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The View From Fly Over Country

The self-appointed elites don't think about much that is beyond the narrow borders of their own lives. All their friends and associates share the same opinions and so they all think alike. Because of this they tend to think that others must automatically share their views and as a result they don't concern themselves with the ideas of people out here in the heartland. But those of us here in Fly Over Country have a few ideas of our own and we are not going to let them monopolize the debate. So get ready for a dose of truth from the great Midwest in the heart of Fly Over Country.

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June 24, 2008

A Bear of Very Little Brain

In this brief article Rick Moran at American Thinker reports on the press conference last week of Richard Danzig. Now if you don't know who he is, you just need to know that he is a top person in Obama's campaign and if the Democrats win in November, Mr. Danzig will probably be the next head of National Security. In the press conference Mr. Danzig gave his views on which author he considers most important to read regarding our current national security situation. Those of you who have some common sense may find his choice to be a bit, well, strange.

"Winnie the Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security. He spelt out how American troops, spies and anti-terrorist officials could learn key lessons by understanding the desire of terrorists to emulate superheroes like Luke Skywalker, and the lust for violence of violent football fans. . . ."

Mr Danzig spelt out the need to change by reading a paragraph from chapter one of the children's classic, which says: "Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump on the back of his head behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down stairs. But sometimes he thinks there really is another way if only he could stop bumping a minute and think about it."

Now I have to say that I find this very disturbing. The reason is, of course, that it reveals in a blatant way just how unprepared and unserious these people are for the positions that they want. The President and his advisors are responsible for protecting the country from the bad guys out there. And today there is no shortage of bad guys to worry about. But here is a top Obama insider who thinks that telegraphing this kind of childish idiocy is going to help us somehow. Mr. Danzig of course did not say just how using this particular book would make us safer.

Mr. Danzig could have mentioned any number of good current books that have addressed just this subject. Authors such as Lawrence Wright, Mark Steyn, Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis come immediately to mind. And one could name many others. The last few years have seen scores of book written by serious authors from across the political spectrum that deal with the issue of national security and the situation of the world today. But apparently the people in the Obama campaign just had too much trouble with all of the big words in these books to find them interesting or useful. No, instead we get Richard Danzig bumping his head down the stairs trying to thing of something else and failing to do so.

Perhaps he should ask his fairy godmother for advice.

Link

June 19, 2008

Vultures on an Olympian Perch

It's a good thing for the planet that you lost your job

The great and powerful elites at The New York Times bring us this editorial in which they celebrate the economic hardship that the left has brought about with their anti-drilling, anti-development energy policy. The editors at the Times think it is a good thing that you are losing your job if you are a worker for one of the big auto makers. They are glad that you are out of work because the cost of gas is getting so high that Americans have stopped buying the cars that you used to make. They are happy that you are suffering. They want it to continue and get even worse. The reason for their indifference to your plight is their belief in the global warming hoax combined with their unrestricted lust for power over the "little people." That would, of course, be you.

It’s hard to convince most Americans that there is a silver lining to $4-a-gallon gasoline. But General Motors provided a nugget of good news when it announced that it would shutter much of its production of pickups and sport utility vehicles — and might even get rid of the Hummer, the relative of the Abrams tank unleashed on the streets in the cheap-gas days of the 1990s.

And what would a New York Times editorial be without a call for a new punishing tax to make things even worse? Yes a new tax on gas to make the price even higher is just the thing we need according to the editors at the Times. Then we would all care so much more for endangered mosquitoes in ANWAR. So just remember the next time you hear some Democrat media elite or politician spouting that they are the party of the "little guy," that you don't count in that equation if you are standing in the way of their vast utopian scheme to rebuild the world along the lines that they have drawn. And remember that those lines are drawn with your blood, sweat and tears, not theirs.

Link

Barry the Kid's HopeMobile

In this brief sound bite, brought to you by Hugh Hewitt, Barry the Kid demonstrates why he is so dangerous when he strays from the teleprompter and starts to wax gauzy about his utopian schemes. In this example he imagines a world of sunshine and lollipops where we never had to defend ourselves from dictators like Saddam and instead spent billions on a new kind of engine that apparently runs on hemp-powered windmills and recycled free-range chicken droppings instead of that nasty oil from big AmeriKan Korporations that make big evil profits.

Seriously folks, this guy is dim as a 10 watt bulb. Automobile companies all over the world are always trying to find new ways to improve the vehicles that they make. And generally cars have gotten better over the years. Today I drive an Exterra that gets about 25 miles to the gallon (as long as I don't race around like I'm in the Indy 500). That is a significant improvement over the VW station wagon that I drove back in my student days. That car got about the same mileage, but was much lighter in weight. My current vehicle is larger and therefore it is much more efficient pound for pound than what I was driving 30 years ago. But technology tends to improve step by step. Sudden transformations from one kind of technology to another are rare and unpredictable. No one can see them before they arrive. And they aren't brought about by any actions taken by government bureaucrats.

Barry the Kid's ignorance and stupidity would crush the American economy. Indeed, we are already suffering due to the policies put in place over the years by the environmentalist left. For decades we have been slowly hamstringing ourselves. Our best people in energy, science and business have been kept from doing their jobs for as long as I can remember. No drilling, no new refineries, no new nuclear power plants, no coal to liquid technology, no development of oil shale. The list goes on and on. What it all has in common is the left's hatred of American capitalism and progress and their desire to see America cut down to size. A size that is more to their liking.

So if you want to drive one of these, vote for Obama in the fall. He will give you a lower standard of living if that is what you want. But if you are weary of the constant attacks on America by the left and the inch by inch destruction of the American way of life, and if you are a Democrat who has voted for them year after year, then it is time for you to reconsider why you have been voting for the Democrats and what you think it will bring you in the long run. Because the long run is finally here at last.

Link

June 13, 2008

Democrats to America: Drop Dead

The left requires only that you kneel

On Wednesday your Democrat party, the party of political hacks who are in thrall to environmentalists who in turn want to save endangered mosquitoes from greedy AmeriKans with cars and microwave ovens, voted to keep oil development on America's coasts shut down. Even as gasoline is rising above the $4.00 a gallon level, Nancy "low IQ" Pelosi and her merry band of pranksters were claiming simultaneously that drilling had been tried unsuccessfully and that drilling had to be stopped before it was too late.

Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., spearheaded the effort. His proposal would open up U.S. waters between 50 and 200 miles off shore for drilling. The first 50 miles off shore would be left alone.

But the plan failed Wednesday on a 9-6, party-line vote in a House appropriations subcommittee, which was considering the proposal as part of an Interior Department spending package.

With record oil prices and gas prices projected to hover around the $4 mark for the rest of the summer, Republicans have ratcheted up their efforts to open up oil exploration along U.S. coastline. But the long-sought change has so far been unsuccessful.

Most offshore oil production and exploration has been banned since a federal law passed in 1981.

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wis., said during the bill mark-up session.

For his part, Peterson said: "There is no valid reason for Congress to keep the country from energy resources it needs."

Note that offshore oil development has been off limits since 1981. In my book that's 27 years. That means 27 years of dwindling supply put in place by political hacks who probably never bothered to take an economics course in law school while they were busy learning how to sue productive business people. But I digress. I mean, just how would the little leftist shill know what would work and what would not since we have been banned from drilling there for almost thirty years? He provides no answer. He just expects you to take it all on faith. After all, you are one of those bitter clingers, aren't you?

Sierra Club lands program director Athan Manuel told a House committee Wednesday that drilling has been unsuccessful in driving costs down.

"The disappointing part about some of the energy policies being promoted (is) that it calls for more drilling when drilling really is the problem. And all we've got to show for pretty aggressive (domestic) drilling for the last 35 years is, again, $4 for a gallon of gas," Manuel said, adding "since the first Arab oil shock in the 1970s, the U.S. has produced almost 90 billion barrels of oil since then, so we've tried drilling our way out of the problem and it just hasn't worked."

Ok, I see. The problem is that we Americans like to have a standard of living somewhat above a cave dwelling neanderthal. And "drilling our way out of the problem"? When in the last thirty years did the leftist environmentalists and their Democrat toadies not fight tooth and nail to prevent American businessmen and scientists from developing our own resources right here in our own back yard? I thought that drilling offshore had been banned since 1981. But don't expect these people to do anything but lie to you. They don't like your standard of living. They don't like the fact that Americans want to be successful. They don't want you to have nice things. They don't like you at all, in fact. What they really want is to push you and me back into the cave.

The radical environmentalist left and their Democrat tools hate America, hate progress, hate capitalism, hate wealth and those who earn it and most of all they hate you for wanting to be happy and enjoy your life as an American. And that is why they are doing what they are doing. They are trying to bring America to its knees in the hopes that you will turn to them and beg for the scraps from their tables. Which, of course, they will be happy to dispense from the taxes that they collect from whatever you have left.

Link

June 12, 2008

Stop

Rush had a great monologue the other day in which he talked about the DiPippo article and used it as a jumping off point to talk about how the Angry Left and the Anti-American Democrat party are taking our freedom away inch by inch, year by year. He asked the question of how long it is going to take before the American people wake up and notice what is going on? When will the American people begin to understand how the state is encroaching on their lives a bit more every day? When will they realize that it is not just a small inconvenience here or there, and if it is not stopped it will mean the end of their freedom and the end of this country as it has been? How long until the American people understand that the Angry Left and the Democrats want to destroy this country and make it into something like the socialist European Union?

I don't know the answer to this one either and I don't think anyone does, but those of us on the right side of the fight have to do everything we can to make sure it does not happen. The Angry Left wants to keep Americans in the dark until it's too late. We need to be the ones to alert the American people to the facts, so that they will be able to see for themselves what is occurring. We need to illustrate the story in a clear and straightfoward way; to sound the alarm so that Americans will notice what is going on. Because when Americans have all of the facts, they tend to do the right thing. And they still value their freedom. But they need to know just how serious is the assault on that freedom and where it is coming from in order to be able to stop it.

Ronald Reagan is one of our heroes. Not a cult figure hero, a substantive hero. Where are the heroes today? Well, how many hundreds of thousands of them are in Iraq, and what the hell is said about them by the leftists and by the Democratic Party, by John Murtha, by Dick Durbin, by John Kerry? You name it! They are murderers! They are rapists! They are thugs! You think this stuff doesn't resonate all over the country? And look at the leftists on college campuses, high school campuses and wherever else you find idle time. They hate the US military! They have been taught and brainwashed to hate the US Military, which is protecting their silly right to say these stupid things. They have an official home: the Democrat Party. They have an official house organ: the New York Times, and the rest of the Drive-By Media. And these are the people who are trying to tell you to stop doing bonfires, to have your car only idle for three minutes at a time.

They're telling you to stop having kids because it's going to pollute the planet even more! They're blaming you for your attempt at a better standard of living and prosperity, for destroying the climate. These are negative, unhappy, miserable people trying to spread as much of all three of those qualities to as many people as possible. They do despise this country. They do purposely seek to cut it down to size. They do purposely and, by design, seek to take away -- little by little so you won't notice or care -- your freedom. They seek to place that which they have taken from you in Big Government where controls over even more of your freedom will be instituted because in all of this huge giant equation, the only place that is benevolent -- the only institution worthy of our respect, in fact our prayers, and getting down on our hands and knees, and saying, "Thank God!" -- is for government. Government wants to give us healthcare. Do you realize...?

We need a goal today like they had a goal in the '60s. We need a goal. Energy and independence, our own oil. Drill it! Drill it here and drill it now! Who's going to stand in the way? The very people who don't want our independence. The very people who want us to be dependent on other sources of oil. They say it's because they're afraid of pollution. How many oil wells are in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Gulf Coast? How many were damaged or ruined during Hurricane Katrina? How many oil spills were there? Hundreds were damaged or ruined and there were no oil spills! It's a phony argument to say that oil wells offshore will end up polluting and destroying the country and the environment and the planet. These are people who, while taking away your freedom and liberty -- at the same time, by definition because you and I are the ones who make the country work, our ambition, our industriousness and productivity. Take away our freedom to do that and guess what happens? The country's productivity shrinks. That, they want.

Link

June 11, 2008

The Audacity of the Democrats

A slow motion putsch

Rocco DiPippo at The American Thinker brings us this remarkable essay in which he lays out the overall strategy by which The Angry Left and their Democrat media and political fellow travelers have sought to undermine America and thus to regain power for themselves. With the failure of the Democrats to recapture the White House in 2000 and the subsequent attack on 9-11 it looked like the left would be out of power for a very long time. In order to get that power back so that they could continue with their utopian plan to destroy American civilization they had to mount an unprecedented attack on the country's legitimacy. Only by undermining the confidence of the American people in their own country and their chosen leadership could they hope to get their clammy paws back on the levers of power. DiPippo shows us in this essay how they have been proceeding step by step to the point that some people might actually consider electing a lightweight one term Marxist Messiah Senator who thinks that the oceans will rise and fall at his command.

Soon after 911, as America shifted into a wartime footing, leftists in academia and in the Legal Left began testing the waters of dissent by deconstructing Bush and the Republicans and blaming American foreign policy for the 911 attacks. Several professors at major Universities openly proclaimed their wishes to see America defeated and disgraced. One of them, Professor Nicholas DeGenova of Columbia University, announced to those attending a ‘peace' conference at the school shortly after the 911 attacks that he "wished for a million Mogadishus," a reference to the loss of 18 US serviceman during a mission to capture a warlord in Somalia in 1993. DeGenova also said, "the only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military," and referred to patriotism as a form of white supremacism adding that "My rejection of U.S. nationalism is an appeal to liberate our own political imaginations such that we might usher in a radically different world in which we will not remain the prisoners of U.S. global domination." Since DeGenova is an American collecting an excellent salary at a prestigious American university, it is puzzling who he meant by "we."

When the Democratic Party joined the academic Left's undermining of the Administration's military response to 911, a lethargic Republican public relations machine and inarticulate President were no match for the polish and reach of the influential leftwing media assisting the Democrats. Within months of 911 the Party and its media assistants began manufacturing anti-Bush, antiwar propaganda with impunity. Prominent leftwing intellectuals spoke openly of America's culpability in the 911 disaster even as the Towers still smoldered and the Nation wept, sowing seeds of doubt and divisiveness amongst a population that had been traumatized and then unified by the terrorist attacks. The press began chipping, then hammering away at the Administration's war policies and its domestic policies regarding security. When the debate on whether or not to invade Iraq came, there was no doubt which side of the discussion the press -- and most of the Democrats -- would be on.

Predictably, the historically anti-US, European socialist Left closed ranks with the Democrats and the academic Left. It also fell in line with the neo-communist-organized antiwar movement in America that was taking shape. With the first wave of antiwar street protests, the Democratic Party's mission to reacquire power lurched into high gear. That mission would be accomplished at the risk of weakening America's security and at the expense of her standing in the world.

Shortly after the US invaded Iraq, Party leaders and their friends in the media started kidney-punching America, pounding away at the wartime president, deriding his administrators and his policies, harping on and grossly magnifying each setback in Iraq.

On the home front, every Bush policy designed to protect America from further attacks was framed and presented by Democratic Party leaders and leftwing 527 groups as direct assaults on the US Constitution and as being destructive to the Bill of Rights. The press followed the Party's antagonistic lead, flooding the news with disproportionate coverage of subjects like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, US so-called torture and rendition; so-called domestic spying; the so-called rights of terrorists in Guantanamo; the so-called evils of the Patriot Act; the so-called lies of George W. Bush; the so-called warmongering of Dick Cheney and the so-called greed and evil of defense-related corporations like Halliburton.

Link

June 10, 2008

The Church of Resentment

If you're poor, it's your own fault

By now you have no doubt seen the video of Father Pfleger giving his demagogic diatribe at Trinity Church on Chicago's south side. Many people in the media, old and new, have written about it

For many people who have been supporters of Hillary Clinton the focus has been on Pleger's charge that Hillary is a racist. And indeed there can be no denying that this charge has been thrown up against her for some time now in ways both explicit, as in the Pfleger video, and in ways less obvious. And if you are a conservative there is something of a delicious irony in seeing the Democrat party sliced up by its own racial politics that for years have been used against Republicans. Democrat tactics for generations have been based on pitting different groups against each other in order to secure power.

In watching the video and listening to the reaction of the audience though, I can't help but notice the dominant emotions of envy and resentment that are the common theme at Trinity Church. Unfortunately many in the black community, and especially on the South Side of Chicago, have been steeped in a politics of resentment and envy that serves the needs of the Chicago political machine, but does nothing to bring the people there out of poverty. Consider the fact that Chicago has been run by Democrats for generations. Blacks have had the benefits of big government programs and welfare transfers for all of that time. During that time what has changed for the poor population of blacks living in those areas of the city? The answer is; not much. Because in order to bring yourself up and move out of poverty you must have a different attitude and mind-set than the one promoted by dependence on government and the Obama welfare state.

Success is the result of planning, execution and determination in the face of all events. And the chances that you will succeed in life are directly related to your actions over time. Finish school, work early and often. Don't engage in crime and don't have kids before you're married and your chances of climbing the ladder of success are considerable. But the ethics of the welfare state that Obama wants to bring us are those of the failed South Side of Chicago where success is the rare exception rather than the norm.

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