The Soup Sandwich

I Have No Words To Add, As This Says It All

2009-09-23T14:10:00.000-05:00

In Dire Straits, ACORN Begins New Fundraising Push

2009-09-22T17:11:00.003-05:00

No, not the one they are talking about over at HotAir ... this one:

I know, I know .... raaaaaaaaaaaacisssst.

Sprinter Has Male And Female Sex Organs

2009-09-10T18:19:00.004-05:00

Get a load of this:

World 800-meter champion Caster Semenya of South Africa has male and female sexual organs, the Sydney Morning Herald said on Friday, posing an ethical and political quandary for athletics' ruling body.

In a related story, DHS Secretary Janet Napalitano:

(with apologies to Norm MacDonald for ripping off his schtick)

And Speaking of Bat Shit Crazy

2009-09-03T13:00:00.004-05:00

Via Gateway Pundit, it looks like one of Obama's (unconstitutional) czars is a 9/11 Truther whackjob:

It figures.
Barack Obama's communist Green Czar Van Jones is a Truther.
He believes the Bush Administration was behind 9-11 and signed the official 9-11 Truth Document demanding a further investigation.

So in the future, when Van Jones says or does something incredibly stupid or embarrassing to Obama administration, don't forget what Machiavelli said about a leader's chosen advisers:

THE choice of servants is of no little importance to a prince, and they are good or not according to the discrimination of the prince. And the first opinion which one forms of a prince, and of his understanding, is by observing the men he has around him; and when they are capable and faithful he may always be considered wise, because he has known how to recognize the capable and to keep them faithful. But when they are otherwise one cannot form a good opinion of him, for the prime error which he made was in choosing them.

Joe Biden. Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner. Chicago Thug Rahm Emanual. Dr. Ezekiel Emanual. Science czar John Holdren. These are some of the men Obama has chosen as his secrataries, and by these men he should be judged.

Pretty damning, isn't it?

Pat Buchanan is Bat Shit Crazy

2009-09-03T11:53:00.003-05:00

Ok, so I'm two days late on this - sue me. Either way, WTF is up with Pat Buchanan, who now want to shift the blame for WWII away from Hitler:

If Hitler wanted the world, why did he not build strategic bombers, instead of two-engine Dorniers and Heinkels that could not even reach Britain from Germany?
Why did he let the British army go at Dunkirk?
Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?
Why, when Paris fell, did Hitler not demand the French fleet, as the Allies demanded and got the Kaiser's fleet? Why did he not demand bases in French-controlled Syria to attack Suez? Why did he beg Benito Mussolini not to attack Greece?
Because Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.

Right, Pat. Hitler didn't want it. Just like Bill Clinton, he of priestly sexual morals, didn't want that blow job from Monica. You see, his pants just fell down, and Monica unilaterally started gobbling on the Bent one. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Maybe Pat's still upset about that uncle he lost at Auschwitz - i.e. the one that fell out of the guard tower.*

Either way, Pat's one guy who conservatism could do without. Pat and his defenders often get testy when they are accused of anti-semitism, but now that Pat is crossing the line into a full-blown defense of Adolf Hitler, I'd say the shoe fits. I'm sure he'll say the Jews had it coming in his next column.

* - I just made that up, but hey, it could be true with a Nazi-defender like Pat.

Coming Soon To A Theater Near You

2009-09-01T14:15:00.002-05:00

via Gallery of the Absurd:

Why Conservatives Should Pay No Heed To Anything Written By David Brooks Ever Again

2009-08-31T12:11:00.003-05:00

Via Stacy McCain, I found this piece on David Brooks (originally published on The New Republic's website, then strangely removed, but preserved for posterity by Google Cache). It confirms everything you thought about Brooks being an Obama suck-up. Brooks' fellatio of Obama is far worse than even his harshest critic on the right ever thought. A couple of samples:

That first encounter is still vivid in Brooks’s mind. “I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant,” Brooks says, “and I’m thinking, a) he’s going to be president and b) he’ll be a very good president.”

“I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” he explains. “Of recent presidents, Clinton could sort of talk like us, but Obama is definitely--you could see him as a New Republic writer. He can do the jurisprudence, he can do the political philosophy, and he can do the politics. I think he’s more talented than anyone in my lifetime. I mean, he is pretty dazzling when he walks into a room. So, that’s why it’s important he doesn’t fuck this up.”

A similar thing happened in early March, when chief of staff Rahm Emanuel called Brooks to complain about that morning’s column criticizing Obama’s spending programs; later in the day, the White House sent over a chart showing that spending was, in fact, holding to historical norms. Brooks told me that Obama had personally signed the chart “Dear Comrade Brooks.”

My apologies to those of you that threw up your lunch. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go throw up mine.

UPDATE: The piece is back up at The New Republic.

Fat Fuck Used To Joke About Chappaquiddick

2009-08-28T13:29:00.003-05:00

Via The Corner at NRO comes this little revelation:

Jules Crittenden mentioned on his blog he heard Ed Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, recalling on air that Ted Kennedy liked to joke about Chappaquiddick. It seemed to defy belief, so I listened to the episode of The Diane Rehm Show in question and sure enough — I've transcribed what Klein told guest host Katy Kay (Here's a link to the audio in WMA format, relevant portion starts at about 30:15):

HotAir has audio via YouTube.

This just defies words. What a sick, disgusting, depraved piece of shit Ted Kennedy was. I didn't write anything on the day of his death, because I didn't have anything good to say about him. I've always thought he was a horrible human being as well as someone who (along with his family) has done incalculable damage to this country and has had an overwhelmingly negative impact.

But this just takes the fucking cake. And you know what? Liberals will excuse him for this, simply because he was a liberal.

Fuck you, Ted Kennedy, you fat, disgusting drunk piece of shit. Burn in hell.

UPDATE: Here's a link to the GQ piece that Michael Kelly wrote in 1990 regarding Senator Big Tits. It's long and it more thoroughly chronicles what a total piece of shit he really was. And keep in mind, he still had 19 more years left to go at this point.

Oh, And Speaking Of Palin ....

2009-08-21T14:17:00.003-05:00

... she uses her Facebook page to argue for a heretofore overlooked aspect of what could constitute real health care reform:

So what can we do? First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he'll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine.

Hammer. Nail. Head.

To broaden the topic a little bit, I really like what Palin is doing with her Facebook page lately. From health care, to energy policy, to the stimulus, and other topics, she really seems to be hitting her stride with her Facebook notes. And as we witnessed with her "death panels" remark, she had a significant affect on the debate over ObamaCare.

Back in the 1970's, Ronald Reagan used to give weekly radio addresses where he would discuss the topics of the day. Palin seems to be doing the same now, using her Facebook page - and to great affect. She's leading, and people are noticing.

You go, girl.

Why Is Charles Krauthammer Still So Revered In Conservative Circles?

2009-08-21T11:41:00.009-05:00

Why the hell is Charles Krauthammer still so revered in conservative circles, as if he is some voice of detached wisdom that we should all heed? I understand he's written some great stuff in the past, and no doubt he is an intelligent guy, but at some point you really have to start looking at the record and asking yourself if his sterling reputation of a conservative of consequence continues to be deserved. Since January, Krauthammer has advocated a huge gas tax, pimped for Turbo Tax Timmy, thrown town hall protestors under the bus, and now throws Sarah Palin under the bus for her "death panels" remark that accelerated the turning of the health care debate against Obama and the Democrats.

Consider:

- In the January 5, 2009 issue of The Weekly Standard, Krauthammer wrote a cover story where he advocated a huge increase in the federal gas tax, under the premise that it could be offset by a reduction in the FICA tax. This hare-brained idea is not conservative, but it is utterly stupid. First of all, as the run-up in oil prices during the summer of 2008 clearly demonstrated, the demand for gasoline is fairly inelastic, so raising the gas tax to increase prices only accomplishes the removal of more dollars from the wallets of Americans while doing little to reduce demand.

But worse is Krauthammer's suggestion that we could offset an increase in gas taxes with a reduction in FICA taxes. What planet is he living on? Has all his time in the beltway not given him a clue as to how Washington works? Anyone who's observed DC long enough knows what will happen if his idea is pursued - we'll get the gas tax for sure under the premises he proposes, but the reduction in FICA tax will suddently beome "unaffordable" in DC-speak - a proposition that will have a lot of weight behind it when you consider the retiring of the Boomer generation. It's a bait and switch that is far too tempting for Congress, which has an insatiable appetite for taxes. Krauthammer never even addresses this achilles heel in his arguemnt.

Not to mention, Krauthammer repeatedly lumps CO2 in with "pollution" in the article. Note, he doesn't actually say it's a pollutant itself, he just lumps it in with other pollution in a guilt-by-association sleight-of-hand. Does DR. Krauthammer not know that CO2 is essential for life on Earth? Take all the CO2 out of the atmosphere and life on Earth is going to disappear pretty damn quickly. Oh, and photosynthesis isn't just a theory, it's an established fact, and it's a process that is utterly dependent on CO2.

So in short, why does Krauthammer, if he is such a great conservative thinker, play right into the hands of the left wing global warming nutcases and those with a socialist impulse by advocating an idea of higher gas taxes? Doesn't sound very conservative to me.

- Next, we have Krauthammer's take on the confirmation of Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner shortly after Obama's inauguration. If you remember, it came out that Geithner was fudging more than just a bit on his taxes, never mind the fact that he was up for the job of chief tax collector. And What was Krauthammer's reaction? Oh, it's just a "triviality", and those that would oppose Geithner for not paying his taxes are "not serious". Michelle's linked post has numerous other links that cut to several fundamental reasons why opposition to Geithner was a good idea. And let's not forget Geithner's record post-confirmation, which is certainly nothing to be proud of. Krauthammer doesn't seem to mind though.

- Third, with the momentum against ObamaCare beginning to turn into a tidal wave, thanks in large part to protestors at town halls, what does Krauthammer do? He throws them clean under the bus. This is a debate over something that affects the relationship between city and state at the most fundamental level, against an enemy that long ago took their gloves off and started hitting below the belt, and yet Krauthammer wants us to put our gloves back on and play nice. Who is he kidding? Never mind the fact that he's completely and utterly wrong - the passion of the town hall protestors only accelerated the meltdown of support for ObamaCare, which has continued unabated despite Krauthammer's warnings of a backlash. Andy McCarthy took Krauthammer to task here, and with great affect. He gets it.

- And not to be outdone by some hick from Alaska, Krauthammer today snidely takes a shot at Sarah Palin over her death panels remark:

Let's see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I've got nothing against her. She's a remarkable political talent. But there are no "death panels" in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

... before he undermines his own argument here:

So why get Medicare to pay the doctor to do the counseling? Because we know that if this white-coated authority whose chosen vocation is curing and healing is the one opening your mind to hospice and palliative care, we've nudged you ever so slightly toward letting go.

It's not an outrage. It's surely not a death panel. But it is subtle pressure applied by society through your doctor (ed: and who puts the pressure on the doctor, Charles? Govt. bureacrats, perhaps?) And when you include it in a health-care reform whose major objective is to bend the cost curve downward, you have to be a fool or a knave to deny that it's intended to gently point the patient in a certain direction (ed: no shit, Chuck, so effectively those who decide to push the patient in that direction constitute what?), toward the corner of the sickroom where stands a ghostly figure, scythe in hand, offering release.

Maybe Krauthammer was against death panels before he was for them. Either way, it's clear that he prioritized taking a distancing himself from Palin, never mind the fact that she completely owned the debate on that one - as the senate's hasty removal of end-of-life counseling can attest. And of course, the VA "encourages" the end of life counseling as well.

Of course, Mr. Krauthammer, your column on the topic puts you in the same boat as that noted conservative icon Eugene Robinson, who also slams Palin on the death panel remark, before he essentially agrees that there might be some merit to it:

That's the reason people are so frightened and enraged about the proposed measure that would allow Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling. If the government says it has to control health-care costs and then offers to pay doctors to give advice about hospice care, citizens are not delusional to conclude that the goal is to reduce end-of-life spending. It's irresponsible for politicians, such as Sarah Palin, to claim -- outlandishly and falsely -- that there's going to be some kind of "death panel" to decide when to pull the plug on Aunt Sylvia (ed. even though you just justified their concern about a "death panel", Gene!). But it's understandable why people might associate the phrase "health-care reform" with limiting their choices during Aunt Sylvia's final days.

Ok, so the government is not going to have death panels ... it's just going to have groups of people deciding that some people will no longer get health care, which will result in their death. I see. Kind of like with Geithner - he's not a tax cheat, he was just a guy who didn't pay what he was supposed to pay.

So, to sum Krauthammer up in the last 8 months, pro-gas tax, pro-Timmy Geithner, anti-townhall protestors, anti-Sarah Palin, particularly on the "death panels" grenade she lobbed so effectively into the Obamacare debate.

At some point, a person has to stop standing on his past record and start standing on his present record. Following the debate over Krauthammer's remarks in the HotAir Headlines, I see a lot of knee-jerk defense of Dr. K. And if he just had one mulligan here and there, if any of these things were merely isolated incidents, I'd tend to agree with the reverence toward Krauthammer. But these are no longer isolated incidents, this is a trend. And when you see a trend such as this, you have to ask yourself whether Krauthammer is really interested in advancing conservatism in practice, or whether he only cares about it as an abstract theory.

The bottom line is that conservatism has been in a fight for its life since the election of Obama. And in that time, Krauthammer has chosen to advocate a notoriously bad liberal policy in the form of a huge federal gas tax, has given tongue kisses to a tax cheat for head tax collector, while throwing cold water on the protestors that are killing ObamaCare and on Sarah Palin, whose "death panel" remark only further damaged ObamaCare's prospects. If that's the direction he wants to go, that's his perogative ... but should we still consider him an asset to the conservative movement? Count me out of that one.

Ever Have One Of Those Weeks?

2009-08-21T09:56:00.002-05:00

I have, hence the light posting ... just a word to those of you who read this blog (both of you).

Some Country Wants To Overhaul Its Healthcare System

2009-08-17T11:05:00.004-05:00

Guess which one?

The incoming president of the Canadian Medical Association says this country's health-care system is sick and doctors need to develop a plan to cure it.
Dr. Anne Doig says patients are getting less than optimal care and she adds that physicians from across the country - who will gather in Saskatoon on Sunday for their annual meeting - recognize that changes must be made.
"We all agree that the system is imploding, we all agree that things are more precarious than perhaps Canadians realize," Doing said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
"We know that there must be change," she said. "We're all running flat out, we're all just trying to stay ahead of the immediate day-to-day demands."

Tell me again, President Urkel, why we should follow down the same path as Canada?

h/t HotAir

A Lovely, Heartwarming Story

2009-08-14T08:38:00.003-05:00

Like sitting around the fireplace with members of family over the Christmas holidays sipping hot cocoa, this story warms my heart to no end:

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - Police had been watching Vincent Goff for years, convinced he was the masked man who sexually assaulted couples at gunpoint on the Mississippi coast. But before investigators closed in, they say Goff picked the wrong victim and was beaten nearly to death with his own rifle.

Ahh, stories like this bring a smile to my face every time.

h/t Ace

Somewhat Off Topic ...

2009-08-13T12:54:00.002-05:00

... guitar legend Les Paul has passed away at 94.

I don't know exactly what to say, but I think I've found the proper way of paying my respects here:

Hitting The Nail On the Head

2009-08-12T16:41:00.006-05:00

I don't know who this guy is, but he absolutely nails it, and not just once either.

The set-up:

As the left tries to ram its dictatorial “health care” bill down the nation's throat, the citizenry speaks back to their insolent public officials. Exercising their First Amendment right to free speech and to petition government for redress of grievances, they show up in unprecedented numbers at town halls, telling (and often yelling) at congressmen, who have no real interest in listening, that they absolutely don't want authoritarian government rationing care.

The first nail:

We have holders of national office, when faced with widespread opposition to their proposals, whose first instinct is to openly slander the America people, view the people as an enemy to be defeated by any means necessary, and tacitly endorse violence to repress them. (None of these town halls, as vocal as they were, turned the least bit violent until the day after the White House said to "punch back twice as hard" and the SEIU union goon squad started showing up. Coincidence?)

the second nail:

Think about that as well: He'd rather risk America coming apart than not get his way. Instead of temporarily accepting political defeat and regrouping, he'd rather take us down a path of conflict wherein the end must necessarily be one side defeating the other, cost and damage incurred in the process be damned. The closest comparison to this I can think of is an abusive husband who'd rather kill his wife than have her escape his control.

and the third nail:

As for the Vichy Republicans, the ostensible “opposition,” who ought to be a veritable megaphone channeling all the citizens' outrage into one unmistakable voice, they are inexplicably nowhere to be heard. Their gutless cowardice apparently knows no limits, and they too are responsible for the escalation of this conflict and whatever deleterious consequences to which it may lead, as they are derelict in their duty to provide a proper political outlet into which all the outrage can be funneled.

One doesn't go outside the system so long as they have an effective way to oppose within it. The GOP steadfastly refuses to be a public voice of real opposition, and as such they are just as much a part of the problem. It's said that all that's need for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, and that's exactly what the GOP is doing – nothing.

Not much else I can elaborate on when the guy nails it that good.

Say What?

2009-08-10T21:42:00.007-05:00

You mean illegal immigration actually has consequences?

Next year’s census will determine the apportionment of House members and Electoral College votes for each state. To accomplish these vital constitutional purposes, the enumeration should count only citizens and persons who are legal, permanent residents. But it won’t.

Instead, the U.S. Census Bureau is set to count all persons physically present in the country—including large numbers who are here illegally. The result will unconstitutionally increase the number of representatives in some states and deprive some other states of their rightful political representation. Citizens of “loser” states should be outraged. Yet few are even aware of what’s going on.

Oh, the irony of ironies, this piece appearing in the Wall St. Journal - one of the fiercest advocates of illegal immigration around. Of course, they won't come out and say that any more than ObamaCare defenders would come out and say that ObamaCare actually will have panels that make life and death decisions. No, the WSJ and other advocates of illegal immigration couch it in rhetoric about the free movement of labor and free markets in general. But the bottom line is their bottom line, and their preferred method for improving it is cheap, docile labor, preferably with no taxes to be withheld from and no benefits to be provided to. Screw the other consequences ... at least until now.

Gee, you think maybe they should have thought about such consequences when they were promoting amnesty, which only encourages more illegal immigration? No, they were too busy demagoguing opponents of mass amnesty and proponents of strict border enforcement as racists, xenophobes, nativists, etc., to listen to the numerous cogent arguments as to why illegal immigration is bad for the country. They didn't care, as long as they got their cheap labor and well-maincured lawns.

I'm almost tempted to indulge in schaedenfreude, just as I am with Obama voters who are now discovering what a horrible mistake they made. But I resist such temptatation because I know that the negative consequences affect us all. Perhaps the WSJ should have considered the same when they were busy demagoguing the issue instead of actually debating it in good faith. Hopefully next time they'll be careful what they wish for.

Post Turtle

2009-08-10T12:15:00.000-05:00

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old Texas rancher whose hand was caught in a gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his bid to be our President. The old rancher said, "Well, ya know, Obama is a "post turtle." Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was. The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a "post turtle". The old rancher saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain. "You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, he doesn't know what to do while he is up there, and you just wonder what kind of a dumb ass put him up there."

h/t Stick It To Liberals (on Facebook)

Redirect Your Spam!

2009-08-10T10:58:00.002-05:00

Mark Steyn has come up with a great idea, one I thought I'd pass along here. Tired of your email inbox overflowing with spam? Well, just forward that spam to an address where it belongs:

flag@whitehouse.gov

What are you waiting for?

A Bazillion Hits, Guaranteed

2009-08-09T17:23:00.002-05:00

New website: I Am Sorry I Voted For Obama.

I bet you are.

h/t Alice H. at doubleplusundead

More Incoherent Gibberish From Maureen

2009-08-09T17:05:00.004-05:00

Maureen Dowd publishes another one of her long, incoherent rants today, where she covers the 1991 Clarence Thomas hearings:

During the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings, I used to wake up in the middle of the night, trying to separate truth from lies.

the Gate-gate affair:

Crowley seems like a good guy, not the type to falsify a police report. And Gates, a man well-satisfied with the salons of Harvard, PBS and Martha’s Vineyard, does not seem like the type to resort to trash-talking from the ’hood.

Bill Clinton on the campaign trail for Hillary in 2008:

Once more, we are mesmerized, even horrified, as Bill Clinton does his dinner-theater version of “King Lear,” howling at the South Carolina sky as he realizes he no longer has enough juice with African-American voters to derail Barack Obama and make his wife president.

and Sarah Palin:

Palin is still obsessed with the blogosphere, which recently lit up with a rumor started by a fellow mavericky Alaskan, who also no longer has his job — that she and Todd were Splitsville. She sarcastically told Mike Allen of Politico that she loved finding out “what’s goin’ on in my life from the news.”

Through it all, Maureen deftly manages to avoid making any coherent point from the beginning of the column to the very end, kind of a columnist version of a prime Barry Sanders weaving his way through would-be tacklers on his way to the end zone. And not only that, but Mo gets paid some pretty serious coin for committing these "thoughts" to paper. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Still, you have to wonder how she could manage to come up with such incoherent babble, column after column. Hmm, just how exactly does she do it?

The Wuss Fest Continues

2009-08-09T16:02:00.011-05:00

It started a few nights ago with this Facebook post on Sarah Palin's page. This paragraph was the kicker:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

The key "offending" phrase in there was "death panel." It didn't take long after that for wuss-boy extraordinaire Rick Moran to completely soil his panties:

I wholeheartedly agree that this statement by Sarah Palin on her Facebook page is unconscionable, outrageous, and either a deliberate lie, or proof that she really is an airhead ...

In his rush to "look reasonable" to liberals (like his brother, leftwing ABC correspondent Terry Moran), Rick the Squish once again reflexively bashes a conservative who is unafraid to take the gloves off and hit the liberals hard - just like he did when Rush Limbaugh made his famous "I want him to fail" remark. I suppose he can't help it, conservative bashing is a Pavlovian response that runs in his family. Of course, all of what I'm saying here assumes he's wrong on the merits and Palin is right - a question that deserves examination.

Michelle Malkin has a post here with numrous links to other items regarding "death panels." Here are some of those items:

*Elderly left at risk by NHS bidding wars to find cheapest care with reverse auctions
*Patients forced to live in agony after NHS refuses to pay for painkilling injections

*Elderly suffer in care shambles

*Twisted priorities that let the elderly suffer

*NHS neglects elderly depression.

*NHS failure on Down’s screening kills healthy babies

*‘I said to the nurse, please feed her:’ Pauline Pringle’s mother went into hospital for a hip

Michelle concludes by asking

Death panels? What death panels? Oh, yeah, those death panels.

Anyone who's taken more than a cursory glance at other single-payer health care systems (which is the admitted goal of ObamaCare, as stated by both Obama and other Democrats on numerous occasions, despite their more recent public protestations to the contrary) knows that rationing care is the ultimate result. Even someone with a bare minimum of conservatism as Moran (ok, I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here) knows that. And once you start rationing care and having government decide who gets care and who doesn't, you're going to effectively start making decisions on who lives and who dies. What do you propose they call such panels, Moran? Life panels?

Of course, Moran's case isn't helped by the fact that one of Obama's health care advisers is Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm Emanual's brother. Legal Insurrection takes a look into some of Emanual's philosophy here:

While Emanuel does not use the term "death panel," Palin put that term in quotation marks to signify the concept of medical decisions based on the perceived societal worth of an individual, not literally a "death panel." And in so doing, Palin was true to Dr. Emanuel's concept of a system which
considers prognosis, since its aim is to achieve complete lives. A young person with a poor prognosis has had a few life-years but lacks the potential to live a complete life. Considering prognosis forestalls the concern the disproportionately large amounts of resources will be directed to young people with poor prognoses. When the worst-off can benefit only slightly while better-off people could benefit greatly, allocating to the better-off is often justifiable....
When implemented, the complete lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.
Put together the concepts of prognosis and age, and Dr. Emanuel's proposal reasonably could be construed as advocating the withholding of some level of medical treatment (probably not basic care, but likely expensive advanced care) to a baby born with Down Syndrome. You may not like this implication, but it is Dr. Emanuel's implication not Palin's.

Hmm. Palin doesn't look quite so far off now, does she?

And let us not forget the views Obama's choice for science czar, John Holdren, whom Michelle discussed in this post.

So when you start adding things up ... single payer, rationed health care, Ezekial Emanual's proposal to withold health care to those that can't have "complete lives" (side question: who decides what a "complete life is?) and a science czar who in the past has advocated forced abortions and mass sterilizations, "death panels" doesn't seem to be that much of a stretch. Moran could have considered these things before he rushed to condemn Palin. But alas, in doing so, he wouldn't be able to curry favor with the liberals whose boots he is so fond of licking. And of course, he knows that nobody in the MSM will take him to task - the only ones doing so will be the conservatives whom he so disdains, despite his own ludicrous claims of being a man of the right.

Michelle, Smitty over at Stacy McCain's, Legal Insurrection as quoted and linked above, and even one Obama voter (Ann Althouse) have all seen fit to take Squishy Rick to the woodshed. Good for them. One of the most damaging thing to conservatism has been the invasion of the right by squishes like Rick, the David Sisters (Frum and Brooks), a true airhead Meghan McCain, a number of elected GOP officials, and many others too numerous to mention here. They've done more damage to the conservative brand than all the liberal efforts of the last 50 years put together. True conservatives need to keep this in mind, because the liberals aren't the only enemy we are fighting now - the squishes who have infected the right like a virus are the bloc that causes the most damage to conservatism, because as Rick showed above, they are all too willing to immediately surrender the premises of all arguments to the liberal side, and fundamentally, they do not disagree with liberals about the direction the country is going. They may quibble about the speed in desperate hopes of maintaining their "conservative" bonafides (and their not fooling anybody), but in the end, they are the ones that always lean to compromise with the liberals, the net result of which is always a win for liberals, and a loss for conservatism.

So Rick, and others, if you really want respect and approval, just take that final step and go over to the other side, where you belong. It would probably be the first thing you ever did in good faith, and it would garner you more respect - from both liberals and conservatives - than your current "I'm a conservative, but I'm not one of those conservatives" position. At least then, the conservatives would stop viewing you as a bunch of pathetic, unpricncipled squishes, and liberals would stop viewing you as useful idiots. And isn't that what is most important to you - approval from others?

UPDATE: Moran responds with his typical, defensive, thin-skinned wussness here - with a big dose of preening about how he is above it all.

UPDATE II: No Rick, it could never happen here, could it:

The 64-year-old Oregon woman, whose lung cancer had been in remission, learned the disease had returned and would likely kill her. Her last hope was a $4,000-a-month drug that her doctor prescribed for her, but the insurance company refused to pay.
What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.
"It was horrible," Wagner told ABCNews.com. "I got a letter in the mail that basically said if you want to take the pills, we will help you get that from the doctor and we will stand there and watch you die. But we won't give you the medication to live."
Critics of Oregon's decade-old Death With Dignity Law -- the only one of its kind in the nation -- have been up in arms over the indignity of her unsigned rejection letter. Even those who support Oregon's liberal law were upset.

Somebody Pried Noonan's Lips From Obama's Butt

2009-08-07T12:59:00.003-05:00

I haven't been a big fan of Peggy Noonan for a while now. Peggy started losing me right around the time of Bush's 2nd inauguration. By fall of 2008, with her snarky, catty Palin bashing and her unashamed willingness to kiss Obama's ass, she'd lost me for good. And I wasn't alone. I'd bet if a poll was taken, it would reveal the Peggy has lost almost the entire conservative base. But even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while, as her column in today's edition of the WSJ demonstrates:

All of this is unnecessarily and unhelpfully divisive and provocative. They are mocking and menacing concerned citizens. This only makes a hot situation hotter. Is this what the president wants? It couldn’t be. But then in an odd way he sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect.

The Democrats should not be attacking, they should be attempting to persuade, to argue for their case. After all, they have the big mic. Which is what the presidency is, the big mic.

Yes, they should be respecting citizens. And they should be trying to pesuade. Of course, that's not easy to do when you've already lost the debate. If the Obama and the Democrats actually gave a flying fornication as to what the citizens think, if they gave a rip about the constitution, and if they were smart (strike 3!), they would drop all of this nonsense of attempting to socialize medicine.

Getting back to Peggy though, I don't want to give her too much credit here. Mostly what she's done in this column is master the obvious. And of course, her elitist contempt for the great unwashed masses still comes through:

Absent that, and let’s assume that won’t happen, the health-care protesters have to make sure they don’t get too hot, or get out of hand. They haven’t so far, they’ve been burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing. This is democracy’s great barbaric yawp. But every day the meetings seem just a little angrier, and people who are afraid—who have been made afraid, and left to be afraid—can get swept up. As this column is written, there comes word that John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO has announced he’ll be sending in union members to the meetings to counter health care’s critics.

Peggy, please explain how being "burly and full of debate, with plenty of booing" is getting out of hand? Vocalzing your opposition as the protestors have is called "excercising one's first amendment rights." There's nothing barbaric about it. Loud and messy perhaps? Sure. But it's clearly an understandable reaction to one politician after another that has shown little more than contempt for their respective consituents and have basically told them that they will get Obamacare whether they like it or not. It's not the protestors that are being barbaric here, it's the powers that be and those that are acting on their behalf.

And yes, democracy is messy sometimes. Boo freakin' hoo. Of all people, you should know that. But I guess that seeking of leftwing approval is a hard habit to break, isn't it Peggy?

The Debate Is Over ...

2009-08-07T11:02:00.005-05:00

... the debate on "health care reform" (translation: socialized medicine) that is.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that the fight to stop it is over - it's not over by a long shot. But let's look at what's gone on in the last couple of days. Obama's White House has started a "snitch list" to collect information on those that are opposing his "reforms".

Meanwhile, this idiot at the Washington Post has branded those of us who oppose socialized medicine as "terrorists". Such a good little Lenninist you are, Mr. Pearlstein. Now go lick Obama's boots.

In Tampa and in St. Louis, union thugs "encouraged" to go to townhall meetings have instigated violence against those opposing the rush to socialism.

President Urkel is telling Democrats to punch back twice as hard - rather than telling them to actually convince voters that his "reforms" are a good thing.

Pelosi, meanwhile, is effectively referring to those that oppose the rush to socialism as "nazis".

Obviously, there has been a significant shift in tactics by the left in their rush to "reform" health care - and that shift has been away from actually trying to debate the topic, away from trying to listen to voter concerns, and most definitely away from trying to sell healh care "reform" on its merits. The left has completely abandoned those tactics, because (as the poll numbers indicate), they are failing miserably in convincing voters of the wisdom of their position. Now they are shifting to trying to demonize and intimidate their opponents.

In doing so, the left is effectively acknowledging that they have failed to win the debate or even advance it a small amount in their direction. They are effectively admitting that they have lost ground. They are admitting that they've lost the debate, again, over socialized medicine in America.

As I said, this doesn't mean the battle is over. We need to continue putting the pressure on our elected officials and to continuously remind them that they work for us. But we can now do so knowing that those of us that oppose socialized medicine (and socialism in general) have, on the merits, won the debate.

Of Course ...

2009-08-06T22:17:00.001-05:00

... in a post about violence breaking out at a town hall meeting after some union thugs showed up and and pulled their predictable agent provocateur tactics, who does Allahpundit side with? Not the protesters who were exercising their free speech in protesting the health care takeover of course:

If all they’re going to do is scream, they belong outside. Disrupting the event itself when people are trying to listen is a jackass thing to do, and totally counterproductive in terms of handing the left material with which to tar the GOP.

Yep, it's automatically and reflexively the fault of the protesters somehow, those who are willing to stand up to Obama and his thugs. And of course, in Allahpundit's opinion, our side must back off, because after all, the media will say bad things about us if we don't.

Way to stand your ground against Obamacare, Allahpundit.

Rush Asks A Great Question

2009-08-06T18:12:00.003-05:00

Where are the civil libertarians with regard to Obama's snitch site?

So will it be informing --" before I finish this, do you people remember when the Pentagon was preparing this massive database of worldwide terrorists and the left had a cow? The civil libertarians went absolutely nuts. Now the White House has a snitch website and where are the civil libertarians? Obama has his own domestic spying program run out of the White House. Where are the civil libertarians?

An excellent question indeed.

Of course, a lot of these civil libertarians were just a bunch of phonies, hiding behind the mantra of civil liberties simply to oppose Bush and the right. Now that their guy is in the White House, they've suddenly clammed up on civil liberties. Their commitment to civil liberties is about as strong as that of the ACLU, which is concerned only with protecting the civil liberties of guilty criminals, pedophiles, and enemies of this country.

Come to think of it, the ACLU is silent on this topic as well. Color me unsurprised.

fas -cism, Pronunciation: \ˈfa-ˌshi-zəm also ˈfa-ˌsi-\

2009-08-06T13:24:00.004-05:00

From http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fascism:

1 often capitalized : a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition
2: a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control fascism and brutality — J. W. Aldridge>

Sound like the political philosophy of anyone you can think of?

Big Brother

2009-08-06T12:23:00.002-05:00

Yes, he really is:

The White House request that members of the public report anyone who is spreading "disinformation" about the proposed national health care makeover could lead to a White House database of political opponents that will be both secret and permanent, according to Republican lawyers on the Senate Judiciary Committee who are examining the plan's possible implementation.

Basically, Obama and his cultists are fucking fascists.

This Is How You Take The Gloves Off

2009-08-06T11:42:00.008-05:00

For a long time, one of my biggest frustrations with the right is that they refused to take the gloves off and really hit back. This was especially true regarding those who relentlessly attacked Sarah Palin, one of the few political figures that has really excited the conservative base in a long time. Now, finally, Dan Riehl and Stacy McCain have done so, and in spectacular fashion at that.

A good background on the topic can be found in this post at Say Anything:

It started off simply enough.

The usual unsubstantiated Palin smashing rumors came from the left, this time that she was divorcing, began circulating and, of course, quickly went viral throught the left’s blogs. Anything, any chance, any way to hit Palin is their unofficial, unspoken motto and verifying anything that comes down their nasty little sewer pipe of gossip before spewing it to the world isn’t exactly high on their list of things to do. Verification? We don’t need no steenking verification!

Basically, a worthless sack of sub-human shit named Jessie Griffin fabricated a story that Sarah Palin was about to dump her husband Todd. Griffin posted the rumor at his pathetic loser blog under the pseudonym "Gryphen" and other unhinged moonbats of the left (but I repeat myself) soon picked up on it (BTW, I'm not going to link Griffin's blog - fuck him, he's a loser that doesnt' deserve the hit counts). I'm not sure whether or not it was Dan or Stacy who started looking deeper into it, but before long they were working together and not only outed "Gryphen" as Griffin, but are now in the process of (rightfully) destroying his reputation with extreme prejudice. Here is a recent post by Dan on the subject, and another by Stacy. There are many others, and I suggest you check as many of them out as you can.

The upshot of it is that for once, a couple of conservatives have decided not to sit around and just play defense, but instead have gone on the offensive, and with a fury at that. Jesse Griffin is paying dearly for fabricating a bullshit, slanderous rumor, and he definitely fucked with the wrong people when he started talking shit to Dan and Stacy.

It's about damn time. These worthless shitbags have gotten away with libel and slander for far too long without an adequate response. We need to take an example from what Dan and Stacy are doing to this scumbag, and apply it to others that would do the same thing. You'll notice that unlike Perv Griffin, Dan and Stacy have just stuck with the facts - that's all they need. We on the right don't need to make shit up like they do. But we can play hardball, and we can do it with facts. It's time to go on offense against these assholes, and let them know that their tactics carry a heavy price. Griffin is finding that out the hard way now. Let's hope he's just the first of many.

Oh, and BRAVO Dan and Stacy.

Palin might be taking the gloves off as well, per this little tidbit I found in another one of Dan's posts:

Palin's attorney sent Griffin a letter asking him if he would rather be served with a summons at home or at work, giving Griffin a choice. However, the lefty Alaskan bloggers have seized on that to scream that Palin's attorney is going to serve Griffin right in front of the kindergartners that he teaches.

I hope they sue his ass off and drain him dry with legal fees. Justice more poetic would be hard to find.

Lost ID

2009-08-05T18:23:00.002-05:00

A guy traveling through Mexico on vacation lost his wallet and all of his identification. Cutting his trip short, he attempted to make his way home but was stopped by the U.S. Customs Agent at the border. "May I see your identification, please?" asked the agent. "I'm sorry, but I lost my wallet," replied the guy. "Sure buddy, I hear that every day. No ID, no entry," said the agent. "But I can prove I'm an American!" he exclaimed. "I have a picture of Ronald Reagan tattooed on one side of my butt and George Bush on the other." "This I gotta see," replied the agent. With that, the guy dropped his pants and showed the agent his behind. "By golly, you're right!" exclaimed the agent. "Have a safe trip back to Chicago." "Thanks!" he said. "But how did you know I was from Chicago?" The agent replied, "I recognized Obama in the middle."

h/t Stick It To Liberals

Hardcore Rightwing Extremist Site Discusses Freedoms Lost In ObamaCare

2009-08-05T16:38:00.005-05:00

Yes, that hardcore right wing extremist site: CNN. Or more particularly, money.cnn.com:

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Somebody better call the White House and snitch on these right wing extremists. In fact, somebody better call Uncle Janet (Napalitano) and have them put on the list.

UPDATE:

Apparently, money.cnn.com didn't get the memo:

h/t Ace.

You OWN It, Urkel

2009-08-05T14:08:00.003-05:00

The deficit, that is:

Seventy-one percent (71%) of U.S. voters say President Obama’s policies have increased the size of the federal deficit, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

Only five percent (5%) say the president’s policies have cut the deficit, and 10% say they have had no impact. Thirteen percent (13%) are not sure.
(emphasis added)

Read it and weep, Sir Spendalot. That's right. Seventy-one percent (71%). Still want to blame it on Bush? Good luck with that. The public has already abandoned you on the issue.

Heh.

While You Are Just Hanging On In This Economy ...

2009-08-05T12:11:00.003-05:00

... Congress is getting ready to fly in style:

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.
But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

Hey, after all, flying commercial is for you little people ... you know, taxpayers. Or as a modern day Marie Antionette would say, let them eat airline peanuts.

Hi. We're Politico ...

2009-08-05T11:20:00.006-05:00

... and we're trying to explain why Obama is such an epic failure already:

Thanks to the Internet, proliferating consumer choices and a dramatic shift in American culture, voters and consumers are more impatient — and more fickle — than ever before. They’re less beholden to old attachments and more willing to make dramatic changes in lifestyle and preferences — whether that’s for a cell phone provider, a spouse or even a religious preference. It’s a trend that some say fueled the rise of Barack Obama as a political force and one that, if he’s not exquisitely careful, could undo him just as easily as it sped his dramatic ascent.

An emerging group of political practitioners and social scientists is examining the trend and finding that loyalty — at least the kind of loyalty that once kept consumers bound to products and voters bound to political parties — is rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

That has profound implications for the future: As old attachments continue to fall away over the coming decades, American culture, politics and business will become ever more tumultuous as leaders and institutions try to stay ahead of an ever-quickening pace of change, chasing an increasingly fickle and mobile population. Election cycles tend to be driven by hot demographic trends. Think of George W. Bush’s victory among soccer moms in 2000 and Rahm Emanuel’s battle to win NASCAR dads in 2006.

The 2010 election cycle may well be dominated by a fight for the “fickle kids.”

Yes. Of course. It's the fickleness of voters. Yeah, that's the ticket. Got nothing to do with Obama's disastrous policies on ... well, everything, right? Nada.

Couldn't be that Obama tried to sell himself as a centrist, when he was actually an unrepentant socialist, could it? Nope, couldn't be that - gotta be those fickle voters.

Jennifer Rubin has other ideas, however:

Fiscal conservatives who bought the spiel that he’d go line by line through the budget have seen the most fiscally irresponsible president ever. After a $787B pork-filled stimulus, a supplemental spending measure with 9,000 earmarks, a $3.5 trillion budget, and a trillion dollar health care plan, Obama has managed to exceed the worst predictions of his critics.
....

Then there are the good government types who fancied a new era of transparency and lobbyist-free government. Well, not quite. We have had the long list of tax cheats and the lobbyists who needed ethics waivers ^[3] to squeeze through the revolving door. Again and again — whether on the stimulus plan or on cap and trade — gargantuan legislation has been rushed through without public scrutiny. Well, if the public figured out what was on some of those thousands of pages, they might have objected.

...

That’s nothing compared to the betrayal of American Jews and other pro-Israel voters. During the campaign he came on bended knee to AIPAC ^[7], made little if any mention of Israeli settlements, and sneered at those ^[8] who might question his Zionist bona fides. After receiving the money and votes of gullible Jewish voters, as president he has now declared his intention to put “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel and has embarked on an openly hostile approach ^[9] to the Jewish state.
...

Then there are the poor benighted pro-life voters who listened to the likes of Doug Kmiec ^[11] and believed Obama would be someone more pro-life than his prior political record had demonstrated.
...
Perhaps the pro-life voters should have compared notes with the libertarians who were convinced that Obama was somehow going to limit the reach of government. But instead, the nanny state reigns supreme, stronger than ever.
...

When you tally the list it’s an impressive record. He’s managed to offend or disappoint a diverse array of voters — everyone from Jews, to libertarians, to green eyeshade conservatives. Then you add in seniors ^[13] who are more wary of his health care plan than younger voters and pro-defense voters who were lulled into his promise to expand the military (and now find that the Department of Defense is on a strict diet ^[14] while the rest of the federal government is gorging).

So it’s not hard to see why the winning coalition of voters who put Obama in the White House is slowly crumbling. Essentially, anyone who expected something other than an ultra-liberal intent on vastly expanding the power of the federal government and retreating from America’s position of leadership in the world was taken for a ride.

I won't hold my breath waiting for Politico or any liberal media outlet to figure out the truth of Rubin's column. But I'm guessing there will be a Wednesday morning in November 2010 where they will finally get their first clue. Then again, maybe Politico already has that clue - which might explain why they are already trying to spin their losses. Good luck with that.

Hi. Freakin'. Larious.

2009-08-03T14:55:00.004-05:00

Zo provides the best, most incisive, and by far the funniest reaction to the whole Gates fiasco:

Squish To Be Squished?

2009-08-03T13:19:00.003-05:00

There are hopeful signs:

If Republican Executive Committees decided statewide primary elections, Charlie Crist's senate campaign would be in big trouble. The Pasco and Lee county RECs have held informal straw polls lately, where Marco Rubio blew away Crist among the party faithful. Last night, the Highlands GOP held their own vote that produced 75 votes for Rubio and one for Crist.

Let's hope this trend continues. Rubio is the real conservative in the Republican Senate primary race in FLA. Current FLA governor Charlie Crist is a total moderate squish and a complete Obama suckup. His endorsement of McCain probably put him over the top in last year's GOP presidential primary race. They are two peas in a pod, and thus Crist is exactly the kind of Republican that was instrumental in leading the GOP to its current disasterous state. Rubio is the kind of Republican that will lead us back to victory.

Remember That Guy?

2009-08-03T12:47:00.005-05:00

You know, the one who was all "Hope" and "Change"? The one that was going to stop the rise of the levels of the oceans? The one that was going to fix health care? The one that was going to make other countries love us again? The one who said that nobody under $250,000 would face a tax increase? The one that said there were no red states or blue states, just the United States?

You know, that guy who was just so totally freakin' cool?

Remember him?

Yeah, me neither:
Yep, a joker indeed - as well as a socialist.

I Just Can't Help Myself

2009-07-30T11:25:00.004-05:00

Obama's poll numbers are tanking, badly:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 28% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -12. That’s the lowest rating yet recorded for President Obama (see trends).

The NBC/WSJ poll has more bad news for the dumbo-eared One:

Pluralities now say that the president’s health care plan is a bad idea, and that it will result in the quality of their care getting worse. What’s more, just four in 10 approve of his handling on the issue.
The poll also finds that Obama's overall job-approval rating has dropped to 53 percent. And it shows a public that has grown increasingly concerned about the federal government's spending as the administration defends its $787 billion economic stimulus and supports a $1 trillion-plus health-care bill.

In fact, according to Byron York, the news in the NBC/WSJ poll is worse than it looks:

In the new poll, the results have completely turned around, and Republicans hold a six-point advantage. On the related issue of controlling government spending, in July 2007, Democrats held a 16-point advantage. In the new poll, Republicans hold a nine-point lead.

Meanwhile, just when it looked like the Democrats had got a deal to get the Blue Dogs on the wagon with health care reform, the progressives (translation: Marxists) jumped off the wagon:

House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) postponed the health bill markup that he planned to hold Wednesday afternoon amid a backlash from liberals to the deal that he cut earlier with four conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

...
The weakening of the public option incensed some liberal Members, with Congressional Progressive Caucus Co-Chairwoman Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) declaring she would vote against it.

Oh, and Card Check? Fuggetaboutit:

With all of the attention focused on Barack Obama’s agenda on health care this summer, another explosive issue has withered from a lack of attention. Despite the removal of the bill’s most controversial option, the Senate still has no plans to move EFCA, better known as Card Check, any time this year.

Cap and Tax is in trouble too.

So we have Obama's poll numbers dropping like a rock, Card Check basically discarded for now, and health care reform in serious trouble. Meanwhile, the stock market is taking note, rising as Obama and the Democrats wealth-destroying Marxist agenda goes down the crapper.

Yeah, it makes me feel giddy:

What Big Government Has Wrought

2009-07-28T12:10:00.003-05:00

The WSJ has an column today regarding the recent arrest of numerous Democratic party officials in New Jersey on various corruption charges. While the corruption was the main topic of the piece, what really jumped out at me was the bold part this paragraph:

That link has to do with reducing Big Government. Big Government is why New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007—while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index. And Big Government is a leading reason New Jersey has a “corruption problem” that an FBI agent at Friday’s press conference characterized as “one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation.”

Ho. Lee. Shit! Only 6800 private sector jobs during a time when the economy was booming? Hell, without having any numbers I'd bet my city (Austin, TX) could beat that figure almost every (if not every) year of the same period.

If you want a vivid description of what big government does to job creation in particular and an economy in general, it's hard to beat the above.

Frum's Wussness Continues

2009-07-28T11:21:00.004-05:00

I'd really like to do a good takedown of this latest piece of shit from the younger of the David Sisters, his squishiness Frum. But then again, there is no way on Earth I could do it better than Slublog did at HotAir's Green Room. Money shot at the end:

Here’s a free piece of advice for Mr. Frum: if you’re serious about remaking conservatism, it’s best not to use Obama’s talking points against conservatives. Just a thought.

Bulleseye.

Bye Bye, Crybaby

2009-07-28T08:14:00.003-05:00

Via The Other McCain, Right Wing News runs a piece about Senator George "I'm The Biggest Pussy In The U.S. Senate" Voinovich:

Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

Yes, that's the problem, Georgie Girl - too many conservatives.

Let us never forget this, which should put Voinovich in the Hall of Shame forever:

That's right. Voinovich cried like a little girl during the confirmation hearings for John Bolton. George, I won't make a remark about "if you were only half the man Bolton is" because it's obvious that I'd be giving you too much credit.

Thankfully, Bolton is retiring after this term, which means addition by subtraction for the GOP. The seat he's vacating could well be winnable for a conservative candidate, and even if it went to a liberal, we'd probably be better off than we were with Senator Crybaby.

Good riddance, loser.

Is Our President Learnin'?

2009-07-27T17:08:00.004-05:00

One of the things that annoyed me when Bush was president was the constant refrain from the media that he was stupid, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (his conservatism was a different question, but we'll set that one aside for now). A similar thing that annoys me with Obama is the insistence by the fawning media that he's some kind of genius. Clarice Feldman challenges this idea on The American Thinker. Some choice nuggets from the piece:

"[I]t was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian, wheeling and dealing." (Confusing German for "Austrian", a language which does not exist.)

"I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur...." (Hirohito never attended the surrender ceremony and you don't "sign a surrender".)

And of course, there's the proverbial one that signified "Moron" from the very get-go, despite the media's ignoring of the same:

"I've now been in 57 states -- I think one left to go."

Damn, even George W. Bush knew how many states there were before he became president.

Show these to your liberal friends, and preface it with this - Obama: Dumber than W.

Who Among The GOP is REALLY Talking About Conservatism?

2009-07-27T16:09:00.006-05:00

It's no secret that the current GOP (leadership especially) has, at best, a tenuous relationship with conservatism. But there is one political figure in the GOP that actually does talk conservatism. Who? Sarah Palin, that's who:

Rush is right. There isn't another leader anywhere in the GOP that is talking about conservatism in broad brushstrokes like this. Not Romney. Not Huckabee. Not McConnell, Boehner, Pawlenty, any of 'em.

Meanwhile, our so-called "conservative" punditocracy is infected with pussies like David Sisters (Frum and Brooks), George Will, etc., as well as jealous menopausal harpies like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker, among others. These people cannot figure out Sarah Palin's appeal to the base, just like they can't figure out what she meant in her July 3rd speech when her resignation was first announced (hint: read the words - they mean what she said they did). Of course, some of these people, including all of those mentioned above, couldn't figure out that Obama really was a flaming liberal until very recently. Joe The Plumber had it figured out well before his supposed intellectual betters.

But I digress. Palin's appeal to the base is quite simply the simple, straightforward, Reaganesque conservatism espoused in her farewell speech yesterday. The fact that so many cannot figure this out says far more about them, their intellect, and their prejudices, than it can ever say about Palin or her fans in the conservative base. Some may cite her good looks and charisma, but those things are only a bonus. They wouldn't get her anywhere with the base if she was just another squish.

Then again, she wouldn't be speaking like this if she was just another squish.

UPDATE: The discussion of this topic on Rush's website, for those that want the text version.

Underwater

2009-07-24T11:54:00.002-05:00

Obama's approvoal - under 50%:

Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Today marks the first time his overall approval rating has ever fallen below 50% among Likely Voters nationwide. Fifty-one percent (51%) disapprove.

Get used to it, Urkel.

Some Democrats Mastering The Obvious

2009-07-23T13:51:00.002-05:00

Barbara Boxer can be abrasive:

In private conversations, Senate staffers say that Boxer’s abrasive personal style helped tank the climate bill that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) sponsored last year. And several recent embarrassing episodes involving the California Democrat have them worried about a repeat performance.

Next up: Democrats Make Startling Discovery That Bears Defecate In Woods.

You Pathetic Squishes

2009-07-23T12:14:00.003-05:00

Actually, our GOP leadership is beyond pathetic:

Senate GOP leaders worry that some of their colleagues are misplaying their hand on health care reform by suggesting that they want to kill the plan in order to hurt the president. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said last week that, if Republicans are able to stop Barack Obama on health care, “it will be his Waterloo, it will break him.”

Asked Wednesday if he saw things the same way, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said: “Of course not.”

“Every senator is entitled to his own view, but that’s not the view of our caucus,” said Alexander, who, as the Senate Republican Conference chairman, is the Senate GOP’s message man. “I prefer what Sen. [Mitch] McConnell said. This is not about winning or losing; this is about getting health care right. That’s certainly my view.”

Translation: GOP leaders like Lamar Alexander are pussies.

The Smell of Desperation

2009-07-22T12:01:00.003-05:00

Can you smell the desperation coming from the White House? It's hard to miss. President Urkel is apparently watching the poll numbers like the rest of us. As it stands now, support for Obama's signature issue is cratering, and fast:

The health care reform legislation working its way through Congress has lost support over the past month. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 44% of U.S. voters are at least somewhat in favor of the reform effort while 53% are at least somewhat opposed.

Meanwhile, his rhetoric in trying to sell socialized medicine is becoming more and more unhinged, suggesting we are just bitterly clinging to our current health care. And he's showing more and more desperation in getting his plan passed ex poste haste, asserting that "the time for talking is through."

Worse yet, he's now on the attack against other Democrats, i.e. the Blue Dogs who are opposing his plan for fear of the voters back home. It's got to the point where he's blaming them for trying to destroy his presidency:

A Democrat congressman last week told me after a conversation with the president that the president had trouble in the House of Representatives, and it wasn't going to pass if there weren't some changes made ... and the president says, 'You're going to destroy my presidency.' "

Dayum! Can you say "desperate"? Attacking the very people he needs to pass the bill is more than a little counterproductive - it's downright damn stupid, and it shows a very poor tempermant (what say you, squishes like Brooks, Frum, and Christopher Buckley, who insisted that Obama had the tempermant to be president).

Begging and threatening are not signs of leadership, they're signs of desperation - weak, pathetic desperation. He can't really be serious, can he?

P.S. Does anyone think the lyrics to that song could apply to Olberman, Matthews, et al?

David Brooks is a Quivering Pussy, but ...

2009-07-21T11:17:00.006-05:00

... he does get this one thing right in his column today:

Machiavelli said a leader should be feared as well as loved. Obama is loved by the Democratic chairmen, but he is not feared. On health care, Obama has emphasized cost control. The chairmen flouted his priorities because they don’t fear him. On cap and trade, Obama campaigned against giving away pollution offsets. The chairmen wrote their bill to do precisely that because they don’t fear him. On taxes, Obama promised that top tax rates would not go above Clinton-era levels. The chairmen flouted that promise because they don’t fear him.

That was painfully obvious from the moment Obama took a hands-off approach to the so-called stimulus package, letting them (congressional Democrats) write the bill to their own left-wing heart's content. In doing so, Obama sent a message of weakness to Pelosi, Reid, and co., and now they are using him like a cheap whore.

I'm not so sure the stimulus, health care, or cap-and-trade would look much different than they are turning out, since Obama himself has shown that every promise he made has an expiration date. And unlike the "intellectual" that Brooks fancies himself to be, I never thought that Obama would govern as a center-left politician, particularly given his voting record and his penchant for statements that reek of Marxist thought.

But regardless, on this one thing in an otherwise crappy column, Brooks is right - Obama did not set the agenda on the specifics of the stimulus bill, he let others do it for him and therefore showed a failure of leadership in his very first test. Perhaps he wouldn't have failed such a test if he had been ready to lead and really was the center-left politician that Brooks believes he is at his core. But of course, Brooks can't quite bring himself to say that, considering he still has a notebook with DB + BO = 4EVER! scribbled on the cover.

Holy Porkulus, Batman!

2009-07-20T13:33:00.004-05:00

We already knew the Porkulus bill was going to be a huge waste of money, but DAMN ...

$ 2.5 million for a 2 lb. ham?

1.9 million for another 2 lb. frozen ham?

$16 million for canned pork?

$1.4 million for a door repair?

I don't know whether to be more amazed at their audacity for trying to pull this off, or their stupidity for thinking it would fly under the radar. Either way, this is a money laundering scam that would make Tony Soprano blush with embarrassment.

Agriculture Sec. Vilsack offers a defense for the ham here:

The references to "2 pound frozen ham sliced" are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy "2 pounds of ham" are wrong. In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound. In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA's Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese. The canned pork purchase was 8,424,000 pounds at a cost of $16,784,000, or approximately $1.99 per pound.

But that's still nearly twice as much as it costs at Food Lion.

And now we're supposed to trust them in implementing socialized medicine. Fat fucking chance.

All Those Planning On Signing A Massive Healthcare Bill Into Law, Please Step Forward ...

2009-07-17T12:30:00.007-05:00

... not so fast, Obama.

Rausmussen reports today that 50% oppose (35% favor) a government health insurance company:

Just 35% of U.S. voters now support the creation of a government health insurance company to compete with private health insurers.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 50% of voters oppose setting up a government health insurance company as President Obama and congressional Democrats are now proposing in their health care reform plan. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

Those wouldn't be good numbers for a president whose poll numbers were soaring. Obama is decidedly not that, but rather, one whose poll numbers are plummeting in the same manner that stock market averages did in the wake of his inauguration. And while Sotomayor has received a small bounce in the polls, the general view of her is still unfavorable:

Forty-five percent (45%) hold a favorable opinion of Sotomayor while 46% hold an unfavorable view.

Thus, President Urkel is pissing away much (i.e. desperately) needed political capital on a Supreme Court Justice who almost certainly is going to turn out to be a flaming, activist liberal on the bench. Not very judicious use of the same when you've got a huge fight upcoming to completely overhaul the U.S. health care system.

To make matters worse, HuffPo has this little gem this morning:

The whip list was obtained by Joan McCarter, a DailyKos contributing editor. It names fifty members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) who have firmly pledged to oppose any bill that doesn't meet the group's standards. Without those fifty votes, Democrats would be unable to pass the reform effort without Republican support. (Once Judy Chu is sworn in, there will be 256 Democrats, and one "closet Democrat"; 218 are needed for passage, leaving Democrats 12 votes short.)

Wow. House Republicans have generally shown more discipline than Senate Republicans, so losing 50 Democrats might doom their chances of getting this bill passed. And with the poll numbers regarding health care reform trending the way they are, the signs are ominous for Obama's chances of getting a finished bill on his desk (translation: good for America). The pressure to vote against this bill is going to be immense for house members, at least for those that would like to be re-elected (i.e most of them).

The fight's hardly over, in fact it's only just begun. Vigilance is never optional, it's always mandatory. But the above news should be encouraging to those who want to kill this proposed monstrosity. If anything, the above indicates that there is blood in the water. Time to go in for the kill and put this thing out of its misery, before it puts the American economy firmly in its misery. And as an added bonus, we can deal a huge blow to the Democrats socialist agenda.

Charge!!

Jazz Shaw: Master Of The Obvious

2009-07-15T18:16:00.004-05:00

Jazz Shaw pens (types?) a piece on Pajamas Media today warning RINO's to be careful what they wish for. It deserves a little bit of dissection:

Some of us, particularly social libertarian RINOs and moderate independents with an isolationist bent, had grown frustrated with Republican leadership after several years of George W. Bush and GOP control of Congress. So, when a new broom began to sweep clean in 2006, we started looking wistfully at the Democrats.

Shaw starts out doing his superior dance with the "social libertarian RINOs and moderate independents with an isolationist bent" line (translation: we're smarter than you rubes that actually believe in conservatism), but quickly reveals his own ignorance with his proclamation that they "started looking wistfully at the Democrats." Look, I'm not going to defend much of the GOP circa 2006, other than a handful of senators and representatives, they pretty much sucked. Nevertheless, why the hell would you ever look wistfully at Democrats - particularly the class that was up and coming then? You had a hard left Pelosi poised to take the speakership, and a hard left Reid ready to take the Senate Majority Leader spot. What did you actually think they were going to do?

Here's a hint, Jazz - the only time liberals are telling the truth about their intentions is when they are going to do something that is liberal. If they tell you they are going to pursue a path that is center, center left, or center right, they are lying. Since you are an intellectually superior social libertarian RINO/moderate independents with an isolationist bent, or whatever you call yourself, this one should be pretty easy to figure out.

We didn’t want another conservative president naming yet another SCOTUS justice who would trample civil liberties and spend their vacations chasing the godless homosexuals into reform clinics to “cure” them of their curious disorder. We had lost patience with hawks who lived and died by the phrase “projection of American power” and saw the best recourse to intractable foreign leaders to be hundreds of thousands of American troops and a cloud of Tomahawk missiles. Perhaps — just perhaps — the Democrats were ready to usher in an America with a new and improved face.

Oh Jesus tits, Jazz, what a strawman covered in bullshit. Which SCOTUS justice spent their vacations chasing godless homosexuals into reform clinics? I seemed to miss that news story. I'm sure it wasn't Souter, Stevens, Buzzi Ginsburg, Breyer or Kennedy? So which of the four remaining justices were doing that?

As for your crack about the projection of power (and in context with the "isolationist bent" thing), it's nice to pretend we live in a world where, geopolitically speaking, everybody else would leave us alone if we just left them alone. But the only place that works is Fantasyland (I suggest you move there). Isolationism didn't do dick to keep us out of two world wars last century. When you take power projection out of the picture, you enable bad actors on the world stage to run roughshod over their weaker neighbors, until they finally set their sites on you. Read some history - you'll see.

Oh, and as for being liked? Who gives a shit. Being respected and being liked are two entirely different things. Being the former is no guarantee that you will be the latter, and vice versa. But the latter is far more important than the former.

But we still felt the same old trepidation. What about the taxes? What of the spending and the federal intrusion into our lives on every level? “Not this time,” the Democrats assured us! “We’ve learned our lesson. Spending must be responsible, unlike that of the Bush administration. And we’ll cut taxes for most of you, just like you want. If any taxes are raised at all, it will only be on a slim percentage of the very richest.” (And let’s face it … nobody likes those poncy, bourgeoisie bastards anyway, even though they already pay the lion’s share of all taxes in the country.)

And you bought it? How gullible are you? Wait, check that - Jazz, I have a bridge for sale. Brand new, excellent condition. Please inquire within. Cash and small bills only, please.

Who could forget the bright promise of Obama’s tax plan, as helpfully laid out with charts and diagrams by the Washington Post? McCain was the one who would tax you into submission. The plan of the Democrats was positively benevolent.

Definitely a case of Hope over experience, eh? Pun intended, sucker.

Tucker was wrong, of course, but who among us could have imagined — even in those dismal days — that his only error would be in underestimating the magnitude of the spending?

Yes indeed, who could have imagined that? Well, other than the millions of conservatives that warned you not to drink the Kool-Aid, not to mention Obama himself with his off-Teleprompter-spread-the-wealth-around remark to Joe the Plumber. Let me guess - you're one of those people who thinks Joe The Plumber is a moron, even though he had no trouble at all imagining what Obama would do in office, while you were swilling Hopium-laced Kool-Aid.

And what of those tax promises? The initial tax cut was delivered on schedule alright. But then the train really began to pull out of the station. Not getting enough cash for your domestic agenda? How about imposing the biggest tax increase on cigarettes in history? (A tax, by the way, which always, always, always delivers the largest hammer blow to the poorest and least educated.)

I hear they have money trees in Fantasyland, Jazz. Here in the real world though, there is no way to pay for a huge agenda like that proposed by Obama without separating taxpayers from their earnings. Well, actually, there really isn't a way to pay for it if you do separate taxpayers from their earnings.

While we’re on the subject, weren’t the Democrats supposed to be weaning themselves off their addiction to bigger government and intrusion into the lives of ordinary citizens?

Ha! You're serious, right? I didn't detect any irony in that last question of yours.

And yet we are watching Washington leap boldly into deep, calm pools where the Constitution never intended them to dip a toe. President Obama is already the de facto CEO of the auto and banking industries, with the Department of Health Insurance soon to follow.

Careful there, moderate. Someone might show you the definition of facism, and then you'd really have a moment of cognitive dissonance. Besides, any suggestion of that will cause liberals to say mean things about you, and there's nothing worse than that right? Gotta get that respect from the left, it's important.

I chose to support Bob Barr in the last election, being dissatisfied with my other options, and I have no regrets on that score. I would not want John McCain to be appointing the replacement for Justice David Souter.

I can't begrudge you too much on this point. McCain was a sucky candidate, and while I did hold my nose and vote for him (and subjected myself to a Silkwood-style radiation scrub), I don't blame anyone for taking the Barr route. There's only so much a person can take. But why would you assume McCain would do any worse than Obama in appointing a replacement for Souter? Granted, I doubt a McCain appointment would be very satisfying to conservatives, but I'm guessing he could do better than a racialist grievance monger like Sotomayor.

Trouble is certainly brewing in places like Iran and Honduras, but I wouldn’t wish to face these trials with a president who envisioned the first, best answer to be the 101st Airborne.

I seriously doubt McCain, who experienced the horrors of war firsthand, would think the 101st Airborne is the first best answer to everything. But your repeated use of strawmen aside, do you actually prefer a president whose first, best answer is always to appease the dictators? Because that's exactly what Obama has done in both situations.

But on the domestic front, what’s a libertarian independent isolationist to do?

To paraphrase the words of the lead singer of Tool, how about pulling your head out of your hippy haze? Libertarianism is nice in theory, but runs into problems in actual practice. Hence, conservatism, which one very astute HotAir comment described as "Applied Libertarianism in an Irrational(sinful) world" (you can drop the "sinful" if the religious connotations make you feel icky).

Be careful what you wish for. You’re most always sure to get it … and a lot more.

Glad you've finally mastered the obvious there, Jazz. Joe the Plumber figured that one out a long time ago.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

2009-07-14T15:34:00.004-05:00

Obama gets something right, via HotAir:

Obama: Hey, we’re going to keep losing jobs

No shit.

Reihan Salam Busy Smoking Some Seriously Good Stuff With Tucker Carlson

2009-07-13T23:58:00.000-05:00

We already knew Tucker Carlson had been hitting the pipe from this. Now it's clear that Reihan Salam is doing the same. Don't believe me? Proof:

Powell could be exactly the presidential candidate Republicans need.

Right, Salami. And malaria could be just the cure for allergies I need.

Seriously, dude, did you write that headline because you just wanted to draw some attention and create some buzz? Or did you really mean it? If it's the latter, then I look forward to your appearance on this program.

Are We Really Being Paranoid?

2009-07-13T14:34:00.003-05:00

Michelle Malkin weighs in on Obama's science czar, with some eye-opening revelations regarding his views as published in his book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment. A sampler:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;

• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;

• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;

• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.

• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Many people will criticize you as being paranoid if you refer to Obama merely as a "socialist", much less as a "Marxist". But if he's going to give a high-level job in his administration to someone whose totalitarian instincts are as ridiculously strong as Holdren's are, is it really that much of a stretch? Is it really being paranoid to believe Obama doesn't really care for democratic governance, free markets, and free people? If he did, then why would he nominate someone with views that are so diametrically opposed to those ideas, someone who is arguably who holds ideas that are both totalitarian and eugenicist?

Oh, and final question - how much evidence do you need?

Obama's Cigarettes Apperantly Contain More Than Just Legal Tobacco

2009-07-11T19:51:00.001-05:00

Proof:

President Barack Obama said his $787 billion stimulus bill “has worked as intended” as he pushed back against Republican criticism that his recovery program has failed to rescue the economy.

All Those Who Think Their Poll Numbers Are Nothing To Worry About, Please Step Forward

2009-07-10T16:50:00.001-05:00

... um, not so fast, Democrats.

Rausmussen reports that on eight of ten key electoral issues, the public trusts Republicans more than Democrats. And when you consider the leaderless/rudderless state of the current GOP, the message can be interpreted as "we really think you are a bunch of colossal fuckups, Democrats."

Question - is anyone actually surprised by this development?

Failure

2009-07-10T00:30:00.002-05:00

It's Hitting The Fan

2009-07-09T17:57:00.003-05:00

Senate Democrats are delaying the vote on Cap and Tax.

Blue Dog Democrats in the House want more to make changes to the health care plan.

Even as unemployment creeps higher, his poll numbers go lower, and consumer confidence craters, a delusional President Urkel thinks that the "stimulus" has done its job.

Yeah, I'd say the honeymoon is over. Oh, and the shit sandwich that is the economy? You own it, Democrats.

Ziegler Weighs In

2009-07-09T15:24:00.008-05:00

There is so much pure and utter bullshit in the media and in the blogosphere (both left and right) about the "meaning" of Palin's resignation from the governorship of Alaska last week. One of the very few people I think that actually does get it is John Ziegler, who has a great piece on the subject over at Big Hollywood. Some choice quotes below:

The bottom line is that Sarah Palin resigned simply because she was no longer allowed to do her job in a way that benefited her state and family. She saw that if she stayed on as Governor it would cost the state millions of dollars in wasted time and resources and doom it to gridlock. She knew that it would also continue to cost her family hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend against false and maliciously filed ethics complaints. And she had simply had enough of her children being fodder for inappropriate public attacks.

I'm sure at least one or two heads of a liberal media type or a Palin-hating "conservative" squish exploded over that, while several more experienced their brain doing the biological equivalent of the Windows Blue Screen of Death.

That’s it. Those are the facts and I’m positive there’s nothing else. There is ABSOLUTELY no hidden scandal (or as CNN’s hack Rick Sanchez “reported,” an unplanned pregnancy) and this was NOT a poorly executed ploy to ignite a 2012 Presidential run. Sarah Palin simply came to the “remarkable” conclusion that stepping down was the right thing to do for the greater good. How sad is it that so many in media (including a whole lot of “conservatives”) can’t even begin to see this obvious reality.

You ain't kidding, John.

There’s a lot of blame to go around for how and why this has been allowed to happen, but I want to make special mention of some my conservative media “friends” (that is just an expression, I don’t really have many friends in the media) who have once again revealed just how weak, shortsighted and willing to sell out they really are. Regardless of what you think of Sarah Palin, every single conservative who attacks her by buying into media-created falsehoods so they can curry favor with the media elite should be seen as traitors to the movement. You have been duped and used as cover for a public lynching.

This is the point that makes my blood start boiling. I expect the liberals to do what they do - the ugliness is hardcoded into their DNA. But conservatives are supposed to at least give those on their own side the benefit of the doubt, especially in the wake of the media onslaught.

Did they? Hell no. The respectability craving cowards went right along with it. I remember when Palin first got the nod. Rich Brookhiser stated, in response to the base's enthusiasm over Palin that "we need a new base" if she was the type of politician they revered. My two thoughts in response are a) We (the base) most definitely need a new elite, and 2) Fuck you, Brookhiser.

Zeigler then hits the nail on the head:

Have conservatives really become that wussified?

This is a rhetorical question, right John?

I don't want to risk an aneurysm given the elevated blood pressure I experience when thinking about the complete and utter pussitude of the GOP/Beltway/DC Insider elite, who largely constitute a 5th column of useful idiots for the left in this country. Instead, I need to vicariously vent my spleen, so I'm going to go re-read this post by eddiebear over at doubleplusundead. I recommend you do the same.

Aw Hell No!

2009-07-09T11:18:00.008-05:00

Via AmSpec Blog, Tucker Carlson thinks that Jeb Bush is the future of the Republican Party. Are you high on crack, Tucker?

There's so many reasons that this is a bad idea. Number #1, we've already had two other Bushes, the first one that gave us Clinton and the second one that gave us Obama. Number #2, they both have demonstrated as much respect for conservatism as a baby demonstrates for its diapers. Number #3, we live in a democratic republic, not an aristocratic dynasty - there's no way it can be this healthy for one family to have this much political power concentrated within. I could go on, but this gives you the gist:

Hey, we've had two Presidents Bush, what could go wrong with a third?

BAD IDEA.

Slip Sliding Away

2009-07-09T10:57:00.002-05:00

Obama's poll numbers continue their bear market-like decline. Today's tracking poll released by Rausmussen sees him at a -8 on the strongly approve/strongly disapprove metric. Who's surprised? The master sure is not:

And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Obama has tried to rapidly introduce a new, socialist order of things in the U.S. He's jacked up spending to heights so ridiculous as to completely cede all grounds for criticizing the previous eight years of Bush and the GOP congress that abandoned fiscal conservatism in the first place. He's pushing for a large, new, market-suffocating carbon tax under the guise of preventing global warming. And he wants to completely remake health care in this country, taking it from the private sector into the public. If that isn't trying to introduce a new order of things, I don't know what is.

Fortunately, as the poll indicates, people are waking up from the Hopenchange high. Enjoy the hangover.

Windbag Gives Up On Windfarms

2009-07-08T14:32:00.004-05:00

Per MIT Technology Review:

A year ago today T. Boone Pickens, founder and chairman of BP Capital Management and oil tycoon, revealed his Pickens Plan, which called for wind farms to replace natural gas power plants, freeing the natural gas for powering cars and trucks, all in an effort to reduce imports of oil (and probably to find new markets for domestic natural gas). ...

Now that plan is in shambles. Bad credit markets and a lack of transmission lines for the wind turbines have led him to scrap the panhandle project, at least for now, he confirmed today. But he still has to do something with all of those turbines he's ordered. "I'm committed to 667 wind turbines and I am going to find projects for them," he said in a statement.

Why don't you try using them in Fantasyland, T. Boone. That's about the only place they'll ever steadily generate electricity in significant amounts.

What's really going on: T. Boone is seeing the writing on the wall regarding the tide building against Cap-And-Tax and the ridiculous amounts of government spending, and probably thinks his chances of getting government subsidies is falling.

What?!? WE were duped???

2009-07-08T12:05:00.004-05:00

John Henke at The Next Right chimes in on some of the biggest dupes in the world: libertarian Democrats (or should I say, libertarians that voted Democrat in 2008):

Recently, though, the people Kos once sympathetically and invitingly described as "traditionally Republican voters [who] simply want to live their lives in peace, without undue meddling..." have been protesting policies and politicians, both Republicans and Democrats. The Democratic response to this widespread public concern has been...ridicule. Thanks for the votes, now get lost.

I really shouldn't, but I can't help laughing at libertarians who voted for Obama and the Democrats this time around. What did you think they were going to do? Did you really believe Obama, Pelosi, and Reid would contract the power of the federal government in any meaningful way? Did you really think that Obama, for whom all promises have a shelf life, wouldn't break promises on wiretapping, etc.? Sheesh.

Some people say that libertarians are only interested in legalizing pot. Regardless of how you feel about the issue, it certainly seems that an awful lot of libertarians were smoking some seriously good shit during the 2008 election cycle. They say that smoking weed doesn't give you a hangover, but I'd say coming down from your high and realizing what Obama and the Democrats are doing to expand government power is a hangover of the worst libertarian nightmare.
Now don't get me wrong - I respect a lot of libertarian ideas. But I also agree with this extremely astute commentator jp from this thread at HotAir:

I think Conservatism, as defined for example by Mark Levin in his book, is Applied Libertarianism in an Irrational(sinful) world.

It would be hard to say it any better than that. Perhaps it's time for libertarians to grow up a little, realize that there is more to life than legalized weed, and make common cause with a political movement (conservatism) that largely shares their goals vis a vis contracting the power of the state.