Michelle,

   You can not help being ugly, but you don’t have to dress ugly.

 

 

My Country Left Me And I Miss It

My country was one that John Wayne loved. It’s gone now. The culture has changed.

One of the first films I recall is John Ford’s “The Searchers” made in 1956 starring John Wayne. The image of him standing in the doorway in the last scene burned into my young mind. This was a real man, who went his own way, imperfect; but always trying to do the right thing.

Maybe this is one reason we spend so much time in Utah. Wayne was in dozens films made there. Maybe we are searching for what we lost? We know it feels comforting to be where he was. It feels just as good to be with people that respect the Constitution – and Mormons certainly do that.

The 60’s changed a lot of people, myself included. The turmoil gave birth to a new generation of “progressives”. It also killed off the real men, first in Hollywood and then across the country. We no longer have the John Wayne’s, Robert Mitchum’s, Paul Neuman’s. Now what passes for “men” wear too big sweats with a ball cap on backwards.

Elizabeth Taylor Warner stated when testifying in favor of the special gold medal Congress struck for him: "He gave the whole world the image of what an American should be."

That was then. We are now in the Katie Couric era. A few dinosaurs surrounded by know nothing liberals.

 

"There's right and there's wrong," Duke said in The Alamo. "You gotta do one or the other. You do the one and you're living. You do the other and you may be walking around, but in reality you're dead."

As it was

What we have now

Great Quote

"Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the Government take care of him; better take a closer look at the American Indian."

Henry Ford

A Way For Me To Think About Them

"Liberalism is a mental disorder. Common sense is the cure."

Ronald Reagan

The Second Amendment

The Second Amendment is divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” Although this structure of the Second Amendment is unique in our Constitution, other legal documents of the founding era, particularly individual-rights provisions of state constitutions, commonly included a prefatory statement of purpose.

Scalia’s reasoning is fairly easy to understand. That is, simply saying why a right is necessary to protect before claiming that it is a right does not obviate the existence of the right once that reason ceases to be in effect.

Breaking the Gun Control Stalemate

Most mass shootings involve mental illness. Legal reforms could protect society without trampling gun rights

By ROBERT LEIDER

Those in favor of gun rights feel that gun-control advocates are using the deranged actions of a few as a pretext to erode the right to bear arms. Because crimes committed with assault weapons are rare, they correctly note that such bans will have little or no impact on crime.

Gun-control advocates, meanwhile, are completely frustrated with Congress's unwillingness to strengthen gun laws, despite the mounting body count over the years. For them, an assault-weapons ban is a first step toward bringing some rationality to this country's gun policy.

The result is stalemate. This stalemate can be broken—but only if both sides retreat slightly instead of standing their ground.

In addition to guns, the common denominator in most of these mass shootings has been mental illness. Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Jared Lee Loughner (Tucson, Ariz.), James Eagen Holmes (in the Aurora, Colo. theater), and now Adam Lanza all had significant mental health problems. As the country turns its attention to overhauling its health-care delivery system, we must discuss improving access and delivery of mental health care to those who need it. As part of this conversation, we need to update federal firearm laws as they relate to persons with mental illness—laws that currently are primitive and rooted in stereotypes.

Federal law generally prohibits the possession or acquisition of a firearm by a person "who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution." Putting aside the offensive label and legal jargon, in simple terms this means that a person is prohibited for life from possessing firearms if the person has ever been: involuntarily committed to a mental institution, or found by a court to be a danger to himself or others, found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity or incompetent to stand trial, or unable to manage his own affairs. It does not matter whether the person currently has a mental illness.

Federal law is both under- and over-inclusive. It is under-inclusive because plenty of people with severe mental illnesses escape the ban on possessing firearms—provided, for example, they have managed not to be formally committed to a mental institution, or found by a court to be incompetent or insane. The ban is over-inclusive because many people recover from mental illness and lead healthy and productive lives. A single involuntary commitment for a severe eating disorder at age 20 will preclude a person from possessing a hunting rifle for the rest of his life.

Gun-rights advocates should support efforts to strengthen the prohibition on possessing firearms by those who have mental illness. Many people with severe mental illness are too dangerous to entrust with firearms—regardless of whether they have been formally labeled under the current law as ineligible.

Mr. Leider is a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.

The Coming World Disorder

Charles Hill on the decline of American power and the Westphalian world order

Yale Prof. Charles Hill writing Nov. 30 at The Caravan, a blog of the Hoover Institution:

The mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler prophesied that "We shall not get through this time without difficulty, for all the factors are prepared." Kepler was predicting the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648 that would launch the modern international state system in which America and the nations of the world still operate.

What ominous factors caused Kepler to shiver? Disturbances, upheavals and conflicts. Merchants moaned about untrustworthy bankers. Diplomats strutted even as they wavered. The masses sullenly made deals they needed to survive when the gathering storm broke. Varieties of religious fervor caused many to prepare to be slain rather than submit to rule by others.

The 1648 settlement at Westphalia, though setbacks were many and vicious, enabled procedures fostering what eventually would be called "the international community," a term that curled many a lip in the midst of twentieth-century world wars. Those wars were attempts to overthrow the established world order. Those wars failed, but in recent decades have become seemingly interminable, and have required the stewards of world order to confront what George Shultz labels "asymmetrical" warfare in which professional standards have been turned into self-imposed liabilities by enemies who reject civilized international conduct.

No international order has proved immortal. Kepler today might note that the world order shaped by the war he predicted might now fail to survive to celebrate its 375th anniversary. As President Obama ponders his Second Inaugural Address, what Keplerian factors are now "prepared" for war?

The causes of war as discerned ever since Thucydides' time are three: wars of ideology, of fear, and of gain.

The ideology of Islamism has been on the rise for generations and now aims to expropriate the Arab Spring. The ambitions of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and Sunni fanaticism are transmogrifying into the kind of major religious war that the Treaty of Westphalia sought to forestall.

Thucydides traced the war that ruined ancient Greece to Sparta's fear that Athens' growing power was crossing the line where it would be impossible to contain. Israel faces that threat from Iran, as today's international structures for the maintenance of international security have failed to halt Iran's drive, propelled by religious ideology, to possess nuclear weapons. Israel, bereft of its traditional sense of American support, is making ready to act against Iran's menace to its existence. President Obama's priority must [be to] repair relations with Israel by visiting the Jewish state and convincing its leaders that the U.S. understands Israel's uniquely dangerous position.

And there now grows a deepening appetite for gain. America, perceived as eager to shed the burdens of world order in order to be "fundamentally transformed" through European-style social commitments, talks of engagement even when Iran's "diplomacy" is a form of protracted warfare. The enemies of world order translate the American election results into the lexicon of abdication, telling themselves that their time has come: there is a world to be gained.

Only America's return to world leadership can halt this deterioration. "Sequestration" will relegate the U.S. to a second rate power and must be reversed to enable American strength and diplomacy to be employed in tandem. Without this the prediction of a Kepler for today must be grim.

Spotted Owls Die Along With Loggers

We took a shot of this sign near Westfir, OR. A once thriving town, is now not much since logging is all but prohibited.

Now there will be less logging and fewer owls.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House released a big fat policy turkey: its final critical habitat rule for the endangered northern spotted owl. The Obama plan will lock up 9.6 million acres of land (mostly, but not all, federal) in Oregon, Washington and northern California. This is nearly double the acreage set aside by the Bush administration. Thousands of timber workers (along with untold thousands of related support jobs) will be threatened in the name of sparing a few thousand spotted owls from extinction.

Despite two decades of massive government intervention and the near-destruction of the northwest timber industry, the furry bird is vanishing faster than ever. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, “(t)imber harvest on 24 million acres of federal land had dropped 90 percent from its heyday” by the year 2000. Yet, northern spotted owls are now “disappearing three times faster than biologists had feared.” Indeed, spotted owl populations in key parts of Washington State “are half what they were in the 1980s.” And overall, the bird has seen a 40 percent decline over the past 25 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Punishing loggers and bringing the timber industry to its knees have made vengeful environmental groups fat and happy. But the northern spotted owl they claim to care so much about is catastrophically worse off thanks to green zealotry. One root cause: habitat loss (thanks in part to raging wildfires resulting from poor forest management and green opposition to thinning/controlled burns).

Mr. Wonderful

Smite My Enemies Redux

A little over 50% of the folks need to go. I am not changing and neither are they. Something has to give. I think it’s time for some Old Testament smiting.

smite (smt)

v. smote (smt), smit·ten (smtn) or smote, smit·ing, smites

To inflict a heavy blow on, with or as if with the hand, a tool, or a weapon.

Ezekiel 25:17.
"And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you!"

Any Group Missing From This List?

Works For Me

The Good CINC

Dancing with a wounded warrior

FEMA

I started this Blog after the Maximum Leader was elected as a way to vent. I can not continue in that vein another four years. I need to distance myself from the daily noise, loss of freedom and the destruction of America. So there will be a change of course.

You perhaps heard that FEMA offices on Staten Island were closed when the Nor’easter hit. If I were running things, I would staff FEMA with retired Marines. Fat chance they would even think of closing due to weather.

Nothing More To Say

 

Welfare Arithmetic

The federal poverty threshold for a family of four is $22,350.

If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194.

Got that? If the poor were paid cash, they would have over $83,000 of income.

Of course, they don't get $83,000, they get much less after overhead costs are incurred. I will leave you to ponder those costs. My point would be why not cut out out the middleman and not pay them cash.

Thomas Sowell

   

What If Romney Wins?

Say he wins. We will still have far too many socialists around to be able to enjoy life. They will constantly be making noise. It would be too costly to colonize Mars with them. They are not worthless. They can be useful. Here is one way they could be productive. Just substitute liberal for poor in second panel.

I see it as a win-win. Fewer noisy liberals and less water used in fracking.

Questions I Cannot Answer

1. Back in 1961 people of color were called 'Negroes.' So how can the Obama ' birth certificate ' state he is 'African-American' when the term wasn't even used at that time?

2. The birth certificate that the White House released lists Obama's birth as August 4, 1961. It indicates that Barack Hussein Obama was his father. No big deal, right? At the time of Obama's birth, it also shows that his father is aged 25 years old, and that Obama's father was born in " Kenya ,East Africa ". This wouldn't seem like anything of concern, except the fact that Kenya did not even exist until 1963 , two whole years after Obama's birth, and 27 years after his father's birth . How could Obama's father have been born in a country that did not yet exist? Up and until Kenya was formed in 1963 , it was known as the " British East Africa Protectorate". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenya_

3. On the birth certificate released by the White House, the listed place of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital". This cannot be, because the hospital(s) in question in 1961 were called "KauiKeolani Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home", respectively. The name did not change to Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital until 1978 , when these two hospitals merged. How can this particular name of the hospital be on a birth certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been applied to it until 1978 ?_ http://www.kapiolani.org/women-and-children/about-us/default.aspx_

4. Why hasn't this been discussed in the major media? Perhaps a clue comes from Obama’s book. He states how proud he is of his father fighting in WW II. I’m not a math genius, so I may need some help from you. Barack Obama ’s “birth certificate” says his father was 25 years old in 1961 when he was born. That should have put his father’s date of birth approximately 1936 . WW II was basically between 1939 and 1945... Just how many 3 year olds fight in wars? Even in the later stages of WW II his father wouldn’t have been more than 9. Does that mean that Mr. Obama is a liar, or simply chooses to alter the facts to satisfy his imagination or political purposes.

Caught Short

This is from a critique of Gore Vidal. I post it here to lament that I will never understand the accusative and ablative any more that I will string theory.

 

For all his claims of erudition, Vidal suffered the wages of the public autodidact. I noticed he quoted Latin ad nauseam — and nearly always with his nouns and adjectives not just in the wrong cases (especially the confusion of the accusative and ablative in preposition phrases), but predictably in the fashion of those who like to copy down Latin phrases but cannot read a complete Latin sentence.

I Agree With This

HANK WILLIAMS JR.: ‘WE’VE GOT A MUSLIM PRESIDENT WHO HATES FARMING, HATES THE MILITARY, HATES THE U.S. AND WE HATE HIM!’

Our Slave Owning President

Barack Hussein Obama, is an eloquently tailored empty suit. No resume, no accomplishments, no experience, no original ideas, no understanding of how the economy works, no understanding of how the world works, no balls, nothing but abstract, empty rhetoric devoid of real substance.

He has no real identity. He is half-white, which he rejects. The rest of him is mostly Arab, which he hides but is disclosed by his non-African Arabic surname and his Arabic first and middle names as a way to triply proclaim his Arabic parentage to people in Kenya . Only a small part of him is African Black from his Luo grandmother, which he pretends he is exclusively.

What he isn't, not a genetic drop of, is 'African-American,' the descendant of enslaved Africans brought to America chained in slave ships. He hasn't a single ancestor who was a slave. Instead, his Arab ancestors were slave owners. Slave-trading was the main Arab business in East Africa for centuries until the British ended it.

Romney?

Not feeling enthusiastic about Romney? Repeat after me: “Supreme Court Justice Eric Holder.”

Fucking Football

A small part of our long trip this year was being away from the Alabama (and Auburn) football fanatics. This includes my wife’s family who are rabid fans. All too soon we will see team flags fluttering from car windows every Saturday and people asking us something about the game. We don’t care about the game. Grow up people, talk about ideas, politics, anything but football.

My word of the year is miasma. It applies equally to living on the same planet with Barry Hussien and his minions and in the same state as Alabama fans.

miasma – my-AZ-muh

A noxious atmosphere or influence.

Compare and Contrast

This is likely to go down as the most memorable utterance of The World's Greatest Orator."If you've got a business, you didn't build that."

Compare with

….the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.

President Calvin Coolidge's address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington D.C., January 25, 1925.

Why closed-mindedness is an imperative for the left.

 

I might call it understanding where Debbie Downer is coming from.

 

By JAMES TARANTO

"Don't repeat conservative language or ideas, even when arguing against them."

That bit of advice, No. 1 on a list titled "The 10 Most Important Things Democrats Should Know," comes from the promotional material for "The Little Blue Book: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic" by George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling.

Many politicians, pundits and talking heads have taken Lakoff's recommendation to heart. This is why conservatives and liberals can't seem to have the simplest conversation: liberals intentionally refuse to address or even acknowledge what conservatives say. Since (as Lakoff notes) conservatives invariably frame their own statements within their own conservative "moral frames," every time a conservative speaks, his liberal opponent will seemingly ignore what was said and instead come back with a reply literally [sic] out of left field.

Thus, he is the progenitor of and primary advocate for the main reason why liberalism fails to win the public debate: Because it never directly confronts, disproves or negates conservative notions--it simply ignores them. . . .

By intentionally refusing to challenge, disprove, understand or even acknowledge the existence of the other side's argument, you allow that argument to grow in strength and win converts.

This is an important insight, not only into the way the left debates and otherwise communicates, but into the way the left thinks--or fails to think. The book's subtitle, after all, promises an instruction in "Thinking and Talking Democratic." Lakoff and Wehling command their readers not only to act as if opposing arguments are without merit, but to close their minds to those arguments. What comes across to conservatives as a maddening arrogance is actually willed ignorance.

Self Destruction

Democracies can self-destruct in any number of ways—economic populism, criminal infiltration of the political system, the bankrupting engines of public-sector unions and universal entitlements—the United States remains susceptible to all of them. This year’s election will solidify the left’s gains or turn the corner back to a sustainable economy.

On Justice Robert’s 1-4-4 Decision

By JOHN YOO

Justice Roberts's opinion provides a constitutional road map for architects of the next great expansion of the welfare state. Congress may not be able to directly force us to buy electric cars, eat organic kale, or replace oil heaters with solar panels. But if it enforces the mandates with a financial penalty then suddenly, thanks to Justice Roberts's tortured reasoning in Sebelius, the mandate is transformed into a constitutional exercise of Congress's power to tax.

Robert’s blessed the modern welfare state's expansive powers and unaccountable bureaucracies—the very foundations for ObamaCare.

Barry Hussien

Keeping our fingers crossed.

Even after he is out of office, we will have to listen to him until we die, plus build him a library. This is a design that works for me.

Just A Trivial Difference

JFK famously directed NASA to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade. It happened.

Barry Hussein charged the Director of NASA to make Muslims feel better about their contributions to science.

The Road to Serfdom

Hayek’s greatest insight in The Road to Serfdom, which he wrote with an immigrant’s eye on the Britain of 1944:

There is one aspect of the change in moral values brought about by the advance of collectivism which at the present time provides special food for thought. It is that the virtues which are held less and less in esteem and which consequently become rarer are precisely those on which the British people justly prided themselves and in which they were generally agreed to excel. The virtues possessed by Anglo-Saxons in a higher degree than most other people, excepting only a few of the smaller nations, like the Swiss and the Dutch, were independence and self-reliance, individual initiative and local responsibility, the successful reliance on voluntary activity, noninterference with one’s neighbor and tolerance of the different and queer, respect for custom and tradition, and a healthy suspicion of power and authority.

I Think It’s Broke

Fathom the Hypocrisy of a Government
that requires every citizen to prove
they are insured... but not everyone
must prove they are a citizen.

The Eloi

I think there are some scary parallels between the Eloi depicted in 1960 movie Time Traveler and the current crop of liberals.

They’re so dumb and docile that they don’t even know they’re cattle. It would be sad, if they weren’t so dangerous to the future of the species.

...the Time Traveller tests his device with a journey that takes him to 802,701 A.D., where he meets the Eloi, a society of small, elegant, childlike adults. They live in small communities within large and futuristic yet slowly deteriorating buildings, doing no work and having a fruit diet. His efforts to communicate with them are hampered by their lack of curiosity or discipline, and he speculates that they are a peaceful communist society, the result of humanity conquering nature with technology, and subsequently evolving to adapt to an environment in which strength and intellect are no longer advantageous to survival.

Nanna

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee will rename a street after former-Speaker Nancy Pelosi today in Golden Gate Park.

“Middle Drive East” which connects Martin Luthjer King Jr. Drive and John F Kennedy Drive in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park will now be renamed in honor of Pelosi and her 25 years of service in Congress.

Some names that have been suggested include:

Anti-Market Street

The Dumbarcadero

Delusional Drive

Psycho Path

Whatever they name it, Lombard will no longer be the crookedest street in town.

TSA–No Brains

The point regarding Kissinger is not that his search was particularly onerous or invasive. The point is that an elderly man, especially one who is a well known national figure, is of zero danger of committing a hijacking and should have been waved right through so that the Transportation Security Administration could concentrate its resources on someone who constituted a real threat. But I suppose such common sense would constitute "profiling" and would therefore be racist or something.

Will the Idiots Prevail?

There is a wonderful quote that has been making its way around the internet over the past year. It was translated from an article published in the Czech Republic newspaper Prager Zeitung last April and reads as follows:

"The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency...Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president."

The only relevant categories of Obama supporters left are socialists and useful idiots - those people suffering from ignorance about world affairs, economics, and the person who is the current leader of the free world.  See 99%.

It remains to be seen if the combo of socialists and useful idiots will make up over 50% of the popular vote and carry the electoral college this year.

Debbie Snakehead

I am thankful every day that while this woman wants the worst for me, that I do not have to lay next to her.

Progressive Insurance

You've seen and probably smiled at the clever Progressive Insurance TV commercials.

Well, as Paul Harvey would say, "You're about to learn the rest of the story".

You know their TV commercials, the ones featuring the ditsy actress all dressed in white.

What you might not know is that the  Chairman of Progressive is Peter Lewis, one of  the major funders of leftist causes in America . Between  2001 and 2003, Lewis funneled $15 million to the ACLU, the group most responsible for destroying what's left of Americas Judeo-Christian heritage.  Lewis  also gave $12.5 million to MoveOn.org and America Coming Together, two key propaganda arms of the socialist left. His  funding for these groups was conditional on matching contributions from George Soros, the America-hating socialist who is the chief financier of the Obama political machine.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/peterlewis.asp

College Is A Waste of Time

By PETER BERKOWITZ

The politicization of higher education by activist professors and compliant university administrators deprives students of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and refine their minds. It also erodes the nation's civic cohesion and its ability to preserve the institutions that undergird democracy in America.

So argues "A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California," a new report by the California Association of Scholars, a division of the National Association of Scholars (NAS). The report is addressed to the Regents of the University of California, which has ultimate responsibility for governing the UC system, but the pathologies it diagnoses prevail throughout the country.

The analysis begins from a nonpolitical fact: Numerous studies of both the UC system and of higher education nationwide demonstrate that students who graduate from college are increasingly ignorant of history and literature. They are unfamiliar with the principles of American constitutional government. And they are bereft of the skills necessary to comprehend serious books and effectively marshal evidence and argument in written work.

This decline in the quality of education coincides with a profound transformation of the college curriculum. None of the nine general campuses in the UC system requires students to study the history and institutions of the United States. None requires students to study Western civilization, and on seven of the nine UC campuses, including Berkeley, a survey course in Western civilization is not even offered. In several English departments one can graduate without taking a course in Shakespeare. In many political science departments majors need not take a course in American politics.

20 Phenomenal Fringe Benefits Of Being A Liberal

by

• John Hawkins

You have to give liberalism a certain amount of credit. It doesn’t work, destroys lives, and pits people against each other, but that's not to say that there are no advantages to being a liberal. Sure, you may end up sleeping in a tent in Zuccotti Park, reading Noam Chomsky's laughably ignorant books, or having to watch Rachel Maddow babble incoherent nonsense on MSNBC, but the fringe benefits cannot be beaten!

1) If you're a politician, no matter how dumb you are or how poor your decision-making is, the press will still never question your intelligence.

2) You can claim to personally speak for everyone in your gender or racial group, like you're their leader, and the press will take you seriously.

3) You can feel completely superior to people who are more admired, more influential, richer, happier, more successful, and just generally better than you in almost every way (likeSarah Palin) because they’re conservatives.

4) You can declare that other people should have their money taken away and given to the government and still get credit for being "compassionate" even if you give nothing yourself.

5) You can leave a woman to die at the bottom of a tidal pool, use crack, or have a gay prostitution ring run out of your apartment and other liberals will STILL vote for you.

6) You can suggest that black Americans are too incompetent to handle something as simple as getting a photo ID without being called racist.

7) You can use capitalism to make huge piles of money and then turn right around and score brownie points with your fellow liberals by ripping an economic system that made it possible for you to actually become filthy rich writing, making music, or acting for a living.

8) No matter how many insults you lob at people you disagree with or how determined you are to refuse to listen to their arguments, you will never feel as if you're being uncivil or close minded.

9) You can be a white man who calls himself the first black President without getting in trouble with Al Sharpton and be a serial adulterer who even cheats with an intern without getting in trouble with NOW.

10) You can go an entire lifetime without having a single kind thing to say about America and still consider yourself to be patriotic.

11) Similarly, you can disregard the Bible, ignore slurs aimed at Christianity, and mock people who take their religious beliefs seriously and still consider yourself to be a Christian.

12) You can be perfectly fine with cheating on your own taxes while you call other people "greedy" for not wanting to pay higher taxes themselves.

13) If you're a minority, you can actually hold a prominent media job centered around regularly accusing other people of being racists.

14) You'll be considered "courageous" by your left-wing friends when you get up in front of a group of liberals and say things that all of you believe to be true.

15) If you run for office, you'll get questions like, "(Do you think your opponents are) uninformed, out of touch, or irresponsible?" from the media while your opponents will be getting asked questions that start with the presumption that they hate half the country or their economic policies couldn't possibly work.

16) You can be a former KKK member who drops the N-bomb on TV and people will still deny you're a racist.

17) You can ride around in an SUV, fly on a private jet, and have a mansion while you lecture other people about the importance of having a small environmental footprint and other liberals won't have a problem with it at all.

18) You can claim to hold the exact same position as conservatives on gay marriage and you won't be called a homophobe.

19) You can regularly call conservative women sluts, whores, tw_ts, and even the C-word and still call yourself a feminist without other people laughing out loud.

20) You get to feel comfortable with lying to other people because you know what's in their own best interests better than they do and if they were a little more enlightened -- like you -- they'd thank you for misleading them into doing the right thing!

Perspective

A Way Out?

Mitt Romney will not become president this November without the support of millions who voted for Barack Obama in 2008. 
                                                             
National Review's Jim Geraghty ponders what this means for this year's campaign. "Generally speaking," he observes, "people hate admitting they made a mistake. . . . Very few Obama voters will express their vote for the GOP [nominee] in 2012 as an explicit act of personal penance for bad judgment." Instead, "a lot of Obama voters must be persuaded that they made the wrong choice in 2008, and that it isn't their fault."                                                                                                                                                             
How to do this? Geraghty goes on: Monday I spoke to a smart political mind who had been watching focus groups of wavering Obama voters in swing states, and he said that one word that those voters kept coming back to, again and again, was "naïve." (The term was to describe the president, not themselves.) Those who voted for Obama won't call him stupid, and certainly don't accept that he's evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on. 
                                                                 
The list goes on, but you get the point: "If we're seeking to persuade Obama voters that it's okay to vote for someone else this time, perhaps we need to reinforce that notion that he just doesn't quite understand how things work in the real world.

                         
This notion does not actually contradict the idea that Obama is a hard-left radical pursuing terribly destructive policies. It just leaves open the possibility that he is a foolish idealist rather than an evil genius.

F0ols And Fanatics

Russell was a socialist and pacifist, but these words ring true for me.

…and to the republic for which it stands

The deliberations of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were held in strict secrecy. Consequently, anxious citizens gathered outside Independence Hall when the proceedings ended in order to learn what had been produced behind closed doors. The answer was provided immediately. A Mrs. Powel of Philadelphia asked Benjamin Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?" With no hesitation whatsoever, Franklin responded, "A republic, if you can keep it."

The difference between a democracy and a republic is not merely a question of semantics but is fundamental. The word "republic" comes from the Latin res publica — which means simply "the public thing(s)," or more simply "the law(s)." "Democracy," on the other hand, is derived from the Greek words demos and kratein, which translates to "the people to rule." Democracy, therefore, has always been synonymous with majority rule.

hmmm, rule of law or the whim of the moment.

The Founding Fathers supported the view that (in the words of the Declaration of Independence) "Men ... are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." They recognized that such rights should not be violated by an unrestrained majority any more than they should be violated by an unrestrained king or monarch. In fact, they recognized that majority rule would quickly degenerate into mobocracy and then into tyranny.

The switch to democracy has only been possible because the Constitution is being ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. Those powers, all of which are enumerated, do not include agricultural subsidy programs, housing programs, education assistance programs, food stamps, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is not authorized to pass any law it chooses; it is only authorized to pass laws that are constitutional.

A Word On Taxes

The next time you read or hear that Big Oil makes too much money and should pay more taxes, consider this.

The average effective tax rate for oil and gas companies is 41.1% for 2010. By the same measure, other manufacturers on the S&P Industrial index pay an effective rate of 26.5%.

For comparison, nuclear power comes in at minus-99.5%, wind at minus-163.8% and solar thermal at minus-244.7%—and that's before the 2009 Obama-Pelosi stimulus. In other words, the taxpayer loses more the more each of these power sources produces.

Back Home in Alabama

If I could take the best parts from all the contenders, I would not have one that I  really liked. That said, Romney has the best chance of defeating Barry Hussein. And that my friends is more important than one’s faith.

Odd that some of the baggage given to Romney is his faith. But he continues to flag among voters who put conviction above electability.

I do not trust Rick. I don’t think he has any more qualifications to be President than Barry Hussein. While I know the country would be better off with him, we really don’t need another Calvin Coolidge.

It’s the economy and freedom folks, not who loves the baby Jesus more.

Where Presidents Spend Christmas

ADD 2011 THE THIRD CHRISTMAS IN A ROW IN HAWAII AND THE COST WENT FROM 12,000/DAY TO 63,000/DAY TO 117,000/DAY.

NICE IF ‘WE’ THE TAXPAYERS CAN AFFORD IT

     – ISN’T IT?

SANDRA FLUKE IS A FAKE VICTIM

Testifying before Pelosi’s committee was a BIG clue for me that the woman was not as depicted.

Since her controversial testimony on February 23, Sandra Fluke has been called many things, from a heroine to a “slut,” but actually, she may just be a fake.

For me the interesting part of the story is the ever-evolving “coed”. I put that in quotes because in the beginning she was described as a Georgetown law student. It was then revealed that prior to attending Georgetown she was an active women’s right advocate. In one of her first interviews she is quoted as talking about how she reviewed Georgetown’s insurance policy prior to committing to attend, and seeing that it didn’t cover contraceptive services,  she decided to attend with the express purpose of battling this policy. During this time, she was described as a 23-year-old coed. Magically, at the same time Congress is debating the forced coverage of contraception, she appears and is even brought to Capitol Hill to testify. This morning, in an interview with Matt Lauer on the Today show, it was revealed that she is 30 years old,  NOT the 23 that had been reported all along.

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Fluke is a left-wing activist cast in the role of everywoman (or as much of an "everywoman" as a student at an elite law school can be). "Fluke has a long history of feminist advocacy," reports the Daily Caller: "While [an undergraduate] at Cornell, Fluke's organized activities centered on the far-left feminist and gender equity movements. Fluke participated in rallies supporting abortion, protests against war in Iraq and efforts to recruit other womens' [sic] rights activists to campus." She even got a bachelor's degree in something called "Feminist, Gender, & Sexuality Studies."

And we all know that Studies anything is crock.

We're More Than Political Animals

This is by Peggy Noonan. I need to take her words to my heart.

The conservative activist Andrew Breitbart, who died Thursday, was a piece of work—bombastic, sensitive, angry, deeply generous, full of laughter. Spirited, too, like some kind of crazy knight. He was a battler and a warrior and he was brave and he made mistakes.

He was a warm-blooded animal, not a cold one, and I suppose the thing that wounded him most was the thing that wounds everybody: He wanted to be understood. That's a lot to ask of the other humans, who are mostly trying to understand themselves.

So many conservatives are mourning his passing, at 43, because he was irreplaceable, a unique human soul. The other day in a seminar at a university, a student of political science asked a sort of complicated question that seemed to be about the predictability of human response to a given set of political stimuli. I answered that if you view people as souls, believe that we have souls within us, that they are us, then nothing political is fully predictable, because you never know what a soul will do, how a soul will respond, what truth it will apprehend and react to. I was thinking as I spoke of the headline when the Titanic went down: "1,400 Souls Lost." We used to see people in that larger dimension, which is not a romantic but a realistic one. The puniest person is big, and rich.

I had criticized Andrew last year in a column. A few weeks ago we bumped into each other at an airport, arranged to sit together on the plane, spoke our peace, hashed it through, and wound up laughing. He was endearing because he was exposed: If he felt it, he told you.

Afterward I thought again of something that has been on my mind the past five years or so. Longer, actually, but more so with time. In a way the argument between conservatives and progressives is that for the left, everything is about politics. Because they seek to harness government and the law in pursuit of what they see as just and desirable ends, everything becomes a political fight. Conservatives fought that narrow, constricted, soulless view of life: "We are not only political, we have other spheres, we are human beings."

But in their fight against liberalism and its demands, too many conservatives have unconsciously come to ape the left. They too became all politics all the time. Friendships were based on it, friendships were lost over it. "You agree with me? You're in. You don't? You're out." They became as good at ousting, excluding and anathematizing as Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, as Jacobins. As self-righteous, too, and as adept at dehumanizing the enemy.

It is not progress when you become what you hate, when you take on its sickest aspect.

Andrew and I talked about this that day on the plane. I agreed with his passion: We're in a big struggle, we have to fight. His argument was in a way like Flannery O'Connor's: You have to push back hard against the age that is pushing you. But he agreed too that politics can leave you twisted and deformed inside, that fighting those who would impose their will can leave you as consumed as they are. You have to be careful and not let political struggles take over your life, your affections—your soul.

We were not built to be all about politics. Empires rise and fall, nations come and go, but the man who poured your coffee this morning is eternal, because his soul is eternal. That's C.S. Lewis. I don't know if Andrew was a religious person or a believer, but I know he respected faith, understood it, felt protective of it. For which good on you, Andrew, and thanks. Rest in peace.

Morally Irrelevant

Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say. Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

 

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”.

With this view, I can think of many morally irrelevant that should be aborted. That some of them are over 50 should not make any difference.

Send Algae

Victor Davis Hanson writing at National Review Online, Feb. 25:

As gas nears $5-a-gallon out west, the president, who has cancelled a key pipeline and frozen federal leases from Alaska to the East Coast, teaches us about American algae potential, in the way he used to emphasize the importance of tire pressure and "tune-ups." He castigates the opposition for making political hay out of bad news, in the way he routinely did as a senator in compiling the most partisan voting record in the Senate. Energy Secretary Chu cannot and will not say a word about soaring gas prices, since he is on record not so long ago hoping that they might double—that is, get to $8- to 10-a-gallon as they are in Europe. The Energy Department can do almost everything Americans don't want, but not the single thing they do want.

Four More Years Due To Apathy?

The Romney campaign is better at dismantling than mantling. They're better at taking opponents apart than building a compelling candidate of their own. They do not seem capable of deepening his meaning, making his stands and statements more textured and interesting.

A particular problem is that he betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He's always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. This leaves people thinking, "Excuse me, but we are in crisis. Financially and culturally we fear our country is going down the drain. This guy doesn't seem to be feeling it.

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There has been low turnout in the Republican races. Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri this week were all down, Iowa and New Hampshire were flat, Florida, that Little America, was down almost 15%. All this in a volatile race, in a time of crisis.

What are the reasons? Maybe it's the increasing negativity of the campaign, maybe it's widespread dissatisfaction with the field. Maybe it's that, and more.

There are some small indicators something else may be going on. Cable news ratings, which should spike in an election year, and which indicate interest on both the left and the right, are relatively flat.

None of them light our fire.

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As for the president's interviews and other speeches, well, when was the last time you heard someone ask excitedly, "Did you hear what Obama said?"

Whose numbers are up? The NFL's.

Maybe the story the political class is missing is not "They don't like the Republican field," or "They don't like Obama." Maybe the story is that people are tuning out altogether. Maybe they're bored with politics, and most especially with politicians. Maybe they think our government can't solve anything. Maybe, even, our political class has done such a good job depicting the crisis we're in that the American people, with their low faith in institutions, think nothing, really, can be done about it. So let's check out. Let's watch the game.

A Word On The Level Playing Field

The Catholic Church has stumbled into the central battle of the 2012 presidential campaign: What are the limits to Barack Obama's transformative presidency? The Catholic left has just learned one answer: When Mr. Obama says, "Everyone plays by the same set of rules," it means they conform to his rules. What else could it mean?

Dan Henninger

Debt, Doubt, and Decline

Paul Ryan January 29, 2012 on Fox News Sunday

 

'The irony of this is the president’s policies do the exact opposite.  We basically have this. The president can't run on his record. It’s a miserable record. He is not going to change his tune and moderate like say Bill Clinton did in 1996 because he’s really stuck with his ideology so he has no choice but to divide. So he is going to run a very decisive campaign for political gain and he has this concept of fairness and equality where he uses the kind of rhetoric we use, but the policies he's producing will result in crony capitalism will result in more power in the government to supervise our lives, to give us a stagnant economy where the rich and the powerful are the ones who are picking it. So what I'm trying to say is he is giving us a future of debt, doubt, and decline. '

Nuff Said

The ugly secret lurking behind environmentalism

William Tucker writing at the American Spectator, Jan. 20:

In turning down [the Keystone XL Pipeline] the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being "liberal" and "against big business," environmentalism's main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs—who are established in the environment, so to speak—are happy to go along with this. It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They are happier with the way things are. In fact, environmentalism works to their advantage. The main danger to the affluent is not that they will be denied from improving their estate but that too many other people will achieve what they already have. As the Forest Service used to say, the person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer.

Environmentalism has spent three decades trying to hide this simple truth. How can environmentalists be motivated by self-interest when they are anti-business? Doesn't that align them with the working classes? Well, not quite. You can be anti-business as a union member trying to claim higher wages but you can also be anti-business as a member of the aristocracy who believes "trade" and "commercialism" are crass and not attuned to the higher things in life. Environmentalism is born from the latter, not the former. It has spent decades trying to pretend it has common cause with the working people. With the defeat of the Keystone Pipeline, this is no longer possible. Too many blue-collar and middle-class jobs have been sacrificed on the altar of carbon emissions and global warming.

Stuck in 1788

I am stuck in 1788. I have read the Constitution more than once. I have read several books that explain both the background and meaning of each section. I admit that what often seems to be plain language is in fact quite nuanced.

Getting Obamacare from the Commerce clause is just not possible in my world. That’s my prolog to this article that shows how if the president and the candidates followed the Constitution as ratified by the states in 1787 and 1788, our “debates” would look more like this:

That stupid question

By Brion McClanahan   01/10/2012

During the January 7, 2012 Republican debate in New Hampshire, George Stephanopoulos questioned Mitt Romney on whether he would support a state ban on contraception. Romney responded that he was not going to address a hypothetical situation that no state was considering, but Stephanopoulos doubled down and continued to press him, ultimately to a chorus of boos. In a Daily Caller piece that hit the front page of The Drudge Report the next day, Matthew Boyle blasted Stephanopoulos for his obvious partisanship. It was a stupid, irresponsible question, to be sure, but not because Stephanopoulos is a one-time Bill Clinton political operative acting in a partisan manner or because the question was purely hypothetical; it was stupid because that type of question is outside both the purview of the executive branch and the president’s constitutional authority.

The executive branch is the most misunderstood in the general government. The American people, the modern media and obviously the current president seem to believe that the president can single-handedly solve the moral, ethical and economic problems of the day. He can part the seas, end poverty, “create or save” a job for every American and educate our children. Americans incorrectly expect as much if not more from the man behind the presidential seal. But, if the president and the candidates followed the Constitution as ratified by the states in 1787 and 1788, our “debates” would look more like this:

Question: “Mr. Candidate, what are you going to do to create jobs in this country?”

Candidate: “I will execute all constitutional laws the Congress sends across my desk and veto those that are not. George Washington set this precedent in his first administration and I would faithfully follow his example. I would certainly encourage Congress, as part of my constitutional duty to “make recommendations,” to facilitate the free market, but my veto is not a partisan hammer.”

Question: “Mr. Candidate, do you believe in same-sex marriage?”

Candidate: “I don’t know how that relates to my job as president of the United States. That is an issue for the people of the states and the church, not the general government. The founding generation and those who wrote and ratified the Constitution were clear. Domestic issues were to be handled by the states, not the general government.”

Question: “Mr. Candidate, what are you going to do to solve our dependency on foreign oil?”

Candidate: “As I said before, I will execute all constitutional laws the Congress sends across my desk and veto those that are not, like Grover Cleveland in the 1880s and 1890s. I would, as part of my foreign policy and akin to that of our first five presidents, encourage peaceful trade with all parts of the world while avoiding unnecessary foreign entanglements and wars. I would again also encourage the free market, including ending laws that place excessive regulation on our energy sector, but I would not support energy subsides or any other unconstitutional legislation that promotes one industry or sector over another at taxpayer expense.”

Question: “Mr. Candidate, can you give me your policy on healthcare, taxes, education and social welfare?”

Candidate: “For the third time, I will execute all constitutional laws the Congress sends across my desk and veto those that are not. As per Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress controls the purse strings. I believe that low taxes are essential for a free economy and would encourage their immediate reduction, but the people of the states elect the Congress and it has a constitutional job to produce a budget and control revenue. As per the Constitution, I am not the legislator-in-chief or a prime minister. Other laws relating to healthcare, social welfare and education are unconstitutional at the federal level and are a state issue. Thus, because I would veto all unconstitutional federal laws, they would certainly be subject to my pen, and because I cannot execute an unconstitutional federal law, those that fall under that umbrella would not be enforced, including national healthcare.”

Question: “Mr. Candidate, how can you believe that treasured social welfare programs are unconstitutional? That is just too radical!”

Candidate: “I guess if you consider the Bill of Rights and the Constitution to be radical, which they are not, then I am a radical. The debates during the Philadelphia Convention and the state ratifying conventions clearly illustrate that the states were to handle the domestic concerns of the people. Congress, they believed, was unable to micro-manage the specific concerns of a state or community. They were correct. Additionally, according to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution — the amendment typically first among those proposed by the states — all powers not delegated to the general government are reserved to the states and the people. I don’t see social welfare in the enumerated powers of the Constitution.”

Question: “Obviously you believe in some archaic and undemocratic notions of government. Your views would have us descending into chaos! Isn’t it reasonable to conclude that we need the power of the federal government and a strong executive to secure the ‘blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity’?”

Candidate: “I believe in American democracy, the way the founding generation believed in it. They argued in 1787 and 1788 that a representative ratio in the House of Representatives of 30,000 to 1 was barely adequate to represent the people. We are now at 700,000 to 1. Obviously, the people have no control over the Congress; the states, as a result of the 17th Amendment, have lost control of the Senate, and, as I said before, the president by design is not a prime minister charged with driving a legislative agenda. “Democracy” carried on quite well in the early republic and the idea that a strong executive is needed to provide liberty is the antithesis of the word. Strong executives never safeguard liberty. History has shown they only destroy it. As John Dickinson said in 1787, “Experience must be our only guide. Reason may mislead us.”

Of course, such answers are typically never given in the debates. All of the current Republican candidates, save Ron Paul, believe that a strong general government, in some shape or form, is the solution to our problems, and Americans lack the understanding of the Constitution necessary to challenge both the president and those seeking office on the constitutional underpinnings of their decisions (Paul received ribbing from the “conservative” Mitt Romney during the debate for his resolute defense of the Constitution). Instead of focusing on what the government or a presidential candidate will do about a particular issue, the first question should always be, “Where in the Constitution can you find the authority to do X, Y or Z?” Ninety percent of the time, if they answered honestly according to the Constitution as ratified by the states, their answer would be, “I can’t.”

Brion McClanahan holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of South Carolina. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Founding Fathers (Regnery, 2009) and The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution (Regnery History, 2012), as well as the forthcoming Forgotten Conservatives in American History with Clyde Wilson (Pelican, 2012).

Republican In Name Only

The clowns yammering about not much that are competing to run against Oblahblah are boring me.

They have said nothing about things that I care about like drilling for gas and oil [here], repealing Obamacare, balancing the budget, reforming the tax code, and fixing Social Security and Medicare.

Barry is going to re-elected.

 

Liberal Conniving Can Always Be Recompensed By Liberal Activism

Today’s reading will be found at Victor Davis Hanson’s site.