‘It’s a Death Trap, It’s a Suicide Rap, We Gotta Get Out While We’re Young . . .’

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Mentoring the next generation of conservative leadership is a serious obligation, and we Jedi masters are thus occasionally called upon to instruct young padwans in the ways of the Force. Readers will recall that I spent Friday afternoon covering the National Conservative Student Conference hosted by the Young America’s Foundation. The conference was followed by a reception and dinner banquet at D.C.’s luxurious Ritz-Carlton Hotel:

Fred Thompson was thronged by young Fred Heads among the rising generation of conservative activists at the YAF reception. While I hate to break my “don’t hassle the celebrities” rule, I did impose on Senator Thompson for a minute to make mention of the Christine O’Donnell Senate campaign in Delaware.

George Allen joins fellow YAF supporters at the gala dinner.

OK, guys, don’t get all “hubba hubba” here. YAF’s Kiana Dunn is only 18, and just recently graduated escaped from high school youth indoctrination camp in California. The reason I took the photo was to remember her name. Why? Because she told me she will be a freshman this fall at a college just 10 miles from Bruce Springsteen’s home in New Jersey and yet, sad to say, she doesn’t even know the lyrics of “Born to Run.” As a matter of cultural preservation, I expect the Sarah T. Herman Intern Scholar to commit these immortal lyrics to memory.

While I would have liked to stay for dinner with the YAF crew at the Ritz-Carlton, the highways were jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive, and my mentoring efforts were needed elsewhere — at the Rocket Bar in Chinatown, to be exact. It was there that Newsbusters was hosting the monthly “First Friday” event, where girls comb their hair in rearview mirrors and the boys try to look so hard. So I had to ride through mansions of glory in my suicide machine to 714 7th Street.

For some reason, seeing Brent Bozell III in a Newbusters T-shirt reminds me of how this town rips the bones from your back.

Joe Marier appears on the right side of this photo, but considering that he writes for Frum Forum . . . well, I’m mentoring him in hopes that together we could break this trap.

Moments before this photos was taken, all these guys solemnly pledged to Iris Somberg, “We want to guard your dreams and visions.”

You’re probably wondering why Crabby Con is not only wearing the famous fedora but also, quite obviously, seated in the back of the famous 2004 KIA Optima. Trust me, there is a perfectly innocent explanation for this, but to get that explantion, you’ll have to come back in about an hour for the next update. I’ll have more photos, which I promise to post with all the madness in my soul.

UPDATE: As promised, perfectly innocent:

You see, Crabby Con was there to see Yates Walker, who is just a scared and lonely rider and has gotta find out how it feels.

I’m pretty sure this is one of those guys who was sprung from cages out on Highway 9.

Two of his fellow Cornell alumni joined Daily Caller deputy editor Jamie Weinstein in an everlasting kiss.

One Fine Jay and Lachlan Markay are gonna get to that place where we really want to go. More photos in the next update.

UPDATE II: Everybody’s out on the run tonight, but there’s no place left to hide:

Matt Sheffield, Mrs. Sheffield, Kevin Mooney and Mary Beth Hutchins sweat it out in the streets of a runaway American dream.

Neither Chris Moody nor Lachlan Markay is gay, even though they look like they may want to be huddled on the beach in a mist.

Iris Somberg and Laura Lieberman briefly considered accepting my invitation to walk with me out on the wire, but wisely decided against it.

Yates Walker and Matthew Vadum are chrome wheeled, fuel injected and steppin’ out over the line.

Matthew Vadum poses with Crabby Con, who is waiting for her ginormous Larry King glasses to come back in style, but ’til then tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.

Marriage of Convenience? No, Rosie O’Donnell Had a Marriage of Vengeance

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The most absurd episode of Blame Bush Syndrome evah!

“George Bush, in the middle of a war, had an all-station news conference to announce how horrible it was for the safety of America that gay people were getting married in San Francisco, which pissed me off enough to get on a plane and go get married . . . It was like an act of . . . defiance . . . If you’re gonna count up everybody who you think is not of value and round ’em all up and slap a pink triangle on ’em.”

You see that O’Donnell has bought into the Bush-as-Hitler analogy so deeply that she deploys it automatically, unthinkingly, with this divisive “pink triangle” nonsense. Furthermore, like many of those on the Left, Rosie is so accustomed to getting her news filtered through biased venues, that she “remembers” things that never happened.

Tim Graham fact-checks Rosie’s bogus history, pointing out that there was no “all-station news conference” and that Bush’s 2004 statement was actually a very thoughtful and measured expression of the conservative position on marriage.

It’s sad, but not really surprising, to think that Rosie’s San Francisco wedding with Kelli Carpenter was merely a political publicity stunt — which is what Rosie means when she misuses the phrase “civil disobedience.” We could scarcely expect any union solemnized under such a pretext to endure, and the dissolution of the O’Donnell-Carpenter romance was one of those “second time as farce” episodes:

Rosie was talking about her long-haired chihuahua Misty with pet psychic Sonya Fitzpatrick . . . And she then revealed further, “What happened [was] when Kelli moved out two years ago, I got the dog. Because I wanted another child or something to love. And I got the dog.”

“I got the dog,” indeed! Speaking of marriage and children, pro-life blogger Jill Stanek notes how Judge Walker’s decision in San Francisco v. Schwarzenegger is being likened to Roe v. Wade.

Further commenting on the undemocratic nature of Judge Walker’s ruling, Melissa Clouthier of Liberty Pundits expects that “the disenfranchised masses will add this to the list of ways that the government treats them as worthless dung.”

That sentiment ought to be repaid with interest Nov. 2.

UPDATE: Dan Riehl calls attention to the news that Ann Coulter will address an event being billed as “Homocon.” NTTAWWT.

Da Tech Guy Visits A Mosque

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by Smitty

Long-time friend of this blog Da Tech Guy was in the neighborhood and discovered what quite a few say about Moslems. Individually, they’re the kind of social conservatives that a goodly chunk of the readers of this blog have no trouble getting along with.

For example, at CPAC two years back, I spent a bit of time talking to Muslims for America.

On the other hand, I just finished The Grand Jihad, and I’m halfway through Nomad.  There are several darkly quotable passages in both.

Thoughts:

  • The US emphasis on individual liberty is at odds with Islam and Sharia.
  • Moderate Muslims need to be offering serious leadership on toning down Islam and Sharia.
  • Real improvement is decades away, and may not come as peacefully as is desirable.

Foppish Munch-head’s Jacked-up Ruling: Annoying

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by Smitty

Sure, I’ve never paid that much attention to the judiciary, figuring that, well, they’re probably more erudite than I. Other than rejecting the DoJ’s motion to dismiss in the VA ObamaCare suit, the headline-making actions of our nation’s judges raise the question of whether a judge can be impeached upon the basis of idiocy. Or, perhaps more gently, couldn’t these knobs go write screenplays or something, where the ripple effects of their vast creativity wouldn’t weaken societal institutions and security? Continue reading Foppish Munch-head’s Jacked-up Ruling: Annoying →

Some Salve For The Kagan Vote

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by Smitty

Gary Marx at TNR has a little picker-upper concerning Justice Kagan, the bullet points of which I’ll repeat, but RTWT:

  1. This 63–37 vote was a victory for judicial conservatives.
  2. The climate regarding judicial nominations has been radically altered.
  3. Major interest groups that traditionally have not played a role in Supreme Court battles are moving toward the side of judicial restraint…
  4. There were some surprising no votes.
  5. Ultimately, the Kagan debate was about the size and role of the national government, and the role of judges within that government.

In summary, we have to hang in there and fight the good fight, even with an undesirable outcome. In a system full of compromise, making the downpayment on this fight affords a basis for subsequent victory. The opposition wants you to cry, punt, and let them complete the task of replacing our Federalist system with a crappy Socialist imitation that dishonors liberty.

To the defeatists we must say no, no, no, no, a thousand nos, and, again: get stuffed.

Debt Slavery Is THE Issue

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by Smitty (via Uncoverage)

Uncoverage posts a startling article by ChuckDeVore.com that shows:

According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749. This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt. Voters with a propensity to elect politicians who burden future generations who can’t yet vote with huge debts voted for Obama while fiscally responsible voters generally voted for McCain.

Fiscal security is the only thing more important than border security. Social issues? What are they but distractors?

Hot Air comes at this point from the CA Prop 8 vantage, quoting a CA Republican Party chair:

“This election needs to revolve around five issues: taxes, spending, the economy, jobs and debt,” said Ron Nehring, chairman of the California Republican Party. “That doesn’t mean that other issues aren’t important — they are important — but the first issue on the minds of people is the economy.”

Things are so bad, that even the Queen of Cluelessness is starting to catch on that there may be some trouble a-brewin’:

The country I was born into was a country that had existed steadily, for almost two centuries, as a nation in which everyone thought—wherever they were from, whatever their circumstances—that their children would have better lives than they did. That was what kept people pulling their boots on in the morning after the first weary pause: My kids will have it better. They’ll be richer or more educated, they’ll have a better job or a better house, they’ll take a step up in terms of rank, class or status. America always claimed to be, and meant to be, a nation that made little of class. But America is human. “The richest family in town,” they said, admiringly. Read Booth Tarkington on turn-of-the-last-century Indiana. It’s all about trying to rise.

Parents now fear something has stopped. They think they lived through the great abundance, a time of historic growth in wealth and material enjoyment. They got it, and they enjoyed it, and their kids did, too: a lot of toys in that age, a lot of Xboxes and iPhones. (Who is the most self-punishing person in America right now? The person who didn’t do well during the abundance.) But they look around, follow the political stories and debates, and deep down they think their children will live in a more limited country, that jobs won’t be made at a great enough pace, that taxes—too many people in the cart, not enough pulling it—will dishearten them, that the effects of 30 years of a low, sad culture will leave the whole country messed up. And then there is the world: nuts with nukes, etc.

Keep thinking, Peggy–you may beat Paul Krugman (h/t Insty) in the race to enlightenment. Past the finish line sit the Founding Fathers, who, in their pre-Industrial Revolution wisdom, saw that liberty was the goal.

Here is a great straight-to-YouTube Trifecta:

This Trifecta episode is a great tactical point, but, for all that, we have to understand that this November is a mere down-payment. Stand by. The new blood will get sworn into office, and discover just How Completely Frobnicated the whole situation is. If the leadership feels We The People have their back, there may, potentially, be some whacking of the Federal hydra in the 112th Congress. Historically, the professionals get accepted into the Ruling Class, and get their Sith Lord makeover.

If we merely light up a maduro and congratulate ourselves on the successful group blogger-bation, by 2012, the Tea Party energy will be the political equivalent of Springsteen’s Glory Days, and the Lindsey Graham and John McCain clones will continue to make patriotic noises while treating the Constitution with the affection afforded a urinal cake.

Remember, this hairball has been a century in the making, and will, at bare minimum, require a decade of your best effort just to get that hydra chopped down to something reasonably un-lethal. Incumbency is the enemy. We The People can either rule, or enjoy slavery.

Right on time, courtesy of the excellent No Sheeples Here, we have I Want Your Money:

Set against the backdrop of today’s headline – 67% of Americans don’t approve of Obama’s economic policies, the film takes a provocative look at our deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama and shows the marked contrast between Reaganomics and Obamanomics. The film contrasts two views of the role that the federal government should play in our daily lives using the words and actions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you; the other believes that the elite in Washington know how to best allocate your wealth. One champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and even daring to dream and build big. The other holds that there is no end to the “good” the government can do by taking and spending other peoples’ money in an ever-burgeoning list of programs. The documentary film I Want Your Money exposes the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state.

This could be good. I hope the film exposes the fact that the Federal Reserve is close to, if not the root of, all this evil. While it may be a stretch to End the Fed outright, and perhaps savvy politics for the GOP to be keeping a low profile about Paul Ryan, the GOP needs to quit being coy and step up to the Federalist plate now, now, now.

Karen Handel: ‘She’s No Nikki Haley’

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So says my friend Orit Sklar, referring to Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel. Orit is supporting the rival campaign of Nathan Deal. The GOP primary is Tuesday and the latest poll shows the race a dead heat. Orit is quoted in an Associated Press article about the campaign:

Critics say Handel is trying to have it both ways, hammering Deal for alleged ethical lapses and then crying sexism over a release from his campaign that labeled his female supporters “real women.”
“There is some real hypocrisy,” said Orit Sklar, a 25-year-old Deal backer from Alpharetta, who had been a Fulton County organizer for another Republican candidate, Eric Johnson.
Sklar said that as a conservative woman she’s been feeling “some pressure to view the Republican runoff in terms of identity – in terms of gender – rather than issues.”
“But I frankly think what Karen Handel is doing is unbecoming for someone who wants to be our governor,” Sklar said.

My friend Erick Erickson of Red State is backing Handel, who also got the endorsement of Sarah Palin. However, Orit is a protégé of the legendary Phil Kent and any friend of Phil’s is a friend of mine. Therefore, the choice is clear:

NATHAN DEAL for GEORGIA GOVERNOR