"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
Somebody’s got to take the fall. It’s the Chicago Way:
Disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich was sentenced Wednesday to 14 years in prison after he made a final plea for leniency, acknowledging his guilt and saying, “I am unbelievably sorry.”
So how is Blago “disgraced,” while Obama is still wonderful? How is it that Blago was prosecuted by a federal Justice Department headed by the “disgraced” Eric Holder?
by Smitty
Hot Air recirculates some heated breath from Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams says Jesus would have joined protesters from the anti-corporate Occupy movement who have been camped outside London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral for more than seven weeks.
In a British magazine, the leader of the world’s 78 million Anglicans worldwide insisted that Jesus would be “there, sharing the risks, not just taking sides.”
If you read the Gospels, Jesus’s encounters with people generally took one of two tracks: if they were people in authority, or ought to know better, he lowered the rhetorical boom. The rest of the people were dealt with far less harshly.
Since Jesus, it’s become something of a sport to attempt to rebrand the carpenter whose job was to bring salvation to fit whatever cause is at hand. What a demotion.
Somebody needs to politely suggest to Rowan Williams that he may be as far off base today as the Pharisees were in the day of Jesus. The notion that the secular effort of the #Occupy movement has even the slightest overlap with Jesus’s mission is daft, as un-Biblical as an ‘Archbishop’, and arguably heretical. Jesus, for example ensured the taxes were paid.
The archbishop said that when Jesus said “give Caesar what belongs to Caesar,” he was asking “what’s the exact point at which involvement in the empire of capitalist economy involves you fatally.”
Really, you Archie-comic Bishop? What was the context of Jesus’s famous statement?
And they send unto him certain of the Pharisees and of the Herodians, to catch him in his words. (Mark 12:13)
The authorities were begging the question: “Have you given up cheating on your taxes?” And Jesus, masterfully, cut the inquisitors to the bone. Furthermore, what do you mean by “involvement in the empire of capitalist economy”? Judea was a Roman province at the time of Jesus’s physical life. Are you making an economic assertion about how the economy worked then? Are we still clinging to the fiction that the British or American economies are purely capitalist now?
Lord have mercy on you sir, and may the Holy Spirit give you an unction to study the Word with some real, prayerful, un-polluted understanding. Because right now, it looks like the rebukes that Jesus laid on the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees of his day may apply to you, as well.
by Smitty
Rush Limbaugh went ballistic about both the Obama 06Dec speech, and the corresponding spinelessness of the GOP in refusing to attack #OccupyResoluteDesk. Of local note is the Timmy Kaine run for Senate.
Face it: rather than gearing up for the next concession speech in 2012, the GOP needs to take this class warfare speech of Baracks and parse it, break it down, and fire it right back at Barack, word for word.
Don’t back down, double down. The country is at stake. Let’s find out who the little children are at GOP HQ and gently toss them in the broom closet until after the election next November. ‘Not going after Barack’ was John McCain’s path to victoryconcession speech in 2008; fear of a reprise in 2012 is exactly why no one wants Mitt on the ticket. Let’s put on our big boy pants now, GOP, and git ‘er done. But even if Mitt simulates gumption, is there any way he can convince conservatives that he isn’t a method actor in a bureaucracy play?
Fischersville Mike with the pithy observation:
Blue Virginia seems awfully excited by Barack Obama giving a speech where Teddy Roosevelt talked in 1910.
Roosevelt was the former president in 1910.
Obama will be a former president in 14 months.
Pithier still, the IowaHawk, via LI
via Atlas Shrugs
When Sarah Palin singled out Rick Santorum for praise last week during her appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program, she got a lot of people’s attention. Danny Yadron of the Wall Street Journal and Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review took notice, as did America’s leading practicioner of Neutral Objective Journalism.
Far more important, however, was the attention Palin’s praise generated among her most loyal admirers:
For Santorum … her words may have been answered prayer, providing the underdog candidate with the kind of fundraising boost his low-budget campaign needs in the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
“Our small dollar donations have just dramatically increased, which is, you know, a great sign for us… and I think Sarah Palin’s comments were absolutely critical to that,” Santorum said, adding that there has also been a noticeable “spike” in traffic to his campaign website. …
Please read the whole thing. Since Palin broke her supporters’ hearts with her Oct. 5 announcement that she wouldn’t be a candidate in 2012, a lot of pundits seem to have decided that she is no longer politically relevant. Yet Palin still has a powerful influence over the many thousands of grassroots conservatives who admire her and some of them — especially including Lisa Graas — are quite literally praying that she’ll make her magic happen by endorsing Rick Santorum.
Crazy? Yeah, but crazy things have been happening all year in the fight for the Republican 2012 nomination, And you know if Sarah Palin were to shock the world with an endorsement before the Iowa caucuses, outraged reactions from “experts” like Karl Rove would be like a gift-wrapped present under somebody’s Christmas tree in her home on the shores of Wasilla’s lovely Lake Lucille. I’m just sayin’ . . .
You can say that’s just crazy-talk, but it’s not crazier than this: Only one candidate in the 2012 Republican presidential race has visited all 99 counties in Iowa, and he’s also the only candidate who knows the title of the national anthem of Vanuatu.
I’m not kidding. Continue reading Rick Santorum: Praise by Sarah Palin ‘Absolutely Critical’ to His Money Surge →
— compiled by Wombat-socho
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POLITICS
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THE ECONOMY, STUPID
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CEO Pandit Says Citigroup To Cut 4500 Jobs
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Don Surber: Gallup – Gingrich Collects The Cain Vote
Ramesh Ponnuru: Heartbreak Awaits Republicans Who Love Newt
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Atlas Shrugs: Obama’s Anti-Capitalism Speech In Kansas
Weasel Zippers: No Joke, Republicans Told Not To Attack Obama
Rush Limbaugh: The So-Called Conservative Media Attacks Newt Gingrich
Michelle Malkin: Hollyweird Distraction Of The Day – Alec Baldwin Booted Off Plane
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Esquire: Could Jon Meacham Be The Most Insufferable Human In Washington?
Reihan Salam: Is The Enemy Of My Enemy My Friend?
Ed Driscoll: Building A Bridge To The 20th Century
Lonely Conservative: Don’t Blame Obama For The Rotten Economy, Blame The Internet!
SOTD: Balls To The Wall
by Smitty
Allahpundit, in the update to Tina Korbe’s post on the latest bit of #OccupyResoluteDesk flatus:
I’m honestly curious to see how he draws the inevitable Gerald Ford analogy before his term’s up.
This administration is going to exit on the most egregious stream of Presidential pardons imaginable. Holder and Corzine, for starters, plus the various and sundry cling-ons and strap-hangers that have done the dirty deeds of swindling and obfuscating for the litany of scandals begotten by this administration.
Personal lubricant should be the top seller this Christmas season, and we look likely to need it. While BHO takes breaks from golfing to campaign next year, we’ll see major flare-ups in every theater of interest, as the economy continues to tank, and GOP front runners take turns making noises like they really want to trim the federal government, while putting in enough winks and codewords that the bloated DC bureaucracy knows it’s all just what you say to win the election, not any serious call for reform.
The only president to whom BHO will never seriously be compared is George Washington. GW had such character as to reveal, in the most personal way, what a useless insult to everything American that #OccupyResoluteDesk has been.
by Smitty
Along with Limbaugh, Beck is going to be remembered as one of the voices that helped turn this country around. His audience draw actually got may parents to buy an interface and subscribe to GBTV, a miracle that could only be topped by Stacy McCain installing TweetDeck.
While busy with all precocious ~17 lbs. of The World’s Youngest Blogger, I missed the bun fight with Newt Gingrich, 
though I did tune in for the Michele Bachmann piece, where Michele called Newt a ‘frugal Socialist’. Mitt speaks in bumper stickers. Newt speaks in scholarly digressions, and seems drawn to arguments for their own sake, irrespective of any real-world impacts. Has either man internalized the fact that the Tea Party cares about liberty, and neither of those big government, nominally conservative chumps is exciting?
Beck, on the other hand, engages in random acts of patriotism and sensible acts of honor. The advertisement for Thursday’s show embedded below hints at a major announcement. I haven’t the foggiest clue what he’s got cooking, but if it involves a large gathering on the Mall sometime this Spring, then I am totally there. Another idea might be the 1,000 day anniversary for that useless clown of a Senate Majority Leader to have failed to pass a budget, rolling by in about 7 weeks. But even a grizzled event planner like Stacy McCain would have a challenge stringing that together, so that’s unlikely. Tax Day in April?
Update: clownface Newt due to Jaded Haven. Remember, conservatives: the Left swooned over BHO’s wonderful baritone. How well or poorly a candidate emits words, while not nothing, should not be the main reason for fancying their campaign.
“It is Newt Gingrich’s turn on the Republican presidential candidate carousel . . . For some reason, the conservative punditry hive mind is collectively suggesting that the carousel may stop with Gingrich on top. Whether it’s their weariness with the poll swings or comfort with a familiar face, I can’t say for certain. It isn’t conservatism. . . .
“Last week, he told Jake Tapper of ABC News that he had the nomination wrapped up. ‘I’m going to be the nominee,’ he said.
“Even his supporters must have gasped when he said that. . . .
“On another occasion, Gingrich explained that he’s not a natural leader, because ‘I’m too intellectual; I’m too abstract; I think too much.’
“Newt wears arrogance like a zebra wears stripes. . . .”
— Yates Walker, “Newt Gingrich’s Coming Fall,” Daily Caller
You can let polls do your thinking for you. You can let the media do your thinking for you. You can jump on a bandwagon because somebody told you that a candidate is the only “practical” alternative to Mitt Romney, or tell yourself that anybody who criticizes Gingrich is a Romney stooge, and that Newt’s the only GOP candidate who can beat Obama next year.
Or you can think for yourself and tell all the pundits and pollsters to go straight to hell.
As for me, I remember October 2009, when Tea Party activists were doing everything they could to help Doug Hoffman win the NY-23 special election, and Newt Gingrich went on TV — over and over and over again — to praise Dede Scozzafava as the best choice for conservatives.
Some friends say I’m wrong to carry a grudge like that, and you may feel differently about Gingrich. It’s a free country and you can believe whatever you want to believe. But I’m a neutral objective journalist, and it is my obligation to tell you this fact: Newt will self-destruct, and the only question is whether that self-destruction will come sooner or later.
There are people praying it comes soon — that’s an objective fact.
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