Category: Democrats

‘It Ain’t True’

Posted on Comments

“I believe in the Second Amendment. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away . . . So if you want to find an excuse not to vote for me, don’t use that one because it just ain’t true. It ain’t true.”
— Barack Obama, September 9, 2008

“I’ve been very clear that, you know, an assault rifle ban, you know, banning these high capacity clips, background checks, that there are a set of issues that I have historically supported and . . . will continue to support.”
— Barack Obama, Dec. 30, 2012

TINFOIL HAT: Sec State Injured, SEAL Killed During Iran Incident?

Posted on Comments

by Smitty

Supposedly the Russian GRU is circulating a report that the recently Navy SEAL Commander demise and non-availability of the Secretary of State are related:

This GRU report, however, states that US military flight logs recorded by Russian air and space forces confirm that Commander Price, and other members of US Navy Seal Team 4, left their base in Urozgan Province, Afghanistan on a flight to US Naval Support Activity Bahrain where they met up with Secretary Clinton and all of them transferred to the C-12 Huron that began a flight path to Baghdad, Iraq.

The whole thing reads like a drunken encounter between John Le Carre and The Onion. I can picture a roomful of GRU guys and some Stoli having a right jolly time putting this one together.

Lord, rest Commander Job Price (whatever the details of his unexpected departure), and

via Joan of Argghh

Obama Promises 2013 Gun-Grab Bill; Warns ‘There Will Be Resistance’

Posted on Comments

Never let a crisis go to waste:

Recalling the shooting of 20 first graders as the worst day of his presidency, President Barack Obama on Sunday pledged to put his “full weight” behind a legislative package next year aimed at containing gun violence.
In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama voiced skepticism about proposals to place armed guards at schools in the aftermath of the Dec. 14 deadly assault at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. . . .
Obama said he intended to press the issue with the public. . . .
“Will there be resistance? Absolutely there will be resistance,” he said.
“The question then becomes whether we are actually shook up enough by what happened here that it does not just become another one of these routine episodes where it gets a lot of attention for a couple of weeks and then it drifts away. It certainly won’t feel like that to me. This is something that – you know, that was the worst day of my presidency. And it’s not something that I want to see repeated.”

 Does the phrase “cold dead hands” ring a bell?

UPDATE: Headlines from the Drudge Report:

Buyers flock to gun shows in VA…
‘It’s Never Been Like This’…
Backorders Up To 6 Months From Manufacturers…
Only 1 Person Shows Up To Protest Show In Denver…

Obama: The Greatest Gun Salesman in American History!

UPDATE II: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Of course, we all remember that, during the 2008 campaign, Obama swore that he had no intention of imposing new gun control laws — right?

 


Objectively Worse: Democrats to Blame for the Hyper-Partisanship They Decry

Posted on Comments

NYPD arrest Occupy Wall Street protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge, Oct. 1, 2011

Commenting on the post-election rancor — e.g., Log Cabin Republicans targeting Chuck Hagel — Professor Glenn Reynolds observes:

You know, somebody — Dave Weigel or Matt Yglesias, I think — was tweeting the other day that the GOP was doing worse post-election than in 2008. Well maybe; at this point, after all, Bush was still in the White House. But Obama is definitely doing worse than in 2008. First the Susan Rice debacle, then the departure of scandal-plagued EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, and now the stalled Hagel nomination. Definitely not as well as in 2008.

Meanwhile, we see gloomy prospects for avoiding the “fiscal cliff,” and the question we ought to be asking is, “How did we get here?”

The problem in trying to answer that question is that the information stream is polluted by the Conventional Wisdom manufactured by the national media, where Democrats out-number Republicans by a factor of no less than 7-to-1. Thus, we must begin the quest for truth by un-learning what our indoctrinators —  the “apparatchik MSM,” as Ed Driscoll calls them — would have us believe, and consider the possibility that something quite nearly opposite is true.

Our liberal friends would have us believe that the problem is that Republicans have been captured by Tea Party extremists and are engaged in politically motivated “obstructionism” because the GOP is captive — “epistemic closure”! — to extreme voices on Fox News and talk radio.

What if that MSM-produced narrative is, in fact, the mirror-reverse of the truth? This relates to a comment I made about Barrett Brown, the “Anonymous” spokesman arrested in September:

The specific object of my critique is the outlaw “civil disobedience” vigilante protest mentality involved in the “Anonymous” and “Occupy” movements, an attitude that excuses crime so long as it is committed against enemies of The Cause.
This attitude was revived and popularized by anti-war protesters during the Bush era, where the information-warfare aspect of their propaganda was clearly displayed: President Bush himself was de-legitimized as an election-stealer, the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” and the U.S. military response to those attacks was “war for oil,” allegedly undertaken on behalf of Halliburton, etc. There is a narrative that justifies Barrett Brown’s demonization of the FBI, you see. The fact that this left-wing rationalization has passed its sell-by date — like the fragments of the Weather Underground that continued their “revolutionary” violence long after the Vietnam War ended — does not prevent people from continuing to carry the radical torch as if it were still 2005.

As Rodgers and Hammerstein might say, you have to be carefully taught to think the way Barrett Brown and his comrades think, and what Andrew Breitbart called the “Democrat-Media Complex” never bothers to expose and debunk the counterfactual beliefs of the radical Left. Why? Because liberals believe that having a loud, militant left-wing fringe — angry shock troops to assault the GOP-allied institutions of bourgeois society — is good for the Democrat Party.

Whatever you may think of the Republican Party, it is not (as the MSM would have you believe) controlled by “Birthers” and other kooks, and the GOP is not pursuing any kind of extremist agenda. It is actually the Democrats who embraced a dangerous anarchist fringe movement, “Occupy Wall Street,” and in fact it is Democrats who are even now pursuing the radical OWS agenda against “the 1%”: Taxes must be increased on “the rich,” Democrats keep telling us, and they are willing to take us over the “fiscal cliff” if they don’t get their way.

 

Greedy Corporate Swine at Starbucks Cleverly Market Altruistic Image

Posted on Comments

Perhaps you’re not old enough to remember the 1999 “Battle in Seattle,” when mostly peaceful demonstrators dangerous anarchists exercised their First Amendment rights went on a violent rampage in downtown Seattle during a meeting of the World Trade Organization.

What the rioters were allegedly protesting was “globalization,” which at the time was the trendy new left-wing code word for capitalism, in much the same way that Obama now talks about the “middle class,” instead of proletariat. (They update the language, but the ideology never changes.) Anyway, amid the senseless destruction wreaked by the rampaging anarchists, they smashed the windows at a Starbucks.

This was ironic symbolism, considering that Starbucks is a Seattle-based company which supports progressive political causes and has always cleverly marketed itself as concerned with environmentalism and other lefty “issues.” But this signifying jive didn’t fool the Black Bloc radicals, who despise all capitalist greedheads, no matter how much trendy progressive camouflage their marketing departments may deploy.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz made more than $65 million last year peddling his company’s left-wing brand and — displaying his shrewd marketing savvy — endorsed Obama, because nothing says Hope and Change quite like $4-a-cup Arabica. So now, Howard Schultz is hustling bipartisan cooperation on the “fiscal cliff”:

There are moments in our lives when we have an opportunity to ignite tremendous positive change—not just in the lives of the customers and communities we serve every day, but in our country. This was evident in the outpouring of support in the wake of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary that claimed 26 innocent lives, including one of our partners (employees), Lauren Rousseau.
This spirit of connectedness and humanity is powerful; so powerful that if we unleash it, we can make a difference on a much grander scale. . . .
As many of you know, our elected officials in Washington D.C. have been unable to come together and compromise to solve the tremendously important, time-sensitive issue to fix the national debt. . . .
Rather than be bystanders, we have an opportunity—and I believe a responsibility — to use our company’s scale for good by sending a respectful and optimistic message to our elected officials to come together and reach common ground on this important issue. This week through December 28, partners in our Washington D.C. area stores are writing “Come Together” on customers’ cups.
It’s a small gesture, but the power of small gestures is what Starbucks is about! Imagine the power of our partners and hundreds of thousands of customers each sharing such a simple message, one cup at a time.

Screw you, Howard Schultz. Screw you and your phony “progressivism,” your bogus idealism-for-profit image-mongering, while you cash in on the National Public Radio-listening MSNBC-watching fools who buy your product because they think it’s a way to “make a difference.”

Next time there’s a riot, I hope the Black Bloc trashes all your stores.

(Via Memeorandum.)

 

 


Obama Scrooges Christmas

Posted on Comments

Re-elect Obama, the tax-hiking enemy of a free-market economy — hey, that’s got to be great for the holiday retail season, right?

Confidence among U.S. consumers dipped to its lowest point in December since July amid rising economic worries, according to a monthly index released Friday.
Marshal Cohen, chief research analyst at NPD Inc., a market research firm with a network of analysts at shopping centers nationwide, estimates customer traffic over the weekend was in line with the same time a year ago, but that shoppers seem to be spending less. . . .
All that spelled glum news for retailers, which can make up to 40 percent of annual sales during November and December.

Via Erika Johnsen at Hot Air, who adds:

The pervasive worries over the fiscal-cliff, combined with continued high unemployment and slackening economic indicators across all sectors, have punctured even Americans’ reliably robust Christmas spirit. But hey, I’m sure it’s all those dang Republicans’ fault, right?

 

The Obama Age: ‘That ’70s Show’

Posted on Comments

In last night’s traditional Christmas round-up — genius! — I began by quoting Rob Long’s doom-and-gloom comments from a New York magazine feature about the post-election National Review Caribbean cruise, an article you should read in its entirety, if you want to be thoroughly depressed about the uselessness of our conservative elite: Wonks, pundits, pollsters and consultants on a free tropical vacation paid for by elderly magazine subscribers who, we presume, were grateful to be in the intellectual presence of the presumed heirs of Bill Buckley.

Near the end of the article — the “print” version is 11 pages — Joe Hagan quotes Jonah Goldberg, who offered this assessment of the cruise:

“This is a more downbeat bunch this year,” he said. “We lost in 2008, but it was almost boisterous and fun. This, a little less so. People were dyspeptic.
“Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”

Indeed. You might even say that we are Doomed Beyond All Hope of Redemption, but if there is any hope of redeeming us from this disaster, it wouldn’t involve a political campaign or a legislative agenda. The problem is the culture, especially the culture of youth, over which Jonah Goldberg and his fellow NRO cruisers — both the geriatrics who footed the bill and the intellectual free-riders — have near-zero influence.

Flashback to Paul Weyrich’s 1999 pronouncement that America had suffered “a cultural collapse of historical proportions.” The demographic aspect of that collapse was apparent to me, and yet where is the evidence that the Bush-era GOP took it seriously? For that matter, where were the conservative intelligentsia? When Weyrich died four years ago, I wrote:

One aspect of the collapse Weyrich decried was the rise of the celebrity culture, wherein the famous people on TV exercise more influence over our attitudes than do the ordinary people in our own real lives.

Has there been any conservative intellectual pushback against that phenomenon? Or has the celebrity culture overwhelmed our intelligentsia? Coming up next on The Daily Show . . .

The consequences are nearly too grim to contemplate, particularly in what it means for the economy, namely a continuation of conditions that resemble the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Obamanomics will forever blight the prospects of an entire generation:

“This generation will be permanently depressed and will be on a lower path of income for probably all of their life — and at least the next 10 years,” says Rutgers professor Cliff Zukin, a senior research fellow at the university’s John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Professionals who start out in jobs other than their first choice tend to stay on the alternative path, earning less than they would have otherwise while becoming less likely to start over again later in preferred fields, Zukin says.
Michael Greenstone, who was chief economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers in 2009 and 2010, says the shift to a downwardly mobile society may be lasting. “Children are not earning as much as their parents, and I think we’re laying the seeds for that to continue into the future,” he says.

Bitter irony: Culture overwhelms politics, and politics overwhelms economics, so that ambitious young people — reacting to cultural cues that told them to oppose Republicans as “rich old white men” — end up supporting a political agenda hostile to their economic interests. It’s the mirror-reverse of the left-wing woe that Thomas Franks lamented in What’s the Matter With Kansas?

And where is our Thomas Franks capable of explaining this?

Ed Driscoll was on that National Review Voyage of the Damned, and Ed has further thoughts on the ongoing Obama Age catastrophe.

Merry Christmas! 

 


President First Person Singular and His Radical Cult of Antisocial Admirers

Posted on Comments

“[I]f we were going to define the left, at least in this country, I guess I’d say that it would revolve around something like people who were committed to the eradication of social, political, economic, gender, sexual, and environmental inequality both in the United States and around the world through the use of a variety of means, ranging from an activist government to revolutionary cadres. . . . I would certainly include myself in this definition of the left.”
— Erik Loomis, Dec. 13, 2012

“On the fringes of the radical movement, many tortured spirits actively sought a martyrdom made doubly attractive by the glamour of modern publicity. The left, with its vision of social upheaval, has always attracted more than its share of lunatics, but the media have conferred a curious sort of legitimacy on antisocial acts merely by reporting them. . ..
“Narcissistic patients, according to [psychiatrist Otto] Kernberg, ‘often admire some hero or outstanding individual’ and ‘experience themselves as part of that outstanding person.’ They see the admired individual as ‘merely an extension of themselves.’ . . . The narcissist admires and identifies himself with ‘winners’ out of his fear of being labeled a loser.”
— Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations (1979)

This past week, Becca Lower counted the number of first-person pronouns (I, me, my, mine) in President Obama’s response to the failure of “fiscal cliff” negotiations with House Republicans. In his memorial to Sen. Daniel Inouye, however, the Narcissist-in-Chief set a new standard:

Whatever the topic, whatever the occasion, the actual subject of any Obama speech ultimately is always Obama:

Someone needs to tell Barack Obama — it must get particularly confusing this time of year — that his own birth is not Year One, the date around which all other events are understood. His much-noted, self-referential tic was on cringe-worthy display Friday when the president gave his eulogy for the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who served in Congress for half a century representing Obama’s birth state of Hawaii. . . .
From Obama’s telling, the next significant event in Inouye’s life was greeting his new Senate colleague, Barack Obama.

What was admirable about Inouye, according to Obama, was that he was worthy of Obama’s admiration. This solipsistic “argument” is the essence of Obama’s politics, and calls to mind Thomas Sowell’s brilliant 1996 book, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy. What matters to liberals, Sowell explains, is not whether their policies produce any real improvement, but rather how these policies affirm the belief of liberals in their own moral and intellectual superiority.

As the embodiment of that politics, Obama incites his admirers, who feel empowered by his example to act out the implicit judgment against demonized enemies whom they condemn as manifestly inferior to themselves. Erik Loomis’s deranged rants come to mind:

Reading how vile the comments of this “gifted young scholar” were, I did start thinking that, at a minimum, some people at [the University of Rhode Island] should occasionally monitor his class or question his students to find out whether he brings anywhere close to that amount of venom to discussions with students who disagree with him.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)