Friday, December 18, 2009
ALBUM COVER RULE 5A semi-regular feature...enjoy...
18 dec 09 @ 8:40 pm est
MEN OF HONOREarlier this week, in celebration of the 70th Anniversary of the premiere of
Gone With The Wind, Stacy McCain wrote a great little essay celebrating the character of Rhett Butler. A
highlight:
While those around him scrupulously obey the superficial
social conventions of the age, Rhett scoffs at his own disrepute and brashly invites scandal, as when he shocks Atlanta society
by bidding $150 for the honor of dancing with the recently widowed Scarlett. And while Ashley is torn by doubt, Rhett is the
embodiment of decisive certainty.
He has a way with the
ladies, but Rhett is indisputably a man's man. When his blunt skepticism toward the South's prospects in the impending war
enrages the touchy pride of his hosts in the drawing room at Twelve Oaks, Rhett is insulted by young Charles Hamilton, but
declines the challenge. "I apologize again for all my shortcomings," Rhett says as he excuses himself. The hot-tempered
Hamilton imputes this to cowardice -- "He refused to fight!" -- only to be informed by Ashley that Butler is a notoriously
deadly duelist, "one of the best shots in the country."
That's true honor. A true man of
honor protects those who are foolish, with a false sense of honor, from their disastrous impulses.
That essay may be found here over at The American Spectator.
In a posting over at The Other McCainthat starts off promoting the above essay, Stacy also defends
the movie against those who charge that it is raaaaacist. He then talks about his conversation with Baldilocks about
why white people so fear being labeled a raaaaacist. A highlight:
Vicious race hustlers who plague America's universities are a major reason
an absurd flinch-reaction to the "racist" label is so commonplace among our educated elite. Just ask Sergio Gor
what it was like when left-wingers at George Washington University perpetrated an anti-Muslim hate hoax against the campus chapter of Young America's Foundation. Or ask YAF's Jason Mattera
about the reaction to his "whites-only scholarship" protest at Roger Williams University.
The cringing fearfulness Shelby Steele describes in his book White Guilt has to be "carefully taught" -- to borrow with obvious irony the famous lyrics from South Pacific -- and our educational system now teaches white guilt as fanatically as Nazi schools
taught Aryan superiority in the 1930s.
Acknowledgement of racial guilt is now de rigueur among white bien-pensants
who, if we may continue this impromptu French lesson, are required to prove themselves amis des noirs if
they wish to preserve their amour propre.
Terrorized by the very real risk of denunciation and ostracism
if they dispute the regnant racial orthodoxy, whites internalize this politically correct fear. As is often the case when
fear is hidden in the heart, however, they seek to resolve the inevitable cognitive dissonance by projecting their inner angst
onto scapegoats.
Spot-on, Stacy, but, please, cut out the using Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkey words [use
Latin].
Oh, and by the way, those of you stunted souls out there who still think Stacy McCain is a 'raaaacist'
and 'white supremesist', let me direct you to his posting from today announcing the engagement of his lovely daughter Kennedy
to an Argentine. As one of his commentators, Steve Poling, put so well:
Your kid is marrying a Christian and it's clear that's a bigger deal to
you than him being a gen-you-wine MINORITY.
Some raaaaacist you turn out to be.
Go check out the full posting and the Comments Section, wherein I, your humble Dispatcher, shamelessly offer my 'special services' to the Father of the Bride.
18 dec 09 @ 8:11 pm est
OH, THE WEATHER IN THE SENATE IS FRIGHTFUL
18 dec 09 @ 7:39 pm est
THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT WEARING YOUR 'SAFETY' BELTWhile reading this sad story in today's New York Post, one aspect of it hit me....
From the report, Larry Celona, John Doyle,
Laurie Kamens, all reporting[emphasis mine]:
The bloodshed began when the
killer barged into the family's third floor apartment and opened fire at around 1:45 p.m., near a string of upscale shops
on Amsterdam Avenue near West 83rd Street.
Gunman Hector Quinones blew away 24-year-old Carlos Rodriguez Jr., and
his father Carlos Rodriguez Sr., 52, and then repeatedly stabbed grandfather Fernando Gonzalez, 87, to death before the elder
Rodriguez's wife and adult daughter walked unwittingly into the carnage in the apartment they all shared.
As soon
as Gisela Rodriguez, 49, and her daughter, Leyanis, 28, walked inside, Quinones, 44, opened fire again at the mother, grazing
the back of her head, cops said.
He then went after Gisela's daughter, who scrambled for safety and ran to a nearby
bedroom. The killer was inches away from grabbing her but tripped over his low-slung pants, sources said.
There was more action and then:
Fleeing empty-handed, Quinones ditched
his gun, a .380-caliber semiautomatic pistol loaded with hollow-point bullets, and made a dash down a rear fire escape.
But again, his low-slung pants fell to his ankles, tripping him and sending him falling three stories to his
death, authorities said.
I'm sorry, but that's funny right there. I don't care who you are,
that's funny.
And the taxpayer's have been saved the expense of supporting this murderer's sorry ass for the rest
of his useless life.
18 dec 09 @ 5:34 pm est
YOU CAN MAKE ME SCREAMOne of Julius Obamacus Caesar's favorite and most used phrases is 'the time for
talk is over'.
He's used it one too many times as far as Pundette is concerned:
How very tiring is Obama's habit of telling everyone to shut up and do as he says....
One quibble Pundette: how very tiring are all
of Obama's habits. He hasn't even been in office one year yet and already I'm hearing so many people say 'When
he comes on the TV, I change the channel, because I'm sick of listening to him all the time'. You didn't hear that comment
made about Presidents Bush II and Clinton by a large number of people until well-into their presidencies.
William
Jacobson, headmaster of Legal Insurrection, is fed-up with the phrase too:
Yep, the speech Obama just gave in Copenhagen is basically
the speech he gave last February to push through the Stimulus Plan, that foul piece of legislation
which has turned into a paradigm of big government gone bad.
Let's bring that Stimulus mojo to the whole planet,
because the time for talk is over. For everyone except Obama, that is.
Our Narcissist-In-Chief was
born in 1961. This song was released in 1960. Perhaps Joe Jones was a prophet?...
18 dec 09 @ 5:03 pm est
SHAFT UNDERSTANDSDan Riehl, Lord and Master of the Riehl World View, has
the best summation of the Dali Bama's trip to Hopenhagen:
Look out, our speak harshly but carry
a small, or no stick prez was angry and on display in Copenhagen as Obama chalked up another allegedly rousing, world-changing
speech that wasn't. Note, that is precisely how the WH allowed his appearance to be billed. I posted that he was only inviting
failure back on Dec 4. Sure enough, China played Lucy to his Charlie Brown and moved the ball, causing Obama to land on his
backside, empty-handed after a tactic that could become the defining theme of his term.
What's Obambi going to do? Hold his breath, or just talk until he turns blue if he doesn't get his way?
Maybe he'll threaten to give even more dramatic speeches that add up to the same old thing if they don't listen to him?
COPENHAGEN - A visibly angry Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet
at China and other developing nations Friday, declaring that the time has come "not to talk but to act" on climate
change.
Stomping his
feet is out. Michelle won't tolerate it around the kids, from him, anyway. You dropped your gauntlet, Obambi. Best pick it
up and put it back in your pocket before boarding the plane home from your latest failed game changer that wasn't of a speech....
Our Divine Obamacus sits there with his chin elevated, looking like an unapproachable King Of Persia, as the rest
of the world laughs and mocks him behind his back. What a Maroon.
THEY'RE PLAYING YOU FOR A FOOL, SUCKA!
18 dec 09 @ 4:22 pm est
JAKE SPEAKS WELLSo...I'm perusing The Other McCain yesterday and checking out Stacy's HEADLINE section, like I always do. This is the section
where he links to interesting blog postings and [most of the time] postings about himself. Stacy writes the headlines
himself and, being a veteran newspaper man [something he'll remind you of constantly], he knows how to write one that will
grab your attention. So, like I said, I'm reading them yesterday and I come across this one:
JAKE
SPEAKS: Conservative blogger sends terrifying message to ACLU
Wow, I'm thinking, I love it when someone verbally bangs around those nimrods over at
the ACLU, this could be interesting....wait...'terrifying'?...oh, man, I hope this Jake fellow didn't threaten them too overtly....I
mean, that would just give those dingbats ammunition in their quest to label us right wingers 'nut balls'. So I clicked
on the link and must say I was very satisfied: not only did Jake do it right, he channelled Lester Bangs.
Please do take the time to click here and read the whole thing.
18 dec 09 @ 10:52 am est
THE TOTALITARIAN COLLECTIVIST IMPULSEOne of the beliefs that Leftists devoutly hold to is the conviction that
power has to be centralized, preferably under one man or under a small group of elites. I label this their Totalitarian
Collectivist Impulse. In as many days, The Classic Liberal has provided us with
two examples of moves by the Obama Administration to further accumulate power in both ways.
-It has become pretty
obvious to many of us through his words and deeds that Comrade Obamnin favors one-world government [most radical Leftists
do]. In April of this year, un-noticed by many of us, in the whirlwind of activity going on in Washington, we missed
this news:
Moving as quickly as he can to gut the USA and then divide its body parts
amongst like-minded globalists, the USA’s Supreme Leader Barack Hussein Obama used the G-20 conference to begin his
turnover of USA sovereignty to said internationalists and start the move toward a one-world government. Obama has signed
off on international legislation—the Financial Stability Board—that would regulate ALL firms, including those
within the USA and places them under the responsibility of an international governmental agency.
On FNC’s
Greta Van Susteren’s program, author and columnist Dick Morris noted “literally from April 2nd of this year, that
is, today, it’s a whole new world of financial regulation in which, essentially, ALL of the U.S. regulatory bodies and
ALL U.S. companies are put under international regulation, international supervision. It really amounts to a global economic
government.”
Called the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the pending international body’s legislation—which
will of course override the US Constitution—states: “We agree to a framework of internationally agreed upon
high standards. We will set up a financial stability board with a strengthened mandate to extend regulation and oversight
to all systemically important financial institutions, instruments and markets”—including hedge funds, all—anything
that they decide is important to the system—to endorse and implement tough new principles on paying (ph) compensation
and to support sustainable compensation schemes and the corporate social responsibility of ALL firms.” The international
community will now be able to determine the salaries and compensation of us all.
Thank God, TheCL unearthed this story. Its so important that we're made aware of these power grabs.
-As to the accumulation of power by one man
[Julius Obamacus Caesar] The Classic Liberal quotes from and links to a fascinating posting by Bradley Blakeman over at the
Fox Forum. A highlight:
The Obama administration seeks to empower a very powerful government agency
you have probably never heard of with new and expanded powers that will have a direct consequence on every American if they
are successful in their efforts to implement national health care reforms.
The Obama White House is also drunk
with power and is seeking to expand the powers of government agencies to oversee and act out to affect Americans in ways that
this country has never seen before.
What is the Office of Personnel and Management and why should you care?
The Office of Personnel Management, (OPM), is suppose to be an independent government agency that is charged with
managing the civil service system of the federal government. If you are a federal employee then civil service laws, rules
and regulations that are managed by OPM govern you. One of the main charges of OPM is to administer and oversee federal health
care provided to all federal employees.
...
Under the Democrats' national health care scheme not only
would OPM be charged with overseeing and administering federal employees health care but they will have the added charge of
administering civilian federal health care as well. What does that mean? Basically, that Americans will be treated as “civil
servants.” Are you starting to see the danger?
The more government seeks to control our lives the more Orwellian
it gets. This “big brother” mentality that "government knows best" and that it is their mission to provide
cradle to grave “care” of its citizens will doom America as we know it. Under such a system the individual becomes
meaningless and the state becomes the entity upon which we are all forced to rely.
And that's not all as
you will see if you click here and read the full posting by Mr. Blakeman.
Thanks again to TheCL for bringing this to our attention. [his site is your one-stop-shop for the latest on all the threats to our freedoms and liberties that are happening in America]
It is the core belief of any Leftist that he or she has THE ANSWER to bringing about 'Heaven on Earth'. The Left
believes they are THE Enlightened Ones who possess the wisdom and knowledge to re-engineer the filthy and chaotic world into
a sterile and very well-ordered machine [note the absence of anything that can reasonably be called 'human' in those
adjectives]. In their twisted way of reasoning, they think a life free of worry or care or dirt is the ideal life.
'Ideal' is the key world here. The New Little Oxford English Dictionary defines this word as 'perfect;
existing only in idea'. In other words, an ideal is something that cannot physically exist in the real world.
It can only exist in the mind and/or soul [the latter does not exist for the Leftist]—places where perfection can be
envisioned, but are not concrete. An ideal is a fancy, a wish, and, like all such musings, rarely applicable or possible
in the real world. Christians and Jews know this. They strive to be perfect like God, but they know that they
will never achieve His perfection. The Leftist, on the other hand, has shedded any trace of humility and modesty, and
believes that the ideas conceived in the laboratory of the brain can be implemented in the real world without alteration.
This attitude, combined with their certitude that they have conceived of THE ANSWER, leads them to believe that any means
necessary to employ to establish their 'paradises' are justified.
To bring this back to the original point: the
Leftists believe they have THE ANSWER and it is the ONLY way to make the world as it should be. They also believe that
the vast majority of people are not as 'enlightened' as their elite group are. Therefore, to provide the world with
'Heaven on Earth', they must force it upon the ignorant majority. Okay...'how best to accomplish this?' they ask themselves.
The answer that rings in their skulls is 'through the accumulation of power by the illuminated elites who "get it",
are with the program, can be trusted with power'. Hence, the pathological need by all Leftists to gather power unto
their elitest-selves.
Now, a few of these people take it even further. I'm speaking of the Extreme Narcissists.
They believe their fellow Leftists are enlightened, but that they don't have what it takes to implement the immanentizing
of the eschaton effectively—they lack the intelligence. Not surprisingly, these Extreme Narcissists think they
are the ONLY ONES who have the smarts and the will-to-power to do the job and do it right. They have THE ANSWER
to implementing THE ANSWER. They also have a tendency to be psychopaths, lacking in any feelings towards or empathy
with their fellow human beings.
18 dec 09 @ 9:27 am est
Thursday, December 17, 2009
ONE TOUGH GAL
17 dec 09 @ 5:28 pm est
THE BATTLE OF THE BULGEI must apologize for having forgotten to mark the anniversary of one of the most
important battles in the history of The West and of America yesterday: The Battle Of Bulge. This was
the Nazi's desperate effort to go on the offensive against the Allies on The Western Front, a last ditch attempt to stave
off defeat by a delusional Adolf Hitler. The start of the offensive caught the Allies with their pants down, but they
recovered in no small way due to the efforts of General George S. Patton and his Third Army. This was their shining
moment. They pulled out of an eastward thrust, turned ninety degrees, and raced to and succeeded in releiving the
Battling Bastards Of Bastonge. This Battle was also the scene of the most vicious and brutal
act committed in the European Theater Of Operations: The Massacre At Malmedy:
Unlike me, Irish Cicero, proprietor of the Washington Rebel,remembered the anniversary—he
couldn't help but remembering as his father was one of those brave men cutoff in Bastonge waiting for Third Army. In a very moving posting, IC recounts the effect it had on his father and some his dad's remembrances. A highlight:
Charlie! Charlie! There was desperation
in his mother's voice as she roused him from a deep sleep. He woke in a Belgian barn where he and his wire crew were sleeping after a tough night stringin' line. They heard a commotion in the woods outside
and looked out the window.
"Kraut tanks everywhere."
The Bulge was on. The Battle of the Ardennes, it's called.
Please do take the time to click here and read it all [he's also got some great pictures and links (especially on Malmedy)].
17 dec 09 @ 4:52 pm est
USEFUL IDIOT OR SPY?On 09 December, Comrade Obamnin sent the following nomination to the Senate:
Mari Carmen Aponte, of the District of Columbia, to be Ambassador
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Republic of El Salvador.
The name
of this gal may sound familiar. I'll let Andrew McCarthy explain:
This is the second time she's been proposed for an ambassadorship. The first
didn't go so well. President Clinton nominated her to be ambassador to the Dominican Republic but, as detailed on Andrew Breitbart's
Big Government, it turned out that she had "co-habited" with an agent of the Cuban intelligence service. In fact,
a confidential U.S. intelligence memo alleged that she had been recruited to become a Cuban spy in her own right. The revelations
caused her nomination to be quietly withdrawn ... whereupon she reportedly refused to answer questions from the FBI (saying
that since she was no longer seeking an executive branch slot, she no longer needed to cooperate in a background security
check). Now, despite that debacle, and heedless of the controversies stoked by Van Jones, Kevin Jennings, et al., Obama wants
to press ahead with Aponte.
Thank you for reveling this Mr. McCarthy [The Big Government
report is here].
If you don't recall that incident at all [the MSM certainly downplayed it at the time] then you might
remember her being at one time the Director of La Raza [The Race], that notorious 'Hispanic' organization that wants
to reincorporate a huge chunk of the Southwest United States back into Mexico because it was 'stolen' from our little friends in
Tequila Land by the Imperialist White Yanquees [Discover The Networks has more information here].
While its no surprise that our Fearless Leader would appoint such a radical Leftist to such a post [Hell,
the Administration's full of 'em], it is a bit surprising that he would appoint a woman who we definitely know was, at the
very least, a dupe of the Communist Cubans or, at the very worst, in the pay of Castro. One would hope the Republicans
in the Senate will fight this one with everything they've got. How can she take her oath-of-office when she clearly
is not loyal to the United States Of America and The Constitution? Oops...wait a minute...I forgot: a precedent has
already been set when Barack Hussein Obama took his oath way back on 20 January and clearly didn't mean it. You go,
mamasita.
17 dec 09 @ 2:44 pm est
RICH LOWRY MUST GO, PART 333Stacy McCain has published another episode in his long-running series Why Rich Lowry Should Have Been Fired No Later Than 2001 [here's the latest episode from my related series: Why Its Dogtrack Time For Rich 'Twinkle Toes' Lowry]. In his latest effort, Stacy once again makes the case that Jonah Goldberg should be running National Review. He quotes this
from Mr. Goldberg's latest syndicated column:
British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations thrive when the
lower classes aspire to be like the upper classes, and they decay when the upper classes try to be like the lower classes.
Looked at through this prism, it’s hard not to see America in a prolonged period of decay.
It’s not
all bad news, to be sure. The elite minority’s general acceptance of racial and sexual equality as important values
has been a moral triumph. But not without costs. As part of this transformation, society has embraced what social scientist
Charles Murray calls “ecumenical niceness.” A core tenet of ecumenical niceness is that harsh judgments of the
underclass — or people with underclass values — are forbidden. A corollary: People with old-fashioned notions
of decency are fair game.
Stacy then comments:
Which is
why Lowry has to go. His "old-fashioned notions of decency" make him utterly worthless in any engagement with the
progressive Left. What conservatism needs now is brutal, fearless savagery, and Jonah Goldberg's got that red-in-tooth-and-claw
thing down cold.
Quite. JG is one of the best soldiers the Right has, always armed, always
ready to duel. In his article, Mr. Goldberg goes on to impress even more in his next few sentences with this bit of
wisdom:
Long before the rise of reality shows, ecumenical niceness created
a moral vacuum. Out-of-wedlock birth was once a great shame; now it’s something of a happy lifestyle choice. The cavalier
use of profanity was once crude; now it’s increasingly conversational. Self-discipline was once a virtue; now self-expression
is king.
Reality-show culture has thrived in that moral vacuum, accelerating the decay and helping to create a
society in which celebrity is the new nobility. One senses that Richard Heene thought — maybe still thinks — that
the way to make his kids proud of him was to land a reality show. Paris Hilton, famous for being famous thanks in part to
a “reality” sex tape released days before her 2003 reality show The Simple Life, is now a cultural icon
of no redeeming value whatsoever.
Stacy is right [pun intended]: Lowry is not up to the job. He's
a Willard...
Kurtz: I expected someone like you. What did
you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard: I'm a soldier.
Kurtz: You're
neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
Jonah Goldberg is both assassin
and soldier—a true WOLVERINE. He would be perfect to lead NR because, to quote Lincoln justifying why he chose U.S.
Grant: 'He fights'.
I mean, jeez, look at this ad Lowry put out:
NOT ONE RED CENT FOR NR UNTIL LOWRY IS SENT PACKING!
17 dec 09 @ 11:50 am est
CHRISTMAS IN AMERICA: JINGLE MY BELLS EDITIONAs promised, I'm reporting on interesting Christmas-related postings and things in my
travels through The Ether...
-First off, a bit of self-indulgence: herewith my rewriting of the seasonal favorite
Holly Jolly Christmas to fit these modern times [this is for Kevin Jennings and Barry O]:
Have a holly, jolly Fistmas It's the best time for your rear I don't know if
there'll be blow But who care's - just come here Have
a holly, jolly Fistmas And when you go buy your Fleet Say 'Hello', tell friends you know 'Make sure you clean
your seat'
Oh, ho, don't use your toe Your hand
is all you need Pucker up your big ol' butt The K-Y is on me
Have a holly jolly Fistmas And in case your rear is queer Oh by golly Have a holly jolly Fistmas this year
-Some of my Friends In The Ether have created
and 'hung up' some great stuff on their sites...
=As you might expect, Carol, over at No Sheeples Here, has drawn-up a dandy set of mastheads that she keeps altering.
=Over at Carol's Closet, the other Carol has gone all frosty with her's [in a good way].
=Red, over at Caught Him With A Corndog, has gone with the 'Corndog Family Christmas' theme on her header. I give it four out of five WOOTS! [got
to keep that gal humble].
=Over at Saberpoint, Stogie has a lovely animated Christmas Tree [and, thank God, no Rod Stewart Destroys Our Beloved Christmas Standards
music].
=GatorDoug goes with old growth trees, over at The Daley Gator. Makes me pine to see them up-close.
=The folks at Cold Fury, as ever subtle, go with a pic of Ebenezer Scrooge about to strike some children with his cane. My only complaint:
they use a pic from the Patrick Stewart one and not from the best version Patton's Christmas Carol.
-Obi's Sister has posted another chapter in The Christmas Memories series that she started three years ago. A teaser:
Round these parts, we’re
“famous” for a certain type of decoration. Friends bring their little ones over and every year we’re stopped
in the grocery store and asked if we did it again.
-Robert Avrech, proprietor of Seraphic Secret, has a great posting up on the true and un-PC meaning of Hanukah.
-Over at Pundit & Pundette, Pundette has been featuring some wonderful recommendations for Christmas gifts for that special person. And, if you
click on one of the ads in the left column, you help to support the site, where you get the best analysis and commentary on Obamacare, bar none [amongst other great info].
-The ornaments were hung with great care...
MERRY CHRISTMAS
17 dec 09 @ 10:24 am est
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
A LITTLE HUMP DAY RULE 5
16 dec 09 @ 8:48 pm est
CODE REDOver at The Other McCain, Smitty's provided us with a report
on yesterday's Code Red Rally at The Capital. He's also published pictures and a video, so please do take the time to click here and check it out [my favorite sign: 233 Years To Build A Great Nation—11 Months To Destroy It] This
is the best and most informative report I've read.
Smitty really is a Superman:
[Cue The Kinks]
16 dec 09 @ 2:43 pm est
THERE WENT OUT A DUMB DECREEThose snoopy folks over at the U.S. Census Bureau have partnered with 136,000
groups and organizations to help spread the good news about the benefits and importance of responding to the Census in 2010*.
One of those groups is the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials [NALEO]. This organization
has put out a poster in English and Spanish to help in the effort:
There's one small problem, as Mark Krikorian points out over at The Corner:
Of course, whoever dreamed up this poster missed a basic point. To be counted, every
person not living in his ancestral town had to return there, as Joseph left Nazareth and headed south for Bethlehem. By the
same token, one could suggest that illegal aliens should head south and return every one of them to his own city. Mexico,
the home of most illegal aliens, is conducting its own census next year, after all.
Herewith, from Luke,
Chapter 2:1-5...
1. And it came to pass in those days, that there went out
a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. 2. Andthis
taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. 3. And all went
to be taxed, every one into his own city. 4. And Joseph also went up from
Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; because he was of the
house and lineage of David: 5.
To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
You see: Joseph went back to his native
land to be counted. So, I guess, NALEO is advocating that all Mexicans should go back to Mexico. Right?
What propheth it a man if he spendeth thousands of dollars on an informational poster and he getteth it wrong?
*Tip of the fedora to Ed O'Keefe and Carol Morello over at The Washington Post.
SIDENOTE: If Luke were writing now,
would he phrase it this way:
1. And it came to pass in these days, that there went
out a decree from Caesar Obamacus, that all the world should be taxed.
16 dec 09 @ 2:17 pm est
THE SPOT-ON QUOTE OF THE DAY......is awarded to Track-A-'Crat for his comments on this billboard you will find off Interstate 70 in the great state of Missouri:
I love America more and more each day.
Nowhere else in the world
would such fiercely independent people be able to erect a billboard kinda sorta exhorting citizens to prepare for the worst
against their own despotic government.
Also, nowhere else (in the advanced world) do rodeo, stunt-biking and other
crazy dangerous sports exist. The stranglehold of socialism is so strong in Europe that risks are not permitted in any
venture (be it business, politics or regarding your own personal safety), but if someone wants to bust themselves up but good
in the US of A while doing something obviously dangerous and awesomely entertaining, then you can just go right ahead.
People will love you for it!
And, more importantly, you’ll be the one paying for fixing yourself.
Spot-on and Amen, brother.
Ain't that America You and me Ain't that America Something to see Ain't that America The home of the free...
16 dec 09 @ 2:03 pm est
NEVERENDING 'WAR'WARNING: Beware a bit of vulgarity on my part...
In
his recent interview on 60 Minutes, the Dali Bama said:
One
of the mistakes that was made over the last eight years is for us to have a triumphant sense about war. There is was a tendency
to say, we can go in, we can kick some tail, this is some glorious exercise. When, in fact, this is a tough business.
Over at Castle Gormogon, The Mandarin thinks this statement is a good look into the mindset of our Community Organizer-In-Chief:
This has to be one of the most revealing insights into this President’s mind-set as well
as the mind-set of most liberal-progressive anti-military people out there. Is the President suggesting that we should not
want to win a war? Should we be fighting to lose? Are we looking to just break-even?
Imagine if we had leadership
in office like this during World War II.
Another telling part of his statement is that he views the war as a tough
business. There is a great difference between the business world and the military. But then again we have been beaten over
the head for the last 40 years with the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, and the War on Cancer. This has weakened the actual
meaning of what war really is. To the liberal-progressive, war is just another social program. Well, it is not.
-If we had this kind of leadership in World War II, we'd be sieging each other's heil today or calling each other
'comrade citizen'.
-The Dali Bama said 'When, in fact, [waging war] is a tough business'. No shit Sherlock,
but it is also a glorious exercise when its waged to defend freedom and when men rise to the occasion and perform acts of
courage and bravery. What a pink pussy Barry is.
-The Mandarin is dead-solid-perfect in his comments on the
diluting of the meaning of the word 'war'. But we should not be surprised. The Left loves the idea of war, as Jonah Goldberg reminded us back in April 2005:
Meanwhile, the progressive mindset sees war from a very different
perspective. The progressives who latched on to William James' "moral equivalents of war" idea saw nothing regrettable
about those infringements. Rather, they saw them as the chief benefit of war. Hence John Dewey's famous "social benefits
of war." Long before WWI, the progressives yearned to do what WWI made possible. For example, Jane Addams in 1902: "[W]e must demand that the individual shall be willing to lose the sense of
personal achievement, and shall be content to realize his activity only in connection to the activity of the many." Walter
Rauschenbusch in 1896: "New forms of association must be created...Our disorganized competitive life must pass into an
organic cooperative life." And: "Individualism means tyranny."
Hence WWI served as wish-fulfillment for those who wanted wartime unity
but lacked a cause to get it. Hence Randolph Bourne's observation about the "peculiar congeniality between the war and
these men" - i.e. progressive intellectuals. "It is," he sadly concluded, "as if the war and they had
been waiting for each other."
The conditions that prevail when a nation mobilizes for war in the modern
era since The French Revolution [massive and deep-reaching regulation of individuals and the economy, rationing overseen
by the government, shaming or silencing orjailing those who oppose and/or protest the war or who oppose the measures
instituted in the name of the 'war effort', etc.] are preciously the ones that the Left desires to be standard in
everyday life. In the late 19th Century, some Progressive thinkers realized that the masses of peoples
in countries of The West [especially in the Anglosphere] would not willingly accept the socialization of their lives and the
attendant loss in their freedoms. They believed that their peoples would only allow for such totalitarian measures to
be imposed on them if they thought it was in an important cause—such as you get when your nation is under attack.
So the Left co-opted the terminology, the philosophy, and the tactics of war and began applying them to areas that
had nothing to do with defense and national security. Perhaps the most successful practitioner of this was FDR.
Still, to this day, people who lived through The Depression will tell you: 'Well, he may not have gotten us out of The Depression.
He may have made it worse. But this nation would have fallen apart if it weren't for the measures he took.' All
of these years later FDR's con still works it magic. Barack Hussein Obama is cut from the same cloth as FDR and
is trying to do the same things. Unlike his mentor however, BHO's ends are much more ambitious. And, therefore,
much more dangerous.
16 dec 09 @ 9:59 am est
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
THE SPOT-ON QUOTE OF THE DAY......is awarded to Dan Riehl for his speaking of the unvarnished truth:
Multi-culturalism, combined with immigration and birth demographics are
on track to end the America we've know for over two-hundred years. That's not a political opinion, it's driven by numbers
far more solid than the ones holding up the climate conspiracy. It
also likely has a great deal to do with why blacks never enjoyed much benefit from the civil rights movement of the sixties.
It came couched in this same misguided progressivism that is destroying traditional America today. Blacks as a whole, particularly
inside the cities where they are captive to the liberal/progressive political machine, weren't told to celebrate equality
and become part of America. They were encouraged to stand apart from it.
America
will survive. It's just not clear what it's going to look like politically, economically, and so forth. I'm just glad I knew
her when and won't be around to fully see what it becomes. I doubt most people on the ground will even understand the changes
that are coming. They'll simply see it as the America they know, but may never truly love.
15 dec 09 @ 9:39 pm est
ACTA SANCTORUMA big thank you to Ran, proprietor of Si Vis Pacem, for linking and commenting favorably on two of my recent postings that dealt with conservatives and the TEA Party folks and conservative and libertarians working
together [QUO VADIS? and ALLIES, respectively].
He realizes the seriousness of our situation and is a fighter for freedom and liberty—a
standout resident of The Camp Of The Saints & The Beloved City.
Please do take the time to go visit his site. I guarantee you'll become a regular visitor like me.
15 dec 09 @ 9:35 pm est
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2009.12.13 |
2009.12.06 |
2009.11.29 |
2009.11.22 |
2009.11.15 |
2009.11.08 |
2009.11.01 |
2009.10.25 |
2009.10.18 |
2009.10.11 |
2009.10.04 |
2009.09.27 |
2009.09.20 |
2009.09.13 |
2009.09.06 |
2009.08.30 |
2009.08.23 |
2009.08.16 |
2009.08.09 |
2009.08.02 |
2009.07.26 |
2009.07.19 |
2009.07.12 |
2009.07.05 |
2009.06.28 |
2009.06.21 |
2009.06.14 |
2009.06.07 |
2009.05.31 |
2009.05.24 |
2009.05.17 |
2009.05.10 |
2009.05.03 |
2009.04.26 |
2009.04.19 |
2009.04.12 |
2009.04.05 |
2009.03.29 |
2009.03.22 |
2009.03.15 |
2009.03.08 |
2009.03.01 |
2009.02.22 |
2009.02.15 |
2009.02.08 |
2009.02.01 |
2009.01.25 |
2009.01.18 |
2009.01.11 |
2009.01.04 |
2008.12.28 |
2008.12.21 |
2008.12.14 |
2008.12.07 |
2008.11.30 |
2008.11.23 |
2008.11.16 |
2008.11.09 |
2008.11.02 |
2008.10.19 |
2008.10.12 |
2008.10.05 |
2008.09.28 |
2008.09.21 |
2008.09.14 |
2008.09.07 |
2008.08.31 |
2008.08.24 |
2008.08.17 |
2008.08.10 |
2008.08.03 |
2008.07.27 |
2008.07.20 |
2008.07.13 |
2008.07.06 |
2008.06.29 |
2008.06.22 |
2008.06.15 |
2008.06.08 |
2008.06.01 |
2008.05.18 |
2008.05.11 |
2008.05.04 |
2008.04.01
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Dispatches are archived by week; click on the links above.
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'This one was worth
the fight. And it's only one fight in the battle, and we have to keep fighting.' —Doug
Hoffman
The Restoration will not be televised; it will be blogged. —Robert Belvedere
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'Bob Belvedere may have the best compilationof IG-Gate information.' —Robert Stacy McCain
'Robert Belvedere at The Camp
of the Saints appears to be maintaining the definitive index of all things PIG-gate...at TCOTS. ...This is an excellent resource.
We thank you, sir.' —Smitty
'More great commentary and juicy
links on l'affaire IG from Camp of the Saints..' —Paco
Captain Ohab: 'From hell's
heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Ye damned Fox News.'
I may be reached at Robert.Belvedere AT gmail DOT com
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T E R M S
Let us make precise and clear-cut the terms we should be using.
Aristotle wrote that A is A; you may also call it B, but
it always remains A. A thing is what it is and, to say it is something else, is to deny reality. There is a lot of denial
of reality going around these days.
As John Adams wrote: 'Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes,
our inclinations, the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence'.
POINT 1: There is no "War in Iraq"
or "War in Afghanistan". Like the Pacific and Europe in World War II, Iraq and Afghanistan are
just parts of a larger war. Unlike them, they are not separate from each other. Therefore,
they are part of the Middle East Theatre of Operations [METO] as the Pacific was the PTO and Europe the ETO.
POINT 2: Many on the Left and some on the Right want to "end
the War". There are only two ways to end a war: (1) by achieving Victory or (2) by being Defeated.
A pullout, before Victory is achieved, is Defeat. They want Defeat. Pullout may
be the best policy―I am not arguing that here―but, leaving without achieving our objective is Defeat.
POINT 3: We are engaged in a War Against Islam.
The term is more correct than "War against Islamo-Fascism" or "War On Terror".
Islam has been at war with all non-Muslims since the
time of its founder, Muhammad [his name be cursed]. Like the Hundred Years' War, there have been periods
of peace in this long conflict, but the Muslim has never stopped believing that he is at war with all non-Muslims.
He can't: Allah commands that all of the world be conquered in his name and he must submit, in all things, to the
will of Allah [the word Islam means "submission", sometimes rendered as "surrender"]. Any
periods of peace we in the West have enjoyed have only occurred after we have dealt them such a devastating blow that they
have not been able to wage their jihad and then have pursued polices that have kept them subjugated. This
began to fade in the latter half of the 20th Century as we forgot the dangers posed by this militant religion and
as they regrouped under new and committed leaders.
If you
doubt that Islam is at war with all non-Muslims, keep in mind this: Islamic apologists
often point out that Islam is not a monolith and that there are differences of opinion among the different Islamic schools
of thought. That is true, but, while there are differences, there are also common elements. Just as Orthodox, Roman Catholic,
and Protestant Christians differ on many aspects of Christianity, still they accept important common elements. So it is with
Islam. One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to
conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law. The four Sunni Madhhabs (schools of fiqh [Islamic
religious jurisprudence]) -- Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali -- all agree that there is a collective obligation on
Muslims to make war on the rest of the world. Furthermore, even the schools of thought outside Sunni orthodoxy, including
Sufism and the Jafari (Shia) school, agree on the necessity of jihad. When it comes to matters of jihad, the different schools
disagree on such questions as whether infidels must first be asked to convert to Islam before hostilities may begin (Osama
bin Laden asked America to convert before Al-Qaeda’s attacks); how plunder should be distributed among victorious jihadists;
whether a long-term Fabian strategy against dar al-harb is preferable to an all-out frontal attack; etc. [Source: Gregory M. Davis, Islam 101, section
4g, found at http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam101/]
They have been at war with us for
centuries and we, therefore, have been at war with them. We are engaged in a War Against Islam whether
we want to say so or not. In an interview with a Pakistani TV network on 23 July 2008, Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid,
Al-Qaeda's No. 3 man and top commander in Afghanistan, has this to say: “Islam does not distinguish between the
American people and the American government, since both are in a state of war with Islam”. [Source: http://www.memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD200008]
POINT 4: The term "Islamo-Fascism" seems
to have been created by Leftists. Since (1) they wrongly place fascism on the Right, (2) they believe [rightly]
Muslims want to establish a theocratic regime on Earth, and (3) anything political that has any connection with religion is
bad and emanates out of rightwing thinking, the term makes sense to them. Therefore, the term is nothing
but a way to associate Islam with the right-wing. Muslims believe in a totalitarian way of governing; in
submission [that word] to an all-powerful Islamic leader or leaders.
POINT 5: As to the term "War On Terror",
it is just plain silly: how can you wage war on a thing?
POINT 6: What is fascism? It is when a government
allows private property to exist, but controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms. Citizens
retain all of the burdens and responsibilities associated with property ownership, but are not allowed to control and shape
its use.
As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied
bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone
liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism
and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through
direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally
private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their
property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a
few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance
of market relations while planning all economic activities. Where socialism abolished money and prices, fascism controlled
the monetary system and set all prices and wages politically. In doing all this, fascism denatured the marketplace. Entrepreneurship was abolished. State ministries, rather than consumers, determined what was produced and under what conditions. [Source: Sheldon Richman, The Concise Encylcopedia Of Economics,
Liberty Fund, found at http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html]
On the political spectrum, therefore, it is located between modern liberalism
and socialism.
POINT 7: What is socialism? It is when a government
allows no private property to exist, and controls and manages the use and disposal of property in all its forms.
Citizens are not allowed to control their lives and are subject to the whims of bureaucrats and officials. If they
retain freedoms and liberties, they do so at the discretion of them. On the political spectrum, therefore, it
is the next logical stage after fascism; some would argue that it lies between fascism and communism.
POINT 8: What is pragmatism? It is a tool used by Leftists,
or those operating under the influence of Leftist logic, to achieve Utopian ends—heaven on earth through social, political,
cultural, and spiritual engineering. It is merely a tool of ideology, part of the means to an end.
POINT 9:The Big Lie - When confronted with truths that reflect
unpleasantly on them, the Leftists deflect it buy claiming over-an-over ad nauseum that these truths apply to and are products
of the Right. This practice is known as The Big Lie. It has been successfully practiced by the
Left since, at the very least, the French Revolution. Thus, we have the now-widespread belief that the Nazis and the
Black Shirts of Italy were right-wingers when the reality-the truth-is they were both people of the Left. I suspect
the violent objections from the Left to conservatives use of the term 'fascist' arise from the fact that they have spent well
over seventy years trying to convince the world of The Big Lie that it is not and never has been a Leftist
ideology.
How does one practice this distortion truth and why is it effective? In a report issued during
World War II by the OSS, the author provided an explanation for all practitioners by describing how Hitler practiced it:
His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault
or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame;
concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than
a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.
By repeating
their lies over and over, the Left creates a false reality that supplements the real world. In this false reality, the
lie is the truth, the truth is the lie. A is not A. [But we know that A must always be A.]
The Left
also practices a variation of The Big Lie that I like to call The Big Deception which involves
a Big Deflection away from the reality of the situation. None of their policies or actions can survive
direct questioning, so the Leftists must turn the tables on the questioners and make it seem as though the inquisitors have
bad or evil intentions. Overtime and after constant and unrelenting hectoring, the Left's way of thinking triumphs.
They successfully infect enough people so that this diseased mode of thinking becomes chronic, deep-rooted, instinctual. If
the Devil's greatest triumph was that he convinced people he did not exist, the Left's greatest triumph has been to convince
people that the Leftist way of thinking is normal. It is not. It is a perversion of reason and a horribly mutant
form of logic. It is antithetical to human life. Nothing but decay and destruction are left [pun intended] in it's wake.
What They're Saying
About BOB BELVEDERE & The Camp Of The Saints...
'Sir Bob of Belvedere' —Smitty—
'So many good things at Camp of the Saints that you need to just click and keep scrolling.' —Paco—
'Go, read it, fine stuff over there!' —GatorDoug—
''Belvederus Maximus' —Smitty—
'You are contributing to a noble yet futile cause -- the butchification of metrosexuals. TCOTS
roolz!' —Red—
'[H]e takes retro dame blogging to a new, narrative noir level.' —Smitty—
'Staunch Rule 5 aficionado Bob Belvedere, is shameless indeed (I have so much respect for this man)!' —The Classic Liberal—
'Who knew he was such a fan of the undead?' —Smitty—
'We need fighters, and I suspect Beck will fight 'til ev'ry foe is vanquished. Bob Belvedere gets it. Phyllis Chesler gets it. We defend truth and
liberty against lies and tyranny. Every eye is upon us and we are surrounded by enemies as numerous as the grains of sand
on the shore. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. WOLVERINES!' —Stacy McCain—
'Bob Belvedere, you're a nasty piece of work.' —Anonymous—
'you charming rogue' —Robert—
'The sad decay of Bob Belvedere into a Rule 5 junkie saddens us all.' —Smitty—
'Belvedere went slightly crazy on us.' —Smitty—
'And thank you, Dr. Belvedere, for setting me straight on Rule 5! I tell ya, that Belvedere Dude
is Funny!' —Irish Cicero—
'Kevin Binversie is not nearly so shameless a blogwhore as Troglopundit . . . but then again, nobody really is. OK, maybe Bob Belvedere, as if anyone could compete with Bob.' —Stacy McCain—
'Lord Fatheringay von Whoopsie of the Dung Heap Hooter' —Anon. —
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