We've Been Sold Out

I was going to write a post from this angle, but Christopher Chantrill over at American Thinker beat me to it. No sense in re-inventing the wheel. Here's the key excerpt, though:

It comes as a blow to the solar plexus to confront the fact that in urban African American communities all across America a frank racist hate-filled rhetoric is not merely condoned but actually celebrated. We white conservatives have been taught for the last generation to button our lips and never to give utterance to a racist thought. We thought that we were parties to a bargain: that if we shut up and truckled to the liberal race bullies sooner or later we would emerge from the post civil-rights era and its hypocrisies of affirmative action and diversity and we would ascend to the sunny green uplands of post-racism.

Now we hear the ravings of Reverend Wright and realize that we have been had. While we were buttoning our lips and attending compulsory diversity seminars liberals were not holding up their end of the deal and neutralizing the Reverend Wrights of America and their vicious racist bile. On the contrary, liberals were pumping them up! We used to wonder how it could be that blacks voted 90 percent for Democrats. How could this be, we wondered, when you can never get more that 60 percent of the rest of America to take sides on anything?

Here's another

Bill Kristol yesterday talking to Dennis Miller about Obama:

"His reaction to the Reverend Wright thing and these other criticism has been to sort of assume that the people criticizing him are idiots and don't have a legitimate ground of ... of concern about him."

In other words, typical leftist. Dismiss your opponents rather than engage in an actual argument with them. Easiest thing to do when reality is not on your side.

Quote of the day

Talking about Leftists in general - a culture he himself was once immersed and saturated in - David Horowitz used this description:

It's a kind of religion ... they get intoxicated with their own virtue ... so I was always preaching. I never listened.

Intoxicated with their own virtue - the very thing they claim to hate about the religious right.

That one goes on the shelf with "moral preening".

Some Pig

(for those of you familiar with Charlotte's Web)

What is unique about Obama is his Brilliance™ & Authenticity™! He's Incandescent™! Why, he's got Audacity™! He brings us Hope™! He's a New and Improved™ candidate! He's Different™! He'll bring Change™! Not only Change™, but Change We Can Believe In™! As if all that other stuff wasn't enough!

!!!

OMG! Im 7o7411y v07ing 4 him!

Right.

Other than all of the glowing adjectives and gushing hyperbole, I haven't heard much of substance from the man that could be meaningfully distinguished from your everyday Socialist speal. It's just very prettily worded.

Here's a challenge for Obama supporters. Describe why you like him using mainly nouns and verbs. Specific ones, not just "change" and "hope". Change to what? Hope for what? And how will he cause these things to come about? What will he do?

The other reason so many young people seem to like him reminds me of this story... While eating in an Ethiopian restaurant one day with my older step-son and a former daughter-in-law of mine (thankfully, "ex" goes in front of her title now) -- talking about our waiter -- announced to the table in a serious, hushed tone:

"We need to be sure and tip him really good, because he's gay."

I shit you not. True story.

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Gort Klaatu Barack nikto.

We have been warned.

Michelle's got a good one

on Jimmy Dihimmi Carter

Dowdy

I avoid reading Maureen Dowd almost as much as I avoid reading Paul Krugman. Almost. It's probably the straight male-wiring in me, considering her head shot is far more attractive to me (c'mon, she's pretty cute) than Paul's will ever be and part of me wants to like her. While Paul's pontifications make my skin crawl, my attitude toward Maureen's columns are more akin to disappointment and resignation. Maybe I'm hoping that like so many I know who were former liberals who one day woke up to the fact that it was an insane world-view, that one day I can happily welcome her to the real world.

It's apparent that the Darling Redhead is in the Obama camp, and the headline piqued my interest to see what it was that she didn't like about Hillary. She wants her gone. And I'm reading along, and I get down to this paragraph:

The Democrats are growing ever more desperate about the Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. With gas prices out of control, with the comically oblivious President Bush shimmying around New Orleans — the city he let drown — and Condi sneaking into Baghdad as rockets and mortars hail down on the Green Zone, beating the Republicans should be a cinch.

I observe the following:

• Gas prices out of control = Government should do something to control gas prices.
• "comically oblivious" Bush shimmying around New Orleans = Bush should really be sitting in sack cloth and ash, at least partially because he's not moving to get government to control gas prices ...
• "the city he let down" = continuing drumbeat of an outright misdirection [lie] concerning where the responsibility for that fiasco really lies
• "Condi sneaking into Baghdad" amongst rockets and mortars = "Why can't we just pull out of Iraq already"... rather dismissive of the Sec'y State's committment, too. Girlfriend got kahunas!

Actually, the government is doing something to control gas prices. It's keeping us from drilling for domestic oil and keeping us from building new refineries. This crimps the supply, thus enhancing the effects of rising global demand. Thus Government is keeping gas prices high. If the government wants to do something about lowering gas prices, it should open up land to responsible domestic drilling. But... I digress.

As far as Bush "shimmying" -- I did see that on TV. I can see where Maureen wouldn't like seeing anything like a human side to George Bush since she and those like her have spent the last 8 years demonizing his every breath.

I found this passage a bit perplexing:

Hillary’s husband became the first person ever to play the Caucasian Card. First, he blurted out to a radio interviewer that the Obama camp had played the race card against him after he compared Obama’s strength in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson’s.

Huh? "The Race Card" is usually something used by a person of politically-sanctioned minority race to diminish or dismiss a person of a non politically-sanctioned race (which pretty much amounts to "caucasian"). I really don't see where Bill was playing a "Caucasian" card here. Bill made what, outside of the world of hyper-sensitive political correctness, should be considered at the very least a legitimate observation. He just wasn't supposed to observe it out loud. The race card was played when Obama's camp cried "foul".

Speaking of racist, she goes on to say:

Despite all his incandescent gifts, Obama has missed several opportunities to smash the ball over the net and end the game.

[plant tounge in cheek] What, is that all black people can do is play basketball? [/plant]

No, I'm not suggesting this was a racist comment. But you can bet if Bill or "W" or McCain had used this analogy it would have been considered racist. I'm not objecting to her language. Just the double-standard.

And just what are "all" his "incandescent" gifts, anyway?

I will agree, however, that members of the press should let people enjoy their waffles in peace -- even if they are running for president.

Democracy & America

Something that gets thrown around a lot by the left and by the right is this idea that America is supposed to be a "democracy", as if that is the highest directive. When Gore lost the 2000 election, "where's the democracy?" got asked a lot. When a very, very loud minority thought they were a majority because of the disproportionate coverage they were getting opposing the Iraq invasion didn't get their way, "where's the democracy?"

The right is guilty of this kind of thing, too, because sometime over the last 200 years "democracy" has been elevated in our collective mind to a level beyond the intentions of our founding fathers.

We get to vote on certain issues directly. We get to vote for people to represent us. And we get to vote on a person to lead us. Those people get to pick judges whose job it is to keep what they do inline with the framework of the Constitution.

Most young people today (and far too many older ones as well) would be surprised to learn that America isn't primarily about Democracy. Never was. Rather, the United States of America is a Constitutional Republic, and it is about Liberty. Democracy is a tool for the people to provide input into the terms and constraints on that Liberty -- but democracy itself is limited by the Federal and State constitutions.

And incidentally, the Bill of Rights lays out 10 specific things this Democracy can't touch.

The second of which has been touched far too much in the past 50 or 60 years.

Bitter

I know I'm late to the game on this.

But it keeps coming up, and I'm getting more and more bugged by it.

Reading the stories in the press would lead you to believe that conservative Democrats and other "small-town" America voters are upset that Obama called them "bitter", as if "bitter" were the offending word and they're being petty about it.

Well, I resemble that remark. I grew up in small-town America, and I have small-town/rural American values. And if all cultures are valid in a Multi-Cultural Utopia, then mine is, too.

And I got news for the press. Yeah, I'm bitter, but not about being called "bitter".

Yes, the "cling" remarks about guns and religion were condecending and dismissive (dismissive being the primary progressive "argument" tactic) -- but they are only indicative of what we're really bitter about.

We're bitter about multi-culturalism and it's insistance on multi-lingualism. We're bitter about being called idiots for believing in God or even valuing Christian-based culture. We're bitter about being called "gun nuts" for believing in taking responsibility for our at least our own self-preservation and even that of our friends and neighbors. We're bitter about nanny statism with its inherent condecension and emaciation of human dignity, not to mention Liberty.

We're bitter about being looked down upon for wanting to preserve our culture of independence and responsibility. We're bitter about being painted as bigots when most of us are not. And we're bitter that we are seen as ignorant fools for not voting "in our interests". That's right, we're bitter about the very presumption that we don't know best where our interests lie.

Barak Obama says that he knows what blue collar voters he's having trouble attracting are going through. The truth is, he thinks he does, but he doesn't have a clue. Even if he does have a clue about what financial struggle is like, he is apparently completely out of touch with real American priorities. He can't imagine that culture, faith, self-reliance, and Liberty could possibly be more important than financial security.

Which sums up the progressive game. We'll take care of you, and you behave the way we think you should. They do an end-around of the church and state question by replacing all of our churches with the state -- and if we don't like it well we obviously belong in mental institutions.

What's there to be bitter about?

---

Update: Mark Steyn concurrs.

All The Fuss

I cobbled this together out of three pictures. The inspiration came from an ad I saw earlier featuring a polar bear with an Uncle Sam hat basically saying "I want you to save the planet" with a link to a carbon tax site.

One of the more irksome claims of the global warmingists is that somehow polar bears would not survive the melting of arctic ice. Even if that were to happen again (it has happened before, and we still have polar bears) ... polar bears are basically white grizzlies. They're a sub-species. They don't "depend" on ice floes. If they can't find food one place, they'll look for it somewhere else, like any other bear. The polar bears don't need saving. They'll be just fine whether the earth warms or not.

Of course, another irksome global warmingist belief is that all climate change is bad.

Tell that to the Minnesotans for Global Warming.

Elitists

So I'm reading this article at the Washington Post. Yeah, I've been keeping up with what's going on... just haven't had much to say and I've been preoccupied with other things... not much posting here.

The article itself was pretty straightforward. I didn't have a problem with it.

Then I started reading the comments. Wow. I have to wonder what most of these comments have to do with the content of the article. I saw a lot of name calling and straw men and empty leftist ranting...

• How often does Mchypocrite go to church? Elitist? Who married into the hundreds of millions Henley estate?
• oh, good grief. must propel the lies... as if john mccain, with his six homes, private airplane, top tier medical coverage -- has a friggin clue.
• I seem to remember in history class learning that a lot of people threw themselves from windows when the Great depression hit. I guess since he married a beer heiress he doesn't have to think about that.
• So the guy with how many houses and a second wife that is how rich tells us Obama is "elitist."
• Wow, now Republicans who have trouble getting people of color and white women to vote for them are not elitist?

So "Wealthy" = "Elitist", aparently.

Fortunately there were several commenters who obviously get it: "Elitist" means "We Know Better Than You Do", not "Wealthy". But "Wealthy" = "Elitist" is pretty much the attitude the rest of what was in the comments represented by the quotes above exuded. And I'm sparing you the sputtering diatribes of leftist rage. (oddly, "Halliburton" didn't even show up once, though. I guess that's so "last year"). They also seem to conveniently ignore that Obama and Hillary are also wealthy. But McCain is Republican, so he's evil. Plus he's white. And male.

This commenter summed it up pretty well:

Obama's comments are offensive because he's saying that small town voters are gun toting, xenophobic racists and that they can't help it because they're poor.

I don't think the "bitter" thing matters nearly so much...

A Clear Line

Here's what McCain says on Iraq:

"I do not want to keep our troops in Iraq a minute longer than necessary to secure our interests there. Our goal - my goal - is an Iraq that no longer needs American troops. And I believe we can achieve that goal, perhaps sooner than many imagine. But I also believe that to promise a withdrawal of our forces, regardless of the consequences, would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership."

A a goal and a plan not to abandon that goal. The most important plan in any victory is not to stop fighting and adjusting and working toward a goal.

Hillary triangulates:

"Rather, I think it could be fair to say that it might well be irresponsible to continue the policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again."

Maybe might could possibly mean that you could say that.... next!

Then there's Obama, who's looking with hope to a future of change where we didn't go into Iraq. 'Cause that'll fix everything.

"I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder [and] that the two problems [of withdrawing troops] that you've pointed out - al-Qaida in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region - are a direct result of that original decision"

With that, and adding in the following from this article

Conservatives may not be thrilled with what a McCain presidency means, but if social conservatives care about the makeup of the House and Senate, as well state legislatures and the courts, then they should rally around McCain. They know better than most the importance of controlling the legislative and judicial branches to achieve long-term influence.

Pretty much sums up why I'm votin' for McCain. Period.

Why Sheep Are Dumb

Hang with me, here.

We were watching the Food Network last night, and Alton Brown came on with his "Good Eats" program. We like Alton. He's informative. He's entertaining. And we've never even pretended to try any of his recipes. He's just fun.

So last night he was doing this "crown" rack of lamb, and as he often does, he did a little skit on the background of the food he was making. Specifically, a background piece on sheep.

In the piece, a historian pops up and starts explaining that sheep were probably the first domesticated herd animal, yada yada... and Alton (after getting over being perturbed at her stealing his thunder... all in the script of course) asked her why lamb/sheep aren't too popular in America. She explained that it had something to do with the Brits not wanting us to compete with them on the wool market.

And Alton says something like, "besides, they're dumb."

She responded by saying yes, they're pretty dumb, and it's partially our fault. See, over the 6,000 years we've had them domesticated, they've lost their horns, their ears are all floppy instead of perky, and they have lost brain capacity.

Now let's think about that.

We took what was presumably a wild animal and started looking after their every need. Keeping danger away, making sure they were well fed, didn't get overly agitated. All they have to worry about is eating. And what happened?

They became less alert (ears are now floppy because they don't have to listen), can't defend themselves anymore ("horn" control ... they've lost their weapons), and they've gotten stupid.

Remember that next time someone starts talking to you about nationalized health care, gun control, promoting nanny statism, etc.

We the Sheeple.

Not for me, man.