Just a few days ago, I sketched what I think are the major points in the last century that have marked our national course to ruin. Among the major inputs to the whole dog’s breakfast we face is military policy. Now, I grew up a Navy brat, enlisted in the Navy, took a commission, and am currently deployed on active duty. Thus, badmouthing anybody or any operation in detail would be rude. Nevertheless, I’d be a less effective supporter and defender of the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic if I neglected to pass along some points to ponder. Continue reading Once in a Lifetime: Military Policy Edition →
We might even have to steal the name, too. I thought these guys had had a Wikipedia page, telling you that they’re a bunch of Aussie surf bums who drag in to play from time to time. Now they’ve dwindled to a mere mention here. Saw them about 13 years ago at a wine tasting in Albany, Australia, or thereabouts. Ageless men playing timeless music.
A huge crowd turned out Thursday at the DC offices of Americans for Tax Reform, where the Daily Caller co-hosted a book-signing party for Andrew Breitbart’s Righteous Indignation.
When I saw Andrew signing books in front of the giant picture of himself, I said, “Big Breitbart Is Watching You!”
Strangely enough, neither Travis Korson nor Matt Martini asked to see Alyssa Farah‘s birth certificate.
Breitbart checks his text messages while, in the background, you can see Derek Hunter and Erik Telford discussing what they’re going to do when the next truckload of unmarked cash arrives from the Koch Brothers.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) announced Thursday he will resign his seat effective May 3.
“It is with tremendous sadness that I officially hand over the Senate seat that I have held for eleven years,” he said in a statement. “The turbulence of these last few years is greatly surpassed by the incredible privilege that I feel to have been entrusted to serve the people of Nevada. I can honestly say that being a United States senator has been the honor of my life.”
The senator plans to send his resignation letter to Vice President Biden on Friday.
Later,
Rep. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) has already announced he’s running for Ensign’s seat, and it’s possible Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval would appoint him as Ensign’s replacement.
And the obvious Sharon Angle question:
According to Nevada law, Sandoval would then have to call a special election for Heller’s House seat. Republican Sharron Angle, who lost her bid to replace Reid last year, is running for Heller’s seat.
One can’t resist questioning the timing. Having held out this long against the charges of being a low-down, skirt chasin’ dog, what’s the point of not finishing the term? Is the stress of the budget fracas too much?
I haven’t actually navigated to Little Foot Greenballs since the last time Instapundit linked Chuckles, which has been forever in Internet time.
This post showed up in the Google Reader’s Recommendations section, which was worth a screencap and a post. Sorry, no link. I neither subscribe to the guy nor recommend reading him regularly. Charles seems petty and delusional in this brief excerpt. There may be a future for him in writing Obama speeches.
. . .language divorced from its anchor (intent) and set to semiotic drift results, predictably, in cynical, self-serving, largely recursive narrative enclosures, with desire — a will to power — coming to stand in for meaning, creating illusory “truths” out of self-interested consensus. That is, mob rule.
Or, as Ronnie James Dio put it: “If you listen to fools, the mob rules.” The good news is the fools seem dimly aware that we’re onto them. The bad news is that this vague feeling does not prompt them to pursue wisdom.
Tied for first place as far as “Things that Give Obama Away as a Man of the Left” (Tied with everything else he thinks and everything else he does) is his favorite “explanation” for the public disagreeing with them: That they’re ignorant.
This has a long history on the left as the go-to explanation for the public rejecting socialism. The earlier, more Marxist version of the idea was to claim the public had a “false consciousness” imposed on them by a manipulative capitalist media; the public, in this telling, were unwitting dupes, who didn’t understand socialism was in their best interest because the corporate masters who control the debate fed them a steady diet of lies. Anything to keep the wealthy and powerful in their positions of wealth and power. Anything to keep the Common Man from realizing he could be his own King.
The overarching irony here is that the real assumption of Common Man royalty is delivered by liberty, not socialism. Locke trumps Rousseau, barring actual wolves at the gate.
We must all hang together or surely we shall all hang separately, so this evening I’ll be hanging out at a reception in Washington, DC, to celebrate the publication of Andrew Breitbart’s new book Righteous Indignation. Let’s hope Martin Bashir doesn’t show up to pester the guest of honor.
In point of fact, it doesn’t make an iota of difference whether Breitbart is a “racist,” define the term however you will. If tomorrow, it were revealed that Breitbart is in fact the Grand Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, that disclosure would have no relevance to whether his statements about politics or policy are true or false. By attempting to depict Breitbart as a racist, however, Bashir seeks to pre-emptively discredit Breitbart, so that the MSNBC audience is given the clear message: “Don’t believe anything he says — he’s one of Them!”
And this is what liberalism has been reduced to: The politics of demonization, the argument that you should vote Democrat not because Democrats have better policies, but because Republicans are bad people. So you’re paying over $4 a gallon for gas, you’re unemployed, you’re underwater on your mortgage and there is no near-term prospect for improvement — but you can congratulate yourself on your moral superiority, because at least you never voted Republican!
