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The Red Moon Journal
The Macintosh Page
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Education in Chicago
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Notes on Culture, Politics, Art and Science (plus anything else that's not nailed down), from a part of the country that most of the self-appointed elites have not been able to locate in years.
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Learn how to appease a dictator today!
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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August 28, 2008
Obama's Stalinists Attack Milt Rosenberg and WGN
Growing up I remember my parents constantly had the radio on and frequently it was tuned to WGN. Nowadays most people know that WGN is where you go to watch the Cubs lose on TV and it is available on many cable systems. But WGN radio has been around forever too and if you are a Chicagoan then names like Jack Brickhouse, Harry Cary and Wally Phillips should be familiar. Another familiar name is Dr. Milt Rosenberg. He has been on the radio with his "Extension 720" program since I was in high school back in the early 70s'. His show is a high-minded talk program that brings in guests for extended discussion of interesting topics. Sometimes these topics are political, but just as often the show covers other ground from music to the arts to culture and science. Dr. Rosenberg is a host with a wide range of intellectual interests and his show reflects this. He is an academic in the best sense of that term because he is genuinely interested in ideas.
WGN was talk radio before there was talk radio such as we know it today. But it is important to note that WGN has always been non-confrontational in its approach. The shock jocks have never had a home on the station and it has tried to maintain a friendly middle of the road atmosphere that welcomes all who come to listen. (Where else can you listen to Orien Samulson's Farm Report?) Host Milt Rosenberg has a very genial demeanor on his program that is in line with this style. He is about as far from a bomb thrower as one can imagine. Some might even describe his on air personality as a bit less than exciting. But if you like in-depth interviews and discussion, then his show is worth a listen.
Now sometimes you get to a point where you think you have heard and seen it all. But listening to Thursday's "Extension 720 with Milt Rosenberg" was a rather new experience for me. It certainly wasn't your average WGN radio program. Milt's guest for the evening was Stanley Kurtz and he was there to discuss his ongoing investigation into The Chicago Annenberg Challenge archives that are housed at The University of Illinois at Chicago Library.
As you may have heard, the records of the CAC that are housed at UIC have become the center of a controversy that involves the Obama campaign. These records are important because the CAC was founded by Bill Ayers and because Barack Obama was the chairman. The CAC disbursed millions of dollars during its run and naturally there is a great deal of interest in this organization now that Obama is running for President. The CAC is, after all, the only executive experience that Obama has had, so it is important to see just what he did in that job. And because of Obama's ties to Bill Ayers, the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist, any information that would shed more light on the relationship between Obama and Ayers is going to be of interest to those who are eager to learn more about Obama's past.
So it came as a bit of a shock to Milt Rosenberg that the station was quickly deluged with emails and calls denouncing him and his guest Stanley Kurtz on Thursday night. Apparently, the Obama campaign released an email to its goons telling them to call up the station and complain. And the calls from the Obama supporters had a robotic similarity in that they demanded to know why WGN "allowed" Stanley Kurtz to be on the air in the first place. They suggested that it would have been better if Milt Rosenberg and WGN would have refused to have Stanley Kurtz on the program and that it would be proper for a major radio station in a major market to censor ideas and opinions that they, the Obama supporters, did not like. Several of the callers put forth the argument that since Stanley Kurtz's views had already been refuted elsewhere, that there was no reason to have him on, although none of them could offer specifics when pressed by Dr. Rosenberg or Mr. Kurtz to support their side of the debate. Nearly every Obama caller insulted Milt by saying they now thought he was not very intelligent for having Mr. Kurtz on the air. Only one of the callers even tried to offer a systematic argument in favor of the CAC, and he was clear about not being an Obama supporter, although he considered himself to be a member of the left.
All in all it was a fascinating two hours that revealed a great deal about what we should expect from an Obama administration should The Anointed One be elected. Note that the Obama campaign is trying to get the Justice Department to silence any opposition that might have the temerity to call Barack's holiness into question. I guess that Obama has never heard of The First Amendment or free speech, and judging by the calls I listened to last night, neither have his followers. The Holy One does not appear to have any problem with using force to silence his opponents when it suits his purpose. But I guess that when you are The Chosen One the rules that apply to lesser mortals do not apply. So if you want to bully and intimidate your critics, the fact that you have A Higher Purpose That Must Not Be Stopped helps you to justify any actions that will get your enemies to shut up. If that involves force and thug tactics then so be it.
If you value your freedom to have an opinion without a gun pointed at your head, that should bother you a great deal.
August 26, 2008
Obama's Annenberg Years
In this article from The American Thinker Thomas Lifson provides us with a summary of a major event in the resume of Barack Obama that has been missing from the coverage so far from the main stream media. It seems that Obama was in charge of an educational project, The Chicago Annenberg Challenge, that spent millions of taxpayer dollars but had little effect. And Obama's pal and terrorist Bill Ayers was a big part of that project. Remember that Obama has said that Ayers was just some guy down the street and that he had no special relationship with him. Now it turns out that Obama was telling a major lie and hoping that no one would find out.
July 28, 2008
Petulant Harry Reid Tells Americans to Shut up and Drop Dead
I think this gets close to the inside baseball stuff.
Fox News brings us this story in which the "leader" of the senate, Harry Reid, whom all skateboarders admire, tells reporters that they did not hear what they heard. His stubbornness, petulance and condescension were on display for all to see. Harry Reid demanded more respect for his little tantrums and ignored the best interests of the American people while yelling at reporters.
At a "pen and pad" — a more casual, off-camera chat with reporters — Reid attacked and scolded correspondents in attendance, telling them he's "really disappointed" in how they have been writing his energy plans, which include a bill to reign in speculation in the energy futures markets.
According to two Senate Democratic aides, Reid and other Democratic leaders were particularly stung by an article Thursday in The New York Times. It followed on several other reports that have highlighted Democrats' attempts to fend off defections from their ranks to GOP-sponsored amendments, measures that would permit new drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and in the West for oil shale.
Reporters tried to pin Reid down Thursday on the amendment issue.
In the exchange, Reid told one reporter she should "watch the [Senate] floor more often. ... You might learn something."
Another reporter explained she had watched the Senate proceedings and said it was not clear he was ... offereing separate amendments, to which Reid asked the reporter if she "spoke English."
"Turn up your Miracle Ear," Reid added.
The new media has been hammering hard on this issue. Whether you listen to talk radio or read the blogs or editorials from WSJ or IVB or NR the message is consistent. It is the Democrats and their environmentalist radical supporters who are against the development of domestic energy. Not just oil, but coal, natural gas, nuclear are all off the table for democrats. What the left wants is American de-industrialization. They want you to sit in your house in the heat, in the dark and sweating. They don't care if you can't get to work. They don't care if you can't afford food.
They don't care about you at all.
If you think that they care about "the little people" remember that these elitists are all incredibly rich. Most of them are baby boomers who never had a hard day in their lives. Many of them are trust fund babies who have not had to work a real job ever. And all of them are insulated from the kind of life that you and I live where working and paying bills is not optional. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, Edwards and Obama. They are all rich lefties who don't have to worry about the cost of food or gas. They all went to elite universities. They all live in mansions. They all have far more power than you or I will ever have. They probably can't even remember the last time they filled up their own tanks because their chauffeurs have been doing it for them for so long. They have mansions, limos and private jets. They have armies of attendants to keep the little people away.
They don't care about you. In fact, most of the time they don't even know you exist. Except at election time, that is. Like now.
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said. "That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.
The Dems have tried to put forth a number of phony claims to rationalize why they don't want to liberate American energy production, such as the story that oil companies have leased land that they are not using. That story has been refuted by pointing out that just because you have a portion of land, there is no guarantee that there must therefore be oil underneath it. Oil companies must play a form of roulette to find oil by looking in many places knowing that some of their effort will not pay off. They pay to look in many places so that they can find the ones that really do have oil. Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are hoping that you, the American citizen, are to dumb to understand the concept of averaging risk. But if you have ever played a game of Bingo you understand that not every card is a winner, and so you play many cards at once to get a winning one.
Nancy Pelosi Says Drilling is a Hoax
Consider Nancy Pelosi's contradictory demand that we open up the strategic oil reserve to bring down prices, and her claim that increased supply does not bring down prices. She says that drilling is a hoax, but is desperate to prevent new drilling by American oil companies. Why the defensiveness if there is no oil on the continental shelf? Why work so hard to prevent oil companies from doing exploration? Why the objection to atomic energy when France and Japan are doing so well using it? Why the contradictory stories?
But of course all these claims have been examined in detail in the new media, and as a result the real story is still getting out to the American people. And they have concluded that Democrats are stonewalling new energy production because of their ties to the hard left environmental movement. I would bet that the Democrat's internal polls are showing them the same thing that public polls are; Americans have come to the conclusion that Democrats don't care about the rest of us paying 4 dollars a gallon for gas as long as the Dems keep getting their big money donations from the hard left environmentalists.
But as hard as they try, the Democrats have been unable to sway American opinion on this issue. And they are worried that the Republicans in the house and senate might rouse themselves from their slumbers and notice that they have a ready made issue for the campaign, if only they would use it.
July 23, 2008
That Just Doesn't Work For Me
The fall of the American newspaper continues
You may have heard that The New York Times refused to print an editorial by the Republican candidate John McCain even though the Times printed one by the Marxist candidate, Barry the Kid, just last week. The Times was caught a bit off guard, however, when the McCain speech ended up on The Drudge Report so that every American who is interested in a free and fair election could read it for themselves and make their own decision about the views of Senator McCain. It is clear from the reaction of the New York Times that they did not consider the possibility that the editorial that they tried to censor would still get out to the American people via New Media.
David Shipley, editor at the Times, offered a lame excuse in an email to the McCain campaign that the editorial was not up to their standards:
'It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama's piece. To that end, the article would have to articulate, in concrete terms, how Senator McCain defines victory in Iraq.'
'The Obama piece worked for me because it offered new information (it appeared before his speech); while Senator Obama discussed Senator McCain, he also went into detail about his own plans.'
'I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.' 'I'd be pleased, though, to look at another draft.'
One could, of course, make a point about the obvious bias of The Elite Media Monoculture that is on display here in its most naked form. And many people have done just that to the embarrassment of David Shipley and the Times. But there is also a financial aspect to this that should be considered. Because the bias of the Times and other newspapers and media like it is not without consequences for the bottom line.
Just recently The Wall Street Journal reported that the Tribune company would be cutting staff at The L.A. Times, which they own, by 15%. The New York Times has seen similar cuts. Liberal and left leaning newspapers around the country have been seeing rapid and catastrophic declines in their readership and corresponding ad revenue over the last decade or so. The fact of the matter is that the overwhelming bias and contempt that leftist elites at these newspapers have for conservatives and average Americans is all to clear to the rest of us. The elites don't believe that they have any such tilt in their views of course, but for the rest of us there is a cause and effect nonetheless. And as a result we are not buying their product from them any longer. As consumers of information, those of us who want news reporting that is fair and accurate are not being served by dinosaur media either in print or on television. And we are taking our attention and dollars elsewhere.
If you are a lefty news journalist, ask yourself where all those readers went. Do you think they moved to Jupiter or something? But most elite media mavens do not have the intelligence or honesty to ask themselves this question. The answer would be far too painful. And so they go on like robots marching to the cliff with no ability to alter their liberal programming or change their final destination.
Of course it ought to be clear to the people who are running things at these companies that they have a problem and that they have driven away a significant block of consumers. And when you drive away a large number of your customers, ad revenue goes with them because they are not there to look at the ads any longer. Advertisers are noticing this and pulling their products out and putting them elsewhere. And this, in turn, means lost jobs at those very same newspapers. But the editors at papers like The New York Times refuse to see the connection between their leftist bias and the continuing collapse of their ancient empires of propaganda.
From personal experience I can say that this fall off in readers is having a deleterious effect on their ability to even get their papers put together and out the door. Where I work we do some small jobs for a newspaper whose name you would know. The part that I work with as a graphic artist has seen more and more technical problems recently. And they have had more difficultly getting us the materials that we need on time. The materials that we need in order to do our jobs have been arriving later and later with more and more errors. Under such circumstances it becomes ever more difficult to correct simple printing problems and get the job done on time and to the press. And if it is happening in this one small area, it must be happening to other papers in similar circumstances across the country. This sends a very serious message about the state of American newspapers. And it could be so easily solved if they would simply admit their bias and do something to balance their product and make it attractive once more to those readers who have left for greener pastures.
But the editors at The New York Times see the loss of jobs, readers and ad revenue and they do nothing to question whether their own actions and the nature of the content that they continue to spew might have anything to do with their situation. It is, apparently, beyond their ability or willingness to question their own wisdom or superiority over all of the rest of us. And so the fall of American newspapers and leftist media continues without relief.
Senator John McCain's Editorial
Here is the editorial that was censored by The New York Times.
In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.
Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."
Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.
Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.
The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.
To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.
Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military's readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.
No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.
But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.
Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”
The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.
I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.
July 21, 2008
I Am the Me I've Been Waiting For
Charles Krauthammer has written a biting editorial showing us all the malignant narcissism that is typical of Barack Obama. It is difficult for me to remember any politician in my lifetime who was at once so embarrassingly ignorant and pompous at the same time. Krauthammer uses the planned campaign excursion to Germany as an illustration of everything that is self-absorbed about the Obama Messiah and it really is a hoot, or it would be if it weren't a real possibility that we might actually get a President who thinks there are 57 states.
Americans are beginning to notice Obama's elevated opinion of himself. There's nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?
Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times.
As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.
It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — "generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment" — when, among other wonders, "the rise of the oceans began to slow."
As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, "Moses made the waters recede, but he had help." Obama apparently works alone.
Obama the Slumlord
I wanted to get to this story earlier but have been generally busy. Still, it is worth noting if you have not heard about it. The Boston Globe reports on some of the slimy financial deals that Barack Obama has been involved in here in Chicago and how it has impacted the people that he claims to want to help. Well, we know that it helped to enrich his influential friends and associates to be sure. But as for the people who live in these rat-infested slums I think we can conclude that the change they were promised has yet to materialize.
Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.
As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.
But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.
Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
July 14, 2008
Osama Obama on the Cover
This week's New Yorker magazine features a cover that portrays Obama and his lovely wife bruno as terrorist revolutionaries in the White House burning an American flag with a picture of Osama above the fireplace. As Mike Allen at The Politico reports, The New Yorker was aiming at the conservative image of Obama in order to satirize it, but judging by the reaction, they have hit a bit wide of the mark. As any humorist will tell you, comedy must contain a grain of truth, and this one has a bit more than that. The leftist fringe is already having a hissy fit over the cover which goes to show that it is not being received in quite the way that it was intended. For the truth of the matter is that Obama is indeed a radical, although he is working very hard to prevent you from discovering it. And the left gets really mad that anyone on their side would unintentionally send the wrong message by telling a bit of the truth.
And in any event, I don't think this cover is going to help Michelle's kids.
July 9, 2008
Goodbye to All That
Another sanction of the victim moment
In this essay the publisher of Encounter Books, Roger Kimball, explains why he will no longer send books to the reviewers at The New York Times. The reason is not simply the overwhelming leftist bias that is typical of that paper and many others that take their lead from them. We all know about that. It is rather that the Times refuses to even acknowledge the existence of any books by conservatives. It would be one thing if the paper were to review books by conservatives and criticize them. But they don't even bother to do that. They just pretend that the authors don't exist, even when conservative books appear on the Times' very own top 10 list. It really is typical of how things actually work in the world of the left. In fact I was reminded of this story by its similarity to another.
I was driving home from work the other night and listening to Dennis Prager on the radio and he was discussing the case of Douglas Feith. Mr. Feith was an undersecretary of defense in the Bush administration and for the last few years has been teaching at Georgetown university. But even though his students give him high marks and even though he is a person who has held a high position in government where he has gained invaluable experience in the field and worked at the highest level, he will not be returning. It seems that the members of the Angry Leftist faculty have their panties in a twist and will not tolerate any ideas that diverge from the Stalinist line that they demand. They are calling him a "war criminal." It is important to note in this context that Mr. Feith was the only conservative to be teaching foreign policy at Georgetown. The school apparently has as its policy a complete monopoly of ideology from the left such that no other ideas will be allowed on campus. Not even one individual with a different way of looking at the world will be allowed to teach. The school has chosen to present a united front of leftist professors with not one voice of dissent. No intellectual "diversity" allowed at this school.
I mention these two different events in this post to illustrate a point made by Mr. Prager on his show. Wherever leftists control things, the result is invariably the loss of freedom to think and act as an individual and the concurrent collapse of standards of justice. When the left is in charge it's their way or the highway. They loudly preach the value of "tolerance" but the claim is a sham. The reality is that they allow only what they themselves agree with when it comes to ideas and actions. If they can find a way to control it, they do. And if they can find a way to silence their opponents they do. Actions and activities that they don't want? They will quickly be forbidden. Speech codes, the destruction of private property, when it is owned by conservatives, and attacks on conservative speakers are encouraged and rewarded. Crimes against conservatives are quickly forgotten and almost never prosecuted. In short, where you find the left, you find Stalinism.
That is why Roger Kimball is giving the boot to the New York Times. There is nothing to be gained in pretending that the left is anything other than the totalitarian movement that it is. Every day it demonstrates in clear ways that it has no use for real tolerance and diversity of the kind that real Americans actually respect. A real debate of ideas and philosophy that goes to the fundamental questions of the human condition and how we actually organize our society for our own benefit and the future of our inheritors would be one worth having. But that discussion only takes place on the right side of the political spectrum where ideas are considered important and discussion is valued. It is utterly alien to the left and will remain so as long as they wall themselves off from the rest of the population with whom they are actually at war. They have no use for the "bitter clingers" or anyone who might want to offer intellectual arguments from that perspective.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
May 30, 2008
All About Me
At TownHall.com historian Victor Davis Hanson identifies the shallow self-absorption of the baby boomers that ushered in the Age of Stupidity which is eroding the foundations that keep our country standing. The baby boomers have never been able to grasp the fact that in life there are always trade-offs. Their malignant narcissism keeps them from accepting as a fact that you just can't have it all. If you want a secure retirement you must put off current spending and save your money. If you want energy you have to go and drill for oil and build nuclear power plants. If you want to have a place to live you have to pay for it. If you want progress and an improving standard of living you can't tax every business out of existence for the crime of making a profit.
But the baby boomers, true to their name, have remained the spoiled children that they have always been and refuse to grow up and become adults with an adult's more sober view of how the world actually works. The pathetic image of an American president going hat in hand to beg for oil from the Saudi baby rapists when we should be developing our own plentiful energy resources is but one example of the foolish self regard that the baby boomers are known for. And there are plenty of examples on both sides of the political spectrum that could be pointed out to demonstrate this unfortunate fact.
By now, of course, we have to come to the conclusion that this generation is not capable of learning anything that might show them the errors of their ways. Those of us who have not been infected by this cancerous infantile attitude will have to work very hard for the rest of our lives to make sure that the baby boomers don't destroy the country completely before they get old and die, which I think we all hope will be sooner rather than later.
Here is how our baby-boom generation solves problems:
— Recently, George Bush went to Saudi Arabia to ask the ruling House of Saud to pump more oil. That request had about as much chance of success as the Democratic-led congressional effort to “sue” the Saudis in American courts for their selfish “price-gouging.”
The current debate about energy in the United States has devolved into doing the same old thing — consume, don’t produce and complain — while somehow expecting different results. Congress talks endlessly about the bright future of wind, solar and new fuels, while it stops us from getting through the messy present by utilizing abundant coal, shale and tar sands; nuclear power; and oil still untapped in Alaska and off our coasts.
— For the past five years, we fretted over a “housing boom” that had priced an entire generation out of the market. In response, government and lending agencies got “creative” by relaxing standards to allow shaky “first-time” buyers into the red-hot market of high-priced homes. Home-improvement TV shows proliferated on how to “flip” houses and buy “no-down-payment” properties.
When the bubble inevitably burst, cries of outrage followed about how “they” (never “we”) caused a “depression” in housing. Our leaders shrieked about greedy lenders and incompetent regulators who foreclosed on us — never that the American people themselves caused much of the speculation problem, or that housing prices are finally becoming affordable again for new couples.
May 28, 2008
Barry the Kid Says "Don't Eat and Drive So Much"
When we're poor and starving the world will like us again.
Child Messiah Barry the Kid gave a rather interesting speech in Oregon last weekend to the Birkenstock clad masses of academics, students and the ever popular greying ponytail demographic. The speech was filled with the usual toxic socialist claptrap we have come to expect from the latest out of touch liberal that the Democrat party has offered up for our amusement. But it is worth noting that in this performance Barry the Kid brought back John Kerry's "Global Test":
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.
"That's not leadership. That's not going to happen," he added.
This is the leftist view of how a society should be organized; with the philosopher kings deciding for all the "little people". But as Ayn Rand said, "There are no little people in America".
This nation is exceptional because it was the first in history to be founded on the idea that people could, and should, be free to run their own lives with only a minimal government to attend to those things that had to be done by the state. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights lay out a system in which we are to have maximum freedom and liberty. A system that recognizes that people are best left to govern their own lives because that is their natural right and because it works better than any top down authority.
But as we know from our own history and the history of the rest of the world, our system doesn't just work here. It has been transplanted to many other places where, to the degree that the people consistently adopt it, it results in similar progress for them as well. Greater prosperity and progress have been the outcome when other nations have moved in the direction of democratic capitalism.
But all of this is lost on the left because they don't learn from history, even when they bother to study it. They are mesmerized by their utopian dream. A dream of power and state omnipotence unfettered by constitutional limits on their reach into all of our lives. And note that Barry the Kid only cares for the opinions of those who hate us, not those who have joined us in the comradeship of freedom. The only voices that he hears and respects are the voices of systemic failure. The voices of dictators and tyrants who gather all power and authority to themselves. Like John Kerry, he is one of those who always blame America first. He wants to listen to our enemies, but not our friends. Is Barry the Kid the best that we can expect from the Democrat party? It would seem so.
The more Barry the Kid opens his mouth the more he reveals just how juvenile and unprepared he is for the job he is seeking. This guy is really dangerous because he is so stupid. Hillary looks like a genius next to this guy and that's saying a lot. Check out the audio from Hugh Hewitt here.
May 21, 2008
Breaking the Back of High Oil
Investor's Business Daily has a series of editorials on the current situation regarding energy that should be mandatory reading for anyone who wants to get past the leftist propaganda on the matter. (And by the way, whatever happened to the leftist shouting about "no blood for oil"? If we had been in Iraq for oil, wouldn't it be really cheap by now? But I digress.)
The reality is that the Democrats in congress and their allies in the media have been shrieking for years about how we have to protect endangered mosquitoes in ANWAR. They have prevented us from developing new sources off of our own coasts. They have prevented us from building new refineries and nuclear power plants. And now we are paying the price at the pump.
For the last 28 years, Democrats in Congress and a few Republicans have again and again opposed our drilling for oil in Alaska's ANWR area when we knew it contained at least 10 billion barrels of oil we could be using now.
• For the past 31 years, Congress repeatedly prevented us from building any new oil refineries that we now badly need.
• More recently, congressional Democrats defeated and discouraged any bill that would let us drill in the deep sea 100 miles out. However, it's somehow OK for China to drill there.
• As a further indictment of our Congress, since the 1980s it has continually stopped all building of nuclear power plants while France, Germany and, yes, Japan, plus 12 other major nations, did build plants and now get 20% to 80% of their energy from their wise and safe nuclear plant investments.
• From 1990 to 2000, U.S. crude oil demand rapidly accelerated by 7.41 quadrillion BTUs, according to Department of Energy data. And our rate of foreign oil dependency dramatically increased while our domestic oil production steadily declined.
Have You Stopped Beating My Wife Yet?
Barack Obama went on mainstream media to warn conservatives and republicans not to make his wife an issue in the campaign. How juvenile do we think this guy is anyway? His wife has clearly made herself an issue by campaigning for him and by putting forward all of the vile hate filled rhetoric that we have heard from Jeremiah Wright. Her bizarre Indiana stump speech speaks volumes about just what the Obamas want to impose on this nation and why any thinking person who values liberty and freedom should wish to keep this woman as far away from the White House as possible. She is a legitimate target in this political season because, like Hillary before her, she is a two for one deal with Barack. You vote for him and you get her depressing totalitarian vision as well. So I say, fire away with both barrels. She asked for it.
May 19, 2008
The Biofuels Backlash
The Editors of The Wall Street Journal bring us this article on the current results of the ethanol boondoggle that has created a crisis in both oil prices and food shortages at the same time. For students of free market economics it comes as no surprise to find that government "solutions" are always less efficient than what the market provides. But as we can see from this latest eco-scam there are plenty of secondary effects as well. Like all of those starving people in the third world that the environmental leftists claim to care about as they are sipping their Starbucks lattes.
The real solution to this problem is, of course, to get the government and all of the tie-dyed activists the hell out of the way and let the best and brightest people we have in business and science do their jobs. Our energy companies have been hamstrung for decades by ridiculous government policies that have kept them from drilling for oil, building refineries and building nuclear power plants. Now we find that we are suffering from shortages in food and fuel as a result. Let us liberate the energy companies from the fascism of big government do-gooders and grey haired hippies who never bothered to take a science or economics class in their lives. Let our people in energy do what they are supposed to do; provide us with energy. And let the farmers do what they are supposed to do; grow food for us to eat. And then we won't have to worry about any shortages except the shortage of intelligence in Washington.
St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes, and for 30 years we invoked his name as we opposed ethanol subsidies. So imagine our great, pleasant surprise to see that the world is suddenly awakening to the folly of subsidized biofuels.
All it took was a mere global "food crisis." Last week chief economist Joseph Glauber of the USDA, which has been among Big Ethanol's best friends in Washington, blamed biofuels for increasing prices on corn and soybeans. Mr. Glauber also predicted that corn prices will continue their historic rise because of demand from "expanding use for ethanol."
Even the environmental left, which pushed ethanol for decades as an alternative to gasoline, is coming clean. Lester Brown, one of the original eco-Apostles, wrote in the Washington Post that "it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that food-to-fuel mandates have failed." We knew for sure the tide had turned when Time magazine's recent cover story, "The Clean Energy Myth," described how turning crops into fuel increases both food prices and atmospheric CO2. No one captures elite green wisdom better than Time's Manhattan editors. Can Vanity Fair be far behind?
All we can say is, welcome aboard. Corn ethanol can now join the scare over silicone breast implants and the pesticide Alar as among the greatest scams of the age. But before we move on to the next green miracle cure, it's worth recounting how much damage this ethanol political machine is doing.
To create just one gallon of fuel, ethanol slurps up 1,700 gallons of water, according to Cornell's David Pimentel, and 51 cents of tax credits. And it still can't compete against oil without a protective 54-cents-per-gallon tariff on imports and a federal mandate that forces it into our gas tanks. The record 30 million acres the U.S. will devote to ethanol production this year will consume almost a third of America's corn crop while yielding fuel amounting to less than 3% of petroleum consumption.
May 5, 2008
Jeremiah Wright and Michell Obama Audio
All last week Hugh Hewitt played audio of the incendiary speeches of the very angry Jeremiah Write and the very angry Michelle Obama. These have to be heard to be believed. The self-pity and sanctimony are palpable for all who have ears to hear. And there is no shortage of audio to listen to. It is impossible for any rational person to listen to this and not come to the conclusion that Barack is anything other than a radical. And given his association with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn the connection is even more clear. Obama sat in that church for 20 years. He listened to these kinds of sermons for 20 years. He is a friend to domestic terrorists who he has known for years. What more do you need to know?
Character Matters
In this article by Kyle-Anne Shiver we take a look at the consequences of the speech last week in which Barack Obama threw his pastor of 20 years Jeremiah Wright under the bus. And if you have some respect for logic and reason then you have to come to one of two conclusions. Both of them reflect poorly on Mr. Obama. The election of a President is as much about character as it is about the issues that may happen to be at hand. For if an individual is to rise to the challenge of the issues that may confront the nation, then it will be character that allows him to do so. Judgment and perception are critical in how a President acts and reacts to the many events that will arise during his term in office. And by Obama's own words we now know that he is a liar. For he has either lied to all of us, or he has lied to his friends. Ms. Shiver lays out the alternatives:
With Obama's Philadelphia-speech, hedging and squirming around specifics, and now with his final, "unequivocal," outright disowning of Jeremiah Wright this week, I have more evidence than I need to conclude that Barack Obama is either one of two things:
Behind Door #1: He is a reprehensible liar, who privately still believes, and has always believed, in the philosophy espoused by his long-time pastor, spiritual mentor and "uncle" figure, Jeremiah Wright, but for opportunistic motives, now publicly disavows his own true beliefs; or
Behind Door #2: He is a man of no integrity whatsoever, who has partaken of another man's friendship and political help for nearly 20 years, who has now publicly dumped and disgraced this benefactor for personal gain. Jeremiah Wright is not some flunky that Obama hired last week out of a far-left think tank or fresh from the halls of Harvard. The two men were close, like family, by the candidate's own pronouncements.
Whether the real Obama is behind Door #1 or Door #2, only Barack Obama now knows for certain. But either way, he has disgraced himself in the eyes of many Americans, and if he offered his hand, some of us older-timers would decline to shake it.
If he truly believes the philosophy of his chosen church, and now denies it because he sees that it is a small-minority view, he defines himself as a wimpy scoundrel, unworthy of being Commander in Chief.
Having the courage of one's convictions is something I would hope my twelve year old would have, and if he didn't, I would be deeply ashamed and know myself to have been a very bad parent. Barack Obama was nearly 30 years old when he first met and befriended Jeremiah Wright, and upon their very first meeting, the Reverend Wright informed Obama that his "fellow clergy" considered him "too radical." He was warned by Wright himself. Obama was no innocent waif, as he now contends.
On the other hand, if Barack Obama vehemently disagrees with the tenets of Wright's philosophy and worldview, but stayed with the man, respected him enough to have him perform a wedding and baptisms, and gave thousands of dollars of his own money to support the black liberation cause, and garnered prestige and political clout from his association with Wright, then Obama demonstrates that he is a man without a well-formed conscience. An unabashed user of another for personal gain.
Would I take my children to a church where someone like David Duke was passing himself off as a minister of Christianity? Would you?
Logic does not permit us to continue in the belief that Obama is some kind of new phenomenon on the political landscape. Rather, he is just another in a long line of machine politicians who is able to do what he has to do in order to get what he wants. And that is a very small and low standard indeed.
The Thrill is Gone
Mark Steyn has a bit of fun in this article with Barack Obama's press conference in which he throws Jeremiah Wright under the bus. The fun part here, from Steyn's point of view, is the self-absorption that has been revealed by this entire episode. Not only has Obama turned out to be something less than a holy messiah descending on a silver cloud from on high, but his wife has turned out to be a bit of a shrew as well. And I think we will be hearing a lot of fun sound clips from her in the not too distant future because she is too arrogant to keep quiet.
“Do you personally feel that the Reverend betrayed your husband?” asked Meredith Vieira on The Today Show.
“You know what I think, Meredith?” replied Michelle Obama. “We’ve got to move forward. You know, this conversation doesn’t help my kids.”
Hang on. “My” kids? You’re supposed to say “It’s about the future of all our children,” not “It’s about the future of my children” — whose parents happen to have a base salary of half a million bucks a year. But even this bungled cliché nicely captures the campaign’s self-absorption: Talking about Obama’s pastor is a distraction from talking about Obama’s kids.
By the way, the best response to Michelle’s “this conversation doesn’t help my kids” would be: “But entrusting their religious upbringing to Jeremiah Wright does?” Ah but, happily, Meredith Vieira isn’t that kind of interviewer.
Mrs. O is becoming a challenge for satirists. My radio pal Hugh Hewitt played a clip on his show of the putative First Lady identifying the real problem facing America:
“Like many young people coming out of college, with their MAs and BAs and PhDs and MPhs coming out so mired in debt that they have to forego the careers of their dreams, see, because when you’re mired in debt, you can’t afford to be a teacher or a nurse or social worker, or a pastor of a church, or to run a small non-profit organization, or to do research for a small community group, or to be a community organizer because the salaries that you’ll earn in those jobs won’t cover the cost of the degree that it took to get the job.”
So just remember, when you are about to question some aspect of Obama's fitness to be President, you should be quiet because it just isn't good for Michelle's kids.
April 21, 2008
LA Times Journalist Apparently Flunked Math and Civics
Wahington served one term; who knew?
Mary McNamara, LA Times television critic and presumably a college graduate who is not one of the bitter people that cling to guns and bibles, brings us this review of the critically acclaimed HBO miniseries "John Adams". Her review is somewhat underwhelming to say the least, and sounds more like a pep-rally for competing networks Showtime and TNT, to say nothing of how she probably comes off in person at the right cocktail parties.
Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion and if Ms McNamara doesn't like HBO, well that is her right. But as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, while people are entitled to their own opinions, they are not entitled to their own facts. And Ms. McNamara seems to think that George Washington served only one term.
In his portrayal of our second president, Paul Giamatti creates a man perpetually dissatisfied, disgusted by the preening ambition of politics even as he is infected by it. If his relentless crankiness was a bit hard for some of us to take in early episodes, in the second half of the series it makes much more sense. While exhorting angry men to throw off the shackles of tyranny offers many opportunities for rhetorical fabulousness, setting up a new government is a bureaucratic nightmare, with oversized personalities disagreeing over things both petty and fundamental. George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term. "I know now what it is like to be disliked," he says to Adams, his perpetually disliked vice president.
One can only be astounded that this sort of error made it through layers of editors and fact checkers and ended up on press despite the fact that any 5th grader with an internet connection would have been able to look it up. But perhaps more amazing is that apparently Ms. McNamara managed to spend four years at an expensive university without taking so much as a basic American history course in which she might have learned what people my age knew in elementary school. Were I to offer Ms. McNamara an opinion, it would be to immediately write to her alma mater to ask for a full