when the government gets to apply the same rational thinking to your health care. You know, the same health care that will become more efficient and less expensive because progressives say it will?

Typical celebrity privilege, getting all the best forms of motive power...no wonder Sarah Silverman can't get her tongue out of her unicorn's mouth...

The Simpsons Goes After The "Tea Party"....

2012-01-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

Used be a time - oh, for maybe its first ten years - that the Simpsons was the most cutting-edge counter-cultural show on television - an animated version of the Saturday Night Live of the late 70's. Over the past decade, it has de-evolved into a subpar poorly written and executed sitcom, whose writers throw in as many liberal tropes as possible, while taking clumsy shots at conservatives, which may earn them kudos at the water cooler but get them brickbats from open-minded viewers of any political stripe.

Possibly the worst offender was this episode....but coming close was Sunday's entry, where a dim witted Homer takes on the role of a FOX news host, and convinces his dim-witted countrymen to join him on a pointless crusade, in which they all wear gravy boats on their heads. The HuffPo gets the joke:

(they wear them like colonial hats -- *wink wink*)

Yeah, it's mostly the stuff liberals find funny, but there were two things that irked me. One was having the fictional FOX producers essentially call their audience idiots, to which Lisa responds with outrage. Maybe just a case of the writers protecting themselves, as they were depicting the FOX audience as idiots? The second was showing Chris Christie as a gluttonous buffoon, too busy eating chicken to run for president. Consider your lucky that he's biding his time, ladies...

Putting the hate of the Left into the mouths of FOX...

Best takedown is from the owner of the Dead Homer Society blog, who labels all Simpsons episodes past season 10 as "Zombie". He's got a point, they've been stumbling around aimlessly and brainlessly for quite some time now:

The subject matter was stale and the satire was stuff that has been done better elsewhere, but the place you can see it most is in the little tricks they use to make this expired milk seem fresh. They ran current jokes in a news ticker, they had static images of the Republican presidential field on a table, with Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain’s photos crossed out with easy-to-add-late graphics. They know that these episodes don’t work well, but they went ahead and did it anyway because if you can take some potshots at Glenn Beck a year after he was dumped off television and add in some political jokes no one will care about two months from now, then you have to do it.

Watching this, I really can’t help but think the staff would rather be writing for Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show.

Exactly. Is the Simpsons now considered a "minor league affiliate" of Comedy Central, or is it just a home for their rejected writers?

Either way, some good news comes out of it:

Anyway, the numbers are in and they are really, truly awful... a mere 5.11 million people remembered Ted Nugent after the Steelers came back to tie it late. That’s easily the lowest so far this season and is tied with Season 21’s “Million Dollar Maybe” for the second lowest number of all time.... Season 23 is now all but assured of being the least watched season ever. The only question now is how far it sinks.

Oh, with an election coming up in 2012, I'm sure the real digging hasn't even begun...

Tim Tebow: God's Messenger? Hmmm....

2012-01-09T21:48:00.002-05:00

Regular readers of this blog know I like to trot out the occasional conspiracy theory. While Occam's Razor is probably the best starting point for interpreting the universe, truth is often much, much stranger than fiction.

And what else is a conspiracy but a series of related coincidences, tied together to form an unlikely pattern, in order to support an unsteady theory? And yet....

It seems to me that every now and again - and more often lately - The Big Guy is trying to send us a message. Personally, when I read about the limited but very specific damage caused by that very unusual late-summer Virginia earthquake, I felt a chill go down my spine. I just felt it again, in reading some of the Tim Tebow post-heroic wrap-ups:

The fact that Tebow had 316 yards passing and averaged 31.6 yards per pass in the game didn't escape notice on Sunday night. Tebow wore "John 3:16" on his eye black in the 2009 BCS Championship game and has since become identified with the famous Bible message. The coincidental stats caused millions of fans to perform Google searches on the Bible passage in the past 24 hours. Here's one more unbelievable stat: John Ourand of Sports Business Journal reports that the final quarter-hour television rating for the Broncos-Steelers game was, you guessed it, 31.6.

More:

As it turns out, the lone interception thrown in the game on Sunday night came from Ben Roethlisberger. What down and distance were involved when he threw it? Third and 16. Of course.

I don't know what it all means. But just to be on the safe side...

John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."

And then, of course, there's always this:

"They say when you talk to God it's prayer. But when God talks to you, it's schizophrenia."
~Agent Fox Mulder (The X-Files: All Souls)

Why So Many "Gay" Questions In The Republican Debate?

2012-01-09T14:10:00.002-05:00

Plenty of well-deserved outrage over the past few days over the debate performances of George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer. Gay rights, abortion, contraception - why in the world would two alleged "reporters" waste the nation's time with such crap?

Yeah, I suppose the easy answer is that because these two asshats are liberals, these issues matter more to them than national defense, trillion dollar deficits, and chronic unemployment. But there is more to it than that. As media liberals, Stephanopoulos and Sawyer see themselves as the vanguard of the elite themselves - they believe they can control the national conversation, and steer it in such ways that it will prevent the barbarians (the Republicans) from storming the gate.

So all the social issue questions that the two "moderators" brought up are really less reflective of America's concerns - or even George's and Diane's - and more of an attempt to use these issue as a cudgel against conservatives, and as a way to create a divide between the American people and the Republican party.

The Left continues its battle for the soul of the nation, if for no other reason than to stamp it out. Via Contentions:

Liberal secularism is a project in its own right that is bent on eliminating any recognized place for biblical faith as the guiding light of the culture. It will not rest content until faith withdraws from playing any public role, direct or indirect. The conflict of secularism and faith is at the heart of the so-called “culture war.”

Mathew Staver, founder of the conservative law group, Liberty Counsel, talks about how the Left is suing "gay rights" as a tool to eliminate the role of a man's conscious in his everyday transactions:

"I believe the greatest threat to religious liberty is the clash between religious liberty and LGBT rights," he says.

Staver says as rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make gains, religious conservatives are having to set aside their convictions. A Christian counselor was penalized for refusing to advise gay couples. A court clerk in New York was told to issue same-sex marriage licenses, despite religious reservations. A wedding photographer was sued for refusing to shoot a same-sex wedding. Staver says these people aren't trying to impose their religious views on others.

"What people of faith don't want to do, however, is be forced to participate in something that literally cuts to the very core of their belief."

But that's exactly what Barack Obama and the Democrats want. A nation where the government can force any person to do what they demand that they to do - regardless of their religious beliefs - under the guise of "the betterment of society as a whole". ObamaCare is an example on a grand scale, but the list grows longer by the day, designed to trip us all up if we don't follow the liberal line, as Staver's examples bear out.

And thus the need for George Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer to try to fortify the gates with the LGBT buttress. Either force the Republicans to acknowledge the overwhelming power of government, or try to discredit them by painting their opposition to gay rights as some sort of moral failing itself (the rights of the aforementioned victims of the LGBT crusade do not exist, of course).

Based on the post-debate furor, it seems as if the liberal vanguard was a little less subtle than they might have been with their frontal attack on American religion, and are getting some blowback. Seems like George & Diane forgot that the erosion of America's tradition of religious freedoms was supposed to be a gradual one, conducted on the down-low, not to be noticed or mentioned until they were already gone...

Tyranny Writ Small

2012-01-09T08:51:00.001-05:00

When this sort of thing starts to happen, it is time to start plucking the chickens and heating up the tar. Folks like this need to be run out of government, and convicted of unlawful imprisonment.

And when they aren't, and don't, things only go downhill from here. The New York Post:

A power-crazed Hamptons politician locked a young contractor in his Southampton office and subjected him to a bizarre rant after bilking him out of thousands of dollars for work done on his Hampton Bays home, the angry businessman told The Post.

The contractor, Anthony Prosano, 23, says he managed to audio-record the incident, in which the small-time politician is allegedly heard abusing the little authority he does have.

“You are f--king playing in a pool you don’t belong in!” seethes James Malone, the Southampton town councilman and deputy Suffolk County clerk, after allegedly locking Prosano in his office.

After Prosano tells Malone that he can’t lawfully detain him there, Malone allegedly claims that his political post gives him that right.
“No, I can!” Malone allegedly bellows on the tape. “Yes, I can! I’m deputy county clerk! I’m holding you!”

Sigh. "I'm a deputy clerk!", as if all should quail before him. Gee..ever get the feeling that some of these politicians are not in it for the "public service"?

When confronted with the audio, what did our town clerk have to say?

Malone did not return calls or e-mails for comment.

Maybe he smells that cauldron of boiling tar? Malone is a Republican, by the way...all the more reason to give him the boot. If we start to act like the people we are trying to overcome...

Jon Corzine's "House-Shopping" In The South of France Raises More Questions

2012-01-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

"House'" is in quotations, because he and his wife were really shopping for a chateau on the French Mediterranean. Not exactly a three-bedroom, two-bath in Jersey...Vanity Fair:

“To buy any decent château is at least a couple of million euros,” explains another person who was at the party, “and that is before the renovation with the air-conditioning and the new kitchen. Sharon was very excited. She said she was flying down there on Monday morning.”

This, two weeks before MF GLobal went belly-up, with Crooked Jon putting on his best "who, me?" face as he told Congress he has no idea where the missing $1.5 billion in customer funds went. But shocking lack of concern or utter cluelessness is not the point here. What interests us is that if Jon and his wife were shopping for a multi-million Euro house, he apparently had no concern about his own finances whatsoever. Which leads us to ask: Where was Dirty Jon's cash-stash?

It is almost unanimously mandated by Wall Street that officers of brokerage firms keep their investment accounts at the firm where they work. This is done for compliance reasons.

If Corzine and his inner cadre of lieutenants had their millions at MF Global, were their accounts breached as well?
Are they being treated identically to other MF Global account holders in terms of the massive amounts of their missing money and the lack of access to what’s rightfully theirs?
If Corzine et al. didn’t keep the vast majority of their money at MF Global, then why not?

Good questions. Maybe Congress will ask them the next time he is called to account, assuming he doesn't get asylum in the French Rivera.

Meanwhile, Vanity Fair paints the profile of a man who did, in fact, know what he was doing, even if he wasn't totally aware of why he was doing it:

“On this, Jon became a zealot,” one person says of Corzine’s European-debt trades. “He managed the process soup to nuts,” says a former employee. “He knew every number back and forth. He’d talk to the accountants and the board. He’s not a detail-oriented guy, but on this he knew every detail.”

Sort of puts lie to his previous sworn testimony before Congress:

“Nor was I an expert on the complicated rules and regulations governing the various different operating businesses that comprised MF Global,” he said.

That's not what your (former?) friends are saying, pal. And the rest of the nation is finally getting a clearer picture of exactly who you are - although we in Jersey already knew this when we tossed your sorry ass out:

"He’s very focused on reputation and how he’s perceived. He wants to be perceived as a winner, and he will do what it takes to get there.” Says a former colleague, “He wanted to be in the game, to prove he was back, to prove he was the man.”

“There are a lot of us who consider Jon to be a friend and mentor,” says a former Goldmanite. “That group is horrified [by the scandal].” He continues: “There is another group who thinks this is par for the course.”

“At first I thought, Oh, Jon must be crushed,” says one person who knows him well. “It’s not like he was doing this [playing the accounting games] to earn a big bonus. But he needed to feed his ego that he would be perceived as being successful. And there are lot of people who are paying a much higher price than he is.”

Those of us who knew him know this is, in fact, par for the course. And he has always left a trail of bodies in his wake. Hopefully, this time, he'll be forced to pay the price.

And ironically, if he is metaphorically "strung up", it will be by none other than the torch & pitchfork wielding, anti-Wall Street mobs that his friend and mentor, Barack Obama, let loose upon America.

Sometimes there is justice, after all...

"What have you been doing lately, Jon? Playing the market with the company's money?

....Look at you. You used to be so cocky. You were going to go out and conquer the world... What are you but a warped, frustrated young man? A miserable little clerk crawling in here on your hands and knees and begging for help....."

~Mr. Potter, "It's a Wonderful Life"

Self Destruction Blues

2012-01-07T12:51:00.001-05:00

So here's the first headline that pops up at me when I open up the Yahoo! homepage:

Gingrich claims Romney taxed the blind

And I saw this one yesterday:

John McCain: ‘We Have To Fix Our Problems With The Hispanics’

While underneath the Gingrich headline, Yahoo had these two listed:

U.S. economy gaining momentum, unemployment near 3-year low
Rick Santorum's income has soared since he left Senate

The Republican party is tearing itself apart right now in a vicious nomination fight, and the media is eating it up. Debate after debate has not led to more insight on the candidates but instead has allowed the MSM to highlight various candidate "gaffes", and isolate comments out of context to be then labeled as "extremist".

The candidates have bought into this, trying to build themselves up by tearing the next man down. Newt Gingrich has been playing this game since May, and with his moment in the sun seemingly over, has reverted back to the worst stereotype of a "right-wing bomb thrower". Except, of course, he's throwing them at the right wing. Which is why he's the media's second favorite Republican candidate, behind Jon Huntsman, who also seems to have never met a conservative he hasn't hated. Ron Paul, of course, may be the worst of the lot, but I try not to think about him much...

Watch where you point that thing, Newt....friendly fire kills...

How is this being absorbed into the national consciousness? The public gets non-stop reports on the negative salvos each candidate launches against the other, while they are spoon-fed positive spins on every vile act perpetrated by Barack Obama. His defiance of the Constitution is "bold", millions of people dropping out of the workforce is a "strengthening economy", and slashing our military to the bone to pay for social welfare programs is "strategic re-alignment".

Suicide by a thousand cuts? Oh, you betcha. So how do we save ourselves?

The candidates must stop attacking each other - NOW - and focus their fire on Barack Hussein Obama. And they need to fight the propaganda war being waged on them by media head-on. No more defensive crouches, just pure offense. John McCain buying into the fact that Republicans have a "Hispanic problem" is a sick buy-in to a MSM lie , we need to make it clear that we offer Hispanics hope for a better life, while Obama offers them only permanent welfare. We need not only to fight every accusation of racism, but to expose the liberal racism that permeates the Democratic party. The candidates must not defend themselves against every accusation of "extremism", but instead point out that the real extremists live in the White House. And occupies the mainstream media.

It is time for each Republican presidential candidate to state, often and boldly, what he feels is so objectionable about the reign of Barack Hussein Obama, and what he would do differently. If the argument is strong enough, petty attacks from weakened candidates can be dismissed with a smirk and a wave of the hand, and the media's reporting of such nonsense will carry less weight. But if the candidates continue to tear each other to to pieces, the narrative will be set in stone by the time the convention opens, and it will be an uphill slog from there.

The only way that Barack Obama gets re-elected is if the Republicans self-destruct. And right now, I'm singing...

It was a Monday morning, When the blues came falling on me
Now it's Saturday evening, And still got a hold on me
Oh please, dear Lord, Help me get rid of my self destruction blues...
~Hanoi Rocks, "Self Destruction Blues"

Bob Menendez Blocks Obama Judicial Appointee? What's The Catch?

2012-01-06T14:30:00.002-05:00

Why would a good little liberal like Bob Menendez (D-La Raza) block a nice Jewish Jersey girl's chance to be appointed to United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit? Especially when U.S. Magistrate Patty Shwartz was nominated by lefty godhead Barack Hussein Obama?

Bob Menendez has on occasion done the right thing for the wrong reasons. But Menendez (D-Illegal Immigrants) has only one motivation to block this innocuous appointment.

Vengeance.

Welcome back to Dirty Jersey:

Menendez doesn’t have the guts to say why he is using a federal form of senatorial courtesy. But, here’s a clue: She worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office from 1989 through 2003 — including two stints as chief of the criminal division. Her former boss, Chris Christie, endorsed her. She was close to assistant U.S. Attorney James Nobile who oversaw an investigation of a local charity with ties to Menendez.

[Sidebar: Menendez was cleared of all wrongdoing, after Christie left the Attorney's office, by his replacement, one Paul Fishman. Menendez supported Fishman for the job, by the way. In private practice Fishman represented Jon Corzine’s gal pal/union queenpin Carla Katz, as well as developer Encap Golf Holdings, both of whom also were investigated by Christie's office. Upon taking the U.S. Attorney's job, Fishman declared there was no "culture of corruption in New Jersey, and that it was "demoralizing" to even say such a thing. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, including Chris Christie's 200-0 record convicting public figures of misdeeds while he was New Jersey's US Attorney...]

Normally this would again be a case of Menedez doing the right thing - blocking an Obama appointee - for the wrong reasons. But Shwartz checks out OK, maybe the best you can hope for from the current administration. And one would think that having a local girl, and a Rutgers alum, moving up the judicial ranks could only be a good thing for New Jersey.

Well, it might be. But Senator Menendez has his own personal pique to look out for, first and foremost. Vengeance must be served on Chris Christie, even if it is via an innocent woman. Then he'll move on the serving the people of New Jersey, eventually...depending on their skin color and ethnic heritage, of course.

And as a secondary benefit to Menendez, it puts all current employees of Justice on notice: If you want a career path, don't you dare delve into the corruption of liberal Democrats. Just look the other way, and sue big corporations for hefty settlements that can be disbursed to my friends and allies...

UPDATE: Even the New York Times is a bit stunned by the audacity here:

...the connection has led lawyers and judges in the state to speculate that Mr. Menendez is acting out of resentment, rather than any concern about Judge Shwartz’s qualifications.

“Every lawyer in the world will tell you that she’s extraordinarily qualified, a decent person and an excellent judge, and would be an asset to the circuit,” said Tom Curtin, the chairman of the lawyers’ advisory committee for the United States District Court for New Jersey. “This was going to be words and music for her, then something happened.”

The Huntsman Campaign Hearts Rachel Maddow

2012-01-06T08:55:00.001-05:00

Yeah, OK, I wrote about what an asshole he was just that other day, and to myself, I thought, I'm done with this guy.

But every day he sinks to a new low, in his contempt for the Republican party whose banner he so dearly wants to carry. Via The Weekly Standard, which calls him a Rachel Maddow Republican:

There's no question Jon Huntsman has been praised by more Democrats and left leaning commentators than any of the other Republican presidential candidates. But until now, that praise has gone one way. Earlier this week, however, Huntsman's top fundraiser, Ann Herberger, announced her new “hero” was MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

How nice that his campaign tweets out love for a vile, radical liberal - a cog in MSNBC's Democratic propaganda machine - who has made a career out of lying about honest, decent people who disagree with "The Agenda". No wonder Huntsman gets so much liberal support. He's one of them, right down to the disdain he shows for his fellow Republicans. Not to mention his fellow Americans.

And yet, some desperate people are giving him a second look. I'm starting to wonder if, after only three years of Obama, Republicans aren't developing a bit of Battered Wife Syndrome.

No, she didn't just get home from "date night with a liberal"...she just voted for Jon Huntsman....

Key thing to remember here:

This might not kill Huntsman in New Hampshire, where Democrats and independents often participate in the Republican primary, but it probably won't help him in South Carolina or Florida.

If Huntsman even finishes third in New Hampshire, the media will elevate him to front-runner status, as he's the closest they'll get to a Barack Obama White House in 2013. Don't fall for the hype, you'll only wind up on the floor again, battered and bruised, wondering why he shows his love for you in such a mean, ugly way....

"The Constitution be Damned...This Is About Power"

2012-01-05T20:05:00.001-05:00

Peter Wehner clearly explains where we are, The Day After Barack Obama declared the Constitution to be subject to his will:

I have argued before that Obama is governing in a post-modern manner, in which what matters isn’t truth but narrative, not rules but will. And that is precisely what this action highlights. It doesn’t matter if what the president is doing is blatantly unconstitutional and in contempt of Congress; Obama has a campaign to run and an election to win. And so the Constitution be damned. This is, after all, about political power. Now in this case the president will argue that he’s violating the Constitution over a small procedural matter. But who exactly is the arbiter of which laws to violate and which laws to abide by? I gather for Obama the answer is Obama. That is not terribly comforting to the rest of us.

It is not a good thing, and it can even be a frightful thing, when we have as president a man who seems to reject the idea (at least when re-election is at stake) that we are a nation of laws, not of men. But that is where we are, given Obama’s casual indifference to our laws and traditions....

It is a terrifying thing, actually. Those freedoms we took for granted for so long? Apparently, we need to fight for them all over again. For every honest Tea Partier, for every concerned citizen, Obama will match them with a union thug or a dangerous "Occupier". And the media will acquiesce in silence - for in their eyes, the end will justify the means.

Welcome to the 2012 election season: The Fight For Freedom...

Obama’s "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" - His Most Epic Fail To Date?

2012-01-05T14:08:00.000-05:00

The fact that Barack Obama is making illegal appointments to out-of control, unaccountable, extralegal federal agencies is bad enough. But what's worse is that his track record of personnel selection to committees, boards, and agencies of all types has been universally brutal. Let's forget Sonia Sotomeyer for a moment, and even (spit, spit) Eric Holder. Instead, let's see how the companies that populate his much-heralded "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" are faring.

It ain't pretty, folks:

When the council’s members were announced February 23, among the concerns raised was that the members would use their status to the advantage of their companies. In fact, what’s happened since then is that the 13 publicly traded companies whose executives were appointed to the council, taken together, have declined in value by about 7% through year-end, worse than the decline of about 4% in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index over the same period.

Eastman Kodak’s stock has lost more than 80% of its value since President Obama named its chairman and CEO, Antonio Perez, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Citigroup is down 44% since Mr. Obama named its chairman, Richard Parsons, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The UBS AG shares traded on the New York Stock Exchange are down 40% since Mr. Obama named Robert Wolf, the chairman of UBS Group Americas and the president of UBS Investment Bank, to the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.

If these council members haven’t produced much by way of competitiveness, at least as measured by stock price, they haven’t produced much in the way of jobs, either. In April 2011, Kodak announced 48 layoffs in Durham, North Carolina. In August 2011, UBS announced 3,500 layoffs. In December 2011, Citigroup announced 4,500 layoffs.

And Kodak is about to file for Chapter 11 protection. How many jobs will be lost in a bankruptcy? Or what if the best move for Kodak is to simply liquidate? Will Obama step in with a bailout, rather than see a member of his "competitiveness" council auction off the bones of a once-great company?

Foursome of failure...

But that's not the point. The real issue here is the president's utter and complete lack of judgement skills, leading to poor appointees across the board. Which, I suppose, is not surprising, given that Obama himself is a man with no real qualifications for any job he's held, but yet has been pushed ahead of the pack - primarily by others who see him as the perfect vehicle to advance their radical agendas. Given his own "success" without any real bona fides, what basis in rationality does he have when selecting other individuals for key posts and positions?

And thus you get a "Jobs and Competitiveness Council" that is actually under-performing the rest of the economy at large. And you get Supreme Court justices picked by their gender. And Attorney Generals picked based on their skin color. And all sorts of other posts filled by people who Obama selected because someone else told him they were good enough for the job.

See the results? They are all around you...

We have met the Barbarians, and they are us...

2012-01-05T11:21:00.000-05:00

How else to explain this story?

A 36-year-old woman was charged Wednesday after punching, scratching and sliding her buttocks against a painting worth more than $30 million, authorities in Colorado said.

Carmen Tisch is accused of pulling her pants down to rub up against the work, an oil-on-canvas called "1957-J no.2", by the late abstract expressionist artist Clyfford Still.

Tisch allegedly caused $10,000 worth of damage to the painting.

Kimbrough said Tisch urinated after she rubbed up against the canvas at the recently opened Clyfford Still museum in Denver....

And women were once the "gentler" sex. Is this what feminism hath wrought? Or just liberalism, a philosophical genre where nothing is sacred, save for the current moment, and what can be wrung from it? Even if it means the destruction of priceless American art for the pleasurable feeling obtained by rubbing one's bare ass against it, while drunk beyond the control of your facilities?

She doesn't exactly look like a conservative to me....

Obama Shreds The Constitution, Media Whoops With Joy

2012-01-05T08:58:00.002-05:00

Barack Obama, in direct defiance of both the United States Constitution and (on a much, much smaller level) the recently passed Dodd-Frank legislation, made recess appointments to both his newly-created regulatory factory - the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau - as well as to the power-mad, job-destroying NLRB.

"Advise and Consent"? The man who swore an oath to protect the Constitution never heard of it, apparently.

And the media? The crew that called for impeachment every time George W. Bush took a shit now cheers wildly for the man who is rapidly creating the very imperial presidency our founders fought a revolution to prevent:

Stymied by Congress, Obama to boldly seat nominees

A defiant President Barack Obama on Wednesday took his boldest action yet to show voters he will confront Republicans, announcing he will bypass Congress and install nominees into politically sensitive jobs...

"Boldly"? "Confront Republicans"? And yet nowhere do I see the word "controversial", which again accompanied coverage of every trip W made to the men's room...

We've thrown around the word "fascist" a lot on this blog when referring to Barack Hussein Obama, and refused to take it back when called on it. Events have borne us out, alas...

And so we see the president's re-election strategy take hold. I created the CFBP to protect you from Wall Street, and when the Republicans tried to block me to protect the rich, I went around them. I supported middle-class jobs by staffing the NLRB when Republicans tried to defang it. And when the Republicanism said no, I still borrowed $1 trillion dollars to pay off all your mortgages anyway!

The media will amplify this message verbatim, while denouncing Obama's eventual opponent as...well, whatever Obama tells them to.

If our Founding Fathers returned to visit the nation they created, I have always thought that out of all the perversions of their dream, one thing alone would make them vomit out of their eyeballs. And it wouldn't necessarily be the massive over-reach of government, or the expansion of the welfare state, or our nearly constant state of war.

It would be the role that the media - the press, back in the day - has taken in American society. Imagined to be the the best defense of the citizen against the encroachment of tyranny, it has instead become a tool of the government itself, used as a cudgel against the very people it was supposed to protect. The lies of the State are printed without reproach, false information disseminated and never retracted, and the enemies of the status quo vilified and destroyed, be they political fugues opposed to the leftist agenda (think Sarah Palin), or simply ordinary citizens who dare ask challenging questions (think Joe the Plumber). The contemporary media has turned their backs on their very purpose in a democratic society, and instead have chosen to take the words of Vladimir Lenin to heart:

“The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses”.

The Founders groan in their graves, while the Republic they built with their blood is frittered away, more rapidly by the day...

So this is how liberty dies...to thunderous applause:

I'll Miss You, Michele

2012-01-04T14:19:00.001-05:00

Michele Bachmann bowed out of the 2012 presidential race earlier today, after her drubbing in Iowa. No cowardice there, just consent to political reality: She wasn't going to win the nomination. Although the opportunity was there, early on. From June 2011:

Washington's conventional understanding of the Republican party is way off the mark. Since President Obama's election, conventional opinion has held that the GOP will have to "moderate" if it wants to win. The opposite has happened, of course: The GOP has become more ideological on economic issues. And 2010 was one of the Republican Party's best cycles in decades.

Which does not bode well for Mitt Romney. The "moderate" mantle didn't work well for Jon McCain, either, as he failed to realize that the media will paint all Republicans as extremists, regardless of record. Nor does it appear we have learned the lesson of 1980, when one George H. Bush declared himself to be more "electable" than a fringe ideologue named Ronald Reagan.

So why not Michele? Jen Rubin, never a big fan of our Divine Miss M, delivers a fair post-mortem:

So why did she lose? The simple answer is that she was big-footed by a better funded but ultimately flawed candidate in the person of Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who attracted the same segment of the electorate that was essential to her success.

There was more, of course. The gravitas and calm that she exudes in one-one-one interviews never came out in debates and speeches. She seemed less sober and less knowledgable than she is.

And finally, her record of opposition to ObamaCare and the entire Obama agenda, in the end, proved insufficient. Without legislative accomplishments and an executive office in her background, she never quite shook the persona of a conservative motivator and grassroots leader. She is a darling of the right, but she didn’t seem yet ready for the presidency.

She has capabilities greater than many of the also-rans in the race. She has considerable intelligence and fortitude. Should she decide to buckle down, become expert on a range of issues and dedicate herself to the conservative movement and to dislodging Obama, she can have a second act. Doesn’t everyone in America get one?

No, we haven't seen the last of Michele. But she did bring a conservative fire that the rest of the field sorely lacks. A fire that could have cleansed the nation of the poison of liberalism, were it wielded by the right person.

Alas, there is no one remaining in the presidential field that is man enough (or women enough) to carry that torch. And so we are left with Mitt Romney, whose supporters make the same argument for his nomination that ironically, became the epitaph of many other nice-guy, losing candidates: He is "electable".

So was Ronald Reagan, But it didn't seem that way early on. Time to give "radicalism" a chance...

Jon Huntsman As The New "Not-Romney"? Are You Kidding Me?

2012-01-04T09:09:00.002-05:00

I'm not a regular reader of Red State, so I missed this bit (via Hot Air) where Mr. Erickson opines that if Jon Huntsman weren't such an asshole, he'd be a contender by now:

I think it was a big mistake for Huntsman to write off Iowa....

...While I have issues with his record as Governor, it is much more conservative than Mitt Romney’s and he has a much, much greater cross-party and independent appeal than Mitt Romney. People kind of like he doesn’t give a crap about pandering.

But everyone closes their lament feeling Huntsman made a strategic decision to not ignore conservatives like Romney, but to give them the middle finger.

And how did Huntsman respond to this plea for civility from a wannabe backer? Why, by giving him his middle finger!

Even before the results were in, Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman had a message for whoever won the Iowa caucus: "Welcome to New Hampshire. Nobody cares."

I'm sure that remark will help him lock up Iowa in the general election, should he survive that far. Although maybe it's just simply that Huntsman is such a focused panderer, that he can't get his head out of New Hampshire's butt-crack. From mid-November:

"I don't care what the rest of the country thinks or feels; that's not important. I do care about what the people of New Hampshire feel."

There's that middle finger again! Lord knows we've seen it before, and as usual, always directed at conservatives. For instance - do you doubt the corrupt science behind the "climate change"scam? If so, Jon's got a message for you:

Jon Huntsman tweeted today:

To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.

A sloppy, backhanded way of calling conservatives "crazy". No wonder the media loves him so (“Huntsman is a liberal’s idea of what a Republican ought to be..." ).

But it's not just conservatives Huntsman holds disdain for. Much like the current occupant of the White House, he doesn't seem to hold a lot of love for his country, or his countrymen. Obama's former Ambassador to China won't defend us from the negative perceptions that foreign despots conjurer up to protect themselves, instead, he identifies with it:

On the campaign trail, Huntsman often dwells on how America is viewed from abroad. “From 10,000 miles away, folks, let me just tell you that we lack humanity, we lack civility, we lack basic respect for which this country should be known,” Huntsman told one crowd.

Actually, it is Jon Huntsman who lacks basic respect - for his nation, for his party, and for Americans as a whole. Mixed in with an obnoxious condensation for all those who don't agree with him (something he picked up from his time in the Obama administration, perhaps?), you have an unlikable fellow with a piss-poor attitude, and someone who is so convinced of his own perfection that any would-be detractors are not to be debated, but merely insulted and dismissed...

We already have a man like that in politics. Goes by the name of Barack Hussein Obama. I don't believe for a second any serious Republicans are giving this guy (Huntsman, not Barack) a real look as our possible presidential nominee.

Is Romney that bad, where we would choose an "serial abuser" to represent us instead, hoping that maybe if we do give him what he wants, he'll finally stop beating us?

No. Next to Huntsman, Romney's a mensch. Huntsman is a man lost in time - that time being 2008:

Huntsman doesn’t represents any particular Republican faction. Rather, he represents a point in time — late 2008 through spring 2009 — when a lot of ”smart” people in the GOP seemed to believe that the Obama ascendancy was more or less permanent....

It's as if a Republican candidate left town in 1976, upon Carter's election, and returned in 1980 talking about detente and appeasement with the Soviet Union, only to be faced with a fellow named Reagan talking about an "evil empire".

Looking forward to seeing Huntsman get his ass kicked in New Hampshire. I don't care by who. I just want to see a conservative boot-print on his posterior, that's all....it's long overdue.

Take that, you motherf*ck*ng RHINO...

UPDATE 1/5: More nastiness from our wannabe king:

Mitt Romney marked his arrival in New Hampshire on Wednesday with an endorsement by Senator John McCain, one of the state’s favorite adopted sons...

The endorsement drew a snarl from Jon M. Huntsman Jr. , who skipped Iowa, where he drew 1 percent of the vote, to campaign instead in New Hampshire. “You can get all the Doles and all the McCains in the world, as Romney probably will,” said Mr. Huntsman, referring to former Senator Bob Dole, the party’s nominee in 1996. “But in the end, who cares?

Stay classy, Jon...

Iran Warns Off American Carrier. What's A Feckless Leader To Do?

2012-01-03T14:06:00.000-05:00

Fresh off its military exercises in the Persian Gulf, the Iranian army chief is warning the US Navy to stay out of "their" waterways.

Iran will take action if a U.S. aircraft carrier which left the area because of Iranian naval exercises returns to the Gulf, the state news agency quoted army chief Ataollah Salehi as saying on Tuesday.

"Iran will not repeat its warning ... the enemy's carrier has been moved to the Sea of Oman because of our drill. I recommend and emphasize to the American carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf," Salehi told IRNA.

"I advise, recommend and warn them (the Americans) over the return of this carrier to the Persian Gulf because we are not in the habit of warning more than once," the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Salehi as saying.

Salehi did not name the aircraft carrier or give details of the action Iran might take if it returned. However, last week a spokeswoman for the U.S. 5th Fleet said the USS John C. Stennis had left the Gulf.

Gee, after all those outreached hands Barack Obama proffered to the mullahs, they still refer to us as "the enemy"? Residual hatred left over from the Bush presidency, no doubt...

So the Iranians are basically threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz to insure the Stennis does not return. Michael Rubin calls it a bad, bad idea, and points out there may actually be a mini "naval surge" heading into the Gulf:

Meanwhile, while Iran perceives weakness in the Oval Office, they should be very careful about what they attempt. After all, not far behind the Stennis is the USS Carl Vinson—last in the headlines after the disposal of Bin Laden’s corpse—which turned around in near record time. The USS Abraham Lincoln is also heading to the Fifth Fleet area of operations. While there is normally only an aircraft carrier or two in the Persian Gulf or Sea of Oman, it seems there is a mini-naval surge ongoing. If Iran wants to pick a fight, they should think twice and then think again.

Israeli intelligence website DEBKA adds and confirms:

...two more American warships, the USS Bataan and USS Makin Island, are cruising in the area. They are small Marine Corps amphibian craft carrying jets and helicopters. The big air craft carrier USS Carl Vinson, deployed in the Pacific from the third week of December, is on standby to advance to waters opposite Iran in an emergency.

USS Bataan, an amphibious assault/support vessel

So we've got plenty of muscle in the area. More than enough to ward off the threats of a few Iranian motorboats that would get laughed out of John Kerry's yacht club. But the mullahs have made a living tweaking America's nose, from the hostage crisis of 1979 to the kidnapped hikers of 2012. Do they see another opportunity before them?

What will Obama do in the face of this threat? DEBKA, again:

It is hard to see the Obama administration caving in to Tehran's ultimate challenge to the freedom of this vital international waterway. The Stennis or some other American naval vessel must soon be sent through the Strait of Hormuz to test Iran's assumption of control.

Ah...no. Actually, it is not hard to see Barack Obama caving in to the Iranians at all. His ability to make Iran bow to his charm, goodwill, and sparkling intelligence was one of the central platforms of his 2008 campaign - an outreached hand as opposed to a clenched fist, yadda yadda yadda. A decision by this president to use a military option here would be tantamount to admitting the failure of liberal foreign policy, as well as the necessity of engaging in a "Bush doctrine" of sorts when dealing with rouge regimes.

Obama is not ready to concede personal ideological defeat. But he has shown a willingness to force the entirety of the United States of America to concede defeat in order to protect his political pretensions (see Iraq, Afghanistan). Obama has already watered down the sanctions passed by Congress and made them flexible to his will, even as the doves in his party screamed bloody murder (mixed metaphor, I know). Why would he not withdraw the Stennis and most of his Persian Gulf fleet, so as to demonstrate to the mullahs that "we're not a threat, there is no need to be afraid of us, we are willing to accede to your demands, so we can all sit down and talk and be friends now. Right?"

That's my bet. Besides, the timing's not right. Obama's learned from the killing of Osama bin Laden that the flush of victory at war only lasts about 2-3 weeks (just ask Bush the Elder, he of the 90% approval rating after winning Gulf War I). Expect an Iranian military strike, coordinated with Israel, on or around October 15, 2012.

Just enough time to carry him to victory...while our defeat is ensured...

How To Properly Interpret The Iowa Caucuses

2012-01-03T09:00:00.002-05:00

There is no more over-hyped event in presidential politics than this non-binding caucus. Unless it is the Ames straw poll, which led to the dropout of Tim Pawlenty and Thaddeus McCotter. Either of which would have been the hot "not-Romney" right now, if they had the guts not to be intimidated by a "straw poll" months before the actual caucus.

But there is no real reason for the over-hyped importance of this one political event, save that it is the first of the season, and it gives the media something to pontificate over for months before and weeks afterwards. Think of baseball, and the overwhelming focus put on opening day, with gallons of ink spilled prognostication the teams fortunes based on 1/162nd of the regular season? To wit:

Over the last 25 years, skipping 1994, the eventual World Series winners have a cumulative opening day record of 14 wins and 11 loses.

Five of the last seven World Series winners [up until 2009 - ed.] lost on opening day. The exceptions are the 2005 Chicago White Sox and 2006 St. Louis Cardinals.

Need more?

In the National League, the New York Mets have enjoyed the most success over the years at that first home game, according to the Baseball Almanac . With a record of 29-19, the Mets have the best Opening Day winning percentage, followed by the Colorado Rockies, San Francisco Giants, Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs. That's right, the Cubs have won 56.7 percent of their 134 Opening Days...

And can I take a quick shot at Iowa, while I'm at it? Just flipping over the golden-brown pancake of rural picture-perfection to show the side that's a bit...burnt. Matt Labash over at The Daily Caller:

...we continue this charade every four years, why? So that we can pretend as though Iowa is the rural, Platonic ideal of America, when its hype isn’t even accurately representative of itself, according to my Wikipedia sources. While reporters are fond of interviewing salt-of the-earth farmers over Iowa’s bevy of meth dealers or government employees (the latter of which account for 10.4 percent of their economy), over 60 percent of Iowa’s population now lives in urban areas, and only 3.5 percent of its gross domestic product is attributable to the production of raw agricultural goods. Meanwhile, less than one percent of the tallgrass prairie that formerly covered the state remains intact. The better to plant more corn to suck up ethanol subsidies (one third of Iowa’s corn is consumed by ethanol production), subsidies which until recently being allowed to expire, were a $5-billion-a-year-racket that caused corn prices to surge as much as 17 percent for the rest of us. Thanks, Hawkeye State!

Hmmm...maybe that explains some of the media's infatuation with a state they'd normally mocked with weary sighs and well-practiced affectations?

They don't really still vote like this, do they? Do they??

But maybe there is some good that comes out of the Iowa caucuses. If you are yellow-bellied enough to quit after a tough loss on Opening Day, if that's all you got, well... certainly you don't have what it takes to be president of the United States. Come to think of it, even the aforementioned Pawlenty and McCotter, two men who I admired, don't deserve to be here today. If you quit during warmups....

So when interpreting the results, here's what to look for: Not the "winners", not the "losers", but the quitters. Wave your white hanky at them, and be glad to be rid of them, for if they can't move past Iowa and the false importance the media puts on this contrived event, they were never presidential timber anyway.

Let's see who can do a gut-check, and still move forward, in this year unlike any other. Rick Perry, I'm looking at you...

Obama 2012: The Audacity of Cynicism? Or The Cynicism of Fascism?

2012-01-02T13:41:00.000-05:00

I'm taking that line from this post in Contentions, where Peter Wehner's head spins while trying to wrap his mind around the contradictions, cluelessness, and collective falsehoods that make up Barack Obama's re-election campaign:

But to really enter the Twilight Zone, consider these two priceless sentences from the Times story: “Winning a full-year extension of the payroll tax, [Joshua R. Earnest, the president’s deputy press secretary] said, will still be a top priority. He noted that House Republicans were now also arguing that it should be extended for a year, after some initially opposed extending it at all.”

Come again? On December 13, the GOP House passed a full-year extension of the payroll tax cut – and was promptly criticized by – you guessed it — the president. Obama favored a much shorter, two-month extension. House Republicans, under intense political pressure, eventually agreed to the two-month extension. Now the White House is declaring a full-year extension is a “top priority.” Yet as recently as three weeks ago the opposition to the president’s “top priority” came not from House Republicans but from Obama himself.

We are now reaching the point in which the president is running a truly post-modern campaign, in which there is no objective truth but simply narrative. Obama’s campaign isn’t simply distorting the facts; it is inverting them. This kind of thing isn’t unusual to find in the academy. But to see a president and his campaign so thoroughly deconstruct truth in order to maintain power is quite rare. The sheer audacity of Obama’s cynicism is a wonder of the modern world.

Wehner calls Obama's world a "Twilight Zone", no doubt a nod to this weekend's excellent marathon presented by SciFi. And it is quite apt: Obama's world is one where seeing is not believing, where the grip upon reality is tenuous at best, and a place where, when common sense dictates one thing should occur, you had best prepare for its opposite instead.

Over at The Weekly Standard, Daniel Halper declares that President Obama's entire re-election team lives not in an alternate zone of reality, but within an entirely different planet whatsoever, circling some cruel and distant sun. He reports a quote from Obama's 2008 guru, David Axelrod:

“We took a guy who speaks about vision and values in as compelling a way as anyone of this generation, and we made him into a narrator of the day-to-day decision making of government.”

Halper is stunned:

So, in other words, Axelrod is realizing that the problem with Obama is that eventually he had to govern, which requires “day-to-day decision making” and which also requires the decision maker to explain why he’s making certain decisions to the people who elected him. I guess he now wants Obama not to have to explain his decisions to the general public, since that’s been weakening the president’s political position and instead Axelrod wants to utilize “a guy who speaks about vision and values in as compelling a way as anyone of this generation".

Not stunning, really. Just 21st Century fascism, with the inevitable postmodern spin. Axelrod is honest - he simply declares his desire to use Obama's charming (if false) facade, along with his deceptively earnest speaking voice, as a front for a regime that will take control of every aspect of American life. Now, Axelrod confesses, Obama may not actually be up to the actual day-to-day tasks of dictatorship, but he can still be an effective smokescreen for the people who are willing to do the dirty work.

Like Lisa Jackson. And Eric Holder. And Kathleen Sebelius.

They'll be the ones hiding behind the curtains in 2012. Would be best for the country if the Republicans shined some light on who is really pulling the levers in the Obama Administration...

The Millennials: A Generation Of Losers

2012-01-01T12:12:00.003-05:00

Did you still have hope that the current crop of 20-somethings would be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and figure out a way to pull themselves out of the muddled morass their lives have become, and somehow contribute to society in the process?

Well, this piece in New York magazine will put paid to that fantasy. Noreen Malone's essay, "The Kids Are Actually Sort Of Alright" was written as a defense of the "Millennials", instead, it comes off as a lettered version of the inanity of the #OWS crowd, exposing the mental weakness and literal lack of smarts of this new crop of Americans.

Some illustrative excerpts - first and foremost, blame your parents:

Our generation is the product of two long-term social experiments conducted by our parents. The first sought to create little hyperachievers encouraged to explore our interests and talents, so long as that could be spun for maximum effect on a college application.

In the second experiment, which was a reaction to their own distant moms and dads, our parents tried to see how much self-confidence they could pack into us...

...Since we are not in fact all perfect, this means that the endless praise we got growing up, win or lose, must have really sunk in. (Meanwhile, it’s this characteristic that our parents’ generation—which instilled it in us!—so delights in interpreting as “entitled.”)

Got that? The Millennials are blameless for their woes, their faults lie within their parent's faults, and the kids are heroic simply for being able to cope with their defective psyches.

Ooooooh....I am so impressed by your bravery! Not enough to hire you, though...

What follows are tales of self-pity from people who are simply not smart enough to realize how lucky they are. Such as...

Lael, who is 27, was the valedictorian of her high school and did very well in college too. Unable to find a position that paid a decent wage using her English degree, she got a master’s at the University of Michigan in environmental studies. She does technically have a job, for now, filling in for a woman on maternity leave at a D.C. nonprofit, but it’s not one that prevents all her go-getting from seeming for naught.

English degree? Environmental studies? What kind of productive job, outside of a teaching gig, could Lael have expected? Or does she believe that society owes her a job that matches her, ahem, skills, even though they contribute very little - if any - productive value?

And they blame their parents for labeling them "entitled"...and for their own unfeeling nihilism:

Our generation tends to prefer our dystopian news delivered with the impish smile of a Jon Stewart. Reared to sponge up positive reinforcement that requires only a positive attitude as a buy-in, we are just not that into anger.

I spent the summer listening to Helplessness Blues, an album by Fleet Foxes....

Time to stop hating your parents, and time to stop with the defeatist existentialism? Nah:

Making stuff is what got us smiles from our parents and top billing in refrigerator art galleries. And since we are, as a generation, more addicted to positive reinforcement than any before us...we have returned to our stuff-making ways, via pursuits easily mocked: the modern-day pickling, the obsessive Etsying, the flower-arranging classes, the knitting resurgence, the Kickstarter funds for art projects of no potential commercial value. The millions upon millions who upload footage of themselves singing or dancing or talking about the news to YouTube.

Who, us? Self abosrbed?

Empty, pathetic attempts at accomplishment, with only transitory pleasure will only lead to more existential despair. Which, I am sure, will be the fault of her parents.
Maybe Noreen could, you know, actually...make stuff? Real stuff? Maybe creating something with an actual worth to society - something that people need or want or don't even know they need but will become a must-have once you "make" it? And if the limits of your generation really is "flower arrangement", is there any reason why you shouldn't be where you are right now - catatonic in an emotional closet?

This piece concludes by taking liberalism's favorite anti-American trope and making it a watchword for their empty, pathetic lives:

Another phrase I now can’t get out of my head is “managed decline.”...that’s what we’re doing when we decide that we can be okay with having more unpredictable careers and more modest lifestyles, if that’s what’s in store: Even as we hold out hope that something will reverse the trajectory, we are managing our decline, we are making do.

Noreen, you ignorant slut - there is no shame in an unpredictable career and a more modest lifestyle, if you are surviving in tough times. That's not "decline"; it is something to be praised, and to find pride in. The fact you see it as shameful, as a "decline", speaks volumes to the moral vacuum of both yourself and your sorry peers.

A Millennial, managing her decline. It's expressed in her body art, stupid!

What a generational wasteland. And rather than do something about it, they'd prefer to give up. Which is why they won't ever get my sympathy - or my help, unless they earn it.

Earn it - is that even a phrase "the kids" can comprehend? And the fact I even have to ask...

...and a "Happy New Year" to all !!

2011-12-31T17:15:00.000-05:00

So it is time to don our party hats, wrap neatly the bottle of good cheer we bring (and soon unwrap, to be served up...neat), and head off to celebrate the welcoming in of a new year.

2011 was not a great year for the United States of America. But it was a pretty good year for this blog. I'd like to thank the nearly 175,000 of you who stopped by to visit this little roadside stand on the internet super-highway this year. That's a record for us, by far. I am humbled, rather than inflated, when I see some of the hefty names and intellects that will on occasion link here; if I were to have any resolution all all for 2012, it would be to honor these people by trying to provide top-rate work on a daily basis, and try to avoid the steaming helpings of dreck that are occasionally served up. We'll see how that works out...

Truthfully, I appreciate each and every one of you who drops by to read, comment, link, or even snark, and I deeply hope this new year sees your fondest hopes and dreams realized.

I have one goal in 2012: To see the regime of Barack Hussein Obama ended, and liberalism discredited for a generation. With every passing day my faith grows stronger that my prayers will be answered. But that has little to do with efforts on my part, and more to do with the mindset of my fellow Americans, who I cherish more and more with the passing of time - for their humility, their strength, and their intelligence. May God bless us all in 2012.

So let's pop some bubbly on the eve of 2012 - not for the year that was, but for the year that lies ahead.

2012: When everything finally changes...

Happy New Year!!

2012: A Good Year For..Israel? Some Facts & Some Prophecy

2011-12-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

While anti-semitism may be on the rise worldwide - especially here in America, where liberal Jews debase their religion in order to use it as a cudgel against Republicans - the Jewish state is heading into the (secular) New Year with a renewed strength and limitless possibilities. Conrad Black writes in the New York Sun:

I think that Israel's prospects have never been brighter. The Arab powers are in complete disarray within and among each other. The Islamists may be gaining ground but all indications are that the Arab masses are finally becoming more skeptical about the endless recourse to the red herring of Israel by their leaders to distract them from the despotism and misrule that has been imposed upon them by theocracies and secular states alike throughout the post-colonial era.

Even if the Islamists shoulder aside the military in Egypt, only the military could return to a war policy against Israel and the Egyptian army won't do it. The hotheads can burn the Israeli flag in Tahrir Square in Cairo and even sack the Israeli embassy as they started to do last month, but no one is taking Egypt back to war with Israel.

Least of all the Egyptian generals. No sense in being a "military leader" if you're whole military infrastructure is razed to the ground. They'll bluster, but they'll do it from secure bunkers.

And domestically? Well, Israel should be the envy of the world:

...West Bank prosperity continues to increase and violence in Israel is at a recent historic low. There have been large oil and natural gas discoveries just offshore in Israel; the problems of Europe are in distinct contrast to Israel's sharply rising levels of prosperity and economic growth. And the new state of South Sudan is decrying Arab racism, and Muslim racism generally against black peoples, and has cracked the solidarity of the Arab-led claque in international organizations which has turned many of those organizations into Israel-bashing fronts. It is setting up its embassy in Israel in Jerusalem.

Probably the only place you can find middle-class Arabs is in the "occupied" West Bank, ironically. That's why you see very little terror from the corner anymore. People raising their standards of living and enjoying peace are less likely to blow up their neighbors over ancient hatreds. I am sure more and more of them will get jobs in the Israeli oil operations, opportunities that will be lost to their terrorist brethren in Gaza. The Sudanese are smart enough to join the winning team...and it is interested in who is sticking with the losers.

Europe, for one. The United States (under Barack Obama), for another. Europe would kill to have the true peaceful multiculturalism of the Jewish state, as opposed to their Muslim ghettos, seething with rage. The United States would love to have Israel's 5% unemployment rate, as opposed to the over-regulated "green" economy that has been foisted upon us. How much of these two region's current anti-Israeli polices are based in jealousy - the same raw emotion that has launched so much antisemitism?

How ironic that the shining beacon of freedom, peace, and prosperity in the world has moved from the United States, and is now emanating from Jerusalem. Funny, I thought there was a book that predicted such a thing would happen...thought I read it somewhere...

Ah. Isaiah 51:3

For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody
Maybe...Isiaih 60?

Nations will come to your light,
and kings to the brightness of your dawn....
the wealth on the seas will be brought to you,
to you the riches of the nations will come...
Although you have been forsaken and hated,
with no one traveling through,
I will make you the everlasting pride
and the joy of all generations...
The least of you will become a thousand,
the smallest a mighty nation.
I am the LORD;
in its time I will do this swiftly.”

Is the time...2012? Hmmm

Mitt Romney, And The "Electability" Myth...

2011-12-30T10:40:00.004-05:00

This blog has not endorsed a primary candidate in the Republican primary, although we retain our original crush on Rick Perry, maintain a healthy respect for Michelle Bachmann (we love her, but we're not in love with her) and stand by our utter and complete disdain for Newt Gingrich. And we view Mitt Romney with caution, wondering what's really behind that plastic-fantastic facade and slick haircut.

Over at Legal Insurrection, Professor Jacobson has been furiously waving the caution flags the last few days, trying to warn the party faithful that the Romney Train - gaining more and more passengers - could be heading full-speed for a brick wall, with the every-smiling visage of Barack Obama (and his $1B war chest) painted across it. A few links:

We will pay the price for giving Romney a free pass

Don’t fall for Operation Psych Out

Romney's electability is overblown

It's the last one that I think is the key - if "electability" were a real thing, a radical liberal from Chicago would never have stood a chance in the primary, nor would a right-wing nut from California won the presidency in 1980. It's about the party putting forward a candidate that best reflects their values, and then sending him out across the country to convince others that his plan of action is the right course for America.

And what record of "electability" does Mitt Romney have, exactly? To answer that, I am reprinting a post from August 31st of this year:

Would You Start A 5-18 Pitcher In Game 7 of the World Series?

Because in 2012, we'll be well into a double-dip recession, the Arab Spring will have devolved into open warfare with Israel, and there will be social unrest in America. And this time, it may not be simply senior citizens yapping at their congressmen at town halls.

And into this mess, when we need most a strong performance to help lead us from tyranny to triumph....we can choose one of the following starting pitchers for Game 7 :

- young upstart Michele Bachmann, more of a successful minor league player with a good inside fastball but questionable savvy,

-Solid veteran Rick Perry, who's career indicates he can get it done irregardless of what dire circumstances surround him,

- or a lifetime 5-18 pitcher, who has spent most of his career pleading for a chance to get into the Big Game.

That losing pitcher is....Mitt Romney. The 5-18 record represents his record in elections. Jonathan Last on how The Man With No Constituency cannot seem to get it done, no matter how hard he tries, or how much he spends.

Let’s revisit Romney’s campaigns:
1994: MA Senate Republican primary: Romney 82%, John Lakian 18%
1994: MA Senate general election: Ted Kennedy 58%, Romney 41%
2002: MA Gubernatorial Republican primary: Romney runs unopposed
2002: MA Gubernatorial general election: Romney 50%, Shannon O’Brien 45%
2006: MA Gubernatorial primary: trailing in polls for the general election to Deval Patrick—a guy who’d never run for anything before—Romney declines to seek reelection. I’ll count this as a loss; you might be more charitable.
2007: Presidential primaries: I won’t go state-by-state, but here’s the breakdown: Romney won only three states where the vote was a straight-up primary. Each of these wins was in a place where he had enormous legacy advantages: Michigan, where his father had been governor; Massachusetts, where he had been governor; and Utah, which is overwhelmingly Mormon. (He also won 8 caucus states, though the organizing rules there are much less indicative of electoral strength.)
On other side of the ledger, Romney lost primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, California, Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, and Maryland. (He also lost a bunch of caucus states, but we won’t count those against him since we’re discounting his caucus wins.)
Which means that in the 2008 cycle he went 3-16.
Combine that with the rest of his runs and you get a 17-year career average of 5-18. I don’t think you could find any other figure in politics who has run this far below the Mendoza line and still managed to get taken seriously as a presidential candidate. In fact, the only reason Romney gets taken seriously is his money. Strip away the $500M treasure room and the willingness to blow large chunks of his kids’ inheritance, and he’s Ron Paul without the ideological moorings and grassroots support....
Last goes further, pointing out that in his signature victory - governor of Massachusetts - he only received 49% of the vote, and that he blew $7 million running against Kennedy only to lose by 17 points.
This line is brilliant:
It’s funny that Romney’s line of attack on Perry seems to be that Perry is a “career politician” because he’s been in elective office since 1984. Well, Mitt Romney would have been a career politician too, if only voters would have let him. He’s been running since 1994. His real gripe about Perry is actually, “Hey, that guy wins all the time! No fair!”

So back to baseball. Game 7 of the World Series, and you're the manager. Do you put in the guy who has never - ever - lost a game, or the loser with a laundry list of excuses and gripes, coming off of a 3-16 season?

That's not a decision I feel comfortable with. Not unless all my other starters are unable to lift their pitching arms. So when the clamor begins to get aboard Train Romney, let us do it with trepidation, and be sure that rather than our first choice, he is our last resort...

Rasmussen: Romney 45%, Obama 39%

2011-12-29T13:30:00.000-05:00
What else needs to be said? The incumbent, with all of his media love, can't even crack 40%. How the hell is he going to get to the 50+1 mark? Is there enough mud in his bucket? In any bucket? And how much of it can stick to a man like Mitt Romney?

Hot Air has this bit of data, which is even more interesting. While the average American comes in ideologically at a 3.3 on a 1-5 scale (1 being uber-liberal, 5 being hard-right), we view Romney as a 3.5, just slightly to the right of us. Obama comes in, however, at a 2.3 - which makes him further Left than any Republican is to the far right.

Again, can all the mud-chucking in the world change that datum?

It seems like we already figured out exactly who Barack Hussein Obama is. And so has Robert Stacy McCain:

He is a false prophet of an anti-religion, whose chief reason for existing is the destruction of America. He’s an un-remarkable piece of work, selected, groomed, credentialed and escorted to his current position not because he has shred #1 of merit in the traditional sense; rather, that he’s a reliable tool for the task of demolition.

He is the totalitarian poster child for the return to a pre-Enlightenment patronage system, where the wealth stays in the hands of the Cool People, with occasional bread & circuses, and regular games for the proles. There is some wealth redistribution, but absolutely no power redistribution whatsoever.

His is the moment in time where the Ruling Class decided that it was time to finish the Progressive project, before technology rendered it completely unattainable...

Somewhere, in our gut, we all know this. Some want the ruling class to win, thinking they will reap the spoils. But they are not the majority.

Shit, they ain't even the 40%...

Islamic Looting And Sacking Of Western Culture Continues Unabated...

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-05:00
No outrage from the "leaders" of the West, only a nervous silence that fails to conceal their fear:

As if further proof were needed of the fecklessness of Western civilization when confronting savagery, consider the destruction of the Institut d’Egypte in Cairo this month. Once again, the world watched helplessly while a horde of Muslim rioters wantonly annihilated a piece of history, and thus served warning that its cultural jihad against the West will advance until we stop it.

The Institut was founded by Napoleon in 1798 during his campaign in Egypt and Syria. Its ranks have included scholars from all walks of life, dedicated to researching Egyptian culture from antiquity to the present. The building, near Tahrir Square — the center of the protests that have marked the Arab Spring in Egypt — was filled with some 200,000 rare books and manuscripts. Gone now, burned in a fire, set off by a mob, that raged for more than 12 hours.

Was it simply the mindlessness of the mob? The episode catalogue of The Simpsons is filled with painfully humorous examples of the town of Springfield coming together (usually as a mob) to destroy edifices of science and knowledge - from the sacking of their Museum of Natural History, to the defacing of classic art, to the declaration that the local observatory be destroyed so that the town is never again threatened by a wayward comet...

Are the Egyptian Islamists as stupid as the denizens of the mythical Springfield, USA?

Or is this a deliberate attempt to destroy a symbol of Western knowledge, even one whose primary purpose was the study and preservation of Egyptian culture, history, and lore? If so, what would be the purpose?

To eradicate any Western influence on Islamist Egypt?

Or to rewrite history itself? If past is prologue...Muslim assaults and occupations of India over the centuries have always involved a "cultural cleansing" of captured areas, where all traces of Hinduism were wiped out. In Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the beards worked furiously to destroy Buddhist works of antiquity, while today in Jerusalem, Islamic "archaeologists" are constantly accused of conducting digs at the Temple Mount that are actually intended to erase traces of the Jewish Temple's altar, and sever its entire connection to Judeo-Christian history.

Win the future by erasing the past? Use the sword and the torch to eliminate all traces of a historical record, and then claim your truth is the only truth, and it has ever been so?

If we don't fight - literally - to preserve our past, we will lose our future. Our leaders have chosen cowardice and accommodation over confrontation, and in their attempt to buy another 15 minutes of peace for themselves, may very well have handed the future over to Islam.

Let's see how that works out for our children.

Syria: It would almost be funny - if those desperate to be free weren't being massacred...

2011-12-28T13:55:00.003-05:00
The nations who make up the Arab League sure know how to placate liberals. Recognize a problem, form a committee, give control of it to a crony, and get the "solution" you wanted all along. Along with a free coat of whitewash when required.

I give you Syria:

The notion that the Arab League was going to stand up for human rights in Syria was always somewhat farcical.

As David Kenner reports in Foreign Policy, the head of the mission is none other than Sudanese General Mohammad Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi. Al-Dabi just happens to be the man who created the murderous janjaweed militias that were the principal perpetrators in the Darfur genocide.

His boss, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, for which al-Dabi also bears no small responsibility. He founded the janjaweed during his service as the regime’s head of military operations from 1996-1999. Since then he has served al-Bashir loyally in a number of different job, including some diplomatic postings.

The irony of sending a war criminal to try and stop the commission of war crimes is lost on the Arab League. It is also lost on Syria’s dissidents who continue to be killed and harassed by the government with the so-called monitors doing nothing.

Less irony, and more design, I reckon. Our good General, ignoring the gunfire and pools of blood around him:

Despite the reported violence, Gen Dabi told Reuters on Wednesday morning: "The situation seemed reassuring so far."

And Obama will nod his head, and point to "progress", and breath a sigh of relief that he doesn't actually have to, you know, actually "do" anything, now that a genocidal maniac has given him moral cover.

Liberalism...

Hanukkah Hotties, On The 8th & Final Night: The Girls Of The IDF

2011-12-27T19:00:00.004-05:00
(note: looking back at last year's tribute, I didn't want to change a word, just the pictures. So it may sound familiar, but likely will not look (too) familiar...)

They'll kill you with a smile, or they'll just...kill you. But a society where every young girl spends two years serving their country with a huge automatic weapon is a society that will never go down without a fight, no matter how much Barack Obama pleads with them to do so.

No Israeli supermodels, or actresses, or entertainers on the last night of Hanukkah...Instead, I present your everyday Israeli female, beautifully attired in standard military fatigues, and all of them armed to the motherlovin' teeth:

No, darling, we salute you, for the work you have done in keeping the only true democracy in the godforsaken Middle East safe, and for allowing Jews worldwide to have a place, should they ever have the need, to call home. The 8th night of Hanukkah is all about you. We honor and thank you for your service in the name of freedom, and we admire you for still looking stunningly, achingly beautiful while doing it.

May God bless you, and keep you.

Happy Hanukkah....

Liberal Jews Descend Into Parody. The Rest Of Us Push Back...

2011-12-27T14:10:00.000-05:00
Jen Rubin, on another piece of pro-Obama fluff in the Jewish newsies:

A piece by Allison Hoffman in the online magazine Tablet, titled “United Jewish Appeal,” is so crammed with ludicrous assumptions, half-truths and self-delusion, it is hard to know where to start a critique...

Rubin proceeds to tear Hoffman a new one, so to speak. I don't have the stomach, but I think one quote is illustrative of the "strength" of Hoffman's argument, as she tries to solidify Barack Obama's bona fides as the candidate of choice for the Jews:

At countless lunches at Axelrod’s favorite lunch spot in Hyde Park, Manny’s Deli, Obama had learned to order pastrami with mustard on rye.

That's the general tenor of the article. All broth, no matzoh ball. But the positive that we can take out of this dreck comes from the comments following the article - they run about 4-1 against Obama, and against the entire prenmise of Hoffman's "argument":

This article is an unbelievable insult to the intelligence of American Jews–hell, it’s an insult to the intelligence of any American voter.
All about “emotional identification?” And “schmaltz?” SCHMALTZ?! What’s that supposed to mean? Reciting mangled yiddishisms and scamming the rube(n)s with old borscht belt stories is not going to get the vote.

....And like ALL other Americans, jews are not a single issue group. The economy blows, health care sucks, “education improvements” my tuchus…these are also issues that AMERICANS have with him that jews do too.
And finally, his “outreach” feels very insincere – and somewhat resentful of the fact that it needs to be done at all. Its a “its them not me” attitude that he brings forth..can he not humble himself and admit that he has made some mistakes?

....I voted for Obama in 2008 but will not this year.
Its not just a question of Israel, which his record is dismal. Its a bigger question of confusing friend with foe. The US is in a war against Islamists and if you don’t see that, you need to wake up. Know who your allies are. Know who your enemies are. Do not confuse the two.

....So, basically the article says that American Jews are idiots who don’t really understand whats going on. And if they did they would fall into line behind Obama like the Chinese under Mao.

Note how many of the writers above are self-identifying as Americans as much as Jews. Seems to me they are saying that despite the pressures they may be feeling from their leaders (both religious and secular) to toe the liberal party line - as Jews always do - these people see the danger to America - and Israel - as Americans, and will vote that way.

I may wind up being proud of my fellow Jews after all...

Maybe We Should Have Read The Tao Te Ching Before The 2008 Elections...

2011-12-27T09:30:00.001-05:00

...it would have given us some insight into the man we were electing.

From the 63rd stanza of the ancient Chinese text (whose name can be translated as either "The Way", "The Way of Virtue", "The Way of Power"):

夫輕諾必寡信多易必多難是以聖人猶難之故終無難矣

In English:

He who promises lightly must be lacking in faith,
He who thinks everything easy will end by finding everything difficult.
Therefore the Sage, who regards everything as difficult,
Meets with no difficulties in the end.

The first sentence I consider to be fairly prophetic. The second I will employ as a gauge to weigh the seriousness - and the character - of whomever claims to be qualified to lead this country past 2012...

Hanukkah Hottie #7: My Kind Of Kat!

2011-12-26T20:13:00.000-05:00

Kat Dennings, that is - whom you may know from The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Big Momma's The House Bunny, Thor, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, and more recently as the star of the new CBS television series, 2 Broke Girls.

Let's take a look at two comments by the Kat, the first from a story about her role in "Nick and Nora", and the other via Wikipedia:

"I had to ask people around the set about the Hebrew words," she said in a phone interview with The Jewish Journal. "I couldn't pronounce it."

....Dennings stated to The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that Judaism "is an important part of my history, but, as a whole, religion is not a part of my life."

Kat seems to be separating her religious practice (or non-practice) from her heritage. And whether she realizes it or not, our Kat makes an important point. If you are born Jewish, you are Jewish, whether or not you go to synagogue on the Sabbath. Or the High Holy days. Or at all.

Just ask all those victims of Nazi Germany, who - despite protestations that they weren't practicing Jews, or they were only half Jewish, or even only a quarter Jewish, or didn't even know they had Jewish blood - were burned alive in the camps anyway.

Important to realize, especially in these times, with the return of rabid antisemitism abroad, and the flowering of it in America, as key media figures accuse Jews of being Israel-firsters, or of buying off Congress, while a feckless president smirks, snarks, and turns a blind eye.

It seems as if our Hot Kat knows better. And while she might not observe the rites and rituals, her candle of Judaism still burns bright within her.

Let's bask in her glow, shall we?

Hitler had his phantom armies, Barack Obama has his phantom Constitution

2011-12-26T09:46:00.001-05:00
The president, apparently, is finally about to act upon all the complaints - both his, and those of his most radical constituencies - that the Constitution is in the way of the "reform" this nation truly needs.

And he's on his way to doing it. By claiming possession of an apparently never-before-seen version of the document that allows Barack Obama to do whatever he pleases, regardless of what the law dictates.

Upon signing the 2012 spending bill, he vowed to spend money upon measures that are specifically delineated within the bill to receive no funding in the fiscal year. In other words, he promised to break the very rules that he signed into law. Because he claims the Constitution says he can. They are pet liberal projects, of course:

The Obama administration won't be bound by a gun control ban in the $1 trillion spending bill for 2012, the president said Friday.

The funding provision for the federal health agency says that "none of the funds made available in this title may be used, in whole or in part, to advocate or promote gun control." The language aims to ban taxpayer dollars from supporting gun safety research.

"I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress's consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient," Obama said in a statement as he signed the bill into law.

The right to own a gun is enshrined in the Constitution, and next to freedom of speech, religious worship, and assembly, it is the one likely exercised most by ordinary Americans. And now it has been signed into law that no monies will be spent to usurp this right. But Obama's version of our sacred parchment seems to be missing the Second Amendment, and - no surprise - says his responsibility his to fund what measures he sees fit, regardless of Congressional approval. Separation of powers, apparently, in something else left out of Obama's new version of the Constitution...

And of course, the President will continue to employ his now-illegal "czars". And he will force the taxpayers to foot the bill for their exorbitant salaries. Even though he just signed a law that expressly forbade the practice. Because the new and improved Constitution....oh, you know the drill already:

The president's signing statement also says he could end up ignoring a provision that bars taxpayer funds for paying for the "salaries and expenses" of so-called White House czars, including the director of the White House Office of Health Reform. The office was abolished earlier this year.

That provision "could prevent me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibilities, by denying me the assistance of senior advisers and by obstructing my supervision of executive branch officials in the execution of their statutory responsibilities," Obama said.

Funny, I don't recall the constitution saying anywhere that the president could have as many cronies as he wanted on the federal payroll, specifically placed to implement polices defunded by Congress. Must be that whole separation of powers thing that Obama has been complaining about since he took office - even when he had an entirely Democratic House.

I guess he finally found a version that suits his need for unrivaled and unchecked power enshrined within a chief executive. Exactly what the Founders wanted, of course.

There's been no doubt for a while now that Barack Obama is a man with a poor grasp of economics, a coward's feel of foreign affairs, and the overall intelligence and craftiness of a small-time grifter. And now he's gone insane, claiming the existence of a phantom constitution that puts him above all law,. and is acting upon it.

How many battles did the Third Reich win with Hitler's phantom armies? Tally them up, look at the end result, and assume America, under Barack Obama's phantom Constitution, will meet with the same end...

Hanukkah Hottie #6: Elizabeth Banks Shows Her Faith...

2011-12-25T17:30:00.008-05:00

The story of Elizabeth Banks' conversion to Judaism is an unlikely, albeit short one:

Banks married sportswriter and producer Max Handelman, who had been her boyfriend since she met him on her first day at college, September 6, 1992 She converted to Judaism upon marrying him.

Unlikely, because while to most Hollywood starlets bed-jumping is just a different type of rung-climbing/status-seeking that is simply part and parcel of the game, Elizabeth Banks stayed true to her one and only, and adopted his religion as a sign of her faith - to him, and to Judaism. All while still thrilling us in the Spider-Man flicks, the 40 Year Old Virgin, and my personal favorite, Zach and Miri Make a Porno (directed by Kevin Smith - "Jersey represents!").

So welcome to the tribe, Elizabeth. We're so ever glad to have you...

Not enough Jewish love for you? Our Hanukkah Hotties from nights one, two, three, four, and five can be found at the appropriate links.

And did someone say Rule 5? Let's see what RS McCain has to say...

This Jew Says: "Merry Christmas To All !"

2011-12-25T10:34:00.001-05:00
I like Christmas. A lot.

I grew up in an Italian-Catholic neighborhood, and celebrated Christmas with the families of my friends since I was a little kid. Not "celebrated" in the sense of going to church - it's not my place - but I was always invited over to a friends house to eat, drink, and occasionally exchange a gift. I think Christmas trees are beautiful, I like Christmas specials on TV, and I enjoy getting into the spirit of the season.

And I thank God every day that I live in a nation as open and tolerant as the United States of America - a Christian nation to be sure, but a nation that has been perhaps the most hospitable in the the history of civilization to the Jewish people. May it always keep its (Judeo)Christian nature, and never forget its heritage, from which springs its greatness.

And on that note, here's an email once sent by Ben Stein, standing up as a Jew and an American to do battle against those who would wage war on Christmas:

I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees, Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against. That's what they are: Christmas trees.

It doesn't bother me a bit when people say, 'Merry Christmas' to me. I don't think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn't bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it's just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.

I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat....

Merry Christmas!

(excerpted from last year - which was cut, pasted and edited from the year before - but with, as always, a few tweaks)

Hanukkah Hottie #5 Wishes You A Merry Christmas

2011-12-24T17:22:00.002-05:00

With a name like Michelle Trachtenberg, she just had to be Jewish, right? Her stats are legit:

Her father is from Germany and her mother was born in Russia; Trachtenberg can speak Russian fluently. Trachtenberg is of Jewish heritage, and celebrates both Christmas and Hanukka; her grandparents live in Israel Trachtenberg was raised, along with older sister Irene, in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn...

Not the girl from Buffy, or the manipulative bitch from Gossip Girl, but a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, who can speak Russian with the babushkas, and has mishpacha in Israel. And appreciates the joy of Christmas. What can be better?

Oh, wait. Did I mention she is crazy-hot? Yeah, that's better. The fifth candle is smokin':

Hanukkah Hottie #4: Emmy is just...yummy!

2011-12-23T17:00:00.008-05:00

Emmy Rossum, that is. Born and raised by a Jewish mother in New York City, you may know her from films such as Mystic River (2003), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and The Phantom of the Opera (2004, for which she nominated for a Golden Globe). Or perhaps Poseidon (2006), or even more recently in the Showtime series Shameless, with the great William H. Macy.

And like Hottie #3, Jennifer Watson, Emmy is a singer as well. The labels, after seeing her in Phantom, wanted her to do classical, but she thought otherwise, making a rock/pop album for Geffen entitled Inside Out. It peaked at 199 on the charts, but it's OK. We love you anyway, Emmy....

And here's why:

Hanukkah = Winning?

2011-12-23T09:31:00.001-05:00
Love this little post over at Anorak, Britain's best tabloid-esque site. I never thought of it this way, but then again, every picture tells a story...

For a picture of how life overcomes history, look no further than the image of Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal and Rabbi Segal Shmoel installing a giant Hanukkah Menorah at the Pariser Platz square in front of the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin. Eight candles that to the Nazis spell out “F*** You!”
But religion is not about vengeance.

It’s about perseverance....

The West comes in for a lot of stick about morals and wrong. But show us another part of the world where expression is tolerated and enjoyed... This is what “winning” looks like…

Awesome. But the victory may proved to be short lived, as an antisemitic American president joins forces with an EU that, while increasingly tightening its grip on the neck of the Continent, still allows their subjects one object on which to focus their scorn and hatred:

...the EU has done nothing to diminish the Judeophobia which led to the Holocaust in Europe. Indeed, the obsessional malice towards Israel has provided cover for a resurgence of the oldest hatred within the graveyard of European Jewry. As Giulio Meotti reports, Jews are being expelled from academia across Europe.

Will the menorah at Brandenburg enlighten the barbarians, or enrage them? We'll know soon enough, I suppose...

Hanukkah Hottie #3: Jenny Lewis

2011-12-22T16:40:00.002-05:00

No, not in the sense that our first two candles of Hanukkah 2012 were hot. Jenny is hot because she became what (2011"Hottie") Winona Ryder always wanted to be - an actress who moved into the rock star life. But Jenny did one better - she went alt-rock, not vain pop-star, and she is alt-rock hot, with tons of talent to match. And did I mention that she is Jewish?

Just turned it up a notch higher, didn't I ?

Nice resume:

Lewis made her professional debut in a Jell-O commercial. She was featured in the short-lived 1986 Lucille Ball sitcom Life With Lucy, where she was cast as one of Lucy's grandchildren. She also had small roles on TV shows, such as The New Twilight Zone, Baywatch, Golden Girls, Growing Pains, Just the Ten of Us, Roseanne, Mr. Belvedere, and Brooklyn Bridge.

Lewis appeared in over a dozen teen-themed movies, such as Troop Beverly Hills...She was featured in the 1996 made-for-TV movie Talk to Me with Yasmine Bleeth, as well as the films Foxfire, Big Girls Don't Cry... They Get Even, and Pleasantville...

And then she goes and forms Rilo Riley. And did I mention...

Ms. Lewis...is Jewish by birth ("although everyone assumes I'm a little shiksa," she says)

For me, Rabbitfur Coat, a solo effort of sorts with the Watson Twins, is Jenny at her best. And most haunting.

....Where my ma is now, I don't know
She was living in her car, I was living on the road
And I hear she's putting that stuff up her nose
And still wearing that rabbit fur coat

But mostly I'm a hypocrite
I sing songs about the deficit....

But we're not here to sing songs. We're here to ogle hot Jewish girls. By the light of the third candle:

Is Obama Now Abusing His Dog For Political Gain?

2011-12-22T13:46:00.001-05:00
I guess that answers the question "how low will he go to get re-elected?"

"A man's soul can be judged by the way he treats his dog."
~Charles Doran

If you've ever flown with a pet, either on-board or "safely stowed away", you know what a confusing, stressful event it is for them. The question is, did Barack have first dog Bo flown back from Hawaii, shortly after arriving there, in order to participate in holiday photo-ops?

Sure looks that way:

Bo Obama was supposed to be in Hawaii. Instead, he showed up at President Obama’s side Wednesday shopping for treats at Pet Smart

According to Michelle Obama’s press office, the first dog was planning to go to Hawaii with the first lady and the Obama daughters. The Associated Press reported that he in fact had made it there. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser quoted an eyewitness who said he had seen the Portuguese Water Dog having his walk.

So what is Bo doing back in Washington shopping at PetSmart?

Either all these reports are mistaken, or Bo was told his vacation was over and that he had to return to the White House to keep a lonely president company – and participate in a silly photo op presenting Obama as an average guy who likes to head out to the PetSmart.

If Bo returned from Hawaii, who paid for his flight?

It’s possible he hitched a ride on a return flight of the Air Force plane that brought Michelle from Hawaii...

Or not. But it's not about the money, it's about a man who would put an poor dog through so much stress in order to get a good holiday optic for himself.

Where's PETA? I suppose with their nose so far up Obama's ass, they really can't see what he's up to anyway...

But it gets worse for poor Bo - he'll be back on a plane to Hawaii within the next 24 hours or so...

"He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion."
~ Author Unknown

Wouldn't be surprised if Bo gave Barack a big 'ol chomp one of these days. Of course, Obama would blame the dog for being not worthy of him...

Jimmy Carter Joins Weeping Nork Throngs Mourning Kim Jong-il

2011-12-22T08:28:00.002-05:00
Jimmy Carter will soon enough pass on to the next life, and Barack Obama will soon enough pass out of office, and onto his next life - as a private citizen. One feels for certain that once he is no longer restrained by the needs of politics and high office, he will follow in the peanut farmer's footsteps.

And follow in the new tradition of former Democratic American presidents embracing the enemies of freedom in order to keep a high profile and fulfill their need for ego gratifaction, no matter how low they must sink:

Former President Jimmy Carter has sent North Korea a message of condolence over the death of Kim Jong-il and wished "every success" to the man expected to take over as dictator, according to the communist country's state-run news agency.

A dispatch from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Mr. Carter sent the message to Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il's son and heir apparent.

"In the message Jimmy Carter extended condolences to Kim Jong Un and the Korean people over the demise of leader Kim Jong Il. He wished Kim Jong Un every success as he assumes his new responsibility of leadership, looking forward to another visit to [North Korea] in the future," the KCNA dispatch read...

Jen Rubin asks: Success measured how — people starved, missiles shot at South Korea?

I am sure I will be referring back to this post in about - oh, two years...

Hanukkah Hotties: Better Bring An Entourage For Night #2

2011-12-21T16:33:00.000-05:00
Yeah, I know you know who Emmanuelle Chriqui is. You've seen her on HBO's Entourage, and if you are one of the few who saw Adam Sandler's underrated You Don't Mess with the Zohan, you'd be able to identify her as Dalia, the Palestinian love interest of the the title's Israeli counter-terror commando.

But did you know she was Jewish? A-ha! Chriqui was born in Montreal, Quebec, the daughter of Jewish Moroccan immigrants. Her mother was born in Casablanca and her father in Morocco, with Chriqui having a number of relatives currently residing in Israel. Her family practiced Orthodox Judaism, in the Sephardic tradition, and apparently agonized over her choices in boyfriends. But there's still hope for all you nebbishes out there - Emmanuelle is still single! Well, not much hope...

Miss Chriqui marks what is become a trend in Jewish actresses - away from the neurotics, away from the Fran Dreschlers, and more towards their sultry Semitic side, which has bewitched men since biblical times.

I like that trend. And I love Emmanuelle. She can light my second Hanukkah candle any time:

War On Christmas Becomes War On Christians

2011-12-21T09:02:00.000-05:00
Or, what happens when a government feels it can empower itself limitlessly, with impunity and without consequences. Or, why over-bureaucratic, nation-state-conglomerates like Europe have succeeded in eliminating religion virtually altogether ( in the very birthplace of Christianity, no less). Seems as if the former democracies of the West have finally learned what Karl Marx and the Communists knew long ago: There is no room for both worship of God, and strict obedience to government. One of the two must go. And since the punishment that can be meted out by government is more immediate than what might eventually be handed down by the Lord, the government has been encroaching further and further upon The Creator's turf.

Sometimes, however, they overreach. The story below is one case. While it is not as media-friendly as the reports about the banning of the "C" word, it is much more insidious, as it is an attack on the Christian values that made this nation great:

Jessica Cross, 24, Benjamin Markeson, 49, and Jonathan "Keith" McHenry, 54, were arrested at 6:10 p.m. on a charge of violating the ordinance restricting group feedings in public parks. McHenry is a co-founder of the international Food Not Bombs movement, which began in the early 1980s.

The group lost a court battle in April, clearing the way for the city to enforce the ordinance. It requires groups to obtain a permit and limits each group to two permits per year for each park within a 2-mile radius of City Hall.

Arrest papers state that Cross, Markeson and McHenry helped feed 40 people Wednesday night. The ordinance applies to feedings of more than 25 people.

"They intentionally violated the statute," said Lt. Barbara Jones, an Orlando police spokeswoman.

Police waited until everyone was served to make the arrests, said Douglas Coleman, speaking for Orlando Food Not Bombs.

"They basically carted them off to jail for feeding hungry people," said Coleman, who was not present. "For them to regulate a time and place for free speech and to share food, that is unacceptable."

The penalty for violating Orlando's ordinance is 60 days in jail, a $500 fine or both.

What can one say about a government that refuses to arrest "occupiers" - who demand that private property be seized on their behalf - and yet slaps cuffs on those who actually do redistribute their own private property to those who need it most?

Guess it depends on who is doing the distributing. And who is getting - or not getting - a cut of the racket.

And on Christmas, no less. Claire Berlinski at Ricochet:

But seriously: an ordinance against feeding the hungry? Are they deranged? Isaiah 58:10, Proverbs 28:27, Matthew 25:41-46, James 2:14-17, Luke 19:8-9, Jeremiah 22:16, Luke 3:10-11, Ezekiel 16:49, Proverbs 21:13--the Bible is really unambiguous about feeding the hungry. This isn't one of those, "Maybe that's what it means, maybe it's allegorical" things. There's just no doubt that Christians are supposed to feed the hungry. Ergo, an ordinance preventing people from feeding the hungry is effectively a ban on Christian practice.

Don't think God hasn't noticed. He has. And He has warned us. We have chosen to avert our eyes. And we will pay the price.

Hanukkah Hottie Number One: Is The First Night The Hottest?

2011-12-20T16:42:00.000-05:00
OK, enough slinky babes in Santa suits. It's the first night of Hanukkah, and time to get down to our annual tradition of showcasing eight hot Jewish girls, one for each candle on the menorah (sans the "shamash", or helper candle). We're going to open with a bold, brazen babe - no "saving the best for last" here - and go all-in on the first night with Alison Brie, who will make any man's candle drip, regardless of their religious orientation...

Allie Brie began her career acting onstage at the Jewish Community Center in Southern California (sigh...). Before hitting it big, Brie had worked as a clown at birthday parties, following the traditions of such Jewish luminaries as Herschel Shmoikel Pinchas Yerucham Krustovsk, aka "Krusty".

You know her now from NBC's Community, and cable's Mad Men. But we'll always know her as that sweet Jewish girl from SoCal.

Happy Hanukkah, Alison...

A Holiday Tradition Resumes...

2011-12-20T16:01:00.000-05:00
It'll make a nice offset to my last gloomy, negative post, I suppose...

Coming up at sundown: The return of our "Hanukkah Hotties" - an eight night celebration of beautiful Jewish women the world over! So stay tuned...she's waiting for you. With a plate full of latkes...

Liberal American Jews: The Worst Anti-Semites Of Them All

2011-12-20T14:13:00.000-05:00
...it's because they are liberals first and Jews second. And they see how Bibi has - virtually effortlessly - exposed Obama as a naive waif, an intellectual lightweight, an uniformed ignoramus, and essentially as a sideshow clown with delusions of grandeur, believing he can, with his sophomoric tricks, earn the adoration of the center ring.

So they lash out at Israel. They lash out at Benjamin Netanyahu. They lash out at their fellow Jews. Anything they can do in an attempt to discredit those who make their true god-king - Barack Obama - seem anything less than divine.

They are suicide bombers, in a way, willing to poison the citizenry with antisemitic lies - given heft by their own status as Jews - in order to advance their liberal agenda. Again: They are willing to kill their fellow Jews - literally, if you believe words have meaning - in order to protect Barack Obama, and serve the "progressive" cause of the Democratic party. They would rather see Israel be destroyed by liberal policies than saved by conservative ones. American liberal Jews would die for their party, but not for their religion, or the one nation that would shelter them, should the great storm arise once more. They would rather kick up the storm in the vain hope they would be spared, then to confess they have chosen the wrong path. Such is the hatred held in the hearts of the liberal American Jew.

I give you the story of Thomas Friedman and Joe Klein, two of America's worst antisemitic Jews. Elliot Abrams exposes them, warns us, and asks where the condemnation is.

It's not forthcoming. Happy Hanukkah, anyway:

First came the Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times: “I sure hope that Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, understands that the standing ovation he got in Congress this year was not for his politics. That ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.

And now we have Joe Klein, in Time magazine, in a section accurately entitled “Swampland”: “Iowa Republicans are not neoconservatives. Ron Paul has gained ground after a debate in which his refusal to join the Iran warhawks was front and center. Indeed, in my travels around the country, I don’t meet many neoconservatives outside of Washington and New York. It’s one thing to just adore Israel, as the evangelical Christians do; it’s another thing entirely to send American kids off to war, yet again, to fight for Israel’s national security.

These two recent statements are as vicious as it gets in the mainstream media, and here we have two Jews—Friedman and Klein—spreading the two major themes of contemporary American anti-Semitism. Why? Why now?

Why does it matter? Perhaps it is their hatred of Israel’s right of center government, or of modern Israel, or of the rise of Orthodoxy in Israel and in the American Jewish community. Let us not descend into such analyses when what matters is not abnormal psychology but the bounds of public discourse. Once upon a time, William F. Buckley banned Pat Buchanan from the pages of National Review and in essence drummed him out of the conservative movement for such accusations. Today, where are the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee, and all the Jewish “defense” organizations? Where are all the Jewish groups which have given Klein and Friedman awards, demanding them back? Where are Jewish Democrats in Congress, who have no doubt wined and dined both Klein and Friedman in a thousand dinner parties, and Congressional leaders from Nancy Pelosi to Harry Reid? And what about our other supposed moral leaders, religious, intellectual, or political?

It isn’t a small matter, because as we have learned the hard way with Walt and Mearsheimer, once the infection of anti-Semitism enters the mass media and the academy, it grows and grows. What begins as a “controversial statement” ends up on every reading list. Klein and Friedman, whatever their personal motivations for these statements, are helping popularize and make acceptable anti-Semitism in America. Their own publications will no doubt reward them for their advanced thinking. Will the rest of our society?

Obama/Holder: Backlash From The Race Card?

2011-12-20T08:52:00.003-05:00
The race card used to be the most powerful one in the deck. Shoot, it pretty much propelled Barack Obama to the Democratic nomination, if not the presidency. Most recently, however, it has been supplanted by another card that can be played against it, and nullify it of its power: the backlash card. As in, when the player of the race card is using it as a feint, a bluff, a distraction from a weak hand, the player leaves himself open to backlash, and defeat.

Eric Holder hasn't been keeping up with the times, and palyed his cards poorly. Not only has his accusations of racism weakened his position, it has weakened his benefactor as well. Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh (R) fires back after Holder whined about his critics being nothing but haters:

“This is sort of the last refuge that people on the left will go to when they’re in trouble,” Walsh said in a phone interview. “They’ll accuse their opponents of racism. My God, we’ve got tons of problems in this country and … this president, is through Eric Holder, saying, ‘Nope, you can’t criticize me. If you criticize me, we’re going to accuse you of racism.’ Shame on them, that’s terrible.”

Walsh said Obama’s continued silence in the face of Holder’s inflammatory rhetoric demonstrates that the president shares in the blame for the attorney general’s choice of words.

“His [Obama’s] silence, to me, tells me the president is complicit in this,” Walsh said

Interesting. If Obama does become accused in complicity in the "Fast and Furious" fiasco, will he too accuse his critics of racism? Walsh things so:

“This is so despicable, because what they’re doing is they’re trying real early now to lay down the ground rules for his re-election,” Walsh said. “This time around, the American people are not going to put up with it. We can criticize this president based on the job he’s done — I don’t care what his skin color is.”

“He is going to say, because he did this during the last election, and the media is going to enable him to get away with it, that any time we criticize him, it’s because of his race,” Walsh added. “For Eric Holder to take that same line right now is absolutely ridiculous and to me, it’s just more fodder proving that he needs to resign.”

Walsh is right. Nobody will be cowed by accusations of racism anymore - the card has lost its power against the American people.

But few of us want to be forced to fight off the accusation, either. It's why Obama's "personal likability" numbers have remained over 50% while his job approval ratings threaten to fall below 40%. Gives the American people a way to fight off the racism claim - "Hey, I like the guy, just not his policies!"

Want to know what percentage of the vote Obama will get in 2012? Look at his approval ratings. And subtract a bit from that number as well.

Call it "backlash".