Dying for an Education

cnn.com

Is it morally right to bring a change to people that would be beneficial in the long run, but that could kill them in the short run?

What if that beneficial change conflicts with that society's values?

CNN has written another article on the challenges of educating girls in Afghanistan, Despite Deadly Risks, Afghan Girls Take Brave First Step.

In it, they tell of the challenges facing the girls and those who struggle to educate them.

There were at least 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations, and the majority of those attacks were attributed to armed groups opposed to educating females.

It's heartbreaking, but you know what? I read stuff like this and I just don't care anymore. God have mercy on my soul, because I should care, and probably somewhere deep inside I really do.

Deeper down, I wonder what we are doing trying to change other people. It's bleak, and the sad fact is, if enough Afghans really disagreed with the taliban types who throw acid in little girls' faces, it wouldn't happen anymore. But they don't, so it does. We are fighting heroically to give this benighted society something it does not want.

"...Nasty, Brutish and Short"

The actions of the heroic women featured in the CNN article end in tragedy. Young daughters burned alive inside of schools, others attacked and killed on their way home after a happy day of learning.  Life is cruel:  Those girls would still be alive if we had just left them alone and not tried to educate them. 

But that begs the question of a life lived heroically or cowardly:  Is it better to be a semi-literate third-grade girl who ends up getting blown up in your school? Or would it be preferable to remain illiterate and unschooled and die from a hemorrhage at 28 after giving birth for the fifth time with no health care because you had to cut wood and cook for the men hours after giving birth?

Obamaville

“Not since the grim days of the Great Depression has New York City had 20,000 children sleeping homeless each night,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless (NY Daily News)

Help the poor? Obama’s government is helping the rich and the politically connected. What have the poor ever done for Obama?

GM’s stock (Which We the Taxpayers hold billions worth) is tanking, and here’s a big reason why:

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce. (Reuters)

Obama robbed the taxpayers to bail out his GM and UAW cronies, and now GM wants us to do them another favor by selling the stock back to them for half of what we paid for it.  See how this works?  They screw us coming and going.  This is how Obama "fixes" things.

The bailout was illegal and the waste of taxpayer dollars is immoral.  With Obama success like this, who needs failure?

The Democrats’ GM Fiction

Time Mag, Daily Beast Go After Obama

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sept. 18 found Obama’s foreign policy approval rating among registered voters to be 49%, down from 54% a month earlier. Among independents that fall was steeper, down to 41% from 53% a month prior. (Time)

Finally, reporters other than Jake Tapper are standing up on their hind legs and pointing out the wreckage Obama's bumbling foreign policy has caused. His administration's stumbling and chaotic response to the latest violence overseas was too much to paper over, apparently.

In the days following the attacks, the White House at first said it believed the attack in Benghazi in eastern Libya that claimed Stevens’ life was spontaneous, born of protests over an inflammatory California-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16.

The Administration has since changed course and now admits the attack may have been pre-planned. Clinton told senators on Thursday that she believed that it was “self-evident” that it was a terrorist attack. (Time - Libya Makes Obama Vulnerable)

The Daily Beast points out the obvious: That the Obama administration's mumbling, self-contradictory Libya narrative is falling apart, even as it took Obama's team more than a week to stop contradicting one another.

“I think this is a case of an administration saying what they wished to be true before waiting for all the facts to come in,” says one senior retired CIA official. (Daily Beast)

Obama didn't build that!

Up to this point, "It's better to be lucky than good" has been an apt description of Obama's foreign policy.  He didn't get bin Laden; all he did was authorize the operation that was made possible by the hard work of others that was started under President Bush.  He choked the Afghanistan surge in its cradle by simultaneously announcing our withdrawal.  He could have saved lives and money by simply ordering us to get out.

     

Obama has been a passive observer on the world scene.  Like a middle school boy in a new school, he hangs back until he finds out which football team the cool kids like and then jumps on board.  That is what strikes everyone about this administration.  America doesn't jump on bandwagons and attempt to ingratiate itself with shady characters; we lead.  Or at least we used to.

It's no surprise that Obama's foreign policy is in shambles. His National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon, has no foreign policy experience. Ambassador Susan Rice is a smart woman, but inexperienced and in over her head, and Hillary may be a hard-boiled tough guy, but she too lacks a foreign policy background. This is what amateur hour at the White House looks like.

Forget the perils of a 3:00 AM phone call. This White House is dangerously unprepared regardless of the time of day or night.

President Obama's 2.9%

Everybody in the Obama echo chamber is talking about Romney’s 47%, but the number that matters is Obama’s 2.9%. That’s the percentage above 50% that he got last time. He won’t get it this time.

Ask yourself, how many people do you know who voted for Obama last time but who are not this time? Now, how many McCain voters do you know who plan on switching to Obama?

The Press is Suppressing Romney Voter Turnout

The press is screaming that it's over for Romney because they want it to be. They are trying to drive public opinion to keep their false idol from falling this November. This sign of desperation is itself an encouraging sign for Romney. Were he losing heroically as a good Republican should, the media would be lauding him and lionizing him as they did noble loser John McCain, and Bob Dole before him.

The reality is, Romney’s moving up and Obama is going down.

2008:  Obama's High Water Mark

The other encouraging thing is that Obama's 52.9% of the vote in 2008 was his high water mark. Cult of personality hysteria drove extremely high participation percentages on the left, and the historical excitement got youth and minorities to turn out for him in record numbers. Well, the hopium smoke has dissipated, the thrill is gone. Sure, they’ll turn out again, but he’ll never whip them into anything like the frenzy of 2008.

Obama will also not get all the moderates he got last time, and finally, he won’t have the votes of what I call “The naily board contingent.” I personally know a handful of people who are non-political but fairly conservative, usually Republican voters, who voted for Obama last time. They did it because it was historical, but also because they were tired of Bush and they were disgusted that the GOP had become indistinguishable from the Democrat party.

They whacked the GOP with a naily board. Those people that I know are all voting for Romney this time, and I believe I can confidently extrapolate out from this miniscule sampling, given the polling data and anecdotal evidence we see around the nation.

Obama has Nowhere to Go but Down

So, Obama has nowhere to go but down. Less people are working than when he became president, median income is down, gas prices have almost doubled, and food and energy costs are eating us alive. His “stimulus” produced doodly-squat, unless you are a Democrat party-approved union, well-heeled green energy mogul, or Wall Street fat cat.

At least FDR’s spending gave men and women the dignity of work while it built libraries, beautiful neoclassical government buildings, bridges and dams. What do we have to show for Obama’s multi-trillion dollar spending spree?

President Obama has a crappy record of no accomplishments, and the world hates us even more now.

But perhaps the worst news of all for President Obama, 60% of Americans think his most powerful super PAC,  the News Media, is full of crap.

As a bonus, I highly recommend The Obama You Don’t Know

We're Angry Too

The Muslim world *Surprise!* continues to explode in violent rage, with rampaging mobs burning and killing their way through their cities.

At least in Libya is looks like they are doing violence for the right reasons, where angry mobs chased an Islamist group out of Benghazi.

Anyway, I'm tired of hearing about how inflamed the Muslim street is.  Their hate meter is already pegged, so, ho hum...

Oh?  You Muslim extremists are all mad and explody again?  Well, here's a message for ya...

Hey, Angry Muslims (not all Muslims, just the angry hatey ones), you think you hate us? You think your hate is the burniest of burning hatey hate?

Wrong. We hate you worse. Only ours is not a murderous hate. It is a hate that despises.  The way one despises mosquitoes and termites, or the stench from the sewage treatment plant when the wind blows the wrong way.

You're a pain in the ass, and you need to get over yourselves.

The US Government does not fund anti-Islamic art...

...It only funds anti-Christian projects

You get angry when a private citizen draws a picture of Muhammad? That’s nuthin! My government paid an artist to dunk an image of my God in a jar of urine.  It also paid an artist to sculpt an image of my Lord's mother in the medium of elephant dung and pornographic pictures.

I didn't throw firebombs at the National Endowment for the Arts building in DC, I didn’t scream murderous hatred like a flaming pack of hemorrhoids, and I didn't storm the art museum where they were displayed and I didn't call for the decapitation of the "artists." Neither did any other Christians so far as I know, although one Christian did deface the elephant dung thing, and he didn’t hurt anyone doing it.

You stupid Muslims (not the smart ones) are snuffing the light of liberty. If you want to sit in tyrannical darkness in your own beshitted lands, have at it, but we hate you because you've brought your darkness, religious chauvinism, murderous hatred, petty bigotries and passive-aggressive victimology agitprop to Western Christendom.

Unlike you though, we don't hate everybody. We have no problem with people, including followers of Muhammad, who come here and respect our constitution and the rights of others.  Muslims have made great contributions to this nation in all fields of endeavor, and I am proud that they and their families can live the American dream here unmolested, and attend their houses of worship without fear.  Shia are safer here than in most of the Islamic world.

In this land, unlike where you came from, you are free to worship how you want and believe what you want. Inherent in that is the requirement to accept like an adult that others will think, act, worship and believe differently than you. Some will even lampoon your religious beliefs.  If you don't like it, go back home and continue destroying the society you came from.

For an excellent defense of offensive speech, see How Muslim Extremists Can Learn from Larry Flynt

H/T to Constitutional Conservative for the inspiration

The Obamanation Flag: Mark Steyn's Take

Mark Steyn's take on the Obamanation Flag...

"I see the Obama campaign has redesigned the American flag, and very attractive it is too. Replacing the 50 stars of a federal republic is the single “O” logo symbolizing the great gaping maw of spendaholic centralization. And where the stripes used to be are a handful of red daubs, eerily mimicking the bloody finger streaks left on the pillars of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as its staff were dragged out by a mob of savages to be tortured and killed. What better symbol could one have of American foreign policy? Who says the slick hollow vapid marketing of the Obama campaign doesn’t occasionally intersect with reality?"

(Mark Steyn)

That's just the first paragraph. Please go read the whole article at National Review.

Apologia

We’ve had a few religious squabbles here recently, and it was my fault.  I started the fire.

I probably came off condescending and self-righteous, and for that I apologize. My purpose was to defend orthodoxy and preserve it from smirch. If one wants to depart from Orthodoxy and Tradition, as found in The Bible and the writings of the early Church Fathers, great. Just don’t claim that what you are doing falls within the pale of Orthodox Christianity as it has been understood for all of its history.

But here I go preaching again.  I guess I just can't help myself.

To their credit, Jack Camwell and FreeThinke ended up acknowledging that they had indeed departed from orthodoxy, and they both gave spirited defense of their ideas.  I don't agree with them, but I respect their right to hold their beliefs, and what fun is a discussion when everyone agrees?

Anyway, while Googling Soren Kierkegaard, I came across a quote from Emmanuel Kant, and I wondered if this is where Jack Camwell and FreeThinke were coming from. When I say I strive to understand those I debate with, especially when I disagree with them, I mean it!

So, my Blogistani buddies, here is a little peace offering, from Wikipedia:

In 1784 Immanuel Kant challenged the thinkers of Europe to think for themselves.[173]

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature.

If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.

The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult.

Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts." (Wikipedia)

See also: 
Introduction to Kant
Kant and Religion
Catholic Encyclopedia:  Kant

Poetic Justice

Pakistani Protester Killed by Smoke from American Flag

In an apparent case of red, white and blue revenge, a Pakistani protester died yesterday after inhaling smoke from a burning American flag during an anti-US rally.

Abdullah Ismail succumbed at Mayo Hospital in Lahore a day after attending the fierce protest at the city’s Mall Road, where an estimated 10,000 people rallied.

Witnesses said Ismail had complained of feeling ill after breathing fumes from burning flags, Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported. (NY Post)

I don't know if Obama has issued an apology yet, or decreed that flags be made of non-toxic fabric...

For a hilarious send up of this event, see Dan Miller in Panama.

H/T:   Conservatives on Fire

A Sick Culture

The Ottoman Empire was famously called The Sick Man of Europe back in the mid 19th century.  The words of Czar Nicholas could just as easily be applied today to the Muslim World...

"a sick man—a very sick man," a "man" who "has fallen into a state of decrepitude, ... gravely ill".

Islam has spawned a sick culture. It is not normal or healthy to stone adulteresses, behead "infidels," collapse walls on homosexuals, chop off hands, or bomb and burn and murder at every perceived slight. It is sick.

And please, those of you who enjoy defending Islam, spare us the crap this time. It wasn't Copts who did this latest violence.   It wasn't Zoroastrians who stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took Americans hostage.  It wasn't Hindus who brought down the World Trade Center.  It was all done by Muslims.   

Muslims Must Learn the Golden Rule

Having a murderously jealous religious chauvinism is very unhealthy, for themselves and those who have the misfortune to become embroiled in their churlish and hyper-sensitive controversies.  For a people so given to hair-trigger screaming grievance at any less-than-reverent treatment of Islam, they sure enjoy trashing the religions of others, often by arson and murder.  If they want to be respected and treated like adults, they need to start acting like adults and respect the religious rights of others.

The events in Benghazi created a major opportunity for President Obama to speak out about an important problem that afflicts a significant segment of the Muslim world: an inability to recognize that it is not just its religion that deserves to be respected.

The president had an opportunity, and still has the opportunity, to call upon Muslim leaders to teach those who heed their words that they accord to others the same respect for the heritage and practices of other religions that they rightly expect for their own. (Dov Zakheim)

Why are Muslims so easily offended?

Dr. Fouad Ajami, a most expert and articulate observer of the Arab world, explains...

There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.
[...]
Younger Arabs today can be brittle and proud about their culture, yet deeply ashamed of what they see around them. They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline. They know that the standing of Arab states along the measures that matter — political freedom, status of women, economic growth — is low. In the privacy of their own language, in daily chatter on the street, on blogs and in the media, and in works of art and fiction, they probe endlessly what befell them. (Why is the Muslim World so easily Offended?)

Walter Russell Mead does his usual excellent work putting these violent events in context. Much of it is about local politics...

Moderates who speak against violence or try to cool matters look like American puppets; this is the kind of issue the radicals love, and we can expect them to milk it for all it is worth.

He goes on to caution people like me who tend to say to hell with them.  That's what the 7th century Muslim extremists want:  To drive an even greater wedge between Islamic society and modernity.  The obscurantists want to keep the people ignorant, superstitious and suspicious.

I saw it myself as I sat at Bagram prepared to go into Pakistani Kashmir after that big earthquake in 2005.  We had whole field hospitals and Satcom systems with phone banks so people could call their families and tell them they were ok.  We had food and medicine, but Pakistan told us no.  

They saw how our stature increased in Indonesia thanks to the aid we provided after the tsunami.  They did not want their people cosying up to Uncle Sam or, Allah forbid, to stop hating America.  So we complied with their request and put no personnel on the ground and dropped anonymous packages from the sky.

As we've seen in Libya, even helping them topple a dictator and putting in an Arabic-speaking ambassador who genuinely admires the culture doesn't move the pegged needle on their hatred dial.

They are sick, but the cure must come from within. As a man over at HuffPo wrote to his fellow Muslims, It is now Time to Grow Up

See also Mark Steyn - Disgrace in Bengazi

They Hate Us More under President Obama

NewsRealBlog

Proof Positive had an excellent blog post this past Monday, making the point that if an obscure YouTube video has inflamed the Muslim world, then President Obama’s incessant bragging about killing Osama bin Laden must really piss them off.

After all, the protesters in Egypt and other countries were chanting “We are all Osama bin Laden!”

So, shouldn’t Obama stop mentioning this all the time and stop poking a finger in the eyes of over a billion people who already hate us? How many deaths is he responsible for? Not counting his drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen? Shouldn’t he discontinue those as well? It doesn’t really comport with his promise that his election would ease Muslim hostility. I’d say he’s thrown gasoline on the fire.

Here’s what happens to American presidents who look to be loved in the Middle East. In 2008, the year Obama won the presidency with his pledge to end George W. Bush’s wars, 75 percent of Egyptians had an unfavorable opinion of the United States. Today it’s 79 percent. Four years ago, that was the percentage of Jordanians with a negative view of the U.S. Now it’s 86 percent. (Niall Ferguson)

If an obscure YouTube video made them mad, just wait until Hollywood's killing bin Laden movie comes out...

More importantly, shouldn’t the president intervene with Hollywood and demand they shelve the film about the killing of bin Laden? If he does not, the perpetual festering boil known as the Muslim world will become even more inflamed, and both the president and Hollywood will have blood on their hands, and by MSNBC standards, that would make them accessories to murder.

Campaign 2012: Obama and the Press vs Mitt Romney

MItt Romney in a moment of candor

(Washington Post) “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…

 “And I mean the president starts off with 48, 49 … he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to convince the five to ten percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

Mitt Romney has committed a fatal political error: He told the truth. Do you really think those happily sitting in Section 8 housing collecting welfare and food stamps are going to vote Republican? Hell no! They’re voting to keep the gravy train running on time.  They don't know the money is all borrowed; they think it all comes from Obama's stash.

The Press: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda 

Most insidious is the press. They’ve known about this, it’s old news, but they’ve held it back, like ammo, for an opportune time. Obama’s dead cat post-convention bounce followed by crazed Muslims storming our embassies and killing Americans made this a great time to unleash this “news,” and the sheeple liberals in this country flock and baa at this “news” like the dutiful little children of the state that they are.

This will die down, but never fear! The “news” media has more! They’ve got Romney oppo research results stacked to their digital ceilings, and they will keep blasting these trivialities out there, firing for effect, to cover Obama’s horrible record and his serial stumbles as he finishes flushing our country down the toilet.

See, this "gaff" is much more serious than Obama divulging Britain's nuclear secrets to Russia, or getting caught whispering to Vlad the Impaler's little boy Medvedev that he would have to wait to sell us out until after the election.

Everything the president says is treated like the Voice of God, his every stumbling, bumbling action explained away by his flying monkeys in the press.  Meanwhile, the most innocuous Romney utterance is universally declared a gaff, as Obama's propagandists in the media call for daily Two Minutes Hate aimed at that evil, traitorous  bajillionaire Mitt Goldstein.

President Obama doesn’t need campaign cash, the news media is busy crafting and airing pro-Obama, anti-Mitt Romney propaganda 24/7.

See also:
Political Realities
Romney… Talking Like a Conservative

Liberty: It's Lost on Progressives & Their Muslim Extremist Allies

The stupid boobs at the nuthouse known as MSNBC apparently have no understanding of freedom of speech:

Over at MSNBC, a riot of consensus broke out when contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch as well as University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the people behind the video should be indicted as accessories to murder. “Good morning,” declared Butler, “How soon is Sam Bacile [the alleged creator of the film] going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now.”

Barnicle set his sights on Terry Jones, the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran a while back and who was allegedly involved in the video as well. “Given this supposed minister’s role in last year’s riots in Afghanistan, where people died, and given his apparent or his alleged role in this film, where . . . at least one American, perhaps the American ambassador, is dead, it might be time for the Department of Justice to start viewing his role as an accessory before or after the fact.”

Deutsch helpfully added: “I was thinking the same thing, yeah.” (Misplaced Blame for Embassy Attacks)

At least they've stopped calling themselves liberal and adopted the term progressive, because their constitutionally-ignorant bullshit has nothing whatsoever to do with classical liberalism.

Why can’t our government simply stand up for free speech?

Matt Welch asks, What's So Hard About Saying, "In the United States, we are not in the business of approving these messages"?

"...it behooves the State Department to constantly explain the vast differences between state-sanctioned and legally protected speech in the so-called Land of the Free. If the U.S. government really was in the business of "firmly reject[ing]" private free-speech acts that "hurt the religious beliefs of others" there would be no time left over for doing anything else.

"It's really not that hard. The values in that film (or "film") are not our values; our government respects religion, religious expression, and religious pluralism (including and especially that of Muslims, even in the wake of murderous Muslim-led attacks on American soil); and we are not in the business of approving or (for the most part) regulating the private speech of our citizens. To the extent that that message is not sufficient for rioters, the problem is theirs."

And if this doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you deserve the government you get:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday. (CBS)

Our federal government should not be expending public resources to out infidels, and Four Star Generals should not be calling up private citizens to discuss a citizen’s exercise of his freedoms.

What's going on?  Progressives are in bed with 7th Century obscurantists to attack freedom of speech, passing anti-blasphemy resolutions at the United Nations.

Somebody needs to tell the progressives that rolling back the Enlightenment is not progress.

Links:

National Review – No! No! No!

Misplaced Blame for Embassy Attacks

Why do They Hate Us?

The answer is, who cares?

Haters will always find a pretext. Do you really think anything can be gained by placating people who break into murderous burning and  bombing tantrums over cartoons? Trying to understand their motivations would be a descent into madness. They want us dead and off the global scene.  It's as simple as that.  Convert or die.

Michael Young has written an important piece in Beirut’s Daily Star, America Just Cannot be the Loved One:

The White House and the State Department would do best to save their public diplomacy funds and focus more on a redefining a lasting, bipartisan strategy toward the Middle East that can span antagonistic administrations. This has not been done in a serious way since 9/11, and it needs to be at this essential moment when Arab countries are facing momentous change. In politics, love is overrated.

A Failure of Intelligence

We dump hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into intelligence and security. Why was there no warning of these embassy attacks? Is the CIA asleep? Is the US intelligence monster too busy spying on Americans?

Rogers (House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich) also said that the attacks would demand a thorough review of the American intelligence apparatus, which did not flag any warning signs before the attacks despite the fact that they came on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. (The Hill)

I hope President Obama does not follow in Bush’s footsteps, when the former president gave the CIA director a Medal of Freedom in the wake of the worst intelligence debacle in our nation’s history.

Bush couldn’t fire anyone. Can Obama?

The Middle East: A Gunpowder-Filled Nut Log

The civilized world needs to tell the 7th century throwbacks who go all burny and explody over people criticizing their 'prophet" to grow up. So their hurty widdle hurt feelings were hurt. Awwww….

Get over it! Grow up and take it like a man like the rest of us do when something we cherish is insulted! That’s what we need to tell these murderous, fleck-spittle morons. To do anything less is to let tantrum-throwing three-year-olds with military armament dictate our words and actions. It’s insane.

Anything less is a capitulation and will only do more damage to liberty worldwide. As I said previously, the rampaging idiots hate us, and they will always find an excuse to slash, burn, bomb and murder.

Also, we should not be about bringing “freedom” to these benighted lands. It is up to the people who live there to shape their societies. A plain look at history and the world around us reveals what a malign influence Islam has on any society it gets in a chokehold. We see it, they see it, but they want it anyway, so why spend blood and money to try to dissuade them?

So one-sixth of the planet enjoys living in a toilet. Let them! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again...

They want Islam? Then we need to stand back and allow their conquering heroes to give it to them good and hard.

Shooting His Mouth Off

Obama talks smack like this...

Romney has “a tendency to shoot first and aim later.” 

... and the lap dogs in the press wag their tails and lick his hand instead of asking him to justify the remark.

Of course, Obama cannot justify it, because unlike Obama, Romney is a man with a proven track record of solid success. He’s not a reckless man, and he has no record of shooting first and aiming later.

Obama, on the other hand, had no record at all before his coronation, and now, the record he has is one of shooting at our friends, shooting holes in the economy, shooting hoops, and taking a record number of golf shots.

When it comes to creating jobs, he shoots blanks.  The only thing he is good at is shooting off his smart-ass mouth.

Obama proved how serious he was by flying off to Vegas in pursuit of campaign cash while our embassies were under attack in the Middle East and the US Ambassador to Libya lay dead, murdered, the first such incident since Jimmy Carter was president.

News Media: Obama’s Super PAC

Black Quill & Ink Blog 

After the Libyan Embassy murders, Mitt Romney came out and gave a statement more presidential than the president...

... And Obama’s flying monkeys in the press went ape, spinning a Carteresque Obama failure into a Romney “gaff.” This collective rabble that calls itself the news media can’t even get basic facts straight, first reporting US Marines were killed. Perhaps they are spending too much time drafting propaganda broadsides against Dear Leader’s enemies.

Obama's Ministry of Propaganda

A recent “open mic” moment between an Obama fanboy from NPR and a Girl Reporter for Obama from CBS is revealing, as they discuss how to attack Romney during his press conference…

Crawford: Yeah that’s the question. I would just say do you regret your question.
Shapiro: Your question? Your statement?
Crawford: I mean your statement. Not even the tone, because then he can go off on…
Shapiro: And then if he does, if we can just follow up and say ‘but this morning your answer is continuing to sound…’ – *becomes unintelligble*
Crawford: You can’t say that..
**Later**
Crawford: I’m just trying to make sure that we’re just talking about, no matter who he calls on we’re covered on the one question.
Shapiro: Do you stand by your statement or regret your statement?

Source:  Mediaite – Open Mic

Foreign Policy is a Legitimate Campaign Topic

The minions of Obama’s Ministry of Truth also forget that John Kerry excoriated George Bush daily on foreign policy during the 2004 campaign.  Besides lamenting how our soldiers were terrorizing people, Mr Teresa Heinz also used such phrases as “Quagmire” and “Phoniest thing I’ve ever heard.” (WaPo).  Candidate Obama also made political hay out of troop deaths in 2008.

Rich Lowry puts it in perspective:

No one should get the vapors over Romney’s critique. Matters of war and peace are inherently political and should always be fodder for political campaigns.

Does anyone remember the Vietnam War? I’m sure Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon would have loved a rule that put debating it off limits. Instead, the protesters and politicians who opposed the war have been lionized for four straight decades.

In 1980, the foreign-policy debate didn’t stop because Americans were held hostage in Tehran. Nor did it stop in 2004 because Americans were fighting and dying in Iraq. Sen. John Kerry used the occasion of the 1,000th death in Iraq to attack everything about the war. One of his ads included the graphic: “2 Americans beheaded just this week.” (Politico-Lowry)

Mitt’s wooden personality and inability to cause worshipers to swoon at campaign events are not his biggest liabilities. Having the hostile news media arrayed against him and actively propagandizing the masses in the cause of Obama is.

Related: Inside the PR Disaster

What Decline Looks Like

The last time a US Ambassador was killed was during the Carter administration

President Barack H. Obama is a dithering, bumbling boob, careening and staggering from one disaster to the next. US incomes are falling, jobless claims continue to rise, and he has the ignominious distinction of not only being the first and only president to rack up a trillion dollar annual deficit, but to repeat the Augean feat four years in a row.

His electoral shock troops, a criminal rabble calling themselves a “Teachers Union,” are in revolt in his corrupt home town of Democrat Machine-controlled Chicago, as he slams the door in the face of the Israeli Prime Minister. I don’t think our country can take much more of his hope and change.

Meanwhile overseas, we have sown the Islamic wind and are now reaping a whirlwind. His administration’s response to the murder of a US ambassador was ramshackle and incoherent.  First silence, then an apology which Mitt Romney criticized, causing the White House and their minions to attack the GOP candidate, before the White House itself repudiated the embassy's apologetic statement.

Finally, a day later, some hollow indignation from a feckless figurehead tottering upon a crumbling society.

The United States, the president said, is "a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." However, he added, "There is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts." (CBS News)

He skipped off to the campaign trail right after issuing these words, the blood not yet dry from the murders of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American embassy personnel.

We Need a Bigger Reset Button

The failed “Reset” with Czar Putin was a farce, and it set the tone for this administration. The only reset button we need is one that flushes this dangerously incompetent administration down the toilet.

We killed the Libyan zookeeper, and the escaped beasts thank us by killing our ambassador. We pushed out the Egyptian zookeeper with almost the same result.

We should drop all this warm and moist talk of Arab Springs and new days dawning in the Middle East.    We are dealing with wild animals who become murderously enraged over cartoons and YouTube videos, and we should act accordingly. Stay out of it, and when we must wade into it, do so heavily armed. They are not rational, and the rational ones among them are apparently unable to restrain their unhinged coreligionists.

Worse yet, our actions on their territory are just as irrational. What are we doing there? Helping allies who shoot us in the back as soon as we hand them an American taxpayer-funded weapon? “Liberating” people who use their newfound freedom to do violence against us? They may be crazy in defense of themselves and their beliefs, but we are incredibly stupid for embroiling ourselves in that seething cauldron of hatred and anger.

How long before the pliant liberal dhimmis throughout Western Christendom start blaming Sam Bacile for his anti-Muslim film?

A personal note: I have worked out of US embassies and I have known ambassadors and State Department personnel. I can criticize our foreign policy, but I cannot criticize the good men and women who represent us, often in hostile environments. I have also been in some out of control mob situations overseas, barely escaping with my life on a few occasions, so this one hit close to home for me.

This is what a government looks like when it doesn’t know what it is doing. Lest you think I’m too hard on Obama, Bush’s administration was what government looks like when it knows exactly what it is doing as it earnestly and determinedly sets about doing the wrong things.

WRM – The Day the Roof Fell In
A Black Flag Day for America
US News – Cairo Protest
Romney Calls Obama Response Disgraceful
US Ambassador Killed in Libya

Seconds

I recall reading an article years ago by Douglas Hofstadter in which he lamented the fact that while we had a term for those who couldn't read and readily understand written language; illiteracy, we had no corollary for those who had no real appreciation of numbers.  He offered the neologism "innumeracy " to describe when people were incapable of dealing with higher order mathematics. I've a feeling that word describes a large percentage of the American populace. 

 I've joked for years that if the average American actually understood what a trillion dollars really was, there would be a politician, bureaucrat, or lobbyist hanging from every lamp post in Washington. So, in the week that the national debt has passed the 16 trillion dollar point let see if we can't make that number a bit more understandable. Since none of us have any experience with that kind of money, lets look at it in terms of something we do understand, time. 

 I'm writing this on Thursday evening the 6th of September. If we take each dollar as a second, a million seconds ago it was Sunday morning on August the 26th. 

 One billion seconds ago it was the spring of 1980, Jimmy Carter was president, and Reagan's election was still six months away.

 One trillion seconds ago it was 29,687 B.C. Our Cro-Magnon ancestors were just beginning to explore a Europe slowly revealed by the retreating glaciers of the last Ice Age, and the first cities, and anything we would remotely describe as civilization were still 20 thousand years in the future.

16 trillion seconds ago it was 505,344 B.C. and the first recognizable humans had just began to trod the path that leads to their prodigal descendants, us.

  If we were to freeze the debt where it is today, and pay it down at the rate of one dollar per second, we'd be clear of it sometime in the year 2519. Of course, that's not including the interest. At the current prime rate, at a dollar per second, that will take an additional 19,054,409,787,071.6 years.

 As the late Senator Everett Dirksen used to say; "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."

Clint Eastwood: Mission Accomplished

Clint Eastwood gave an interview to his local paper, The Carmel Pine Cone.  Here are a few excerpts:

“President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” Eastwood told The Pine Cone this week. “Romney and Ryan would do a much better job running the country, and that’s what everybody needs to know. I may have irritated a lot of the lefties, but I was aiming for people in the middle.” 

[...]

“I had three points I wanted to make,” Eastwood said. “That not everybody in Hollywood is on the left, that Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office, and that the people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job. But I didn’t make up my mind exactly what I was going to say until I said it.”  (Carmel Pine Cone)

It's an interesting article, giving a blow-by-blow account leading up to the speech and then the aftermath.

After the DNC's Kavalcade of Kooks, Clint's performance looks even better.

Eastwood: Mission Accomplished

Democrat Lies

And as a latebreaking addition, I'm reposting Scudrunner's excellent comment from yesterday:

The GOP needs to point out the Obama/Obiden lies

1. Clinton left Bush a surplus not a deficit = Lie
Clinton was in deficit spending (That means we were spending more that we were taking in).  With his new math of using the medicare surplus he considered that a budget surplus.

2. Obama saved the auto industry and Romney said let them go out of business = lie
What Romney said is they need to file bankruptcy to reorganize.  What Obama did was spend 20 billion to give the unions half of GM, eliminate several companies and then have them file bankruptcy. At least he took Romney's advice

3. Romney/Ryan will give millionaires/billionaires a tax break while raising taxes to the middle class = Lie
Romney will eliminate tax deductions which will affect the "rich" far more than the middle class

4. Obama cut taxes for 95% of Americans = Lie

He cut SS taxes further depleting SS for the future while starting taxes for obamacare and of course tanning

5. Romney/Ryan will cut medicare = Lie
Over 55 nothing will change, under 55 you have a choice of accepting a voucher to pay private insurance or take medicare as it is. Democrats think Americans are to dumb to make their own choices.

6. Obama will strengthen Medicare by lowering costs = Lie
He will cut reimbursements which will result in fewer Dr's accepting medicare resulting in healthcare shortages

7. Obama go Bin Laden = True
Thanks to the systems put in place by the previous administrations which Obama was against.

8. Obama is for equal treatment of women = lie
Female workers at the WH make less than males.

Obama: A “Toasted” Leader

The 2012 Democrat Party Political Kabuki is now history. The main theme? There’s no problem that cannot be fixed by bigger government and more money. The Democrats are in denial.

There were some funny moments, like when Jennifer Granholm, the woman who destroyed Michigan, got up to talk about jobs. At least the GOP shuns their failures; the democrats embrace theirs. Believe it or not, Ray Nagin, mayor of the Chocolate City who fumbled and bumbled while people died, is now a disaster consultant. No, he doesn't advise fellow democrats on how to create them, but how to handle them, believe it or not.

It was also fun to watch Elizabeth “Chief Spouting Bull” Warren talk about how President Obama is presiding over a system that is stacked against the little guy. Sandra Fluck and a brigade of angry feminists sourly telling us how Mitt Romney would gleefully leave women to die on the steps of hospitals all over this nation was also a hoot. Not the speeches, but that so many soft-heads actually believe this overheated rhetoric.

Bill Clinton was the one bright spot of this craptacular spectacle. Even I was ready to vote for him by the time he was done.

The Hopium Smoke is Dissipating, The Thrill is Gone from Chris Matthews’ Leg

The low point of this clown car circus was the president’s speech. When Obama Fanboy Michael Tomasky starts throwing eggs, you know the president is in trouble.

The man who promised Hope and Change four years ago has instead led us to the brink of disaster. The critics agree: It was a crappy, uninspired speech. Fellow Right Blogistani Hack Wilson provided a nice recap complete with links to reviews by the punditocracy.

The President's speech was not only a plodding slog, it was downright creepy in places…

He promised to "Lead us to a better place.”

Like the “better place” I assured my kids their dead goldfish went to?

He also told us “It will require common effort, shared responsibility and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one.”

That’s really scary. We don't have 15 years.  Roosevelt tinkered and cajoled and canoodled our economy for over a decade, making thing worse than they otherwise would have been. If history has taught us anything, it is that an economy is too complex to be managed by a central authority.

The King's Speech

This was a dictator’s speech. This was a speech of a party that believes government, bureaucracy and central planning are superior to free people exercising their personal sovereignty in free markets. It was pure progressivism, with it’s future-shaping baloney and fatuous promises of leading us to a better place, all the while pleading for more time and more money.

The President did show a few flashes of humor, like when he said this country was a place where…

“… everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules - from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, DC.”

Yeah right. An ordinary citizen steals a hundred bucks and goes to jail. Washington Cronies on Wall Street steal billions and walk free (see Jon Corzine).

I highly recommend George Will’s column on Obama’s speech. He puts it in historical perspective:

Progress, as progressives understand it, means advancing away from, up from, something. But from what?

From the Constitution’s constricting anachronisms.

Rights “adjusted and harmonized” by government necessarily are defined and apportioned by it. Wilson, the first transformative progressive, called this the “New Freedom.” The old kind was the Founders’ kind — government existing to “secure” natural rights (see the Declaration) that preexist government. Wilson thought this had become an impediment to progress. The pedigree of Obama’s thought runs straight to Wilson.

“Government is a relation of give and take.” The “rulers” — FDR’s word — take power from the people, who in turn are given “certain rights.”

Forward? Are you Insane?

Elder – Five “Reasons” to Re-elect Obama
Clinton Speech Fact Check
WaPo – Obama Vows our Problems can be Solved

Democrats? as in Democracy?

 The Democrat Party, for the first time in it's history, passed a platform without a single reference to God, and surprisingly failing to mention or recognize Jerusalem as the capital of our ally Israel. Rather predictably, this raised some eyebrows.

Taking stock of the consternation that this generated among their supporters, since most Americans still acknowledge believing in a Higher Power, and certainly the vast majority of Jewish voters would assert that Jerusalem is Israel's capital, some wiser heads decided that they had gone a bridge too far and that an amendment to the platform was in order. 

 Accordingly, one was proposed and put to a vote:



After seeing, and more importantly hearing this, the question becomes do they actually believe in democracy? It seems that their own delegates are not immune to having "what's good for them" shoved down their throats, or elsewhere.

H/T to Powerline

Signposts Along Progressivism's Path of Destruction

The Democrat Party is preaching more of the same that got us into this mess...

Events in Europe are revealing the myth of a democratic social society funded by capitalism.  It's untenable. We're in even worse shape here in the US, we just haven't woken up to it yet.

It's a mystery to me why the GOP doesn't point to Detroit or California as object examples of the damage the progressives and their union co-conspirators can do when given enough leeway.  In the case of Detroit, corporate malfeasance abetted by active government policy also contributed greatly to its demise.

California is blessed with wonderful weather, beautiful beaches, great cities, entertainment and technology industries, mountains and outdoor recreational area that are the envy of the world, and bountiful natural resources.  On it's own, it ranks somewhere around the world's 10th largest economy.

Consider what Democrat one party rule has done to that great state...

The state budget, mandated to balance by law, has been billions in the red for ten straight years. Yet Californians re-elect the same politicians, year after year, who produce budgets with multi-billion dollar deficits.

California now has a $16 billion deficit which “assumes” that California voters will pass massive tax increases on themselves. If they do not, the 2013 deficit becomes a mind numbing $20 billion.

Yet despite the red ink, Governor Brown signed into law a “high speed rail” bill that will spend $6 billion on a train between Fresno and Bakersfield – not LA and San Francisco as promised. Polls turned against the choo-choo, but there remain no outcry from California voters. (Robert J. Cristiano)

There's more...

Orchards in the Central Valley were allowed to wither and die resulting in unemployment in the Central Valley as high as 40%. Imagine Californians on food stamps, living in what was the fruit basket of American.

California’s business climate now ranks dead last according to 650 CEOs measured by Chief Executive Magazine. Apple will take 3,600 jobs to its new $280,000,000 facility in Austin Texas – jobs that California would have had in the past. Texas ranked first in the same survey.

California’s unemployment rate is consistently higher than 10% of its work force, and there are few jobs for college students who graduate with as much as $100,000 in student loans. (Robert J. Cristiano)

I don't say this with glee, and neither does the author of the article, who is a California native. He sees California going down the same path as Michigan, which bled out over 70,000 jobs over the past 12 years. Those jobs didn't go overseas; they went to other states.

Jobs, and job creators, are fleeing the state. Intel, Apple, and Google are expanding out of the state. The best and brightest minds are leaving for Texas and North Carolina. The signs are everywhere. Meanwhile, the voters send the same cast of misfits back to Sacramento each year – just as Detroit did before them.

Today, California is following Michigan’s path with exploding pension obligations, a declining tax base, and disastrous leadership. Housing prices have fallen 30 to 60% across the state, evaporating trillions of dollars of equity and wealth. Unemployment remains stubbornly high and under-employment is rife. Do our politicians need any more signs? (Robert J. Cristiano)

Progressive Political Patronage

Governor Brown’s budget will first slash money to schools and raise tuition on its students while leaving all 519 state agencies intact. He apparently will protect political patronage at all costs. (Robert J. Cristiano)

Barack Obama's "Change" will take the entire country down the same path (which I readily admit plenty of Republican progressive have helped blaze as well). We see the shipwrecks broken upon the shoals we are headed towards. Are we smart enough to turn around?

What's Wrong with Free-Market Capitalism?

What's wrong is that we've abandoned it. Democrats and Republicans, the Crips and Bloods of politics, collude with corrupt anti-capitalist corporatists to stab, rape and murder taxpayers and smaller businesses who can't afford to pay to play.

Charles Murray explains the two problems that afflict our dysfunctional markets:

One is the rise of collusive capitalism. Part of that phenomenon involves crony capitalism, whereby the people on top take care of each other at shareholder expense (search on "golden parachutes").

But the problem of crony capitalism is trivial compared with the collusion engendered by government. In today's world, every business's operations and bottom line are affected by rules set by legislators and bureaucrats. The result has been corruption on a massive scale. 

The other problem is...

... the emergence of great fortunes made quickly in the financial markets. It has always been easy for Americans to applaud people who get rich by creating products and services that people want to buy. That is why Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were American heroes a century ago, and Steve Jobs was one when he died last year.

When great wealth is generated instead by making smart buy and sell decisions in the markets, it smacks of inside knowledge, arcane financial instruments, opportunities that aren't accessible to ordinary people, and hocus-pocus.

He goes on to explain how personal liberty and economic liberty go hand in hand.  Sociologists will tell you that human happiness is hard to quantify.  It's different for each of us, but...

The pursuit of happiness, with happiness defined in the classic sense of justified and lasting satisfaction with life as a whole, depends on economic liberty every bit as much as it depends on other kinds of freedom.

Arthur Brooks, my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, has usefully labeled such achievements "earned success." Earned success can arise from a successful marriage, children raised well, a valued place as a member of a community, or devotion to a faith. Earned success also arises from achievement in the economic realm, which is where capitalism comes in.

Earning a living for yourself and your family through your own efforts is the most elemental form of earned success. Successfully starting a business, no matter how small, is an act of creating something out of nothing that carries satisfactions far beyond those of the money it brings in. Finding work that not only pays the bills but that you enjoy is a crucially important resource for earned success.

How can we fix it?

What government can do to help is establish the rule of law so that informed and voluntary trades can take place. More formally, government can vigorously enforce laws against the use of force, fraud and criminal collusion, and use tort law to hold people liable for harm they cause others.

Everything else the government does inherently restricts economic freedom to act in pursuit of earned success.

... demand that any new intervention meet this burden of proof: It will accomplish something that tort law and enforcement of basic laws against force, fraud and collusion do not accomplish.

... acknowledge that what has happened incrementally over the past half-century has led to a labyrinthine regulatory system, irrational liability law and a corrupt tax code. Sweeping simplifications and rationalizations of all these systems are possible in ways that even moderate Democrats could accept in a less polarized political environment.

He talks about virtue throughout the article. You can't make someone be virtuous, but taking away perverse incentives to cheat, collude and gamble away other people's money will make market participants virtuous if they want to stay in the game.

Why Capitalism has an Image Problem

Liars for Obama

Comrade!  Go visit The People's Cube for more funny stuff like this!

That picture has nothing to do with the post today, but I thought it was so funny I had to share it.  If you enjoy this kind of humor, go visit The People's Cube.  It is a great website.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogpost...

GOP Women for Obama: A Campaign of Lies

Obama has rolled out his "GOP Women for Obama," ad, but like much from this president and the Democracked party, there's one little problem: It's a lie.

Liar #1:

Her name is Maria Ciano, and BuzzFeed finds that she has been a registered Democrat in Colorado at least since 2006. Here she is in the Obama ad. She is easy to spot in the ad because she wears braces. (Fake Republican Women for Obama)

Liar #2:

The women in the video aren’t named, but she is Delia Ciano–none other than Maria Ciano’s mother. Her Facebook page, like her daughter’s, is revealing. She put up a link to the Obama video and writes, “Maria and I are part of this video. I hope you watch.” 
 (Fake Republican Women for Obama)

The woman also gushes about meeting with Michelle Obama on one of her many visits to Denver, and calls Republicans “idiots.” Go look at the bling and the comments on her facebook page. She’s no Republican.

But the Obama campaign describes Ms. Ciano as a “Republican Woman!” Right. There are liars; there are compulsive liars; and then there is the Obama campaign. 
(Fake Republican Women for Obama)

For extra credit, you can read this fact check of Paul Ryan's speech Forbes – Yes, Paul Ryan Told the Truth.

See also:
Politfact Lied
Ryan’s Fact-Challenged Fact Checkers

The leftwing mudball brigades are in a frenzy, so Ryan must be doing something right.  As Ken Blackwell says, dogs don't chase parked cars.

Obama: Look Upon his Works and Despair!

Obamazymandias

President Obumbles, riding the creaking chariot of early 20th century progressivism, has the gall to call the GOP so "last century?"  What a hoot!

He's peddling old, stale, failed ideas that have screwed us so far in the ground we may never get out, and the debt progressivism has wracked up at all levels of government is frightening.  Where's his plan?  Where are Democrat ideas? They are intellectually bankrupt.

Lies and shouty smears are all this president has left.

The worshipful sand sculpture of him washing away in the rain is an apt metaphor:

"My name is Obamazymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

* Apologies to Percy Bysshe Shelley

Hat tip to Hack Wilson!

“We Own This Country”

Remember back when Clint Eastwood made that Superbowl Commercial? Remember how Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda, aka the news media, lionized the award-winning actor and director as wise and powerful?

Remember how Left Blogistanis, who celebrate what unions and progressives have done to Detroit, hooted and danced like moonstruck loonies at a Burning Man Festival? 

Well, nothing makes the Obamedia and the hopium smoking left turn on you like blaspheming the Obamessiah. They’ve all now done a 180 and have anathematized Eastwood, casting him out and declaring him senile, irrelevant, and persona non grata. 

You see, artists, like blacks and Latinos, are supposed to march in lockstep with the progressive left or be branded traitors.

As if he cares. He’s Clint Eastwood! 

And the pantywaise bedwetters on the left can go to hell. They can’t make art like he can, and they have nowhere near his wisdom and insight, so they criticize, which is an easy thing to do and the only thing they know how to do, besides lap up DNC propaganda and dutifully regurgitate it.

Old, Stodgy Left unable to laugh at Non-State Sponsored Humor

Eastwood’s speech was funny and thoughtful, artsy, not intended to be a standard political speech, but the stultified, constipated lefties didn’t get it. If it doesn't involve a childish liberal smirking into the camera with a laugh track, how can it be humor? For those paying attention, Eastwood gave off a distinct vibe of “I don’t think much of republican politicians either.” But the angry left, who treats Colbert and Stewart like Moses descending Mount Sinai, worked themselves into a rabid frenzy, never pausing to analyze what he said.

The middle America rubes got it and the stodgy, constipated progressives did not. John Stewart, Rachel Madcow and the leftist propaganda vectors out in TV Land imagine they are the cool kids, telling everyone else what is funny and what isn’t. Well, I got news for them: They are not the cool kids anymore. They are yesterday. They have become angry, controlling beetle-browed plonkers unable to think for themselves or Lilith forbid, able to allow their fellow Americans to do so.

Mark Steyn had the best analysis, agreeing with John Hayward that Clint’s performance was a perfectly-calibrated message aimed at the apolitical undecideds, letting them know it’s OK to abandon Obama and vote for Romney. His point is proven by how the left went on a panicky, full-out jihad against the performance. If it really was an incoherent, shambolic ramble, why are they trying so hard to prove the obvious? No, this was a brilliant piece of theater:

The hair was a clue: No Hollywood icon goes out on stage like that unless he means to.

I’m not sure he could have pulled that off if he’d delivered a slick telepromptered pitch. As Mr. Hayward suggests, the hard lines packed more of a punch for being delivered in the midst of a Bob Newhart empty-chair shtick from the Dean Martin show circa 1968.

Indeed, they were some of the hardest lines of the convention and may well prove the take-home (“We own this country . . . Politicians are employees of ours . . . And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go”), but they seemed more effective for appearing to emerge extemporaneously from the general shambles. (Mark Steyn)

Bill Maher got it, praising Eastwood (while still disagreeing with him politically), saying “He killed it.”

“As a performer, as a stand-up comedian for 30 years who knows how hard it is to get laughs, excuse me, he went up there … without a net, on a tightrope. There was no teleprompter. He did a bit with just an empty chair and killed,” Maher said. “He committed to it, it was consistent and it worked.” (Bill Maher)

Clint Said What Needed to Be Said

Obama's unemployment rate should make us all cry.  It's time to fire him and bring in somebody new, but you won't hear it from the state-approved performers in the press and on tv...

For four long years we've waited, hoped and prayed that some young comic would break free of the politically correct demands of The State and mock Obama the way all presidents and all people in power should be mocked. But for four long years (with a few exceptions) all we've seen instead are cowardly toadies of The State: Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Chris Rock, the cast of "Saturday Night Live"… (The Media Strikes Back)

John Nolte observes that the press is in full attack mode, defending their man:

This is why the media has already written 25 stories (5 from Politico) mocking Eastwood.

Had Eastwood said the things the media likes to hear with the same nervousness and hesitation, they would've called him wizened and seasoned. But because he mocked Their Precious One, suddenly he's some kind of embarrassment.

And now Politico, Ben Smith and CNN are all talking about how they intend to use Eastwood as way to overwhelm Mitt Romney's speech in the coming days. (The Media Strikes Back)

Real Pathetic Senility is on the Left

I think the real acts of pathetic senility happen when the poobahs in the press make Kronkite-esque pronouncements and pompously assume that brings finality to the issue. That really cracks me up! Do these progressive pontificators really believe their own BS? They take themselves so seriously, as if they believe that we do. We don’t. 

Also pathetic is MSDNC’s Soviet-style airbrushing out the minority speeches and anything else that didn’t fit the leftwing Potemkin Village they’ve built to cosset their small and peevishly sensitive leftwing audience.

Nolte sums it up by speaking for all right-thinking people:

All I can say in response is: Go to hell you Obama-shilling crybabies. Eastwood showed more grit and honestly in those few minutes than you water carriers have during your entire propaganda-for-the-collective careers.

What Eastwood did tonight was funnier, fresher, edgier, and braver than anything those comedy cowards Chris Rock, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert have done in 15 years.

82 years-old, and Dirty Harry is still pissing all the right people off.

My hero. (The Media Strikes Back)

Here's Clint, for those who want to see it again...

 


More Links:
Eastwood’s Political Theatrics no Surprise
Clint Eastwood Goes Unscripted
Amy Althouse
The Brilliance of Clint’s Empty Chair