Category: Politics

Your First Time: Obama Ad Hits New Low

Here.  How low can the Dems go?  And you thought Clinton was a sleazeball for answering the question about his underwear and telling us about his old El Camino with the astroturf in back for, you know . . . .

Time to elect some adults.  Enough of clowns and buffoons.  (Did you see Biden in the VP debate?)  Give gravitas a chance.

Mark Steyn:

Both videos – the one faking Obamagasm and the one faking a Benghazi pretext – exemplify the wretched shrinkage that befalls those unable to conceive of anything except in the most self-servingly political terms. Both, in different ways, exemplify why Obama and Biden are unfit for office. One video testifies to a horrible murderous lie at the heart of a head of state's most solemn responsibility, the other to the glib shallow narcissism of a pop-culture presidency, right down to the numbing relentless peer-pressure: C'mon, all the cool kids are doing it; why be the last holdout?

If voting for Obama is like the first time you have sex, it's very difficult to lose your virginity twice. A flailing, pitiful campaign has now adopted Queen Victoria's supposed wedding advice to her daughter: "Lie back and think of England." Lie back and think of America. And then get up and get dressed. Who wants to sleep twice with a $16 trillion broke loser?

Ron Radosh on George McGovern

A  balanced assessment.  The piece concludes (emphases added):

Years later, I heard McGovern at the PEN International Writers Conference in New York City, where he spoke on a panel with Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., and Bruno Kreisky, the former chancellor of Austria who was virulently anti-Israel. At that meeting, McGovern said that had he been elected president, the first thing he would have done to deal with the Middle East would have been to go to ask Kreisky for advice. Kreisky, with McGovern’s support at the panel, also called for recognition by the West of Communist East Germany, and rejected  any policy that would have sought to isolate the regime. It was clear then, listening to McGovern at that event, what a disaster he would have been for his country had he been elected.

McGovern, it is true, opposed the war in Vietnam before it was popular to do so, and showed rare political courage, taking a position he thought was right although it could not help his political career. He was a straight-shooter, honest, and principled, and one could reject his policies and still respect him as a person of honor who thought what he fought for was in the nation’s best interest. A war hero, he did not ever mention his war record to try and show that he had fought valiantly for America, even though Nixon was condemning him for weakness and for having no concern for America’s position in the world. He simply did not feel to raise his own war record was the right thing to do, especially since he had become anti-war.

His defeat revealed to most people that standing for national office on a platform of extreme leftism, if openly proclaimed, could lead only to political destruction. Future leftist candidates learned from the outcome in 1972 that a more stealth approach to a move to the left was the way to operate if one wanted to achieve, as Barack Obama put it in 2008, a “fundamental transformation” of the United States based on redistribution of wealth and attainment of a social-democratic model for a future America.

A good and decent man who advocated policies that were both dangerous and wrong, he passed away living into his 90th year. R.I.P.

A good part of Obama's deep mendacity is his use of the stealth approach.  He won't say plainly what he is really for, and he will say he is for things he isn't.  For example, did you notice that in the third debate he came out in favor of American exceptionalism?  He was lying, of course.

Liberty Forever?

Liberty stampHow many Americans care about liberty?  The depressing fact that Obama may well win the election shows that vast numbers of Americans care more about panem et circenses, bread and circuses, than about liberty.

We're running on fumes.  The stamp is border-line Orwellian.

Time was, when liberty was a state.  Now it's a stamp.

Dorothy Rabinowitz

Victor Davis Hanson

 

 

 

Obama Lied Last Night About Arizona Senate Bill 1070

Here is the video clip of Obama lying to Romney and the rest of us in their second debate.  Obama lies when he claims that on the Arizona law (S. B. 1070) law enforcement  officers can stop people whom they merely suspect of being undocumented workers. Obama has told this lie before. 

The details are in an earlier post which I now reproduce:

Debra Saunders' article begins:

President Barack Obama hailed the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision Monday that struck down most of Arizona's 2010 immigration law. In a statement released by the White House, however, the president said that he remains "concerned about the practical impact of the remaining provision of the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally."

All eight voting members of the Supreme Court upheld this provision, which requires
that Arizona cops try to determine the immigration status of individuals who have been stopped for reasons not involving immigration.

Please note the difference between what the president is quoted as saying and what Saunders correctly reports the S.B. 1070 provision as requiring.  The law requires "that Arizona cops try to determine the immigration status of individuals who have been stopped for reasons not involving immigration." President Obama of course knows this.  So Obama lied in his statement when he said that "the Arizona law that requires local law enforcement officials to check the immigration status of anyone they even suspect to be here illegally."

Obama's egregious misrepresentation has been repeated time and again by leftists over the last two years.  See my 1 June 2010 post, The Misrepresentations of Arizona S. B. 1070 Continue.  Other
of my 1070 posts are to be found in the Arizona category.

Why are leftists so mendacious?  Because in their scheme the glorious end justifies the scurrilous means.

Don't forget to read the rest of Saunders' article.

National Public Radio and Big Bird Need Your Support!

Big bird

This is something I wrote 10 March 2011.  The points still hold and the piece is relevant because of Governor Romney's 'attack' on Big Bird in his first debate with President Obama.  Lefties have a hard time understanding why we mean-spirited conservatives would want to deny such a loveable critter Federal bird seed.  Maybe this will help.

……….

If you like NPR programming, as I like some of  it, write them a check!  Just don't demand that they receive taxpayer support.  At least not now.  We are in fiscal crisis, and budgetary cuts must be made.  If such inessentials as NPR, PBS, NEH and NEA cannot be defunded, where will the cuts be made?  Think about it.  If these small allocations cannot be zeroed out or placed on moratorium, how are we going to tackle entitlement reform?

So one good reason to defund NPR is that we cannot afford it.

Some think that a refusal of sponsorship amounts to censorship.  But that is stupidity pure and simple and duly refuted here.

But even if we could afford it, NPR in its present configuration should not receive Federal support.  And this for the simple reason that it is plainly a propaganda arm of the Left.  Now that should be obvious to anyone who has been following current events, including the firing of Juan Williams, the exposure and sacking of the two Schillers, etc.  If you deny the Leftward tilt of NPR in its present incarnation, then you are delusional and not worth talking to.  So let's assume that you are sane and admit the bias.  The next question is whether you think it is morally right that tax dollars be used to push points of view that most of us in this conservative land find objectionable.  I say that it it is not morally right that you take my money by force and then use it for a purpose that is not only inessential and unconnected to the necessary functions of government, but also violates my beliefs.

Perhaps, if NPR were balanced like C-SPAN, it could be tolerated in times of plenty.  But we are not in times of plenty and it is not balanced.

So that is my second reason for defunding NPR. 

Note that a reasonable liberal could accept my two reasons.  I am not arguing that government must not engage in any projects other than those that are strictly essential such as those connected to the protection of life, liberty, and property (the Lockean triad).  I leave that question open for the space of this post.  I am arguing that present facts dictate that defunding NPR is something we ought to do. 

I love Garrison Keillor and his "Prarie Home Companion" and tune in whenever I can.  "Guy Noir" is one of my favorite bits.  So I hope NPR stays on the air — on its own fiscal steam.  Hell, if they wean themselves from the  mammaries of massive Mama Obama Government I may even send them a check myself!  And the same goes for PBS. 

Obama, the Imaginary Man

Outstanding analysis by Andrew Klavan. Excerpts:

The mystery Obama—the hollow receptacle of out-sized fantasies left and right—is not a creation of his own making, political chameleon though he may well be. It emanates instead from a journalistic community that no longer in any way fulfills its designated function, that no longer even attempts the fair presentation of facts and current events aimed at helping the American electorate make up its mind according to its own lights. Rather, left-wing outlets like the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and the like have now devoted themselves to fashioning an image of the world they think their audiences ought to believe in—that they may guide us toward voting as they think we should. They have fallen prey to that ideological corruption that sees lies as a kind of virtue, as a noble deception in service to a greater good.

It is the nature of the Left to conflate the world with the world as leftists want it to be.  Whereas the conservative stands on the terra firma of antecedent reality, the leftist trades in nebulous hopes and dreams, many of them impossible.  (it comes as no surprise that the late Edward Kennedy's favorite song was "Impossible Dream.")

Theirs are largely passive lies and lies of omission. The active frauds—NBC’s dishonest editing of videos to reflect a leftist worldview, ABC’s allowing Democratic operative George Stephanopoulos to masquerade as a newsman, the Los Angeles Times’ suppressing even the transcript of the video in their possession that shows candidate Barack Obama at a meeting with a PLO-supporting sheik—these are only egregious salients of the more consistent, underlying dishonesty. The real steady-state corruption is revealed in the way Obama scandals like Fast and Furious, Benghazi-gate, and the repeated breaking of federal campaign laws have been wildly underplayed, while George W. Bush’s non-scandals, like the naming of Valerie Plame and the firings of several U.S. attorneys at the start of his second term, were blown out of all proportion.

And it is revealed in Obama’s blankness, his make-believe greatness, and the suppression, ridicule, and dismissal of any evidence that he is not the man this powerful media faction once wanted so badly for him to be. No other modern president could have associated so intimately with lowlifes like Wright and Ayers and the now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and not had those associations exposed in every detail. No other president could have made the radical remarks he’s made—about wealth redistribution, religion, and the federal government’s alleged ill-treatment of blacks—and not had them headlined all over for weeks. No other could have presided over such a crippled economy and such universal failures at war and in foreign policy and escaped almost without mainstream blame.

The Delusional Left and ‘Voter Suppression’

Here is a TNR piece that proves once again that lberals live on a different planet.  I call it the planet Unsinn and I sometimes speak of the 'planetary' difference between left and right.  The difference is between nonsense and sense.  The author asks why principled conservatives won't denounce 'voter suppression.'

'Voter suppression' is leftist code for 'photo ID.'  Here's the short answer:  we won't condemn it because common sense demands it.  Longer answer and arguments here.  It shows how far we've fallen that this needs to be argued at all.

I am of course against voter suppression while being all for 'voter suppression.'

I am also against voter fraud, unlike liberals.  They welcome it knowing that it can only redound to their benefit.  That is the plain motive behind their opposition to photo ID.  If voter fraud worked to the benefit of conservatives and libertarians, leftists would be screaming in protest.

POTUS Pounded

Romney scored big against Obama  last night in the first of their three debates, as most of the pundits, left and right, agree.  When Romney came out with the "trickle-down government" line, I gave him a big 'thumbs up' to the mild amusement of my wife who, bless her heart, insisted that we watch the debate instead of a 1965 rerun  of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  (I was tempted to blow off the debate, expecting nothing but the usual bullshit.) 

But Romney should have repeated the excellent line that sums up the whole leftist approach: we take your money which, by rights does not belong to you but to the collective, and we dribble back to you such benefits as we see fit.  (Karl Marx: "From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.")  Obama 2016 provides evidence that this is the ultimate Obama agenda.

Romney should have pounded away with the "trickle-down government" line.  Repetition is necessary to get through to Joe Sixpack.  Romney is still too gentlemanly.  Politics, however, is not gentlemanly debate but war by other means.  Leftists have understood this all along.  Conservatives are slowly learning.

So while POTUS was pounded, he did not receive the plenary pounding that he needs.  Work for the next two debates.  Romney needs to slug harder while maintaining  his smiling 'nice guy' demeanor.

Obama: Fiscally Clueless

Here.

You say the Republicans are not much better?  I don't disagree.  But think of it this way. 

A jackass and an elephant are heading for a cliff, a fall from which will be fatal.  The jackass, being a jackass, is moving faster towards disaster.  The elephant is moving slower.  You must choose to ride on one or the other.  Upon which animal would you prefer to be mounted?

Obama is an utterly clueless jackass.  With a 'Ryanized' Romney there is some hope that we can avert disaster or at least postpone it.

Obama: A Prediction Come True

On 6 November 2008, I wrote into my journal:

The Irony of the Obama Victory.  The presidency was handed to him by the financial crisis.  But his policies will exacerbate it.

I was right.  I now predict that if he is re-elected, four more years of his policies will bring us to financial ruin.  Mark my words.

The man is not only incompetent and inexperienced but unserious.   Here he is on Letterman admitting that he doesn't know what the national debt is.  He obviously doesn't understand the gravity of the situation, or his own partial responsibility for it in irresponsibly pushing another entitlement, popularly known as ObamaCare, when the problem of the long-term solvency of the existing entitlements  has not been addressed.  Instead, he blames his predecessor while manically digging the hole deeper.

The Fallacy of Redistribution

Thomas Sowell:

The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.

In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s. [Professor Sowell is referring to the forced collectivization of the Ukraine.  If you want to inform yourself of the horrors thereof, I recommend  Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Oxford UP, 1986.]

How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth — and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.

Sowell is right of course.  People typically do not allow themselves to be jerked around.  If California is not business-friendly, business people will move to states like Texas, and the once 'Golden State' will sink deeper into the mire.  (Bill Bennett in a recent speech referred to California as the "The Lindsay Lohan of states.")  If you tax me at 100% for any amount earned above $100,000, I will arrange things so that my taxable income will be less than that amount.  It is just human nature to resist being screwed.

The current debate about redistribution on shows like the O'Reilly Factor is close to moronic.  O'Reilly talks as if Obama is for redistribution while Romney is not.  But redistribution has been with us for a long time in the form of a progressive income tax code, and that is not going away any time soon.  (And I am not even convinced that it should.)  So the issue is not redistribution versus no redistribution.  The issue is is whether we are going to have more of it, or less of it, or reduce the rate of its increase. 

Under Obama we will most assuredly have more of it, a lot more.    This will depress the economy, the national debt will increase even more, and we will be on the way to financial ruin.

Anyone who votes for the fiscally irresponsible Obama is a fool  who does not understand his own long-term best self-interest.  And anyone who thinks that it doesn't matter who is in the White House is also a fool, despite the fact that Romney is a milque-toast and a wimp.

Never forget: politics is always about the lesser of evils.  Better a milque-toast and wimpy businessman who understands how the economy works than a incompetent leftist who doesn't.