Recently in Liberalism Category

I used to spend far too much time on a forum for NE Patriots football fans, esp. in the subforum on politics. The immaturity I encountered by liberals and their fallacies was annoying.

I have to think that this incident is another case of an arrogant Democrat believing the "Do as I say, not as I do" nonsense.

In this case, New Hampshire 2nd Congressional District candidate, Democrat Annie Kuster, didn't like that someone was recording her as she was making her campaign rounds. In fact, she disliked the idea so much that she attacked the cameraman, took his camera from him, and walked off with it with a parting "F*** him."

Later she claimed that the cameraman had been harassing her, but as the post from the NH Journal claims, "campaign trackers, bloggers, regular voters and even reporters frequently use handheld cameras to record politicians." If she wants to be a politician she had better get used to being followed around by people with cameras while in public.

Kuster seems to be following the lead of her fellow New Hampshire Democrat Carol Shea-Porter, former member of the House from New Hampshire's First Congressional District and once again a candidate for her old seat.

Shea-Porter often harassed previous First District Congressmen at their public forums, being arrested more than once for her outbursts. But once she took office she made sure all of her 'public' appearances were devoid of anyone who might pull the same thing she had, meaning non-Democrats were decidedly unwelcome. In forums where she could not control the content of those attending, she made sure there was little if any time for anyone to ask her questions she didn't want to answer. She also had undisguised disdain and contempt for those who were not her constituents, meaning anyone in her district that wasn't a Democrat or independent. Republicans in her district were persona non grata. (This I know both directly and indirectly having experienced this discrimination and having heard from others who were treated to the same "You're not a constituent" blow off.) It's no wonder she was defeated by a landslide in 2010, replaced by Republican Frank Guinta, someone who seems to have no problems with helping his constituents regardless of their party affiliations. (Shea-Porter blamed the Chinese for her defeat, an accusation she has never explained.)

So once again we see the how arrogant Democrat politicians have one set of rules for themselves and different rules for everyone else.

It wouldn't exist. Basic tenet, folks, of Islamic law is that any and all criticism of Islam is prohibited, a basic point that escapes most naïve Westerners who parrot the so-called "tiny band of extremists causing all the problems" theme that's bringing Western property and lives under assault all over the world.

The truth may be the truth, even when it's hard to accept, suggests blogger and columnist Diana West. Her recent entries are certainly worth a look.

The echoes of Ann Romney's words had barely stopped reverberating at the GOP Convention before the Left's long knives were drawn, working to draw blood by doing to Ann what they'd done to Sarah Palin - dehumanizing her.

Jennifer Rubin covered Ann's speech, stating:

She showed a determination and soberness that was appropriate to a still doubting public. No one speech is going to turn an election. But Ann Romney delivered as promised. Romney and his team should consider themselves lucky to have a candidate's wife who can look her fellow Americans in the eye and sound both sincere and ebullient. She is indeed his greatest asset.

But to read the comments to Jennifer's post, you'd think Ann was something that crawled out of a sewer, becoming someone even more reviled than Palin. But what do you expect from readers of the Washington Post who are "true believers" in the cause of Progressive Socialism, (thought they don't call it that...assuming they even know what it is.)

All kinds of accusation were leveled at her, all kinds of claims about her background made, and attacks made against her sons. But every single one of those supposedly enlightened bits of information were so easily debunked with just a little bit of search time on Google or Bing. But the facts don't fit with the narrative and therefore must be discarded.

What it comes down to is the folks posting those kinds of comments ceased thinking for themselves years ago and are capable only of regurgitating what they've been told by their leaders/friends of a friend/etc. If what they hear backs up their 'beliefs', then it must be true, right? After all, the Democrats and the Left never lie about anything, do they?

I expect that the closer we get to the election the worst the attacks against Mitt, and particularly Ann will become, harking us back to the days of the character assassination of Sarah Palin and her family. And like the last election, I expect the Obama campaign to go after the Romney kids and grandkids. But I also expect to hear a hew and cry if anyone were to make cracks about Michelle or the Obama girls. After all, the rules only apply to the GOP and not the Democrats, right?

And considering some of the other activities seen by the Left and their lapdog media, I expect the racist looting hypocrites to pull every dirty trick in their book to keep the Narcissist-in-Chief in office, including making sure all of the dead, the non-citizens, and other ineligible people 'vote' for their guy as many times as they can. After all, aren't the Democrats, and particularly the Chicago machine, the party of voter fraud? (See, I can make accusations, too. But at least I can prove mine.)

From the comments to the original WSJ opinion piece by Fred Krupp I posted about this past weekend comes this piece of wisdom from the late George Carlin. This was also linked by Instapundit. Warning: Strong Language.


While I haven't always agreed with Carlin's viewpoints, I agree with him about this topic, though maybe he didn't go quite far enough. A lot of the folks predicting the end of the world because of AGW are no different that those Carlin excoriates, except they may be even more clueless and self-serving.

Wow. This is one of the easiest take-downs that the Union Leader editorial writer will ever have. I like Spike's reader comment. Here's an excerpt from the editorial:

Wait a minute, said the mayor. If the statewide high school dropout rate is now down to something like 1 [sic] percent (as Gov. Lynch claims), where does the group get a 22 percent dropout rate for whites, let alone the one claimed for Hispanics?

The group had no answer, but it forged ahead, adding to its charges that the city school system rigs its hiring practices and that is why only seven percent of the faculty are minority while nearly 40 percent of the students are [sic].

As more than one blogger has noted, Romney's choice of Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate is one that will make Team Obama sweat, particularly in light of the fact that Ryan has been a pitbull in regards to the out-of-control spending perpetrated by Congress since 2007 and the Obama administration in particular since January 2009.

It doesn't help Team Obama that Congress hasn't passed a budget for 1,200 days and counting. And Obama's official term runs 1461 days.

Here's some sobering facts about it:

The last time the Senate passed a budget was on April 29, 2009.
The Outstanding Public Debt as of 11 Aug 2012 at 12:38:57 AM GMT is: $15,920,131,113,709.46
The estimated population of the United States is 313,295,427, so each citizen's share of this debt is $50,815.08
Obama's $3.6 trillion budget proposal was defeated this year in the House of Representatives by a vote of 414-0.
Obama's FY2012 budget was defeated last year in the Senate, by a vote of 97-0.
By 2050, the national debt is set to hit 344 percent of the Gross Domestic Product.
By around Election Day, the total debt of the United States will be $16,394,000,000,000.00 ($16.394 trillion).

The first point brought up overlooks the fact that the budget passed then was a carryover from the end of the Bush administration, due directly to the machinations of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. The majority Democrat House and Senate delayed a vote on a budget they knew George W. Bush would have vetoed. Instead they relied on six months of continuing resolutions to keep the government funded until after Obama's election and inauguration. That is the major reason "Bush's" last budget was $600 billion in the red - it wasn't his budget, but Pelosi and Reid's.

It's also interesting to note that the last attempt to pass Obama's budget died without a single Democrat vote in favor in either the House or the Senate. Is it that they didn't like it any more than their Republican brethren or that they thought it would be easier to hide increasing deficit spending through the use of continuing resolutions? I'd like to believe they thought it was as much of a stinker as the GOP did. I'd like to. Really.

Should Romney and Ryan be elected to office, and with Ryan added to the ticket it seems to be more likely, I think we can expect the budget hammer to fall. No more trillion dollar plus deficits (we hope). No more "Let's tax the s**t out of the job makers!" No more unfunded mandates or multi-billion dollar government giveaways to industries incapable of standing on their own under any circumstances. No more interference in the energy markets. No more "the government knows best how to run the economy and your lives" BS.

Are Romney and Ryan the perfect candidates for the GOP? No, not by any means. But as we have to be reminded constantly, we can't let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Romney and Ryan are good enough.

Genocide against the white farmers in South Africa--the ANC taking the cue provided by Robert Mugabe's murderous and disastrous regime in nearby Zimbabwe--is amping up. It's already happening.

Rhodesia, the former name of Zimbabwe, used to be the bread basket of southern Africa. But Mugabe has engaged in the racist practice of targeting white farmers, who tend to have the most productive and largest farms, and giving the land away to supporters of his who lack the skills and resources to continue the work.

So the shelves have been bare and the hyper inflation has been solved by using the U.S. dollar as the currency.

I remember in 1984 going to Hanover, where Dartmouth College is located, and seeing all these shanties built on the village green, in violation of school rules, to protest apartheid.

It was the equivalent of driving a Chevy Volt today: one knew he was among the anointed by engaging in such activity.

But now that the criminal polygamous South African president Jacob Zuma gets away with singing notorious "kill whitey" songs to jubilant racist black mobs, the movement to protest injustice has become thirty-year-old newscopy. No story here, folks. Just white people living in fear, having to hire private gangs for protection in an increasingly lawless place.

One of the options for a new car in South Africa, which has been around for fifteen years, is the flame thrower defense. Astonishing! Bend down as if you're going to reach for your wallet in the widespread practice of car muggings, and depress the button for the flames to be fired off both sides of the vehicle.

Homework, gentle readers: read J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace. Coetzee, one of the most important living authors, has wisely emigrated to Australia.

A few months back I had written about adding a new feature to this blog, particularly some kind of cartoon. The concept was discussed with a friend of mine, GG, who happens to be a very good artist and we figured that between the two of us we could probably come up with a good one now and then. We think this one is a good one to start with.

This is taking the sexual consent dictum too far.

A women writes to advice columnist Emily Yoffe, aka Dear Prudence, asking about her sex life with her husband. In effect, she seems to think that spontaneous, if drunken, sex with her spouse is some kind of sexual abuse - a crime - and wonders whether she should divorce her husband. "Prudence's" response:

But even a married couple who have had sex hundreds of times can enjoy that alcohol might ignite a delightful, spontaneous encounter. Your approach, however, seems to be to treat your sex life as if it is subject to regulatory review by the Department of Health and Human Services. Your prim, punctilious, punitive style has me admiring your put-upon husband's ability to even get it up, given the possibility he'll be accused of rape--or turn himself in for it!--if one of you fails a breathalyzer test. Living in terror that expressing one's perfectly normal sexual desire could end one's marriage, and freedom, is itself a form of abuse. Stop acting like a parody of a gender-studies course catalog and start acting like a loving wife. If you can't, then give the poor sap a divorce.

And women wonder why men are becoming more gun-shy about sex and marriage. Who needs that kind of misery and fear because a woman has bought into the feminazi tripe that no sex is ever consensual, even when it is...unless maybe it's lesbian sex?

This young woman is still stuck in the college "Mother may I?" paradigm. I agree with Prudence on this one, but will take it one step farther by advising this young woman to divorce the poor suffering bastard now and let him find a real woman. The last thing he needs is an indoctrinated, self-victimizing neurotic like her.

Sheesh.

(H/T Instapundit)

It seems we've had a good run of comments out in the blogosphere with a second round of "Best Comment Ever". In this case it was inspired by President Obama's statement about how no one built anything by themselves, playing the Marxist word game that denigrates individual effort by trying to claim everything ever invented was a collective effort and that the individual couldn't have done it themselves.

Writes Frank Martin in response to our Marxist In Chief:

Just want to be clear Mr. President, in the three years of your Administration, you haven't built a goddamned thing.

My father was self employed all of his post-military service life. My father made furniture. He interviewed his customers at their home, sketched their desires on a piece of paper and then went to his workshop and created the piece from scratch. No one taught him to do this, he figured it out on his own. He took the time, the initiative and applied it to the task. He didn't apply for a job, he became the job. He was both artist and engineer. He was also his own man. He taught me that there is a dignity to work that no amount of good intentions can replace.

He was never rich, but he was free and that was the point of it all. It was never about the money. If people want to sit in envy my father, envy the freedom he had and not the money he made from his labor. He came and went as he pleased, he answered to no man but himself.

He used to say that at the end of the day what we all want from money is to be able to say "Screw you" and suffer no negative consequences from the act. Money simply buys the ability to walk away. My father never had a lot of money, but he was free.

In my 52 years of life, I have never heard anything from any politician that has left me filled with rage as the words the President has used to describe men like my father, the men of this world who live their life with the goal of being dependent on no one and only wish to be left alone.

I want to thank the President for providing me with a moment of clarity.

And should the President continue to provide such moments of clarity to the voting public, he can count on losing the election in November and being booted out of the White House bag and baggage.

I've come to get irritated at the attack on the Second Amendment with these questions given to me when I go with one of my children to the doctors' office, which is Plymouth Pediatrics in Plymouth, NH.

The first question is whether the home is a gun-free home, along the lines of is it a smoke-free home. Then, failing that question, they want to know if the guns are locked up at all times.

Seemingly fair enough.

Yet, not so fast.

I had all kinds of intentions of writing something dealing with the latest round of Chicago-style politicking from the Obama campaign, or about how the case for AGW is still falling apart (our 'local' heat wave notwithstanding), or how we deal with those who still somehow believe that what we earn somehow belongs to them.

But then I came across this over at Maggie's Farm and it struck such a chord in me I had to watch it again and again. And every time I watched it I became both angrier and sadder at the same time.


While this video did not come from a real debate (it's from a new HBO series The Newsroom), the fact that this character spoke his mind rather than act like a gladhanding politician by giving a 'safe' answer in order to at least not lose ground to his competitors shows that at least in some screenwriter's mind, someone recognizes the problem we have with this nation. (I am not a fan of HBO, particularly after the hatchet job they did on Sarah Palin.)

It all comes down to this, as expressed by one commenter on the original YouTube page:

We WERE the greatest country in the world until socialism, lawyers, unions, and television lulled us into mediocrity. They convinced us to give up our lofty pursuits for the security of never failing.

While the sentiment is a little simplistic, it does get to the heart of the matter. Over the last 5 decades we have been told by our supposed 'betters' that by merely being American that we are somehow inherently evil, that we must pay for the crimes of our long-dead forebears and that we must apply late 20th/early 21st century 'sensibilities' to 18th, 19th, and early 20th century actions, laws, and morality. How incredibly stupid is that?

But we've seen this kind of stupidity multiplying over the years and the fact that it no longer surprises me brought me up short. When did I get so jaded that I no longer point out such stupidity?

It's been a while since I've pointed it out and ended up looking through the Weekend Pundit archives and came across something I posted a little over three years ago. It illustrates just how much damage we have allowed to be done to this once great nation, how we've been fooled into becoming nothing but a mediocre nation more concerned with feelings and not about facts.

Unless we change that this nation will go out with a whimper, and woe to us if that is the case.

You have to hand it to the Left. When they decide to take the low road, they go all in.

Yesterday, they went the racist route, denigrating Justice Clarence Thomas after the ObamaCare decision.

Today, the took the sexist route, with the DNC slamming ObamaCare foes with sexual slurs.

Talk about hypocrites!

It looks like the newest strain of Bush Derangement Syndrome is working its way through the leftist Democrats. This sub-strain, called Romney Derangement Psychosis (RDP), hasn't taken long to mutate and spread amongst our much less knowledgeable leftists brethren.

One of the first signs is the claims by low-level Obama supporters that "Romney became rich by making other people poor!" Call it an offshoot of the ever-discredited "Zero Sum Fallacy" constantly being sold by the economically clueless Left.

If memory serves, I recall reading one claim on one of the WSJ forums about Bain Capital buying a distressed business, closing it, and selling off its assets.

First, Bain's raison d'étrè was to invest in failing businesses, turn them around, and make money for the investors. For the most part, they succeeded. But sometimes they couldn't and the companies failed, were closed, and the assets sold off to offset their losses. There are times when no matter what, a failing business can't be saved.

Second, the action in question took place in 2002. There's only one problem with the claim made by the poster in the forum: Romney wasn't with Bain at the time. He'd left in 1998, four years before this supposedly took place.

So how could Romney be held responsible for something that took place well after he left unless it's one of the side effects of RDP? After all, the Left blames George Bush for all kinds of things, including things done by a Democrat majority Congress. Some blame him for things that have taken place long after he left office. Why shouldn't we expect the indoctrinated Left to do the same thing to Romney. All I'm waiting for now is some kind of "fake but accurate" incident analogous to Ra^therGate to smear Romney. I figure it's only a matter of time.

Reading some of the Letters to the Editor in one of the local papers here in New Hampshire, I am already seeing elements of the coming smear campaign. The local Leftist parrots are already repeating their carefully programmed claims, condemning Romney and praising their messiah, regardless of the fact that Romney has created more jobs while working in the private sector than Obama has since he was nothing more than a community organizer in Chicago. Claims of 4.25 millions jobs created by Obama must be taken with a huge grain of salt, just as many of us doubt his "3 million jobs created or saved by the $878 billion stimulus" claim. Certainly the unemployment numbers never reflected that claim, either the officially reported number (meaning those collecting unemployment) and the officially ignored number (meaning those also unemployed who were no longer collecting unemployment or who were underemployed) which boosted the unemployment rate a good 6 or 7 percentage points higher than the official numbers. (At one point the unemployment rate was above 11%, meaning the actual unemployment rate was closer to 17 percent.)

So far the "evil Bain" approach and hyped jobs claims hasn't worked and it's backfired on the Democrats. Too many folks out there know the real story because they're living it and claims made by the Obama campaign to the contrary don't match their reality. With today's unemployment numbers showing the unemployment rate has gone up, job creation fell far short of projections, and the Dow Jones Average falling almost 300 points today, reality has just slapped the Democrats in the face.

But I don't expect that to stop the spread of baseless, fact-deficient, and ignorant distortions of Romney's record of accomplishments.

The implosion of Detroit continues, with the city taking more actions to cut its costs even as revenues decline and more people leave the city seeking greener pastures. Their latest action: shutting off and/or removing half the street lights in the city. That ought to help the crime rate in the city...go up.

Detroit, whose 139 square miles contain 60 percent fewer residents than in 1950, will try to nudge them into a smaller living space by eliminating almost half its streetlights.

As it is, 40 percent of the 88,000 streetlights are broken and the city, whose finances are to be overseen by an appointed board, can't afford to fix them. Mayor Dave Bing's plan would create an authority to borrow $160 million to upgrade and reduce the number of streetlights to 46,000. Maintenance would be contracted out, saving the city $10 million a year.

When you have block after block of abandoned commercial buildings and homes, it makes no sense to waste money lighting streets where no one (except squatters) live. Of course many of those buildings and homes wouldn't be abandoned if decades of Progressive leadership hadn't driven the city into these dire straits. The city is a perfect example of the Thatcher Axiom: "The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money." That certainly fits Detroit to a 'T'.

Detroit's dwindling income and property-tax revenue have required residents to endure unreliable buses and strained police services throughout the city. Because streetlights are basic to urban life, deciding what areas to illuminate will reshape the city, said Kirk Cheyfitz, co-founder of a project called Detroit143 -- named for the 139 square miles of land, plus water -- that publicizes neighborhood issues.

--snip--

Meantime, [Detroit Chief Operating Officer Chris] Brown said, the city will fix broken streetlights in certain places even as it discontinues such services as street and sidewalk repairs in "distressed" areas -- those with a high degree of blight and little or no commercial activity.

As Glenn Reynolds stated in his link to the story, it's like something right out of Atlas Shrugged or I Will Fear No Evil.

I have to agree with Bird Dog on this one: The Kennedy's are what we term "bad people" in Yankee land.

I know the folks out on Martha's Vineyard Island universally detested the Kennedy clan with only a few exceptions, those being Jackie, John Jr. and Caroline. The rest were considered meddlesome do-gooder-like wastrels more interested interfering with Islanders' lives and livelihoods rather than actually doing anyone any good.

Although a law prof at a place that covets those who publish, it's becoming increasingly obvious that Democratic candidate for the Senate seat held by Scott Brown, Elizabeth Warren used her bogus claim that she's "Native-American," whatever that's supposed to mean, to get her job at Harvard Law in the first place.

Aren't you as tired as I about affirmative racism, er, "action"?

Quick, as I read in David Mamet's _Secret Knowledge_, about his conversion from Jewish birthright lib to a thinking conservative, what did Custer say at Little Bighorn? "Look, here come the _______ ?"

Anyway, a new name making the rounds for Warren is not Fauxcohantas but She Will Sioux. More here.

Thomas Sowell writes on the ongoing black-white intifada, "A Censored Race War?" He's the smartest man in America, and it's obvious the dead tree media refuses to make clear how much interracial crime is taking place. It's much more black on white than the other way round.

Trying to keep the lid on is understandable. But a lot of pressure can build up under that lid. If and when that pressure leads to an explosion of white backlash, things could be a lot worse than if the truth had come out earlier, and steps taken by both black and white leaders to deal with the hoodlums and with those who inflame the hoodlums.

Listening to a podcast of a CSPAN interview with Max Hastings and his WWII history, _Inferno_, I learned about a genocide that I had never heard about before: the Bengal famine or 1943.

Are you going to celebrate Towel Day this May 25? How?

Bret Stephens addresses members of the graduating Class of 2012, exposing them to some hard truths they haven't had to face until now. One of most salient points is something that will stand them in good stead, assuming they're willing to listen: "But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!"

Bret brings up a number of problems with our existing college and university system today, that being they are less about preparing students to face the real world and more about students "getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree." What's worse is that many of these students put them and/or their families deep into debt, yet they won't be able to find jobs that will pay them anywhere what it is they owe.

Some of those commenting to Bret's piece miss the point, trying to make it seem that he's saying the only worthwhile degrees are in STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine), but that's not what he's saying at all. Instead he's warning students who get degrees in Womyn's Studies, Urban Graffiti, or Transgendered Native American Studies shouldn't expect to be snapped up by corporate America when there are more than enough graduates with degrees in Business Administration, Statistics, Finance, Graphic Arts, Culinary Arts, and an almost endless list of other BA and BS degrees that are far more applicable to the real world.

What's even worse for many of these still unprepared grads is that is that a lot of their contemporaries who didn't go to college are doing far better than they can ever hope to do. This is particularly true of those who went into the trades. They don't have huge student loans to pay off. They started earning their way years earlier than their college-bound friends. And in many ways they've grown up while their friends lived an extended adolescence in college.

On a slightly different thread, one commenter fell into a semantic trap, claiming students are being taught how to think. He went on to claim that they're being brainwashed into being good little progressive puppets. But what he really meant was that they're being taught what to think, which is entirely different.

Being taught how to think, meaning being taught critical thinking skills, is something we need more of in our educational system. If one can think critically, then they can reason from available facts and their own experiences rather than being spoon fed radical and, in the end, socially destructive ideologies masquerading as knowledge and wisdom. Unfortunately we aren't seeing much in the way of critical thinking being taught in our schools any more, and it shows. (This is particularly true in many of our liberal arts colleges.)

Could it be that the lack of critical thinking skills and the abundance of money through loan programs has caused this rampant problem of students studying majors that don't prepare them for life in the real world? I don't know, but it's something worth pondering.

Frank Luntz of the Washington Post has an interesting piece dealing with the 5 Myths About Conservative Voters. Luntz attempts to address those myths that Democrats believe about conservative voters.

For the most part I agree with his points, but at times he gets a little mushy as if he doesn't want to offend the sensibilities of his liberal readers. On his very first "busted" myth he doesn't quite make the connection between what conservatives want in regards to government and what it means.

Conservatives care most about the size of government.

Today, conservatives don't want a reduced government so much as one that works better and wastes less.

In a poll we completed among self-identified conservatives just before the 2010 elections,"efficient" and "effective" government clearly beat "less" and "smaller" government. For conservatives, this debate is less about size than about results, along with a demand that elected officials demonstrate accountability and respect for the taxpayer, regardless of whether they're spending $1 million or $1 trillion.

--snip--

It used to be that conservatives supported smaller government on theoretical grounds: The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen; government should only do for people what they truly cannot do for themselves; government isn't the solution, it is the problem.

I think Luntz missed the point. A government that works better and wastes less will be smaller. There won't need to be nearly as much government (and attendant bureaucrats) in order for government to perform its functions. One begets the other.

We want smaller government because it costs less and is more efficient. If being more efficient and less costly creates a smaller government, so be it. Just so long as they stop wasting taxpayer dollars on things we neither need or want.

(H/T Maggie's Farm)