Bittersweet Mythology

Sarah Palin's Myth of America - TIME

Mr Klein actually comes very close to stumbling over the truth here. He sees half of it--successful Republican politicians use the power of story and myth to get their points across. The part he doesn't see is that Democrats do absolutely the same thing, often with even more power due to Hollywood and the MSM compliance of guys like Klein that see their own story as "fact" and the other guys as "myth".

FDR is WAY more mythology than truth. The "New Deal" never worked, it was WWII that bailed us out. FDR did give us gigantic vote buying social pork programs that have killed a lot of the American spirit of individual responsibility and have bills that continually come due in bail-out after bail-out, because the old adage that there is "no free lunch" is unfortunately still true in the universe of reality as opposed to myth.

The idea that the "ideal" must be something that is "reality" for most Americans is very strange. There is no reason at all that Americans can't rally around the values of "small town America" even though they don't live there. "Values" are quite transportable--our forefathers transferred mostly the enlightenment version of European Judeo / Christian values to this continent. They didn't have to start a "new mythology" because they no longer lived in Europe. Indeed, Christianity is largely not of this world at all--yet for over a billion people, they profess that it applies even though in reality they live here and not in heaven.

Politics are ALWAYS heavily tinged with mythology--as are sports, the arts, romance, products, and everything else that humans deal with. We convert an effectively infinite cosmos into a set of "myths" or "stories" that make sense to us at a level that we can grasp as humans. Our ENTIRE reality is and can only be "human" ... coming into a very limited gray matter brain through sense organs that have have very minimal bandwidth and being processed WAY short of "real time". Klein uses the common "man in the street" connection of "Myth = lie" and for the audience that he is trying to reach, I'm sure that has the effect he wants.

He is no doubt aware that for the more educated, "myth" is often a positive description of truths that are more significant than "mere fact" -- Joseph Campbell has done a few books on that subject.

MSM Changes Tale on Troops for Afghanistan

Admiral: Troops alone will not yield victory in Afghanistan - CNN.com

Gee, the MSM, Kerry, BO story has been "We took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan and fought the WRONG WAR in Iraq, we ought to have had those troops in Afghanistan hunting down Osama Bin Ladin".

But wait! Now Bush is transferring troops from Iraq to Afghanistan because we are winning in Iraq and the Al Quaeda forces are fleeing back to Afghanistan. One of the few things that the MSM and BO have any consistency on is THEY HATE GEORGE BUSH and he is ALWAYS WRONG!

Ergo, it is now a BAD IDEA to shift troops from Iraq to Afghanistan!!! NOTE!! We have a TON of "Admirals / Generals / etc". You can ALWAYS find testimony from more than one of them that agrees with whatever perspective one might have. That is precisely why we need LEADERSHIP in the Oval Office rather than BO.

Even the Liberals are Noticing

Op-Ed Columnist - From the Gut - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

I'm sure that most of the left will account for McCain's rise and BOs slide in the polls with their usual effective reasoning--Republican lies, corporate money, Karl Rove, racism, etc, Friedman goes against the grain and actually thinks that BO may have some control over his own chances! Wow, now THAT is a refreshing thought for a lefty!

Tom thinks that BO is actually going to have to do more than say "I'm not Bush and McCain is". Cool! Now THAT would actually be a different sort of lefty politics!

"Bailouts"

I'm amazed at how out to lunch a lot of lefty's are on the Fannie and Freddie "bailout".

First some history --If you look really close, you will find that the "F" in both of those stands for FEDERAL. They were initiated in 1938 under FDR and for 30 years was ALL Federal. In 1968 (Democrats in charge of all branches of government), they were moved to a rather odd state of affairs where effectively the profits could be privatized, but since their names stayed FEDERAL, many people (and countries) erroneously assumed that purchasing their bundled mortgages was backed by the "full faith and credit of the US Government", just like bank deposits. They hold something like 6 TRILLION in debt, which is more than the GDP of Japan and close to half of the GDP of the US.

The S&L bailout of the early '90s had a similar history. They had been around forever and regulated heavily since the '30s, but Carter decided to remove a lot of restrictions on them, mostly in order to encourage them to shore up the sagging home sales that had been decimated by the high inflation and poor economy of the late '70s (Carter's economy). By the early '90s, that mess cost the US $150 Billion. In comparison, the current estimate for Fanny and Freddy is "only" 25 Billion (done by CBO, Democrat congress, so it MUST be right!).

Why bail them out? Well for starters, it doesn't help the STOCKHOLDERS in Fanny and Freddy at all--they are out a whole lot of money in lost stock price. What it DOES do is preserve the financial markets, without which, both our and the world economies would be headed for something worse than the 70's and maybe in "depression territory". Once the left creates huge bloated FEDERAL entities it is only a matter of time before they have to be "bailed out" with more good money thrown after bad.

Not many folks in business would argue in favor of massive federal organizations being created to do what the private sector can do better in the FIRST PLACE, but it seems that one party always thinks that it is good idea to try it again. Predictably, the task gets beyond the capability of even the massive federal bureaucracy and they decide that "privatization/regulation" is going to be successful. Of course, government being government, what they do best is "blame the other party", so over time they at least fail at the regulation, but often go well beyond that and either "strongly encourage" or "force" the originally federally created entity to provide goods/services/finance to people that are poor credit risks (but vote). It is a semi-privatized version of the old old government story of "buying votes".

Once the federally created entity gets in enough trouble that it can no longer be hidden by just pointing at the other party--S&Ls, FNMA, FICA, etc, then somebody steps up to fix the problem. (oddly, that always seems to be Republicans) ... Bush 1 in early '90s with S&Ls, Bush 2 in '08 with FNMA ... of course Bush 2 made the mistake of trying to do something to fix FICA BEFORE the "crises" happens, but he paid dearly for that attempt! Americans seem to want to ignore reality as long as possible. Last big fix to FICA was Reagan in '92 ... REALLY the "largest tax increase in history" since the upper limits keep growing. Again, note the Republican cleaning up the Democrats mess--and, they of course love to howl when the cleanup of their own mess adds to the deficit!!

It used to be that Democrats handed out programs and Republicans raised taxes to pay for them. The Democrats and MSM liked that relationship. Reagan changed that, while he DID raise quite a few taxes, he decided that ultimately that wasn't a good answer for the country since the high taxes continued to push down the potential for economic growth, thus reducing the standard of living for all. The cutting the taxes ignited the 30 years of best in history US economic growth that we have just gone through.

BUT, folks still seem to believe that one can create a whole bunch of new programs that will somehow "redistribute the pie" without stopping the pie from growing. It has never worked in the past because the folks that make the pie figure that there ought to be some reward to all that work they are doing. Eventually, Democrats pretty much want to turn the country into a giant concentration camp, only what they WANT is the top 1-5% of the folks working like dogs and getting as little as they can possibly give them and the other 95-99% voting Democrat and complaining that the 1-5% aren't working hard enough.

If ONLY the top 1-5% were actually as stupid as the Democrats typically believe they are, that might have some prayer of working.

Uh, BO Finds "Change" Shameless?

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Obama: These folks are shameless « - Blogs from CNN.com

Gee, I thought BO found just throwing the term "change" around with nothing specific behind it to be the essence of good politics. They haven't even said "hope" yet that I have heard.

Did BO copyright these words? As far as I know, he could round up all the Republicans and put us in a concentration camp and fullfill his promise for "change"-- or even "real change" (that is his detailed version).

Last I checked, the Democrats had been in control of both houses of congress for the past two years -- which is the period that the gas prices shot up, we had a single quarter of down GDP (not a recession) and the housing market fell causing financial problems. When the Democrats were running in '06, they seemed to be claiming that they could get a LOT done. What happened? The one thing they REALLY claimed they would get done -- immediate and unconditional surrender by the US in Iraq, was thwarted when they discovered that the President is Commnader in Chief. Thank God ... had BO and the Dems their way, at least 100's of thousands and probably millions would have died, and the US would be WAY less safe than we are today.

"Shameless"?

MSM Has Change Of Heart on Religion

Pastor: GOP may be downplaying Palin's religious beliefs - CNN.com

BO ran along for nearly a year before the Hillary campaign brought out the views of the church he had attended for 20 years. MSM view? "BO's religion is a private matter, no reason to look" ... at least for BO.

Of course in BOs case, the church was anti-American, anti-semetic, and racist against whites. One MAY think that all those views would be HIGHLY appropriate to be examined.

In Palin's case, it is pretty much standard reasonably fundamentalist Christianity very close to what I grew up with and what probably 20-30 million US citizens believe -- and in fact is not really much out of touch with what something in the 200+ million would at least profess to believe. God is involved in the world, there are important moral issues relative to both this and the next life, God may well pass "judgement" (although for a human to claim they know what is "judgement" is always shakey, but often done).

Why the difference in treatment? Well, certainly most of it is good old MSM bias, where "if a Republican does it, it is probably evil, stupid, fattening, or all of the above" ... so BO's religion is most likely fine in their minds, and Palin's is suspect at best. I think the other part in this case is that BO's church pretty much sounds like the beliefs of the MSM -- anti-American, anti-Jewish and anti-white. No doubt they saw those views and thought "sounds like a reasonable church".

Palin's church sounds pretty foreign to them ... real spirit and authority of God, pro-American, pro-family, pro-life, pro-personal responsibility, etc ... all those beliefs are "out there" relative to the MSM.

WOW, McCain Palin Deadlocked with BO and Slow Joe?

McCain, Obama deadlocked in presidential race - CNN.com

Maybe the MSM doesn't really hold ALL the cards! Sounds like with the addition of Sarah Barracuda and the convention bounce, BO may be in some trouble. Maybe beating up on a pregnant 17 year old girl isn't the kind of thing that most Americans find palatable?

Who knows ... maybe there is hope yet!

Why Must the Left Destroy Palin?

Why They Hate Her

The whole article is OK, but the summary is in a single paragraph. There are a whole lot of reasons for the left to hate Palin, a woman that is a Republican is almost as galling to them as a black Republican, but the MAIN reason is the one below. Leftism demands destruction of the family, the family provides a conduit for hated moral content to be transmitted to children outside the control of the state. For leftism and collectivism to be triumphant, the family MUST be destroyed. One of the main tenents that they hold sacred to do that is that a "traditional family", with kids from one couple that stays together MUST be "demeaning, constraining, damagine, etc" to the woman. It is IMPOSSIBLE to be an "intelligent, successful, influential, fullfilled, etc" woman AND be in a traditional family. Sarah Palin is an example of something the left elite would say CAN'T EXIST! She must be destroyed!

The simple fact of her being a pro-life married mother of five with a thriving political career was--before anything else about her was known--enough for the left and its outliers to target her for destruction. She could not be allowed to contradict symbolically one of the central narratives of the left. How galling it will be to Sarah Palin's many new enemies if she survives this assault and prevails. If she does, her success may be an important moment in the struggle to shape not just America's politics but its culture.

Saint Trooper Speaks!

Trooper in Palin probe tells his side - CNN.com

Well, obviously this trooper is great and Palin is the devil. I mean this guy has "admitted to mistakes and has learned from them"! Assuming he has a "D" next to his name, that would exonerate him from anything. Now, when he was actually investigated, here is what was found:

In 2006, state investigators found Wooten guilty of "a significant
pattern of judgment failures," including using a Taser on his
10-year-old stepson and drinking beer while operating a state trooper
vehicle. Wooten was suspended for 10 days as "a last chance to take
corrective action."

But, he has a LOT of explanations, and even though he was found guilty of drinking, he says he wasn't. Sarah Palin is a definite "R" that has even been willing to sign up as a VP candidate that could cause BO some challenge. Certainly that choice deserves punishment -- death if possible, but if that can't be pulled off, the Ds and the MSM will go for whatever they can.

Clearly Wooten was framed ... CNN covers his side very well, his 10-year old was HAPPY to be tasered! I think that is why they invented the things-to make kids happy. If only Wooten would get the picture and come out hard after Sarah, we would KNOW that he is completely in the right and truthful. I mean, certainly you can trust a guy that went through a messy divorce from the womans sister, those are NEVER the kind of folks that bear a grudge!

Artists and Republicans

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Heart condemns McCain-Palin use of ‘Barracuda’ « - Blogs from CNN.com

I happened to watch a bit of Leno last night after the McCain speech. 100% down on Sara Palin, McCain and everything Republican -- to the point that he even lost his studio audience and had to make some lame statement about "tension in the room". There are always folks in the entertainment industry "condeming Republicans" in one way or another, but I always wonder if they really understand what that means.

I'm sure that the message of Heart is basically "We hate Republicans", which other than hate not being the nicest of emotions, is fine. I wonder if the Beatles ever condemned Charlie Manson's use of "Helter Skelter"? Somehow I doubt it.

I listen to NPR every day, and they are CONSTANTLY concerned about "how partisan Republicans are". I'm not really sure what "partisan" means other than "thinking differently in a group", which apparently NPR and Heart are actually against. Sooner or later, "diversity of thought" is going to mean that someone doesn't agree with you, and in fact you find their opinions to be "wrong" in some sense, maybe even a very significant sense. If "freedom" has any meaning, one would think that such "partisanship" would be very much expected. Having multiple competing ideas would seem to be a great way to figure out what works and what doesn't -- unless you are already certain that your ideas DON'T work and have realized that the only way to succeed is to suppress the ideas of the opposition.

The supposed "liberal folks" -- art, media, education, etc are drawn to a set of ideas that probably they even realize don't work. Radical income distribution, destruction of the family, inability to defend the nation militarily, anti-business, etc. When those ideas are put into practice, the only way they can "succeed" is with a dictator (since people won't vote for actual failure for long), who promptly destroys the individual rights that the arts, media and education depend on as well as the economic surplus (funds beyond food, clothing, shelter) that the more "elite" require to exist. It seems they are somehow forced to bite, and if possible even kill the very hand that "feeds" their existence.

Strangely, the modern "conservative" (which are actually the true "liberals") has no trouble liking BOTH Heart and "Sarah Barracuda".

Nice Cover Contrast

Us Weekly Cover Blasts Sarah Palin, but for the Obamas It’s a Cakewalk - America’s Election HQ

Little difference in magazine cover treatment between BO and SP? Nah, there is no bias in the MSM!

Secret Economic Data

BEA: News Release: Gross Domestic Product and Corporate Profits

As the Democrats and the MSM tell us, we are deep in the SECOND "Bush Recession". The old definition of "recession" was two or more consecutive quarters with negative GDP growth. We don't know the NEW definition yet (Republican President = Recession?), but apparently we can now be in a recession with a GDP growth rate of 3.3%!

I also love their assessment of why we achieved this growth:

The acceleration in real GDP growth in the second quarter primarily reflected a larger decrease in imports, an acceleration in exports, an acceleration in PCE, a smaller decrease in residential fixed investment, and an upturn in state and local government spending that were partly offset by a larger decrease in inventory investment.

<br />Gee, less imports and more exports--that must be "double secret", I'm not even sure that BO would be able to spin that as bad news!<br /><br />Clinton, from '93 - 2000 would have spent 14 quarters in "recession" if the "new definition" has anything at all to do with GDP. <br />

Lieberman a Liar Too

Democrats attack Lieberman, saying he lied to delegates - CNN.com

Democrats are always the truthful ones. Strange how a practicing Jewish guy that was their own VP candidate in 2000 is taking the time to get up there and "lie" in front of the Republican convention and is supporting the Republican candidate. There is no way that such a guy could be principled and standing up for what he believes to be true!

So John McCain, a guy that the press AND the Democrats LOVED when he was disagreeing with how Bush was carrying out the war in Iraq, against the Bush tax cuts, part of the "gang of whatever" that prevented Republicans from using the "nuclear option" in the Senate to get Bush appointments through is now "just like Bush"!

Could it be possible that Lieberman and McCain are still where they always were -- standing up for principles that they believe in, while the Democrats and the media have slid farther and farther to the left? If someone sees BO as not doing an effective job of "reaching across the aisle", that makes them a LIAR?

McCain has a long history of being bipartisan. I tend to disagree with a Republican being bipartisan because of exactly what we see here. As long as that bipartisanship is damaging to the Republican cause, the MSM treats the bipartisan Republican as a HERO, but as soon as those bipartisan actions could aid them in a contest with DEMOCRATS, that history is completely lost and they are "another Bush" (or whomever the Republican MSM demon of the day is).

Iraq? Where is Iraq?

Iraq's caldron cools down - Opinion - USATODAY.com

As readers of the MSM know, we lost the war in Iraq, the surge was a failure, and the early recognition of these "facts" is the chief reason that we have the brilliant Dems, BO and Joe the Plagarist running for President.

Oh, but wait, page 100 ... it appears that we DIDN'T lose the war and things continue to look up and up. They turned ANBAR over to Iraqi control!! One would think this is a national secret on the same level as the economy growing at 3.3% in the 2nd quarter during the "recession".

The MSM has decided that if reality favors Republican policies, the answer is SIMPLE -- down with reality, up with fantasy!!

Temple of BO

So BO will give his speech from a fake greek temple. I'm not sure why, but the Nazis liked the "greek look" as well.



Power Line: The Temple of Obama