Loony As a Way of Life

Op-Ed Columnist - The Guns of August - NYTimes.com

Note this is not from some fringe rag or wingnut blog, this is from the NYT. Mr Rich is convinced that any minor whiff of thought that doesn't agree with the lefty view of the world means that we are on the verge of armed conflict. He doesn't say what we ought to DO about this horror, but it is implied in various columns that confiscation of weapons, controls on any group that is somehow identified as "right wing", maybe "education" (forced?) ... it is all very fuzzy, but at least to Mr Rich, we have a "Clear and Present Danger".

Oddly, I'm sure he has probably "forgotten" that Reagan was actually shot and easily could have died, Gerald Ford was shot AT by ex-Manson follower Squeaky Frome -- but in true lefty fashion, she missed entirely (thankfully). My point here would  be that while Rich seems to think that violence is an affliction only of the right, any sort of perusal of the facts is going to make that case hard to support.

No, the biggest contributor to this resurgence of radicalism remains panic in some precincts about a new era of cultural and demographic change. As the sociologist Daniel Bell put it, “What the right as a whole fears is the erosion of its own social position, the collapse of its power, the increasing incomprehensibility of a world — now overwhelmingly technical and complex — that has changed so drastically within a lifetime.”

Bell wrote this fine analysis in '62, but the panic on the left that somebody still thinks differently from them is just as great. JFK was shot by a Castro supporter that had visited the USSR -- not PRECISELY what one might call a "right wing attack". Sirhan Sirhan claimed that he shot RFK because of his support for Israel -- Sirhan was born in Palestine. James Earl Ray was a poor repeat criminal with no identified ideology. I must admit that there is some strong evidence that the 1979 swimming rabbit that attacked Carter in GA was a member of a radical fringe militia group -- so I'll grant him one!

Note also how it is somehow "the right" that can't handle "change". One might argue that globalization, the internet, the end of the USSR and much of the various technical revolutions had much more to do with "the right" than with the left. Is it simply because Rich is certain that "left = smart, right = stupid" that he is convinced of the right's inability to deal with complexity? I know a whole bunch of guys that Rich would call "rightists" that design and code operating system software for a living -- is that less complex than writing bad opinion for the NY Times?

Can a rational person look at the facts of the past 50 years and conclude that there is any significant danger from the right in this country? The war protests, the campus bombings, the race riots in cities, union violence and rampant crime. What of that is a phenomenon of "the right"? Sure, there is Timothy McVeigh and some abortion doctor killings. So the "right" is going to have some crackpots as well. In many ways, Rich ought to be saying "Thank God" -- if Timothy McVeigh didn't exist, it was almost getting to the point that the left ought to have faked him in order to keep them from looking bad!

Of course, how can you really look bad when you have the NYT on your side!

Open Conspiracy, Cloward Piven

CHANDLER: The Cloward-Piven strategy - Washington Times

This a good little article that does some "connecting the dots" on ACORN, BO, and Cloward-Piven. I covered Cloward-Piven here. How much is BO following this? One can never tell for sure, but I'm pretty sure he is well aware of it and one of the reasons that he is very cavilier about making policy choices that are highly likely to destroy the fabric of America is because he sees America as basically a "racist, imperialist, war oriented, unfair, bully that has had things going it's way for way too long for a lot of damage to the rest of the world and the environment".

While complete destruction of America and having it "bombed back to the stone age" may not be his specific agenda, he finds the country as he found it to be completely unacceptable -- the TOP priority is "change". The content of that "change" is extremely secondary.

How democratic nations are destroyed is sadly almost too predictable. Sadly, our founders were well aware of this, so VERY explicitly created a nation that WAS NOT a "Democracy", but rather a Representative Republic -- unfortunately, our aristocracy became an elite. Think of the aristocracy as having real skin in the future of the Nation -- wealth, family history, connection and subsctiption to the American ideals. They are examples of "what it means to be an American". If they allow the nation to be destroyed, they lose what they cherish, they are one with the nation, they look to the nation to give them a form of immortality. Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin -- they were all part of the American aristocracy. If America descends into a tribal third world look alike, those names will be lost to history.

Think of "the elite" as academic, noveau rich, the famous, the chattering classes -- their card is CURRENT  "influence and power". Hitler is still well known and would be even if Germany ceased to exist. It isn't important for Einstein, Gates, Buffet, Michael Jackson or even Thoreau that America continue to exist in any recognizable form -- their names are "world names", like BO, they are "citizens of the world", not primarily "Americans".

So is BO TRYING to "overload and reset"? I don't believe so, but I do believe that he would see that outcome as much more positive than the horror of a largely "unchanged America". He did not run on the greatness of America, he ran on "Hope and Change". While he did very very little to specify what either of those meant, I think we can assume he thought that "hope" was lacking and that things needed to be more different than the same (change). The country had become too democratic, so the masses were taken in by the most dangerous president in US history so far. We are in grave peril.

The Prevention Scam

Charles Krauthammer - Preventive Care Isn't the Magic Bullet for Health Care Costs - washingtonpost.com

Like most things in BOworld, his claims that "prevention saves money" are pure lies. Note that these are REAL LIES as opposed to fake lies like "Bush lied about WMD". Every intelligence service in the world was certain Saddam had WMD, it was common knowledge. When common knowledge turns out to be wrong, it is just wrong -- nobody "lied" about the world being flat, they were just WRONG. If BO doesn't know that spending a lot of money on thousands of people for preventative care costs more, he is is such a fool that he should resign -- if he does know and keeps saying it, then he ought to forced from office because he is a liar.

That's a hypothetical case. What's the real-life actuality? In Obamaworld, as explained by the president in his Tuesday town hall, if we pour money into primary care for diabetics instead of giving surgeons "$30,000, $40,000, $50,000" for a later amputation -- a whopper that misrepresents the surgeon's fee by a factor of at least 30 -- "that will save us money." Back on Earth, a rigorous study in the journal Circulation found that for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, "if all the recommended prevention activities were applied with 100 percent success," the prevention would cost almost 10 times as much as the savings, increasing the country's total medical bill by 162 percent. That's because prevention applied to large populations is very expensive, as shown by another report Elmendorf cites, a definitive review in the New England Journal of Medicine of hundreds of studies that found that more than 80 percent of preventive measures added to medical costs.

Should we do prevention? Sure, but we need to be aware that it costs money -- as to many things, so it is a TRADEOFF, not a panacea. The real world has very few panaceas -- BOworld seems to be loaded with them.

When Giants Fall

The subject book by Michael Panzner is an orgy of doom and gloom, but the reasons why along with any potential for escape are cloudy at best.

"For many Americans, the years ahead will be nothing short of a Modern Dark Ages, where each day brings forth fresh anxieties, unfamiliar risks, and a deep sense of foreboding ..."

He does go on to assert that an "enlightened few" that have things firmly in grasp could do well, but after reading the book, I'd have to say that other than being a survivalist with some buried gold, he is short on advice for how the "enlightened" might get along.

Why is all of this coming upon us? There is no one clear reason, but here is an example :

"Now though, the circumstances that have made the United States a beacon of light and the economic and cultural agenda setter over the course of many decades are changing. Many blame the disastrous military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the newfound acceptance of barbaric torture techniques and scandals like the mistreatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, others put it down to a general sense of arrogance, of unilateral decision making and hubristic exceptionalism, especially during the two terms that President George W. Bush was in office."

Again, the guy is clearly no neocon -- two terms of George Bush may well have been what killed America! Certainly not a very robust nation, in that merely ONE horrible President, even with the very able 2-year assistance of a fully Democratic congress could irreparably destroy the nation. Think of it -- we survived the '60s and '70s ... Bay of Pigs, the massacre at My Lai -- is killing women and children in cold blood worse than harassing Iraqi prisoners? the loss of 50K lives in Vietnam in complete ignominious defeat, assassinations of two Kennedy's and MLK, Watergate, the economy running to 20+ % inflation and 13%+ unemployment --- BUT, we were brought down by two wars in which we have lost less than 10K soldiers and which at this writing, there seems to be every prospect that we will win both of them!!! Wow.

I'm not so sure the guy is wrong, but I think it has a lot more to do with "America" than it does with Bush -- for the first time in my lifetime, the MSM / elite in this country decided that they so thoroughly hated a president that there were no boundaries on how they would attack him. It is reminiscent of diseases like arthritis or MS where the immune system goes nuts and attacks the body. Humans are designed to live in groups of 250 people or less, and we are wired to do whatever it takes to "maintain enough status to breed" (and to protect our families / offspring) within that group. When the leadership of "our group" identifies someone in the group as "unclean/beneath contempt/outcast", it is well documented that we are "wired" to "pile on" -- it is too late for that one, the only way to save ourselves is to "go with the group".

I think our mass media has crossed a boundary where for most Americans it supercedes whatever their "actual group" is (work, family, church, etc) and the level of disparagement of Bush made him our "ultimate pariah". Oddly, mankind seems to have evolved an odd type of creature sometimes called an "iconoclast" -- which I prefer to call "Moose". I feel most comfortable far outside of the "common wisdom" because I find nearly all common wisdom to just be "popular foolishness".

The rest of the world is well enough wired to our media that the spectacle of a supposedly great nation completely turning on a leader that they had elected a mere two years before in a growing economy with no major policy changes was simply too much to maintain any respect for. When that sudden change of heart was coupled with a radical shift to the left in '06, most of the world validly saw us as just plain nuts. But I digress, this guy thinks it is "Bush" -- and that is a popular view.

Whatever the reason, he is convinced that the age of the unipolar US dominated globe is over, and as the US itself descends into financial, industrial and military ruin, the squabbling for leadership among China, Russia, Europe, Venezuela, etc will speed the worldwide decline.

"Worries and resentments over falling wages, surging unemployment, and the widening gap between righ and poor will also rouse nationalistic, protectionist, and xenophobic hostility. Throughout the world there will be a push for tighter borders and controls on the flow of people, goods, and capital. Immigrants and foreigners will become scapegoats for domestic ills. Meanwhile, a variety of home-grown woes will stir up social unrest, triggering obstructive and antagonistic responses. In many cases, governments will implement ill-conceived policies, including hyperinflationary expansion of the money supply, which will engender further instability. Enfeebled nations will see the reins of power commandeered by populists or tyrants. Some will tap the destructive energy of old rivalries or demonize wealthier rivals, including the United States."

Here is a little quote from a guy named JR Nyquist that I found interesting:

As it happens, men are not global creatures. They speak a specific language, relate to a specific culture, and share specific historical experiences. Although it may sound enlightened to say that we are "all one", it is nonetheless untrue. We are not one. We are individuals with individual traits and attachments. What attaches me to the globe is nothing compared to the reality of language, culture, family and tribe. Every individual has a motherland and a mother tongue. There are national sentiments and national interests.

Very well put -- and for BO, that is KENYA and the Luo Tribe!!!

"To cynical observers, the 1973 publication of "Small is Beautiful" market the peak of hysteria about the limits to growth. ... Perhaps it is ironic that despite decades of apparent evidence to the contrary, Schumacher's vision of the future has not disappeared from view."

Welcome back to the age of malaise! Economic freedom inspires risk taking and innovation which provides growth that breaks down the old "limits to growth". There is a strange paradox that for the "liberal" that finds any restriction on sexual behavior from marriage to sticking with the opposite sex or same species to be restrictive beyond belief, the idea that folks ought to be able to labor at the job of their choosing and keep most of the money they make is scandalous beyond belief!! The "cynics" are the ones that believe that the human mind and ingenuity is unlimited, and of tremendously more importance than the supposed "limits to growth". Potentially, if the average liberal spent 1/10th as much brainpower on new economic horizons as opposed to new sexual horizons, the malaise could be subdued!!

"After years of ever-growing profits, easing regulations, and a yawning gap between the incomes of workers and those at the top, political and social pressures will force the pendulum back the other way. The result will be increasing taxes on businesses and their overseers, restrictive legislation and political interference, tougher rules on governance and executive compensation and pressure for payoffs and handouts ... "

And the result? Well, less for everyone of course!!

In many ways, this book is like one of those reality chase videos on TV where the fleeing car is driving erratically and very fast, with an ever tightening police pursuit -- it becomes certain that there will be a bad crash at the end, but it is impossible to see how to prevent it. Our vehicle "made impact" in '06 when we put the drunken Democrats in charge of Congress, and in '08 when we handed the wheel to the Kenyan Obozo, we drove off the cliff of unknown height and now we just await the sudden stop at the bottom.

Oh, if you are feeling happy and wonder what depression is like, it will work! I wish there was a little less truth in it.

The Greatest Spiritual Secret of the Century

The subject book by Thom Hartmann is actually a lot "better" in that it is fairly well written. Thom took over the mike on Air America from Al Franken and is considered the most influential "progressive" radio host in America. One really should read through the Wikipedia entry for him just to see what sort of nutcases have influence with the left in this country. Thom hasa PHD!! in homeopathic "medicine" -- the "medicine" where one dilutes substances to the level where single molecules or less exist in the "dose". It has been known to be complete quackery for a least 100 years, yet Thom has a "PHD" in it!!!

Among his other wacky beliefs is that John Kennedy was murdered by a trio of mafia dons. There are a couple of quotes from the book that I find to be base concepts of the liberal mind:

"It's not human nature that is broken or sick, it's our culture, which has spread across most all of the world. The culture of domination and conquest. Of the thousands of tribes on earth, only one has gone so insane that they'd lock up food and make people work like slaves to earn it. And that tribe, that culture, is ours".

That "insane tribe" is the US for Thom -- and from looking at a list of his other books and writings, one can pick out that he is CERTAIN that ANYTHING is better than the current US culture!!! One really wishes that Thom could spend a few joyus months in Mogadishu or with some other similar "better tribe".

"... I guess it would mean that I couldn't continue to just get along and go along, to feed the machine of the multinational corporations and the kings and the despots of the world, to be a wage slave. I'd want to find a way to make a living that wasn't toxic to the earch, to other humans, to all life".

There you have it ... why don't we all live in some way that makes zero impact on the planet? Amish maybe? He didn't say HOW -- he just said what needs to be done.

This guy is a best selling author and his radio show took over the slot of a guy that was elected SENATOR !!! He is a radical new age quack and he is the most influential liberal talk show host in America!!!

Airport for Nobody

Remote Murtha airport lands big bucks from Washington - CNN.com

Remember the "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska? One of those horrible examples of Republican pork that helped the MSM and the Democrats bring down that Republican majority? You ought to, it was covered like crazy.

Take a look at the silent little $200 Million taxpayer funded airport used by an average of 20 people per day!!! Courtesy of John Murtha, Democrat. Plus, it goes on giving -- we can only hope that more people don't use it, since each ticket is subsidized by the Feds for $100!!

War With BO is OK

For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all | Washington Examiner

I happened to be out on the road for a few days and got to see a bunch of old "Bush/war" bumper stickers. So if the wars were so horrible with Bush in office, what is up now? Well, as York, reports, just like Clinton/Kosovo, nothing -- being left means having no fixed principles, so as long as your side is in, war is just fine.

The Fish Rots From the Head

The White House - Blog Post - Facts Are Stubborn Things

Note, the MSM doesn't find anything "chilling" about THIS!! Hey, turn in your neighbors to the BO White House! We'll decide what to do about their "misinformation"!!! Naturally, the cud chewing lefty sheep find this to be very comforting. They regularly have trouble fully explaining the latest BO program that is going to "improve care, be less costly, cover everyone and allow you to keep all the same choices you have to day with no negative impact"!!! Hey, who could be against THAT, and why in the world would you ask any questions about it!!

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Worries on the Left

Obama's healthcare horror | Salon

Please read this, Camille Pagila is a lefty with impeccable empty headed views on creating a perfect world with a few simple government programs.

But somehow liberals have drifted into a strange servility toward big government, which they revere as a godlike foster father-mother who can dispense all bounty and magically heal all ills. The ethical collapse of the left was nowhere more evident than in the near total silence of liberal media and Web sites at the Obama administration's outrageous solicitation to private citizens to report unacceptable "casual conversations" to the White House. If Republicans had done this, there would have been an angry explosion by Democrats from coast to coast. I was stunned at the failure of liberals to see the blatant totalitarianism in this incident, which the president should have immediately denounced. His failure to do so implicates him in it.

A "strange servility"? Apparently Camille has missed most of her lefty compatriots quietly chewing their cuds when Democrats held power in the past.

In case you doubt that she is actually a certified Bush hater, and therefore obviously intelligent in the eyes of the MSM and it's followers ...

Aug. 12, 2009 | Buyer's remorse? Not me. At the North American summit in Guadalajara this week, President Obama resumed the role he is best at -- representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair. Obama has barely begun the crucial mission that he was elected to do.

Imperial Congress

John Fund: Congress’s Gulfstream Jet Scandal Is Just the Beginning - WSJ.com

Naturally a corporate CEO wanting to leverage his time by using a Gulfstream is something that ought to be pointed out as wasteful of money and damaging to the environment.

Congress though, not THAT is a completely different story!!!

The Bloom Coming off BO Rose?

Dorothy Rabinowitz: Obama’s Tone-Deaf Health Campaign - WSJ.com

Are the masses waking up and starting to smell the stench of BO rather than the lofty airs that the MSM has been telling them are associated with BO? One can only hope. It is going to take a WAVE to get even minimal leverage to right the ship in the next election. Even I would not have believed the level of damage that BO has been able to wreak in 6 short months.

The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them. 

Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning. 

It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

Un-American Protests

Column: 'Un-American' attacks can't derail health care debate - Opinion - USATODAY.com

Remember when it was "chilling" for some to claim that it was "un-American" for the NYT to sensationalize Abu Grab and to leak classified documents on rendition programs and other supposedly covert activities? They thought that such activity was bound to embolden more terror and to make the US out to be the bad guy. Wow, folks that think like THAT are "radical" -- let's see how the left thinks about people making statements about BOcare.

However, it is now evident that an ugly campaign is underway not merely to misrepresent the health insurance reform legislation, but to disrupt public meetings and prevent members of Congress and constituents from conducting a civil dialogue. These tactics have included hanging in effigy one Democratic member of Congress in Maryland and protesters holding a sign displaying a tombstone with the name of another congressman in Texas, where protesters also shouted "Just say no!" drowning out those who wanted to hold a substantive discussion.

Well now it is "un-American" to protest your government adding trillions of dollars to the debt for BOcare. This is an America where you have no right to oppose the will of BO and Nancy Pelosi. "Change" has come to pass!!

It is interesting to note which side is offended by what. Conservatives tend to be offended by flag burning, not supporting the nation at war and chants and disruptions at campaign events. Democrats are offended that not everyone agrees with them at a Town Hall meeting. One might wonder if the "Town Hall" is supposed to be more like the local Politburo? Where we all get together to say the same thing?

Simple Truth

Remove the complexity and often the truth is quite simple!

Who's Nazi Nancy Now?

RealClearPolitics - Nancy's Nazi Shock: Did She Forget the Bush Years?

A nice jaunt down memory lane of the Bush years. Gee, who would have ever thought of likening someone you didn't like to Hitler or a Nazi!! Wow, we have NEVER seen that before!!

How short some memories are. Nazis were "National Socialists" -- gee, which side of the spectrum are socialists normally on? But wait! There IS a correlation -- Republican = evil = Nazi!! There, that makes sense!

Republican Mobs

Democrats say Republicans staging town hall protests - CNN.com

I've never been to a major Republican campaign event where some number of Democrats didn't show up to demonstrate on the street outside, try to cover the speaker with boos or chants, or just yelling. In order to see Newt Gingerich speak 15 years ago, I had to walk through a line of chanting democrat and union protesters (they stopped and let me through nicely -- it helps to be 6'4" 250+).

They were being LED by the Democrat that was running for congress from this district and received more coverage from the local media than Speaker of the House Gingerich. I think every national Republican convention for at least the last 8 years has been heavily demonstrated against and typically had someone have to be carried away during the major acceptance speech. I've never heard the media have nary a negative word to say about it, nor have I seen where they publish some Republican complaints about it.

So Democrats have been turning Republican events into shout-fests forever, but somehow it is "evil" if Republicans say something? Staged? The protest over Newt just being here was completely led by the Democrat that was running for Congress. What is that?

The insanity builds -- BO and his Democrat cronies are spending TRILLIONS of $$$ that they don't have and anyone that doesn't agree with them is supposed to just shut up?? How close are they to trying to FORCE the opposition to shut up?? Are any of the sheep starting to hear some warning bells here?