I have told you this before and I will tell you this again. Unless you elect Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ken Buck, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Sharron Angle, and Joe Miller, we will never see Obamacare repealed.
Senator Judd Gregg is up today saying that repeal is not recommended.
Sen. Judd Gregg (N.H.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said that repealing the new healthcare reform law — or looking to defund it — were not good options.
“I don’t think starving or repealing is probably the best approach here,” Gregg said on the Fox Business Network. “You basically go in and restructure it.”
Here’s the thing — Senate leadership staff will say this is just Judd Gregg, who is retiring, and not reflective of the Senate GOP leadership. There is a problem though.
In the past several weeks, there have been several closed door, off the record meetings of high dollar donors getting briefings from various elected officials, including several Senators. In each case the donors have been “reassured” by the Senators present that they have no intention of repealing Obamacare, just restructuring it.
The Senators seemed to think the high dollar donors were not kooks like those tea party activists and would understand the practical need to just “restructure” instead of “repeal.” Unfortunately, the Senators have badly misread the donors.
A loose accusation of his being a socialist has trailed Obama for years, but without real evidence that he saw himself as part of this radical tradition. But the evidence exists, if not in plain sight then in the archives — for example, the archived files of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), which include Obama’s name on a conference registration list. That, along with some misleading admissions in the president’s memoir, Dreams from My Father, makes it clear that Obama attended the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars conferences, and quite possibly the 1985 conclave as well. A detailed account of these conferences (along with many other events from Obama’s radical past) and the evidence for Obama’s attendance at them can be found in my new book, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.
The 1983 Cooper Union Conference, billed as a tribute to Marx, was precisely when Obama discovered his vocation for community organizing. Obama’s account of his turn to community organizing doesn’t add up. He portrays it as a mere impulse based on little actual knowledge. But that impulse saw Obama through two years of failed job searches. Clearly he had a deeper motivation. The evidence suggests he found it at the Socialist Scholars conferences, where he encountered the entrancing double idea that America could be transformed by a kind of undercover socialism, and that African Americans would be the key figures in advancing community organizing.
--In the interview, the president predicts he’ll be able to work with Republicans after the election: “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible, either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.”So let me see if I get this straight. The coming tidal wave in November that will wipe out the Democrats in congress will result in a situation in which Republicans will want to bow down to the lightworker because they will want to abandoned their principles or because the American people will be sending a message that they want the Republicans to compromise with the left? Yeah, right.
--He reflects on what he called the “tactical lessons” of his first two years: He let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat,” realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” and perhaps should have “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” in the stimulus. He said he and his team took “a perverse pride” in focusing on policy while ignoring the need to sell it to the country and that he realizes now that “you can’t be neglecting of marketing and P.R. and public opinion.”So all of the claims that the trillions of spending come down to the child in the White House admitting that the money we spent was wasted and that he doesn't know what happened to it. Gee, I feel better about the depression we are having already; don't you?
Barack Obama is the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history. Thanks to him the era of big government is back. Obama runs up taxpayer debt not in the billions but in the trillions. He has expanded the federal government's control over home mortgages, investment banking, health care, autos and energy. The Weekly Standard summarizes Obama's approach as omnipotence at home, impotence abroad.
The President's actions are so bizarre that they mystify his critics and supporters alike. Consider this headline from the Aug. 18, 2009 issue of the Wall Street Journal: "Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling." Did you read that correctly? You did. The Administration supports offshore drilling--but drilling off the shores of Brazil. With Obama's backing, the U.S. Export-Import Bank offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras to finance exploration in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro--not so the oil ends up in the U.S. He is funding Brazilian exploration so that the oil can stay in Brazil.
“He cannot save 2010,” the big-time Democrat is saying of Barack Obama. “It is gone. He must now concentrate on saving 2012. But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”
In my experience, the big-time Democrat has hardly ever been wrong. He does not dislike President Obama. On the contrary, like most big-time Democrats, he worked hard for his election in 2008 and would much rather see Democrats hold onto Congress this Nov. 2 than lose.
Sooner or later, well or badly, that majority's demand for representation will be filled. Whereas in 1968 Governor George Wallace's taunt "there ain't a dime's worth of difference" between the Republican and Democratic parties resonated with only 13.5 percent of the American people, in 1992 Ross Perot became a serious contender for the presidency (at one point he was favored by 39 percent of Americans vs. 31 percent for G.H.W. Bush and 25 percent for Clinton) simply by speaking ill of the ruling class. Today, few speak well of the ruling class. Not only has it burgeoned in size and pretense, but it also has undertaken wars it has not won, presided over a declining economy and mushrooming debt, made life more expensive, raised taxes, and talked down to the American people. Americans' conviction that the ruling class is as hostile as it is incompetent has solidified. The polls tell us that only about a fifth of Americans trust the government to do the right thing. The rest expect that it will do more harm than good and are no longer afraid to say so.
The perfect ending to a day that saw support for repealing O-Care reach a new high in Rasmussen (58 percent) and support for The One reach a new weekly low in Gallup (47 percent). Turns out that fantastically long, mind-bogglingly complex bills which no one has actually read may create unintended consequences. Remember how they forgot to require insurers to cover kids with preexisting conditions? Oh, and they forgot initially to let young adults be covered by their parents’ insurance until Reid fixed it in reconciliation. Now this. Who knew that when Pelosi said they’d have to pass the bill so that people could find out what’s in it, “people” meant Congress?
I’d call it comedy gold if not for the obvious point raised by the Times: “If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?”
By one estimate, the effective tax rate on the 26 million small businesses across the country -- which in the past have accounted for more than half of the job growth in the US -- has jumped to 50 percent from 40 percent, sucking valuable cash from the businesses
These dollars could have been used to add to payrolls or make capital improvements -- but instead will be siphoned off by Uncle Sam, state and municipal governments.
"The impact of these higher taxes and reduced hiring will be a recovery cycle that will be much longer, be slower to take hold and be without much job growth," said Al Angrisani, founder and CEO of Angrisani Turnarounds and former US Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Reagan. A survey of 200 small businesses across the US by the economist found 51.5 percent of business owners in March were concerned about the viability of their businesses -- up from 49.5 percent in February.
I spent some time with the highest tenured faculty member at Chicago Law a few months back, and he did not have many nice things to say about "Barry." Obama applied for a position as an adjunct and wasn't even considered. A few weeks later the law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn't have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.
The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).
Via the Right Scoop, this is as snarky as I’ve ever seen him; obviously, America’s cool reception to his world-beating boondoggle has hit a nerve. Forget the fact that if there’d been a huge spike in support, he and his lackeys would be on TV 15 times a day talking it up. That’s just politics. Instead, start with the fact that no less than Bill Clinton famously predicted that The One’s numbers would leap 10 points “the minute health care reform passed.” The actual result? The Democrats’ favorable rating is now at the lowest level recorded by Gallup since they started polling the question in 1992. At 41 percent, they’re actually a point lower than the GOP, whose brand has been in the toilet for a good five years now. No wonder vulnerable Democrats don’t want to talk about health care with their constituents during the recess.
"Most of these people [in the Administration] have never had a real job in their lives. They don't understand a thing about business, and that includes the President," says a senior lobbyist for one of the companies that announced the charge. "My CEO sat with the President over lunch with two other CEOs, and each of them tried to explain to the President what this bill would do to our companies and the economy in general. First the President didn't understand what they were talking about. Then he basically told my boss he was lying. Frankly my boss was embarrassed for him; he clearly had not been briefed and didn't know what was in the bill."
It isn't just the President who didn't understand his own proposal. Late Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and Rep. Bart Stupak, chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel, announced that they would hold hearings in late April to investigate "claims by Caterpillar, Verizon, and Deere that provisions in the new health care reform law could adversely affect their company's ability to provide health insurance to their employees."This is, of course, the problem. We have in this administration a cadre of hard left socialists who hate the country and want to destroy it. Needless to say, none of them really understands how it works or why. Nor do the seem inclined to learn the first thing about the principles and ideas on which it was founded. They have no idea what they are doing except insofar as they "know" that they have to "fundamentally transform" the country that the rest of us cherish.
Democrats vote to destroy our food supply
The Globe and Mail and Red State have both reported on this story.
You may not know it, but much of America's produce is grown in the central valley of California. But this year radical leftist democrat communist environmentalists have used their political power to shut off the water supply to the farmers there. The pretext that they give, is that there is a species of fish, the Delta Smelt, that is at risk from the transfer of water to the farmers who grow so much of our food. The leftists have convinced the politicians that the Delta Smelt is more important that providing Americans with food. And so they have shut off the water to the farmers who would otherwise be growing the food that ends up in your local grocery.
For years, conservatives have been sounding the alarm about how dangerous the environmental movement is, but most people didn't pay much attention. Now they are literally stealing the food off of our dinner plates and seem bent on starving us. I hope that if you care about having enough to eat that you take this kind of thing seriously. These people are sick and damaged and they will not stop until they have completely destroyed this country. Now they are attacking our food supply and making us even poorer.
But, of course, you will never hear about this from the State Controlled Media. No leftist will ever admit that they are attacking America for the purpose of destroying it.
Rand called this epistemological process the "blank out". Note the inability of the leftist to acknowledge the facts:
1. The central valley is the source of much of our plant based food supply.
2. Plants need water in order to grow.
3. Democrats (and three traitor Republicans) have used government force to turn off the water to the farmers in this valley.
The result? A modern day dust-bowl because plants need water in order to grow, and they now have no water.
No observant, rational person disputes these facts.
A rational person, i.e. a person who is able to perceive and understand the facts of reality provided by their senses, is not confused about this issue. Based on this reaction we can confidently conclude that the Leftists who support this action are either deeply confused about what constitutes a fact, or they do understand what they are doing to the farmers and they approve.
There are no other logical alternatives.
I am curious to know why Senator Durbin seems inclined to support ACORN, a group that is under investigation by the Justice Department in 14 states and that now appears to be involved in conspiracy to support underage sex slavery, human trafficking and tax evasion to say nothing of voter fraud. Is Sen. Durbin's position that he is now in favor of underage sex slavery, human trafficking and tax evasion? If not, then can you explain to me why he voted in favor of continued funding for this organization?
The ACORN Story Continues
If you are a member of the Elite Media Monoculture then you probably have not heard about this story। But if you are anyone else in America you know that independent film makers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles have broken one of the biggest stories of the year over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government web site. In this story, ACORN representatives in Baltimore, Washington, New York and now in San Bernardino have offered to help James and Hannah set up a sex slavery ring of under age prostitutes with a big helping of tax evasion on the side. Well, the story just keeps getting better and better.
Charlie Gibson was on WLS radio's Don Wade and Roma program and in a remarkable exchange said that he had not heard of the ACORN story that has been breaking across the Internet and talk radio all week. Of course one must decide whether to believe him or not. Many people in new media are skeptical of this claim. The alternative view is that Dinosaur Media does not want to cover this story because, like so many others they ignore, it is bad news for the Obama-Fuhrer. ACORN people are his homies. Obama comes from the left and worked closely with this group and others like it. Thus anything that makes the left look bad is bad for Obama. So it comes as no surprise that stories that go against the leftist narrative will not be covered by legacy media, or if they are, they will be covered in such a way as to distort and change the story into something that is unrecognizable.
This is why the huge demonstrations in Washington and across the country by the tea party movement over the weekend barely registered at all on the Legacy Media's radar. For them, if it is not happening in New York, it is as if it didn't happen at all. They live in a bubble surrounded only by people of like mind. Nothing from the outside can penetrate. And that is why they are collapsing. I think that they do know about these things, but the elites in the media live in a reality that is so far removed from the real world that the rest of us know, they just don't have any interest in understanding or reporting on it. For them, such things might as well be happening in the next star system, they are so far away intellectually.
You know, I really don't think it matters any longer.
The millions of people who showed up on Saturday for the protests, and the millions more who couldn't, but who are of similar mind, are simply ignoring the Elite Media Monoculture. The State Run Media is now wholly irrelevant to a wide swath of Americans who now get their news and information from New Media. I can speak for myself; I just don't care about them any more. I listen to talk radio, I read the blogs, I watch Fox and I post in places like this.
Who cares what the legacy media think? They're yesterday's news.
The future belongs to New Media.
The numbers tell the tale. NYT, Trib and Boston Globe are just a few lefty media outlets going broke. CNN barely registers on the ratings scale compared to FOX. CBS, NBC and ABC are losing their audience year after year as the old liberals die off and aren't replaced with younger viewers who instead go to the Internet.
Legacy media is dying. Let them die
The National Tea Party Movement is announcing their support for John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, who wrote an article recently for The Wall Street Journal that has the left up in arms. The reason that they are having a fit is because Mr. Mackey suggested that the free market might be a better solution to our health care issues than nationalizing one sixth of the nation's economy and destroying the private insurance industry.
ST. LOUIS - (BUSINESS WIRE) - The national leadership team of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition this morning announced a series of Tea Party Buycott events designed to support John Mackey and the Whole Foods grocery chain. Mackey is the CEO whose op-ed in The Wall Street Journal opposing Obamacare and supporting free market health care reform has sparked unprecedented and unwarranted attacks from left wing propagandists.
The first two events are scheduled for Tuesday evening, September 1, 2009 in St. Louis, Missouri and Dallas, Texas, with additional events in other cities and locales to come. The St. Louis event will be held at the Whole Foods store located in Town and Country, Missouri off Clayton Road and will begin at 6 pm. The Dallas kickoff event will be held at the Whole Foods Market located at 11700 Preston Rd., Dallas, Texas and will begin at 7 pm. Details of these Tea Party Buycotts and future buycotts can be found online at http://www.teapartybuycott.com.
Kevin McCullough at Townhall.com predicts the effective end of the Obama-Fuhrer's administration in pretty short order. I hope he is correct, as the country can't survive if the hard left gets its way. The amount of spending, taxes and debt that they want will sink this country for generations if Obama's plans are passed.
Peter Ferrara writes at The American Spectator on how Obama's economic plans mean the end of the prosperous America as we have known it.
Chris Stirewalt at The Washington Examiner looks at how the Obama administration's honeymoon with the media is winding down. Of course the state run media is still doing quite a lot to cover for the Obama-Fuhrer's incompetence, but they can only do so much. As time wears on, the luster has come off and the reality is sinking in.
In this photo essay from Foreign Policy, we get a glimpse into one of the left's favorite utopias. It's not a pretty picture.
The Tax Day Tea Parties brought out more than just patriots who are interested in limited government and lower taxes. It also brought to light the failure of The Elite Media Monoculture. Here we have two different stories, one from Real Clear Politics and the other from Microsoft Money Central, that show us that Fox News is crushing the competition. In the first quarter, and again on April 15th, Fox news destroyed its competitors.
Now I know that some of you want to throw yourselves on the floor and bang your fists while screaming "NO, NOOO, NOOOOOOO it can't be TRRRRRUUUUUUUEEEE!!!!!!!!!." But I assure you, it is a fact; it is true and no amount of tantrum throwing will make it otherwise.
The reality is that if you are a media outlet and you have a hard left tilt, you worship socialism, you think Obama is the bee's knees and you think that regular Americans are "racist teabagging rednecks, then you have probably driven most of your audience away.
Patterico reports that Green is the New Ponzi. But if you had a brain you knew that already.
Considerable forces have been, and are being arrayed, that will force you to bow to the false god of environmentalism. But it is not about clean air or clean water or 'saving' the climate. The climate does not need to be saved because it is not in danger from Man, or anything else for that matter.
Here is a news flash for you in case you have been the unfortunate victim of public school brainwashing; Man does not cause Global Warming. If you cook up a steak on the grill this weekend the ice caps will not melt, nor will the sun explode, nor will the Earth fall into a black hole if you happen to drive an SUV. Let me repeat, Man Does Not Cause Global Warming.
No dear friends, it is the sun that is responsible for Earth's climate, and the last time I checked, we don't have much to do with what the sun does. What this is really about is control. Elites who think they know better than you do want to have control over what you drive, what you eat, where you live, where you work and what you think. But you don't have to buy the propaganda. As another blogger says, you can take the red pill.
Just a few more thoughts on Janeane Garofalo. It should be pointed out for all you liberal left retards who cannot bear to face facts that the Garofalo vid in which she claims to be both a mind reader who knows that millions of specific people are racist and an expert in phrenology who can tell you just what you are thinking by the size of the lumps on your forehead.
Across the blogsphere, on the other hand, the reaction was to recognize that the wretched little bag of frustration is a deeply disturbed excuse for a human being who should perhaps take a look in the mirror first before casting stones at others. For just a small sample of such opinion on this sad and bitter person look here and here and here.
Or you could just do a google search and find about 30 thousand more.
That would be me
I didn't get to this earlier because last week was so busy with the Tea Parties and the resounding media meltdown that followed, but this story is another example of the Obama-Fuhrer's continuing attack on free speech and the criminalization of opinions with which he and the left disagree.
World Net Daily brings us this story on The Department of Homeland Security report recently issued that warns us, not against hostile foreign governments or dangerous Islamic terrorist groups or the exploding drug war on our southern border, but rather against conservatives. Because we all know just how awful it can be to hear about those evil right wing causes, like freedom, liberty, capitalism, small government, the Bill of Rights and low taxes.
Blogger Patterico reports what we all know happens when you post something on YouTube that The Elite Media Monoculture finds embarrassing; it gets pulled down. The Soviets were very good at this sort of reverse engineering of history; inconvenient truths were routinely airbrushed out of the picture when it became necessary. It is typical of the left. But then again, the Soviets did not have to contend with the Internet or talk radio.
In our latest adventure from dying leftist media, CNN demanded that the video of the Susan Roesgen report from the Chicago Tea Party be removed from YouTube because of 'copyright' violations. But the argument does not hold up for long. The purpose of the video posting, which can be seen all over the Internet at this point and not just on YouTube, is to offer criticism and comment on the performance of CNN itself; something which is protected by the 1st amendment and the doctrine of 'fair use.' If you want to offer your opinion of CNN's coverage of the Chicago Tea Party, you can use that video in order to point out what you think is wrong with reporter Roesgen's behavior. The use of the video is as evidence for editorial opinion. And that is what CNN is really against. Copyright isn't really an issue here because the people posting the vid aren't claiming it as their own; rather they are making fun of it. And CNN doesn't like that at all. They know that they look like fools for putting this reporter on the scene. They know how they are made to appear because of this video and they are doing whatever they can to erase this annoying little bit of history. But fortunately for us, it is very difficult to do that in the age of new media.
The reality is that Dinosaur media still doesn't get it. I was watching a panel of liberal journalists on C-SPAN over the weekend discussing the collapse of old media, (they didn't call it that of course) in particular the 'feature story' that seems to be more and more rare in journalism, which was the topic of this particular panel. They offered many different explanations such as the centralization of corporate ownership of media, etc., to try to understand what is happening to their publications. All of the usual explanations from the left that we have heard before. None of them dared to ask whether the content they were offering might have something to do with the fact that people were no longer buying their product. It just does not occur to them to imagine that in the world of new media with the Internet and talk radio, that you can't get away with treating half of your audience with disdain and contempt and not see a serious decline of your product, in this case the liberal newspaper or newsmagazine.
CNN got crushed in the ratings by competitor Fox over the Tea Parties and for a simple reason; they had better coverage. Fox took the protests seriously and covered them as a serious news event. They asked questions and covered the issues raised by the protests in a way that recognized that the audience really would want to know and understand the meaning of the event. CNN sent Susan Roesgen. The difference between the two was clear for all to see. The problem for CNN and for the rest of Dinosaur Media, aside from the fact that everyone knows about the Roesgen report by now, is that with the advent of the Internet regular people can now talk back to them and let them know what they think about the 'coverage.'. Speaking Truth to Power is how they used to put it when the only speaking we heard was from the left. But now that the conservative right has a voice, feedback is just a bit too inconvenient for them to deal with. But try as they might, they can no longer silence the true voice of the people. And of course, they cannot hold onto viewers who have alternative sources of information from which to choose.
Wretched loser Janeane Garofalo spews bile and hate; demonstrates her ignorance again
Janeane Garofalo, who has failed as an actress, a radio talk show host, a comedian and now as a human being, went on the little watched Keith Olberman show to spout her racist conspiracy theories regarding the tax day Tea Party protests and the people who took part in them. That Garofalo finds it necessary to refer to regular Americans as stupid rednecks and racist Klan members should, by now, come as no surprise. In her interview on MSNBC she offers up her view that conservatives have, to paraphrase her wandering verbal vomit, an expanded limbic brain that apparently pushes against the rest of the grey matter thus causing those evil conservative thoughts. And she also aped the easily debunked idea that these protests were the product of the Republican party and Fox News; what Nancy Pelosi referred to as astroturfing. That such a protest could be organized from the ground up by motivated individuals who share a desire for limited government and lower taxes is beyond Garofalo's ability or desire to comprehend.
The idea comes to my mind that Garofalo is implying that all those conservatives at the Tea Parties need to have a lobotomy, getting rid of that pesky limbic brain, to make them into good little liberals. Let's repeat that; to be a good little leftist, you need a lobotomy. Of course, I don't think she would have put it that way if she had spent a few moments thinking about the implications. But then again, it is pretty rare for any hate filled leftist such as Garofalo to do much thinking beyond the moment in any case, so it should come as no surprise that she didn't take this line of thought to its logical conclusions either. Would that qualify as a self fulfilling prophesy?
In any event, commie leftards like Garofalo are becoming more and more shrill as the opposition to big government elites in both parties is now coming from regular people in flyover country. The reality is that the Tea Parties are about regular people who are deeply concerned about the rapidly increasing size and scope of government. We look at what has been happening for many years and we see the danger to the republic that we love. We want to preserve what is best in this country and to return the government to its true purpose and a size that is smaller and more limited. This is the vision that the founders had when they created America in the first place. We were to be a nation of citizens with individual rights that the government was forbidden to take away. Our government was to be one of limited, specific and enumerated powers that was to stay out of the lives of its citizens to the greatest degree possible, because that is the only moral form of society, and because no totalitarian government has ever avoided an eventual collapse. And regular people have now reached the tipping point at which they understand that they have to take action to roll back the size of government while it is still possible to do so and they have begun to act. And that terrifies the left.
The people who are now becoming activists have not generally done so before. And that has the potential to be a huge change in the political landscape. If this movement gains momentum, then the big government elites and self-loathing leftists like Garofalo are finished. They will not be able to stop the eventual electoral avalanche that will result if most people come to realize the danger of allowing the government to tax, spend and grow to the point where collapse is inevitable. The people who came out on April 15th do understand it. Our numbers are growing and we are not going to be cowed by the Garofalo's on the left. They are moral and intellectual pygmies who deserve only scorn and laughter. Don't let the tattooed court jesters distract you.
Push them aside and keep your eyes on the prize.
CNN reporter loses her mind on national TV
The Tea Party in Chicago was a resounding success like so many around the country. I went downtown myself and arrived shortly after the rally had begun. Federal Plaza was packed with a standing room only crowd. I would say that it would have been nice if there had been a raised stage because it was impossible to see the speakers due to the number of people in attendance. But regardless, it was fun to wander around reading all of the different signs that people had on display. The people there were well behaved and polite; something you don't usually get from the left. Speakers included Mancow Muller and Jonathan Hoenig among others, speaking about the current situation and how we got here. Founding Bloggers have posted lots of pictures of the event that will give you a taste of what it was like to be there.
Contrary to what some in the left media would have you think, this was not an event sponsored by the RNC. Indeed, I was very pleased to hear that organizers refused Michael Steele's attempt to insert himself into the rally as a speaker. It is, indeed, time for the officials in government to be listening to us, not the other way around.
With regards to stage time, we respectfully must inform Chairman Steele that RNC officials are welcome to participate in the rally itself, but we prefer to limit stage time to those who are not elected officials, both in Government as well as political parties. This is an opportunity for Americans to speak, and elected officials to listen, not the other way around.
It should be noted that the left and their handmaidens in The Elite Media Monoculture are spinning like mad in an attempt to portray this as manufactured by the Republican party rather than being a grass-roots effort. But the argument, such as it is, falls flat when Republicans are targets of citizen outrage too. The massive spending spree in Washington has been going on for some time now, and Republicans should get their share of the blame. The elites in both parties need to be kicked out and replaced with people who will be responsible stewards of the national interest. Right now we have only a few in congress from either party who fit that description. The job of cleaning out the dead wood and replacing it will take years.
Official numbers coming in from the organizers show that the total attendance across the country was about 650,000. It is no wonder that the left is freaking out. Conservatives coming out and protesting in massive numbers is something that the left is just not used to or able to comprehend. This is the last thing that the left wants. They prefer that conservatives be unseen and unheard so that the left will be able to push their socialist agenda without any critics causing inconvenient delays or objections. They are cowards you see. They are unwilling and unable to defend their plans on the basis of ideas or evidence because there is no evidence in history that collectivism works and no theory that hasn't been soundly refuted by free market economists, historians and political writers over the centuries since the country's founding. And so they resort to smears, lies and scare tactics to make you think what they want you to think. And the dinosaur media is a big part of the problem.
As evidence for this, we should take a look at the now infamous video of CNN 'reporter' Susan Roesgen having a hysterical nervous breakdown on live national TV at the Chicago Tea Party. Judge for yourself whether there is any possible way that today's Elite Media Monoculture can claim to be fair or objective when the 'reporter' spends her on air time arguing with the protesters instead of gathering information about the who, what and why, etc., as a journalist is supposed to do. Lecturing and yelling at the people there is not what you would expect from a reporter who was really interested in getting the story. But if you have an agenda you are trying to push, then it comes as no surprise.
Little Green Footballs used to be one of my favorite daily reads on the Blogsphere. Alas, Charles now spends his time attacking Right-to-Lifers, Intelligent-Designers and other assorted Right Wing Extremists. Sad but true. It illustrates a point made long ago by Ayn Rand; that if you have no solid, and explicit principles, then you will not long hold any consistent point of view. Of course Charles Johnson did some good work in the past, for example with regard to the Dan Rather fake memo scandal. But over time Charles has drifted father and farther into Andrew Sullivan territory. If LGF were a smaller blog it would matter little, but he is not. Thus I have chosen to demote his link to the loon category along with the perpetually fearful Daily Dish. If you want to read good blogs doing good work on liberty, limited government and the war against the Islamo-Fascists you will find plenty of good links in the regular blog section. I recommend those that I put there. But unfortunately LGF is no longer one of them.
All across the country there will be tax protests on April 15th. Even before Rick Santelli's Shout Heard Round the World, this movement was gaining steam as people became more and more alarmed about the out of control tax and spend policies of the Obama-Fuhrer and the Democrats. For not only are they eager to spend all of our money on their socialist schemes, they are now spending the money of generations yet unborn as well. So if you would like to make your voice heard, find a Tea Party Near You and go. I'll see you there.
Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today
The Wall Street Journal reports that the same forces that have decimated Michigan are at work in New York. Taxes in the empire state are the highest in the country, and as happened in Michigan, the best and brightest, who also happen to be those earning the most money, are rapidly leaving the state.
We reported not long ago that New York city depends for half of its annual budget on just a tiny handful of taxpayers. But those people are leaving, and now that new and more crushing taxes are being put in place, the exodus will only speed up. The city and state depend on a flow of tax revenue from the very same people that they have demonized for years. Now those people are fleeing and taking their wealth with them. How will New York survive when it is made up of only welfare dependents?
The laws of economics cannot be evaded. Sooner or later the actions that Democrats take to destroy the wealth producers takes its toll and all that you have left are those people who are a net drain on the system. It is at that point that the collapse comes home to roost.
Reuters reports that pirates have seized another boat and taken more people hostage. This is, of course, what happens when you have a weakling in the White House.
At The American Thinker Ken Blackwell, who should have been elected as the head of the RNC instead of Michael Steele, gives us a rundown of the Obama-Fuhrer's foreign Policy blunders so far. And there have been no shortage of them. Obama's recent trip to Old Europe has cemented in the minds of many the fact that he is a weakling and a naive idiot who can be easily played. Already the boy president is cutting critical weapon systems that keep us safe and talking pie in the sky ideas about unilateral disarmarment that could only come from an American leftist.
American Leftists are easily indentified by our enemies who know instinctivly that the playing field is wide open to them as long as Democrats are in charge. Russia and China are both building up their respective military power. North Korea has launched a missile over Japan and continues to develop their atomic weapons capability. The terrorists in Iran are doing the same. And Pirates are running loose on the high seas kidnapping American citizens while Obama admires his reflection in the teleprompter and dreams about his next magazine cover story.
The Obama administration is incompetent and feckless and is pursing a radical agenda that is designed to undermine American power and make us much less important, and therefore will take away many of our options for future action, and the rest of the world knows it. In Europe they are celebrating because they understand just how weak and ineffective Obama is going to be. Dictators around the world are running wild because they know that with Obama in the White House, they are safe for the next four years. Can there be any doubt that they will take advantage of The Affirmative Action President's stupidity and weakness?
Skilled and educated workers are fleeing the state
This story from The Detroit News brings us further confirmation that the economic environment in Michigan is forcing people out of the state in order find jobs that are fast disappearing in this once great midwestern state. As I, and many others have pointed out, it is Democrats and the big labor unions that have run Michigan for decades. Now we are seeing the long term results of their policies in the form of falling employment, rising taxes and collapsing businesses. Other states that have been similarly run by Democrats for years and years such as New York and California are also suffering from severe economic problems and for many of the same reasons. But Michigan is a good case study because it was at one time such a major economic powerhouse of the American economy. Michigan was at the heart of America's auto manufacturing and heavy industry. But things have changed and not for the better.
If one can count on anything, one can be sure that Democrats and the left will always raise taxes, will always create a hostile business climate, will always increase the levels of government required regulation of every facet of economic activity they can, will look for more and more ways to strangle creativity and business creation, and will always find ways to punish the most productive people while rewarding the lazy and indolent. It is as predictable as a law of nature.
And just like a law of nature these policies, when put into practice as they have been in a state like Michigan, will have consequences that are as completely predictable as they are destructive. In the state of Michigan, therefore, conditions have reached the point at which people and businesses can no longer function. The people who live in the state and see this happening are now pulling up stakes and moving out for good because it is the only way that they can survive. The government of the state has literally made it impossible for these hard working and productive people to exist in Michigan. If they stay, they will end up impoverished as the government takes more and more of their wealth. And so they are leaving in droves.
And it is not just a random selection of people either; the ones who are moving out are those who are most educated and productive. It is these individuals who are always targeted by the Democrats for looting that allows the left to "spread the wealth" around to other people who have become permanent wards of the state. But that can continue only so long as the productive are present and continue to produce wealth to loot. What happens to the sclerotic socialist edifice when the victims refuse to cooperate?
Years ago, for those of you who are too young to remember, there was a popular phrase used to describe this phenomenon; "Brain Drain." It was used in connection with the loss of population that affected Eastern Europe after the advent of communism after the end of WWII. For a time, before the communists closed their borders, the best and brightest of Eastern Europe fled the communist utopia in favor of Western Europe or America. The communists who ran things could not afford to allow their victims to escape, so within a short time the borders of the communist world were closed to the rest of the world. The socialist utopia became a prison from which escape was punished by death. Barbed wire, machine guns and land mines made sure that the most productive people were chained to the communist vampires so that a constant flow of blood could be ensured.
Fortunately Michigan has no such border. At least not yet.
CNS News brings us this story in which we learn that the Democrats are still in thrall to the Back to the Cave Movement that wants to keep you poor, technologically backward and in the dark. They talk a good game for the cameras, but when you look at the details you know that energy under the Obama-Fuhrer will be much more expensive and much more scarce.
Not to worry though, because Democrats are not against all energy; just the kind that is productive, cheap, plentiful and reliable. They have no problem at all with water-clocks, sundials and torches. And while we're at it, why don't we bring back the use of that renewable oil resource from the 19th century, the Whale?
Nice work if you can get it
The Chicago Tribune reports that Rahm Emanuel was paid $320,000 for a brief stint at Freddie Mac at the same time that the housing crisis was exploding across the country. It seems that he attended a few meetings, but whether he did much more is unclear. Of course, I don't think he will be asked by the New York Times to give any of it back.
In this article from The Washington Examiner we see yet another example of a prominent leftist projecting his own mental and emotional problems onto those healthy people he sees as a threat to his own self image. Congressman Barney Hot Dog seems to be channeling Janeane Garofalo who is fond of making similar claims about how evil conservatives and Republicans are, along with her desire to put them out of their misery for the benefit of all humanity. This tendency of leftists to demonize their critics is, unfortunately, nothing new.
It should be noted here that conservatives tend to shy away from making such ridiculous blanket pronouncements about the evil nature of their opponents. And this is a critical difference. Of course we should not be unwilling to point out the evil nature of leftist ideology itself and name names when required. For some people on the left really are evil. But not everyone is; some are just simply mistaken or deluded by the overwhelming amount of propaganda that they are subjected to on a daily basis. And many people have not been exposed to the ideas of liberty and freedom in anything like a systematic way, and so have nothing against which to compare the slogans of the left. And many people simply don't follow politics closely in any case as they are busy with their lives and day to day concerns.
We conservatives tend to focus on the merits of the arguments in question first and foremost. We believe that the facts and evidence back up our views on free markets, national defense and the basic virtue of the American system as it was seen by the Founding Fathers. We are confident that these views are true and that both theory as well as history have shown them to be so. We expect that most reasonable people, who when shown the arguments and facts, will be able to see for themselves the superiority of the American way of doing things.
But the leftist has no such deep level of confidence, as can be demonstrated by the fact that the leftist will nearly always try to squirm out of any debate of first principles or related ideas. Facts and logic are anathema to them for the most part. And so we are treated to the spectacle, for example, of Barney Frank trying to bully his way out of having to answer a simple question put to him by a young law student.
It is not an inspiring sight.
