Monthly Archives: September 2009

While I was gone, one of the funniest movies of the year came out, and I think it is definitely one of the funniest political movies in quite a long time.

First, let’s be clear. The only real reason you need to see this movie is Malcolm Tucker. Fair warning, the following clip is not meant for delicate ears:

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, I think it’s a bit like the Dr. Strangelove of our time, because much like that movie, its characters are caricatures of caricatures, real enough to only capture the essence of particular individuals. And yet it completely embodies a certain… zany quality that Washington so often seemed to have in the time between September 11th and the start of the Iraq war. Read the rest of this entry →

In yet another bout of quaking liberal fear aimed at scary, scary dissent, Thomas Friedman rediscovers the virtues of moderate rhetoric. The developing meme that right wingers are whipping each other into a frenzy that will ultimately lead to violence (of some sort) is belied only by the utter lack of said violence. For now.

Ah, but there are signs! There are always “signs”…

Friedman points to a a few: pre Yitzhak Rabin assasination 1990′s Israel (because we all know how much the US is like Israel, don’t we?) and a single creepy facebook poll.

Others have already remarked on this analogy, but I want to add my voice because the parallels to Israel then and America today turn my stomach: I have no problem with any of the substantive criticism of President Obama from the right or left. But something very dangerous is happening. Criticism from the far right has begun tipping over into delegitimation and creating the same kind of climate here that existed in Israel on the eve of the Rabin assassination.

What kind of madness is it that someone would create a poll on Facebook asking respondents, “Should Obama be killed?” The choices were: “No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.” The Secret Service is now investigating. I hope they put the jerk in jail and throw away the key because this is exactly what was being done to Rabin.

Better minds than the Beast’s have already commented on the irony that those who now bemoan the lack of comity in public discourse seemed to have had no problem with it a few years ago. Civility is a situational virtue – it’s all funny until your ox gets gored.The same ethos that released a movie about Bush getting assassinated now freaks out over a lone nutty facebook poll.

But let’s follow his reasoning to its conclusion – is Obama in danger and from whom?

The political thriller fan in the Beast has seen this narrative dozens of times. The left has gone all in on Obama. He’s the first black president. He’s the first liberal president in a generation. Can he be allowed to fail? A Carteresque collapse would be a nightmare for them.

So assume it’s a year from now and Obama’s in full rout. The left has been screaming “Danger! Danger!” all along. And suddenly some right wing wacko patsy puts a round in his shoulder John Hinckley style. When Reagan took his bullet it did wonders for his polls. He (pardon the pun) shot right up. Now the right is in full defense mode while the left shrieks “See we told you so!”. And if something more severe happened, you now have JFK and MLK rolled into one – a hyper martyr.

If the Beast were Obama he might start looking over his shoulder, but It would be the left one, not the right.

This was published Wednesday on NRO. It seems that the temperature data upon which global warming is based – the data that shows a steep rise of 0.6 degrees +/- 0.2 degrees over the past 100 years or so – has disappeared. Author Patrick J Michaels picks up the story:

Imagine if there were no reliable records of global surface temperature. Raucous policy debates such as cap-and-trade would have no scientific basis, Al Gore would at this point be little more than a historical footnote, and President Obama would not be spending this U.N. session talking up a (likely unattainable) international climate deal in Copenhagen in December.

Steel yourself for the new reality, because the data needed to verify the gloom-and-doom warming forecasts have disappeared.

Or so it seems. Apparently, they were either lost or purged from some discarded computer. Only a very few people know what really happened, and they aren’t talking much. And what little they are saying makes no sense.

Read the rest of this entry →

G20 Summit baby! The voices of the peace loving Lib protestors are heard!

And you got to pity this poor CNN reporter who got nailed by tear gas. Heh.

If only those murderous violence-prone teabaggers would follow the libs’ peaceful example:

Those terrifying right wing thugs should learn how to protest peacefully.

The Nutroots have been all a-twitter over the death of a Census worker, supposedly found hanged in a tree with the word “fed” set on him. They see it as the beginning of right wing violence and are using the event to indict the right. The Beast doesn’t see how the murder of some guy in Rural Kentucky has anything to do with the tea party movement, although he understands that the left has desperately labored to equate disagreement and protest over Democrat tax and spend policies with hate and incipient violence. And he knows they have been waiting with baited breath for an example to trumpet. Despite all the heavy breathing it’s interesting that so far nothing even close to the apocalypse they predicted has happened. So now they have to manufacture something. Most likely this ain’t it, but seeing as how we know nothing right now about what really happened The Beast won’t repeat the mistakes of those on the left who see this as an indictment of a political movement (of all things).

  Read the rest of this entry →

Love this pic! Look at the body language. Dem candidate Deeds recoils from The One.

From Kim Strassel in the Wall Street Journal:

Not so long ago, Democrats were thrilled by the long length of Barack Obama’s coattails. Creigh Deeds would be a lot more thrilled today if he could just step off.

Mr. Deeds is the Democratic state senator running for governor of Virginia, and while he’s at it, running away from his commander in chief. It ought to worry Democrats that their top recruit for the year already views their Washington agenda as a liability. It ought to worry Mr. Deeds that there seems no escape.

Read the rest of this entry →

Ah, Onion…

Not even Lincoln himself could be this awesome holding a wussy fluff dog

Don’t worry, white people.
I will care for you as I care for my Fluffy.

Yes, the fox is in the henhouse.

The legislation being prepared by Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, who heads the Senate Banking Committee, would also differ from the Obama plan by diminishing the role of the Federal Reserve as a systemwide overseer.

Mr. Dodd’s plan is intended to be the starting point for the Senate as it redraws the financial landscape in response to the market crisis.

For consumers, banks and the markets, Mr. Dodd’s bill is expected to take on the same central role in the debate as Senator Max Baucus’s recent bill is to remaking the health care system.

“We clearly need to put in place an architecture that restores confidence and makes people feel that when they engage in financial activities, from making a bank deposit to buying insurance or investing in stock, that they can have confidence in the system,” Mr. Dodd said in an interview on Friday. “On the other side of this, I don’t want to strangle business.”

A good video making the rounds. Remember to Look at the Big Picture.

Media Double Standard: Only The Right’s Signs Are Worth Covering

At a time when such enormous shifts in American public policy stand precariously on the threshold of enactment, this is no time for the American Right  to go batty. When Barack Obama raised scorn and overplayed his hubris by seeking to address all US schoolchildren via live video feed, the Right managed to fumble the opportunity by throwing a well-publicized and indecent temper tantrum.

After a week of this unfortunate blunder, Rep. Joe Wilson poured gasoline on the fire that was consuming the Republicans’ opportunity to advance against Obama, by shrieking wildly, like an hysterical damsel of a 1950′s drive-in. Wilson immediately apologized for his outburst, but the rank and file were not so circumspect. Cheering Wilson’s childishness, right-wing bloggers announced that there were now no rules limiting the propriety of an attack on the President. This is, of course, a political faux pas, though admittedly, the right-wing true believers openly disdain any consideration of political practicality.

For his part, Wilson appeared indifferent to his own alleged penitence, instead relishing the infamy the congressman who was a relative unknown just a week ago had attained. Speaking on Sunday, he attacked Obama for appearing on multiple Sunday news shows, but passing on Fox News: Read the rest of this entry →

I’ve been told that the flag was at half staff not for 9-11 but because of the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.

The unusual attention to crowd numbers instead of the message of the 9-12 protests (nationwide) is interesting. Let’s be honest for a second. Any D.C. protest managing over 50,000 is considered a success, 250,000 is a smashing success and anything over that is phenomenal. The numbers game on this one is amazing in its diversity. We get everything for tens of thousands from the D.C. fire dept to 1.2 million from the D.C. police and parks employees. The organizers claim about 800,000 in attendance while Glenn Beck and some others claim about 1.7 million. London Daily has downgraded their estimate of up to 2 million down to 1 million. 

Various crowd counters stationed at different places had counts that totaled 450,000. The trains were packed and buses and cars had to be left miles from the center due to traffic as large columns of protestors  miles long tramped in for the rally/protest. And everyone I have interacted with that lives in the D.C. area has said it was the largest political protest they had ever seen. Any way you look at it was impressive in strength and scope. I was amazed at how many people I have some sort of connection with attended including our very own Mo K and a couple different guys I went to high school with as well as some facebook friends etc.

Was it 2 million? Probably not. Was it 65,000? Probably not. My best guesstimate is more around the half million mark. The Left wants us to believe it was just the turn out for the average weekend football game and it was clearly not as anyone who has ever attended a NFL game can attest. A few starry eyed ones on the Right probably got carried away as well. I’ve been in a milling political crowd of over 100,000 at any given time with an overall attendance of up to 250,00 overall and by viewing the pics and videos this was clearly quite a bit larger than that but probably not anywhere near the two million mark either.

Does it really matter? Not really. Is it interesting that the Left could only cry “racists” and then try to belittle the crowd estimates? Absolutely. Their wonder boy is in trouble, the grassroots is pissed, and a lot of people who don’t normally engage in political activism are getting involved. Does this spell trouble for Obama’s agenda and especially for the 2010 elections? You bet your pasty-white “racist” hide it does.

Safe to say, by liberal math standards, the  turnout rivaled the ‘Million Man March’ and the ‘Million Mom March’ for sure.”

Almost no one seems to be surprised by the recent revelations regarding ACORN, yet nobody wants to openly address its ramifications, either.

1. The videos may be the most damning direct evidence ever shown concerning the federal government’s ability to administer a massive and dispersed federal program. The dominant Democratic dogma of the day is a blind belief that if the same government that was charged with rebuilding Iraq, overseeing the financial system, and just keeping the occassional eye on ACORN should completely take over all medicinal ministrations in our country, milk and honey will surely flow. 

2. I have heard recently some writers on this blog suggest that there is one party for corruption (R.–”boo, hiss”), and another for justice (D.–many huzzahs!). That one group of ideologues is possessed with a selfish desire to enrich their friends, while the opposite group wants “transparency” and “fairness.” The videos of ACORN show nothing less than this: Crooked, ghetto welfare artists, gulping copiously at the government trough, administering a nation-wide, government-run conspiracy of corruption and graft. The program has been enacted, defended, and administered by Democrats who most certainly have known that this was the normal course of ACORN’s “buisiness,” but ignored this criminality because it helped their side politically. And all this activity is perfectly in line with the activities of Democratic federal, state, and local governments going back almost a century.

3. Ten months after Barack Obama was elected President, there is still a racial double standard in polite American society, but not the one most written about. Since the days of the ’08 election, every educated American has known or suspected that ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, and other hyper-political, inner-city, overwhelmingly black outfits calling themselves some form of “community organizers” was likely a colossal urban slush fund, greased by federal tax dollars. Jon Stewart can wax indignant all he wants (I thought it was a nice touch that he even claimed to be angry with his own show for ”missing” the story), but in truth, any number of journalists–both real and pseudo–knew just enought to pretend to look away.  This is of the same family with other obvious liberal corruption. Next time one of the ConClub lefties answers with snorts of righteousness an attack on one of the wretchedly, nefarious unions like SEIU or the Teamsters, understand that the unions, the inner-city conveyor belt of federal funds, the trial lawyers, and the educational bureaucracy have stolen their minds and are fast absconding with their credibility.

A good overview on the 912 protest in D.C. and the mood behind it all.

Update: And you can now get a shirt with the slogan as well. It was probably inevitable. You can order it here.  You’ve got to love free enterprise and a clever slogan now and then. Unfortunately, it is basically true. Jimmy Carter in all his infinite wisdom is now stating that last weekends conservative bash in D.C. was “primarily motivated by racism.” The psychosis and paranoia of the Left only grows with each passing day…

Posted here simply because I’m sure many of you thought that most liberals would never even hear about it.

We’ve all seen it; big scary wounded animal surrounded by troupe of primates hooting and barking and thumping their chests. Animal snarls and circles while primates work themselves up to a frenzy – all the time keeping their distance. Suddenly one primate darts past the scary animal and thumps it. One of two things happens next:

1. Scary wounded animal leaps into group and starts tearing them up. They flee shrieking.

2. Animal roars viciously but can’t respond. Emboldened, more primates dart in. Eventually, scary animal is overwhelmed.

This classic documentary scene was replayed last Wednesday night.

Obama’s wounded – he didn’t invoke the executive nuclear option and call that joint session of congress because things are going well for him politically. He did it to pump up waning support. And all the opposition from the GOP and grassroots have been just so much chest thumping and hooting, up til now. Nobody’s actually gone eye-to-eye with the man, personally. Nobody has dared to dart into him at a moment of (what used to be) his greatest power – when he’s speechifying.

Joe Wilson thumped him. He counted coup. And now we wait for the denoument. Which is why the Dems screamed so loudly in the aftermath. They understand that if they allow Wilson to survive they will only invite more thumps in the future.

And we know where that road ends, don’t we? Ask Bush 43, or Jimmy Carter.

Jonah Goldberg of NRO foresaw this last July in his column “The God Who Bleeds”. To mix metaphors:

In one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, Captain Kirk is mistaken for a god by inhabitants of a planet of Native Americans (it’s a long story). The illusion works for Kirk until a jealous shaman cuts Kirk’s hand, revealing that the divine being is just a man after all. “Behold! A god who bleeds!” the shaman mocks, exposing Kirk as a fraud to the rest of the tribe.

It may sound like a stretch — and, let’s be fair, it is — but I keep thinking of that episode when I look Barack Obama’s poll numbers these days.

Well, now he’s the god who bleeds, and once you’re the god who bleeds, it’s hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were.

So now the animal’s bleeding. Six months ago this would never have happened. Six months ago the GOP were cowed, intimated. But not today. Today they are emboldened and the big scary beast will never be able to snarl again without wondering if the next thump is about to land.

Because Joe Wilson landed his punch and survived it.

“The purpose of [the General Education Board] was to us the power of money, not to raise the level of education in America, as was widely believed at the time, but to influence the direction of that education… The object was to use the classroom to teach attitudes that encourage people to be passive and submissive to their rulers. The goal was – and is – to create citizens who were educated enough for productive work under supervision but not enough to question authority or seek to rise above their class. True education was to be restricted to the sons and daughters of the elite. For the rest, it would be better to produce skilled workers with no particular aspirations other than to enjoy life.”

 –G. Edward Griffin, on Rockefeller’s General Education Board, founded in 1903.

Google Fast Flip.

The dead cat bounced three points, according to Mickey Kaus:

WaPo reports that in the days after Obama’s speech, the Dem health care plan was opposed by a 48 to 46 margin–versus a 50-45 margin in mid-August. … From five points down to two points down. That’s all he got for playing the joint-session-prime-time-address card? Does that seem like enough to you? … P.S.: “[S]eniors remain solidly opposed to health-care reform, and the number who think government involvement would do more harm than good continues to rise … “

And Stephanopolous agrees that Obama’s speech was no game changer:

Our new ABC News/Washington Post poll out this morning shows that the President’s joint session speech may have stopped his summer slide, but it doesn’t appear to have been the “game-changer” Democrats were hoping for.

No doubt Obama’s passionate presentation energized his partisans and began to unify Congressional Democrats, but this poll is the best evidence yet of where the public stands – and it demonstrates how difficult it will be for Obama to shape the debate and overcome skepticism about his plan.

Bottom line: right now, voters are almost exactly where they were before the speech.

The approval ratings slide stopped while Obama was on vacation, edging up from a low of 51.2% in the RCP average, to a high of 53%. But today it’s slipped back down to 52.0%. It’s actually dropped since the speech. The days when they could make it all go away with one big speech have come to an abrupt close. What are they going to do for the next three years?

And the news is actually worse. The WaPo poll showing no meaningful statistical movement for ObamaCare was a very sympathetic one, according to Jennifer Rubin at Commentary magazine:

And the kicker: not only doesn’t the poll assess voters’ sentiments (let alone likely voters), the sample has a split of 32 percent Democrats and 21 percent Republicans. (This poll’s partisan advantage for Democrats is higher than the one on Election Day and comes at a time when most polls show Republican identification increasing.

Gallup, for example, shows the Democratic advantage narrowing to just 5 points.) So actual voter sentiment may be far worse for Obama than this poll reflects.

Obama has single-handedly revived the GOP. He is the gift that keeps on giving! I’m so embarrassed, I didn’t get him anything…

Riffing on Dave’s Post:

Estimates of the crowd in DC have ranged from a low of “thousands” by the lapdog MSM to more than two million by the UK daily Mail (seems high). Whatever the actual number turns out to be (we’ll probably never know), no doubt the turnout was higher than expected.

So here is the National Park Service schematic for estimating crowd size, released after Obama’s most expensive Inauguration in history (a hint of things to come, in retrospect):

And this is the link to the interactive version.

And here’s a pic of the crowd to compare it to:

UPDATE#2: The original pic the Beast found via Power Line (they’re usually pretty good) for this turned out not to be of the rally (thanks to Guru Steve), so here is a time lapse video that shows the crowd size.

here’s a statistical analysis done by Henry Vanderbilt:

Analysis 1: This gives a range of 240,000 to 320,000 marchers down Pennsylvania Ave, and is based on the time-lapse march route video plus measurements of the route taken from Google Maps. The time-lapse sequence was taken from a webcam over Freedom Plaza at 14th St and E NW, looking ESE down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol. The time-lapse video is 41 seconds long (0-40), is labelled as covering 8 AM to 1130 AM on 9/12/09, and thus scales at just over five minutes real-time per second of video. The video shows the march starting out of Freedom Plaza at 17 seconds (~9:30 AM) with the tail end leaving the plaza at 36 seconds.

UPDATE: and let’s talk cleanliness and respect for the environment. This is a shot of the aftermath of the 9/12 rally…

And this is after Obama’s inauguration…

Draw your own conclusions.

It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.

-Samuel Adams

NRO at the 912 March

Up to two million march to US Capitol to protest against Obama’s spending in ‘tea-party’ demonstration

Conservative Woodstock Rocks the Capital

Probably the best sign was one that said:

  “It doesn’t matter what my sign says,you would just call it “racist”.

The problem with the arguments of Dave, Sting the Away, and the Mo K’s, is that they are so glaringly unconservative. Years ago, I got into a spat with well known conservative Denver talk-show host Mike Rosen over a similar issue. Rosen had insisted on his show and in a column that the problem with the criminal justice system (this was around the time of O.J.) was that there was all this focus on the fairness of the process instead of getting the outcome right. He railed against judicial protections for criminal defendants that zealously protected the process against them, when the rules should really just focus on convicting bad guys and letting good guys go free.

I wrote a letter to the Denver Post in which I attacked his argument as undermining the very conservative principles he insisted he was defending. He was so angry, he read my letter on air and attacked me by name. I immediately called in and joined the battle. Read the rest of this entry →

 “President Clinton’s health-care legislation didn’t fail in 1994 because people didn’t want better health care. The White House plan failed because it was too bureaucratic, too complicated, and too expensive. Last night, President Obama’s response to sixteen years (and one angry August recess) worth of bi-partisan doubt was to double down and bet even more political capital on the same approach. It’s as if he expected Americans to tune in, and suddenly realize their mistake. . . . The speech was brilliant–unless you’ve actually read the legislation behind it, which contradicts many of the President’s restated ‘commitments.’ . . . President Obama’s address to Congress made it clear that he’s barely listened to the national debate on health care that he himself set in motion. Yesterday’s teachable moment: the more America learns about government-run health care, the more Barack Obama wants to talk, and the less he wants to hear.”  –  DAVID GRATZER –  The Unhealthy Politics of Deja Vu.

9/11 – NEVER FORGET – NEVER GIVE IN • Looking at the Left.

What a powerful photo essay.

Did you know that California became a state on September 9, 1850? In those days, the people had no electricity, the state had no money, almost everyone spoke Spanish and there were gunfights in the streets.

Basically, nothing has changed, except back then the women weren’t made of silicone, and the men didn’t hold hands.

- from PaPundits

Chilling. There is nothing more anti-freedom than a liberal with real power…

The latest Obama crackdown; taming an unruly blogosphere

The recent Obama intended appointment of Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, to the position of head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is the next nail in the coffin of the First Amendment. In this position Sunstein will have powers that are unprecedented and very far reaching; not merely mind-boggling but with explicit ability to use the courts to stifle free speech if it opposes Obama policies. In particular, Sunstein thinks that the bloggers have been “rampaging out of control” and that “new laws need to be written” to contain them. Advance copies of Sunstein’s new book, “On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done,” have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the new position to which Sunstein is about to be appointed, the powers with which Sunstein will be endowed are very, very, troubling.

I eagerly await the Democrat investigations, hearings and ethics complaints in regards to The One’s propaganda outreach program to the students of America. For Obama the controversy and complaining is now mostly over. For Bush, once the speech was over it had just begun.

When Bush spoke to students, Democrats investigated, held hearings

On current events.

Van Jones and the MSM:

Byron York has a good post on the MSM reaction to this guy.

From a Nexis search a few moments ago:
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0

9/5/09 UPDATE: The New York Times, ABC and NBC hold the line
After the Jones controversy reached a boiling point on Friday, the Washington Post published a story, “White House Says Little on Embattled Jones,” on page A-3 of its Saturday edition. But the New York Times remained silent on the story.
Likewise, on Friday night the “CBS Evening News” reported the Jones matter, but ABC’s “World News” and “NBC Nightly News” again failed to report the story.

This guy is a virtual one man Youtube circus.  Think back to the Bush years; at least then the Administration was was made up of grown ups instead buffoons like Van Jones and Joe Biden.

Read the rest of this entry →

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

-George Orwell

What indoctrinating the youth in an ideology looks like.

WWII: Intense Propaganda Posters – Photo Gallery, 37 Pictures – LIFE.

What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now – Biography of Ted Williams – Esquire.

Regarded as perhaps the finest piece of sportswriting on record, the furious saga of Teddy Ballgame — from boy to man and near death — is an unmatchable remembrance for an American icon. And now it is available in its entirety for the first time online.
Read more:

Rockies add Contreras as Cook fill-in – The Denver Post.

So, the Dodgers pick up Jim Thome and the Rockies get 50 year old 37 year old Jose Contreras for the stretch run.  Granted, the Rockies are getting his services for basically nothing (though they do give up a pretty good Triple A prospect  in Brandon Hynick), but does an aging old pitcher with a 5-13 record this season really help shore up the rotation?