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Saturday, June 13, 2009
RULE 5 SATURDAYThe past two weeks we've showcase two swingin' chicks from the late 1960's [Ann Margret and Jill St. John]. This week the Committee is taking a short helicopter hop back to the 1950's and honoring one of
those gals who was and is a top notch, high-flyin' broad [for Mr. Belvedere that is one of the highest compliments].
In compliance with Rule 5, the TCOTS Rule 5 Compliance Committee presents....
KIM
NOVAK:
When you're young at heart...
She makes the pearls classy...
Oh to be an alley cat...
Like a fine wine...
Miss Novak had the most beautiful back in Hollywood...
Well folks, its time for your old friend Bobby Bel to get in the plane so he can jet himself off with the gang
to get away from it all for a few swings of Big Ben and a few swigs with Col. Jack Daniels. It's the ooonly way to fly,
buster. As Dino used to say: 'Keep those card and letter coming'. It's so nice to go trav'ling...maybe that's
why Cahn and VanHeusen came up with this sweet song...
It's very nice to
go trav'lin' to Paris, London, and Rome
It's oh, so nice to go trav'lin'
But it's so much nicer, yes, it's so much
nicer to come home
It's very nice to just wander the
camel route to Iraq
It's oh, so nice to just wander
But it's so much nicer, yes it's oh, so nice to wander back
The mam'selles and frauleins, and the senoritas are sweet
But they can't
compete 'cause they just don't have
What the models have on Madison Ave.
It's very nice to be footloose, with just a toothbrush and comb
It's oh, so nice to be footloose
But your heart
starts singin' when you're homeward wingin' 'cross the foam
And you know
your fate is where the Empire State is
All you contemplate is the view from Miss Liberty's dome
It's very nice to
go trav'lin', but it's oh, so nice to come home
You will find the maedchen
and the gay muchachas are rare
But they can't compare with that sexy line
That parades each day at Sunset and Vine
It's quite the life to play gypsy, and roam as Gypsies will roam
It's
quite the life to play gypsy
But your heart starts singin' when you're homeward wingin' 'cross the foam
And the Hudson River makes you start to quiver like the latest flivver
That's simply
drippin' with chrome
It's very nice to go trav'ling but it's oh, so nice to come home
No more Customs
Burn the passport
No more packin'
And unpackin'
Light the home fires
Get my slippers
Make a pizza
[tip of the fedora to Todd & Sharon Peach]
Don't forget to check out Paco's Rule 5 entry for this week by clicking here.
13 jun 09 @ 7:53 pm edt
STEYN OF THE WEEKENDA double-shot of Mark Steyn...
1) From his most recent appearence on the Hugh Hewitt Show:
HEWITT: Mark Steyn, today the United States Congress empowered the FDA to broadly
regulate tobacco. And I’m laughing. The world’s on fire, we’re spending trillions of dollars, we’ve
got wars in the Middle East, we’ve got the Iranian elections today, and the United States Congress summons up the courage
to regulate tobacco. It’s mindless what they’re doing.
STEYN: Well, it isn’t mindless, actually.
It’s, for a start, it’s stupid. This country’s over-regulated. Its business environment is especially over-regulated
in ways that if you’re a twerp like John Kerry, who’s never run anything in his life except for the twenty minutes
he was a sleeping partner in a donut stand in Boston, it doesn’t seem a big deal to impose ever more regulations on
this, and ever more regulations on that, every more regulations on every aspect of American life. But this constant federalization
of every single routine activity will in the end destroy this country. It’s incremental soft-despotism, and it is entirely
at odds with the animating principle of this society.
The subtle threat is always worse than the overt because
sublty is always harder to recognize and, usually by the time you do, its too late.
2) From his weekly column in Macleans:
...It’s America “one second after,” to use the title of William
R. Forstchen’s novel.
One Second After what? After an EMP attack. What’s EMP? “Electromagnetic
pulse.” You’re on a ship hundreds of miles offshore floating around the ocean, and you fire a nuke. Don’t
worry, it doesn’t hit Cleveland, or even Winnipeg. Instead, it detonates 300 miles up in the sky at a point roughly
over the middle of the continent. No mushroom cloud, no fallout, you don’t even notice it. That’s the “second”
in One Second After and what comes after is America (and presumably pretty much all of Canada south of Yellowknife) circa
1875—before Edison. The cars on the interstate stop because they all run on computers, except for Grandma’s 1959
Edsel. And so do the phones and fridges and pretty much everything else. If you were taking a hairpin bend when your Toyota
Corolla conked out, don’t bet on the local emergency room: they’re computerized, too. And, if you’ve only
got $27.43 in your purse, better make it last. The ATM won’t be working, and anyway whatever you had in your account
just vanished with the computer screen.
Mr. Forstchen tells his tale well, putting an up-to-the-minute scientifically
sound high-tech gloss on an old-fashioned yarn. One Second After is set in small-town North Carolina, but the stock characters
of Anyburg, U.S.A. are all here—the sick kid, slow-on-the-uptake local officials, gangs of neo-barbarians, the usual
conflict between self-reliant can-do types and the useless old hippies. I liked this passage:
“ ‘What
a world we once had,’ he sighed.
“The parking lot of the bank at the next corner was becoming weed-choked,
though that was being held back a bit by children from the refugee center plucking out any dandelions they saw and eating
them.”
And at that point I stopped thinking of One Second After as a movie-thriller narrative, and more in
geopolitical terms. After all, the banks in America and western Europe are already metaphorically weed-choked, and may yet
become literally so. In the Wall Street Journal a couple of months back, Peggy Noonan predicted that by next year the mayor
of New York, “in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers
leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get
the impression no one’s here and nobody cares”—or, to put it another way, lest the world stand on a rise
in New Jersey and get the impression Manhattan’s already been hit by an EMP attack....
In Atlas
Shrugged, Ayn Rand wrote about what it means when the lights go out in New York City [I tried to find the quote,
but failed. If you have it, please send it along.]
13 jun 09 @ 6:57 pm edt
HANSON-PALOOZAEverything Victor Davis publishes is well-worth a read, but two of the works he
published this past week are must-reads: one was posted on 08 June over at Pajamas Media, the other
was his syndicated column of Friday instant. Please take the time to click on the links below and read both of them.
I would like to quote from each and offer a few comments
1) From the PJM posting:
From mid-November to mid-March, the media assured us that, as Obama warned, we
were in a mess analogous to the Great Depression, a crisis, a morass. Then suddenly the stimulus passes (as of yet largely
undistributed), the nearly $2 trillion deficit budget is approved—and? Yes, now the panic is over, the tide has been
reversed, there are now time and resources to do healthcare, cap and trade, and massive education “reform.” The
media went from Bush was Herbert Hoover to Obama is far better than FDR in a matter of a few days this winter, as the tanked
economy, almost by sorcery, was suddenly ‘over the worst of it.’
We have a self-governing
Ministry Of Truth in America—if such a thing is possible.
And...
To the extent that one
reads that Obama has flipped on key points of national policy—NAFTA, renditions, military tribunals, Predator attacks,
wiretaps, intercepts, Iraq, etc.—we hear from conservative and moderate pundits not that his past demagoguery on these
issues helped to demonize here and abroad American foreign policy at a critical time. Instead, we are supposed to be overjoyed
that we can now appreciate his new flexibility and be thankful that his contradictions at least now led to the right way of
thinking.
I cannot and will not speak to the moderates. As for those conservatives he mentions: their
problem is that they refuse to understand their opponents on the Left; they are in denial that the Hard Left now in charge
of the government [and also the culture] think completely differently than those on the Right. The Modern Leftists are
like the Muslims: like the Mohammedins, the Leftists believe that they can lie and deceive the 'infidel' with impunity
because the Right, in their minds, is not worthy of any respect because they refuse to be enlightened as the Leftists have
been. The Left has found THE ANSWER and, if their inferiors would just get out of the way, they would be able to bring
heaven on Earth [immanentize the eschaton].
At one point, Mr Hanson writes about Al Gore [emphasis mine]:
...At break-neck
speed he has labored to construct a world-wide environmental-shame empire, based on stifling debate, hawking films, videos,
and study kits, selling penances called ‘carbon offsets’ evaluations for rich people, demonizing
opponents of his views, and spreading the “Bush-did-it” religion....
A more succinct term to
use for these carbon offsets would be: indulgences. History repeats in general here.
Regarding some of the things Sonia Sotomayor [pronounced: sought-toe-mayer
(as in: Oscar Mayer)] had written and spoken, VDH writes:
We are
told not to believe what Justice Sotomayor on several occasions said and published—this is now something called “misspeak”.
Is 'misspeak' a word in Newspeak?
Near the end of this great essay, Mr. Hanson remarks:
The President
himself never pauses and examines the irony of a half-African, half-white prep schooled person, lecturing the world on the
African-American civil rights experience—with which by heritage and chronology he has had no experience.
Instead,
the world of American racial identity politics distills down to the ability to claim some sort of affinity, any sort actually,
with the African-American, Native American, or Mexican-American experience.
My maternal great great grandmother
was full-blooded Cherokee—where's my damn casino?
2) From his syndicated column, this spot-on set of observations:
Why has President Obama developed a general disregard
for the truth, in a manner far beyond typical politicians who run one way and govern another, or hide failures and broadcast
successes?
First, he has confidence
that the media will not be censorious and will simply accept his fiction as fact. A satirist, after all, could not make up
anything to match the obsequious journalists who bow to their president, proclaim him a god, and receive sexual-like tingles
up their appendages.
Second,
Obama is a postmodernist. He believes that all truth is relative, and that assertions gain or lose credibility depending on
the race, class, and gender of the speaker. In Obama’s case, his misleading narrative is intended for higher purposes.
Thus it is truthful in a way that accurate facts offered by someone of a different, more privileged class and race might not
be.
Third, Obama talks more
than almost any prior president, weighing in on issues from Stephen Colbert’s haircut, to Sean Hannity’s hostility,
to the need to wash our hands. In Obama’s way of thinking, his receptive youthful audiences are proof of his righteousness
and wisdom — and empower him to pontificate on matters he knows nothing about.
Finally, our president is a product of a multicultural education:
Facts either cannot be ascertained or do not matter, given that the overriding concern is to promote an equality of result
among various contending groups. That is best done by inflating the aspirations of those without power, and deflating the
“dominant narratives” of those with it.
This is a damning answer that is nevertheless quite
true. This is a damning indictment of 52% of the American people. What have we learned about this man so far,
in the little time he has walked the American stage? He is...
-a raging egotist
-a narcissist
par excellance
-educated, but not learned, lacks wisdom and common s ense
-a relativist with no belief that
absolute truths exist
-a leveller/egalitarian.
This man is dangerous. WWU-AMerica.
13 jun 09 @ 6:23 pm edt
LET'S PLAYIts time to play...WHO SAID IT?
I'm you're host, Wink Andanod. Each week we
read you a quote from someone in the news and you have to guess WHO
SAID IT?
This week we're sponsored by Fascist Motors. Fascist Moters—There Are No False Choices
Because There Is No Choice! Call 1-888-666-2012 to find out which car has been chosen for you. Or visit
their website at: www.hopeychange.gov.
Tonight's quote comes to us from a southern gentlemen named Quin Hillyer—Thank you kind
sah.
Remember, you will have five seconds to guess the name of the person who uttered these words...five seconds.
Are you ready?....Good...Let's play, WHO SAID IT?...Here's the quote:
Who can deny
the differences in appearance, character, and physiology between dog breeds that can vary as much as the Maltese and the Great
Dane? Is the obvious difference between dog breeds just a societal construct, a myth created by dog breeders? Are we so blinded
by egalitarian dogma that we can't see the obvious differences in human races and their expressions in culture?
You have five seconds....Go!...
[The intro to Imagine by John Lennon plays for five seconds]
[Air-Raid siren wails]
No answer?...Well...As you probably guessed by the way I formulated the question: it was
not Sonia Sotomayor [maracas shake]; it's David Duke!
But ain't it a sad commentary that is was quite within
the realm of possibility that it could have been her?
Tip of the fedora to Quin Hillyer for the quote.
13 jun 09 @ 5:29 pm edt
DON'T LOOK IN THE MIRRORThe ever-passionate and insightful Quin Hillyer hits another home run with his
latest column over at The American Spectator. It is a must-read on the blatant hypocrisy of the Left.
He starts off by asking this question:
The debate over the nomination of Sonia
Sotomayor to the Supreme Court raises a much broader question: Why can't any opinion leaders or office-holders on the Left
show even a shred of intellectual integrity?
[That assumes it is reasonable to expect intellectual integrity
from them in the first place, Mr. H.—This ain't your Found Father's America.] Mr. Hillyer then goes
on the provide the sad but truthful answer in his usual sharp fashion. I particularly liked this section:
But [Sotomayor's] repeated discourses on ethnic wisdom are beyond the pale.
Yet
where is E.J. Dionne to acknowledge the patently obvious fact that her multiple speeches are disqualifying? Where is Maureen
Dowd? Where is the Los Angeles Timeseditorial page? Where is Jack Cafferty? Where are the editors of the New
Republic? Where are Senators Dorgan and Reed and Hagan or Reps. Shuler or Bright or even Hoyer?
How do they
even live with themselves if they won't criticize that which is unambiguously indefensible?
They live with
themselves because they're all passengers sailing down a certain river in Egypt on the royal barge of Pharaoh O-Rameses.
I have to admit, though, even for a cynical bastard like me, their denial of reality is quite breathtaking sometimes.
To them, A is not merely not A, it never was or could be A. I am reminded of this exchange between Winston Smith ['If
you are a man, Winston, you are the last man. Your kind is extinct; we are the inheritors. Do you understand that you are
alone? You are outside history, you are non-existent'. (you mean us RWE's?)] and O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four:
SMITH: How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two
and two are four.
O'BRIEN: Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they
are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
[Does he know Joe Klein?]
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Hillyer's full essay.
13 jun 09 @ 4:59 pm edt
BAHOFTNI've just posted a new photo in SHARED DNA. I think it rather appropriate and it was approved for posting at the last VRWC meeting.
DEAD SOLID PERFECTThose three words are my highest form of praise for a commentator, analyst, or
thinker, and I'm applying them in this instance to Charles Krauthammer for his latest column. Herewith are four
highlights, presented without comment because nothing I could add would be worthy:
Not
that Obama considers himself divine. (He sees himself as merely messianic, or, at worst, apostolic.) But he does position
himself as hovering above mere mortals, mere country, to gaze benignly upon the darkling plain beneath him where ignorant
armies clash by night, blind to the common humanity that only he can see. Traveling the world, he brings the gospel of understanding
and godly forbearance. We have all sinned against each other. We must now look beyond that and walk together to the sunny
uplands of comity and understanding. He shall guide you....
And...
...We
all have our shortcomings, our national foibles. Who's to judge?
That's the problem with Obama's transcultural
evenhandedness. It gives the veneer of professorial sophistication to the most simple-minded observation: Of course there
are rights and wrongs in all human affairs. Our species is a fallen one. But that doesn't mean that these rights and wrongs
are of equal weight.
Further...
Even on freedom of religion, Obama
could not resist the compulsion to find fault with his own country: "For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable
giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation" -- disgracefully giving the impression
to a foreign audience not versed in our laws that there is active discrimination against Muslims, when the only restriction,
applied to all donors regardless of religion, is on funding charities that serve as fronts for terror.
His
conclusion...
Distorting history is not truth-telling, but the telling of soft lies.
Creating false equivalencies is not moral leadership, but moral abdication. And hovering above it all, above country and history,
is a sign not of transcendence but of a disturbing ambivalence toward one's own country.
Someone should give this guy a medal.
Please, I urge you, take the time to click here and read the full column [and check out Pundette's take by clicking here].
13 jun 09 @ 3:17 pm edt
ITS THE SAME OLD STORY...With all that's been going on, what with the whirlwind kicked up by the new Administration,
Iran and North Korea, many of us have taken our eyes off the resurgent Russians. Over at The Weekly Standard.
Cathy Young has up a very good article on her encounters with them while attending a recent conference of Easter European
nations. A highlight that will, I think, give you a good indication of where their thinking is:
"Today, many people in Eastern Europe see us as an authoritarian system, an analogue of the Soviet Union,"
declared Duma member Adalbi Shkhagoshev of the ruling United Russia party, participating in a panel on the prospects for partnership
between Russia and the European Union. "This is not true. We want dialogue and are ready for it." He did acknowledge
that Russia needs to be "more careful" abroad and listen respectfully to neighbors.
Alas, many other
statements from the Russian speakers did little to dispel their country's reputation as an authoritarian bully. One telling
moment occurred on a coffee break when I joined a conversation between Sergei Semyonov, director of a government-affiliated
Russian institute of public administration, and a female Estonian parliament member whom Semyonov introduced as a delegate
from "another part of post-Soviet space."
"Excuse me," the Estonian MP said firmly, "a
full-fledged member of the European Union." "No, no," Semyonov replied with a smirk, "whatever you say,
it's post-Soviet space." Moments later, he asserted with a straight face that Russia's initial reports of 1,500 South
Ossetians slaughtered by Georgian invaders had never been disproved and that the current official estimate of about 150 dead
refers only to Russian military casualties.
Same old Russia; nothing has changed. Let's hope there's
someone somewhere in the Administration who (1) actually has some understanding of Russian history and the Russian soul and
(2) who was one of those on the right side [pun intended] during the last decade of the Cold War.
Please take the time to click here and read the full article.
13 jun 09 @ 2:57 pm edt
'THE LIE TOLD OFTEN ENOUGH BECOMES THE TRUTH' -LeninAs promised in a previous posting, I've added a definition for the term The Big Lie in the TERMS Section of this Page [located:
lower right-hand column]. I hope it proves useful.
13 jun 09 @ 2:44 pm edt
Friday, June 12, 2009
ILL BILL, PART 1Keith Hennessey continues his yeoman's work analyzing the Kennedy Health Care and
House Democrat's Health Care Bills. [please see my two previous postings on him by clicking here and here]
Yesterday evening, he posted a new one. A highlight:
There is much
debate about whether a health care reform bill should include a government-run health insurance plan, a so-called “public
option.” Advocates argue that such a plan can compete fairly with private health insurance, and that this competition
would “keep insurers honest.” They also argue that more choices are a good thing.
I fall in the
other camp. I think that government cannot compete on a level playing field with the private sector. Government
always has advantages because of its sovereign power. I also think that in most markets there is a range of private
health insurance plans competing for business, and so the addition of one more plan is not worth the downsides of government
involvement. (I believe that competition is flawed because for most people their employer shops for health plans.
I prefer a system in which individuals are shopping for health plans.)
Please take the time to click here and read it all.
This morning, Mr. Hennessey subjects the bill to a four-part test:
I believe
our Nation’s long-term fiscal problems, and the problems resulting from the growth of per capita health care spending,
are higher priorities to solve than reducing the number of uninsured Americans now. I would rather solve America’s
health care cost problems of the future than expand government now. This is my value choice. I expect and accept
that others will disagree.
As a result of this value choice, I believe any bill that fails any one of these four
tests is fiscally and economically irresponsible, and therefore worth defeating.
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting.
I'm posting permanent links to all of his work over in the JUST THE FACTS, MAM Section of the
WWU-AM Page of this Site [located: lower-middle column]. I've just created a special bordered section in JTFM
for them which also contains links to other people's work on the health care bills. I will keep updating as I discover
more background and analysis, so please keep checking the WWU-AM Page.
12 jun 09 @ 7:48 pm edt
SENATOR HACKFrom Politico, Abby Phillip reporting, we learn:
Sens. John Cornyn and Chuck Schumer each spent more than $140,000 in taxpayer money
on travel in the first half of the fiscal year - roughly 10 times as much as some of their thriftier colleagues.
Cornyn, a Republican, racked up the highest travel bill in the Senate by spending more than
$38,000 on a St. Michaels, Md., retreat for 59 staffers and by taking expensive, multicity charter flights throughout his
home state of Texas.
Schumer,
a Democrat, ran up the second-highest bill by routinely flying private charters to cities in New York served by commercial
airlines.
Monique Stuart comments [tip of the fedora to her for finding the Politico report]:
You aren’t rock stars. You
are ordinary people. In fact, you are SERVANTS OF the people. No wonder Congress has such consistently low poll numbers. They’re
all frauds duping the public in order to score a free ride. It’s enough to make a person sick.
I'm
not really concerned with Mr. Schumer's behavior here—I expect nothing less from Leftist hacks because, given their
nature, I have low expectations for them to begin with. What really disturbs is Mr.Cornyn's conduct. As Miss
Stuart puts it:
...And, Cornyn, good luck selling Republicans as the party of fiscal
responsibility....
The Politico report goes on to say:
Cornyn
spokesman Kevin McLaughlin said his boss’s Texas-size airfare tab stems from the size of Texas itself.
"It
has to do with travel around Texas ... the realistic ability to use commercial flights to get him where he needs to be, when
he needs to be there," said McLaughlin. "I've driven from Austin to El Paso, which is easily an eight-hour drive.
It's unbelievable how far it is."
But other big-state senators manage to get around much more cheaply. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison spent about
$88,000 on travel in the first half of the fiscal year; Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski spent about $65,000 on transportation -
less than half of what Cornyn spent.
By this one revelation,
we know that Senator Cornyn is nothing but a hypocritical hack—big state travel, my ass. He's one of the boys
and girls who have been in Washington too long for any good they may do. He should go and spare his Party the embarrassment.
Please take the time to click here and read Miss Stuart's full posting and to check out her site.
This is the perfect time to remind everyone about the NOT ONE RED CENT movement started by Robert Stacy McCain and others. Why? Well, here's their mission statement:
On May 12, 2009, The National Republican Senatorial Committee betrayed its
mission, betrayed Republican voters, and betrayed the Reagan legacy.
The NRSC sided with an establishment candidate,
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, in a Senate primary against young conservative leader, former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio.
Republicans across the country were outraged by this action, which is only the latest betrayal of grassroots conservatives
by the out-of-touch GOP elite in Washington.
The word went forth among conservative activists: Do not give money
to the NRSC. The current chairman, Sen. John Cornyn, must resign. His replacement must pledge to keep the committee neutral
in contested primaries. Let Republican voters -- not party elites -- choose Republican candidates.
This is where
the conservative grassroots rebellion begins. When the NRSC asks you for money, tell 'em:
NOT ONE RED CENT!
Senator, you've outlived your usefulness.
Go and darken the door of some SquishyCon think tank and impede conservatives no more.
12 jun 09 @ 7:00 pm edt
THE MAN WITH THE PLANThe Insight Of The Week Award goes to John Graham, director of Health Care Studies
at the Pacific Research Institute, who, in the course of commenting on Obamacare, wrote:
The Obama White House has succumbed to the fundamental fallacy of socialism: believing that the
government can collect information, analyze it, and then command its citizens to act in accordance with the government’s
conclusions.
Quite. This is the modus operandi of the Social Engineer, he who believes he has
devised THE ANSWER, the only solution to a particular problem. He believes that we are Pavlovian dogs
who can be trained by force to act in accordance with his unique wisdom.
Please take the time to click here and read his full posting.
12 jun 09 @ 6:24 pm edt
'SOCIALISM REPRESENTS THE FUTURE OF THE WEST'*The shooter of Security Guard Stephen Johns at the Washington D.C. Holocaust
Museum, James Von Brunn, was immediately labeled a right wing extremist by the Left in the media and in the blogosphere.
I suspect this happened because he was discovered to be a quite vocal white supremacist, and the Left automatically
labels any such person to be an inhabitant of the right side of the spectrum—evidence to the contrary be damned. We
now know that this useless piece of flesh is, in fact, a fringe Leftist.
Becky Brindle has done the research and
compiled list of who he hates:
African-Americans
Jews
Israel
Neoconservatives
The Weekly Standard
Christians
George Bush
John McCain
Bill O'Reilly
Fox News
Rupert
Murdoch
Von Brunn is actually a self-declared socialist. What a surprise given who and what he hates.
Mrs. Brindle has done a great job of aggregating what's been reported on him and of what the Left has been
commenting in the blogosphere. She also found this spot-on bit of commentary from Andrew Breitbart on his Facebook page:
F.U. MSM: This Holocaust Museum killer creep job was a 9/11 truther (a left-wing phenomenon),
hated Neo-Cons (Jews like me,) Bush, McCain and hated the right's beloved Israel (also a leftist phenomenon, mostly) -- and
you -- in conjunction with the Democratic Party try to say he is an example of the 'far right' that is against Obama -- all
for the sickening sake of political gain? We won't forget this, you thugs.
We may forgive, but we must never
forget.
I posted several quotes from Lenin in an earlier posting today and I've found one the fits what the Left
has been doing regarding this situation: they're just following the advice of their hero Comrade:
A lie told often enough becomes truth.
This is known as The Big Lie. It has been successfully
practiced by the Left since, at the very least, the French Revolution. [Tomorrow I will be defining the term in more
detail in the TERMS Section of this Page. I'll also publish it as a posting.]
Please take the time to click here and read her full posting.
*As written by James Van Brunn [click here for source of quote]
12 jun 09 @ 5:33 pm edt
WILL HE FLOAT?One more posting about Dave 'The Pervyman' Letterman and then, like Pundette says
'we'll try to let it go'...
Speaking of Pundette, she's got another good posting up on this over at Pundit & Pundette with some good
links. A highlight:
...Dave's apparent devotion to his mom was something that
appealed to Pundit and me when we were real Letterman fans in the 80's and into the 90's. I wonder what she thinks of his
weird animus against Palin and the working-class middle-American woman? Michelle [Malkin] is right: those jokes above aren't
funny unless you look down on a very broad class of women.
Richard Pryor commented a lot on how women bothered
him sometimes, but those razor-sharp riffs never contained any anger.
Jim Treacher has also been doing some
good commentary on this and I apologize for having neglected him until now. Please take the time to click here and here and here.
12 jun 09 @ 9:59 am edt
WE MAKE HIM ONE OF OURSELVES...Writing the previous posting caused me to think of these passages from George
Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four:
O'Brien to Winston Smith - We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we
never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him;
we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill
him. [...] we make the brain perfect before we blow it out.
...
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment
of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always- do not forget this, Winston- always there will
be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be
the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of
the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face- forever.
OFFERS WE CAN'T REFUSEI think many in America would agree that the Democrats in power these days are
engaging in thuggish behaviours. The national government's Executive and Legislative branches have most certainly been
willing to grind the Federal jackboot in a face or two [and the states and localities are feeling their oats too]. In
order to wage the right kind of war against these forces, we need to understand who they are and what kind of strategies/tactics
they are employing [Rommel... you magnificent bastard, I read your book!]. Over at Red State, Erick
Erickson has been contemplating:
One must wonder these days if the Democrats
are wrapping themselves around Chicagoland rough and tumble politics, or are they wrapping themselves around the politics
of hyper-inflation experiencing third world thugocracies.
In Chicagoland politics, like third world thugocracies,
opponents of government get gunned down, thrown in jail, threatened by the powers of government, etc. We saw this happen a
few months ago when a bank executive wrote a letter to the editor in his local newspaper criticizing TARP. Barney Frank demanded
he appear before Congress to answer questions unless he recanted his position.
...
People are not explicitly
being denied their right to peacefully assembly and petition government. They are simply made to fear that should they exercise
their constitutional rights, harm will come to them, their families, or their businesses.
It is the Chicago way.
And these same people will not now go on the record because they fear the power of Congressmen who do not respect differing
opinions.
But it is not just the Chicago way. It is also the way of the third world thugocracy. And what makes
me think this is more third world thugocracy that your basic Chicago cement shoes, is that in thugocracies, in addition to
rounding up political opponents, throwing them in jail, harming businesses, or putting bullets in heads via hired hit men,
the thugocracy also seeks to deny the opposition basic services — something that does not happen in Chicago.
I think there are three ways: the Chicago, the third world totalitarian, and [related to the Chicago Way] the Mob.
The Mob used many of the same tactics as the other two, depending on which side was paying them, in the owner versus union
disputes of the 1930's and 1940's.
The key here in our times is that, so far, physical violence has not been employed
by our thug overlords. What we are witnessing is a hybrid, a fourth way, if you will: soft thuggery. It consists
of intimidation via threat [we'll hold press conferences and denounce (key word) you], disruptive and childish tactics [pull
the plug!], and using the law enforcement power to investigate and indict people who resist [see: Sheriff Joe Arpaio]. No physical assaults need be taken; verbal violence is sufficient.
All four ways are, however,
employing tactics used repeatedly by the Left since the Modern Leftist Movement began during the Enlightenment.
Recall some of the words of Lenin:
-There are no morals in politics; there is only
expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.
-A lie told often enough becomes truth.
-The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the
millstones of taxation and inflation.
-It is true that liberty is precious - so precious that it must be rationed.
-The best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.
-One man with a gun can control
100 without one.
-We do not have time to play at "oppositions" at "conferences." We will keep
our political opponents... whether open or disguised as "nonparty," in prison. [non-person? —Belvedere]
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Erickson's full posting.
12 jun 09 @ 9:31 am edt
Thursday, June 11, 2009
ILL BILLSI mentioned in a posting yesterday that Keith Hennessey has been doing the Lord's work in analyzing the Kennedy Health Care and House Democrat's Health Care
Bills. He's done us an even greater service by combining his analyses into one page on his site, said page being updated
by him as he gains more insight into the proposals.
Please click here to visit that page and bookmark it [I've posted a permanent link to it under the JUST THE FACTS, MAM Section of the WWU-AM Page of this site].
We are in for the fight our our lives here—literally. The government
takeover of our health care must be stopped. It is no exaggeration, nor is it the product of hysteria, to say: the lives
and/or comfort of many of us are on the line.
11 jun 09 @ 2:06 pm edt
STUPID HOSTING TRICKS
11 jun 09 @ 1:56 pm edt
HUH?It seems that every few days Tiberius Obamacus and his minions perpetrate some
new policy or action that seems designed to offend us. The newest policy outrage is being reported by Stephen Hayes
over at The Weekly Standard:
...the Obama Justice Department has
quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in
Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The administration has decided to change
the focus to law enforcement. Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today -- foreign fighters
who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they're reading them their rights -- Mirandizing these foreign
fighters," says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials
on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.
Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama
administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. "I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed
up because we hadn't been briefed on it, I didn't know about it. We're still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is
clearly a part of this new global justice initiative."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding
is that onlysuspected criminals in the United States have to be Mirandized because the SCOTUS ruled
it a requirement of The Constitution? Am I insane because I think this? Am I out where the buses don't
run? Oh...I forgot: our Fearless Leader, in order to set a green example, has started using The Constitution as toilet
paper.
Mr. Hayes also reports:
A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues
for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration's approach. "If the US is mirandizing certain
suspects in Afghanistan, they're likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information
is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future."
Andrew McCarthy warned us many times in the past few months about 'the ongoing effort to move us away from
a war approach and return us to the law-enforcement paradigm for dealing with international terrorism'. Hell, he provided
us with a near-perfect example of what happens when you adopt this policy in his book, Willful Blindness.
From my review of the book last year [reposted at the top of the THE OTHER ARTS Page]:
As to the second bit about how treating terrorists like regular criminals is not successful:
Mr. McCarthy shows in detail how placing matters of national security before courts of law are not effective. He states:
...the domestic realm and the international realm have always been and will always
remain fundamentally different in kind, and they implicate quite distinct species of executive power.
Terrorism
prosecutions confound that distinction. A counterterrorism strategy that places too much reliance on them thus has numerous
harmful consequences. It shifts national-security (as opposed to police) functions from the ambit in which executive
discretion to respond to threats is necessarily broad to the ambit in which executive action is heavily regulated and the
federal courts, by performing their ordinary functions, actually empower our enemies.
The differences
between the courts and national security, he states in two succinct sentences:
On the courts:
The line drawn here is that it is preferable for the government to fail than for an innocent
person to be wrongly convicted or otherwise deprived of his rights.
On national security: The line drawn here is that the government cannot be permitted to fail.
Treating
the terrorists like ordinary domestic criminals requires that too much information be disclosed to the defense through discovery,
information that can compromise intelligence operations. This fact discourages our allies from cooperating with us:
Clearly, however, foreign intelligence services...will necessarily be reluctant to
share information with our country if they have good reason to believe that information will be revealed under the generous
discovery laws that apply in U.S. criminal proceedings.
[the full review can be found by clicking here]
Does our Fearless Leader have any justification for this action? Mr. McCarthy reports:
...I guarantee the president will argue that he is merely bringing government agents operating overseas
into compliance with the McCain Amendment (enacted as part of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act).
I hate to say I
told you so, but back when we were having this debate, thanks to Senator McCain's grandstanding on "torture," I
warned that his amendment would lead to the legal claim that American agents — including the military — were now
required to give Miranda warnings to captured terrorists outside the U.S. (See, e.g., here, here, here and here (under "The Domestic Agenda")). Live by demagoguery, die by demagoguery.
Robert Stacy McCain calls himself The Other McCain; I think we can now call the Senator The
Stupid McCain.
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Hayes's report and here to read Mr. McCarthy's posting.
How about another item to be outraged about? From Mr. Hayes:
According
to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. "The International
Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people -- 'Take the option. You want a lawyer.'"
11 jun 09 @ 11:36 am edt
WE'LL MEET AGAIN...DON'T KNOW WHERE...DON'T KNOW WHENFrom The New York Times, Michael de la Merced and Micheline
Maynard reporting, we learn the sad news:
With the touch of pen to paper and a simple wire transfer, Chrysler completed its alliance with Fiat on Wednesday morning, largely ending its quick trip through bankruptcy.
The reorganization
was completed in 42 days.
...
As envisioned by Chrysler, Fiat and the government, Wednesday’s
sale will create a new carmaker freed from the old Chrysler’s crushing labor costs and debt levels. In Fiat, which will
run the company, it will have gained a partner skilled in making and selling small, fuel-efficient cars around the world.
...
Under the plan, Chrysler would emerge from
bankruptcy with a union retiree trust owning 55 percent, Fiat owning a 20 percent share that could eventually grow to 35 percent
and the United States and Canadian governments holding minority stakes.
...
The company said its nine-member
board would include three directors appointed by Fiat, four appointed by the federal government, one by the Canadian government
and one by the United Automobile Workers’ Retiree Medical Benefits Trust. The board is expected to name C. Robert Kidder as
chairman.
My heart is breaking. Except for one, small, abbherent time period, all my cars have
been Chryslers [starting with a '64 Plymouth Belvedere].
We're going from this...
To this...
Ugh.....Thanks alot Big Bossman
 'There are no false choices at Fascist-Chrysler-Jeep-Fiat.'
Please click here to read the full article. [tip of the fedora to Stephen Spruiell]
11 jun 09 @ 10:50 am edt
GOVERNMENT-HOG DAYMy cousin Cheech Landscape Grass Seed Belvedere sent me this old 1934 cartoon
that appeared in the Chicago Tribune:
History repeats....
11 jun 09 @ 9:36 am edt
WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT POP?As if to prove he's not the Sultan Of Suckitude, R.S. McCain has provided us with some spot-on wisdom in a posting this AM. In the course of providing some sage advice
for grassroots conservatives, he writes this about dealing with what Craig Henry calls 'reservation conservatives'. Let me provide RSM's definition of RC's before I quote the advice:
This is evidently a play on the term "reservation Indian," denoting the harmless,
domesticated breed (e.g., David Brooks) as opposed to us buck-wild conservatives who are prone to guzzling constitutional
firewater and taking some liberal scalps.
Now, the advice:
...Henry
is dead on target in observing that Republican officials who claim to be fiscal conservatives but liberal (or "libertarian")
on social issues usually end up supporting a big-government agenda in economic terms. This was definitely true of Bush 41,
and although Bush 43 cut taxes, his "compassionate" agenda included No Child Left Behind and Medicare prescription
drugs, both of which were anathema to limited-government conservatives.
Republican strategists who are trying to
figure out how the GOP can recover its mojo need to think hard about this problem. The GOP's brand is damaged by these "reservation
conservative" types -- whether elected officials like Schwarzenegger or pundits like David Brooks -- who function as
Republican echoes for liberal criticism of the core conservative message.
Some of my friends mistake my frequent
criticism of "centrists" like Brooks et al. as a call to "purge the RINOs." I don't go in for
that urge-to-purge stuff, and understand that ideological purity tests are a losing approach to pragmatic coalition politics.
He's absolutely correct: we don't want to get into purging of any flavor. Such endeavours always get out of
hand—often very quickly [see: any Communist regime]. Besides, purging is a practice devised and frequently utilized
by the Left and we're all infected with enough Leftist thinking as it is—its bad enough we don't need to let it spread
any farther than it has. No, better to do as RSM says...
Conservatives must
regain confidence in the basics of Reaganism, and recover the belief that the core principles of our nation's founding --
individual liberty, individual responsibility and organic local government free from the stifling bureaucratic interventions
of centralized authority -- are legitimate and honorable, appealing to all Americans of all conditions.
...and
make it so that the 'centrists'/RINOS/Reservationcons either 'come to Jesus' or leave of their own free will. Isn't
that attitude one of the better angels of the conservative nature?
Please take the time to click here and read RSM's full posting.
11 jun 09 @ 9:25 am edt
BAD IMPRESSIONRobert Stacy McCain is under the impression that he sucks. Paco thinks this is because he is 'possibly temporarily unbalanced from the strain of creating Not Tucker Carlson
in three days'. He, rightly, thinks we need to 'buck up the poor fellow' so he's created a simple poll. Please take the time to click here and take the poll. [Like the former union official I am, I have inserted a special bot in the link above that will assure you vote the
right way (if yaz valah ya health—nuff said)].
Actually, in my personal opinion, RSM definately does not
'suck'. Given the way he dressed in the late 70's / early 80's, I would say he trucks [yup, I am dating myself]. Eddie Kendricks lives!
SIDENOTE: Thanks to Paco for listing this site on his.
11 jun 09 @ 8:49 am edt
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
IT'S THE FASHION IIIn a previous posting today [please click here], I wrote of how many Americans are starting to emulate Barack The Unready who is magically creatin' or savin' jobs every
day. Well, Pundette has run with this meme:
That piece of cheesecake I didn't
eat every day last week? You got it -- I created-or-saved at least two pounds of weight loss. And I freed up space for more
ice cream. It's a win-win.
Create-or-save is a great way to finance that special vacation or home addition. Just add up what you haven't spent on something. (The more expensive the
project is you're trying to finance, the more creative you'll have to be about what you haven't indulged in. But the sky's
the limit.) Then apply those savings to something else you'd like to indulge in. Resisted those designer sneakers three times? Decided against hiring the personal chef? Had second thoughts about that weekend getaway? Didn't go to Hawaii or Paris last year? (Don't forget to include what you would have spent on a Parisian shopping spree
-- it really adds up fast.) You've freed up lots of hypothetical cash. And you can lose the guilt. You're
not being irresponsible; you're just stimulating the economy. Create-or-save is not just fun -- it's patriotic!
Please click here to read her full posting which contains some good links. [Thanks to her for linking to my previous post from earlier today]
DO YOUR PATRIOTIC
DUTY COMRADES!...
10 jun 09 @ 7:08 pm edt
WHERE DO WE GO NOWIn commenting on New Hampshire benefiting from Massachusetts raising its sales
tax by twenty-five percent, the fact that the Live Free Or Die state has no sales or income tax, and that many Bay State shoppers
are buying things in NH, J.G. Thayer writes:
This is yet another sign of the increasing
mobility of the American people, and their growing independence from geographic and political boundaries. Last year, Maryland
decided to help fix its budget by raising the income tax on people who made over a million dollars — a pool of about
3,000 people. One year later, that pool had shrunk to around 2,000 people.
And need anyone mention Rush Limbaugh’s
“defection” to Florida over New York’s taxes? Or Microsoft’s announced plans to “export”jobs should Obama pass his tax plans.
The lesson is simple: if you push people
too far with taxes, they will simply take their money (and, occasionally, themselves) elsewhere....
True.
Mrs. Belvedere and I live in one of the Northeast states that has high taxes which are about to go even higher and we've
been planning for several years to move to New Hampshire. But, considering the way things are progressing in this Year Zero...
Once every state has high taxes.
Once every state government has been reduced to being merely a
regional administrative department for the national government.
Once America is no longer America.
Where
do we go then?
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Thayer's full posting.
10 jun 09 @ 1:27 pm edt
IT AIN'T NECESSARILY SOEarlier this AM, I posted a comment on a posting by Monique Stuart over at her
website HotMES. I was just about to quote from her posting here when I discovered she had added me to her Blogroll: Thank
you. [and thanks to Robert Stacy McCain for turning me on to her site]
In compliance with Rule 2 - The Reach Around, I've added her to my version of the Blogroll—FELLOW DHS-CERTIFIED RIGHT WING EXTREMISTS [located:
lower right-hand column of this Page]. Please check out her site often; its always entertaining and informative.
As to the posting in question, Miss Stuart wrote this spot-on comment on Tiberius Obamacus's frequent invocation
of Jesus:
Let me reiterate:
just because someone claims to be something doesn’t mean they are whatever it is they claim to be. I could claim to
be a Democrat. That doesn’t make it so. Obama can claim to be a Christian, but that doesn’t make it so. Would
a true Christian support abortion on demand? Would a true Christian support discarding babies born alive after botched abortions
and leaving them to die in an empty hospital room? Somehow, I just don’t think so. A true Christian would not put a
woman’s “right to choose” before one of God’s most sacred creation’s right to life.
And, as for Obama mentioning Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount at Georgetown University,
would that have been the same speech during which the administration allegedly had a cross and a Catholic religious monogram
covered up? I’m just wondering.
Barack Obama claims to be a Christian. Meghan McCain claims to be a Republican. And, the MSM claim to be objective.
That doesn’t make it so.
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting.
My comment on her posting...
Unlike Miss McCain who appears to be simply immature and not very well-read, our Fearless
Leader is a Committed Leftist and what he and others of his ilk are doing is employing a standard tactic of the Left: The
Big Lie. From the Wikipedia entry:
The phrase was also used in
a report prepared during the war by the United States Office of Strategic Services in describing Hitler's psychological profile:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit
a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept
blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner
than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
Sounds like our Messiah. Now, it must be said: the President is no Hitler, but, like that
paper-hanging SOB and like Lenin, Stalin, Alinsky, etc., he has used, and will continue to use, this tactic to achieve his
ends. It is a standard play in the Leftist playbook and Obama is the Man With THE ANSWER [Immanentize The Eschaton].
10 jun 09 @ 10:01 am edt
IT'S THE FASHION...
10 jun 09 @ 9:30 am edt
UBER-CURIOUSEROver at Red State, Josh Painter has posted another useful update
on Dealergate [his tenth]. A highlight:
Did we mention that FIAT, the company
the Obama administration pushed Chrysler into a hastily-arranged shotgun marriage with, has the lowest owner satisfaction scores in all of Great Britain? Just another brilliant move by our genius president. Quality
control and owner satisfaction issues are partly responsible for Chrysler’s predicament, and FIAT, which many unhappy
owners say is an acronym for “Fix It Again Tony,” seems an unlikely partner to help Chrysler improve in that department.
Please take the time to click here and read his full posting.
My previous three postings: THUS SPAKE OBAMATHUSTRA, UBERMENSCHLICH., and UBER-MESS.
10 jun 09 @ 9:08 am edt
ILL-HEALTH CARE BILLSEconomics maven Keith Hennessey has been doing the Lord's work in analyzing the
Kennedy Health Care and House Democrat's Health Care Bills. I've posted permanent links to both under the JUST
THE FACTS, MAM Section of the WWU-AM Page of this site.
I'm still reading both and will have comments here in the near future, but I urge
you to read them ASAP [tip of the fedora to Kathryn Jean Lopez]. The Left has to be stopped.
10 jun 09 @ 8:43 am edt
INTERESTING...From Fox News and Sky News:
Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on
board the Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic Ocean, killing all 228 on board, it has emerged.
French secret servicemen established the connection while working through the list of those
who boarded the doomed Airbus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on May 31.
Agents are now trying to establish dates of
birth for the two dead passengers, and family connections.
There is a possibility that the name similarities are
simply a "macabre coincidence," the source added, but the revelation is still being "taken very seriously."
...
France has received numerous threats from Islamic terrorist groups in recent months, especially since
French troops were sent to fight in Afghanistan.
While I remain skeptical because no group has claimed responsibility,
it could be that, if this was indeed a terrorist act, the perputrators are enjoying watching us be fearful and uncertain.
[tip of the fedora to NTC News]
10 jun 09 @ 8:32 am edt
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
BANANASOur spot-on dope slap of the day comes from Pundette:
Can I declare, like, a fatwah or something on David Letterman? To think Pundit and I used to love him back in the
days when Chris Elliot was "the guy under the seats." But of late Dave has become a creep of the first degree. From last night's Top Ten:
2. Bought makeup from Bloomingdale's to update her "slutty flight attendant" look Dave, we know you've got an icky love-hate thing for Sarah. We haven't forgotten last November when
you outed yourself as a dirty old man. But maybe you should find a way to keep it to yourself.
Mrs. Belvedere
and I salute you Pundette: we're having a shot of Sinatra's favorite, Jack Daniel's, in your honor.
Please take the time to click here and read her full posting.
SIDENOTE: Chris Elliot is a comedic genius.
9 jun 09 @ 7:36 pm edt
WELCOME BACK MR. COTARDOur spot-on observation of the day comes from John Derbyshire. Having read
philosopher Thomas Metzinger's new book, Mr. Derbyshire comments:
I did not know until reading The Ego Tunnel that there is a psychiatric disorder in which the patient may believe he doesn't exist. It sometimes seems that the Republican
Party suffers from a sort of collective version.
If we could obtain one, a pint of Tennents Larger would be raised in your honor, Mr. D.
The above is as good excuse as any to remind you about NOT ONE RED CENT.
9 jun 09 @ 7:20 pm edt
THE CULTURE OF DEATH BILLWhat is an 'unintended consequence'? It a result that happens unexpectedly,
that was not planned for. Wikipedia defines it thusly:
Unintended consequences
are outcomes that are not (or not limited to) the results originally intended in a particular situation. The unintended results
may be foreseen or unforeseen, but they should be the logical or likely results of the action....
Unintended consequences can be grouped into roughly three types: - a
positive unexpected benefit, usually referred to as serendipity or a windfall
- a negative or perverse effect, that may be
contrary to what was originally intended
- a potential source of problems, such
as described by Murphy's law
Discussions of unintended consequences
usually refer to the situation of perverse results. This situation can arise when a policy has a perverse incentive and causes actions contrary to what is desired.
While people are finding
out many bad things that will come about if the Kennedy Health Care Bill [aka: Obamacare] is passed, these are intended.
We opponents of socialist health care can prepare and launch counter-attacks against them. If we win, our health does
not suffer; if we lose, we are forewarned and can try to act to prevent our health from being hurt. It is a lot harder
in the area of health to battle and win against the results of unintended consequences. By the time we are aware of
the problem, it may be too late.
I bring all of this up because of something I just read by Jim Hoft, proprietor
of Gateway Pundit, over at the American Issues Project:
Currently the United States leads the world in treating breast cancer. Women with breast cancer have a 14 percent higher survival rate in the United States than in Europe. Breast cancer mortality is 52 percent higher in Germany than in the United States, and 88 percent higher in the United
Kingdom. Breast cancer mortality is also 9 percent higher in Canada than in the US. Less than 25 percent of U.S. women die
from breast cancer. In Britain, it's 46 percent; France, 35 percent; Germany, 31 percent; Canada, 28 percent;
Australia, 28 percent, and New Zealand, 46 percent. The European Network of Cancer Registries reported:
Breast cancer is also
the most common cancer in females in Europe. It is estimated that in the year 2000 there were 350,000 new breast cancer cases
in Europe, while the number of deaths from breast cancer was estimated at 130,000. Breast cancer is responsible for 26.5 percent
of all new cancer cases among women in Europe, and 17.5 percent of cancer deaths.
In Britain, where they enjoy
socialized medicine, breast cancer rates have soared by more than 80 percent in the past 30 years under their system. A big reason for this is
early diagnosis. Nine of 10 middle-aged American women (89 percent) have had a mammogram, compared to less than three-fourths
of Canadians (72 percent). Women who develop breast cancer in Europe are four times more likely to be diagnosed when the tumor has spread and survival is less likely than are
women in the US.
In our battle against this horrendous and unconstitutional Bill, we can never, and must
never, forget how high the stakes are. Anything short of victory will mean future unnecessary death sentences for
a good number of our fellow Americans. The Left has to be stopped.
Please take the time to click here and read Mr. Hoft's full posting which is well-researched. [tip of the fedora to Mark Tapscott]
9 jun 09 @ 7:04 pm edt
PRIVATE WILLIAM LONGOver at Red State, Caleb has posted a report of the funeral for Army
Private William Long who was murdered by Islamic terrorist Hakim Mujahid Muhammad last week:
Pvt. Long’s brother, Pfc. Triston Long, placed his unit’s
insignia in the casket. “My brother taught me valuable lessons and made me the man I am today,” he said. “My
commander said, ‘Make your brother one of us.’ I will miss my brother with all that I am, and I serve in honor
of him.”
Please take the time to click here and read the full report.
Deus vult! [slogan of The
Crusades]
9 jun 09 @ 2:43 pm edt
AND THEN THEY WILL FEAR YOUMark Hyman thinks the Administration has an Enemies List and he makes his case
over at The American Spectator. A highlight:
Just having
the appearance of someone who might possibly vote for an opponent of Barack Obama could land them on the President's enemies
list where proxies do the dirty work. Political appointees in the Justice Department killed a six-month investigation by career
DOJ lawyers into the most blatant voter intimidation case in 40 years. Last November, jack-booted, uniformed, baton-wielding thugs from the New Black Panther Party calling themselves "security" obstructed a Philadelphia
polling location and behaved in an intimidating manner toward white voters.
Days after dismissing charges against the menacing thugs,
the Justice Department moved in the opposite direction by blocking responsible steps to stem voter fraud. The DOJ barred the administrative procedures Georgia authorities put into place – under federal
court guidance -- to verify voter registrations. The DOJ claimed the procedures violated the rights of minority voters.
A de facto Obama enemies list and dirty political machine have been expanding since last year. Obama has established
several embarrassing presidential firsts including targeting private individuals by names, assigning a well-known "partisan dirt-digger"
and non-lawyer to the White House Counsel's Office to likely gain access to Bush Administration documents protected under
attorney-client privilege, and moving the senior political advisor into the West Wing. These are heretofore unseen partisan
practices.
Please click here to read the whole article.
I have seen no evidence that Don Obamleone and his Capos have an actual list, but, like the proven thugs they are, I'm
sure they have compiled a mental list. Paco has transcribed a message he received from one of the Capos* [funny how he looks like Frank Costello]. Here's a highlight:
Ya know what
makes for political success? Knowin’ who your friends are. Which also means, knowin’ who your friends ain’t.
An’ if dere’s one t’ing de Boss is good at, it’s fingerin’ his enemies.
...
An’ when de boss attacked Rush Limbaugh – hey, like
I said, he didn’t have anyt’ing poisonal against de guy. So what, Limbaugh was a drug abuser and he can’t
seem to get along wit’ none ‘a his wives, an’ he’s a fat putz; live and let live, dat’s de Boss’s
motto.
So, mind your p’s and q’s an’ everyt’ing’s gonna be jake. An’ if ya
docatch a little heat from one a’ de President’s button men, remember: it’s just business.
You Godfather fanatics out there [and I am one] may recall that, in one of the restored scenes
in the chronological recut of the first two movies, The Godfather Epic, Michael says, I think to Tom Hagen,
'Everything is personal'. It always is.
*Tip of the fedora to NTC News.
9 jun 09 @ 2:31 pm edt
UBER-MESSAn update regarding the possibility that the Chrysler dealers who contributed
to Republicans, or, as we now learn, political enemies of the Administration, are the ones being closed down by the government.
As I mentioned last week, Josh Painter has been on the case over at Red State. Since my last
posting early last week, Mr. Painter has posted three more updates. Please take the time to click here and here and here to read them.
Doug Ross, who I mentioned has also been reporting on the story has two more good postings
here and here. [He also has a pictorial preview of what the new Chrysler and GM models will look like in 2011. Its funny now, but—and this is a sad commentary on our times—it may come to pass; its entirely possible.
Egads.]
And, Joey Smith is also doing yeoman's work over at http://chryslerdealershipshutdown.blogspot.com/
My previous two postings: THUS SPAKE OBAMATHUSTRA and UBERMENSCHLICH.
'You have three choices and three choices only: you either buy the Dodge Dictator
or the Chrysler Comrade or the Jeep Trotsky. There are no false choices at Fascist Motors.'
9 jun 09 @ 1:40 pm edt
BRITAIN AND THE EU ELECTIONSI've just published a roundup of reactions by the four best Albionic commentators
over in THE FLAMES OF ALBION Section of the BRITAIN Page [where I keep an eye on the goings-on in the sceptered isle].
9 jun 09 @ 8:39 am edt
Monday, June 8, 2009
SOME MORE THOUGHTS......on the whole Sotomayor [pronounced: sot-oh-mayer (as in: Meyer Lansky)] meshugas...
1) Regarding this whole 'empathy' requirement that Barack The Unready demands of his judicial nominees, Mark Steyn discusses what exactly 'empathy means':
It’s a modish fancy. You didn’t hear the word much a generation back. Now
people who would once have sympathized with you insist on claiming to “empathize” with you. In his book Clinical
Empathy, David Berger offers the following definition: “The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing
from within the frame of reference of that other person.”
...Because, after all, that’s the tricky
bit. Take the presidential requirement “to understand what it’s like to be disabled.” If you’re paralyzed
in a riding accident, I can sympathize at the drop of a hat: my God, that’s awful. Helluva thing to happen. But can
I empathize “from within the frame of reference of that other person”?
Example: “Driving down
there, I remember distinctly thinking that Chris would rather not live than be in this condition.” That’s Barbara
Johnson recalling the immediate aftermath of her son Christopher Reeve’s riding accident. Her instinct was to pull the
plug; his was to live. Bill Clinton famously claimed to “feel your pain.” He can’t, not really. But the
immodesty of the assertion is as pithy a distillation as any other of what’s required in an age of pseudo-empathy.
The first definition in my Webster’s gets closer to the truth: “The imaginative projection of a subjective
state into an object so that the object appears to be infused with it.” That’s geopolitical empathy as practised
by the Western world. The more depraved the subjects of the Palestinian Authority become, the more energetically the great
powers invest in the delusion that this is a conventional nationalist struggle. Thus, “empathy” becomes the very
opposite of David Berger’s definition: we examine these subjects from within our frame of reference. As Condi Rice told
the columnist Cal Thomas a year or two back, “The great majority of Palestinian people, they just want a better life.
This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don’t
believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to
go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that’s what people are going to do.”
Mr.
Thomas asked the secretary of state a sharp follow-up: “Do you think this or do you know this?”
“Well,
I think I know it.”
I think she knows she doesn’t know it....
All this use and abuse
of the word makes me recall some Bob Dylan lyrics:
I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you
Positively.
2) Thomas Sowell looks at the whole 'she had to struggle' argument as a qualification for a judge:
Bonnie and Clyde had to struggle. Al Capone had to struggle. The only president of
the United States who was forced to resign for his misdeeds — Richard Nixon — had to struggle. For that matter,
Adolf Hitler had to struggle. There is no evidence that struggle automatically makes you a better person.
Sometimes,
instead of making you appreciative of a society in which someone born at the bottom can rise to the top, it leaves you embittered
that you had to spend years struggling, and resentful of those who were born into circumstances where the easy way to the
top was open to them.
Much in the past of Sonia Sotomayor, and of the president who nominated her, suggests such
resentments. Both have a history of connections with people who promoted resentments against American society. La Raza (“the
race”) was Judge Sotomayor’s Jeremiah Wright. If context is important, then look at that context.
Sonia
Sotomayor has, in both her words and in her decision as a judge to dismiss out of hand the appeal of white firefighters who
had been discriminated against, betrayed a racism that is no less racism because it is directed against different people than
the old racism of the past.
Hear, hear.
3) Ralph Alter thinks he may have uncovered another 'first' this President represents:
In the same sense that Toni Morrison claimed Bill Clinton was our first black president, Barack Obama could be thought of as another
groundbreaker: our first female president. He displays every trope of femininity more than any female "who could ever
be elected in our children's lifetime" (to borrow Morrison's phrase about Clinton).
...
Obama is
filled with sensitivity (one might even say, empathy), he would rather talk than fight, is highly (yet selectively) compassionate and to top it
all off, he has a finely tuned sense of fashion. B.O. attempts to collaborate with Europeans, South Americans, Muslims
and nearly everyone except the citizens of red state America. Oh, and his position on abortion and women's rights is
nearly identical to that of the Choicers at NARAL and NOW. Ms. Magazine felt so simpatico with B.O. that he was featured on their special
Inaugural issue cover, ripping open his shirt to expose his "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" T-shirt.
While the cover was somewhat controversial for the magazine, the editor pointed out that (Obama) purportedly told them: "I
am a feminist." According to Ms., Obama "ran on the strongest platform for women's rights of any major
party in American history."
In addition, Obama has surrounded himself with women in most important security
and foreign policy positions in his administration. While some might choose to describe BO as our first metrosexual President, the clincher is that, consistent with all outward appearances, the Obama administration fights like a girl.
I don't know if I agree with all he writes, but it would certainly explain a lot. Perversely, it makes
you yearn for the days of Alan Alda [shivers run down spine].
8 jun 09 @ 7:57 pm edt
WELL WELL WELL MY MICHELLEThe JammieWearingFool posted this Reuters photo
taken this past Saturday:
He comments:
As hard as the media tries to foist the idea on us that Michelle Obama is some kind
of supermodel and fashion icon, it just will never wash. ...Man, is that a scary look.
Wow, it sure is.
Even Mrs. Belvedere has never given me such a look [and she's half-Irish and half-Sicilian]. I wonder how many
times Barry has gotten that look thrown his way? Makes me have just a bit of sympathy for him [a very small
bit, mind you]. Yikes.
8 jun 09 @ 7:27 pm edt
THE JOB SAVER - IN COLORFrom Reuters, Doug Palmer reporting, we learn:
President Barack Obama said on Monday accelerated stimulus spending would create or save 600,000 jobs over the next
100 days, pledging action to slow the growth of unemployment that has reached a 25-year high.
"We've got a
long way to go, but I feel like we've made great progress," Obama said at a White House meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and cabinet officials aimed at highlighting gains made since Congress passed the massive
stimulus package in February.
"The biggest concern that I have moving forward is that the toll that job losses
take on individual families and communities can be self-reinforcing," Obama said.
"People lose jobs,
they pull back on spending, that means businesses don't have customers, and suddenly you start seeing more job lay-offs."
The White House event took place three days after the Labor Department reported that U.S. unemployment rose to 9.4
percent in May, even though job losses last month slowed to 345,000.
Robert Stacy McCain comments:
The White House press corps stenography pool doesn't seem to be asking any of the important
questions about the Obamanomics agenda. Monique Stuart asks a
good question.
Indeed she does:
I’m just waiting for some real breaking news, like how this money is going to
“create or save” jobs in the first place. Or, better yet, how will this be measured? I’m tired of our president
making claims that can never be proven. I could claim that I’m creating and saving jobs, too. That doesn’t mean
I actually am. In a month when Obama claims how his ramping up spending accomplished this goal, how will the validity of these
claims be tested? Quite simply, they can’t be.
She's absolutely correct. I am reminded of the
claims made by The Politburo about the success of each and every Five-Year Plan. We old Cold Warriors used to look forward
to them because we were always guaranteed
a good laugh—Oh, those crazy Commies!
[tip of the fedora to RSM for the Reuters and Monique Stuart links]
8 jun 09 @ 7:08 pm edt
SIX THOUSAND WORDS IIII've been tripping the ether fantastic again, searching for superb analysis and
commentary on our Fearless Leader's trip to the Middle East last week and have discovered a few more gems worth one's
time:
1) Unlike most of us, Ralph Peters has benefited from the President's visit to the Middle East last week. As Mr. Peters puts it in the Sunday New York Post:
I thought
I knew a little bit about the Middle East. Boy, was I wrong. Last week, President Obama set me straight. Here's what our president
taught me during his Middle-Eastern pilgrimage....
He then goes on to list thirteen items. Here are
several:
There are "nearly seven million American Muslims." Who knew? We all thought there were three or four million, max. Is this a preview of the predetermined
results of our upcoming census? [Note to editor: Confirm numbers with ACORN.]
"It was not violence that won full and equal rights" for black Americans.So much for the Civil War and my ancestor, who volunteered to wear Union blue and paid for it with his life. I thought
a half-million Americans died fighting to end slavery. Silly me. Still, it was brave of our president to highlight slavery's
"lash of the whip" in his speech, since his own ancestors, as Muslims along Africa's Swahili Coast, would have been
complicit - if not actively engaged - in enslaving their fellow black Africans for Arab masters. As a self-proclaimed "student
of history," Obama surely knows that.
Holocaust, schmolocaust.
Aren't those pesky Jews ever going to go away? Yes, denying the Holocaust
is "hateful." But let's get a grip. Palestinians "endure . . . daily humiliations." Their lot's "intolerable."
Israel "devastates Palestinian families." No wonder our president shunned wicked Israel during his trip - sending
a clear, if unspoken, message that Jews are now fair game.
"America's
strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable." Yup. And they're issued
by Chrysler.
Good one, that last one. And the ACORN one too.
In Mr. Peter's conclusion,
he makes this spot-on statement:
His crowd-pleasing speech sanitized and romanticized
Islam, letting the disgruntled populations of the Middle East off the hook for their own self-wrought failures, their monstrous
oppression of women (our president's women's-right-to-wear-hijab remarks were aimed at Europe), and the violent aggression
toward others they often celebrated and generally tolerated.
To Arab ears, especially, the Cairo speech made America
the guilty party in our confrontations, as if, on 9/11, crazed Presbyterians had attacked Mecca. Yet, the historical facts
are that Islam's remorseless assault on the West lasted for more than one thousand years, its cruel occupation of Christian
lands lasted into the 20th century, and the dream of an all-conquering caliphate remains very much with us.
The
last mass slaughter of Christians in Iraq wasn't a millennium ago, but in 1933. Al Qaeda isn't an aberration. It's a manifestation.
The current War Against Islam is merely another chapter in a book begun long ago when Mohammed [his name be
damned] survived into adulthood to wreck havoc and bring misery to the world.
2) Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson has posted ten comments on the Cairo speech. Here are two of them:
1. If Obama were General-Secretary of the United
Nations, the speech might have been passable. Coming from the president of the United States, it was an embarrassment. Obama
runs down the country he represents while puffing himself up as a transcendent figure. He humbles the United States while
glorifying his personage. This aspect of the speech seemed to me indecent.
9. The speech seems to me comparable
to Jimmy Carter's Notre Dame speechdeclaring that America had overcome its inordinate fear of Communism. Obama declares that
in his person America has overcome its inordinate fear of Islam. Beyond the old Carter message of American weakness and prostration,
Obama also presents himself as defender of the faith: "I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United
States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear[.]" This is exceedingly strange.
Well, these are strange days after all. Never has The Constitution been under such a violent assault.
Never have our liberties and freedoms been so in danger. Never have we had a President whose loyalty to America is in
serious doubt [who doubts the loyalty of Wilson, FDR, LBJ, and Clinton?]. At the end of Mr. Johnson's posting, he uses
an appropriate and fitting quote Winston Churchill:
These failures suggest that
the speech is an offering, to borrow Churchill's words, from "a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year
unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden
time."
'Moral health and martial vigour' are what we conservatives have need of now.
3)
Over at Investor's Business Daily, the Editors are spot-on:
President Obama's Cairo University address to the world's Muslims on Thursday
squandered a historic opportunity that perhaps only a president with a Muslim father and a Muslim name could have utilized:
effectively rallying the Islamic world against Iran as it pursues nuclear weapons.
Instead, he did pretty much
the opposite, declaring that "no single nation should pick and choose which nation holds nuclear weapons."
This is multilateralism taken to its reductio ad absurdum. Since the dawn of atomic weapons, it has been mostly the United
States' job — what Harry Truman called "an awful responsibility which has come to us" — to act as a
kind of global nuclear custodian.
Truman made no bones about defending our building of the bomb, noting that the
Nazis "were on the search for it" and that "we know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the
disaster which would come to this nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first."
That Democratic president made it clear to the world that "Great Britain, Canada and the United States, who have
the secret of its production, do not intend to reveal that secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to
protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction."
If we are honest with ourselves
today, we must admit that even now, nearly six-and-a-half decades into the nuclear age, there remains no foolproof means of
controlling the bomb. It continues to be, in Give 'em Hell Harry's words, "too dangerous to be loose in a lawless world."
So it is chilling to hear a U.S. president go to Egypt and, after issuing an unprecedented apology for the 1953 CIA
coup that kept Iran and its oil from the clutches of Iran's direct neighbor to the north, the Soviet Union, declare that Iran
has "the right" to nuclear power — which it can easily use to build bombs.
'Chilling'?
It's freezing.
8 jun 09 @ 2:44 pm edt
I SEE YOU'VE GOT MO-JO OF THE GA-GO-GOOver at Red State, Warner Todd Huston has unearthed a deeply
disturbing provision in the Kennedy Health Care Bill [aka: Obamacare]. The whole damn thing is, of
course, disturbing, but this one is very worrying [and I'm sure its not the only one]:
Do you want your government to know that you have bowel troubles? Do you mind if the president can discover if you
have erectile disfunction? Would you be out of sorts if your local Congressman could discover if you’d had an abortion?
How about if your state comptroller’s office or your governor could discover if you’d had breast implants? Well,
a vote for Obamacare is a vote to give away your personal, private, maybe embarrassing medical information.
Do
you think this is a silly claim? Well, don’t. In the newly released Obamacare plan, section 3102 titled “Financial
Integrity” makes provision for state and federal governments to be able to investigate any medical care provider at
any time. This provision gives government the right to look at any record that a doctor has in his files and that
means your private medical information. Worse, they may do so without court approval, without a warrant, with no
cause stated.
This is just another incentive to see that this unconstitutional plan is soundly defeated.
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting. Mr. Huston also provides a link to Patient's United's website where they have placed a searchable and downloadable
version of the bill in PDF format. They ask for your help in finding such nastiness such as the above provision. [permanent link created to both
in the JUST THE FACTS, MAM Section of the WWU-AM Page of this website]
8 jun 09 @ 2:02 pm edt
STEYN OF THE WEEKENDFrom his most recent syndicated column:
...Overseas,
the coolest president in history was giving a speech. Or, as the official press release headlined it on the State Department
website, “President Obama Speaks to the Muslim World from Cairo.”
Let’s pause right there: It’s
interesting how easily the words “the Muslim world” roll off the tongues of liberal secular progressives who’d
choke on any equivalent reference to “the Christian world.” When such hyper-alert policemen of the perimeter between
church and state endorse the former but not the latter, they’re implicitly acknowledging that Islam is not merely a
faith but a political project, too. There is an “Organization of the Islamic Conference,” which is already the
largest single voting bloc at the U.N. and is still adding new members. Imagine if someone proposed an “Organization
of the Christian Conference” that would hold summits attended by prime ministers and presidents, and vote as a bloc
in transnational bodies. But, of course, there is no “Christian world”: Europe is largely post-Christian and,
as President Obama bizarrely asserted to a European interviewer last week, America is “one of the largest Muslim countries
in the world.” Perhaps we’re eligible for membership in the OIC.
I suppose the benign interpretation
is that, as head of state of the last superpower, Obama is indulging in a little harmless condescension. In his Cairo speech,
he congratulated Muslims on inventing algebra and quoted approvingly one of the less bloodcurdling sections of the Koran.
As socio-historical scholarship goes, I found myself recalling that moment in the long twilight of the Habsburg Empire when
Crown Prince Rudolph and his mistress were found dead at the royal hunting lodge at Mayerling — either a double suicide,
or something even more sinister. Happily, in the Broadway musical version, instead of being found dead, the star-crossed lovers
emigrate to America and settle down on a farm in Pennsylvania. Recently, my old comrade Stephen Fry gave an amusing lecture
at the Royal Geographical Society in London on the popular Americanism “When life hands you lemons, make lemonade”
— or, if something’s bitter and hard to swallow, add sugar and sell it. That’s what the president did with
Islam: He added sugar and sold it.
Please take the time to click here and read the full column.
8 jun 09 @ 11:29 am edt
SIXTY YEARS ONOver at The American Culture, Mike Gray reminds us:
June 8th marks the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's dystopian political novel, Nineteen Eighty-four.
I'm sure there is someone somewhere who keeps track of how often a text is cited
(e. g., the Declaration of Independence or—depressingly less frequently these days—the Bible). Orwell's novel
must surely rank near the top of the list—every time you hear the terms "Orwellian," "Big Brother,"
"doublethink," "thought crime," "thought police," "Ministry of Truth," or "two
minutes' hate" you're getting allusions to 1984.
It is remarkable, moreover, how
people of virtually every political persuasion—Left, Right, Center, on the Fringe—find Orwell's terms to be a
useful shorthand for what they regard as unsavory misconduct by government entities.
In other words, they invoke
1984 when they perceive a threat, real or imagined, to their freedom of action—which is a
good indicator of just how successful Orwell was in sowing the seeds of distrust in governmental power.
He
then goes on to provide recent example from across the spectrum.
Please take the time to click here and read the full posting.
I just recently DVR'd and watched the film version of the book that was done in 1984. It should be required viewing
in our schools—especially in this Age Of Big Barry. When I was in high school in the 1970's, the novel was required
reading; is it still? If not, I would plead with parents out there to try to get your teenagers to read it, or, at the
very least, see the movie [perhaps, that will spur them to want to read the novel?]. Orwell's warnings are just as timely
today as they were in the late 1940's.
Here's one of my favorite quotes from the novel:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed-if all records told the same tale-then the lie passed
into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present
controls the past.' Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made
by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion,
which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean
and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
George Orwell - Nineteen
Eighty-Four, Book 1, Chapter 3
Fitting for these times, eh?
8 jun 09 @ 11:25 am edt
TIBI GRATIAS A very special 'Thank You' to Smitty over at The Other McCain for featuring my Rule 5 Saturday posting at the top of his Rule 5 Sunday posting.
Don't forget to check out The Other McCain's Rule 5 posting each and every Sunday.
This past one was was especially good—and not because of TCOT's prominence: Smitty provided
us with a list of 10 Conservative Women With Whom We'd Like to Enjoy a Beverage, and What We'd Say.
The whole thing is well worth your time.
Also, thanks to Smitty for correcting his error in missing TCOTS
in his original Saturday Reach-Around posting. His mea maxima culpa resulted in this site being featured in its own posting here. He even put the picture I sent to privately scold him with in the post which I now reproduce for the historical
record only:
Thanks again Smitty [and to RSM].
8 jun 09 @ 11:10 am edt
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And it's only one fight in the battle, and we have to keep fighting.'
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We thank you, sir.'
—Smitty 'More great commentary and juicy
links on l'affaire IG from Camp of the Saints..'
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Captain Ohab:
'From hell's
heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned Fox News.'
I may be reached at
Robert.Belvedere AT gmail DOT com
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T E R M S
Let us make precise and clear-cut the terms we should be using.
Aristotle wrote that A is A; you may also call it B, but
it always remains A. A thing is what it is and, to say it is something else, is to deny reality. There is a lot of denial
of reality going around these days.
As John Adams wrote: 'Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes,
our inclinations, the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence'.
POINT 1: There is no "War in Iraq"
or "War in Afghanistan". Like the Pacific and Europe in World War II, Iraq and Afghanistan are
just parts of a larger war. Unlike them, they are not separate from each other. Therefore,
they are part of the Middle East Theatre of Operations [METO] as the Pacific was the PTO and Europe the ETO.
POINT 2: Many on the Left and some on the Right want to "end
the War". There are only two ways to end a war: (1) by achieving Victory or (2) by being Defeated.
A pullout, before Victory is achieved, is Defeat. They want Defeat. Pullout may
be the best policy―I am not arguing that here―but, leaving without achieving our objective is Defeat.
POINT 3: We are engaged in a War Against Islam.
The term is more correct than "War against Islamo-Fascism" or "War On Terror".
Islam has been at war with all non-Muslims since the
time of its founder, Muhammad [his name be cursed]. Like the Hundred Years' War, there have been periods
of peace in this long conflict, but the Muslim has never stopped believing that he is at war with all non-Muslims.
He can't: Allah commands that all of the world be conquered in his name and he must submit, in all things, to the
will of Allah [the word Islam means "submission", sometimes rendered as "surrender"]. Any
periods of peace we in the West have enjoyed have only occurred after we have dealt them such a devastating blow that they
have not been able to wage their jihad and then have pursued polices that have kept them subjugated. This
began to fade in the latter half of the 20th Century as we forgot the dangers posed by this militant religion and
as they regrouped under new and committed leaders.
If you
doubt that Islam is at war with all non-Muslims, keep in mind this:
Islamic apologists
often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools
of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic,
and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with
Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to
conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic
religious jurisprudence]) -- Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali -- all agree that there is a collective obligation on
Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including
Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools
disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama
bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda’s attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists;
whether a long-term Fabian strategy against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc. [Source: Gregory M. Davis, Islam 101, section
4g, found at http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/]
They have been at war with us for
centuries and we, therefore, have been at war with them. We are engaged in a War Against Islam whether
we want to say so or not. In an interview with a Pakistani TV network on 23 July 2008, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid,
Al-Qaeda's No. 3 man and top commander in Afghanistan, has this to say: “Islam does not distinguish between the
American people and the American government, since both are in a state of war with Islam”. [Source: http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD200008]
POINT 4: The term "Islamo-Fascism" seems
to have been created by Leftists. Since (1) they wrongly place fascism on the Right, (2) they believe [rightly]
Muslims want to establish a theocratic regime on Earth, and (3) anything political that has any connection with religion is
bad and emanates out of rightwing thinking, the term makes sense to them. Therefore, the term is nothing
but a way to associate Islam with the right-wing. Muslims believe in a totalitarian way of governing; in
submission [that word] to an all-powerful Islamic leader or leaders.
POINT 5: As to the term "War On Terror",
it is just plain silly: how can you wage war on a thing?
POINT 6: What is fascism? It is when a government
allows private property to exist, but controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms. Citizens
retain all of the burdens and responsibilities associated with property ownership, but are not allowed to control and shape
its use.
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied
bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone
liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism
and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through
direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally
private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their
property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a
few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance
of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled
the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions.
[Source: Sheldon Richman, The Concise Encylcopedia Of Economics,
Liberty Fund, found at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html]
On the political spectrum, therefore, it is located between modern liberalism
and socialism.
POINT 7: What is socialism? It is when a government
allows no private property to exist, and controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms.
Citizens are not allowed to control their lives and are subject to the whims of bureaucrats and officials. If they
retain freedoms and liberties, they do so at the discretion of them. On the political spectrum, therefore, it
is the next logical stage after fascism; some would argue that it lies between fascism and communism.
POINT 8: What is pragmatism? It is a tool used by Leftists,
or those operating under the influence of Leftist logic, to achieve Utopian ends—heaven on earth through social, political,
cultural, and spiritual engineering. It is merely a tool of ideology, part of the means to an end.
POINT 9:The Big Lie - When confronted with truths that reflect
unpleasantly on them, the Leftists deflect it buy claiming over-an-over ad nauseum that these truths apply to and are products
of the Right. This practice is known as The Big Lie. It has been successfully practiced by the
Left since, at the very least, the French Revolution. Thus, we have the now-widespread belief that the Nazis and the
Black Shirts of Italy were right-wingers when the reality-the truth-is they were both people of the Left. I suspect
the violent objections from the Left to conservatives use of the term 'fascist' arise from the fact that they have spent well
over seventy years trying to convince the world of The Big Lie that it is not and never has been a Leftist
ideology.
How does one practice this distortion truth and why is it effective? In a report issued during
World War II by the OSS, the author provided an explanation for all practitioners by describing how Hitler practiced it:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault
or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than
a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
By repeating
their lies over and over, the Left creates a false reality that supplements the real world. In this false reality, the
lie is the truth, the truth is the lie. A is not A. [But we know that A must always be A.]
The Left
also practices a variation of The Big Lie that I like to call The Big Deception which involves
a Big Deflection away from the reality of the situation. None of their policies or actions can survive
direct questioning, so the Leftists must turn the tables on the questioners and make it seem as though the inquisitors have
bad or evil intentions. Overtime and after constant and unrelenting hectoring, the Left's way of thinking triumphs.
They successfully infect enough people so that this diseased mode of thinking becomes chronic, deep-rooted, instinctual. If
the Devil's greatest triumph was that he convinced people he did not exist, the Left's greatest triumph has been to convince
people that the Leftist way of thinking is normal. It is not. It is a perversion of reason and a horribly mutant
form of logic. It is antithetical to human life. Nothing but decay and destruction are left [pun intended] in it's wake.
What They're Saying
About
BOB BELVEDERE &
The Camp Of The Saints... 'Sir Bob of Belvedere'
—Smitty—
'So many good things at Camp of the Saints that you need to just click and keep scrolling.'
—Paco—
'Go, read it, fine stuff over there!'
—GatorDoug—
''Belvederus Maximus'
—Smitty—
'You are contributing to a noble yet futile cause -- the butchification of metrosexuals.
TCOTS
roolz!'
—Red—
'[H]e takes retro dame blogging to a new, narrative noir level.'
—Smitty—
'Staunch Rule 5 aficionado Bob Belvedere, is shameless indeed (I have so much respect for this man)!'
—The Classic Liberal—
'Who knew he was such a fan of the undead?'
—Smitty—
'We need fighters, and I suspect Beck will fight 'til ev'ry foe is vanquished.
Bob Belvedere gets it. Phyllis Chesler gets it.
We defend truth and
liberty against lies and tyranny. Every eye is upon us and we are surrounded by enemies as numerous as the grains of sand
on the shore. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer.
WOLVERINES!'
—Stacy McCain—
'Bob Belvedere, you're a nasty piece of work.'
—Anonymous—
'you charming rogue'
—Robert—
'The sad decay of Bob Belvedere into a Rule 5 junkie saddens us all.'
—Smitty—
'Belvedere went slightly crazy on us.'
—Smitty—
'And thank you, Dr. Belvedere, for setting me straight on Rule 5! I tell ya, that Belvedere Dude
is Funny!'
—Irish Cicero—
'Kevin Binversie is not nearly so shameless a blogwhore as Troglopundit . . .
but then again, nobody really is. OK, maybe Bob Belvedere, as if anyone could compete with Bob.'
—Stacy McCain—
'Lord Fatheringay von Whoopsie of the Dung Heap Hooter'
—Anon. —
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