The Left Is Never Right

During his State of the Union address, with eight of the Supreme Court justices sitting right in front of him like clay pigeons, Barack Obama told the world that he would have to correct their mistake by bringing back McCain-Feingold. Well, why wouldn’t he say such a stupid thing? After all, he’s been wrong about everything else.

It’s perfectly reasonable that Obama would oppose corporations donating money to political campaigns. Where do oil, coal and pharmaceutical companies, get off thinking they should have the same right as the UAW, the SEIU, ACORN and George Soros, to finance elections?

Exit Stage Left

I think it was around mid-January — the public collectively shrugged and concluded of Obama, “I don’t trust anything that this guy says.” And when that happens in American politics, it is almost impossible to restore any modicum of credibility. All we are left with now is three more years of the president’s “Bush did it” mantra and a buffoonish Robert Gibbs, like some strutting carnival barker, showing off ink on his palm to a bored press corps.

©2010 Victor Davis Hanson

Testing Positive For Stupid

The Fun-Suckers go around saying how unsafe this fun thing is and how unhealthy that fun thing is and how unfair, unjust, uncaring, insensitive, divisive, contagious, and fattening every other thing that’s fun is.

The motive behind spoiling things for others and then throwing a wet blanket over the rained-on parade is a matter of neither caution nor morals. The Fun-Suckers suck the fun out of life in order to gain control. They’ve found a way to achieve power without merit. Nothing requires less information, education, or accomplishment than saying that everything’s wrong. It’s wrong to risk lives, wrong to use up earth’s resources, wrong to pollute air, wrong to support an economic system that heightens income inequalities, wrong to own a big, expensive car, drive it fast, and vote Republican.

The Fun-Suckers have been around forever. But they didn’t used to have the influence they have now. Right now we have the armpit of the liberal left wing running the country. The community activists, the socialists, call them what you will, the perfect storm bought all the rats out of the sewer. It looks like the cycle is turning and they return to lurking underground once again.

Homework: Ask a progressive if they want to make the world a better place through regulations and sacrifice, aspire to be like Pol Pot or if they are closet masochists who just want to feel the boot of tyranny.

The Elite Know Best

Charles Krauthammer writes: After Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health-care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a "jobs bill." This being a democracy, don't the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don't they understand Massachusetts? Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.

Our Obama Saga

by Victor Davis Hanson

While much criticism is made of the president’s scripted eloquence, his reliance on the teleprompter, his unease with repartee, his awkwardness in question and answer, nonetheless he is skilled with the teleprompter, and much of his message to many of the people can be teleprompted. After all, that is in part how a two-year senator got elected in the first place. And as a rhetorician, Obama is skilled in weaving alternate realities. For you reader, his recent exegesis of his broken promises to put the healthcare debate on C-SPAN (it was sort of aired, didn’t you know that, dummies) was preposterous. But admit as well that such a bold alibi came right out of the mouth of Saruman in his Orthanc — mellifluous, assured, seamlessly shameless. It would make even Tartuffe proud. Obama’s art is more than just teleprompted eloquence.

I have to admire anyone who can correctly use Saruman and Tartuffe in a political analysis. Hanson is truly a man of letters.

For my own edification, from Wikipedia:

Saruman is a character in The Lord of the Rings. The meaning of names was important to Tolkien: Saruman means "man of skill". In the book, Saruman is one of several characters illustrating the corruption of power; his desire for knowledge and order has led to his fall and he rejects the chance of redemption when it is offered. He serves as an example of technology and modernity being overthrown by the forces of nature.

Tartuffe: a hypocrite who pretends to religious piety (after the protagonist in a play by Moliere)

The Elites Know What's Best For Us

On a recent Glenn Beck Show, he had a graph that illustrated the percentage of each past president's cabinet who had worked in the private business sector prior to their appointment to the cabinet. You know what the private business sector is... a real life business, not a government job. Here are the percentages discussed by Mr. Beck.

Eisenhower...57%

Reagan...........56%

GW Bush.......55%

Nixon............53%

Wilson..........52%

GH Bush......51%

FDR.............50%

Truman.......50%

Harding......49%

Coolidge.....48%

LBJ..............47%

Hoover.......42%

Ford...........42%

Taft............40%

Clinton......39%

T Roosevelt..38%

Carter........32%

Kennedy.....30%

Obama.........8%

Only Eight Percent!!!..the least by far of the last 19 presidents!! And these people are trying to tell our big corporations how to run their business? They know what's best for GM... Chrysler... Wall Street... and you and me? How can the president of a major nation and society...the one with the most successful economic system in world history... stand and talk about business when he's never worked for one... or about jobs when he has never really had one??! And neither has 92% of his senior staff and closest advisers! They've spent most of their time in academia, government and/or non-profit jobs....or as "community organizers"...when they should have been in an employment line.

Free Speech

Finally a post about the theme of this Blog.

Justice Clarence Thomas added that the history of Congressional regulation of corporate involvement in politics had a dark side, pointing to the Tillman Act, which banned corporate contributions to federal candidates in 1907.

“Go back and read why Tillman introduced that legislation,” Justice Thomas said, referring to Senator Benjamin Tillman. “Tillman was from South Carolina, and as I hear the story he was concerned that the corporations, Republican corporations, were favorable toward blacks and he felt that there was a need to regulate them.”

It is thus a mistake, the justice said, to applaud the regulation of corporate speech as “some sort of beatific action.”

Justice Thomas said the First Amendment’s protections applied regardless of how people chose to assemble to participate in the political process.

“If 10 of you got together and decided to speak, just as a group, you’d say you have First Amendment rights to speak and the First Amendment right of association,” he said.

“If you all then formed a partnership to speak, you’d say we still have that First Amendment right to speak and of association.”

“But what if you put yourself in a corporate form?” Justice Thomas asked, suggesting that the answer must be the same.

The Good Old Civilized Days

One of John Edwards's early boosters was the late Ted Kennedy, who "saw almost unlimited potential in this young, energetic, well-spoken, good-looking Southerner." In a conversation with Mr. Young, Kennedy waxed sentimental about Washington in the early 1960s: "It used to be civilized. The media was on our side. We'd get our work done by one o'clock and by two we were at the White House chasing women. We got the job done, and the reporters focused on the issues. . . . It was civilized."