It Was the Power, Stupid!
V. Good and Bad Fat Cats
There is no difference in the way the Koch brothers or Exxon run their empires and the way that GM, GE, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and Google do. But the former are enemies of the people, while the latter are protectors who have have confessed to their bishops and agreed to mouth doctrine and thereby obtained penance to make as much money as they want and to spend it as they damn well please. Suddenly in America after 2009 there are good and bad cable networks, good and bad celebrities, good and bad CEOs, good and bad sports teams (ask Lovie Smith), good and bad states, good and bad everything—not adjudicated on the actual basis of behavior, but rather on whether some are willing to go to reeducation camp, admit their errors, and join the effort to clean the air and feed the kids.
Or do any of you believe there are not Google “corporate jet setters,” or Facebook “fat cats,” or GE executives who didn’t know when it was time not to profit, or Microsoft grandees who ignored the point at which they had made enough money? (For that matter, why could not Barack Obama have made $550,000 last year; had he not reached the point where he didn’t need any more cash?)
VI. The War on Science
We are in strange times. When the Right is in power, the press, the academy, the arts, the foundations, the liberal churches, and the zillionaire class all lecture us on greed, scandal, profit-mongering, wars against science, destroying the planet—the entire laundry list of exploitive greed. The result is that the Right is careful. Bush walked a tightrope, as his moral concerns about stem cells became killing Christopher Reeve, and No Child Left Behind and the prescription drug program were begrudged as too little big government, too late.
When the Left is in power, all of the above go silent.
There really is a war on science in the way a Steven Chu wasted billions on irrational subsidized schemes that produced no energy, while, along with Ken Salazar, neglecting proven ways to increase oil and gas production on federally controlled lands. The GM-subsidized Volt is de facto a war against science; so is high-speed rail—at least for now. The anti-deficit properties of the Buffett rule are make-believe accounting, and entirely anti-mathematical. There really are anti-constitutional scandals in which people died as in Fast and Furious. There really are Ken Lay-type con artists still around called Jon Corzine. There really are misogynists like Bill Maher that daily declare “war on women.”
VII. Fire With Fire
I have a confession to make that may upset readers. I was neutral in the Republican primaries, but especially interested in one fact: who would take off the gloves and run a “war room” campaign in the fashion of Bill Clinton in 1992 (as opposed to the McCain model of emulating Mike Dukakis in 1988)? Romney did it first and most effectively.
The result is that when we hear that Rush Limbaugh should be taken off the air for his profane misogyny, almost immediately now there are accounts of Bill Maher’s $1 million gift to Obama and his far greater and unapologetic slurs against women. When we hear all those creepy “concerns” about Romney’s great-grandfather as a polygamist in Mexico, suddenly we are reminded that Obama’s father in Kenya was, too. Putting a dog on the car roof is now not quite the same as eating a dog and then matter-of-fact reading one’s account of it on an audiotape. Trivial? Yes. Distractions from the current economic mess, and beneath us all? Perhaps. All Romney’s doing? Of course not.
But at least 2012 won’t be a default campaign. In other words, to quote Obama, Romney will get in “their faces” and “bring a gun to a knife fight.” McCain more graciously and nobly lost by putting all sorts of concerns off the table. I would expect that should Obama keep harping about Romney’s tax returns, Romney will demand Obama’s transcripts and medical records at last to be released. If Obama’s surrogates keep writing about Mormonism, we will learn of new disclosures about Trinity Church. For every Mormon bishop who said something illiberal in 1976, we will hear of a Father Pfleger or Rev. Meeks trumping that in 2007. And so on.
This piece is so powerful, disturbing and on target, I’m speechless.
You note, “In 2012 we will learn whether there is a year 5 or 2013.”
This is the year: Morning in America, or End Game.
Obama and the liberals are on the verge of replacing our current system in which the powers of government officials are limited by Law with a medieval Feudal system where government officials are limited only by a complex web of personal loyalties.
Feudalism currently rules in Russia, China, most of Africa, South America, the Middle East and in every country ruled by socialism. Amazingly, this accursed bane of the past has become the wave of the future.
Feudalism is based on the cult of personality. There are a host of laws written down in books, and a host of learned juris doctores to interpret them, but the ways the laws are enforced depends completely on the whim of the local lord and his position in the web of personal loyalties.
The most important question you do not even address is how have the liberals lords managed to completely dominate the national news media. Why do these ‘reporters’ accept their serfdom so uncritically? Why do they defend their lords so passionately? Why do they support a system in which personal loyalties replace the rule of law?
Cosmetically lords are no longer called lord; the are called ‘Chair’ or ‘Secretary’, ‘President’ or ‘Administrator’. Most of these lords are in agencies such as the EPA, TSA, DEA, BATF, ICE, FDA, FCC, or NLRB. Only a few are elected. The rest have jobs for life. All hsve powers. All can make wealthy peasants tremble.
Why is feudalism in America’s future? After all, our parents all fled feudal societies when they came to America.
History is an elastic. Over time, it tends to take its original shape. Tribal structures and pecking orders are natural. To break the pattern takes special circumstances. Vigillance, sacrifice and will are required to sustain it. It is not yet a foregone conclusion that freedom is lost to us. But there are tribulations ahead. How we meet them is a test, and a testament to who we really are.
Correct — pecking orders and tribal organization are natural. They are part of Human Nature and the foundation of human society. Because man is intelligent and self-aware, there is flexibility in Human Nature, but it cannot be overcome under any circumstances. ‘Socialist’ economies can exist (so far, at least, some have) but communism is impossible, even with mass murder. So is a multi-cultural society (a contradiction in terms!) or multi-racial peace. Most of man’s troubles for the last 200 years have sprung from the attempt to ignore Human Nature, and create a rational or reasonable society (as the Illuminati thought that should be). Homo sapiens is what he is. He will remain so, or die. The test will be the future of Russia — can a natural society destroyed by Leftism recover?
“can a natural society destroyed by Leftism recover?”
The czar and serfs? They did not exactly have a Democratic-capitalistic tradition to lose, did they?
“The czar and serfs?”
D-White, didn’t serfdom in Russia end in the 1860′s? And what about 1905, and the reforms that were instituted then? Duma?
Unless you are talking about the Rule of the Red Pencil Neck Times when you were czaring over all those young serfs in the Village of The Damned School.
Please allow me to… introduce… myself…
Wow, Dwighty – a masterful non-sequitur. I am impressed. Perhaps you can entertain us by systematically working your way through the list of logical fallacies. In alphabetical order, naturally.
Yes, serfdom was over, but I am all ears to hear about the “natural society” in Russia, which got taken over. One can argue that nowhere in their whole tradition do they have such a thing functioning long enough to be the rule, rather than the exception.
It’s quaint to think of my time as a teacher as being a czar; I had a lot better luck with them than the czar did with his folks.
And Imagine the look on my face last evening when they advertised “the One’s ” upcoming appearance on Jimmy Fallon.
I really got to wondering if the rest of America sat there slack jawed as I.
The President of the United States ,being advertised as the greatest celebrity actually appearing on a late night show.
With the economy the way it is, gas prices, foreclosures… and everyone is cheering the upcoming appearance.
Need I use the Hunger games analogy. All the happy young hipsters doing his bidding.
Orwellian indeed
The cult of personality has to perpetuate itself somehow. He’s beginning to be perceived as a communist with ice water in his veins. He had to liven up the persona.
“The most important question you do not even address is how have the liberals lords managed to completely dominate the national news media. Why do these ‘reporters’ accept their serfdom so uncritically? Why do they defend their lords so passionately? Why do they support a system in which personal loyalties replace the rule of law?”
I believe that you ask the most important question of our time. In my opinion the liberal rot that is leading us down the road to ruin is by far more the product of the popular media than the unchallenged result the actions of the miscreants that actually hold the power. When intellectual lightweights such as Wolf Blitzer, Katie Couric, Matt Lauer, Brian Williams, Bob Schieffer, and many others find themselves in a position to become “respected” multi-millionaires they gladly spout the party line and play the liberal game. These people are wealthy, but hollow, “personalities” of quite average intellect and compromised principles. It is they, and the non-curious aspirants behind them, who are the major cause of our current decline. To put it bluntly, we are being led toward cultural and financial oblivion by a bunch of bought-off dimwits.
A country, with a government such as ours, stands or falls on 3 pillars:
1) A reasonably well educated population, capable of processing information and making sound decisions
2) An information gathering and disseminating apparatus that provides information – neutrally – on which the population makes its judgements.
3) A religious foundation that assures that the population is virtuous, in keeping with John Adams’ words, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
All 3 have been under a deliberate and relentless attack by enemies for decades and we are literally on the verge of losing this country. It is time for all patriots to wake up and understand that the Left has taken over the above institutions, as well as the Democratic Party, and needs to be resoundingly defeated if this country is to survive in any recognizable form.
That’s BANG ON!!Yooper
Excellent comment Yooper. Liberalism is a plague that slowly morphs into tyranny; death by incompetence and intellectual haughtiness. The worship of the state is the main requirement. Thank heavens that Americans are averse to this, and will not tolerate such an obvious onslaught against freedom.
Excellent analysis. I live in Brazil and though they are not Venezuela, they aren’t as far from Venezuela as they think. The biggest city in each state is the each state’s capital, where Brazilians go to find their piece of the government pie and power or position in the power ladder.
Sol You missed one of the most potent of these government and semi-government agencies, the USDA which controls the agriculture side of commerce. I can plant peanuts for my own use but not for sale, that would be unfair to those signed into the USDA crop allotments and includes cotton, corn and several other crops but not fruit and produce or the beef industry. This was and is an attempt to control the market. It doesn’t work and the entire aricultural industry is affected plus a lot more. There is no evidence that we are more prosperous or stable under the USDA system than we would be under the free market system with the individual making all the choices rather than the ignorant and misinformed government.
Ever thing still moves at the top price the free market will support and no price fixing changes that. If you squeeze the profit you lose the supply.
There is not one whit of exaggeration in this statement by Victor:
“Perhaps before the second-degree-murder charge is thrown out, the prosecution can so entangle Zimmerman in testimony that they can recharge him with perjury or conspiracy and then plea bargain him down to a year or two. The case is now not concerned with justice, but with politics, defusing threats of violence, and salvaging the careers of so many who so foolishly rushed to judgment.”
A beloved former felon[can a felon ever be a "former felon"? FB] was more than happy to explain what is needed:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/18/trial-of-george-zimmerman-could-trigger-another-rodney-king.html
Mansfield Frazier, The Daily Beast, April 18, 2012
I felt the desire to stand up an applaud after reading this article. Thank you.
McCain ran the worst campaign I’ve ever seen. Actually, I do think he’s mentally “off” somehow as in unstable. I wish it had been that other centrist-Republican, Giuliani. Without McCain in the race I think he would have gotten every primary vote McCain got and more.
The worst was Palin. He’s running against the least experienced opponent ever and he chooses a far worse VP – there goes his best argument. It’s like Bush I with Quayle. Reagan picked Bush I and Clinton picked Gore and Bush II piced Cheney and Obama picked Biden. You have to pick someone who could step in. I don’t think Rubio or Christie cut it. I think you have to go with a really articulate Senator. What about this Utah guy? He’s supposed to be a Mensa-type. I guess he’s to inexperienced, too. Someone has to be able to articulate Reaganomics and capitalism the best possibly.
Can you say, “Jeb Bush?”
Howdy Mr. Progressive. It sure is a shame about Sarah Palin ‘cept she garnered more energetic activity than her boss.
I know you wanted a McCain/Hatch pair-up but look at the bright side, you won, didn’t you?
Perhaps you ought to learn a bit more about Ms Palin before you so condemn her so completely. It seems to me that her choice by McCain may well have been part of an effort to immunize us against a truly conservative and charismatic woman in the presidential politics. Consider that nearly all that you know of Ms Palin is a product of the left media, from biased reporting to utter nonsense about her youngest child and the sexist ‘humor’ of pundits like Maher and Garafelo the political class has simply tried to destroy a decent, honorable woman who has given her best to her family, friends, town and state. The truth is that she was at least as qualified to be vice president as Obama was to be president, withour his background of communist mentors, criminal supporters and political tactics of questionable morality.
Beyond that, perhaps you ought to re-examine your mindless support for the professional political class that our fonders warned us not to encourage. These are people with so little to offer in the private sector that they must resort to the armed authority of government to impose their views on the genaral populace. I urge you, and anyone else reading this, to find members of your local community who are honest, earnest and honorable, convince them to run for office and then support and elect them so that we can at least loosen the grip of Kennedy School style government.
Meanwhile remember that we have been a century getting here and we are not going to return to government of by and for the people tommorow, next month or even in the next decade. It will be a long hard campaign and the last people to entrust with it’s leadership are the sort who have brought us to this dire situation, the professional political class.
Well said Kruelhunter (and Jim Rockford).
Sarah Palin represents everything good and wholesome about what used to be America. She is a decent and honorable woman and her bona fides are proven by her list of enemies – the entire cultural, governmental and media establishment. With enemies like that I would be proud to stand in her corner.
Selecting Palin as VP was the only smart thing McCain did. You may recall her selection propelled McCain ahead of Obama in the polls. Palin actually had more executive experience than Obama, Biden and even McCain himself.
Palin had more executive experience than Obama, Biden and McCain combined and is, to this day, the only person to publicly chastise Obama.
GDI:
The glass is finally half full but unfortunately it’s also half empty. Doctor Hanson is beginning to see the light, after three and a half years, as to what a dedicated Marxist can do to destroy a nation as great as the United States of America if given the chance. Commumists don’t go gently into the good night, they simply retrench and return for another shot later. Like old soldiers, they never die. That’s real world vs. campus history in 2012.
Fill the glass Dr. Hanson, full speed ahead, enough of the niceties, help stop this evil communist narcasistic bastard now for there may never be another chance, which makes the next six months critical. Tyranny or freedom?
may I add that the pathetic phony CONservative Fox news anchors like Sheperd Smith and hucksters like O’Reilly, Hannity, et al constantly interviewing the libtard “experts” and thanking them profusely for being so kind as to talk with them and spouting their lies in the name of fair and balanced bs provides the left with a powerful tool. These same morons have no qualms about vicious confrontation and interrogation of anyone on the right. The Orwellian media would be very entertaining if this were fiction and not our worst nightmare come to life.
btw – Professor Hansen you are brilliant as always and people like you, Palin, et al are our only hope.
Very good comment GDI
JUst how many bumper stickers will I see that read Obama 2012? And who will be counting the votes this coming November? This is male versus female stuff at play with metrosexuals at the helm in more ways than one might imagine.
The American psyche is split in so many ways, certainly not working in an harmonious manner nor constructively.
Start with the dominant females on our national political scene: Divide your list into two camps, the left then the right. Now, look at their pictures: See a pattern? Look at their histories, see a pattern?
Government as the big, and I really mean giant teat! Come one, come all for feeding.
What happens when the “golden cow” goes dry?
The American psyche is not harmonious, and never has been. There is no such thing as a unified American psyche. From the days of sectional antagonisms to today’s Blue States vs. Red States, we have differed on the role of federalism. Meanwhile, our rhetoric has been personalized and the nation remains ideologically polarized. I wrote about that here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/. I am moreover puzzled by the notion of “power” as a unifying theme. Power for what? Everyone wants to be heard and to have her vote count.
VDH: You’ve mentioned the correct word “Power!” That’s the basis for everything Obama and his supporters do, to gain more power, to reach their goal, power forever.
If Obama were to be re-elected in 2012, he will never leave office until his daughters are ready to take over from him. In every sense, 2009 was year one of the Obama dynasty.
Hence the love affair between Penn, Moore, Stone, Fonda, et all with “The Dictator” where ever you may find him.
They simply LOVE the power those lunatics hold over the masses.
The Obama Dynasty will be even shorter than the Qin Dynasty from 221 B.C to 2-5 B.C. or 14 years http://www.dynastiesofasia.com/asian-history-references/qin-dynasty-period-in-chinese-history.htm, his dynasty will end in November of this year after 4 years just like Jimmy Carter or even the really bad golfer Gerald Ford since he only lasted the rest of Nixon’s term!
Obama does not stand a chance and I for one am glad to see that those that donate to him are poor speculators this election I am confident will be a landslide, so go to the pools and make it happen even if you are not happy with the Republican candidate, we simply can not tolerate a day more of this liar! Joe Wilson who stated “You lie” during Obama’s first State of the Union Speech was shamed by the media as well as the entire Democrat Congress to apologize when he was correct, and do your remember the look on Obama’s face when this event occurred?
Excellent, and frightening, analysis Dr Hanson. At the risk of using a cliche, the election in November is the hill to die on. And like you, I cared less about the various candidates in the Primaries than I did about which one had the fire in the belly to take the fight to Obama and the Left. In fact, I spent most of the Primaries cringing, watching the fraternal bloodletting in the same way as if Custer’s troops at the Little Big Horn had decided to settle scores with each other rather than focusing on shooting the howling savages trying to wipe them out.
Obama and the Left, with their monopolistic control of the organs of information and culture, pose an unprecedented and existential threat to America, a threat greater than we faced in WWII, in my opinion. No matter the outcome in Europe or the Pacific, there was no realistic chance of America being invaded. Hell, Hitler couldn’t even cross 20 miles of Channel to invade Britain, let alone an ocean to occupy us. Same with Japan.
But today, the enemy is within – he controls the very apparatus of government, ruling us through an ever pervasive and invasive regulatory beauracracy, unchecked and unmonitored and answering to no one but their own fealty to the Religion of Government. And nauseatingly self righteous about it to boot. And their watchdogs, the media, have turned into junkyard dogs, protecting their power and viciously attacking anyone who dares say boo and attempt to ‘speak truth to power’. Ironic how now that ‘the power’ is theirs everybody else better shut up.
The reason we are so vulnerable existentially is because this country, more than any other I can think of, is based on an idea. At its most elemental level, the idea of equality of opportunity. What is the idea behind Germany, or France or China? None that I can think of other than ethnicity. You are born a German, a Frenchman, a Chinaman. And excepting that birth, nothing you can do will make you a German, or a Frenchman….not really. Not so with America. Literally anyone in the world can become an American. As long as he/she accepts and embraces the idea (and does it legally).
Unfortunately, the Left has an idea a well, at its most elemental level the idea of equality of outcome. And that is where the danger lies. Because as even the most wild eyed utopian leftist would have to admit, it is an impossibility to raise everyone to the level of a Gates or a Jobs or a Buffet. But it is possible to lower everyone to the least common denominator. To the level of a gray, bleak, colorless, subsistence level of existance. Where everyone is sullen and cheerless, but happily – for the leftist – equal. And there is a price that comes with that equality as well. The price exacted in forcing everyone to that subsistence level equality. A price that numbers in the scores and perhaps hundreds of millions of lives, both taken or ruined.
These are the stakes as I see them. Our future as the greatest, most benevolent superpower in history hangs in the balance. And this November is the final battle, Last Stand Hill if you will. And all freedom loving patriots need to close ranks, ignore our petty differences as to who is the purest candidate, the most pure conservative, and focus our fire, in the form of votes, towards the enemy that would end our experiment and crush our freedom under their statist boot heel.
Well done. The election, if you can call it that, will hinge simply on the ability of the GOP to prevent massive fraud. The honest voting public would under any stretch of imagination and historical perspective throw the bum out.
Preventing the fraud entirely will be too tall of an order. The prudent goal is to win the election by more than the margin of fraud.
That is the ticket, a landslide victory for Rommney will create down ticket coatails so that we can have the legislative machinery to sweep out government. A repeat of Bush/Gore, where Rommney wins the electoral college and Obama takes the popular vote would be a disaster, and I think this is very likely. I doubt Obama would go graciously.
The crux about 2012 is election fraud.
Leftists/socialists in all lands throughout history and across the globe rely on voter fraud to maintain their power. Castro, Chavez, Putin, etc. It is not who votes but ***who counts the votes*** as Stalin said.
If you have been shocked at what BHO has been doing for the last 3 years and saying “That will never happen in America,” only to realize that it IS happening here, then you also must wake up and *act* to assure honest elections.
Electronic votes from 26 U.S. states and 900 jurisdictions are to be counted by a Spanish company. Is that company Soros controlled? Is the CEO a major Obama contributor and an avowed socialist? Find out!
The deck is stacked against Liberty, though I believe that truth and Divine Providence are on our side. Nonetheless, if we do not act, then the election will be stolen, and your vote will be disenfranchised by the dead and the corrupt.
If a precinct reports more votes than registered voters the entire vote should be thrown out. Seattle, Philadelphia, Madison, amd Minneapolis might be a little more careful.
When did Castro ever stand for election for anything? I know he promised elections in 1959 before he seized power, but after he seized it he never risked it probably because he knew he and Guevera and his type of enforcers were too brutal to win a vote from anybody. Castro is nothing but a gang leader with a gun. He has never been elected to anything. Don’t forget that. In fact anyone who gets more than 70% of the vote has never been elected to anything either, at least not a fair election. But I don’t think Castro ever even did that.
Hell, Hitler couldn’t even cross 20 miles of Channel to invade Britain, let alone an ocean to occupy us.
There was a military expert who once calculated that had the Lufwaffe been able to continue its attack on the RAF another twenty minutes, they would have broken the RAF. Hitler’s army was in position for the invasion of Britain and it would have happened.
I hate like hell to try to comment on VDH article. I always feel like a fool in trying to come up with something good, something deserving. I always feel like a child saying I like what you just did Daddy. OK VDH I like what you just did Daddy.
– if the DEMedia does not get the conviction it hoped to contrive, then it will lobby for the Feds to prosecute to a verdict on civil rights violation. Seen this before.
Good to see Dr. VDH getting to the bottom line and with such passion. Would very much appreciate the Dr’s plan in the event Obama gets another term. Let us hope Romney can transform from Mr. McCain-the-Loser to Mr. Mean Son-of-a-Bitch the winner. Say what you will about Newt but at least he had the brains and passion to kick Obama’s socialist a–. If Romney can’t then we will see the end of the USA as we have known her. Yes, this election (#4) is indeed the hill to die on.
I don’t think it’s Romney’s nature to be nasty or hateful, but I don’t think he’ll stand and suffer the blows from the left and his opponent like McCain did. And, in McCain’s defense, he knew a hard attack on Obama would bring down a hard rain of accusations of racism. Immediately after the election, there were discussions about how, or whether, to use Obama in comedy for fear of being labeled a racist. After almost 4 years of Obama, with a pitiful record to run on, Romney can rightfully and forcefully challenge Obama’s miserable term, and while the Sharptons and Chris Matthews will decry racism, they’ve worn out the effect of the charge by crying wolf so many times. The hard left, and the black vote will scream, but they won’t vote for Romney anyway, and haven’t much sway over the voters who will determine this election.
McCain’s refusal to attack Obama and his platforms and policies rendered McCain unfit to be president. He cared more for himself than for the country. He was unwilling to do what it took to save this country from Obama’s policies. He wanted to RUN for president, that was all. He got what he wanted.
…And, in McCain’s defense [for refusing to fight back with BHO], he knew a hard attack on Obama would bring down a hard rain of accusations of racism…
I don’t understand why McCain would feel this threat of being called a racist. After all, he adopted a black baby girl who is now a young adult, so why wouldn’t he throw that fact back in the face of any accusers? That’s a lame excuse. He didn’t fight back because he didn’t really give a **** about being prez. And he was so friggin’ old, he didn’t have the energy!
There can be no question – at least in the mind of rational, non-theological/ideological slaves – that the current administration is an ideological marxist/fascist monstrosity, corrupt and cynical to a level not seen since Tammany Hall, the late 18th century French monarchy, or the Roman Patrician class in the latter half of the first century B.C. It is also blindingly obvious that the administration and the democratic party are making a bid for absolute power using the fascist model of partnership with Big Finance, Big Media and select Big Company interests to destroy the constitution and institute an oligarchical reign with bought-for public voting majorities as a manipulated and controlled tool for a facade of legitimacy.
However:
Only a fool would think that Romney’s election will change everything for the better, for the following reasons:
1. His record as Massachusetts governor, and his subsequent wishy washy statements defending his record, directly contradict his attempt to be perceived as an anti – big government leader.
2. The previous repub president and his 6 year repub congress were different from the democrats only in terms of financial scale. In all other ways – deceit, propaganda, big government largesse, graft, etc – they were just as authoritarian – minded as today’s democrats.
3. The current repub – controlled House has not only been a failure, but has clearly betrayed the trust placed in it by angry voters looking for a return to sanity. They are also all authoritarian, big government cynical hypocrites who are only interested in lining their own pockets and making sure that they are part of the oligarchy when the republic is completely and irrevocably overthrown.
All of you get as enthused as you like about Romney. If you think the job is done simply by voting for him, you’re likely to be in for a crushing disappointment.
All that a Romney victory does is end Obama’s rein. But that is no small thing (indeed I must admit I will cherish the moment forever, as I have been dreaming of seeing the end of his arrogant, hypocritical, kleptocratic, power-crazed term since November 2008)!) Re-taking the Senate is therefore crucial as well. Therefore in my household, we are forgoing our summer vacation this year, and donating heavily to key Senate campaigns as well as the national campaign.
I am already heavily engaged in promoting conservative, pro-Constitutional ideals and Tea-Party organizing. This will only increase right up until November. If Obama is re-elected, he will make the last four years feel like a cakewalk.
The rest is up to us. We will have to put massive, unrelenting pressure on Romney after he’s elected. We literally have to take charge here, with phone-calls, emails, letters, rallies and demonstrations, to push Romney to start dismantling the superfluous bureaucracy and exposing the corruption. Yes he will resist, especially when it looks like some of his friends might get burned. No-one said this would be easy. WE have let things get to this state (we do ourselves no favors by ignoring that painful truth), so it is hypocritical (and morally cowardly) of us to shy away from the task ahead. One is seldom given a winning hand in life. What separates the quick from the dead is the will to prevail no matter what. We are free humans! A rare and supremely potent breed: nothing can stop us if we unite behind our highest ideals!
We are stronger than these Dem buffoons. We are more focused, alert, aware, informed… we are coming from a better place. It is time for us to engage this enemy. We may not enter the fight with all of our advantages fully deployed, but the alternative is to always be remembered as the ones who gave up.
I can’t wait for the day he steps down too. I wonder if he’ll form another make-belive office like his “office of the president elect”? The “office of the president reject” maybe?
Yes, we can make him a plaque and mail it to him.
Give him a Jimmy Carter 2 Plaque with the words of I did it in one term!
Thanks, we’re all in this together brother. Just make sure you get out and vote! :)
STALLION:
I gotta agree with your perspective, even though is so sad!
“…All of you get as enthused as you like about Romney. If you think the job is done simply by voting for him, you’re likely to be in for a crushing disappointment.”
STALLION
I agree. The job STARTS with getting Romney (or whoever the candidate is) elected and stopping the hemorrhaging that Obama and the Left is causing. They did not get to where they are overnight. The left has been undermining America for over 70 years and in earnest for at least 40 (since the late ’60′s). It will certainly take more than one election to root them out. This November is the start and then we have to make up for the multiple decades worth of damage we’ve allowed to happen under our noses.
But again, the job starts with throwing Obama out. And that means voting for the Republican nominee. Period.
We also need to vote out any Republican collaborators. That includes any who used the Tea Party mantle to gain office, and then reverted to “business as usual” Republicans.
What you are ignoring is Romney’s experience. Business consultants look at all aspects of a project and reduce a percentage here and there to turn around an ailing concern. How can he NOT apply that trade to the government?
If Republicans can gain the Senate, he’ll have a real conservative foe or ally to contend with. If Dems hold on, there will continue to be monkey business.
The tea party has insinuated itself and continues to do so like the 60′s left did into the body politic. Odds are they will continue to effect events.
All the replies to my comment are excellent – thank you. Gylippus, I reserve my greatest praise for you. :-)
Thanks, we’re all in this together brother. Just make sure you get out and vote! :)
You have a point,
and this is why I have a problem with Hanson singling out only liberals as being interested in power.
ALL politicians and political activists worth their salt–regardless of their political convictions–are primarily interested in power. (If you don’t want power, then you’re content to be a blogger or even just a blog commenter.)
POWER is what politics is all about. Without POWER nothing gets done in Washington.
So I really hope that Romney is supremely interested in POWER. Otherwise either he won’t win the election, or he’ll be a passive weak President if he does.
We have a two-party system. Each party has to appeal to a broad range of interest groups and cultures (within the larger American culture), in order to get to 51% and keep 51% for years afterward.
That means that ideologues of either the Left or the Right are going to be perpetually disappointed. We’re still a CENTER-right country, not a right-wing country nor a left-wing country.
A conservative President who wants to shrink the size of government will always be constrained by all the voters who want to keep their favorite government programs intact. A liberal President who wants to vastly expand the size and reach of government will always be constrained by small businesses and individuals who resent micro-management from Washington and by taxpayers who resent soaring tax burdens.
These constraints work like an automatic pilot, making small corrections to keep the government satisfactory to a center-right nation. Any time the government moves too far to the left or the right, those constraints nudge it right back to center-right.
I agree with your basic premise. What bugs me, however, is the amount of damage done each time we shift from left to right or vice versa. As an analogy, our car may travel in the middle of the road *on average* but it often runs completely off the road, out of control, knocking down mailboxes and scaring pedestrians, before it swerves back toward the center. I’d say a lot of us worry that we won’t be able to recover from one of these excursions.
You’re exactly right – electing Romney (or any of the others for that matter) is not the solution to what ails us. But diagnosis is not treatment. What is to be done?
The fundamental problem is that governing has become the near exclusive domain of a political class whose interests have widely diverged from the public interest. This renders Constitutional checks and balances ineffective in preserving our freedom.
The government has long since lost the consent of the governed (less that 20% think if has their consent according to Rasmussen). We’re very close to answering Lincoln’s question, whether government of the people, by the people and for the people could long endure, in the negative.
These governing elitists are not dumb. They’ve become quite good at stealing the rest of us blind, at keeping us divided and diverted. And Big Party politics dilutes to impotence any “outsider” electoral efforts. Consequently the Tea Party with all its millions of strong adherents has made hardly a dent in the growth of government.
The remedy IMO is to give the People a direct say in their governing. This can take many forms. One way is popular initiatives and referenda. Many states and localities have these and they’re used effectively to keep governments in check. Just last week for example, the voters in my community turned down a very costly education proposal that would solve a hypothetical overcrowding issue by destroying and rebuilding four schools. The school board responded by releasing a snide statement “congratulating” another locality on approving some school bond or other. But the point is, they were stopped.
There’s no reason we can’t do this or something like it nationally.
I’m waiting to hear a reason to vote for Romney other than he is better than Obama.
Every reason is an isn’t. He isn’t a communist; he isn’t a racist; he isn’t an America hater. He isn’t a Muslim lover.
If you take away the isn’ts, Romney and Obama are twins: arrogant, big government, croney capitalist/fascist, big brother who knows better than you, unethical do-anything-to-win anti-democrat, power-mad power-tripper.
What Romney definitely isn’t is the person we need to put the country back on the right path. All he is is he isn’t Obama.
WEO,
I am a retired US Navy officer (7 years enlisted/16 years commissioned). NRA/VFW/AMVETS/DAV life member. Tea party conservative, defender of the Constitution. Lover of FREEDOM.
I humbly ask you to vote for Mitt. He is the Anti-Obama, and we need EVERY vote we can.
I believe that he is a good and decent man who listens to his advisers–whose heart is in the right place. He record indicates he will do the right thing. I have to have faith. And I ask you to have faith as well. Consider the terrible alternative.
Very respectfully,
Mike
I know what you’re saying Mike, but this Romney buffoon isn’t the anti-obama, he’s the pro-status quo.
Your reaction of tucking your tail between your legs and whimpering for another scrap from the table is a big part of what got us to the precipice in the first place.
Personally, I’m not thowing by weight behind a pack of thieves who are slightly less malovent than the other pack of thieves.
I may eventually decide to hold my nose, my balls, cover my family with a shotgun, grab my wallet for dear life and vote for the slightly less malovent Romney….but I’m damn sure gonna make them understand that the fire is coming, and it’s gonna come real quick if they don’t begin to act like responsible Americans instead of manicured vulture capitalists who just elbowed their way in to the really really big time nest of thieves and communists.
I agree with you. President Romney is a problem for fiscal conservatives but I have my eye on the Supreme Court. I pray that all of them can hold on until the next election. To give Obama one more opportunity to install another radical to the court is just an unbearable thought.
Great comments STALLION …
Dear VDH, I don’t think you are cynical enough to find the notion of Zimmerman as sacrificial lamb acceptable. I know I am not.
If he is guilty of something more than self-defense, let him be charged with it, tried and convicted. If he defended himself, he should not have been arrested, and all his arrest does is open him to endless harassing civil suits.
All of this troubles me: that we have a justice system so exquisitely tuned to racial politics that the fact that every single person is a minority of one has vanished; that the citizens of the United States have become so cynical that we read and write of these possibilities without crying out in furious outrage; and that our media believes that narrative trumps truth.
Well Dianna, you might be troubled by what you see and read, but this is the world we live in and we have no one to blame but ourselves. Yes, it sickens me to observe all this societal and political racial dis-functionality, but the train has left the station and I fear that it has achieved too much momentum and power and there is just not enough of us to change this train’s direction.
I don’t think it’s so much a matter that there aren’t enough of “us” to change the train’s direction but that of the fact that not enough people are willing to do what it takes. Most people have to be made to feel really uncomfortable to an extensive degree before they get up off the couch. JMO.
This is a terrific essay, spelling out the Left’s hypocrisy.
I too, “sat out” the Republican primaries, except to wince from time to time. I like the analogy of Custer’s men fighting amongst themselves. That’s what it felt like, in retrospect. We need to defeat this administration which has been corrupt and deceitful in both word and deed. They deserve to be booted out, based on their lack of performance on so many issues, it is hard to know where to start, or how to rank them in importance.
As Frank is a common name, you force me to reply. My primary here in California isn’t until June. By that time voting for a nominee is a waste. Yes, the criminal enterprise that is the Obama Administration needs to be booted. But no matter who may be elected in November, the stage has been set for civil turmoil.
If Romney is elected he will be a leader in the fashion of Karensky – liberal, accommodating, ineffectual, and transitional.
We are quickly approaching a time when elections, or political trials, won’t settle the issues. And that is precisely what the radical left wants.
France, anyone??
Besides the “handle” we have something else in common, we both live in states represented by liberal women Senators. In my case, Washington. Other than local and state races, there is no point in holding a presidential primary here. Nor is it worth having one in neighboring Oregon.
I think, at this point, about 10% of voters, at the most, are undecided about who they’ll vote for in November. We know a ton of lifelong liberal Dems who voted for Obama in 2008. They’re circumspect, for the most part about his lack of performance and the few I have personally asked if they plan to vote for him again, don’t answer. Instead, they point out what they see as a shortcoming of one of the Republican candidates. I guess this is a way of saying why they wouldn’t vote for (fill in the blank.) I haven’t spoken to anyone on this since Romney seemed to lock it up.)
I am waiting, but not holding my breath, for just one of these people to say, “Yeah, I made a big mistake voting for him.” Or something stronger.
I’m bored by all these predictions of what Romney is or isn’t going to do if he wins the White House. I’m tired of hearing how he flip flopped on this or that issue. If all that really mattered to the people who cast the votes, in the primaries, then he would NOT be where he is. What matters to me is that he has had some political AND business successes. He has run things in the public and private sectors, unlike our elected, community organizer.
I believe he understands trade, business and macro economics, unlike our elected Constitutional Scholar, to whom these subjects seem distasteful. I don’t give a damn if he’s a Morman. I’m not one, but I’ve known a number of them and all but one individual were straight shooters. Clannish yes, but that’s just the way they roll.
Correction, that should be Mormon.
Professor, Thank you so much again for putting our thoughts down in black and white and making clear what many of us believe but have trouble actualizing verbally or in print.
This is the best blog.
Gylippus is right. First, democratically remove Obama. Second, confront and act to limit America’s decline and the suicidal public debt and unfunded entitlements.
Another commentator at the Belmont Club Post “Hidden Hands” linked to this video If I Wanted America to Fail. As a sympathetic Canadian I think this video shows why Gylippus is right to be taking the actions that he describes.
The correct title of the Belmont Club post is “The Hidden Hand”.
There is a code for speaking to simpletons and imbeciles, and the Left is fluent in speaking that code. So, some will hear reasoned arguments and vote for those making them, but a multitude will go the other way and vote for Obama and Pelosi and their ilk.
“There is a code for speaking to simpletons and imbeciles, and the Left is fluent in speaking that code.”
Bingo, you sure did nail that one, Patrick! Meanwhile, I’ve been struggling around in the dark trying to describe that same Leftist tactic as involving, say, “the verbiage and other methods which specifically appeal only to the stupidest people around who can still manage to vote.” But alas, no contest!
Victor, I am sure you knew the score a long time a go, and your recent ‘awakening’ is merely a rhetorical device. Not to worry. You are absolutley correct in recognizing the effectiveness of the Romney response team. Every little whack at Romney should be immediately answered with a club. To play defense is to lose. Offense is the only effective defense. L’audace, toujours l’audace. NO MORE MR. NICEGUY. The media must be held accountable.
What is disappointing and a prescient indication of our future is not the puerile and heavy-handed Democrat politics, rather it’s the acceptance of those corrupt acts by the hoi polloi. The people, always and every time, get the gummint they deserve.
In fairness to ourselves, the dems have won mostly because of fraud. On our end we’re down to about 45% of the eligible voters who actually turn out to vote. We need all people to vote. It’s our duty.
But I’m also sick to death of the fraud. There’s no way Al Frankin whould be in congress. What a bad joke that is!
“There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always– do not forget this, Winston– always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face– forever.”
–George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
Or, in Belmont Club’s version: “Imagine a Croc sandal stamping on a human face forever” ;-)
Dr. Hanson, there is no question that the far left is driven by power almost exclusively. The evidence is overwhelming, as you have pointed out. Almost everything the left does, much more so than the right, can be explained by the need to acquire absolute power. All the far left’s dogma, when implemented fully would, and is, creating a forever dependent on the government class. Would anyone, once so indoctrinated, ever want their benefactors out of power? They have been told continuously that the government has to supply almost every basic human need. To not keep the far left in power would be, in their view, life threatening.
What seemed to be missing in Dr Hanson’s usual excellent coverage of any subject is any mention here of our Muslim/Islamic enemy’s penetration and infiltration of our society by “lawfare”, and how our Muslim-influenced president (low case “p” deliberate) has dealt with it.
Apparently the attorney general (low case deliberate) doesn’t need to be a Muslim sympathizer if his president continues the way he has so far. Scary.
In the end, and our own personal rear ends if we’re not careful, the democrat party’s red hot poker is poised to go even further up into darkness in November.
Somehow, we must mobilize to prevent Obama’s re-erection.
Well, the first thing we could try to do is get our “true conservative” friends to stop calling Romney Obama-Lite and such. Anybody who thinks that there is any ideological commonality between a Republican businessman and a Red Diaper Baby communist of the Alinsky/Trotsky school has watched waaaay too much Glenn Beck and done too little study of politics and rational thinking.
Likewise, anyone who thinks that a Republican House with a small majority can dictate the direction of the federal government doesn’t know enough about government to even vote intelligently. The only power the House has in the current circumstance is the negative power of refusing to fund programs. Unfortunately, if they do that, they quickly don’t have a friend in the World. Even Republicans who should support them, who scream “entitlement reform” and “smaller government” at the top of their lungs, curl into fetal postion from fear or outright aid the enemy when the Left and the media, pardon the redundancy, start talking about pushing granny off the cliff and starving/killing the children. Likewise, the House has no law enforcement authority, so the only thing it could possibly do to, say, Holder, or the GSA head is cut off their money with the same consequences in the media. And before some “true conservative” genius says “impeach,” sure, the House can impeach, but it can’t convict and a Democrat Senate WILL NOT convict a Democrat even if there were blood on the floor and a video of the crime. Two things inform the thinking of federal level Republicans: the failed government shutdown under Clinton and the failed impeachment of Clinton. I believe Republicans could win a government shutdown now that the Right knows more about what are basically union strike tactics, but it could only be won in the first year of a Presidential term and would cost some Republican seats in the off-year election. As much as I hated to see Boehner back down, he really had no choice; the Ds would have had grannies laying at the bottom of cliffs on the 6PM news the day the House cut off the money, and there would have been NO time to overcome the attack before the ’12 election. The Clinton Era failures are what made the Republicans in Congress into the free-spending, get along, go along Congress they became; they had a President who either on principle or because of his personal makeup wouldn’t defend himself or his programs, so the Republicans sought to placate the Democrats with spending in much the same fashion as Reagan kept the Democrats sullen but not mutinous. It didn’t work and cost the Republicans the whole government for two years and the Presidency for at least one term, maybe two if we can’t find some unity against the communist. And it may yet cost us the Country if the communist is re-elected.
Even if we get the Senate back, hold on to the House, and elect Romney, there is going to be a lot of Kerensky karma about the next Presidential term and everything has to be predicated on fending off what will surely be a furious attack by the bolsheviks. If we think the Left was venomous towards Bush, wait until you see what they can do to the people that launched a counter-revolution and threw out the black communist President.
Caligula and his minions will not go quietly into the night
Caligula gets a bad rap. You have to remember that the consumers of books in Roman times were the Senatorial class. Reading surviving Roman literature about the emperors is like reading the New York Times about President George Bush.
Art -
I stated the following in a previous post………
“Romney is cornered by our economic circumstances. The fiscal iceberg is not just on the distant horizon but close and directly ahead. He either steers our ship of state away from financial calamity or goes down with it. That means he abandons any liberal horseplay and takes the only course of action that can be chosen. And that course involves fiscal responsibility, the engine of free enterprise, and the reduction of government. Conservative values all. He has no other choice at this late (hopefully, not too late) date. Ironically, thanks to the insane crackpot currently at the helm the action of his successor is forced.”
I might add that a Republican (hopefully) congress is in the same situation. Do you not believe this to be the case?
Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the Democrats convinced at least 52% of our miserably ignorant electorate that they’d just been through the worst economy since the great depression under the evil BusHitler, when in fact it was probably the best economy any modern nation has ever had. Attempts to actually deal with our stratospheric debt and uncontrolled spending will result in a cascade of grannies off cliffs, there’ll be dying children on milk cartons, mommies dying of cancer because the evil corporatist USSC threw out ObamaCare and the partisan and mean-spirited Republicans in Congress didn’t do the “simple fix” of single payer and save all those mommies. Remaining Democrats in Congress will be even crazier and more leftist as the gerrymandered VRA districts get more and more homogenously Black and Democrat. It is going to be all Hell as they Democrats throw up every kind of pandering legislation they can think of, and Romney and the Republicans in Congress are going to have to starkly face losing their majority in the mid-term. Remember that’s how we got Medicare Part B.
President Reagan got the economy moving quickly enough that it could be felt by the ’84 election and even then if the Democrats hadn’t still been in disarray from the struggles between the Old Time Democrats and the new communist variety that might have been a very different election. It is going to take a deft hand to both do the things that thinking adults know must be done yet avoid succumbing to what will undoubtedly be a furious counterattack by the communists which might well result in their returning to power in Congress in ’14 and the Presidency in ’16. It is almost a guarantee of defeat in ’16 if SS/Medicare/Medicaid get modified unless there is some powerful communication, something Republicans haven’t been able to do since Reagan, and which Romney has given little indication of doing. We are going to live in interesting times.
When our massive debt causes economic disruption the left will benefit and the blame will fall on “speculators” and conservative politicians who try to stop the free money train.
Thanks for your reply (although at first I thought it was coming from Fran Striker) to my question. I feel strongly that this economy and the indicative stock market will roar with the defeat of Obama and the subsequent removal of ObamaCare. Accordingly, unemployment will drop rapidly. Those events could happen in the first months of a new administration. There is a couple trillion dollars sitting on the sidelines ready to jump into investment. Also, Democrats will see defections as those events unfold. That has happened in the past. Although the recipient class and the socialists will remain I take heart in the fact that even the average uninformed dolt has begun to realize that SS/Medicare/Medicaid programs are broke and that whatever savings they have in any form has been devalued considerably. They know the price of gasoline and the rising cost of food. They may even pick up on the fact that European economy is in the toilet. With that background I feel that the Republicans will have more room to work than we may believe is possible. The economic contrasts between administrations will be so stark that I can’t see the Democrats having an easy time of it. Remember, congress even now only has about a 13% approval rating. I think that there is a good chance things will go this way. I had better. But possibly not. Throw a war into the mix and all bets are off.
Here is all you need to know about Liberals:
1. Liberals seek to gain power in order to do what they want.
2. Liberals desire to do what they want in order to gain more power.
3. Every event and issue is viewed through the prism of how it can be used as a tool to advance items 1 and 2.
Rear-Colonel Blimp often soars high, of course, but sometimes, I fear, he does not think very deep. ¡¡POWER!! is certainly the whight answer, from the ScroogeBank point of view, but . . .
. . . well, ¿Which question does it go with, exactly?
We are vaguely solicited all the time to suppose, without evidence, that the fiend Barry thinks about regulating Ebenezer & Co. essentially the same way Governor Romney (’75) feels ’bout firin’ volks.
In theory, it could be that the POTUS of us all suffers from the dread HVSMBAES, “H*rv*rd Victory School M.B.A Envy Syndrome.” But the best guess is that poor Barry’s notions of Big Management are comparatively crude and childish, not amounting to much more than keeping all those scrumptious Powers that Richard Bruce Firstlord Cheney squirreled away in the basement “just in case” — without, that is, any proper case-method-based notion what sort of case that would be.
Happy days.
Sounds like the Stolen Teleprompter is turning on Its former boss. The sound of an idling bus can work wonders, even on stolen circuitry.
Hey, dba MegaDildo Jr. how are the prospects for “that job” as Mrs. President’s post election friend coming along?
One must reflect on the power and persuasiveness with which DBA postulates. His inventive name-calling is the work of true intellectual firepower, and must be taken seriously.
/sarcasm
McCain was “gracious” and “noble”?
Politics makes strange bedfellows, to strike a phrase.
In 2008, John McCain proved that a single person could still make a Manichean-like difference. I hold him responsible for the election of BHO, and was fast-furious with him almost as soon as he became the nominee, because he not only failed to play hardball by outing Obama’s turgid record, but also right up to election night did his best to keep anyone else from doing so.
Yes, McCain directly “voted” for Obama, so we can all thank him for the tiresomely predictable mess we’re now in.
See—truth matters!
Ah, for the olden days of law and order. On one side you have a party that’s for a rule of law BY MEN, and the other one is for the rule of LAWS, not man. Guess which is which?
I’ve studied the central and mostly unknown—I’d bet less than one in a million Americans have even heard of it—school of Buddhism, called Madhyamika. It uses the negative dialectic to destroy all the inconsistent and/or contradictory philosophies that try to preach ultimate knowledge.
In the west, the argument used is known as reductio ad absurdum.
Why McCain didn’t assemble a team of intelligent people who knew how to wield this weapon is a mystery for the ages. If ever there was a candidate with copious dirty laundry, it was, and IS, Obama.
By the way, the whole canard about “dirty campaigning” — exposing the TRUTH about one’s opponent, even using his own words— should be ITSELF exposed. The American people direly need a real education—the truth must come out of the closet.
As they say, Obama is target rich, beyond belief. If I were he, I’d wake up every day simply amazed about the pusillanimity of my political domestic opponents. Why, he could spend his entire day too shocked by this to get any work done—maybe that’s why he’s so incompetent.
Prediction—when he’s out of office, there will be a race by insiders to write a tell-all book with vivid details of his myriad executive/managerial failures.
Final prediction—Romney has already proven he’s no McCain. Those who NOW think the race is going to be close might take into account what power Mitt has: TRUTH.
In sports, winning being the absolute objective, a true fighter destroys his opponent as quickly as possible. A boxer, for instance, desiring both keeping his handsome face and emerging triumphant, if he could would land a single punch, say to the stomach, that took out his foe totally. At least, dancing and fighting—that is, proving to be un-hittable and unstoppable—long enough to cause his opponent to give up would be preferable.
Look for a truth reckoning, the likes of which a presidential election has never seen, in America. Truth is truth. Obama DID go to Wright’s church. If VDH can regularly regurgitate in tearful detail Obama’s past, why can’t the Romney team or his supporters do what McCain failed to do, and with gusto and humor?
Here’s a simple truth—if Obama were white, with his record, he’d be ALREADY known as the far and away worst president in history. Now there’s a racial nugget of TRUTH for you.
The real joker in the election deck is election fraud. If Obama is found to be on the losing side during the vote count, watch for a who bunch of previously undiscovered absentee ballots to materialize.
Obama and company already have that angle covered – they have arranged that the votes will be counted by a company in Spain, CYTL, in which Soros allegedly has a controlling interest. This compromises the process – instead of producing election results trackable at precinct level, votes will be impossible to go back and check their integrity at the local level. We need to see if this can be reversed, as it would render the true vote worthless, if allowed to stand.
Apparently many states now have voter ID laws in place, but no matter how carefully the voting was overseen, it would be to no avail if the actual counting of the votes could be tampered with, and that is a real possibility.
The truth about Comrade Obama is good enough. Obama can’t “arrange” how the votes are counted or who counts them. Votes are counted under state authority and depending on the state the count is conducted by local, county, or state organizations or combinations thereof. In my state elections are conducted by the Lt. Gov., in many others it is the Secretary of State, some elected, some appointed. Stealing elections at the state level was important enough to the Soros junta that they did mount an operation to buy Secretaries of States but had only mixed success. The only way that I know of to get federal supervision of an election is the USDOJ could render some finding that some state’s process was discriminatory and could assert control under the Voting Rights Act; possible but unlikely, even for a criminal like Holder.
The real problem we Republicans have is that we live in civilized places that have honest elections. Most of us really don’t understand the accepted criminality in the places under Democrat control.
The Obama administration has turned Orwellian double speak into an art form. But the war in Libya by far troubled me the most. Here we were, thrown into yet another Middle Eastern civil war, and the Obama administration didn’t have the stones to call it a war. They called it a “kinetic military action.” Remember that charmer? But if you were at the United Nations, they called it “a limited humanitarian intervention.” I can deal with all of the other double speak coming from our government (well, sort of), but I draw the line when it comes to matters of life and death and WAR.
Add to that the fact that Congress never approved of the war and never even voted to go to war, it makes for a very creepy scenario where we no longer have a president but a king, who seems to have the right to do what he wants to with our military. In addition, this “king” isn’t even listening to his own advisers. He seems tethered to that disgusting debating society known as the United Nations, preferring to do whatever they want rather than what our own Congress, people WE elected, decide to do. These are dangerous times, my friends, and if we don’t start going back to the Constitution and do things the way our Founding Fathers wanted us to do them, then we are in very deep trouble. The right to go to war rests with Congress, NOT the president, and the timid Congress should have enforced the War Powers Act to prevent our president from turning into a king. Hopefully, when Romney becomes president he will have a lot more respect for the Constitution. If not, we need to elect conservatives to Congress who will at least stand up for that institution, the way our Founders wanted it to be.
Good grief, if that is what troubles you he most, then (whew) we are in pretty good shape.
Thank you for the wake up call-again. It is frightening how much the far-left has infiltrated our society-especially our universities, government, media, etc.
Your article reminded me of the left’s switch in WW II when the Soviet-Nazi pact ended and the left went from not fighting WW II to a vigorous effort to fight WW II. It also reminded me of Ted Kennedy going from Chappaquiddick to the left’s great hero.
To me the questions include: where is the head of the snake to be removed? Where are the poison springs to be decontaminated? How do we wake up the public in the pot of slowly heated water before we’re cooked? What is wrong with our society that we have let this get so far? How do we overcome this new oppression? How do we neutralize the counter-revolution to our great revolution of 1776?
It’s a long time until the election … a long time in that so many things can happen by then.
Well, well dear professor — let me welcome you to the Ambrose Bierce world of cynicism. Mr. Bierce defined a cynic as — a black guard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Welcom Aboard!!
John.in.Georgia@25/
Add to the list that great Philosopher Lilly Tomlin: “I try to be cynical–but I can’t keep up.”
If I wanted America to FAIL……. BUT If you don’t, WATCH
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CZ-4gnNz0vc
A masterpiece, VDH. Truly one that should go viral.
The Propaganda and Lies Ministry (Palm Press) is not only one with the Left, but one with the hard Left, one with the radical Left, one with the seditious Left, one with the racist and anti-Semitic Left who despise the Judeo-Christians with a rage, ….they are one with the enemies of capitalism and the free market, they are one with the enemies of the military and law enforcement, they are one with the overthrow.
The Inversion Narrative says that they are peace loving and anti-war. They aren’t, they just openly root for our enemies.
The Inversion Narrative declares that they are tolerant, but the ONLY form of racism today that passes without comment, is acceptable and even “funny” is against whites, most acceptable being against conservative and/or southern Christians.
The Inversion Narrative suggests that the hard, radical, small c communist Left is for a race neutral society, but our own DOJ has people running it that openly state that civil rights laws and protections are not intended for whites.
The Martin/Zimmerman altercation is short on known facts, but long on known race baiters and hucksters. Did Martin have a recent history of slapping a bus driver for not letting him ride free? Did he become a burglar, using a flathead screwdriver to boost women’s jewelry that he was going to fence? Did he become a violent truant at school and a serial troublemaker? Was he actually casing houses and escape routes when Zimmerman caught him acting “suspiciously”? Did he assault Zimmerman in an unprovoked PHYSICAL attack, because he got caught casing houses with his flathead screwdriver and women’s jewelry already on him?
We don’t know, because the Inversion Narrative had already written that a “white Hispanic” (whatever that is), with a GUN, had racially “profiled” him and hunted him down. The Inversion Narrative doesn’t want Zimmerman to be Hispanic, it NEEDS him to be “white”. It doesn’t want him to defend himself, so it photoshops out his gashes on the back of his head, uses five year old photos of little Martin, and edits out words to intentionally mislead the audience….in the search for “truth” about racism in America and gun use.
There is no “mainstream media”, there IS a corrupt propaganda arm for the small c communist Left.
There are no “liberals” or “progressives” or “elite”…there IS a hard core, radical, small c communist Left.
Romney was not my first, second or third choice to lead the fight for the preservation of our freedoms. But those freedoms are the ONLY issue on the ballot in November…and we MUST PRESERVE THEM. The Constitution is under assault. The rules of our Senate are now non-existent. Our borders are unprotectable as it now stands. Our polling booths are unprotectable as it now stands. Our DOJ is more interested in suing our border states than protecting them. They are more interested in covering up abuses at polling booths than prosecuting them.
We have located the enemy, VDH. We must find the courage to confront them…and the smear campaigns against all who do …will be vicious. They are fighting for the overthrow. We…are fighting for our very lives.
Zimmerman wasn’t running guns to drug cartels, our DOJ does that. He was a watchman protecting his neighbors from violent burglars…for that, he may give his freedom, maybe his life to those who put a hit out on him. The first contract put out on him, came in the guise of the Inversion Narrative, from the propaganda and lies ministry itself.
Race was always his Ace. I think the narcissist in chief wants to preside over the second civil war.
Great thoughts, cfbleachers and VDH:
From “The Long Telegram”, from George Kennan in 1947, minister-counselor stationed in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, sent to the U.S. Treasury Department.. his report being “so strange to our form of thought…” he wrote:
• The USSR perceived itself at perpetual war with capitalism;
• The USSR viewed left-wing, but non-communist, groups in other countries as an even worse enemy of itself than the capitalist ones;
• The USSR would use controllable Marxists in the capitalist world as allies;
Soviet aggression was fundamentally not aligned with the views of the Russian people or with economic reality, but rooted in historic Russian nationalism and neurosis;
• The Soviet government’s structure prohibited objective or accurate pictures of internal and external reality.
Was Kennan mistaken, because this is actually the our Mainstream Inverted Narrative, isn’t it? ;)
It’s about time conservative fought back. I’ve spent 20 years watching them give ground over and over and getting nothing in return.
Take this fight to them and be merciless. You don’t even need to be nasty. just keep hammering away at their record.
We are just watching the same ugly show that we had already seen in Soviet Union and in all the other communist countries. With the difference that in there the totalitarians had to use violence to reach their propaganda goals.
This time they have conquered the (pseudo-)hearts and (pseudo-)minds of nearly all the journalists and teachers before getting into power, so the level of violence is (for now) relatively low. No big gulags, no tortures, no mental institutions for dissidents.
The nomenklatura can rape the economy, destroy the Country, erode Freedom, laugh at the Constitution without fear of a real backlash.
We have one election day, and if we lose, we will see more of the true face of the totalitarians. A lot more.
And the whole world will go to hell.
Let us pray.
Been praying since 1.21.09. unfortunately we are the prey. I personally believe the normalization process has been underway since the Clintons. Trouble is they can’t quite get all the way there until they snuff the last freely educated generation…timed perfectly with universal healthcare…am I being paranoid? Maybe. Gradualism at play, totalitarianism the goal, environmentalism the tool.
Oh how good this is! One big bone to pick:
Romney will get in “their faces” and “bring a gun to a knife fight.”
But Romney’s face is the mask of Janus, and the gun will fire blanks and he’ll fumble to find the safety. Yes, surely better than nothing, but the GOP/RNC will pay a heavy price for selecting a marionette like Romney. Maybe Romney is enough to oust the worst president in history but, really, you can say the same about a doorknob with ears.
Romney is the best the GOP can do? — well, it’ll serve as an epitaph for the GOP in 2016.
Breathtakingly brilliant
Another solid hit by Dr. Hanson, with an interesting take on the Romney’s “fight fire with fire” approach. I wish some things were different in Romney’s record, but I’ll tolerate that past because I know with absolute certainty that Obama’s goal is to pull in more power so he can more easily advance the collectivist’s abhorrent agenda.
Obama notes that Romney was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Well don’t worry because Obama is out to make sure nothing like that ever happens again in this country.
This is certainly no criticism of you, Mark, but Obama was misquoted carelessly. Sxxx happens.
http://volokh.com/2012/04/23/the-path-of-a-spurious-president-obama-quote/
Excellent article. We know the left is relentless as it shallow and will not be restrained this election year in its efforts to keep O in office. But it’s unlikely to be enough. Still, we worry that something might come along to help O and persuade the ‘low-information’ independents that he hasn’t been that bad a president.
I agree that Romney is likely to run a tough campaign. He understands that O and his minions must be removed or we are in very serious trouble.
As always, VDH’s essays are Thoughtful and provocative. So often, pundits have no historical view that they are myopic.
I do have a question: What does the Trotskyization of America mean? I have read history about the Red Revolution in Russia and its aftermath, but Trotsky is usually not too elaborated on, so a bit of expansion here would be helpful. Meanwhile, I will search the web and the virtual bookshelves for sources.
Thanks, B
Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, who changed his name to Leon Trotsky about the time that Vladmir Ilich Ulyanov changed his to Lenin, advocated a doctrine of “eternal revolution”. This was defined as constant attack on any and all “bourgeois elements” anywhere they might be found. Violence was a necessary part of the doctrine, as it both dramatized the “plight of the workers” and was considered “just retribution” against the bourgeoisie for their failure to join the revolutionary movement.
What this means in modern terms is that no matter what you give the left, they immediately demand more, with threats of “total destruction and revolutionary vengeance” if you don’t come across. And this is from the “mainstream” left. The extremists on that side will resort to violence even if they get everything they want, because their main desire is destruction. As Alfred said of the Joker in “The Dark Knight”, “some men cannot be reasoned with, or negotiated with; some men just want to watch the world burn”.
Many in these two categories tell themselves that “constructive destruction” is vitally necessary, because the old world must be utterly destroyed for the Utopian Brave New World to be born- with them as its eternal rulers, of course.
But for the most part, they are ruled by their medulla, the reptilian hind-brain which still operates on the basest instincts of a predatory animal. They want to rule, because they want to rule. They want to destroy, because they want to destroy.
They want to kill, because they want to kill.
clear ether
eon
What’s most important to any discussion of Comrade Obama is that most of the American communists, whether CPUSA or fellow traveller, and that would include Comrade Obama’s maternal grandparents and his mother, pretty much subscribe to the Trotsky school of communism over the “excessively bureaucratic” style the Soviets under Lenin and, especially, Stalin adopted. Saul Alinsky, whose disciple both Comrade Obama and Comrade Clinton are, was a Trotskyite. It isn’t coincidental that Comrade Clinton wrote her thesis on Alinsky and her illustrios husband has yet to give a credible explanation for his youthful sojourn in the Soviet Bloc. By the late ’90s my primary hornbook for dealing with public employee unions was Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” which book is an essential key to understanding today’s communists who call themselves Democrats.
There is an upside: When The One is defeated in November and a press conference the Left begins to object to a tactic or action the new press secretary can simply say: “You’ve already demonstrated that you don’t object to the tactic, you only object because it’s a Republican doing it.”
Agreed. It would apply to the press, a Democratic politician, or various political groups. We will have fresh examples to call on and, with the Internet it will be difficult for them to hide. But we will need to press the point. Recall Brian Williams criticizing Governor Brewer for wagging her finger at Obama, yet Williams had done the same to Bush? That was news only in the conservative Web-o-sphere.
An excellent summary of some of the major progresive hypocrisies exemplified during the Obama administration. But to me, the news isn’t that progressives/socialists are like this but rather that conservatives need to be constantly reminded of this fact. When socialists make a principled criticism, conservatives believe they have a legitimate complaint and take it at face value. How many hypocrisies must be demonstrated to conservatives before they see that socialists aren’t interested in principle, they are interested in winning? In actuality, the term I use to describe this aspect of socialist behavior isn’t hypocrisy but rather “partisanship masquerading as principle.” Please, conservatives, wake up and embrace the “fool me once” doctrine.
News junkies like me saw this during the 2008 campaign. For example, at the Saddleback debate, Obama used a strict constructionist argument against the Defense of Marriage Act. Yet he was clearly not a strict constructionist; he was simply making whatever argument he could to win the point. Regarding when rights were due to a fetus, he said it was above his pay grade; yet he didn’t feel it was above his pay grade to vote in favor of partial birth abortion. Again, say whatever it takes to win the point. He argues that Jesus would favor his redistribution philosophy, but if he sees the Bible as an authoritative source, what does it say about the sanctity of life and gay marriage? Again, use the “enemy’s” ideology against him even if you don’t believe it yourself. Recall that Obama is a disciple of Alinsky and that Alinsky isn’t at all about ideology, he is about winning at all cost.
Further evidence of the “winning is everything” attitude of the left is their stance on free speech. They hate Citizens United but favor the Fairness Doctrine and play with the notion of bailing out financially troubled newspapers. Hillary Clinton acknowledged the use of shame and peer pressure to control the public dialogue, and this is part and parcel of the politically correct speech that now dominates the news media and university campuses. They lie in wait for a conservative to say something they can use against him, and immediately pounce by calling for his firing or a boycott against him; both of which I consider legalized extortion. They shout down conservatives at public events rather than engaging in an exchange of ideas. Through critical theory, they promote the thesis that prejudice is deeply and subconsciously ingrained in our culture and that, therefore, some forms of speech should not be allowed because it promotes prejudice. Sound incredible? Check out the hate speech trials in Europe. Win at all cost; don’t debate, conquer.
The naiveté of conservatives is even more troubling because socialists have been so for decades. Hayek told us (“The Road to Serfdom”) that to socialists, information and science should serve the political agenda; they embrace censorship. Levin (“Ameritopia”) reminds us of this in his examination of Marx and it was also a theme in “Atlas Shrugged”. In the 1950′s Aron (“Opium for the Intellectuals”) talked about the exact same kinds of hypocrisies on the left that we see today.
I implore fellow conservatives to take off our principled blinders, learn this lesson once and for all, and see socialists as they are.
If people saw socialists and their ilk for what they really are, slaughter would ensue. And it would be self-defense.
“We surely must assume that Warren Buffett has never had problems with the ethics of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc….”
Two words which should always be associated with Saint Warren: Kirby Vacuums.
Kirby sells high-priced vacuums not through WalMart or Target or Macys (where they’d have to deal with professional buyers) they sell them door-to-door to the elderly and to the lower middle class.
Google “Kirby Vacuums” to get some idea of their nasty methods.
ABC did an expose a few years ago but they failed to mention that Saint Warren is the ultimate owner who personally benefits every time some poor old person pays in excess of $1000 for a Kirby vacuum.
(Unlike the typical CEO who holds a minuscule percent of their company’s stock, Saint Warren is one of the planet’s richest because he owns an enormous chunk of B-H.)
It’s all about power for some, but not all of the liberal scum.
For those who have conned their way to the top of the pyramid of criminal enterprises, it IS all about power, and money.
But for many others in the sewer, it’s simply about greed. It’s easier to steal your money abettted by the government mafia than risking breaking into your house to do it.
And for many in the intellisgensia, it’s about ego. They absolutely know they are smarter than scum like you and don’t mind in the least supporting vermin who like to use them for their own devices.
And there is also a tiny slice that is simply brainwashed. There aren’t many, but some people actually do believe the propaganda that the criminals shovel into their brains 24 hours a day. I know some like that. They never give a passing thought to how they have been manipulated.
9th Circuit Upholds Voter ID Law April 18, 2012
http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2012/04/9th-circuit-upholds-voter-id-law/
Thanks, Wash, always great to receive good news.
Think of life as a learning experience, which is what science and the arts do.
In politics and religions we get promises of a happy end state of eternal satiation.
Unfortunately, life’s tuition is the butcher’s bill, and the question is how much punishment we want to take and dish out before wisdom is obtained.
I am so glad to see the Republicans take off the gloves and refuse to travel the high road to defeat as we have done too many times in the past. One can only play “a gentleman’s game” when dealing with another gentleman, and as history has shown us (again and again), the Left is the back alley street fighter, not abiding by any Queensbury rules.
Speaking up IMMEDIATELY would have nipped the “global warming-climate change-tree hugging” nonsense in the bud. “Silent Spring” was based on faulty science, and the scientific community knew it, but the general public did not. Democrats saw a way to control comfort and growth and innovation and embraced it with faked pictures of stranded polar bears, natural occurrences like icebergs melting, and studies with “engineered results” to stoke their theories that the toilet paper we use, light bulbs we buy and cars we drive are “killing” the planet.
Conservatives said nothing and the EPA’s rules and regulations are crippling EVERYTHING (explaining why it has taken 10-plus years to erect a memorial to the lives lost on 9/11/01).
An excellent column, Mr. Hanson. Thank you.
What if — what if the nation were in the hands of people who were ashamed of the USA and wanted to bring it down many pegs. How accomplish that? Destroy the economy, thereby lowering the standard of living for most Americans. But not the standard of living of the insiders. Betcha President Obama is influenced by radicals like Bill Ayers. What does a radical want? Rooting out the existing order. This is not to say that the President would bring us socialism or communism. Just a system providing, quoting the opening sentence in Federalist No. 57, the “ambitious sacrifice of the many, to the aggrandioziement of the few.” The quoted words are, for me, a pretty good definition of “aristocracy.”
I am not confident that Romney will not self-destruct before November 6. I do pray that conservatives will have the wit and wisdom to realize that the left is, indeed, working to uproot our founding legacy and bring us back to the aristocratic mindset. Rally round Federalist No. 57, conservatives — you have nothing to lose but government of, by and for the people. (Oh — consider, too, that where aristocracy reigns, the Statue of Justice does not have a blindfold, and her scales are tilted.)
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples’ liberty’s teeth.”
- George Washington
versus
“As a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms. But just because you have an individual right does not mean that the state or local government can’t constrain the exercise of that right, in the same way that we have a right to private property but local governments can establish zoning ordinances that determine how you can use it.”
- Barack Obama
Agreed. Even states don’t have the right to violate constitutional rights which many are doing.
Now find me the date and place when George Washington made said remark…and I’ll vote for Romney. If not, then you’ll agree to vote for Obama; OK?
D-White, you’ve already gone Romney. Or did you forget your pledge? That pension must be getting thinned out. Inflation. Printing money. Mr. President… Love rejected. Rather than a pound of flesh, your dog. Tax. More. More. Fair. Game.
D-White, but then again, aren’t you all But? Is there any Maybe there too?
Pick It!
Killed the czar and his ministers…
“D-White, you’ve already gone Romney. Or did you forget your pledge?” Did I say that? Good grief, what was I thinking? It is so hard to lie down with either the goofy left or the goofy right. Doesn’t seem to bother you though. What an amiable guy!
Too bad that the “liberty teeth” quote is bogus. There are any number of better, and true, quotes from the founders to maker your argument. (cf http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2008/06/liberty-teeth-g.html)
Yes, the left is fueled by gullible ignoramuses…and they are going to be held in check by OUR gullible ignoramuses: ;-)
http://frankwarner.typepad.com/free_frank_warner/2008/06/liberty-teeth-g.html
Here is the full text of the firearms “quote” regularly attributed to the Father of Our Country:
“Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence. The church, the plow, the prarie wagon, and citizen’s firearms are indelibly related. From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and the pistol are equally indispensable. Every corner of this land knows firearms, and more than 99 99/100 percent of them by their silence indicate they are in safe and sane hands. The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference; they deserve a place with all that’s good. When firearms, go all goes; we need them every hour.”
Alarm bells. Here is what “Pious Frauds” found:
This quotation, sometimes called the “liberty teeth”quote, appears nowhere in Washington’s papers or speeches, and contains several historical anachronisms: the reference to “prarie wagon” in an America which had yet to even begin settling the Great Plains (which were owned by France at the time), the reference to “the Pilgrims” which implies a modern historical perspective, and particularly the attempt by “Washington” to defend the utility of firearms (by use of statistics!) to an audience which would have used firearms in their daily lives to obtain food, defend against hostile Indians, and which had only recently won a war for independence. The “99 99/100 percent” is also an odd phrase for 18th century America, which tended not to use fractional percentages. It’s clear that “Washington” is addressing “gun control” arguments which wouldn’t exist for another couple of centuries, not to mention doing so in a style that is uncharacteristic of the period, and uncharacteristic of Washington’s addresses to Congress, both of which exhibited a high degree of formality.
According to “Pious Frauds,” Playboy Magazine used this quote in December 1995 and was forced to retract it in March 1996. (Somebody reads Playboy?)
“Bogus Founder Quotes,” a gun rights Web page, also warns against using this very dubious Washington “quote.”
If I recall correctly, the Great Plains were owned by Spain at the time. New Orleans and the Louisiana Territory had been French but got transferred to Spain after some peace treaty or other; Napoleon got them back shortly before he sold them to the U.S.A. But I may be wrong, at any rate about the dates and possibly about whether Spain got more than just New Orleans, so you should check this.
Since Marx, morality is defined in political terms. For the Left the “good”, “right” “truth” itself is what enables them to obtain or maintain power. Remember what we call morality is merely a device the Ruling Class uses to oppress women, minorities, etc.
In 1940 Fascism was good because Nazi Germany was allied with the USSR. A few months later after German invaded Russia Fascism became evil. Read the Leftist press at the time–their flip flops and rationalizations are hilarious.
This is silly. The “left” is not suddenly pro all that Bush-crap just because Obama has continued and expanded it. We are categorically against it and decry Obama for his continuation. It’s just that, in the corporate media you never hear from the left, just the Democratics who are simply in it for the party.
However, the left does recognize that a McCain presidency would have been just as bad, and probably far worse, in this realm but without an Affordable Care Act, Lilly Leadbeter Act, etc. Going forward, Romney does not decry any of the actual freedom losses (4th, 5th, and 6th amendments) so voting for him will change none of that but will attempt to reverse those few good things Obama has accomplished.
Name any. Obamacare IS NOT an accomplishment. It will end as a detriment to society, period.
Then why aren’t you stupid lefty punks out screaming in the streets and howling for war crimes trials like you did all the way through the Bush Administration? You’re simply a stupid, lying lefty punk who needs to find some other place to play where there are people who care what you think.
Oh please. While it is impossible to say how things would have turned out under McCain, some reasonable speculation is possible. We would not have had the ruinous Dodd-Frank. And I agree that Obamacare is not an accomplishment. Neither is the Lily Ledbetter act. The Keystone pipeline would be under construction. Recall that the GOP had a plan for dealing with the recession that, according to White House economic models, would have created twice the jobs for half the money. That would have been the model McCain would have used instead of the disastrous spending of Obama’s economic recovery act. Also, Obama has increased federal government some 20% – do you think McCain would have done that?
There certainly would have been no Operation Fast & Furious under McCain, because;
1. McCain would never have said anything as idiotic as “90% of all guns used in crimes in Mexico come from U.S. gun shops”.
2. Eric Holder wouldn’t be Attorney General of the United States.
As such, there would be no covert BATFE operation to flood U.S. commercial small arms into Mexico, so as to prove that the President’s dogma-induced delusion was reality.
I’ve come to the conclusion that this was the initial objective of F&F, by the way. The choice was between
A. Spending huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, violating U.S. and Mexican laws seven ways from Sunday, and risking the deaths of innocent civilians and law enforcement officers on both sides of the border, or
B. Asking the Messiah to admit that he said something stupid.
Well, what did you expect from an administration that operates on the principles of a religious cult?
clear ether
eon
You know, the whole Lefty story on Lily Ledbetter is a lie. They try to convince the idiots that can actually vote for Democrats that somehow that law had something to do with the woman’s pay. All it was was a relaxing of the standards for timeliness of filing an Equal Pay claim. The law originally said you had to file within 180 days of becoming aware that you were being paid less than someone similarly situated because of your membership in a protected class, in this case a female. There was pretty good evidence that Ms. Lily knew or should have known at least 6 years before she filed and was given her 15 minutes of fame by the Democrat panderers.
Having been through the nightmare of trying to defend against stale fraudulent claims for overtime, I’m here to testify that every day older a claim gets, the harder it is to deal with. The actual thrust of the law is something like the labor arbitration doctrine of a “continuing violation” as a way to get around timelines in union grievance procedures. So, latches, waiver, detrimental reliance and other such equitable defenses can be evaded by saying that even though you sat on your rights for years, so long as the alleged violation of your rights continues, timelines and filing limits are waived. PITA.
Perfect! The cynicism of the left is eating the core of the U.S..
VDH, how about an article on the left in CA with One Bay Area? Property rights as you know are being destroyed with the concentrated stack and pack housing with mass transit to nowhere. Let’s out this tenement style housing for everyone except the very rich in CA..
Excellent, excellent piece. The only upside to the sorry state of our Union is that folks like Dr. Hansen get to shine when commenting on said sorry state.
Your piece is nonsense. If it were true the peace demonstrations would have disappeared as soon as the Dems were in power.
Really? How many peace demonstrations do you see now? They don’t give a crap about our troops, they just hate soldiers and republican presidents!
Jeebus…turn your sarc sensor on.
When Right is wrong and the Left is right, when all is about color and brown becomes white, when the good guys are bad and the bad guys are good, when a president becomes a messiah and punks rule the hood, when liberty is denied and tyranny takes hold, the Republic’s in danger, time to lock and load. Be prepared, be vigilant and above all pray, come the sixth of November it’s Judgement Day.
In 2012 we will learn whether there is a year 5 or 2013
Bravo, Dr. Hanson! I have yet to find a more succinct summary of the choice we face. And by ‘choice’ I refer not to the clown-circus farcial choices of this electoral season, but rather to the fate of our own unique Western civilization, of which America was the pinnacle. My use of the past tense is deliberate, as the issue is very much in doubt.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s landmark The Gulag Archipelago serves as a chilling guide guide to where this power-lust can lead. I recall this quote from “From Under the Rubble,” from the essay As Breathing and Consciousness Return – October, 1973. Speaking about Russia as it existed then, Solzhenitsyn said,
Long, low whistle on that one. But why? And to what end? I think that another one of the 20th century’s great writers understood the nature of that “pure, naked, smirking evil” and its ultimate aims all too well:
That’s the triumph of the Will to Power in all of its malignant narcissistic glory, as Eric Blairs, writing under the pseudonym of George Orwell, described with merciless clarity in 1984. From all indications, he was off by only a couple of generations. The true horror is to now watch this nightmare unfold under our very eyes. People need to wake up and smell the killing fields that inhabit the imaginations of the monsters who currently dwell in the White House.
Stripped of all of its pretensions, the ultimate aim of those driven by the will to power is to harm others and to do so without consequence. They are monsters – killers without conscience. All of them.
There will be only one way to stop them.
Thank you for linking to the fantastic essay.
I have forwarded it to many people.
The unfettered pursuit of power by the left is aimed at achieving the control of a minority over the rest of us. It has just about succeeeded. One of the results is that our society entertains all manner of fantasies (wind and solar energy), fetishes (get rid of hydrocarbons), and meaningless distractions (Plame). I suspect but cannot prove that a society that does not confront and debate the real problems it faces (e.g., government spending out of control) is going down.
Mr. Hanson is directly on point as usual. The Corzine bundling scandal is nothing short of mindbendingly spectacular hypocrisy on a level I previously thought unimaginable. It would be as if Romney began taking donations from the Madoff’s and then to go unreported by the MSM. Yet, here we have the spectacle of the left and the MSM looking the other way as Corzine continues to bundle for the President. As Hanson clearly explains, one no longer has to wonder why the howls at ‘the mere appearance of impropriety’ are utterly absent and that the obvious ‘quid pro quo’ of a pardon for dollars that is clearly and transparently in the works is not even getting a nod from the media. It’s all about power, control and a contempt for the common man.
VDH deserves credit for being one of our most learned and observant social critics. However, he always spends a lot of expository effort on hypocritical behavior by democrats. Hypocrisy is not a huge sin, on its own. Underlying ethics beliefs and policies are much more important in selecting leaders, governors and regulators. It is, of course, infuriating that conservatives are punished so often for hypocritical actions and liberals almost never are. This is certainly much more a function of liberal control of the media than it is anything else. Unfortunately, hypocrisy polls as one of the highest negative traits in the eyes of likely voters. Personally, I think focusing on the outright lies and non-stop deceptions of Dear Leader get more mileage in the long run. Lying and deceiving are more serious faults than hypocrisy and people are less forgiving of them. Lies and deception leak out of the alternate mediate in more complete memes and are harder to ignore than mere hypocrisy, which is situational more than it is premeditation.
Good night, America.
Why do these ‘reporters’ accept their serfdom so uncritically? Why do they defend their lords so passionately?
Because the ‘reporters’ are the lords. Don’t you get it?
No one likes a bully and I think Romney knows how to stand up against a bully– he’s showing that he can fight back, simply, effectively, presidentially and then return directly back to the issues of the economy, jobs, energy, leadership and problem-solving. If Obama wants to bring a dog into the fight, so be it- handle it back with humor. If Obama wants to bring trash talk against women, Ann handles it with 17 words. Romney says, Obama is a nice guy but one we can’t afford. Obama is not a nice man. Nothing is ever his fault, he’ll throw anyone under the bus even his grandmother for political gain and say one thing and do another. He attacks viciously — from Joe the Plumber, to the Cambridge police, the Catholic church, etc. We need to hire a President who wants to and can solve the problems, not one who just complains and blames. Personally, I’d rather have a successful person be President than the unsuccessful one we have now.
It was actually Sarah Palin who led the way in this new Republican approach– she fought back and didn’t back down from her principles, our principles. She used humor, facts and she listened to the people giving them a voice. She got hammered, her family was hammered, she made mistakes but still she fought on for what she believed in. The left did not crush her and they tried very hard. Romney has his own style, but is showing signs that he too has learned how to fight back effectively. That gives me a glimmer of hope that the tide can change.
Blah, blah, blah. For Pete’s sake we know what the left is. Over and over we read the vivisection of the left, but nobody will write or talk about how we are going to take the nation back.
Even if Mitt wins the WH, do any of you here think Zero will go peacefully? If the left can get blacks in an uproar over a thug being killed, in what may be self defense, think about what they will do with an impending Zero defeat and the loss of the Senate?
Are any of you here ready for a race or civil war? What will you do to defend our nation?
And if Mitt wins and we take the Senate, there is still the government bureauracy which is unionized and left, state governments, colleges, our legal system and the LSM. What do you think they will do with nothing to lose to either take back the nation or cause it to die by violence? Will you meet their violence? Will you stop buying products that support the left? Will you organize against the left and perhaps take up arms? I doubt it. We’ve had several decades to stop the left and we didn’t do a thing.
All we do is analyze.
Well, some of us have been investing in precious metals, brass and lead, for some time now.
Shack, Lead! It was always only about the power. The will to power is now the Democrat party’s defining characteristic.
As talented as they are, at times I’m almost as frustrated with Dr. Victor Hanson and cfbleachers as I am with Eric Holder and the anointed one.
I wait like a cat waits to be fed.
Rachel waits for words that convey this thought to flow from their pens.
That…
Barack Obama and his leftist bunch of cherry red progressive neo-com hypocrites possess every conspiratorial intent on earth to run this great nation right into the ground. Why? For their own particular leftist Van Jonesian ideologies, and aggrandizement.
But these are Rachel’ words and conclusions. I want to hear it from Victor and cf. Because their words carry a lot more weight than a girl’s.
Cf and Victor analyze what’s going on so effectively, explain it so eloquently, write with such style, shedding brilliant disinfectant light on the leftist hypocrisy that America faces on what seems to me an almost daily basis.
To me, ObamaHalftruths and full fledged lies, along with traitorous actions come with the daily frequency of the 7:15 AM out of Manhasset.
But as masterful as they’re written, cf and Victor never tie their treatises with the ribbons of honest-to-goodness conclusions. I want the red meat, guys. Obama’s up to no good. In fact, he’s nothing short of contemptible.
Are they afraid how it’ll sound? Afraid of people making fun of them?
Here’s what I’m talking about.
Guys, admit what all your marvelous words add up to.
This nation is being led by bandits.
It’s being ruled by leftist inspired miscreants.
The scum of the earth; traitors, liars, misfit hypocrites all who love money and power and hate the freedoms this country stands for; Barack and his despicable bunch find themselves occupying the most sacred address in this nation: 1600 Pennsylvania. They’re desecrating it.
Openly and obnoxiously, they break our laws on the one hand, and the next day refuse to enforce others. Voter intimidators the Black Panthers are not. Or so Eric and Obama say. Voter ID’s, of course, are unconstitutional. Victor lists numerous other contradictions of logic and law committed by the Obama administration seemingly with machine gun rapidity.
Victor, please, go a step farther.
Admit that Barack and his cabal of liars, tax cheats, looters, lawbreakers, misfits, frauds, hypocrites, pedophiles, embezzlers, Communists, terrorists, thugs and traitors represent the worst this country have ever had in elected office.
Use your wonderful words of wisdom to describe to what horrid extent these pitiful examples of human decadence, divisiveness, disunity, dissension, not to mention class warfare, are determined to being this nation to its knees, and, in the process, make the people of this nation suffer like they’ve never suffered before.
Scienter. It’s a good word. Please consider using it.
Obama intends to kill the American Dream.
To make sling shots our only legal weapon of choice. To see our citizens fight for food and water.
To lower our standard of living until it’s ground level. To turn the best medical delivery system in the world into one that would make any well-intentioned doctor in his right mind throw up.
To deflate the value of our money till it’s virtually indistinguishable from that of the Confederacy. Neuter our military till we’re virtually defenseless. Sell our nation’s defense secrets to the highest bidder. See our allies vaporized. And horrible attacks visited on American soil.
cfbleachers and Victor Hanson. I feel it’s time you dove into the true reality of Obama’s scienter.
The Obama administration, along with their Joseph Goebbels type ministers of propaganda (the mainstream media) are out to tear freedoms’fabric asunder; the U.S. Constitution to shreds.
I see Barack Obama as evil incarnate. His actions scream it. If I could, I’d scream it from the mountaintops.
I guess there’s a little Howard Beale in all of us.
I take a different perspective Rach. There are a lot of eloquent writers (yourself included) exposing the radical Marx-Alinksy roots of the Dem cabal. And national figures too. Glenn Beck’s message was hugely popular. Top Radio hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Savage…) spend a lot of time explaining their statist agenda, and their totalitarian methods.
Basic strategic doctrine says that you always want to present a multi-faceted front to your enemy. It makes it harder for him to respond. Therefore I think there is ample of room for the kind of staid, formal, methodical analysis that the Good Doctor provides. Some people’s minds snap shut once you start throwing around charged words like I do! Others, like you and merespond to it, because we know what we see and we’re impatient with those who equivocate. Either way I think VDH is doing the nation a great service by patiently educating the fence-sitters, the “centrists”, the “moderates” and the many Americans who ignore politics except in the most superficial ways.
After a while, the contradictions, lies and hypocrisy he exposes from so many angles, begin to speak for themselves.
Stay passionate, and spread it is much as you can, but there is a room for many approaches. Our center of gravity will soon begin to mass and condense and then you will see that in the balance, we will benefit from the diversity in our ranks.
Sorry. Anon. was me
Albeit VDH is more inclined to beat around the bush, CFB hasn’t minced words. He has been accused by some of “whining.” Anonymous does have a point about how some people will shut you out when “charged words” are thrown out. Obama is truly the epitome of pure, unadulterated, unabashed evil IMO; this as a fact is literally too much for many to handle, particularly those who voted for him in ’08. It’s very disturbing to me that due to being an AA POTUS, Obama has been shielded from the consequences of his horrid deeds that a white POTUS would not have been spared from. The bitter lesson here that I am not at all sure enough people have learned is that no one based on AA should be allowed to serve as the leader of the most powerful country in the world (actually shouldn’t be allowed to lead ANY country).
vdh isn’t the problem. at least he speaks out.
Romney and the moneybag republicans he represents are the problem. Despite vdh’s hopeful observation that Romney has a rapid response team, the odds of panty waist rejoinders about eating dogmeat as a child will be about as effective as the Belgian army was against the Nazis. “maybe maybe Romney has a backbone when he doesn’t have the overwhelming asset advatage. Yeh, that’s the ticket.”
This is so obvious, it hardly bears saying….yet it is the infitesmally thin reed the entire conservative nation is currently clinging to after being snookered and overwhelmned by the “good” moneybag scum and the sneering sychophant Ann Coulter.
McCain was a better candidate than Romney. At least McCain has one or two conservative convictions and an occasionlly sharp wit. Romney has money to club people to death with who don’t have money or a lapdog press to amplify the bashing (which isn’t obama’s problem, by a long shot).
Bye bye country.
“Some people’s minds snap shut once you start throwing around charged words like I do!” Bingo!
And you know why? Because the world is full of people who have more passion than brains, and when their arguments are not heeded, they become more passionate, but never any smarter. They fear perspective, because it dulls passion, and hints that quite possibly this is NOT the end of the world as we know it…either way. So it goes.
“…people who have more passion than brains, and when their arguments are not heeded, they become more passionate, but never any smarter.”
This perspective is typical input coming from someone who deems anyone else with a different perspective as not as smart, but NTS this is not necessarily so. The voters were literally led down the proverbial primrose path with regard to the election of Obama in ’08. We will get to see whether or not the bitter lessons have been learned this upcoming November.
“…either way. So it goes.”
Such an incurable Passionate Pick It Fence sitter.
But. “…never any smarter…”
Im not talkin’ about the kind of clothes she wears…
What a load of carp, Dwighty. And yes, ‘carp’ is intentional, as your supercilious attempts at triangulation stink on ice.
Thank God you never ‘taught’ any of our kids.
Careful Mr. Dorrity and Mr. Beloit. Don’t leave any identifiable mental bruises on D-White. He’s scheduled to appear at a rehab party for those who went hook line, sinker and wallet for Mr. President in ’08.
Sometimes when agitated, he goes off about John Adams and the Constitution. You know what that’s like. Keeping him focused on reality is difficult, and his recitation at the rehab party of “Singin’ in the Rain” may be his last chance at maybe, just maybe, maybe, being relevant.
Assuming we have another election, I fully expect that post-election, a disheveled and disconsolate Mr. Dwighty will be standing on a street corner somewhere with a shopping cart full of trash and recyclables, shouting authentic ‘moderate’ gibberish at cars and passers-by.
“…, but never any smarter.”
Hell, either way the next election goes, I’ll be happier than you. My carping can’t hold a candle to yours. Remember, I’m moderately happy, but just bemused by you charged word folks. Why in earth would I be disconsolate after the next election with EITHER outcome? You, on the other hand, apparently think it will be the end of the world as we know it, should Candidate O win.
Wow, nice chromed shopping cart there D-White. No wonder you will be “happier than you”. But! D-White, with all due respect, the Street Corner gig rehearsals don’t begin until after the election. However, rote learning is the hallmark of the Children’s Prison System, so maybe, just maybe, you’re be at the head of the Shopping Cart Class of ’13. Experience.
The “bemused” look is good, non-threatening OWS, and the “moderately happy” attitude highlights at least one Mr. President’s successes. And who the “Hell” is “Candidate O”?
“Why in earth would I be disconsolate after the next election with EITHER outcome?”
True. Channeling the Pick It Fence. Really, one wonders, again, if the Fence found you and crammed itself and took over, or if you just sat on it so that “I’ll be happier than you”.
Been dazed and confused for so long…
A humble (or is it an humble) request of you Dwight. Would you mind answering two questions? First, is it a good thing for the American people to have to pay Europe-style prices for gasoline? Second, is it your understanding that the Obama administration desires that Americans pay Europe-style prices for gasoline and have acted accordingly?
Thank you in advance for your consideration.
They are politicians and certainly would prefer lower gas prices around election time. I assume that you have followed the O’Reilly “expose” with the former CNN guy, whose name escapes me at the moment, regarding the high price of oil. Two of the major causes are exportation of “our” oil to China and others and speculation. My general position is that we should use “our” oil last, after we have consumed the ME oil at cheaper prices. Eventually we will and should drill baby drill, but not necessarily full-bore right now. But what do I know?
Did you see Frontline last night on the financial crisis? I will grant you that they soft-pedaled the role of Fannie and Freddie and there was not really anything new, but the general picture became clearer to me about how the lack of transparency for the default credit swaps, which had been fought for so energetically by all banking interests is what directly contributed to the freefall. Few (and I mean people who should know) knew just how riddled with toxic stuff so many institutions had become. JP Morgan, which had originated the concept, (for institutional, not mortgage risks) had actually backed off, because they realized how easily the magic, new procedure permitted institutions to pretend that they had their obligations covered, when actually they were not close to having them covered. By the way, Obama had a mole in all the negotiations, which permitted him to talk like a guy who knew what was going on when the sh*t hit the fan, whereas McCain was pretty much clueless and made a terrible impression, even on his fellow Repubs in that big meeting.
To me, it was just one more example of the boom-bust cycle with its always new permutations. What makes any boom so appealing is also what eventually brings on the bust. That is a law which transcends left and right. Taxpayer money bailed out the banks that were too big to fail; it was even forced on Wells Fargo, and GWB and Obama did pretty much the same thing, because it did not seem as if they had any choice. The free marketeers were forced to grovel and when faced with the choice of socialism…or the dissolution of all markets, chose socialism, permitting Rush & Co. from then on to bray about Obama’s socialism.
When Benjamin Randall, a farmer, who lived a few miles from me complained during the ratification of the Constitution that the monied, elite interests would be forever entrenched by the sublime document, he was clearly right, but history was going in that different direction and probably always will, as long as we have a free society.
Whether we are paying $5 a gallon or $5 a litre for gasoline, the monied interests will be getting rich. I suppose that there is some security in that, if we can afford to buy Exxon or Apple stock…at the right time, not the wrong time. Cheers.
I am hoping (against hope) that Romney will eschew the Republican fear of not being popular in the New York Times. Mr. Romney: the Times will try to seduce you by playing nice, then attempt to crush your every breath. It has worked for decades and look at where we are: nearing moral and financial bankruptcy. Of the media, only MSNBC is honest: it is the far-left mouthpiece of the Progressives. And for the rest of you America-loving voters: invest in your future, invest in Romney and conservative members of Congress. Yes, keep your nose to the grindstone (the government won’t pay YOU, only left-wing “activists”) but pay and stay in the fight against unions, trial lawyers, George Looney and Barack Obama. They want to own you and crush freedom and free enterprise. Donate and talk to everyone, convince only one person about how dangerous the Progressive agenda is, and we — America — will win.
No one knows what happened between Treyvon Martin and Robert Zimmerman in the moments before the fight, but I suspect it went down something like this:
http://newsone.com/2004070/mob-beats-white-man-unconscious-thats-justice-for-trayvon-martin/
Except that in this story, the man didn’t have a gun while he was being beaten nearly to death and hospitalized with severe head injuries by people who were initially unarmed.
Good analysis. I particularly liked the part about the “war room” campaign, especially regarding the tax returns. I’ve been saying this forever: If Obama keeps demanding the tax returns, Romney should calmly point out that he’s already released the most recent years, but if it’s that important, Romney will release one year of tax returns for every year of college transcripts that Obama releases (and Romney can throw in his own transcripts, as he has nothing to hide). That would put a stop to this very quickly.
don’t hold your breath
The answer to your questions ladies and gentlemen is:
There are now only a few good Men & Women. And those that were THERE (D.C.) did not respond. The future is before “US” in Wisconsin & Walker. That is “High Noon” I’m an Arizonan I contribute to Walker I suggest you do also. By By “6″ in 2013?
I had to laugh at the professor’s concern that we would be upset with him for his neutrality in 2008. Who wasn’t neutral in that GOP primary season? McCain is, on balance, an asset in the Senate, even if he does have a passion for Gangs. But I wasn’t interested in him as president, nor did Romney or anyone else thrill me. Sarah Palin gave the ticket some oomph after the convention, of course.
May we learn well from all this the proper place of government and politics in our lives, and stop looking for salvation in these flawed, highly corruptible human endeavors. Government is just other people, whom we have authorized to hold a gun to our heads. It should have the dogs set on it regularly.
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