Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Christmas Movie Update!!

2011-12-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

Just got back from seeing a film that needs to be inserted in my top ten best Christmas movies of all time list that was published last year (along with the top ten worst Christmas songs - I like to provide balance). This year I offered the opposite - the ten worst movies and the ten best songs - and I haven't seen anything to change my mind on that side of the equation. But the Ten Best Movie List has to make room for a newcomer. Here's what it used to be:

10. Elf (Will Ferrell at his best)
9. Holiday Inn, or White Christmas (either one will do)
8. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (classic TV special)
7. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (classic TV special)
6. Miracle on 34th Street (original)
5. It's a Wonderful Life (Jimmy Stewart; how can you go wrong?)
4. The Bishop's Wife (Cary Grant; how can you go wrong?)
3. A Christmas Carol (1984 version with George C. Scott)
2. A Christmas Story (movie perfection)
1. A Charlie Brown Christmas (TV special perfection)

But there's a new kid in town. Rich with colorful detail, amazing animation, witty and clever storytelling, charming characterization, delightful humor throughout and an absolutely lovely story that will entertain children for many, many years - meet Arthur Christmas:

This is a classic Santa story re-imagined by writers, animators and actors who must actually love what they're doing. It shows. Arthur Christmas is Santa's son - the younger son who is not in line to take over the family business, so to speak. And what a business it is! Big brother Steve Christmas is running a state-of-the-art shop up at the North Pole, including using the latest in (hacked) military technology to "make the magic happen."

The scenes that depict the North Pole operation are breathtaking and imaginative. I am quite sure I could watch this several times (on a big screen, please!) and find new and amusing detail every viewing. There is simply too much to take in all at once. This is one of the most visually pleasing animated movies ever. Like wandering through a giant eye candy store.

The characters, from the entire Claus family to the zillion or so elves who inhabit the Pole, are utterly enchanting, and many of them could probably carry their own Christmas movie. But this one's about Arthur - a very, very good person who has to decide what to do when just one little thing goes wrong in an operation of global proportions. How important, after all, is just one child? Arthur knows the answer to that all along, although some of the other characters have to be reminded. What a splendid message for a holiday movie, by the way - that the feelings of just one little child are indeed of great importance.

I'm inserting Arthur Christmas at the #4 slot on the list. It earns that spot because Charlie Brown's unabashed embrace of what Christmas truly is all about must remain at the top, and A Christmas Story is a movie where each scene outdoes the one before it, culminating in the most perfect ending to a Christmas movie ever. I would have put Arthur at #3, but the filmmakers made the horrific choice of including a Justin Bieber version of "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" which will make you want to kill yourself. That misstep means I'm keeping George C. Scott's exquisite version of A Christmas Carol in 3rd, and Arthur slips in just behind. All this, of course, knocks Elf off the list - but that's somewhat deserved, as the last 15 minutes of the Will Ferrell movie offer none of the charm or humor of the rest of the film, and quite frankly are kind of painful to sit through. So off with you, Buddy the Elf. And welcome, welcome, to Arthur Christmas.

Christmas! MOVIES we hate, SONGS we love - Another Top 10 List for the Ages!

2011-12-14T11:30:00.000-08:00

Last year, I chronicled the ten best Christmas movies ever made… juxtaposed against the ten most annoying, banal, and downright horrific Christmas songs ever inflicted on unsuspecting holiday music lovers. I wasasked on more than one occasion – why the hate on Christmas music? And surelythere are Christmas movies that suck, too?

Why… yes, Virginia… there certainly are.

As with my list last year, there are candidates who didn’tquite make the cut, but certainly are contenders. For instance, Nat King Cole’s“The Christmas Song” isn’t on this list – and yet how could we fully enjoy theholidays without “chestnuts roasting on an open fire”? On the other side of thespectrum, there are plenty of bad movies just outside the confines of this topten list – a sorry remake of “The Bishop’s Wife” (“The Preacher’s Wife,” withWhitney Houston) comes to mind.

So anyway, as I said last year…

“…grab a cup of cocoa and settle in for a whirlwind sleighride through the heights – and depths – of Yuletide entertainment…”

The 10^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

SANTA CLAUS: THE MOVIE

Once upon a time, more than a quarter of a century ago, somefilmmakers set out to create the definitive Santa Claus movie. They failed.Miserably. This movie was a big budget blockbuster minus the block and thebuster. An enormous flopperoo which you’d be hard-pressed to find on AmericanTV… however, for some unfathomable reasons, it apparently gained some tractionin England, so you if you’re spending your holidays with Will & Kate, youmight catch it.

A lot of that big budget may have been spent on the scenesof Santa’s workshop, which are indeed visually rich. However, there is so muchmore that is wrong with this flick. First, the screenplay hopelessly manglesthe real Christmas story (you know, the star and the manger and all) and offersup Santa as the savior of the world, for all intents and purposes. Second, itstars Dudley Moore as an elf. (I know, kids, you don’t even know who DudleyMoore is. There’s a good reason for that.) Third, it features an EVIL CORPORATETYCOON who will DESTROY CHRISTMAS. That theme is just as fascinating as it isin every other Hollywood movie about EVIL CORPORATE TYCOONS, and about asappealing as an unwashed Occupier.

The 10^th best Christmas song of all time:

HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS – JUDY GARLAND

Okay, I’m cheating just a little bit, because this isactually a movie song. It was written for the film “Meet Me in St. Louis,”where it was first performed by Judy Garland. But the song has continued tospeak to generations of folks who are “muddling through” and looking ahead tobetter Christmases. A true American classic, and in my opinion never donebetter than the original.

The 9^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

FRED CLAUS

We stay right here at the North Pole as more modernfilmmakers take another swing at the legend of Santa. Like the 1985 dud, thisversion purports to give us the backstory on Santa, and in this case his bigbrother who always felt like the black sheep of the family. Vince Vaughn isboth annoying and grating as possible in this unfunny role, which involves anEVIL EFFICIENCY EXPERT (filling in for the corporate tycoon) who threatens toDESTROY CHRISTMAS. Another eggnog-gagger.

There is ONE marginally amusing scene near the beginning,where Vaughn visits a “brothers anonymous” meeting for guys overshadowed bytheir more successful brothers. Real-life siblings of Bill Clinton, SylvesterStallone and Alec Baldwin make cameo appearances. I’ve included it here, butit’s all you’ll want to see of this movie, which after this scene goes downhillfaster than an overloaded Grinch sleigh.

The 9^th best Christmas song of all time:

WHITE CHRISTMAS – BING CROSBY

I’m pretty sure that I am legally required to include thissong on any definitive “best Christmas songs” list. Talk about an Americanclassic. The Christmas song so wonderful that, although it was written for amovie called “Holiday Inn” (yup, I’m still stuck on movie music), it spawnedits own movie called (what else) “White Christmas.” Little-known fact: Beforethis tune was recorded, people used to dream of all different coloredChristmases.

The 8^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

FOUR CHRISTMASES

We leave the North Pole, but we don’t leave Vince Vaughn,who earns the distinction of starring in two of the very worst holiday moviesever. There are really only two themes in bad Christmas movies (and, to befair, in quite a few good Christmas movies). The two films we’ve alreadydiscussed are of the “Saving Christmas” category… this begins our look at the“Christmas is all about family” category (although Fred Claus contained a fewnods to that one as well.)

In this big Christmas turd, an unmarried couple, played byVaughn and Reese Witherspoon, try to take a tropical vacation instead ofspending time with their four dysfunctional families (all four of their parentsare divorced). When they’re “outed” at the airport by a TV reporter, they’restuck making the rounds. Much hilarity ensues. I mean, how can you go wrongwith making fun of blue-collar and/or religious people, babies throwing up(comedy GOLD), and the always-charming Hollywood staple, oversexedpost-menopausal women. Oh, and a guy falls off a roof. Har har har.

Message? Even if all your relatives are horror show freaks,Christmas… it’s all about family.

The 8^th best Christmas song of all time:

PLEASE COME HOME FOR CHRISTMAS – THE EAGLES

So I am finally leaving the theater with this choice. Thishas become a modern-day Christmas classic, without being written for a film –although I am guessing it’s probably been used in some. The Eagles’ soulfultake on a lonely holiday makes a nice break from the general cheeriness of mostholiday tunes.

The 7^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

SURVIVING CHRISTMAS

As reviewers noted at the time this came out, when a studiodumps a Christmas movie before Halloween, that’s a good clue that it’s probablymore Horrible than Ho-Ho-Ho. This moviewas released in October 2004. ‘Nuff said.

Ridiculous plots are what one expects in the “SavingChristmas” theme category, what with the necessity for flying reindeer and allthat jazz. But in the “Christmas is all about family” category, ludicrousplotlines are not a plus. So, there’s this rich handsome young man who can’tfind anyone to spend Christmas with (including his pretty girlfriend). Hedecides to visit his childhood home and offers the family currently inresidence a quarter of a million dollars to pretend he’s their beloved son. Muchhilarity ensues. Of an entirely predictable nature. Oh – hilarious plot twist:the preteen son is addicted to computer pornography! Har har har. Warm familyholiday fun for all.

The 7^th best Christmas song of all time:

SANTA BABY – EARTHA KITT

I will not accept your hate mail on this one. I know thissong is despised by many Christmas aficianados, but I find it charming. Plus,she’s been such a good girl, skipping out on all that fella-kissing – and shewants a ring! What could be more pure than that – after all, “Christmas is allabout family,” as we have painstakingly learned. However, only the Eartha Kittversion qualifies. Having Madonna perform the song adds the yuck factor. Idon’t think she’s skipped many opportunities to kiss any fellas (or, whatever).

The 6^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS

NOT the classic animated version, which made my list of thetop ten best Christmas films of all time. This big budget live-action remake ofthe charming cartoon, while visually fun to watch, was a bust. Jim Carrey wasflat in the title role, the storyline was contrived and vastly inferior to theoriginal Dr. Seuss book, and the movie featured one of the most nauseatinglystupid songs ever written for a Christmas movie (yup, that made the list lastyear as well). The original book and animated feature were examples of how the“Saving Christmas” category is done. This version, not so much.

The 6^th best Christmas song of all time:

SANTA CLAUS IS COMING TO TOWN – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Okay.

This. Just. Rocks.

The 5^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

JACK FROST

Did I mention that Christmas is all about family? And whatbetter way to bring that lesson home than to kill off a beloved father at thebeginning of the movie, so that he can come back (courtesy of a magicharmonica) as the hands-down creepiest snowman ever? A Christmas miracleenvisioned by screenwriters on acid. They were on something, that’s for sure,because this turkey includes witty repartee like: “You da man! You da snowman!”Or, “Snowdad is better than no dad.”

Let’s see… what could we do to make thismovie suck even worse… I know! Let’s include music from the Spice Girls andteen band Hanson! PERFECT.

The 5^th best Christmas song of all time:

JINGLE BELLS – Barry Manilow

I will not accept your hate mail on this one, either. Iliked Barry Manilow when I was 14 and I like him now. But that’s beside thepoint. The point is, this is the rockin-est, hoppin-est, most fun version ofthis most famous Christmas song. I love the whole 40s-flavor and the pretendAndrews Sisters. You can’t sit still for this one.

The 4^th worst Christmas movie of all time:

JINGLE ALL THE WAY

Pull on your big boy Santa cap, dear reader – we’reventuring into some real stinkeroo territory now. Unlike the previous filmsmentioned, the rest of them on this roster have absolutely no redeemingqualities. This pre-governor Schwarzenegger outing pairs the philanderingex-bodybuilder with… Sinbad? Uh, yeah. And the entire point of the movie isthat Dad’s in big trouble if he can’t get the one toy that junior wants forChristmas. Great message, there. So, these two buffoons pratfall and mug theirway through this holiday monstrosity, reinforcing every idiotic stereotypeabout how fathers, in particular, are stupid fools. Nobody outside of thegovernor’s maid could have enjoyed this pile of reindeer poo.

The 4^th best Christmas song of all time:

ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU – Mariah Carey

Judging by the amount of play this gets on the radio overthe holidays, I can’t be alone in finding it delightful. Like some of the othersongs mentioned, this one rocks along at an irresistible pace, tempting you todance along (which is a far better temptation to indulge than eating the lastof the Christmas cookies). And although I really can’t stand anything elseMariah Carey has ever done – the soul-inspired intro to this song is a perfectshowcase for her considerable pipes.

The 3^rd worst Christmas movie of all time:

DECK THE HALLS

I’m guessing that sometime in early 2006, at a weeklymeeting of the crappy filmmakers’ club (such a thing must exist; there’s justtoo much evidence in favor of it), a light bulb went off over someone’s headand they said, “Hey… it’s been ten years since that pile of crap ‘Jingle Allthe Way’ movie… let’s do another one with pretty much the same story, and thistime let’s make it REALLY blow!”

And that, my children, is how we got “Deck the Halls,” withMatthew Broderick and Danny DeVito filling the not-inconsiderable shoes ofSchwarzenegger/Sinbad. This time, it’s not one toy the dueling man-children areafter. They’re fighting over who gets to be known as “the Christmas guy” intheir quaint New England-ish town. Men making fools of themselves? Yes. Pratfalls?Of course. Cringe-inducing behavior? I’ll say! Especially the scene where bothmen are lusting after girls in skimpy Santa outfits. These “happily married”men with children are yelling out “Who’s your daddy” to the dancers until thegirls turn around and – guess what? The dancers turn out to be their teendaughters. Hilarious!

A good part of the storyline revolves around DeVito’scharacter wanting to outdo everyone else on his outdoor Christmas display. Thisidea was executed in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” – but with actualHUMOR.

The 3^rd best Christmas song of all time:

CHRISTMAS EVE-SARAJEVO – TRANS-SIBERIAN ORCHESTRA

Of all the musical selections that I’ve characterized as“rocking”… none can hold a candle to this. It’s big and dramatic and lush. DidI mention BIG? It’s so big that when Dwight wanted to make a bold Christmasstatement in last week’s episode of “The Office” – he rocked out to this.

The 2^nd worst Christmas movie of all time:

THE CHRISTMAS SHOES

Okay. So last year the song that inspired this movie won myhighly competitive and coveted Worst Christmas Song of All Time award. Clearly,a movie based on said song is going to rank right up there (down there) aswell. This maudlin, sorry excuse for moviemaking is an embarrassment to allthings Christmas. The asinine original story/song, about a boy who needs SHOESfor his dying mother, apparently wasn’t manipulative and banal enough – thefilmmakers had to add another layer of crappy by giving us a lawyer (of course)whose marriage is on the brink. But the well-known phenomenon of ChristmasSHOES will bring a happy, poignant ending to all. You’ll cry and cry. If you’rea complete moron.

The 2^nd best Christmas song of all time:

SLEIGH RIDE – BOSTON POPS

No piece of music captures the sheer child-like joy ofChristmas like this instrumental masterpiece. And it wouldn’t be completewithout the musical “neighing” of the horse pulling the sleigh. I love thiseven when it’s performed by mediocre junior high school bands. Under the batonof John Williams directing the Boston Pops, it’s pure Christmas magic.

And… the absolutely, positively worst Christmas movie of alltime:

CHRISTMAS WITH THE KRANKS

Incorporating virtually every objectionable element in allmovies previously mentioned, this Tim Allen vehicle is fatuous and determinedlyunfunny from beginning to end. (Tim Allen isn’t funny in the Santa Clausemovies, either, but this makes those look like Oscar material.)

The Kranks love Christmas and can’t wait to celebrate itevery year with all their neighbors who also overdecorate, overbuy andoverparty. But – the plot thickens! Their only child is going off to the PeaceCorps and now there’s no reason to celebrate Christmas. Instead of spending$6000 on Christmas (uh… what?) they’ll spend $3000 on a tropical vacation. Inpreparation for the trip, Mr. Krank gets an overdone fake bake (hilarious,no?), but – the plot thickens! The neighbors won’t hear of this! How can theyall celebrate Christmas if the Kranks don’t? (Uh… what?) The neighbors threatenthe Kranks and attempt to force them to conform with the neighborhood holidaystandards. But – the plot thickens! Daughter, after about two weeks in thejungles of Peru, decides to come home for Christmas after all! How will theyever get ready in time NOW? Comical scenes of chasing after the last Christmas ham inthe grocery store hearken back to the glories of “Jingle All the Way”… whilecomical scenes of characters falling off roofs while hanging Christmas lightshearken back to “Four Christmases.” Really, is there anything funnier than aman falling off a roof? I think not. And, in the heartwarming twist we musthave in the best holiday movies, the Kranks’ psycho neighbors all come togetherto help them finish their last minute Christmas prep. Ugh. Feel like vomitingyet?

And… the absolutely, positively best Christmas song of alltime:

MARY DID YOU KNOW – KATHY MATTEA

From the ridiculous to the sublime... or more to the point, from the sublime ridiculous-ness of a Kranky Christmas to the ridiculous sublime-ness of THIS.

The haunting melody of this song stands in directcounterpoint to the cheerfulness of the just-mentioned classic “Sleigh Ride.”But this isn’t about child-like Christmas magic. It’s about the real Child, thereal Christmas, and – better than any movie or song profiled this year or last– it’s about what Christmas is really all about. And why we needed Christmas.And how the path that started at the manger ended at the Cross.

And once again... a merry, merry Christmas to one and all.

Word Bandits and other Conservative Bad Guys

2011-12-07T09:00:00.001-08:00

I certainly am not in the habit of hanging out over at “Crooks and Liars,” a festering cesspool of Leftist rant if there ever was one. But following a link this afternoon I regret to say I found myself lured into an article there entitled “The War of the Words,” in which a leftist, who identifies herself only as the holder of a master’s degree in English (be suitably impressed, less-educated reader!) gets herself all worked up over… well, allow her to tell you herself:

“He who controls the word controls the world. And there are no dirtier, more malicious or ruthless opponents in this vital war of words than the American right wing.”

Yes, you! You bitter clinger. You are not only stupid, greedy, and illiterate, but you are a… WORD-STEALER. (Apparently, “illiterate” and “word-stealer” don’t cancel each other out. We conservatives have magical powers!)

Read this at PJMedia!

Occupiers in La-la Land

2011-11-30T08:47:00.001-08:00

Just a few quick and random notes from the Occupy L.A. movement that has (sort of?) finally ended.

Maybe the police unions are right - maybe we don't pay these officers enough:

These officers had to don BIO SUITS to clean up the disgusting mess left behind by the Occupy L.A. cretins.

This officer should file a union grievance - he also was tasked with cleaning up a kind of disgusting mess, and he had to do it WITHOUT a bio suit. Brave, brave gentleman.

The officers (who are hardly part of the 1% now, are they?) also had to put up with these idiots screaming obscenities at them:

Wait -- is that Garth from Wayne's World?

Anyway, a spokesman for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (who has coddled these idiots all along and ought to get his ass down there and help the cops clean up the mess) says it will take all day to clean up the giant stinking biohazard (the L.A. Times says "the stench of urine and old food emanated from the lawn"). So here's what these assholes did to our city hall:

Of course, all they are saying, is give peace a chance:

Or possibly they're saying (really loudly, through a megaphone), give peace a chance and also be careful not to run over illegal aliens:

I am so, so over these people.

Special for Halloween... the Most Evil Show on TV Is...

2011-10-31T10:32:00.000-07:00

Something wicked this way comes… across the pageant stage, wearing a tiny bejeweled $2000 dress, hairspray-lacquered locks, a spray tan and fake teeth (yes, fake teeth).

Okay. In all fairness, what came across the stage isn’t wicked. Her parents, however… another story. A somewhat malevolent story. So what better time than this Halloween season to turn our minds to the dark… the hellish… the evil. Yes, I’m talking about Toddlers & Tiaras, that reality show ode to child beauty pageants from the folks at cable channel TLC. TLC, by the way, stands for The Learning Channel. But with programming like Sister Wives (reality show about polygamy), LA Ink and NY Ink (reality shows about people who tattoo pretty much every square inch of skin), and I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (reality show about morons), they really ought to change the name to TFC – The Freak Channel.

Amidst this video onslaught against all that is right and good, Toddlers & Tiaras should seem relatively innocent. After all, you may well ask, what could be so wrong about a bunch of little girls playing at Miss America?

Oh, dear reader. There are so many ways it is wrong – dreadfully, revoltingly wrong. Allow me to enumerate. But I caution you – this journey is not for the faint of heart, nor weak of stomach. And if you make it through this, an even more chilling fate is in store at the end, where a commercial-free 45 minutes of Toddlers & Tiaras – the Halloween Bash pageant edition, awaits you. Menacingly.

You have been warned. Here then, ten reasons why Toddlers & Tiaras is yet another ominous omen of the end of civilization as we know it. Let the horror be unleashed:

California's Clown King Jerry Brown Unleashes His Special Brand of Lunacy

2011-10-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that clowns are downright scary.

Not funny. But definitely a clown.

Ahhh… California. You never, ever fail to amaze. I’ve written about you before – how you resisted the tidal wave of Tea that broke over the rest of the country like a wave of good sense and allowed it to come to a crashing halt at California’s eastern border, ensuring another few years in the loony-bin. You brought back Governor Moonbeam, who has now really outdone himself in the bats**t crazy department, as he spent the past few days clearing his desk of the final bills sent to him by his equally barking moonbat legislature. It’s such an overwhelming display of ignorant arrogance that I almost don’t know where to begin.

Almost.

Elitists - Almost as Distasteful on the Right as on the Left

2011-09-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

Leftists, as I have pointed out before, get all giddy andexcited about the royal family. Any royal family. They love royals because theysee themselves as royal. Leftists are by definition elitists. They believe theyknow better than the rest of us how things should work. They’re wrong, ofcourse, as has been proven over and over. But nevertheless, they wish, morethan anything else, to rule over the great, unwashed masses – the bitterclingers, the non-Ivy Leaguers, the flyover country inhabitants… you know. Thepeople they believe to be not as smart or beautiful or sophisticated as theyare. The little people. In other words, you and me.

Yup, we’re used to this from the Left. From the Presidentwho travels with an entourage to rival that of an Arab sultan. From the formerSpeaker of the House who considered U.S. military jets her own private taxiservice. From the Secretary of the Treasury who considered himself far, far abovethe bourgeois classes who actually PAY taxes. We know exactly what they thinkof us.

But it’s a bitter pill to swallow when one of our own turnson us. Someone who, philosophically, adheres to some of our principles – but thendoesn’t mask his contempt for us.

It's not the greatest, but it is the latest example of this - it happenedtoday on Fox News Sunday. Bill Kristol, who blogger Jim Hoft refers to as an “east coast elitist,” says the Florida Straw Poll is proof of the “weak” field ofcandidates on the GOP slate.

As Hoft points out, the current field includes:

“…aTexas governor who has created half of the jobs in the U.S. these past twoyears; a former Massachusetts governor who has a strong business background andsaved the Salt Lake City Olympics; a former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza; a popularMinnesota Congresswoman; the former Speaker of the House of Representatives…”

Amongothers. Yeah, that’s an incredibly weak field.

I don’tknow who’s going to stay in the running, join the race late, drop out, or winthe nomination. But I know that elitists like Kristol are doing us any favorsby insisting that these people are not up to par with the arrogant socialistcurrently residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Free Market Haters - Insane, Misled, or Evil? You Make the Call.

2011-08-15T20:38:00.000-07:00

When it comes to the free market, the beverage of choice for leftists

Leftists hate free enterprise. Yep. They hate the free market, and Hollywood leftists ESPECIALLY hate it. Here - let our friends at Reason.tv prove it in 90 enjoyable seconds:

I know, I know. It’s ironic that those Hollywood types, who make SO MUCH MONEY in the free market that is the entertainment business, are so ignorant of, blind to, and quick to bite the hand that feeds them. More on that in a minute.

You know something that leftists love? Again, especially Hollywood leftists? They love royalty. Any royals will do. Here are a bunch of Hollywood types sucking up like leeches to two young British people who, as it turns out, know something about leeches, as their whole lives will be spent sucking up resources from the taxpayers of Great Britain.

Anyway, the reason leftists love royalty is because that’s the role they envision for themselves in the coming utopia they want to build. (For more on that, see my article Heaven on Earth Comes with a Hellish Price Tag.) After all, someone has to run things, don’t they? And who better than the people who are prettier and therefore better than the rest of us? By the way, they LOVE it when the media calls them “Hollywood royalty” for this very reason - in their minds, it’s a preview of a most alluring coming attraction.

But I digress. Why does Hollywood, and why do leftists, hate free enterprise?

Because the free market means that they cannot control you - and control is what they need to create that perfect world they’re so longing to impose on the rest of us.

But the liberating power of free enterprise means that instead of being forced to do something (like, say, buy health insurance), you can sit back and let different businesses compete for your dollar. Each one of those businesses has to respect you, compete for your attention, persuade you - because their very existence depends on you.

So do you feel respected at the DMV? (As Bill Whittle asks in his outstanding DVD “Firewall: What We Believe.”) Or do you feel respected at the post office? The post office is actually a good example, because in some ways, the free market has brought a ray of cleansing sunshine to that operation. FedEx and UPS have made a lot of money because people (even leftists!) always seek the cheaper, more efficient, and more pleasant alternative. There are no options to the DMV; nothing cheaper, nothing more efficient, and nothing more pleasant. That’s your tax dollars at work.

Government cannot compete with free enterprise, because the genius of free enterprise is that it channels what could be a negative - human self-interest - and makes it work for the good of society. I want more money. I want you to buy my product so I can have more money. So I will make the best product I can and sell it at the best price I can and provide the best customer service I can - all so I can get your business. And my competitor down the street, if he’s smart, will do the same thing.

Who wins? You do, Mr. Customer. You do. And all of society does. Because if my competitor starts getting too much of my business, I will have to innovate and come up with a new, great idea that serves people in another way. And then everybody’s better off again due to my new idea. And on and on it goes.

This, my friends, is how we got cell phones and laptops and iPads, and gourmet ice cream, and plush hotel rooms, and 92,403 TV channels to choose from, and... well, everything that makes our lives better than pretty much any other people in any other time.

I wish the people who are so all-fired insistent on being pro-choice when it comes to a woman’s right to kill her baby were pro-choice in all things market-related (to be fair, some of them are... but most of them aren’t). Pro-choice in the market means you support all of us having more choices, which means we have more power over our own lives, which means we have more liberty.

When the government runs things, we’re stuck. We have no choices, no power to change the situation, and no freedom to go elsewhere. Just imagine that endless line at the DMV, the bored and unmotivated workers behind the counter who will never lose their jobs no matter how incompetent their performance (special shout out to public sector unions!), and the absolute certainty of knowing that you could actually be arrested and put in jail if you don’t stay in line like a good little sheep and get your license.

(a little help for your imagination)

That grim picture... or people competing to make you happy.

Only a crazy person would opt for the former when they could have the latter. Or a person who craves power over others and envisions being in charge. Or a person who’s a true believer in utopia.

And without exception, everyone who hates free enterprise falls into one of those three categories. The good news: They’re not all crazy! The bad news: The power-hungry - and the True Believers - are a lot more sinister than crazy people. And the DMV is only a little preview of a most appalling coming attraction.

Heaven on Earth Comes with a Hellish Price Tag

2011-07-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, sure. It's all great till the butchering starts.

Ever get locked into debate with a “progressive” who’s so off-base on every topic that you realize you have nothing in common except the fact you’re both human – and his bot-like talking points have you questioning even that? Ever find yourself wishing there was some way to break through the ten-inch thick skull and shine a cleansing ray of truth, light and goodness?

Well, there isn’t.

But I do think there’s a Big Question you can introduce that will go a long way toward predicting whether or not your bot-like humanoid leftist friend has a chance in hell of ever seeing the light. And that Big Question is – what is your fundamental view of human nature?

Do you think man is ultimately perfectible? If we just came up with the right society, the right laws, the right situation – man could create a utopian society, right? We could eradicate evil, right? We would all take care of each other in a never-ending hippie circle of peace and hope and change and stuff… right?

If your lefty friend’s eyes glaze over with a misty, faraway look when you put this question to him – if he nods enthusiastically about the heaven-on-earth we are just THIS CLOSE to creating (if we could only get the dumb Republicans to sign on) – if, in short, he answers yes in any way, shape or form… then he’s got a snowball’s chance in hell of ever getting his head on straight.

You can relegate him to your circle of friends with whom it’s not particularly wise to debate the issues of the day, because he is coming at life from a diametrically opposed point of view, and he will likely never agree with even your smallest point due to his foundation being in exactly the wrong place. All you can do is pray for an intellectual miracle.

If, however, your friend scratches his head, looks puzzled, says he’s not sure – and especially if he says no, he doesn’t believe that humans can or will create their own utopia – well, my friend, you have a potential convert to the Side of Goodness and Light.

See, as wiser pundits than me have pointed out, this human nature question is really at the heart of everything. The wiser pundit I’m leaning on most heavily here is Bill Whittle, whose DVD “Firewall: What We Believe” is utter brilliance. He clearly and concisely lays out the case for conservatism – if you have kids, you MUST make sure they watch this, in little 10-minute easy-to -swallow segments. I’ll be writing more about this soon, but for now, back to that Big Question.

If you believe that humans can create their own nirvana, that we are a perfectible species, then you will move heaven and earth to CREATE heaven ON earth. You will gleefully undertake all manner of nanny state social engineering, all manner of political chicanery, all manner of power and money grabbing via tax and regulation – because the means justify the end, which is creating a perfect society where nobody has too little, and everyone has just enough. (See? It sounds so nice.)

If you’re busily building heaven here on earth, you will also undertake a lot of questionable stuff, like banning light bulbs and cupcakes and oil drilling and DDT – not because science has proven that they’re so deadly as to merit banning, but because YOU, the utopian, believe that all of us would be better off without them. And you are always right. So for the greater good, we all are forced to agree with you. That “force” part is key. The utopians believe the all-powerful State has the right to take your property (and your life) if it serves the great cause of equality and social justice. And why are we complaining? It’s all for our own good. Or it’s for the children. Or something.

Actually – it’s tyranny. And it’s the opposite of liberty. And – here’s the kicker – it’s not a new approach. It’s been done, and done, and done. To death (literally). It has never, ever worked.

Yep. Every time in recorded history where do-gooder utopians have tried the central-planning-collectivist approach – it has failed, and left behind (again literally) a bloody mess.

Bill Whittle points out some 30-50 million human beings were slaughtered in Russia to further the greater good. China killed or starved to death another 50 million or so. Not all the failures have been this spectacular, granted, but they have all been failures. Even the French revolution, which is often compared (at least by ignoramuses) to our American revolution, saw a thousand people losing their heads every week as the revolutionaries attempted to create a new man free of religion and income disparity.

We should call these people utopians, because they’re certainly NOT progressive, which is the title they wish to be known by. But there’s nothing progressive about old, tired, failed ideas.

There was this ONE progressive idea that really was different, back about 235 years ago or so, as Whittle notes. It was the idea that we actually take human nature into account when forming a system of governance. The idea that, because human nature really never changes, and that all human beings are enormously motivated by their own self-interest, that we build in lots of checks and balances to keep utopian tyrants from ruining everything for the rest of us.

That’s the great American experiment. The idea of legally limited the power of government know-it-alls to tell us what to do, as Whittle says – limiting the power of those who might be attracted to “public service” because they really crave power over others (*coughobamapelosireidcough*). Creating those limits, for the first time in history – now THAT’S progressive (to quote an annoying TV ad). And it’s worked amazingly well for those 235 years.

And that’s why conservatives and tea partiers and others who don’t care for our current state of affairs are not racist or bigoted or small-minded or stupid. They are, as Whittle notes, believers in limited, responsible and frugal government – and they are standing up, now, against those who would build an all-powerful state, who think they are entitled to all our money, and any of our freedoms. How else to remake us all into perfect little bot-like citizens of the utopia that exists only in their fevered imaginations?

Debunking the Leftist Fantasy Myths on Islam: Easy as 1-2-3

2011-06-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

Facts. They’re important. Sometimes they’re inconvenient (*paging Rep. Weiner*) but a refusal to face them rarely – probably never – leads to a good place. So, here’s a fact. Jews have faced persecution at virtually every historical turn. Here’s another one. Before the horror of the Holocaust, a lot of people who would become enthusiastic members of the National Socialist Party, the Nazis, were saying a lot of bad things about Jews. And here’s a sad fact: A lot of Christians, as well as a lot of other people, simply looked the other way as an inferno of hatred otherwise known as Hitler’s murderous regime began to ignite.

Never again.

That Islam played a role at the highest levels of the Nazi party is also an indisputable fact. Amin Al Husseini, founder of the World Islamic Congress, was BFF with Hitler, as abundant photographic and documentary evidence attests. So it is not particularly shocking that the same Jew-hating rhetoric that poisoned Europe in the 1930s is flourishing in Islamic countries today.

However, good leftists never let facts get in the way of their fantasy narrative. And they’ve got quite a fantasy working on this issue, which includes the following three articles of faith which they hold with downright religious fervor:

Islam isn’t the problem; extreme Islam is the problem.
There are extremists in Christianity who are just as bad – maybe worse.
And… the Crusades!

Let us now gently debunk each of these three non-facts, starting with the last one. The distorted and politically correct view of the Crusades is that they were all about forced conversion to Christianity, which of course makes no sense since a relationship with Jesus Christ is not something that one individual can coerce another individual into beginning. But yes, they were certainly religious in nature – and political – and a reaction. From the time of Muhammad’s death in 632 to the first crusade more than 400 years later, as author Thomas Woods notes,

“…Muslims spread their religion by force throughout Arabia, and into the modern Middle East, including Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, as well as into Egypt, North Africa, and Spain. Further progress into Western Europe was stopped cold by Charles Martel and his Frankish warriors… it is easily forgotten that some of these territories has been heavily Christian when the Muslims took them over.”

The simple fact that the Crusades began in reaction to some 400 years of Muslim warmongering sheds a different colored light on the historical context. For those interested in learning the facts currently obscured behind popular myths about the Crusades, I recommend Woods’ book How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, which will also serve the purpose of providing some excellent food for thought on a number of other ridiculous historical myths that are often repeated as gospel truth.

Moving backward to point 2 – “extremists in any religion are just as bad or worse.” This one cracks me up. First, this postmodern idea that being “moderate” is somehow morally superior to being “extreme” is laughable. Are not all sane people 100% opposed to, say, the Ku Klux Klan? Pedophiles? The Real Housewives of Wherever? The point is, whether or not having an “extreme” view on something is bad or good has a whole lot to do with the “something” being discussed. In short, positing that “extreme=bad” is simple-minded.

And what, exactly, is an “extreme” Christian? Someone who loves his neighbor as himself way more than everyone else? Someone who turns the other cheek way more times? What leftists often MEAN by this phrase is: The guy who shot the abortion doctor. Or, the KKK. Those are “extreme Christians.” Never mind that, in either case, it requires a complete distortion of Christian teaching to arrive at those mindsets. Never mind! THOSE people are “more dangerous” than the ten zillion “extreme” Muslims who have blown up countless men, women and children (and themselves) in the name of Allah. Of course, the “extreme” Muslims indeed ARE following their holy teachings (more on that in a moment).

Leftist tool Tavis Smiley beautifully illustrated this willful blindness to reality when he said that Christians kill more people in America than Muslims. Interrupting someone who was discussing acts of Muslim terror in this country, like the Fort Hood shooting and the Christmas day bomber, Smiley offered this intellectually-challenged ode to “critical thinking”:

“But Christians do that every single day in this country… there are so many more examples of Christians who do that than you can ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country.”

Uh… okay. Tavis buddy, are you under the impression that if you’re NOT a Muslim, then you’re a Christian? Because that’s the only possible way your numbers could add up. So, every crime in this country committed by someone who is not a Muslim has to go in the “Christian” tally column – even though those crimes are all antithetical to Christian teaching. This is how we get the dimwitted “Tim McVeigh and the Columbine killers were Christians!” defense. Yeah. Talk to me when people stop yelling “Allahu Akbar” and start yelling “In the name of Jesus” right before they open fire or blow themselves up. Then we’ll have something to compare.

The slander of Christianity, in the vain attempt to create some sort of moral equivalency between it and violent Islam, flies in the face of reality. Just a few days ago, at that intellectual vacuum known as the Daily Kos, a writer who goes by the handle “Six Dollar Liberal” posted this astoundingly ignorant comment:

“We don’t call out Christianity for being a very violent religion that calls upon the execution of women, children, and homosexuals; so let’s not do it to Islam either.”

Ignoring the fact that this mental midget doesn’t know the difference between “calling upon” something and “calling for” something – this statement boggles the mind. And the writer claims he has a good understanding of Christianity – that’s why he can characterize it as “very violent.”

Hmmm. Well, I guess he’s on to our secret. The fact that we do of course regularly murder homosexuals. He’s got us there. Ha ha, guilty as charged. And of course, we also regularly kill women and children, especially if they’re not wearing the burqa – oh, wait. That’s not us.

Did I mention that his article was entitled, “In Defense of Sharia”? Good grief.

Which brings us back to our first point – that only “radical” Islam is a problem. Well… was only “radical” Nazism a problem? Because both of them are worldview political systems that seek to impose themselves… on EVERYONE. The prime minister of (Muslim) Turkey was quoted as saying, “There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. All those people blowing themselves up? They have a REASON for their behavior, and it involves what their scriptures are telling them to do. Muslims who prefer to live in the relative peace and prosperity of the West are making a conscious decision to “moderate” their own religion – but as the prime minister said, it is what it is.

Speaking of Muslims in America – not all of them are here because they love liberty. Some of them are here to shake things up… to say the least. Consider the group that this week celebrated the life of the murderous tyrant Ayatollah Khomeini at a party in Washington, DC. He was “a breath of fresh air,” they said. He left a “legacy of Muslim unity and active resistance to oppression.” One of the Muslims interviewed grins as she recalls how Khomeini made the “mighty great United States seem like a paper tiger.”

Hey! How about a bunch of us get together, migrate to Iran, and then have a party there celebrating Ronald Reagan? We can all laugh together about how Khomeini acted like a scared little girl once Reagan took office. Ah yes, that would be a fun party, just like these Muslims had in DC. Except these Muslims all went home safely after THEIR party.

So, my dear leftist friend, I ask you to consider this very carefully. If AMERICAN Muslims are telling us that Khomeini left a "legacy of Muslim unity" - what does that tell us about that whole "radical Islam is the problem" school of thought?

Bill Nye the Fearmongering Guy

2011-05-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

So, apparently you can be, like, really enthusiastic about science – a real role model for kids – and still be a complete tool!

Bill Nye proved this point on Fox News today by blathering on at some length about how “tornadoes are almost certainly a consequence” of climate change because of “whatever it is that’s holding in all this heat and creating all this extra water vapor in the atmosphere.”

As NewsBusters’ Noel Sheppard reports,

“It is indeed telling that ‘The Science Guy’ didn’t once mention the impact of this year’s La Niña on tornado activity which most climatologists and meteorologists on both sides of the global warming debate agree is largely the culprit.”

Then the non-Science Guy seemed to be completely stumped by a question about tornadoes in other countries, and unleashed this stream of blarney, including some completely unrelated linguistic fun:

“Well, there’s not that many other countries that have the configuration of North America to make tornadoes. And the word ‘hurricane,’ you know, is a word coined in the Caribbean, like, so this is a unique, unique area in that regard. We have the Gulf of Mexico. We have this access for cold air from Canada or from the Arctic. And these two things conspire to move the jet stream, and then that helps carry this extra water vapor across this part of the North America. So, it’s a unique place, and you don’t have this kind, you don’t have tornadoes in Norway, for example. It’s just set up different, the weather’s set up differently. Here in the U.S. it’s a serious problem.”

Whew! Got all that? It’s a conspiracy between the Gulf of Mexico and Canadian cold air! I just KNEW those two were up to something. Plus, the weather’s set up differently here! And there’s no tornadoes in Norway. Except when there are! Like here, from 2009 along Norway’s southern coast…

Or here:

Sheppard continues to demolish Nye with… wait for it… scientific facts:

“Tornadoes have been observed on every continent on this planet with the exception of Antarctica. A study of insurance records across the globe finds tornadoes causing significant losses in Europe, India, Japan, South Africa, and Australia. Although the United States typically has more tornadoes than any other country, as a function of land area, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom both actually have more. Also contrary to today’s conventional wisdom, Bangladesh is the nation with the most tornado-related deaths averaging 179 per year having also experienced the deadliest tornado in history on April 26, 1989, killing approximately 1300. That country has had at least 19 tornadoes that have killed more than 100 people, almost half the total of the rest of the world.”

As Sheppard says, so much for “The Science Guy’s” odd claim that not many other countries are as good at “making tornadoes” as we are. Why Fox News had this guy on to talk tornadoes is a mystery to me, since he seems to be nothing more than Pee Wee Herman in a lab coat. Or more accurately, Pee Wee Herman with a political ax to grind, as can be seen quite clearly right here.

Adoring Girly Media Props Up Its Big Man on Campus

2011-05-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

They'd do ANYTHING for Big Man.

Did your high school have a Big Man On Campus? You know. The football star who could do no wrong? The teachers and administrators ignored missing homework, or looked the other way when he lit a cigarette in the school parking lot – because he brought glory to the school, and everyone liked basking in that glory. So he got a pass – and he learned to be an ass. There were, sadly, always a few girls who were willing to do anything – and I do mean anything – to curry favor with Big Man. Often used and discarded, some of them even kept coming back for more abuse. These pathetic girls couldn’t get enough of serving as doormats for Big Man. One might say they literally felt a thrill go up their leg whenever he was around (or maybe that was his hand).

I think you know where I’m going with this.

The mainstream media has completely and utterly humiliated itself as far as Obama is concerned, jumping into his bed and offering themselves like the cheapest of hookers. For the most part they’ve asked no questions, but told plenty of lies on his behalf. They can’t bother to fact-check any one in a long line of his “let me be clear” statements that are patently false (although when Saturday Night Live poked a little gentle fun at him, they immediately responded with the full force of their investigative powers).

When Big Man said “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” his media “girls” practically swooned. It was like being promised a date to the prom. Maybe even an engagement ring!

Hey, media groupies – he’s not going to marry you, and it’s doubtful you’re going to the prom. He just wants you to service him in the back of the presidential limo. Don’t you get it?

Like the fickle football star, he picks and chooses which girls he will favor with his attention, and punishes those who have crossed him. Most recently, the subject of his petulant wrath was the Boston Herald, which found itself out of the loop in pool coverage of the president’s visit to Boston, because Big Man didn’t like a recent op-ed the paper published by Mitt Romney.

It’s one thing to deny an interview to a specific media outlet because you’re unhappy with them. That’s his prerogative. After all, Big Man doesn’t have to ask any one specific girl to the prom. But media pool coverage is different. He can’t demand that certain girls not be allowed to show up at the prom at all.

The ultimate example of this administration’s utter contempt for their girlie media groupies was the infamous reporter-in-a-closet incident. I say “infamous” because of course most of the girls just pretended that one of their own didn’t get locked in a closet at a Democratic fundraiser – so most people have never heard of it. Our friends at American Thinker explain:

“The Sentinel sent one reporter. Said reporter was immediately confined by a Biden advance-team member to a storage closet, given a bottle of water and kept inside by a Biden thug at the closet door. Biden’s prepared speech – but nothing whatsoever else – got ‘covered’ for the people of the U.S.A. And the intrepid press-pool-on-point ‘reporter’ limped back to the Sentinel with his little tail between his legs, happy to have had a little water to drink and a cell phone to keep him company during his confinement.
Wimp is too mild a word.”

How ‘bout a phrase? “Degraded media slut” comes to mind. The fact that this reporter didn’t shout his outrage from the rooftops – well, it speaks volumes about the state of American journalism today.

Bullies like Big Man need to be exposed, and that’s the job of the Fourth Estate. But our once-noble Fourth Estate is now, with a few exceptions, a sad little bunch of eager-to-please, self-esteem-challenged, psychologically-unhealthy teenage girls. They await, in quivering anticipation, whatever humiliation Big Man will inflict next – and they’ll be grateful for his attention.

Peace & Tolerance: Leftist Double Standard Special Edition!

2011-05-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

Let’s pretend, for a moment, that academic freedom really did reign on America’s college campuses. I know, it’s difficult to envision, but just for the sake of argument let’s pretend it exists.

So into our little fantasy, let’s introduce a character. Let’s make him one of the most influential young conservative Christians in America, who is also a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at Yale. (Ha ha ha! A well-known conservative Christian teaching at Yale! This is one crazy fantasy!)

And let’s say that in a lecture one day, he says the following things:

1. The Bible teaches that Islam is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless.

2. Muslims, therefore, are evil.

3. God says that Muslims are spiritually filthy.

4. The life and property of Muslims hold no value when we are battling them. Here in America, this is not the place and time where we can take their lives and property, but in other places, we can, and at another time, we may do it here, as well. But not here now. Not yet.

Let’s further pretend that we have audio of this teaching, widely available on the internet.

Care to speculate on the reaction from the Left? The mainstream media? Obama?

Well, their heads would probably implode.

However, last I looked, their heads are all still intact. Which means that we have one serious double standard working here. Because leaving behind our pretend scenario and turning to cold hard reality, our young influential conservative cleric at Yale is not a Christian (of course) but a Muslim. And here’s what he has to say:

1. The Koran teaches that Christianity is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless. (He calls it “shirk” or polytheism, because he misunderstands the nature of the Trinity)

2. Christians are evil. It’s important to study their teachings to understand evil.

3. Allah calls Christians filthy. People who practice “shirk” (known as “mushrikoun”) are “nejjis” – filthy.

4. The life and property of Christians (mushrikoun) hold no value in the state of jihad. Not here right now, in this country. This is not the time or place. This will be the case when we are in a state of jihad, in an Islamic state, when there is a caliphate.

The teacher in question, one Yasir Qadhi, emphasizes that he doesn’t mean in America – at least not now.

Qadhi is described by the New York Times as:

“…a fixture on the New Haven campus. He wore a trim beard and preppy polo shirts, blending in with other graduate students as he lugged an overstuffed backpack into Blue State Coffee for his daily cappuccino. A popular teaching assistant, he exuded a sprightly intensity in class, addressing the undergraduates as ‘dudes.’”

Dude! You’re filthy, repugnant and evil, and a day is soon coming when your iPod and skateboard – and head – are mine. But for now… let’s grab a cappuccino.

Of course, my analogy breaks down with #4, because Jesus Christ certainly does not teach that we are to take the lives or property of non-Christians. Even if we lived in a “Christian” state. Even if our leader was a pope or pastor or Billy Graham. It wouldn’t happen – that’s not what following Jesus is all about. That’s why we can live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize the Bible and our teachings. Our Muslim friends, not so much. Islamists cannot live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize their Koran and teachings. In fact, they’re not happy even if someone on the other side of the world burns one copy of their book. They’re so unhappy, in fact, that innocent people have to die because of it.

Now, which faith tradition are we calling evil, again?

Epic Fail at the Beach=Endless Summer for UNION Lifeguards

2011-05-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

In beach lingo, THIS is the Anointed One

It’s hard for kids who grow up near the ocean in sunny Southern California. Who wouldn’t be tempted to spend all their time hangin’ at the beach, soaking up the surf, sand, sun, and bikinis? Of course, the responsible ones stay home and do their studying and go to college and get good jobs. When they grow up, if they stay in Orange County (the OC), the median annual income is $71,735. Not bad, right? They made the wise decision to hit the books instead of the beach, right? I mean, they’re way better off than the slackers who spend their lives down in the sand… right?

WRONG.

It utterly boggles my mind to report this, but city lifeguards in the swanky oceanside city of Newport Beach are UNIONIZED. In fact, they’ve got TWO unions – one for the full-timers and one for the part-time seasonal help.

So what I’m about to report next probably won’t surprise you one bit.

Newport’s full-time lifeguards make six figures. All 14 of them.

Well, okay. The lowest-paid collected $98,160.65 last year. The rest of them ranged from just over $100,000 to… wait for it… more than $200,000. (Two of them.)

That’s LIFEGUARDS, folks. You know – the job your kid had last summer? Too bad he didn’t work in Newport Beach, right? If he had, you wouldn’t have to worry about those college costs, because it would all be paid for, thanks to the ~~dupes~~ Newport Beach taxpayers.

Oh, we’re not done yet. I wish we were, but we’re not. The good people of the Lifeguard Management Association and the Association of Newport Beach Ocean Lifeguards were not content with obscene salaries – oh, no. That lifeguard work is stressful! Thirty years on the beach takes its toll! These poor slobs sitting in lifeguard towers their whole lives must be compensated for the tremendous burden imposed by their career choice: staring at girls, breathing crisp ocean air, tanning… you know, I’m getting choked up just thinking about the price these brave souls of the surf have paid to perform their selfless public service. Anyway, that’s the story their unions are sticking with, apparently.

Because Newport Beach lifeguards, after 30 years in the sand, can retire with 90 percent of their staggeringly inappropriate salary.

A group called Americans for Prosperity-California (wait – there are Americans who are for prosperity in California?) … anyway this brave and lonely band of right-thinkers points out that there is already at least one retiree who, if he lives to 80, will collect well over $3 million in retirement. (Strangely, that dude is doing the same thing now as when he was working – hanging out on the beach. Go figure.) And as more of these guys transition out of the lifeguard towers and down onto the sand – more and more of them will be retiring with $200K a year instead of $100K. Do the math. It’s not a day at the beach for Newport taxpayers, that’s for sure.

What does the union have to say about this?

“We have negotiated very fair and very reasonable salaries in conjunction with comparable positions… lifeguard salaries here are well within the norm of other city employees.”

THAT’S THE PROBLEM. Public worker pay is out of control in comparison to private sector salaries. Remember that OC median of $71K? That’s a median of ALL private salaries – from fast food workers to surgeons. So that median salary is $30K less than what city workers get – if they’re LIFEGUARDS.

So what have we learned, kids?

Stay in school!

Oops. No, that’s not what we learned.

We learned that public employee unions are, like, totally radical!

And I mean that in EVERY sense of the word.

U.S. Muslim Groups Reveal True Colors (Hint: Not Red White & Blue)

2011-05-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

Protesting bin Laden's death at U.S. embassy in London

Certainly there is no lack of words about the departure from this world of the closest thing we had to a real-life Lord Voldemort. (If you're not into Harry Potter characters, you could always just insert the word "Satan.") Anyway, how we react to these pivotal news events says a lot about who we really are, our values and our priorities.

Quite a few honorable, patriotic Americans struggled a bit with how to respond to the demise of Osama bin Laden. There was definitely joy over the (vastly delayed) justice, and pride in our awesome military. But there was also sober contemplation of a life wasted in hatred and violence, and very little hope of a positive eternal reward (jokes about 72 virgins notwithstanding).

One thing none of the honorable patriots would have done was to eulogize bin Laden as a fallen hero. Only “radical Islamists” would do such a thing. Right?

The Muslim American Society (MAS) is a group founded by the Muslim Brotherhood to promote “Islam as a total way of life” – here in the United States. From their headquarters in the DC area, the group blamed 9/11 on Osama bin Laden “American foreign policy,” so I’m guessing they weren’t among the celebrants in front of the White House on Sunday night. (Although come to think of it, didn’t “American foreign policy” also die a somewhat horrible death… back in 2008? Hey, I think they DID celebrate that one at the White House!)

But I digress. MAS has a long and rich history intertwined with terrorism, and along with CAIR, ISNA, etc. have been named co-conspirators in funding terror. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that their (somewhat disjointed) press release on bin Laden’s death doesn’t exactly express joy over the recent turn of events. And although it doesn’t overtly criticize America for killing bin Laden – they’re all about the subtlety, those MAS folks – it doesn’t spend much time mourning the loss of life on 9/11, either. That is mentioned, in a couple of lines buried within the bigger message of this statement, which seems to be this: Osama bin Laden was a great man who made a bad mistake one day. (That day, of course, was September 11, 2001.) But before that, he was AWESOME.

“Osama bin Laden cared unrelentingly about the Afghan Muslim children in the same way he cared about his own children, and believed in the right to liberate the Afghan people from their Russian aggressors, who raped innocent women and who tried to destroy the country… they did not have rights over.”

Um… wait. Bin Laden was AGAINST trying to destroy a country you don’t “have rights over”? I guess that was before he was FOR it. And what’s all this about him being anti-rape? Who knew. Too bad he didn’t share this secretly-held conviction against raping innocent women, at least to his buddies in the field – the “boots on the ground” if you will. That would have saved one CBS reporter a hellish encounter that will no doubt haunt her for the rest of her life. Not to mention the veritable epidemic that some have referred to as the “Muslim rape culture.”

But no. MAS defends bin Laden, upon his death, as a… visionary. (I know that’s probably not the word YOU were thinking of, you Islamophobic bigot.)

And MAS is right. He was a visionary, as they say:

“…who believed in the possibility of an Islamic state in Afghanistan and the possibility that this thing might someday be. There was nothing wrong with that dream, even if it differs from that one that all Americans have here for themselves.”

The dream that Americans have here for themselves? You mean our dream of not getting blown up, even while engaged in such warlike activities as boarding a plane or sitting at our desk in a tall office building? Yeah, wacky Americans – we’re funny that way!

But in the spirit of peace-loving tolerance, let us indeed acknowledge that there was “nothing wrong” with bin Laden’s dream. It was just “different” from ours. Yes, yes, his dream was a little unorthodox, in that it involved killing all of us — but never mind that NOW. The important thing is, he had a dream! Osama, we hardly knew ye!

“That dream of a pure and merciful Islamic state in a Muslim land, never realized itself in Afghanistan.”

Uh, why was he trying to blow up this country if he just wanted to live in purity and mercy over there in the sand? Methinks that MAS doesn’t really want to be honest about bin Laden’s intentions, since he made clear only about ten-trillion times that he wanted to destroy the West.

Despite its disingenuous posturing as it attempts to distance itself from the actual 9/11 attack (the press release refers to 9/11 as a “nightmare”), here is the bottom line: MAS considered bin Laden a visionary because they share the same vision, even if they disagree on tactics.

And what is that vision? Islam for all. The West will be conquered, Allah willing. England is closer to this reality than the U.S., as could be seen during the furious protests outside the U.S. embassy this week in London.

So I mean this both literally and figuratively: read the signs.

Unequivocal Proof that Fox News Sucks

2011-05-02T09:38:00.000-07:00

Your morning joe with a message of hope and change

For all the union members screaming “Fox lies” during the Wisconsin protests… for President Obama insisting that Fox News is “destructive” for our country’s growth, and his administration attempting to de-legitimize them as a news organization by barring them from news conferences… for every logic-impaired idiot who has never actually watched Fox News but KNOWS that they aren’t journalists… here’s the proof that you’re right: screenshots of the two main cable news sites taken virtually at the same time this past weekend. If a picture tells a thousand words, these two pictures should speak volumes:

See? You were right! Fox News DOES suck, because – what real American journalists would concern themselves with devastating tornadoes in those yucky Bible belt states, when we can talk about a royal wedding on the other side of the world?

I have long suspected that a good part of the asinine “royal worship” in this country is frustrated leftists who desperately long to just pronounce themselves royalty, collect taxes from the rest of us, and wave regally from on high as we bow before them (*coughObamacough*). Leftists imagine themselves as part of the elite inner circle of the world, so it’s not at all surprising that their focus is on a pair of their own. (The groom’s daddy, by the way, is an enormous left-leaning tool.)

But I digress. Yeah. Fox News is so biased and if you watch it you’re a drooling moron and you’ll never understand How Things Really Are because Fox News lies? And did I mention, Fox lies?

At the site where this CNN/Fox comparison was displayed, there was a bracing discussion from a group of intellectual giants debating why Fox News, which is clearly not really a news organization, would have covered the tornadoes while CNN concentrated on inbred monarchy types. Allow me to share just a tiny nugget of this incisive analysis:

“(Fox is) not exercising journalistic professionalism; they’re showing a news story that they think more people will want to see. I’d imagine Fox’s target audience is more rural and midwestern on average, and this story probably hits closer to home for them. It’s all about the money, yo.”

This story hits closer to home for them? Where do YOU live, “yo”? Unless it’s in Wales or Scotland, I daresay this story should hit closer to your home, too. In fact, I kind of wish this story had actually hit your home. Oops! Violent rhetoric. Allow me to retract that statement. Although speaking of hateful rhetoric… I stand in awe of a true master of the art, writing in the same discussion thread (profanity is masked for your reading safety):

“Fox is still f***ing retarded. The devastation is known, and talking about it isn’t it going to change anything. They’re called acts of nature/god for a reason, and the bible-belt is getting hit by storms that wouldn’t be as bad if the imbeciles living there hadn’t fought so damned hard against preventing climate-change.Yeah, I said it. We all know it’s true, and the fact that people are dead shouldn’t dissuade anyone from holding this up as evidence of their stupidity and backwards thinking. What better time than now, when we can see that people are actually being killed by the extreme weather caused by global anthropogenic climate change? But Fox won’t cover that aspect of it, even though CNN has. Fox will, however, talk about all the prayer groups being held to ask a f***ing MYTHICAL SKY WIZARD to stop the tornadoes. In the BIBLE BELT. Where almost everyone is a Christian, even when they don’t believe it (because they get the s**t beat out of them if they don’t act like bible-thumpers). FoxNews: Negative Over 9000, CNN: 0, so it’s still better.”

People like this actually vote, which explains a lot, no? One doesn’t even know where to begin – the seething hatred for Christians (and their mythical sky wizard), the fact that in defiance of all scientific evidence this bitter little hater “knows it’s true” that climate change apparently parked itself over the southern states and let loose, or the journalistic genius of noting that since the tornadoes have already happened, “talking about it isn’t going to change anything.”

The mind boggles. If this doesn’t inspire you to pray (hard) for this country, I don’t know what would.

But I digress again. If any of these mental midgets could actually find the Fox News Channel on their remote, they could watch the only television news outlet where you are likely to hear a variety of views on virtually every topic. Yes, many of the commentators make their opinions clearly known. (As opposed to the Katie Courics and Dan Rathers of the world, who make their opinions clearly known while insisting that they’re objective and neutral.) But Fox News as a pure news organization is excelling, because they are not manipulating virtually all coverage to hew to the leftist party line. (For a concise example of how this type of manipulation works, see this brief deconstruction of a CNN story).

A picture tells a thousand words. Two pictures can speak volumes.

Hannity Lights Up Muslim Congressman for Lies and Smears

2011-04-26T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sean Hannity took on the media last week in a tour de force that should forever and always dismantle any argument that the mainstream or “legacy” media is objective. With such a large viewing audience, the hour-long special should cause some serious discomfort in “journolist” circles. There are a few other circles to which I’d like to introduce some discomfort. That’s why I hope Hannity will expand on a theme he ripped into with some gusto earlier this week, when Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison visited the Hannity show for the first time ever.

Things got a little heated.

Hannity is firing on all cylinders when, with the persistence of a hungry pit bull, he attempts again and again to bring Ellison back to the reality, reported by the 9/11 Commission, that radical Islam is at war with us. Ellison did not want to agree with that wording, squirmed, tried to insert the phrase “Al Qaeda” instead of radical Islam, finally was badgered into agreeing, then recanted and substituted the phrase “Al Qaeda” again.

What is Ellison’s problem? Hannity didn’t even ask him to say Islam was at war with us (which, by the way, it is). He offered the politically-correct “radical” Islam phrase. But Ellison can’t go there, because it conflicts with his narrative that “we’re at war with all violent extremists,” whether they be “Muslim, Christian or Jewish.”

You know, like the Christian terrorists who blew up the U.S. embassy in Lebanon in the name of Jesus. Or the Jewish terrorists who brought down the plane over Lockerbie in the name of God. Or the Buddhist terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and threw a wheelchair-bound elderly man overboard in the name of Buddha. Or the Hindu terrorists who killed a bunch of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in the name of Shiva. You know, violent extremists like that.

Ellison’s unwillingness to call a spade a spade is stomach-turning, and Hannity’s persistence in revealing that reluctance is admirable, as was his insistence that Ellison provide a concrete example of his claim that Fox News, using what Ellison referred to as a “common right wing tactic,” is trying to inflame religious conflict.
Hannity pressed again and again for an example. After dissembling that he didn’t come on the show to debate things he’s said (what did he think Hannity was going to ask him about – cupcake recipes?) offering the smugly arrogant insight that maybe, presumably with his appearance, Fox was finally turning over a new leaf… stating that Hannity already “knew” what he did wrong (“you know what you guys broadcast”)… after all that, Ellison finally offered the utterly pathetic “proof” that Fox inflames conflict: When Hannity talks about terror, he always attaches the word “Muslim.”

Let’s assume that’s true. Why would Hannity do that? Hmmm… could it be the U.S. embassy in Lebanon? Lockerbie? The Achille Lauro? Munich Olympics? How about 9/11? How about the thousands upon thousands of terror attacks both before and after that pivotal date?

How about the fact that every last one of them was done in the name of Allah?

That is why, Rep. Ellison, that Mr. Hannity wants you to acknowledge the danger of (radical) Islam. To even imply that other faith traditions are equally worthy of our concern is an insult to intelligence. If you went camping and didn’t take precautions to protect against an attack by a hungry bear, because you wanted to be equally sure you took precautions to protect against an attack by a hungry bluebird, or a hungry earthworm – you’d probably end up getting eaten by a bear. ‘Nuff said.

The King hearings on the radicalization of Islam are “bear attack” precautions. We all know bears have attacked, do attack and will attack again. To spend time discussing possible bluebird threats is not only silly but dangerous.

Speaking of the King hearings, Hannity took Ellison to task for his gross mischaracterization of a Muslim paramedic who died in 9/11. Ellison claimed, during tearful testimony, that this man had been maligned as “one of them” – as a terrorist. Ellison used this alleged unfair treatment as the basis for his argument that the hearings presented the same kind of ignorant bias. Except, as Hannity pointed out, the 9/11 paramedic was lauded for this service to America and mentioned by name in the Patriot Act. Again going on the offensive, Hannity repeatedly asked Ellison to explain why he misled the American people during his (literal) sob story. The best Ellison could come up with, under pressure, was that the man’s family had told him that “some people” had said hurtful things.

What? Stop those hearings immediately! We can’t have any hurt. Stop the madness!

Hannity also took Ellison to the woodshed for his bogus comparison of Rosa Parks to the folks building the Ground Zero mosque. This is truly a case of leftist analogy #FAIL. I’m sorry – did I miss where Rosa Parks’ friends bombed some buses and killed a few thousand Americans in order to further “black power”? Because if that happened, I wouldn’t be a big fan of her sitting next to me on the bus, either.

As for those who opposed the mosque, Ellison used the classic leftist ploy of “when I called those people bigots, I didn’t mean all of them – just the ones who are bigots.” Uh-huh. Ellison says some people opposed the mosque on good faith, whereas others are just bigots. Hey, Rep. Ellison, I can play that game too! Try this: People who act as apologists for bloodthirsty terrorists make me sick! Of course I don’t mean all people who act as apologists for bloodthirsty terrorists – just the ones who do it on TV.

As strong as Hannity’s challenge to Ellison was, next time he has the congressman on we’d really like to see him raise the subject of Islamic stealth jihad organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In particular he needs to be asked about the Muslim Brotherhood’s secret document An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America which lays out a plan for conquering our country from within.

The Oval Office Is Not Enough - But the World Might Just Do

2011-04-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

Well, he thinks he can.

Obama’s something of an enigma. Despite publishing not one but two autobiographies, his history and motivations are still cloaked in shadows. Conservatives argue: Is he incompetent? Savvy? Overwhelmed? Brilliant? How about evil? These questions are dismissed by both well-meaning (read: ignorant) liberals, and their more malicious and deliberate “swallowed-the-koolaid” leftist comrades. They dismiss questions about Obama’s history or motivation as racially motivated. After all, Tea Party types weren’t complaining till a “black man” got elected, right?

Like virtually every other argument the Left posits, this involves faulty reasoning. It is true that a sleeping giant appears to have awakened over the past few years, and much of that movement, clearly polarized by President Obama, has organized itself around the Tea Party. It is also true that of the millions who have been involved in conservative and Tea Party causes, approximately 0.000021 percent of them have exhibited actual racism (as opposed to the Left, where attacking someone due to their race is a perfectly legitimate political tactic).

The reason that President Obama woke the giant has nothing to do with his skin color (for the 9,783,216^th time). It has to do with his virulently hard-left agenda, which despite the best efforts of the leftist lapdog media, was leaking out, bit by bit, even before he was elected. Since he took office and began ramming that agenda down America’s collective (ha ha) throat, a number of intrepid individuals have researched and chronicled and – well, PROVEN what he’s all about. But the most crucial question, brought up today by Leon de Winter over at Pajamas Media, is this – is the White House merely a stepping stone for him?

I argued in a post earlier this week that, despite the dismay of the Left, Obama’s political ambitions at times dictate that he downplay his class warfare, wealth redistribution, nanny state, America-hating agenda – but make no mistake, it’s still his agenda, and it doesn’t take a seasoned reporter (or an unintended hot microphone) to reveal it. On the contrary, almost every time he opens his mouth he illustrates his utter contempt for most Americans (bitter clingers to guns and religion) and his slavish (ha ha, I said slavish) adherence to a new world order in which we all share the wealth. He also hasn’t been particularly shy about demonstrating the overweening arrogance that is the invariable accompaniment to that worldview; indeed, the biggest leftists (Soros, Gore, Michael Moore, and yes Obama) always excuse themselves from the sacrifices they want everyone else to make.

But my argument, that Obama will do anything to stay in power now so that he can have unfettered access to mucking up our country from 2012-2016, may have taken too limited a view of his ambition – a mistake not made by de Winter:

“I started to understand the fascinating phenomenon of Barack Obama when it suddenly dawned upon me that his present office may not be his final ambition.”

What? Don’t all good former presidents move on to (best case) hyping their presidential libraries or (worst case) meddling in current affairs and being mildly irritating troublemakers (hi, Jimmy Carter!)? I mean, once you’ve been president, it’s all downhill from there… right? Right?

“Obama and his team try to transform America and reorganize society around the concept of social justice. A transformed America will, naturally, lead to a completely different balance of power in the world. Internal change will create external change. The vacuum left behind by a weakened U.S. — a world without a superpower, a globe of equal nations — should be filled by a new transnational body. This is the core dream of every progressive ideologue.”

And what better leader could there be for this vision than one who, at that point, will indeed bring a wealth of executive experience to the cause.

“Does Obama, in word and deed, start to make sense when one starts to understand that he sees his role from a vantage point far above the presidency? Beyond the White House, there is a world for him to gain. What he achieved in Washington he could repeat on a global scale… In order to save the world from devastating global warming and climate change — and, indeed, all fatal consequences of capitalism — the restless progressives in the world are uniting. Obama is well prepared to position himself as their prophet — or messiah. Internationalism, global governance, America the evil — these are ideas Obama has absorbed for year after year… Obama knows precisely what kind of America he envisions. He wants to mold a certain type of America in order to mold a certain type of global governance. For that, he needs another term to reach his goal.”

Could de Winter be way off base? Sure, as he acknowledges. Unfortunately, his scenario cannot be dismissed as deranged conspiracy theory. Too much of it is already in play; too much of it is abundantly evident. That the Left has this as an ultimate agenda is indisputable; that Obama is a product of those teachings is also not in question.

So we have two choices. (1) Obama is destroying the free market and dismantling freedoms in a well-intentioned but misguided effort to make our country a better place (Hope and Change™). Or, (2) He’s got a bigger office in mind than the Oval.

In a way, it doesn’t matter which is true. He must be stopped. But if our president does have grand designs on becoming World Potentate, a negative 2012 outcome will slow him down considerably. That is a goal toward which we must all most diligently apply ourselves.

To that end, remember the distinction I noted at the beginning. Well-meaning liberals vastly outnumber True Left Believers, whose fierce zeal indeed aims for exactly that scary picture de Winter paints – America eviscerated, transnational governance for Our Own Good. So the key to writing a happy ending is engaging the well-meaners – the people currently blinded by Obamic “charisma” who don’t see the darkness ahead. These are people who, with blinders removed, still embrace the promise that is America. Let’s win their hearts and minds.

Feelin' Your Pain: The Left Utterly BETRAYED by Obama's Crass Re-Election Gambit

2011-04-21T08:22:00.000-07:00

They loved him so, so much.

The True Believers over on the Left are awash in a sea of insecurity, anxiety and unhappiness these days. Their Anointed One, their Savior (and no, I’m certainly not talking about Jesus, although the individual I have in mind does seem to think he can walk on water), has turned out to be not quite as unsullied, ideologically, as they imagined. In fact, they are questioning something that was previously accepted unquestioningly – Obama’s birth certificate. Oops no. They’re still not questioning that. What I meant to say was, they’re questioning Obama’s credentials as a True Believer himself.

Salon.com writer Glenn Greenwald is arguing, in fact, that Obama isn’t really a big fan of leftist (they call them “progressive”) outcomes. He points to Obama’s agreement with last week’s budget deal, as well as the President’s launch of a third Middle East war, as signs that Obama is (gasp!) more interested in getting re-elected than he is in real Hope and Change™. He says Obama is moving to the center, maybe even to the… Right!

“Adopting ‘centrist’ or even right-wing policies will always produce the same combination – approval of independents, dilution of GOP anger, media raves, and continued Democratic voter loyalty – that is ideal for the President’s re-election prospects.”

Well, he’s partly right about the strategy. If Obama really were moving to the center or right (which he is not – more on that below,) he might defuse some GOP ire, and he might gain the approval of the more mushy-headed independents who think that being as close to the middle on any given topic is somehow morally superior to having an actual conviction. As for continued loyalty from the media or Democratic voters, that’s a no-brainer no matter what Obama does. The “legacy” media and Obama are Best Friends Forever. And Democratic voters… well, let’s just let Greenwald say it himself – because he’s pretty angry that 2/3 of Democrats supported the budget deal:

“Why would Democrats overwhelmingly support domestic budget cuts that burden the poor? Because, as [fellow Lefty blogger Matt] Yglesias correctly observed, ‘just about anything Barack Obama does will be met with approval by most Democrats.’”

Of course it is! If they don’t approve, they’re racist! DUH.

(As an aside, Greenwald also points out that these alleged centrist policies keep corporate and banking money on Obama’s side, “where it overwhelmingly was in 2008.” Hey, Glenn, thanks for stating that so clearly. I’ve said it numerous times but nobody on your side seems to believe me.)

Anyway, I’m not sure if Greenwald is really buying his own “maybe Obama was never our True Leader” schtick, or if he’s just playing with smoke and mirrors because his analysis utterly ignores the reality of Obama’s first term – both the next couple of years and the last couple.

Face it – the man was elected on a hope and change and transparency and we’re-going-to-do-things-differently and we’re-going-to-bring-folks-together platform. Anyone not completely dumbed down by their public school education had reason to question these vacuous platitudes, but clearly the “great conciliator” was presented to us over and over again by the media, the Democrats, and the larger Left.

The media pointedly and thoroughly ignored all evidence that Obama was most likely a card-carrying socialist, and they and the Democrats made sure that anyone who questioned his “centrist” tendencies was an object of harsh mockery. This has been painstakingly documented by Stanley Kurtz in his outstanding piece of reportage, Radical-in-Chief. Obama’s voting record (the leftiest-possible), his associations (lefty terrorists) and his background (immersion in far Left organizations) was whitewashed and glossed over.

But the far Left knew what they were getting, which was exactly why they were so excited!

He came to Washington and immediately started acting exactly like a socialist. He rammed through Obamacare, pushed unprecedented spending, and told Republicans to piss off (“I won”).

We come to today. With less than two years to go in his term, an American public that is in some cases openly hostile to him, a new GOP House, and Tea Partiers putting up one helluva fight against both him and any RINO-types he may have courted in the past – he has to back off. We all know he risks an ignominious personal defeat in 2012 (since he just had an ignominious group defeat in 2010) unless he backs off his alliances with the far Left, and again woos his “centrist man-in-the-middle let’s-all-work-together” image.

Greenwald’s right about the crass political move. He’s wrong about the motive, if he really thinks Obama’s not interested in the leftist agenda. I have no doubt that Obama is cravenly ambitious. All one has to do is research his early election behavior to know that he’ll stop at nothing to win. Greenwald’s correct that Obama is a political animal.

But this alleged move to the center, or to the right, is as unsubstantial as fairy dust. Obama’s putting on an act, again – it’s his wildly successful election persona. And it is a necessary “evil” he must endure in order to have a clear playing field in 2012. Does anyone really think that the man behind the biggest lurch this country has ever made toward socialism is really modifying his ideology? Of course not. He is merely attempting to stay in the game. He can’t win it if he’s not in it.

But this time around – both recent history and his behavior should illuminate the socialist behind the persona. And speaking of cracks in the persona – being forced to play a role he doesn’t like may be the motivation behind his recent well-documented testiness.

So, Mr. Greenwald, you can rest easy. Dear Leader is still a True Believer. He just has to throw a few (meaningless) bones to the Bitter Clinger side – so that he can ultimately achieve his Higher Purpose. Take a deep breath and relax. Your leftist dreams are still within grasp.

Merry Taxmas! Happy Taxivus! The Top 5 Insane Taxes We Are Forced to Pay

2011-04-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

As the week winds down to the big climax of Tax Day 2011, leftists are getting in the holiday spirit. They can be heard humming their favorite holiday tunes (“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”? “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Tax Day”?) as their excitement mounts over what Obama Claus will put under the Tax Tree for all the good little Boxers and Franks. Who’s on his naughty list? Let’s just say bad boy Paul Ryan won’t be getting any holiday goodies in his Tax Day stocking.

Oh, wait. He wouldn’t have a Tax Day stocking, because nobody in their right mind is actually celebrating April 15. (Though, this year taxes are actually due this Monday on April 18. Go figure.)

But it does seem like a good time to take stock of the most foolish and in some cases insane ways the Left employs crass political gamesmanship in stealing our money. After all, they need a whole lot of it to satisfy their insatiable hunger for government spending, and feeding this beast requires annoying us with taxes at every turn.

First up: Sales taxes on stuff you didn’t even buy

5. California (surprise!) cell phone tax

Your old cell phone has seen better days and so it’s with a spring in your step that you head over to your local cell provider store, knowing that you have FINALLY reached the date on which you can upgrade to the new slick super-duper state-of-the-art touchscreen smartphone. Even better – your cell provider is offering the latest/greatest phone for a song, so long as you re-up your service contract. No worries there – you like the service and don’t plan on switching.

So you buy your new $500 phone – but you only pay, say, $100. At the state sales tax rate of 8.25% (higher for those unfortunate enough to live in cities that tack on even more), you’ll pay an additional $8.25 in taxes. Ah, well. Anyway, you can’t wait to get home and start playing with all the nifty features and apps on your new device!

Whoa, there, intrepid cell phone buyer. Hold on a minute. You’re in California! Here in the Golden State, Governor Moonbeam and his kind, who are not dealing in reality, think that you should not be dealing in it either. So we’re going to PRETEND that you actually paid the full $500 for that phone. Which means your add-on tax will be $41.25, thank you very much – nearly half of what you actually paid for the phone.

This has been an actual true story. Had this been just an example of a true story, I would have more money in my bank account right this minute. And, my blood pressure would be lower.

Next: Vacationing won’t lower that blood pressure…

4. Vacation (or business travel) taxes

So, I found a great deal on a rent-a-car for the weekend. Sure, it’s a peanut-sized vehicle which will risk the life of everyone foolish enough to get inside and hurtle down L.A. freeways, but the price is right – $12 a day!

Whoa, there, intrepid car renter. Hold on a minute. There’s the little matter of some taxes and “fees” to be added to that price which will nudge it up, just a wee bit. Surely not half again as much, like in our cell phone story, right?

Of course not! Try more than double. That’s right! The real per-day price of my rental car, after the airport tax, tourism tax, facility tax, state tax, and vehicle license fee recovery tax (?) is a whopping $25.39. Meaning my 3-day weekend wheels which I thought would run me around $36 will instead inch a whole lot closer to $80. And the rental car website has the chutzpah to say this, right under my “grand total”:

“Additional surcharges, local taxes, etc. may apply.”

Additional? What more could they add? WTF, as the kids say.

But hey. At least I can relax when I get to my hotel. I booked a sweet deal online for a swanky place – I saved up so I could stay at this resort and I got a killer deal… just $200 a night.

Whoa, there, intrepid hotel visitor. Hold on a minute. There’s the little matter of the “tax recovery and service charge” tax. Uh, what? Anyway, it pops that bill up to close to $240 a night, so all of a sudden my two nights in the hotel are a $500 proposition, not $400.

I don’t know about you, but adding an extra $150 onto my weekend in nickel-and-dime taxes does not put me in a festive, relaxing mood. One fellow traveler, on the road all the time for business purposes, expressed it somewhat colorfully:

“I am so sick of these BOHICA (Bend Over Here It Comes Again) tax policies that stick it to the business traveler who has no option but to travel, no matter what the cost. I hate these totalitarian bastards that continue to have their way with our wallets. More than 200 years ago, a few guys got a bit rowdy over taxes far less than what we are raped for nowadays. Yet most people barely notice they’ve been robbed.”

She’s right. Most of us just look at the total, heave a forlorn sigh, and hand over our credit card.

Next: What’s that you’re eating, fatty?

Do as we say, not as we devour

3. Food “sin” taxes

So-called sin taxes are a way for Big Brother (or Big Mama Obama) to express profound disapproval for your poor choice-making skills, and in effect spank you for being a bad boy or girl. (You know, the irony here is that the Left, with all its libertine living, is the first to get on board the “let’s tax the snot out of that bad/immoral/dangerous behavior” train. Unless the bad/immoral/dangerous behavior involves the SEIU, or aborting babies. Then it’s okay. Go figure.)

Let’s start with taxes that gladden the heart of the aforementioned Big Mama (I mean the First Nanny Lady). In her hometown of Chicago, all that windy weather might make you thirsty. Well, heaven forbid you stop somewhere for a (gasp!) soda pop. If you must drink that toxin (Makes you fat! Bad for teeth! Probably makes you dumber!), at least buy it in a can (3% tax) and take it home to enjoy in guilty solitude. Because if you buy a fountain drink, the tax on it is nearly 10%.

Want fries with that? I think not. Because: Makes you fat! Bad for heart! Probably makes you dumber! And especially if you’re still in Chicago, which is one of a number of cities where you pay an extra tax for take-out food.

So skip the fries and grab a candy bar. Not so fast, would-be sugar fiend! Still in Illinois? Okay. Check your candy and see if it contains flour (Twix, Butterfinger, and Kit-Kats qualify). Illinois says candy, which has an extra sales tax of up to 6.25 percent, is “any sugar-based product not requiring refrigeration or containing flour.” So if you’re breaking off a piece of that Kit-Kat bar, SCORE! The insanity is not limited to Illinois. In Kentucky, a Milky Way is a cheap choice, but the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup – well, that’ll cost ya.

Enough about what goes in. Surely they can’t tax what comes out.

Why… turns out they can.

Maryland has a flush tax. You read that right. Households that flush (isn’t that everyone?) get a tax added to their monthly water bill. That extra tax has collected more than $150 million for the state environmental department, so they can take “action on climate change.” See, here’s how it works: You poo, and they piss away your money! Very symbiotic, no?

Next: Sex and drugs and rock & roll and…

2. Sin taxes your mother would approve of

Well, not if she’s a good libertarian, perhaps. But it does boggle the mind how far politicians will go to pick your pocket. Like, they’ll follow you right into the strip club. If you’re in Utah or Texas, anyway (they have strip clubs in Utah and Texas?). In Utah, any business where someone appears nude or partially nude pays a 10% sales and use tax on admission, merchandise, food, drink and “services.” Texas has a strip club “pole tax” that charges an extra $5 in admission for pervs patrons who wish to enjoy some “dancing.” The state Supreme Court is still deciding whether that infringes freedom of expression, but the state has collected millions already.

Maybe you’re not into the whole strip club scene – gambling’s more your style. Well, even if it’s just a friendly game of poker around the kitchen table, someone’s going to get some tax money out of it, at least in Alabama. Lawmakers there tax any purchase of a deck of (evil?) playing cards – an extra dime. Talk about nickel-and-diming us to death. However, this tax only applies to decks containing no more than 54 cards. A 55-card deck is tax-free. Yahoo!

Neither sex nor gambling your vice? Maybe you’re into the wicked art of body manipulation. Clearly we can’t allow that to go on without soaking someone for extra bucks. So if you really must have a giant butterfly tattooed above your fanny… or you simply cannot go on without a stud embedded in the side of your nose… just don’t do it in Arkansas. (Wait – that advice probably has a much, much wider application than just tattoo parlors, come to think of it.) Anyway, in Bill Clinton’s home state, tattoos and piercings will pierce you for an additional 6% sales tax.

Hey, you with the fake bake! You think you’re getting off scot-free? Not if Obamacare has anything to say about it (AND IT DOES). Taxing Tanning salons now charge an additional 10% tax that’s expected to raise close to $3 billion over the next decade. Now, right there’s a reason for celebrity tanners like George Hamilton and Lisa Rinna to immediately enlist in the repeal fight.

Next: Perhaps the dumbest tax ever conceived in the long and rich history of dumb taxes

1. Illegal drug tax

I know. Wrap your brain around that one for a minute. We’ll come back to it.

It’s difficult to win the coveted “dumbest tax” award. You have some seriously stiff competition. We’ve already covered quite a few of the contenders, and we haven’t even touched on some of New York’s finest taxes, like the extra levies on haunted houses, or bagels (wanna eat at the bagel shop? That costs extra). Fun is taxed in Kansas and West Virginia (hot air balloon rides and sparklers, respectively). Professional athletes have to pay tax for money they earn during away games in at least 20 states (you beat the Lakers in L.A., and you will pay – you will pay Jerry Brown, that is).

Good grief, the New York City Fire Department proposed charging a $500 “crash tax” to anyone involved in an accident that required emergency response. That’s assuming you survived, I guess. If you don’t, that’s when King County in Seattle gets you. They now charge $50 to REPORT a death. If you don’t pay, you can’t get the paperwork needed for a burial. Kinda gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “death and taxes.”

But for pure, unadulterated imbecility, nothing compares with the government’s attempt to dislodge tax money from illegal drug transactions. In several states, you are supposed to drop by your local tax collection office and pay the tax on your illegal drugs ahead of time. They will give you a stamp that you can attach to your container of illegal drugs (the amount of tax you pay, of course, depends on the size of your stash). Anyway, don’t worry your little head for one second that you will get arrested at the tax office, no sirree! It’s illegal for tax authorities to report you to those other, mean authorities. Should those meanies get you, however, your stamp will prove that you are a law-abiding taxpayer! Or… er… well, I’m not sure what it proves.

The feds are just as dumb when it comes to taxes. IRS tax guidelines at one point say, “…illegal income, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Form 1040, line 21.” There you go, scummy drug dealer. A little free tax advice from me. You’re welcome.

Taxes are serious business, of course. In the future I hope to bring you some lists of the most outrageous taxes that really are crushing our quality of life. But this nickel-and-diming stuff, the taxes that are thought up by legislators who seem to be completely daft – they have a way, when added up, of crushing the spirit. That would be the Spirit of Liberty, who is down but not out. She’s gearing up (after Obama’s latest raise-taxes, tax-the-rich speech) for another fight against the Spirit of Tax Day Past, Tax Day Present… and especially Tax Day Future. God bless us, everyone!

Them's Fightin' Words: States Smack Down Obamacare, Illegals and Unions

2011-04-14T09:25:00.000-07:00

I attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat earlier this month – this is the final installment of my five reports on the various speakers and panels. You can read the others at Newsreal Blog... they covered Obama’s reign of failure, stealth jihad, separation of mosque and state, and Dennis Prager’s address on God (this was a hot one). They can also be seen here on this site!

With a salute to states refusing to march in lockstep with the Obama agenda, and with the stakes for our country higher than ever, one U.S. Congressman and two law professors argued forcefully for the current state rebellions on issues of public unions, illegal immigration, and Obamacare during a spirited panel discussion at the David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat earlier this month. The ferocity of some of the state-level battles now being waged made for a lively presentation.

Congressman Steve King is fighting Obamacare tooth and nail, and outlined a strategy to defeat it once and for all. The legislative approach involves introducing bills to defund and repeal at the federal level; the litigation approach involves the various states fighting Obamacare in court. Panelist John Eastman, a renowned Constitutional expert, insisted that the healthcare bill is indeed patently flawed, and that none of the administration’s arguments (which keep changing) are legally sound. Unfortunately, that is not a guarantee that courts will not rule in Obama’s favor.

Along with discussing states taking the feds to court – the panelists covered Obama taking the states to court, as well, in the case of Arizona’s immigration bill. Nationally-recognized litigator Kris Kobach said that letting states fight illegal immigration is the ultimate unfunded mandate, burying border states in fiscal liability. The profoundly negative effect on K-12 schools, and dramatic increases in crime, are two particularly troubling results. Congressman King noted that more than 20,000 American citizens have died at the hands of illegal aliens, making illegal immigration a crisis issue in some areas.

One would think, as the panelists pointed out, that our President would want to step in and assist states attempting to tackle this problem themselves. But we all know that instead of assisting, he’s filed a federal lawsuit against Arizona. Thanks for the kick in the face, Dear Leader! Eastman goes so far as to characterize Obama’s blockage of the Arizona bill as immoral – partly because in the face of immense unemployment figures, he has no business keeping even one citizen from a job he or she could take from an illegal. “Create one job today – depart one illegal today,” Eastman said.

Kobach debunked the leftist myth that there are only two solutions to the illegal alien problem – round them all up and deport them, which is a daunting and expensive proposition – or give them all amnesty. A third alternative is to arrange factors so as to facilitate self-deportation. If businesses were penalized for hiring illegals, all benefits stripped from them, and arrest threatened, that would be a powerful disincentive for them to stay here. Kobach noted that when some of these “get tough” tactics have been signed into law in various states, the numbers of illegal aliens have dropped automatically as they cross back out of the U.S.

There is no question that the focus of much political battle has shifted from Washington, DC to the state capitals, as state after state takes on the Left on these issues and more. Wisconsin’s public union battle may have been the most strident to date, but it was not the first and it will not be the last. It is telling that at an event like the Freedom Center retreat, with a decided lean toward national and international affairs, that one of the most vigorous panels was all about states and their rights to fight the federal government. Given the intensity of the state-level battles, it is not surprising that some attendees from battle-weary states, like Arizona, say they would be lying if they didn’t admit the thought of secession has crossed their minds. That, of course, is a testament to the gulf that separates the Left from the rest of America.

Parents as Sheep: Lunch Fight is Tiny Battle in Big War

2011-04-13T14:14:00.000-07:00

Parents being told, in effect, that they are too stupid to pack their own kids' lunch - or put another way, the uber-Nanny State machinations of one Chicago public school principal - has generated a lot of negative reaction, and rightly so. As my colleague Lisa Graas points out:

"If we can't even decide for ourselves what our kids can eat, we might as well throw in the towel and hoist a Marxist flag up the flagpole. There is no more basic decision for parents than what we decide to feed our children. If we capitulate on something so utterly fundamental to parenting, there is no freedom that cannot be taken from us."

However, it occurs to me that we capitulated, a long time ago, one something even more fundamental than what we put in their stomachs, and that is what we put in their minds.

The parents who are bowing and scraping to this public school official by submissively accepting her dictates regarding the potential evils of potato chips or cupcakes are parents who no longer can think critically or independently. And why is that, you say? Because they themselves are products of this same public education system.

Wake up, people! Public schools, although on a dizzying downward spiral now, have not been bastions of rigorous academic or critical inquiry anytime in the recent past - in fact, I would say that any of us still young enough to vigorously debate in the public square did not in fact have the benefit of an excellent public school education (with the occasional exception in various affluent communities, etc.).

People like Bill Ayers have been teaching the teachers - effectively hollowing out America's education system from the inside with the rot of Marxism. These are the people who are educating your children - and it's why the younger the voter, the more likely he/she voted for Obama.

So I would remind my fellow conservatives - the battle in the schools is not what your child eats. It is what your child thinks.

So teach your child to do so. Whether you make the courageous and principled choice to homeschool your kids, the financially sacrificial choice to pay for private education, or you use the deeply-flawed public education system - engage in conversation with your children every single day about what they're learning, what they're absorbing from the culture around them, how they're being prodded to think. Talk to them about why you believe the way you do. Give them examples; show them in a hands-on way the value of the free market. Teach them to revere our liberties. For heaven's sake, read the Constitution with them. Make sure they know the beauty of what we have.

Long term - this kind of parenting is really America's only hope.

Yes, the Chicago school principal is guilty of gross intrusion into private family matters. But she could not get away with that if the Left hadn't already stacked the deck. If my kids were in that school, I'd be a lot more worried about what's going into their brains and their hearts than what's going into their stomachs.

Budget Deal Leaves Leftists Feeling Blue - #Winning!

2011-04-13T14:10:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. You’re not feeling that chipper over the last-minute aversion of a government shutdown. Perceived “caves” on key defunding issues like Planned Parenthood, NPR, and the budget in general have a lot of us feeling a bit down, although there may be room for some guarded optimism – my colleague Joseph Klein lays out the case here. And although all right-thinking people are relieved that the Left will not hold our soldiers hostage during a government shutdown, many of us think that shutting down so-called nonessential federal functions is EXACTLY what we need to do long term.

However. We can certainly take heart in knowing that our friends on the Left are reeling with despair over Friday night’s deal.

Illustrative of this perceived trauma is Huffington Post writer Richard (RJ) Eskow, otherwise known as “Senior Fellow with The Campaign for America’s Future” (in the interest of full disclosure, please note that I am “Senior Gal with The Campaign to Cut the Snot out of the Federal Budget”). Anyway, Eskow’s article is entitled “Why Progressives Keep On Losing and the Right Keeps on Winning,” which tells you right there the mood over at Huffpo.

Eskow attempts to rally the troops by explaining how those evil Tea Partiers manage to outmaneuver the socialist Left, but he’s got his premises (surprise!) all wrong:

“…it’s not as if progressives don’t have any cards to play. Their policies are very popular, while those of the Tea Party and the Republicans are equally unpopular.”

Uh, what? Eskow must have screwed on his lefty blinders so tightly that it’s interfering with his ability to remember the 2010 election. See, RJ, that was kind of a popularity contest, that thing we did last November. And to paraphrase Dear Leader, YOU LOST. The real question is, how can one can explain your absolutely delusional insistence that leftist ideas are actually more popular than the core Tea Party mantras of lower taxes, less spending and limited government?

Speaking of delusions, ol’ RJ just keeps ‘em coming. Why are we intellectually and morally superior “progressives” losing, he asks? Because! Because The Tea Party is way richer than we are (of course, the phrase “Koch Brothers” makes the requisite appearance, one word away from the phrase “ultra-conservative” – why can’t the poor Koch brothers ever just be regular old conservatives?) And the Koch brothers happened because the Supreme Court has been packed, ideologically, by the GOP! (Uh, what?) Those damnable evil rich Republican ultra-conservatives!

“…decades worth of funding for ad campaigns and ‘conservative think tanks’ (an oxymoron, perhaps?) continue to lay the groundwork for destructive moves like the one we so (sic) last night.”

Is anyone else amused by the fact that RJ mocks the idea of conservative thinking while in the same sentence misspells the word “saw”? Heh heh. Of course, he’s talking out of a bodily orifice other than his mouth when he claims that more money is being pumped into “their side” than “his side.” Big Democrat money is only a union away, RJ. You might want to consider reading this and this, my friend.

Ah, but that would mean dropping the daisy chain of magical fairy-dust delusions you’re peddling here. Like:

“Only 6% of those polled think that reducing the deficit is Congress’ highest priority.”

Yes, I’m sure that’s the case – if “those polled” are, say, all current occupants of the White House (and the 6% would represent the wisdom of Bo, the First Dog).

This lack of grasp on reality is worrisome. Isn’t that a sign of mental illness? I’m concerned for RJ, and with good reason. After demonizing Paul Ryan’s budget proposal as positively Dickensian…

“…the environment is despoiled, the poor go unfed, and the middle class faces a lifetime of financial insecurity following (sic, again) by an old age of sickness and penury.”

…he then goes on to lay out HIS vision for America. You may have to grab an Excedrin for this one:

“First increase Social Security retirement benefits by 15%, across the board, by lifting the payroll tax cap and imposing a financial transactions tax. Second, increase income taxes on a sliding scale that goes up to 60% for the highest earners in the country… Third, add $500 billion to our stimulus spending over the next two years, and keep adding it until unemployment is down to 4%. Fourth, immediately add a public option, ‘Medicare For All’ plan that’s voluntarily available to Americans of all age brackets.”

Yes, RJ, you’re right. That vision is far, far more popular than anything being offered by those dumb teabaggers. And way smarter and more sophisticated-like, too!

RJ offers a glimpse into the leftist mind (is this where I say “an oxymoron, perhaps?”) in his gloomy disillusionment over Obama, who he once thought was the long yearned-for Energizing Great Leader of the Left. Now he’s more of a “we don’t need no stinking leader” school of thought:

“The Tea Party is seen as a leaderless movement. By having no alliance to a party or politician, it holds a credible veto threat over the Republicans and their leadership.”

Insert “Tea Party” for “progressive” and “Republican” for “Democratic” and he’s got this one right:

“Challenging incumbents doesn’t just help the progressive cause. Paradoxically, it helps the Democratic Party too, by forcing it to clarify its ‘brand” and espouse more popular positions than those it now holds.”

He counsels his fellow socialists (although he insists on calling them progressives) to work within the Democratic party, but with this caveat:

“…their relationship to the party should mirror what Thoreau said about his relationship to the world: Be in it, but not of it.”

Sheesh. Leave it to a leftist to quote the Bible, but credit Thoreau. Then again, RJ’s in a bad mood today.
Come to think of it, I’m starting to feel a little more chipper now.

The Emperor Has No Clothes - How to End Obama's Reign of Failure

2011-04-11T15:02:00.000-07:00

I attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat earlier this month and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the fourth; the third, on stealth jihad, can be read on Newsreal Blog here; the second, Separation of Mosque and State, is here; the first, Dennis Prager’s comments on how God’s doing, is here (or elsewhere on this site).

My first post from the David Horowitz retreat poked a little fun at Obama thinking he’s God. Nah, he (probably) doesn’t think he’s God. He does, however, seem to think that America is his personal empire. This approach to government was of course a hot topic at the retreat, as speaker after speaker unpacked the dismal failures of the Obama administration. At the top of everyone’s agenda? How to end his “reign.”

There was plenty of disagreement – not as much about particular candidates as about overall strategy. Author Ralph Peters offered the most divergent viewpoints – for instance, opining that President Obama’s Libya strategy should be given a chance and is not all bad. Nevertheless, calling Obama a second rate man of first rate charisma, he offered advice about nominating a candidate – urging conservatives to stop administering “litmus tests” and to purge the phrase “RINO” from their vocabulary. This advice stood in sharp contrast to that offered by Congressman Tom McClintock, who reminded conservatives of the dangers of RINOs and said “we win when we act like us.”

Author Mickey Kaus counseled a populist approach for Republicans, marrying the fight against public unions with a fight against “Wall Street interests.” Mr. Kaus is wrong on that one – the Wall Street issue is complex and not currently in the public eye. Republicans do need to frame the debate on public sector unions to highlight how it’s a battle for the (true) working man – the one who has to work till he’s 70 to support his government worker neighbor who gets a bigger paycheck and retires at 50.

Another perspective was offered by Democratic pollster Pat Caddell, who, while disavowing the corruption of his own party, cautioned Republicans against acting stupid. Referring to the 2010 elections and recent events, he said he’s “never seen a party win so big and cave so fast.” Caddell reminded GOP strategists that they should hit Obama where he is vulnerable – the incompetence of his explanation for Libya, for example (Victor Davis Hanson, in referring to the Obama Doctrine, said “there is none!”).

While confessing a fondness for the straight talk of a Chris Christie, Caddell emphasized that at this point Republicans should be standing firm on the issues they consider important, and letting the potential candidates emerge from that process. Caddell also issued a pointed warning to the GOP: “The American people and the Tea Party are not to be mocked.” I agree – and point out that if Tea Partiers feel mocked, things are going to get ugly for many Republicans (as rhetoric surrounding this week’s budget deal made crystal clear).

Virtually everyone agreed throughout the weekend that “it’s the economy, stupid”… but that terror concerns are also growing. Potential presidential candidate Michelle Bachmann told attendees that President Reagan’s success stemmed from his emphasis on these twin pillars of prosperity and national security.

Speaking of national security, pollster John McLaughlin noted that concern over external threats is bigger now that at any time since the Cold War. These concerns were vividly brought to life by James Carafano of the Heritage Institute, who screened the movie “33 Minutes” – which refers to the time it would take a ballistic missile to reach our shores from any number of hostile nations currently attempting to build nuclear weapons. The movie is a powerful argument in favor of a solid missile defense program – something Obama has allowed to lapse.

On another front, law professor John Eastman discussed the President’s unconstitutional penchant for ignoring the legislative process and forcing his agenda via executive order, creating more and more unaccountable government bureaucracies. Eastman also noted that Obama is ignoring the non-delegation doctrine in allowing, in some cases, private agencies (of a leftist bent) to in effect run federal agencies.

Obama’s insane job-killing agenda was unpacked in detail. Finance experts David Newton and Ben Horowitz (yes, that’s David’s son) outlined the oh-so-simple path to economic recovery: cut taxes, cut spending, cut regulations, and expand domestic oil. In other words, pretty much the polar opposite of everything Obama stands for.

As for the 2012 race, there was some discussion among attendees as to whether Godfather Pizza magnate Herman Cain would be an attractive choice – a black Republican vs. a (half) black Democrat. Racial issues were not, however, much of a factor in weekend discussions – although well-known investment strategist Charles Payne did note that Obama has certainly failed to bring us together. He pointed to “serious divisions fanned by the highest office in the country,” the politics of envy, and the misplaced sense of entitlement engendered in young people, particularly those in recognized victim groups. As a black child, he was involved in programs, ostensibly aimed at reducing poverty, that “tell you every day that ‘they’ don’t like you, that you’re a victim.”

Again, while most speakers were taking a wait-and-see approach about specific Republican candidates (many names were not mentioned at all over the weekend’s many panels) – the discussion of disastrous Obama policy, including incoherent approaches to China and Israel, underscored why he’s “got to go.” Making that a reality will take courage – something shown by Paul Ryan when he unveiled his budget plan that of course took on the “sacred cow” of entitlements. Although some conference attendees expressed concern over alienating voters with this type of action, Congressman Ed Royce said that’s exactly why GOP legislators were elected – and they can’t wait till 2012 to take action. That principled approach should help Republicans, not hurt them, if conservatives can get out the message that they’re helping all working people by ensuring the entire system doesn’t collapse under its own weight.

They're Hijacking More than Planes - America's Freedoms Used Against Us

2011-04-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

They call our freedom "terrorism" - but they're using it against us

I attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the third; the second, Separation of Mosque and State, is on Newsreal Blog here; the first here. You can also read them both elsewhere here on this blog!

What’s the definition of a “moderate Muslim”? Writer Andrew McCarthy addressed that question at this past weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat, during a panel on “Jihad on the Home Front.” Author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad, McCarthy brought a little levity to the issue with these tongue-in-cheek questions: Is it someone who is not actually currently in the process of blowing something up? Is it someone who has run out of ammunition?

The reason for his sarcasm is the inordinately generous view of certain Muslims as “moderate” by the mainstream media, which has been quick to categorize certain Muslims as moderate, for example, because they condemned 9/11. But some of the same individuals who condemned that attack have since called for fatwas to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

McCarthy fully recognizes that many American Muslims are indeed putting American concepts of liberty and free markets ahead of the politics of their faith. These are the people who can be well characterized as moderates – the kind of people who wish to separate the violent, jihadist, terrorist and sharia aspects of Islam from their day to day lives. (Whether or not what they then practice is truly Islam is a discussion for another time.) And McCarthy is quick to note that were it not for such moderate Muslims, the United States would have not had nearly the success it has enjoyed in tracking down and capturing Islamic terrorists, especially in our own country. However, McCarthy thinks it’s important to differentiate between what we might call true moderates, and those the media portrays as moderate – because that difference reveals the covert nature of so-called stealth jihad.

Shaykh Yusuf Qaradawi is one who condemned 9/11 but has since called for attacks on American soldiers. Why the discrepancy? McCarthy says it’s because 9/11 actually was counterproductive to a more stealthy effort to infiltrate American society that had been in place for years already. (It certainly brought home the dangers of Islam; many of us were blissfully unaware up to that point.)

Jihad, according to McCarthy, exists to spread sharia to the world. By force is one method, but the West is too powerful for Islam to conquer at this point – unless it infiltrates and conquers from within. This, according to McCarthy, explains the otherwise puzzling collaboration between the hard Left and the Muslim Brotherhood. After all, on certain issues they do not see eye to eye (gay rights comes to mind). But as McCarthy points out, their commonalities are greater than their differences. They are both totalitarian, authoritarian, and cannot coexist with American-type freedoms. “Historically,” says McCarthy, “they have always collaborated.”

Berkeley law professor and former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo, another “jihad on the homefront” panelist, discussed the Obama administration’s incompetent policies regarding terrorists. (Read my colleague Donald Douglas’ detailed discussion of Yoo’s comments here.) Because of Obama’s emphasis on killing them instead of capturing them, American intelligence has suffered. And the administration’s insistence on treating terrorism like regular law enforcement cases has had severely deleterious effects.

For one thing, processing terror suspects (even those from Iraq or Afghanistan) through civilian trials exposes sensitive intelligence to the disclosure laws of open court. Perhaps even worse – soldiers who do capture suspected terrorists are expected to collect evidence that would stand up in court. As Yoo points out, this puts our soldiers at greatly increased risk because now they not only have to get their man, they have to go back and interview witnesses and collect material evidence. This, of course, is utter insanity. But the terrorists are only happy to use our own legal system against us.

Obama would do well to consider Yoo’s commonsense suggestions, which include keeping terrorists in military courts, restoring operational flexibility to soldiers instead of police duties, and morphing the FBI into a counterterrorism organization. (Other agencies certainly can take over chasing down bank robbers and white collar criminals.)

Yoo and McCarthy both articulated how jihad threatens America; recognizing this threat on the homefront is crucial. But as panelist Karen Lugo can sadly attest, our system is being hijacked and used against us.

Elaborating on the nature of so-called “civilizational jihad,” Lugo, a prominent law professor, told of coming face-to-face with the anti-free speech component of American Islamists. She helped organize a protest against militant, anti-American Muslims holding a fundraiser in Yorba Linda, California. The protest drew hundreds of well-behaved people, but a few misbehaved and made hateful statements that were immediately “weaponized,” as Lugo reports, by the radical group CAIR (Council for American Islamic Relations). CAIR worked with a local “human relations commission” to push for her termination as a law professor, and organized a campaign to crash her campus email account – although her university connections were in no way used as part of the protest. Lugo points out the “chilling” effect of so-called human rights commissions to discourage people from their Constitutional right to express political opinion. She also points out the irony that the commission was not the least interested in the Muslim “hate speech” that she was there to protest – commission members instead focused merely on attempting to intimidate those who would object to the radical Islamist statements. This is our system – being turned on its head.

Special note: Of utmost importance to patriotic activists – Karen Lugo escaped from this unfair dilemma primarily because she’d arranged to have two different people videotaping the event, which proved she was involved in no wrongdoing. Do not underestimate the power – protective power – of video!

Separation of Mosque and State?

2011-04-07T08:46:00.000-07:00

I attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the second; read the first elsewhere on this blog or here.

I have to give props to David Horowitz – his recent Freedom Center weekend featured a significant diversity of thought. A particularly fascinating element was a debate between Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, author of Stealth Jihad, and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander who advocates the “separation of mosque and state.”

The crux of the debate is the million dollar question – are jihad, terrorism and sharia law inextricably linked to Islam itself, or can so-called moderate Muslims embrace American concepts of liberty and justice, independent of the political aspects of Islam?

Jasser, of course, believes that type of separation can indeed happen – that Islam on its own is not inherently violent or hateful. Part and parcel of this perspective is the whole concept of “radical Islam” being some type of extremist outworking of an overall less malevolent Islamic worldview.

Spencer, who unlike Jasser is not a Muslim, argued that anyone who studies the scriptures of Islam must come to the conclusion that so-called radical Islamists are merely acting on the actual tenets of their faith – in other words, that the Islamic worldview is indeed malevolent. And Spencer’s got me convinced that he’s a lot closer to the truth than Jasser.

History teaches that Islam has not always been aggressive, as Jasser pointed out, but Spencer noted that just because Muslims were not powerful enough to wage violent jihad at certain historical moments does not mean that their goal had ever changed.

Jasser also argued that how Muslims perceive Koranic teaching is somewhat affected by their particular imam (or teacher,) the implication being that radical imams produce radical followers. He drew a parallel between that and a Jew or Christian deferring to their rabbi’s or minister’s view of scripture. But the Bible urges followers to test any teacher’s interpretation against the scripture itself – effectively minimizing the danger of a teacher leading people astray. Not to say it hasn’t happened – virtually every cult is birthed by someone twisting the words of scripture – but therein lies the point. Jasser’s analogy falls apart because any “radical minister,” for example, is soon exposed as a teacher of anti-biblical thought. In comparison, the so-called radical imams are teaching a doctrine that is in fact what the Koran says.

Another implication of the argument that Muslims can separate some of the Koran’s teachings from their everyday lives is the idea that Islam simply needs to “grow up” – that it needs to evolve into something more compatible with modern values. An unspoken assumption behind this idea is that Judaism and Christianity have already gone through such an evolution, which is why those belief systems are compatible with Western thought.

This is nonsense. Judaism and Christianity are compatible with Western thought, all right, because Western thought owes much of its lineage – the concepts of individual responsibility, private property, and fallen human nature, among other valuable lessons – in part to Judeo-Christian thinking. But Jasser misunderstands the fundamental nature of both Judaism and Christianity. They have both maintained the same teachings for thousands of years. They have not “evolved” (although they have been bastardized, by some – but that’s a discussion for another day).

So quite frankly it seems kind of insulting to Muslims to imply that, if we just give Islam some more time, it will “grow up” and become a faith we can all learn to love. The only change that can happen and is compatible with our American system of government is when individual Muslims decide that living in liberty and freedom is of higher value to them than fully embracing Islam (which, although he might not characterize it exactly so, is indeed what Jasser has chosen to do).

Regarding sharia law in particular, Jasser says that any system of law that may be said to be “of God” becomes manmade law when humans implement it – but this is a very weak argument that somehow sharia itself can be separated from Islam. In another discussion during the Horowitz event, Jasser indicated that he thought a person could embrace sharia “just for themselves” – but this is illogical. No one can embrace any system of law all by themselves, because systems of law include such things as judgment and punishments. More than one person is required for a legal system.

In defending attacks against the prophet Mohammed, Jasser implied that other faiths look up to men who were flawed, like Abraham. Jasser of course entirely misses the point that neither Judaism nor Christianity hold Abraham to be equivalent to deity, or in any way impervious to criticism. (Nobody gets killed if you draw a picture of him, either.) And the Bible is fairly clear about Abraham’s personal failings. Spencer agreed, however, that calling Mohammed out for his pedophilia does not win over most Muslims.

Dr. Jasser, somewhat poignantly, asked what he was to teach his children if Islam could not be separated from its violent, anti-Western tendencies and political visions of conquering the world. I would argue, with great respect for Dr. Jasser and his noble but misguided mission of trying to fuse his faith with American values – that in fact Islam is not a faith that he wants to pass along to his children.

Other presentations throughout the weekend underscored that reality, as speakers like Andrew McCarthy and Karen Lugo brought home, again and again, the sobering reality of fatwas, terrorism and jihad. Watch the NewsReal Blog site for video of the Enemies Within panel, in particular.

Why You Better Pray that God Is Not Dead - Wisdom from Dennis Prager

2011-04-05T11:08:00.000-07:00

I attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.

I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I’m about to unpack on you. But let’s ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common?
A: Neither has a birth certificate!

Q: What is one difference between Obama and God?
A: Leftists love Obama!

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God?
A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!

Heh heh. El Rushbo tells a good joke. And that’s a lighthearted introduction into a heavy topic – a topic that talk show host and nationally-syndicated columnist Dennis Prager opted to take on as the final keynote speaker at this weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

God, according to Prager, is in trouble.

Of course, God is not really in trouble. We’re the ones who are really in trouble, because of what we as a society are doing to God. For the purposes of this discussion, it really doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist – the ramifications apply to us all. But Prager thinks he knows why atheism might be more attractive to a lot of people right now, and he outlined a number of reasons.

The first is the evil that people are doing in God’s name. And no, he’s not talking about the Westboro crazies (although they’re definitely in the running for consideration). He’s talking about Islam. Every time someone yells Allahu Akbar as they blow something up, or slit someone’s throat – they’re claiming to act for God. This, no doubt, is a turnoff to many.

What’s perhaps an even greater turnoff is what Prager calls the “pathetic response” to this evil from (mainstream) Judaism and Christianity. The fact that only Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians are consistently speaking out against Islam’s crimes (a good deed for which they are roundly condemned as “Islamophobic”) is indeed a sad commentary on the state of those who claim religious faith in this country.

It’s not enough, as Prager indicated, to condemn religious violence in general – because nobody is slitting anyone’s throat in the name of Jesus Christ, and nobody is yelling “Yay Torah” before blowing themselves up. Evil should be identified and denounced – and most Jews and Christians are doing a terrible job of that. It appears that their God has no teeth.

What passes for faith in most mainstream (liberal) Christian denominations and most of Judaism (outside Orthodox) has become a mushy pablum of warm fuzzy feelings instead of concrete moral standards. One can’t even discuss concepts like sin and hell (which are necessary prerequisites, by the way, for mercy and grace) without being accused of “extremism” and, in a torturous logical twist, of being just like “radical Muslims.”

The lack of critical thinking skills from which these illogical flights of fancy emerge is of course the fault, in part, of our current educational vacuum, but Prager frames it in an interesting way. If a student was homeschooled in a strict Christian home his or her entire life, never allowed to watch television, listen to popular music, read anything other than the Bible, get on the internet, or even leave the house – would you consider them somewhat brainwashed? You might – although of course, I defy you to actually find anyone who has experienced this (despite the fevered imaginations of teacher unions that oppose homeschooling or any type of Christian education).

Now Prager turns this on its head. Keeping in mind the virtually lockstep leftist leanings of popular culture, the media and our educational institutions – if a student went to a secular K-12 school system his or her entire life, absorbed countless hours of secular TV programming, listened to nothing but popular music, read nothing about teen-oriented magazines and books, and went to movies, concerts etc. that were all completely non-religious and non-conservative in nature, would you consider them to be somewhat brainwashed? Because you should – and I guarantee that you can find thousands and probably millions of kids whose lives mirror this set of experiences.

What does this have to do with God? Well, an entire generation has been inoculated against thinking about Him in any kind of serious way. And without an understanding of God, as Prager says, our concepts of good and evil grow blurry indeed, and we get all mixed up, just like the leftists who confuse hating people who fight evil with hating evil.

What’s more, as Prager points out, “When you don’t fight great evil, you fight little evils.” If you can’t be bothered to denounce the decapitation of an Israeli infant by murderous Palestinians, but you get all agitated about someone burning a book (I’m looking at you, Joe Klein, Harry Reid, and Lindsey Graham) – you’re part of this problem. If you’re an animal rights activist who is okay with PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” program, which compares a barbecued hamburger with the gassing and incineration of 6 million humans – well, frankly, words fail me on that one.

But this is the kind of world we humans create when we shut out God. Our country was founded by men who, regardless of their personal relationship to any particular religion, recognized both the existence of a Deity and the moral imperative of aligning oneself with Him. They were not all Christians (although most of them were), but they all believed that the best government would be that system that understood man’s true nature (we are eminently corruptible) and crafted a system of checks and balances in full recognition of that nature.

Today, we still enjoy (some of) the fruit of those wise decisions. When we insist on denying the importance of God in our societal life, as Dennis Prager so eloquently reminded us, we do so at our own peril.

Nanny Knows Best! Feds Can't Stop Butting In

2011-04-04T11:36:00.000-07:00

Some years back, I got a ticket for driving without my seatbelt on. I explained to the nosy officer that I had a painful sunburn which the seatbelt would exacerbate, and he asked me if I had a doctor’s note for that.

A doctor’s note! When’s the last time you got a sunburn and ran to the doctor? But that’s not really the point. The point is, he apparently thought I was a moron who couldn’t figure out, all by my little self, that the seatbelt was rubbing my sunburn raw. I needed an “expert” to pin a note to my collar to show the nice officer.

Well, be thankful, comrades, that Those Who Know Best are issuing more Proclamations From On High That Are For Your Own Good:

New FEDERAL labeling requirements will force chain restaurants, bakeries, convenience stores and coffee chains to clearly post the number of calories for each item on the menu.

Why? Because you’re a stupid fat slob who doesn’t know how to feed yourself, and because Michelle Obama said so… that’s why.

Now, some conservatives are entirely missing the point on this one. They’re saying things like, “well, I kind of like having the calorie counts posted. It makes it easier for me to order something healthy.”

You know what would make it even easier? If Michelle Obama came to your house and personally fixed your salad and rice cakes. But we don’t want that, now, do we?

Wake up, fellow chubsters. It’s not about what’s easy. It’s about what’s right. It’s ALWAYS about what’s right.

The government – especially the federal government – has no Constitutional right to tell the restaurant owner how to advertise his wares. Nor ~~does~~ should the government have the power to force the restaurant owner to pay for new signs to post information he may or may not want to post. Period. End of discussion.

If customers want calorie counts listed, they should speak to the store manager. As it is, this law doesn’t apply to non-chain eateries, or movie theaters, or a number of other places where people buy food. Again, if customers want something, they should ask for it, and if a store owner is not responsive, let the power of the free market guide the choice of where to dine out next. Consumers should have all the power, and they would, if the government would just get out of the way.

By the way, who do you think will pay for that new sign at the Burger King? Why, you will, dear consumer, when your burger price gets hiked to cover the store owner’s increased costs. (For the record, the answer to the question “who do you think will pay for fill-in-the-blank”… well, the answer is ALWAYS “you, dear consumer.”)

And for the record, this is Reason #936 to oppose Obamacare, as that law birthed this stupid requirement. In fact, there is some speculation that if you suffer a heart attack, your medical care might be denied if they can show that you were eating 1200-calorie burgers WHICH THEY WARNED YOU ABOUT.

Anyway, if this were the only regulation the feds had ever created… it would still be wrong. But it would be minor. The reason it’s not minor is because this is just one of approximately 99 zillion federal regulations, all of which took time, money and energy to draft and get pushed into law, and will now require enforcement which will mean more tax dollars spent on more government bureaucrats – this is truly a lose-lose proposition.

In fact, the only thing that won’t be lost is weight, since consumers will learn to simply ignore the calorie counts, just like they’ve been doing on packaged food from the grocery store for years.

But that won’t stop our all-knowing Federal Nanny from forcing these types of packaging requirements on food. Or forcing us, when we go to buy it, to wear a seatbelt. Blistered sunburn or not.

Thomas Jefferson Schools Blowhard Michael Moore

2011-04-01T16:57:00.000-07:00

That whole up-is-down, black-is-white thing that the Left’s got going does leave a sane person wondering if they’re all off their meds. How else to explain professional blowhard Michael Moore’s appearance on Colbert this week, where he offered up several big heapin’ helpings of crazy. Bet you didn’t realize Professor Moore was a scholar and expert on all things Founding Father-related? Or that he and Thomas Jefferson had so much in common? Check it out:

Quite a compendium of misleading statements, outright lies, and utter nonsense, no? The coup de grace has got to be that mangling of the legacy of Thomas Jefferson to serve Moore’s own fevered fantasies of collectivism. I don’t know which quote book he’s using, but as far as I can tell Jefferson never said, as Moore claims, “the earth belongs to all of us and we are to share in its resources and labor.”

Best I can tell, this is the quote that Moore was attempting to torture into Marxism: “The earth is given as a common stock for men to labor and to live on… Wherever in any country there are idle lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. Everyone may have land to labor for himself, if he chooses; or, preferring the exercise of any other industry, may exact for it such compensation as not only to afford a comfortable subsistence, but wherewith to provide for a cessation from labor in old age.”

The somewhat controversial implication that Jefferson did indeed appear to make was that IF there were land/resources that were not being used, and IF there were poor people sitting around doing nothing and not providing for themselves, then perhaps some of that land/resources should be redirected to said poor people. But remember the time and place in which Jefferson made his statements. I think it’s safe to assume that there was significant land sitting around that was not yet considered anyone’s legal private property (after all, the West hadn’t been settled yet).

But note that Jefferson went on to promote that poor people should be exercising some industry of their own, and that they were to earn not only what would make them comfortable now, but MORE than they needed (retirement savings, as it were).

Contrast that with Moore’s utterly unhinged idea that the richest people in this country have “sucked wealth” out of the economy and are “sitting on it.” But Mr. Moore – aren’t they doing exactly what Jefferson was suggesting?

In fact, I have a few more questions for the Left’s favorite filmmaker – because, after all, all quotes are best studied in context. Let’s take a look at a few more of Jefferson’s quotes, and see how they line up with Moore’s “workers of the world unite” rhetoric.

First: On the connection between working and eating...

1. Whose money is it anyway?

“To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

Ah. Mr. Moore, I started with a doozy, didn’t I? I like this one because it even covers those rich trust fund kids that we all love to hate – but that you especially love to hate. After all, those kids are living off that money that was sucked out of the economy! In case that quote isn’t clear enough for you, how about this one?

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

The democracy will cease to exist? Well, there are quite a few of us who think that you, Mr. Moore, are actually angling for that to take place, seeing as how you’re such a big fan of the common tractor and all. But you see, that puts you 180 degrees away from Thomas Jefferson, who also said:

“A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Wise, FRUGAL, and good = no stealing from the productive. Which makes the vision you’re promoting, Mr. Moore, to equate with foolish, profligate and bad. See, that makes you DIFFERENT from Thomas Jefferson, who showed some remarkable foresight.

Next: On “helping the poor”...

2. What helps the poor, and what hurts them?
Even back THEN, Jefferson was saying things like this:

“I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.”

Parasites, Mr. Moore! That is what we call people who think they are entitled to the fruit of others’ labor. You told Mr. Colbert that because God had “chosen” the two of you (as wealthy people), you have responsibility to make sure that you do “even more” to help people who are having a hard go of it. I suggest you get right to it. Write a big check to the American Red Cross. Donate a ton of money to your local soup kitchen. Pay to build a new hospital wing.

But (as our Dear Leader would say) let me be clear about this. Your responsibility as a rich person has nothing to do with MY wallet (just like my responsibility toward the poor has nothing to do with your wallet, my snarky suggestions notwithstanding). Taking tax dollars to “help” poor people does two bad things – it steals from the productive and it does not help the non-productive – a concept which, again amazingly, did not escape our friend Thomas Jefferson!

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

WASTING the labors… PRETENSE of taking care of them. Yes, Jefferson saw it pretty clearly – you would do well, Mr. Moore, to try on his glasses. The last thing he wanted was an expansion of government, which is of course a necessity when you start talking about taking, by force, that wealth that the rich people are “hoarding” for themselves.

Next: On our choices and what they say about us...

3. What makes us successful… or not?

“The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

Get that, Mr. Moore? The feds are not to prevent us from our business, and they aren’t to help us, either. That’s not their role, and Jefferson was again pretty clear about this. With a fairly keen insight into human nature, he knew the end result of such meddling:

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.”

And he wasn’t speaking positively about ambition there. “Suffocating the germ of virtue” (in case Ezra Klein is reading this – he has a well-known problem with hard words and long sentences and stuff) means that people who are dependent on the government will literally have the virtue snuffed out of them. Case in point: Every major inner city in America where crime is rampant. Wait – that IS every major inner city in America.

So Mr. Moore? What makes people different? What makes some people end up being successful filmmakers, and others being thug gang members? Jefferson had an interesting take:

“There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”

See, Mr. Moore, even though he was the guy who said all men are created equal – he also recognized that some men will choose to be good, and some will choose to be bad. Some have talents they will cultivate, and others will choose not to. These decisions, regardless of other fortunate or unfortunate circumstances, are what ultimately differentiate us. That is why your collectivist ideas are so very repugnant. They do not take any of these realities into account.

Next: On the mischief that government can do...

4. What role does government play?

Speaking of reality ignored, Mr. Moore, your ideas also fail to consider the reality that is right in front of our faces – this reality that history teaches so very clearly: Government and efficiency are antonyms. Again, Jefferson was ahead of his time in recognizing this:

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread.”

(Note to Ezra Klein: By the phrase “we should soon want bread” he means that in no time at all, we’ll be out of bread, and we’ll really, really wish we had some.)

Mr. Moore, surely even you can see that, if you persist in promoting historically-disproven, human nature-disregarding, and utterly failed philosophies like Marxism, that require a heavy government hand – you really have nothing in common with Thomas Jefferson. Consider:

“Most bad government has grown out of too much government.”

“The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

“I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”

Oppressive, Mr. Moore. What you are advocating, as Jefferson so clearly enunciated, is oppression. So to have painted him as somehow supporting your cause was… oh, how can I put this… um…
A LIE.

Next: On the beauty of facing reality...

5. What is truth?

As Mr. Colbert pointed out, the dirty and disheveled baseball caps don’t fool anyone – the truth is, Mr. Moore, you DO have some serious coin. You have profited greatly from capitalism, despite your disingenuous attempts to prevent Mr. Colbert from hawking your latest book at the end of the segment. That makes you, by anyone’s standards, a big fat hypocrite (regardless of your personal size issues). Speaking of truth, try this one on for size:

“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”

Yes! Ponder that, Mr. Moore. And let me leave you with a few more Jeffersonian gems:

“When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.”

That means wherever you proclaim your lies and nonsense, Mr. Moore, we will fight it. Because it is the right thing to do.

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

Every time – EVERY time – that your ideas have been implemented, Mr. Moore, it has resulted in tyranny, just as Jefferson noted. And misery. And death. LOTS of death (a hundred million, give or take a few million).

Speaking of things to fear, here’s what you and your big-government friends should fear: The Tea Party and other like-minds, because they are 100% opposed to your agenda, and they have truth, justice, and even Thomas Jefferson on their side. But you don’t have to be too awfully afraid – a side benefit of the liberty they are promoting is that it will extend to everyone – even you.

And finally, Mr. Moore, ponder this one:

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

And that Jeffersonian wisdom speaks for itself.

Jew-Haters Need Not Apply - Take a BIG Swing at BDS

2011-03-30T09:51:00.000-07:00

Usually, Americans love a good underdog story. After all, there’s a reason Sylvester Stallone made about 9,385 sequels to the original feel-good underdog “Rocky” movie. And how many kazillions of kindergarten teachers have read their students The Little Engine That Could, the story of the train that through sheer willpower (“I think I can”) made it up the hill?

Well, how about the little country that could? Tiny but miraculously mighty and influential, Israel, about the size of New Jersey, is surrounded on all sides by enemies that want to wipe it out, but even while being constantly forced to defend itself, Israel has created a “flower in the desert” – a fertile agricultural oasis, a thriving business community, innovative technology, and unparalleled (in the Middle East, especially) human rights. That’s an underdog story that Americans could learn to love, and this week there’s a way to “show the love.”

This week (Wednesday, March 30) is “Go BIG Day” – with the “BIG” being Buy Israeli Goods. Israeli food, wine, clothing – whatever you’re in the market for, you can probably find a way to purchase an Israeli version of it, either in-person or online. StandWithUs, an organization that exists to promote awareness of Israel’s unique contributions to the world, is inviting the world to “stand with them” and support Israel – with the pocketbook.

Why a “buycott”? Well, it’s in response to the misguided and ongoing boycott of Israeli goods and services that has been widely publicized, aided by a media that, like the distracted teacher on the playground, never sees the initial punch of the bully, but only sees the response of the victim.

The initial bully’s punch, of course, includes life in certain parts of Israel, where rockets fall with alarming regularity. The response – fences, security checkpoints, etc. – have led to charges of “apartheid,” and as any good leftist knows, good people must fight against apartheid. Never mind that Israel is the only human rights-friendly democracy in the Middle East – the push is on to de-legitimize the Jewish state through boycotts, divestment and sanctions – the so-called BDS movement.

BDS manifests itself in some ways that are more amusing than dangerous. For example, performers like Elvis Costello, Dustin Hoffman, Meg Ryan, and Santana all cancelled appearances in Israel “in support of the Palestinians.” Because they’re all just dumb Hollywood types, we can’t get too excited about their opinions or political activity.

Other activities are more sinister: Israeli athletes being excluded from international competitions. Israeli professors disinvited from academic and scientific conferences (this one’s particularly appalling, considering Israel’s immense contribution to modern day technology). American free speech rights being used to prevent Israeli free speech, as happened during last year’s outrageous shout-down of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine.

BDS focuses on isolating and crippling the Jewish state through a misinformation campaign, and efforts, primarily campus-based, to endanger Israel’s very survival through economic pressures. BDS organizers have called on the largest retirement funds in the world to divest themselves of all Israeli-related investments, and pro-Palestinian activists can be counted on to support and rally for such divestment. But the real genius of the BDS movement is its focus on individual action – particularly individuals of college age.

College kids tend to be idealistic – they want things to be right in the world, and they are itching to do “something” to further those ends. That statement applies equally well to both conservative, pro-Israel students and leftist, anti-Israel students – but the problem is, due to the media, leftist faculty, and the general softening of mental faculties inflicted by the public school system – there are lot more of the latter than the former on any given campus.

Israel is the little country that could, and did, and does — even providing humanitarian aid to places like Japan despite its own and constant troubles. Israel deserves America’s unwavering friendship and support. And it deserves better from American college students, who need to educate themselves on Israel’s contribution to the world – as opposed to the “contributions” from those who seek to destroy it.

So. Boycotts suck. Buycotts are cool. Wednesday, March 30 is Go BIG day – BIG for Buy Israeli Goods. Do a little shopping and do some good in the world! Find out how, where and what here.

Lying Liars and the Reporters Who Act Just Like Them

2011-03-29T12:20:00.000-07:00

It was just ten minutes. Ten minutes sitting in the cafeteria to have a cup of coffee. The TV, I noted with some irritation, was on CNN, which I gave up watching a long time ago. But how bad could it be to sit and watch for just a random ten minute period?

Bad enough that I was fully reminded of why I stopped watching it.

The anchors were discussing their Facebook page, where people were posting comments on the President's speech, which begs the question - do only morons watch CNN? Or do only morons post on CNN's Facebook page? They quoted someone who said - I kid you NOT - that Obama's approach to Libya was "genius." No counteracting comments were reported, as the anchors discussed how their viewers were "buying" the "Obama Doctrine" a lot more than the "Bush Doctrine." Um... okay.

Well, I could have written off one segment, right? But the very next story was an exercise in yellow journalism. As a professionally-trained journalist, this type of reporting is deeply offensive to me. The story: A Utah state legislator is pushing to grant work permits to illegal aliens. So, the reporter talked to the legislator, focusing (as is only fair) on the reasons he supports the bill. Things went downhill from there. We had the requisite "hidden identity" interview with an illegal alien who we are informed has an MBA (wonder who paid for that) and is now "paying taxes." (If she's paying taxes, why does she need a work permit? I'm a little confused.) Anyway, the point is, this is no criminal or even an agricultural worker. This is an MBA, darn it, and there she is, in tears, because it's all so unfair.

Lest you think the reporter would skip over the other side of the story, fear not. She found a Utah Tea Party member who she allowed to comment on his opposition to the bill - for about 7 seconds. Then, instead of shedding more light on the subject by having him expand on his concerns, she asked this important question - "how far would you go to stop this bill?" Needless to say, Tea Party man did NOT say that he would kill anyone, but that doesn't really matter. Because the reporter's very next stop, in the story, was a return to "brave legislator" talking about how he's received death threats for promoting the work permits.

See how that works? CNN can pretend it told both sides of the story, but 90% of the story was sympathetic to the pro-illegal alien side, and the tiny bone thrown to the Tea Party member was tainted by the clear implication that he and his kind issue death threats.

And all I did was watch for a mere ten minutes. Ten minutes!

This is the network that is broadcast in many places of business, because it has been successful, to some extent, in branding itself as a nonpartisan alternative to MSNBC and Fox News.

It is not.

5 Facts to Win Every Argument on the Left's Unhinged Reaction to All Crises (Japan Edition)

2011-03-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

What is there not to love about Rahm Emanuel? He’s the proud owner-operator of one of the foulest mouths in politics, he doesn’t have to live in a city to win its mayoral race, he’s linked to countless cases of political corruption and he’s given the world one of the most overused phrases in politics: Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste (NLAGCGTW).

Ol’ Rahm did us all a favor, in a way. That phrase has been a leftist modus operandi for years, but Americans were largely unaware of the strategy until Rahm let the cat out of the bag.

The Left’s reaction to one of the most potent natural disasters to ever strike a Western nation – the earthquake and accompanying tsunami that has devastated Japan – is merely the latest proof that, for leftists, Rahm’s Law is on a par with one of the ten biblical commandments. (Come to think of it, it’s way more important than biblical commandments, since leftists break those with frequent and casual disregard.)

Leftist reaction to this event-of-biblical-proportions has ranged from crass opportunism to bald-faced deceit to unhinged hysteria. Welcome to the Japan Edition of NLAGCGTW:

No more nukes? How about no more lies?

5. Nuclear energy is safe

This response could not have been more predictable.

As Japan raced to ensure its nuclear reactors were contained, the drumbeat from the “no coal-no oil-no nukes-know nothing” crowd heated up. These are the permanent Fantasyland residents who want us to power our world with sunlight, cool breezes, and magical pixie dust. For this granola-for-brains crowd, any excuse to shut down nuclear power is a good one, because they simply refuse to consider facts.

For instance, the fact that Ted Kennedy killed more people than Three Mile Island ever did.

Here’s another interesting one. By living your life in Denver, Colorado, you are exposed to more radiation (because of radon) than people in New York City. If all those people were forced to move to New York, 4800 lives could be saved! (Of course, different perils await in the Big Apple – can you die of high taxes, for instance?)

Anyway, this kind of reality-check is woefully underutilized by our friends in the “old media,” who have been shamelessly parroting the leftist talking point that Japan “proves” we need to get rid of nuclear power plants. After all, this is Japan’s Chernobyl! (Line best delivered with breathless and alarmed sincerity.)

So let us take a moment to actually consider the facts about Chernobyl, the worst nuclear disaster in history by far. Dr. Jay Lehr, science director at the Heartland Institute, explains:

“(At) Chernobyl, where there was no containment structure… 10 years later when all the facts were in, there were less than 10 fatalities from that explosion – only people right near the plant were affected by the radiation. A thousand people got leukemia, 998 were cured… It was predicted that tens of thousands of people would get cancer… this never happened. This is not an atomic bomb and people don’t understand a nuclear reactor is something very different than an atomic bomb.”

No one is denying that being killed in an explosion in a nuclear plant (well, being killed in any explosion, actually) is horrible. Nor is radiation poisoning an attractive fate. However, as Dr. Lehr pointed out, nuclear power plant accidents are not akin to atomic bombs; nor are the results similar in any way, shape or form.

That isn’t stopping the Leftmeisters from attempting to make hay with Japan’s nuclear plants, however. Keith Olbermann, ranting to the minuscule audience that reads his pathetic Fox News-mocking blog, said that nuclear power plants are “doomsday machines.” Doomsday machines! Keith – are the transformer robots coming to get us, too? Good grief. No over-the-top hysteria or fearmongering there!

There is a great deal of common sense out there for those calm and intelligent enough to consider it. I invite Olby and his legion of fans (all 37 of them) to consider this – or this, written in language that even a leftist can understand. Hey you guys, it has colorful pictures, too – always a plus!

Next: Biggest damage? Reaction to the reactor. Here’s another fact to help you win every argument on the nuclear crisis in Japan…

4. The two biggest casualties of nuclear fearmongering: mental health and the reputation of the U.S.

Let’s start with our world reputation, which the old media informs us is much better under the soothing ministrations of Dear Leader. But as he has shown throughout his relatively brief time in the Oval Office, President Obama seems far more interested in appeasing our enemies than playing nice with our friends. And Japan is – was – one of our best friends.

These reports did not receive much attention, at least in the old media. One wonders why not? Both the BBC and a newspaper in Singapore reported a fairly significant piece of political gamesmanship in a story headlined “Japan rejected early U.S. help on nuclear disaster”:

“According to the unnamed senior (Japanese) official, U.S. support was based on dismantling the troubled reactors…”

So, the United States government put a condition on offering help, and that condition was to permanently cripple the country’s electrical generating capacity? To score “greenie” points?

Well, the State Department has denied the original story. But as other bloggers are pointing out, it certainly bears investigating.

The other big casualty of the reactor story? Peace of mind. There is a price to be paid for the needless hysteria generated by a media only too happy to conjure up images of Hiroshima. And we have seen this price paid before, as pointed out by writer Paul Gregory, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. This is from his discussion of the authoritative report on Chernobyl published in 2005:

“Strikingly, the report labels the mental health impact of Chernobyl as ‘the largest public health problem created by the accident’ and partially attributes this damaging psychological impact to a lack of accurate information. These problems manifest as negative self-assessments of health, belief in a shortened life expectancy, lack of initiative, and dependency on assistance from the state.”

Gregory goes on to note that the current rash of irresponsible media reports will likely create an even worse mental health impact for the Japanese people, as the press feeds upon baseless statements like that of the European Union’s energy chief, who described the situation as “an apocalypse.”

“The media also pounce on pronouncements like radiation ‘twenty times normal’… no one bothers to explain what twenty times more than about zero actually means in terms of health risks.”

There will be no real life tragic consequences as the lefties fantasize – in fact, there is significant evidence of the opposite, as Ann Coulter reported this past week.

But there will be real life tragic consequences from the hysteria:

“Consumers throughout the world will now fear Japanese products. The Japanese people will conclude that they face a life of poor health, in a suicide-prone society. There may be a rash of abortions, such as in the wake of Chernobyl, as expectant parents fear birth defects. Countries like Germany, confronted with a politically powerful anti-nuclear power lobby, will shut down their nuclear reactors at huge costs.”

He’s right about Germany. And he’s probably right about the rest of it, as well.

Next: Let science speak…

3. Despite reports to the contrary, global warming is not the cause of every earthly disaster

No scientists are postulating a link between global warming and earthquakes. Because if there were, they’d be on the front page of the New York Times and all over MSNBC. Instead, we have “scientists” like these geniuses taking to Twitter to share their wisdom with the world:

“An earthquake with an 8.9 magnitude struck Japan… and some say climate change isn’t real?!”

Yeah! Who can possibly not connect those two dots!

“Events like the Japan earthquake and tsunami MUST keep climate change at forefront of policy thought”

Because back in the old days before evil people started driving cars and using spray deodorant and stuff, there were no earthquakes! Oh, wait…

Anyway, this guy wasn’t a believer – UNTIL NOW:

“Never really believed all this global warming talk, but after the earthquake in NZ and today in Japan. Maybe we’ve ruined the world.”

And – as if you needed another example of the propaganda that passes for education in today’s public schools – consider this poorly written and emotionally charged message:

“While Japan witnessed an earthquake we were talking about the problems that global warming leads to in school. Think. Pray. And change.”

Perhaps it wasn’t poorly written, and he really did mean they were talking about the problems that global warming leads to in school – like not studying real science, and an inability to think critically. But hey, he’s advocating prayer in school. Something for everyone!

Next: Throwing away our money won’t make the world a safer place…

2. Spending money we don’t have won’t make us safer

The very worst kind of political posturing, after a tragedy, is to accuse one side of wanting it to happen – or causing it to happen, as the leftists did with the Giffords shooting and their persistent attempts to pin that on the Tea Party. The Japanese earthquake was only hours into the history books when the Democrats pulled out this particular dirty playbook again.

Senator John Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) called the disaster a “cruel wake-up call” to Republicans who had targeted the federal agency (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration or NOAA) that operates the National Weather Service. Rockefeller said that cuts to NOAA prediction programs “would endanger lives.”

You know who else used this kind of propaganda? Why, the Weather Service Employees’ Organization (Union)! I didn’t even know there WAS a Weather Service Employees Organzation, but there is. And they’re pissed that those Republicans want to cut any of their funding. The union’s president had an entirely predictable response:

“The number one mission of the National Weather Service is to save lives,” said Dan Sobien. Well, that may well be, but the number one mission of the Weather Service Employees Organization is to grab as many taxpayer dollars as possible, which is, ironically, exactly the same mission as EVERY public sector union.

The media – SHOCKINGLY – came down on the side of the unions as well, with ABC’s Bill Weir discussing how that darn House of Representatives had voted to “slash funding” for the Hawaiian tsunami warning center. His colleague Clayton Sandell produced an even more biased report, asking the proverbial loaded question to a Democrat only too happy to help connect the bogus dots:

“Sandell to Thompson: If NOAA’s budget gets cut, are people’s lives more at risk?
Congressman Mike Thompson (D-California): Absolutely. This is important stuff. It’s public safety. It’s an investment in our everyday lives.
Sandell: Republicans counter that it’s up to NOAA how it spends its budget, as residents along the coast wonder how bad the next tsunami might be.”

Oh, those poor coastal residents… left shivering in fright at the thought of the next tsunami, after the wicked GOP has cut all funding for the tsunami warning system. It’s a compelling tale, no doubt.
It’s also 100% BS. Here’s what the “reporters” failed to tell us, according to the Media Research Center:

“…the funding ‘slash,’ which is only proposed and is far from implementation since it hasn’t even passed in the House, is not for any specific program inside NOAA and is for a reduction of just 7 percent, which hardly means all of NOAA’s programs must be shut down since NOAA would still be able to spend 93 percent of what they spent in the previous fiscal year.”

They might, however, have to cut a few union perks, which is probably what has the “weather union goons” all up in arms and angry enough to imply that OUR LIVES ARE ALL IN DANGER if they have to undergo even a tiny budget cut.

By the way, OUR LIVES ARE ALL IN DANGER can be filed in the same category as IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN (filed under Lies, Union).

Next: What it’s really about…

1. It’s all about Japan – not all about you and your pet issues, dear leftists

Let’s find out what Chris Matthews (aka Tingles) is thinking about this topic!

Well, apparently the very FIRST thing he thought was – good grief, thousands of people could be dead! No, that wasn’t it. What is the best way for Americans to help Japan? Still not quite right. Oh, YEAH. This was it:

“Was this sort of a good opportunity for the president to remind everybody that he grew up in the United States and Hawaii?”

Exactly! What any worshipper of Dear Leader should be thinking at all times – how does this (or any) situation affect Him?

A few days later, when the president had indeed taken Tingles’ advice, a guest on the show noted it, which resulted in much tingly pleasure:

“Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Well what was interesting to me was, the way the President noted his personal connection to Japanese culture, having been raised in Hawaii, which has a heavy influence of, Japanese culture, he’s familiar with it. I think it affected him personally. And so, in terms of the, the humanitarian response of trying to help Japanese I think he has been as fast and, and correct as you could possibly be.

Matthews, closing the show: Gene, thank you for reminding us the President was raised in Hawaii! That the influence he felt was of the Japanese-Americans and living in Hawaii and not of the Mau Maus, which some of his more insane critics have brought up.”

Yes, I confess that the word “insane” certainly popped into my head while watching this exchange.
Leftists are funny! And by funny I mean desperately pathetic.

Need further proof? The incompetent mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villagairosa, is a Democrat (duh) who never met a camera (or a female TV reporter) that he didn’t love. Last week he blasted state Republicans who are trying to block tax hikes in an effort to save jobs in California’s sinking economy, calling it “absolutely outrageous” that they would “abdicate their responsibility, sign on to some ideological pledge that says they won’t raise revenues.” Because after all, Democrats do not believe in ideological pledges, except the one they take to protect public sector unions at all costs. And then the good mayor used this verbiage, referring not to the taxpaying families who are drowning in a sea of California red ink, but apparently to families of teacher union members:

“This would be a tsunami when you think about the devastating impact on families…”

Yup. Failing to raise taxes in California would have exactly the same effect on union teachers as the tsunami had on the town of Sendai. Except for that their homes wouldn’t be washed away and they wouldn’t die. Other than THAT, it’s EXACTLY THE SAME and that’s why I’m so proud Mayor Villaraigosa is MY mayor – he knows how to keep the focus where it belongs: on him and his agenda.

One more leftist response deserves to be noted. And that is the unspeakably vile denunciation of people like Glenn Beck – for the crime of praising the Japanese for the lack of looting. As my colleague Chris Queen points out, a Vanity Fair editor named James Wolcott (proud old media icon) applied the most tortured logic possible to twist Beck’s heartfelt tribute to Japanese society into a racist screed. According to Wolcott, what Beck (and any other conservative) really mean when they praise the calmness of the Japanese people is that black people are looters and that’s why Japan is looter-free.

Apparently Wolcott is blind to his own racism in bringing this up. So allow me to set you straight, James buddy. People don’t loot because of their skin color. They loot because they weren’t brought up to respect other people’s property – a concept with which you leftists should be entirely conversant. The reason the Japanese aren’t looting isn’t because they’re not black; it’s because they’re not disrespectful.
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You gotta hand it to ‘em. Nobody wastes less of a crisis than a strident leftist – and the more unhinged he is, the more he can twist the crisis/panic to his own nefarious ends. Sadly, the Japanese disaster provides no exception to this rule. Rahm must be very, very proud.

Shocking Family Murder in Israel – And Yes, Leftists Share the Blame

2011-03-15T14:51:00.000-07:00

Just signed the kids up for the Timothy McVeigh Memorial Soccer Tournament. What, you say? That’s inappropriate and offensive! Why would a youth organization name an event after someone who killed and injured a bunch of people?

Roger Kimball over at Pajamas Media makes this point in reporting on the Wafa Idris soccer tournament at a West Bank Palestinian youth center. Wafa Idris was the first female Palestinian suicide bomber, and in that role killed an 81-year-old man and injured 150 more Israelis. (By the way, there is no Timothy McVeigh soccer tournament. Nobody in this country thinks he’s worth memorializing, which definitely puts us on a higher moral plane than the residents of the West Bank.)

But allow me to ask what Kimball asked: Ever heard of this Wafa Idris? If you did, ever hear how the Palestinians thought she made a nifty role model for the kids?

Betcha didn’t. Because we rarely hear about ANY of the atrocities perpetrated against Jews in Israel. We hear lots of outrage against Israeli checkpoints, but not outrage against the terrorist threats that motivate them. My own high schooler, taking a summer class at a major university, was taught about the evil of Operation Cast Lead, where Israel sent bombs into Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians. But the instructor never mentioned the provocation that led to Israel’s action: the thousands of rockets fired into Israel’s southern cities. (My daughter, knowing a little about Israel, noted that provocation in a class discussion. For her trouble she earned the enmity of the professor and the profound disinterest of the rest of the students, who astutely observed that discussing that aspect would buy them nothing.)

I bring this up because it is people like that instructor, and (most of) the American media, and leftists in general, who bear some responsibility for one of the most horrific crimes (barely) reported in some time – a crime that I fear is being buried under the avalanche of horrifying news from Japan. And indeed, as terrible as Japan’s situation is, this crime cannot be overlooked, and Western leftists do bear responsibility because they have been silent about Arab incitement while castigating Israel over every response. This has indeed created an environment in which the most militant Palestinians feel justified in this sickening and revolting crime:

A young couple and three of their children murdered – stabbed and carved up – in their own home. One of the children a 3-month old baby girl. The bloodsoaked bodies found by another child returning home.
I urge you to spend three minutes watching this gutwrenching video about the incident – and I warn you that it is terribly graphic.

video platform video management video solutions video player

But this is a terribly graphic crime. And it is an outrage that this video was taken off both Youtube and Facebook. The deadly silence continues.

The BBC and New York Times have both focused on how Israel’s response to the killings – which is to announce it will no longer delay in building new homes for settlers – will cause problems in the peace process.

Building homes hurts the cause of peace, but stabbing an infant gets a pass?

The loons who were trying to link the Tea Party with Jared Loughner at least had one thing right, which is that IF there HAD been a climate of hatred, and IF Loughner HAD been saturated with that hatred, then this would have been at least partly the responsibility of the Tea Party. Of course, it wasn’t and they weren’t.

But Western journalists and leftist professors are creating – by their selective reporting – a climate where this atrocity, and others like it, can take place. A climate where Palestinians distribute candy afterward, to celebrate what one of them said was the joy that “is a natural response to the harm settlers inflict on the Palestinian residents in the West Bank.”

And what harm was 3-month-old Hadas inflicting on them? That this story is being relegated to the internet is a disgrace to American journalism.

5 Facts to Win Every Argument on the (Alleged) Evils of the Islam Hearings

2011-03-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Howling, whining, and other assorted agonies. It was not just union goons who lost in Wisconsin this past week. It was not even just the teachers union that lost in Idaho! No, some of the most passionate temper tantrums over the last few days were on Capitol Hill where Rep. Peter King convened his long-awaited hearings on radical Islam in the United States.

We had rude and angry outbursts! We had tears! (Which were later proven to be entirely manufactured, but what can you expect from someone who thinks the Constitution is a racist conspiracy.) And of course, we had remarkable displays of civility courtesy d-baggery.

Ah, the Left is so predictable.

The idea of the hearings is to shine a spotlight on the extent of radicalization in the American Muslim community, and to consider how the government might prevent more terrorism against Americans.

Horrors! Why, oh why, would anyone think this “descents into McCarthyism” – this “singling out of a single religious faith” – could possibly be acceptable, here in America?

Well… here are five good reasons. Unleash them on your leftist friends when they engage in the ever-so-tired leftist lunacy of demanding to know why we’re not having hearings on radical Christians, or radical Buddhists, or whatever.

First up: It’s not for everyone. Oh, wait… yes it is.

5. Islam wants to impose Islam on everyone

What is it with leftist philosophies? Why do they all want to take over the world? Communism, Socialism, Environmentalism – none of these movements are content messing in their own backyard. No, they all have to try to pull the rest of us along with them. Someday, there is bound to be one heck of a conflagration when full-on secular totalitarianism meets full-on Islamic totalitarianism, which also seeks to impose its will on… well, on all of us.

Proof of this oppressive viewpoint is… well, everywhere. A particularly concise example? Comments from Sheik Nasser bin Suleiman Al-Omar on Al-Jazeera television a few years back (did you call your cable company to make sure you’ve got Al-Jazeera? Sam Donaldson says it’s the one to watch! And you’re sort of paying for it already!). Anyway, the good sheik said this:

“Whoever is familiar with the Sunna and the Hadith knows that a battle against the enemies of Allah awaits on the horizon, in which the Muslims will be victorious. This is confirmed by the reliable hadiths, as well as by reality… Islam is making steady progress in America… twenty-five thousand people have converted to Islam every year since 9-11, and an even larger figure was mentioned in the New York Times.”

The sheik went on to detail how Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world. Author Gregory Davis spells it out clearly:

“Islam's message to the non-Muslim world is the same now as it was in the time of Muhammad and throughout history: submit or be conquered. Islam is less a personal faith than a political ideology that exists in a fundamental and permanent state of war with non-Islamic civilizations, cultures, and individuals. The Islamic holy texts outline a social, governmental, and economic system for all mankind. Those cultures and individuals who do not submit to Islamic governance exist in an ipso facto state of rebellion with Allah and must be forcibly brought into submission. The misbegotten term ‘Islamo-fascism’ is wholly redundant: Islam itself is a kind of fascism that achieves its full and proper form only when it assumes the powers of the state.”

Why is this religion/political system, with its stringent Sharia requirements, attractive to anyone – especially people raised in the liberty-loving West? Davis opines:

“Islam combines the interior comfort provided by religious faith with the outward power of a world-transforming political ideology. Like the revolutionary violence of Communism, jihad offers an altruistic justification for waging death and destruction… The areas in which Islam is growing most rapidly, such as Western Europe, have been largely denuded of their religious and cultural heritage, which leaves Islam as the only vibrant ideology available to those in search of meaning.”

Indeed. I think the founders had something to say about the interplay between liberty and a virtuous people, but that is a discussion for another day. For now, it is sufficient to point out that Islam is all about global dominance:

“One of the common elements to all Islamic schools of thought is jihad, understood as the obligation of the Ummah to conquer and subdue the world in the name of Allah and rule it under Sharia law.”

In other words, they want to impose their religion on everyone. That is to say, the Hindu, the Taoist, the atheist, the Tom Cruise follower. E.v.e.r.y.o.n.e.

Now we often hear some poor soul, miseducated in our public schools and crippled in the critical thinking department (paging Rosie O’Donnell!), insist that we have just as much to fear from “radical Christians”; that Islam is no different from Christianity, because Christianity would like to see everyone become a follower of Jesus.

Ah, but Christianity cannot be forced (despite a few regrettable historic attempts) because by its very nature it involves individual free will to embrace or reject a relationship with God.

Dear deluded leftist clinging to this “Christians want to take over the world too” argument, I invite you aboard the reality train. Think: Where is there a Christian nation? A theocracy whose government IS the Christian faith? (You can’t count Vatican City!) America is perhaps closest to that possibility, due to our heritage and the sheer number of Christians. Yet, despite the strong cultural and historic ties to the Christian faith, we are a pluralistic, democratic republic with “separation of church and state.” The Christians, with ample opportunity to “take over” – did not. So again – where are the scary “radical Christians” who want to force everyone to believe the way they do?

In leftist imaginations, that’s where.

Where are the scary radical Muslims?

Right here, increasingly. And that’s why Peter King is not having hearings on radical Lutheranism, or radical Baptism, or radical Episcopalianism.

You see, when a belief system of any kind wants to take over the world – that’s something we SHOULD be talking about.

Next: Western civilization, the United States, and Israel… what do these have in common?

4. Islam wants to destroy Western civilization in general, America in particular, and don’t even get them started on Israel
Along with an indisputable goal to conquer the world, Islam holds a particular contempt for the West and the United States. Some of that is completely understandable.

But seriously. The hatred for America and its liberties has been obvious for a very long time. The Nation of Islam, as reported in the New York Post in 2002, has been virulently anti-American.

“Malcolm X dismissed his American passport as signifying ‘the exact opposite of what Islam stands for,’ and Louis Farrakhan announced that ‘God will destroy America at the hands of the Muslims.’”

Author and speaker Daniel Pipes has compiled a somewhat chilling anthology of quotations that make this West-hatred pretty clear to anyone open-minded enough to actually absorb the meaning.
A few choice morsels:

“May Allah destroy America and Britain…”

“Allah has told us to make atom bombs. America is telling us not to. Who should we listen to O Muslims, Allah or America?”

“If we were united and strong, we’d elect our own emir and give allegiance to him… take my word, if 6-8 million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.”

Ismail Al-Faruqi, who taught for many years at Temple University in Philadelphia, spoke longingly of conquering America for Islam:

“Nothing could be greater than this youthful, vigorous, and rich continent (of North America) turning away from its past evil and marching forward under the banner of Allahu Akbar (God is great).”

Pipes also writes of Omar Ahmad, chair of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR, of course, is irrefutably linked to Hamas terrorists, despite the willful blindness to that fact of certain top law enforcement officers in Los Angeles (*coughLeroyBacacough*). But I digress. Chairman Ahmad said this:

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran… should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

They keep telling us, but we don’t seem to want to listen. History tells us, too. Islamic armies attempted to conquer all of Europe many hundreds of years ago. And Islam didn’t become more peaceful. It simply got defeated. But hey, big points for persistence. Because centuries later, the Ayatollah Khomeini would state:

“Those who know nothing of Islam pretend that Islam counsels against war. Those are witless. Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers… we shall export our revolution, to the whole world. Until the cry ‘Allahu Akbar’ resounds over the whole world.”

That cry resounded in a German airport just a few days ago.

They hate America, they hate the West, and holy cow (holy pig?)… do they EVER hate Israel. Oh, and Christians. From Hamas, an overtly terrorist group that many leftist Americans can’t quite bring themselves to denounce, comes this little tidbit:

“These Christians and Jews, these descendents of monkeys, now rule in all the nations of the world, but their day, too, will come. Allah! Kill them all, do not leave even one! It is the fate of the Jews and Christians to be slaughtered by our hands. We have taken upon ourselves to fulfill our obligation to society and to torture them because torture is the fate of the Jews and the Christians. No Jew and no Christian is innocent. All Jews and all Christians must be killed.”

Are we getting a clearer picture of why Islam, of all religions, is being “singled out” for the spotlight treatment?

A quick tour of the world’s “great” religions turns up no other faith calling for the destruction of entire groups of individuals, as well as entire countries (nor is any other faith telling unbelievers to “convert or die”). The leftist weenies crying about this can boo-hoo all they want and scream “McCarthyism” – but the U.S. can’t fight the threat if they don’t have the cojones to admit it IS a threat.

Next: Putting women and children first… first to suffer, anyway...

3. Islam’s treatment of women and children is disgraceful

No “feminist” in their right mind (and personally, I don’t think most of them ARE in their right minds) could possibly in any way, shape or form support Islam. The Islamic fundamental disrespect for women morphs into a number of increasingly ugly manifestations, the evidence of which is again, all around us.

I’m all for modesty, a concept lost on much of the Western female population. It would be great if American women and girls did not dress in such a way as to distract men and boys from thoughts of anything other than sex.

However, the idea that the mere existence of a female form should prevent men from going about their daily business is just the first step in a series of justifications for demeaning women individually and as in general. The idea that nothing but the eyes should be visible in public (and even those eyes can be dangerous) is a necessary prelude to the idea that it is acceptable to taunt, grope, or even rape a woman who is not adhering to that most restrictive dress code. After all, she asked for it. This viewpoint also dehumanizes men, by the way. If you tell a boy he is an animal who cannot be responsible for his basest urges, that is what you will get.

This entire philosophy is rooted in the concept that women by their very nature are somehow lesser or evil, and that men must protect themselves against them. When that is the foundation upon which you are building male-female relations, things are going to go very, very wrong. How wrong?

Ritual genital mutilation of young girls is perfectly acceptable because you know how women are – if they can feel sexual pleasure, think what whores they will become. Wifebeating is also perfectly acceptable – and proof of such teaching (and practice) is not difficult to obtain. Finally, there is the ultimate misogyny: honor killing. When a women (or girl) has pissed off a male family member one too many times, she's butchered. That does happen in other cultures, too; it’s just not considered “honorable.”

Even if these perversions of human relationships were confined to Muslim nations, it would be cause to speak out. The fact that these crimes are now taking place – regularly – in the West, and that Muslims are calling for Sharia law so that these atrocities can be defended… well, that is another reason Peter King is having hearings. We have this evil among us now, and we must call it for what it is. One study of family violence in Britain, a nation more heavily infiltrated by Muslim thinking than America, found that women married to Muslim men were eight times more likely to be killed by their husbands than any other woman in Britain.

Imagine if a new faith or worldview emerged that insisted that “people of color” were dangerous, and really should be covered from head to toe, save their eyes, when out in public. This new faith had its own laws and court systems, and wanted the right to abuse people of color as part of its religious freedom in this country. Would we stand by and allow this faith’s legal system to become part and parcel of our American system of jurisprudence? Well, I certainly hope not. I would hope that some states might even pass laws to make certain that this new legal system could not gain a foothold in our system that so carefully attempts to protect individual rights and dignity. I would hope that states that pass such laws protecting our judicial system would not be mocked by leftists. Hmmm.

A quick word for the “all religions oppress women” crowd. Please, please put on your little thinking caps and move beyond the knee jerk rhetoric. A faith that proscribes certain roles for men and certain roles for women is not the same as a faith that denies the full humanity of one or the other. The Bible teaches that “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This was fairly revolutionary talk at the time the book of Galatians (3:28) was written, by the way. Human nature has often led to abuse of women, but not all faiths enshrine that in teaching. Not all faiths count the testimony of a woman to be significantly less valid than that of a man.

Ritual genital mutilation of young girls is not the only abuse of children inherent in Islam. But how can a faith cherish children when its Prophet, by example, participated in forced marriage and child rape? Such abuse of young children is unchecked in the Muslim world, justified by some of the philosophy to which I referred, above. By way of contrast, Jesus warned his followers (Matthew 18:6) that interfering with a child’s healthy development would lead to dire consequences. (Please file that one under: “Radical Christianity”: Why Hearings Are Not Needed.)

Quite possibly the most egregious child abuse in the Islamic world is the pervasive inculcation of hatred in very young minds. How do you get an otherwise healthy young man (or woman) with their whole life in front of them to strap on explosives and blow themselves up? This is how:

(Want your kids to experience this kind of cultural education? Well, that’s another argument for getting Al-Jazeera on your cable plan as quickly as possible!)

Of course there are the avowed relativists who insist that all religions produce young terrorists. Like Ezra Klein, the Washington Post’s idiot boy columnist (he’s the one who finds the Constitution long and full of hard words). Klein produced another gem of moronic greatness last week, in discussing the upcoming hearings, when he drew a parallel between radical Muslim terrorists and American school shootings, perpetrated by young Christians.

Uh… what?

Here’s a quick test to determine if “young Christians” are perpetrating your next shooting incident. If they cry out “Jesus is Lord” right before they start shooting, then we will have something to talk about. Until then, can someone please find Klein some anti-psychotic medication?

Next: Somewhere over the Islamic rainbow…

2. Hey, gays! THEY WANT TO KILL YOU.

Yeah, there are many Americans (and mostly Christians) who do not support your right to redefine marriage to allow for same-sex unions. Again, I implore you to grab that little thinking cap again. Here’s a quiz.
One of these things is not like the other:

1.       People expressing distaste for your sexual practices
2.       People opposing same sex marriage
3.       People questioning whether children do better in traditional vs. gay families
4.       People shooting you, hanging you, or hacking you up in little pieces

Were you able to spot the one that doesn’t belong?

I am not the first person to point out that gays who wish to define themselves primarily by their sexual orientation should be the first ones in the pro-Israel, anti-Islam line. You have to know who your allies are, and who your enemies are. The leftist gay community has this all messed up, and they will be among the very first to pay a terrible price should Sharia take hold in this country. That, again, is another reason that high-profile hearings on this topic are both relevant and instructional.

And for those “Christianity is just as bad” numbskulls: the fact is that Judaism and Christianity, both of which teach against homosexual behavior, nevertheless uphold the dignity and protection of every individual. That is abundantly evident in the countries most closely aligned with these faith traditions (the U.S. and Israel).
As author Peter Schweizer points out, while Judeo-Christian values are compatible with democracy…

“Why not Islam? The answer lies deep within the root of these faiths. Christianity is an individualistic faith which is based on the belief that the individual has a direct pipeline to God, and that each individual has value. After all, each individual was created in God’s image. Given that foundation it is easy to see how representative government developed. Islam does not have an individualistic view of faith, or the value of the individual.”

Respect for the individual. Again, when one hops on the reality train, the picture of who is really threatening gays emerges clearly.

Next: There is a (good) reason that Muslims want to live here

1. Islamic nations are terrible places to live

Let’s stay on that reality train a little longer. Leftists who have been brave enough to come on this journey – stay calm. Breathe deeply. I am about to present a concept with absolutely no politically correct sugarcoating, and it might be difficult to swallow. Bear with us.

Muslim countries are barbaric and backward.

Whew. That was hard even for me to get out. But come ON. Certain faiths have made the world a better place. They have provided fertile soil for human advancement in art, science, literature and government. There is a reason Western civilization has been a dominant global force. There is a reason Western countries have led the world. These are places that invent technology, build skyscrapers, and have flush toilets. There is a reason that Islam, historically, has not been able to subdue the West.

I know, I know. The Muslim contributions to the world during the Islamic golden age. The problem is, that golden age occurred where there were significant populations of Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, among others. This mixing of cultures meant that the Muslims who contributed to the golden age were “free thinkers” who were willing to build upon other great thinkers (of ancient Greece, for example). What’s more, many of those free thinkers were attacked and condemned by Islamic purists. Ex-Muslim Syed Kamran Mirza offers a comprehensive treatment of this topic. A comment on his site sums up neatly what happened as “pure” Islam took hold:

“Where there was no yearning for knowledge and striving for advancement, barbarism reigned, as for example in the burning of the contents of the great library at Alexandria by the invading Arabs. As the percentage of Muslims in the general population started to increase (through conversion due to conviction, intimidation… or desire not to pay the jizya tax) the belief that the Koran was the ‘only book’ worth reading and that it contained all knowledge increased, and subsequently the golden age vanished.”

Mirza discusses the “greatest mind of the Islamic golden age,” a famous Persian physician, philosopher and scholar, Ar Razi. He was condemned for blasphemy and his philosophical works destroyed during a “revival force of back to Islamic darkness.”

Back to darkness.

Look around the world at this very moment – there are many countries that are ruled either in fact or in theory as Islamic nations. Is their way of life, their culture, their day to day experience, superior to that of the West? Is it equivalent, oh dear leftist who so wishes us all to be exactly the same? Would you want to live there?

Look, even Bill Maher recognizes this point. If Bill Maher and, say, Sarah Palin can agree on something, can we all just acknowledge that it’s fact?

But the factual existence of this “darkness” is what gives us, here in America, the motivation for holding the Peter King hearings. We do not wish to deny entry to immigrants from these majority Muslim nations, many of whom want nothing more than to escape that darkness. They are among America’s fiercest supporters and defenders. They are the Muslims who have been supportive of the hearings, because they, more than anyone else, understand what’s at stake. They came here to escape a system, to escape the violence, to escape the hatred – they don’t want it seeping into the fabric of American life.

However – not all Muslim immigrants come with that mindset, as has been clearly demonstrated. How do we make that distinction? How do we welcome people who wish to place a higher priority on liberty and democracy than on a religion, while protecting all of us from those who come with a more sinister agenda – those who wish to impose a faith-based totalitarianism that would annihilate the American way of life? I wish I had a good answer… but the question must be asked, and that is precisely the heart of the King hearings – despite the unfair, irrational, hostile, toxic and somewhat hysterical opposition to them.
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I highly recommend taking a few minutes to read Gregory Davis’ excellent outline of all things Islam at the Jihad Watch website. Mark Humphrys’ site is also interesting. Both will greatly enhance understanding of the issues at hand. As an aside… Davis explains that their scriptures, while generally teaching the value of truthfulness, specifically encourage deceit when it suits the “big picture”, i.e. the jihad mission. Obviously, this doctrine makes it impossible for open and honest dialogue between Islam and the rest of the world. How can you trust someone who believes it’s okay to lie to you? Kind of a sobering perspective on any “pro-Islam” testimony at the King hearings.

10 Facts to Win Every Argument on the Evils of Public Sector Unions

2011-03-02T09:44:00.000-08:00

One might make a case that this article is unnecessary. After all, who could possibly be supporting public sector unions after the shenanigans we’ve seen in Wisconsin and elsewhere this past few weeks? Legislators fleeing across state lines to avoid doing the job taxpayers elected them – and are paying them – to do (and they’re not exactly sleeping in their cars during their illicit vacations). Public schoolteachers calling in sick and encouraging their students to picket on their behalf (instead of going to class). Taxpayer-funded doctors unethically and fraudulently writing notes to excuse public workers from their jobs. Union thugs whacking young women Tea Partiers (more on that ahead). What a sordid mess.

Nevertheless, many of our friends and acquaintances aren’t educating themselves on the true goings-on in Madison and other current hotspots around the country. Or worse yet, they’re getting their news on it from the MSM, or the likes of Jon Stewart.

So it’s our job, those of us who love liberty and the free market and the rule of law, to school ‘em. All we need is a little well-honed rhetorical ammunition to stock our intellectual arsenals (I just love to use that vitriolic weapon imagery, although I must defer to the unions on this one – they are the masters).

ANYWAY. Here are ten facts – facts that won’t change the minds of the leftist true believer who worships at the altar of Big Government and honestly thinks the state can run our lives better than we can. But these ten facts just might give the unaware and undecided some much-needed food for thought.

Starting with: History is fun!

10. History proves we don’t need public sector unions, and the folks in Wisconsin are lying about it

I hate it when kids say they hate history. To me, that’s a stinging indictment of whoever was teaching them history, because history should be fun. History is just stories, and what could be better than that?

Those stories are particularly compelling when they illuminate the present. The history of public sector unions is crystal clear, and the Left is being wildly dishonest in their approach to it. The president of Madison Teachers, one Mike Lipp, offered this “historical perspective”:

“(For Governor Walker) to include gutting law that was put into place in 1959, signed by the great Gaylord Nelson, granting public employees the right to collectively bargain, is ludicrous.”

Huh? As Rich Lowry points out at National Review Online, “why would anyone in 2011 think of changing a government practice put in place in 1959?” Especially when it was signed by the great … who was that again?

What a ridiculous argument. But at least Mike Lipp wasn’t hysterical, like this lady:

Okay, that part with Obama at the end was just a joke. But don’t you feel like yelling out an “Amen” to the crazy lady? IT’S FOR THE KIDS!! Because if she can’t suck quite as hard at the public teat, we won’t have weekends. Or something.

Now let’s talk reality and the truth (refreshing, I know!).

All the historical arguments we’re hearing in support of unions – every last one of them – are related to the relationship between labor and the private sector. Not the relationship between well-paid government workers and THEIR employer – which is YOU.

President Kennedy is the one to blame for lifting the federal ban on government unions back in 1962, but it wasn’t because government workers were poorly paid, or suffered in adverse working conditions. It was because the traditional labor unions were losing power, as Jonah Goldberg points out, and JFK saw how public unions in states like Wisconsin were putting Democrats in power.

“The plan worked. Public union membership skyrocketed and government union support for the party of government skyrocketed with it. From 1989 to 2004, AFSCME — the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — gave nearly $40 million to candidates in federal elections, with 98.5% going to Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”

98.5 percent! (More on that ahead.) Anyway, THAT is the true history of why we have public sector unions.

So if someone tries to tell you it’s because workers were dying in the mines, or we needed weekends – that’s a bald-faced lie.

Next: Why public employees should never be able to strike…

9. We are the employers

Government exists to provide a framework for free enterprise to flourish. Our government was never intended to be a producer of goods and services as much as it was intended to facilitate production in the private sector. Many conservatives believe that the services government does provide should be limited to those related to safety, like military and police functions. So when public sector unions infuse their self-centered collective bargaining demands, they jeopardize the safety of our society as a whole. This cannot be allowed, and it is why many government workers are forbidden, by law, from going on strike (which as we have seen does not stop them, when a militant union is involved).

What’s more, even when government workers are fulfilling a function that can (and maybe should) be privatized (education comes to mind), they still should have no right to withdraw that function from their employer, because their employer is all of us.

Ronald Reagan understood this quite clearly. Here he is ‘splainin the facts to a bunch of hardheaded (and soon to be ex-) air traffic controllers:

Ah, but our beloved President Reagan is not the only president to make a meaningful contribution to the issue of public sector unions. Consider what another president had to say – and this wasn’t an argument against strikes, but an argument against ANY collective bargaining in the public sector:

“All government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public-personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government-employee organizations. The employer is the whole people…”

That, my friends, was what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to say. Mr. New Deal himself. That’s a wee bit o’history that you probably won’t see quoted in the NYT.

We are the employer. You and me. So don’t let anyone try to frame the argument in terms of “corporate greed” (which is exactly what they’re deceitfully doing). The only greed evident in THIS debate is that of the money-grubbing unions. The real employer – the taxpayer – you, me – we are not being greedy. Is it greedy to tell the kids you can’t take them on a European vacation when Dad just lost his job? That’s not called greed. That’s called responsibility.

Next: The criminally-selfish circle of money and influence…

8. Public unions PLUS Democrats MINUS taxpayer interests = unending river of fun money for everyone (well, everyone except the taxpayers)

The formula mentioned above is one being applied in many states, municipalities and of course at the federal level. Public sector unions “bargain” with the government for wages and benefits, but the folks representing the government at the bargaining table end up being those representing primarily Democratic politicians (remember that 98.5% figure, above?) who give the unions everything they want in exchange for untold riches being funneled back to the Democrats in power at election time. By the way, there is no seat for the taxpayers at this bargaining table, even though it is their money that is at stake. So the unions ask for more and more lavish entitlements, which the Democrats are only too happy to provide from the public coffers, because they know the union will then line their pockets come campaign time.

The results of all this largesse back and forth between the public unions and the Democrats? The results are the jaw-dropping budget deficits in all those states, municipalities and counties (and countries) with public sector unions. The Democrats (primarily) have thrown taxpayer money at the unions in the form of outrageous wages and benefits (more on that, later), then benefit personally at election time (more on that, later, too).

The leftists clearly understand how this system works – why do you think there’s such an outcry? No less a liberal luminary than Watergate “uncoverer” Carl Bernstein is calling Governor Walker’s action a “very political, demagogic move by a governor who knows that the Democratic Party subsists to some extent on union contributions.” To which we would add – what does he mean “to some extent”? It’s their mother’s milk! This is why Walker is, as Carol Platt Liebau puts it, an anathema to both the unions and the liberal politicians.

Jonah Goldberg sums up the problem neatly:

“And this gets to the real insidiousness of government unions. Wisconsin labor officials fairly note that they’ve acceded to many of their governor’s specific demands… but they don’t want to lose the right to collective bargaining. But that is exactly what they need to lose. Private sector unions fight with management over an equitable distribution of profits. Government unions negotiate with politicians over taxpayer money, putting the public interest at odds with union interests and, as we’ve seen in states such as California and Wisconsin, exploding the cost of government. The labor-politician negotiations can’t be fair when the unions can put so much money into campaign spending. Victor Gotbaum, a leader in the New York City chapter of AFSCME, summed up the problem in 1975 when he boasted, ‘We have the ability, in a sense, to elect our own boss.’”

Indeed. And keep in mind – WE are the real boss that is being supplanted. This is positively criminal behavior. It’s corrupt. It’s a racket. And it’s why Scott Walker is a hero for trying to dismantle it in his state. It robs all taxpayers to benefit the few who happen to be employed by the government. And as much as the Left tries to cloak this in class warfare terms – Americans are not buying it.

Next: Another factor in this corrupt and evil formula…

7. Union members are given no choice

At the risk of repeating myself, allow me to quote New York Post columnist Michael Walsh, discussing the vast sums of money discussed in our previous point:

“Where does that money come from? From union members’ dues. In what is effectively a criminal enterprise were it not for the moment legal, public-union leaders negotiate ever-larger pay and benefits from the very politicians to whom they then kick back ‘campaign contributions.’ All at taxpayer expense.”

But Diane, you say. You already went over this. Yes, I did. I just wanted to reiterate the “criminal” aspect before making the next point, which is that THESE UNION DUES ARE COERCED BY FORCE FROM UNION MEMBERS. These aren’t voluntary donations from union members who are 99% Democrats themselves. These are union dues removed from public union members’ paychecks before they ever see the money. Mona Charen has a good description here:

“Through collective bargaining, unions negotiate with elected officials for wages and benefits. They then get the state to collect union dues for them by withholding the dues from public employees’ checks. With the accumulated cash, the union then makes campaign contributions to the favored public officials. Neat.”

She goes on to quote labor historian Fred Siegel:

“Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits.”

Do you think every one of those public sector employees wants to have dues taken out of his or her paycheck? Do you think if the dues weren’t removed from their paychecks automatically, that quite a few of them might fight for the right to opt out? Do you think every one of them agrees with the politicians their unions push? What about the teacher whose forced union dues paid for attack ads against her conservative politician husband – do you think she was on board with that?

You know the answers to all of these questions, and so do the Democrats. That’s why they’ll flee over state lines before acting on the clearly defined will of the people (as per the 2010 elections). Special interests don’t relinquish their privileges without a fight, as Carol Platt Liebau notes.

This is at the heart of the reason the union organizers are camping out at the Wisconsin Capitol. Linda Chavez spells it out:

“The unions are afraid that if the state doesn’t deduct the dues from members’ paychecks and turn them over to the union, the members won’t pay up. The National Education Association alone will receive $358 million in its share of union dues nationally this school year — virtually all of it taken automatically out of teachers’ paychecks and turned over to the union by their government employer… Walker also wants to give state employees the right to vote on whether they want to be represented by a union — and if so, which one. But the unions don’t like that either. They want workers to have the right to choose union representation, but they seem scared to death that the issue might actually be put to a vote every year.”

This is one thing that unions are not lying about – it really isn’t about this year’s budget. It’s about power and who’s going to control the purse strings. It’s really an issue of right vs. wrong. Is it right to force people to give their money to causes with which they disagree? To force a wife to give her income against her husband?

Clearly, this is a cycle that needs to be broken. It does not even represent the best interests of the union members, many of whom will have NO PENSIONS AT ALL if some type of Walker-ite reform is not implemented and soon. Union bosses have been in bed with Democratic politicians for far too long, and it’s time to break up this illicit romance. All politicians, of every political stripe, are supposed to serve we the people, we the taxpayers – not, as Liebau notes, their megalomaniacal fantasies of being some type of government overlords.

Next: And lest there be any confusion whatsoever about which politicians, of which stripe, are benefitting from this corrupt system…

6. This is a 100% Democrat, big money racket

Okay, not 100%. Like we said earlier, some figures put it at 98.5%. Whatever. Writer Michael Walsh says:

“Unions such as the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the National Education Association (NEA) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) give hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats — some $171 million in 2010 alone. They give almost nothing to Republicans.”

That’s a pretty accurate figure. Almost nothing. Keep that fact in mind the next time someone tries to tell you that one party is as bad as the other. Not on this point, my friend, and this is a pretty darned important point, as it cuts to the heart of the integrity of our entire system. You can blame the Republicans for one thing, however, and that’s for not making a huge stink about this corrupt cycle a long time ago. Why is it only the Tea Party that has emboldened action?

Anyway, the Wall Street Journal did “out” AFSCME last fall – AFSCME being the primary public employee union (outside of teacher unions). The very largest spender in the 2010 election – yes, Californians, bigger than Meg Whitman – was AFSCME. The number one spender in all state elections is public employee unions. And of course they are supporting the party of Yes-You-Can-Have-More (if not the party of Actually-You-Can-Have-Everything). The party that is cheating the American taxpayer while lying to the public sector union employees. No – we canNOT have it all. Nobody ever can. It’s one of those lessons we were supposed to learn in kindergarten.

Next: But aren’t our teachers worth it?

5. Public sector employees are making 45% more than you are. Is that right?

You may love your kid’s teacher. You may even have a favorite postal worker, or (although this is hard to believe) someone at the DMV you like. But do these people deserve to make an average of 45% more than people teaching private school, or delivering packages for UPS, or pushing paper inside some insurance company office? Well, are private school teachers doing a 45% worse job than public teachers? Does UPS do a 45% worse job than the Post Office? Is your insurance company receptionist 45% less surly than the lady at the DMV? I think we all know the answers to all of those questions, don’t we? So why do these public employees get the gold-plated treatment? Listen to Linda Chavez again:

“Public employees pay less for their health care and receive far more generous pensions, often without making contributions to them. Teachers, who are among the most heavily unionized public employees, also have tenure rights — which make it difficult, if not impossible, to remove incompetent or underperforming teachers.”

Ah, yes. Linda brings up an important point, which we will return to a little later. For now, let’s look at a few numbers in more detail, courtesy of the Department of Labor, via Carol Platt Leibau:

“…when it comes to hourly wages, the average in the private sector is $19.68 per hour; for workers in state and local government, it’s $26.25. While 74% of private-industry workers receive paid sick leave and 8 paid holidays per year, 98% of state and local government workers have paid sick leave, along with 11 paid holidays yearly. And 99% of government workers have retirement benefits (with the same percentage enjoying medical benefits), compared to 74% and 86% respectively of private sector employees. Finally, in the private sector, an average of 20% of medical premiums are paid by employees, while state and local government workers pay only 11% on average. By almost any measure, it pays to work for the government – subsidized by taxpayer money and unconstrained by the economic discipline imposed on the private sector by the need to compete — rather than as a taxpaying employee in a private enterprise.”

Working for the government used to be called public service. It can no longer be referred to as such, under these outrageous circumstances.

Side note: This undue burden on private business is a huge part of the reason are economy is in the tank. Why should business have to compete for workers with an indulgent Uncle Sam (or state or local governments)?

Next: But like I said, aren’t our teachers worth it?

4. The service we are getting from these top-paid government employees… sucks.

Unionized public employees provide crappy customer service. Like all blanket statements, that one has its exceptions. Rare as a coherent comment from Khadafi, but yeah, I’ll grant you, out there somewhere there might just be a unionized government worker who gives a damn.

However.

There is no incentive for excellence when, for all intents and purposes, you have unlimited job security. This is the reality of human nature, and it applies to every last one of us. When we think we can get away with something we shouldn’t do – we are more likely to do it. Period. End of discussion. There aren’t even any exceptions to that blanket statement. It is just, simply, Truth.

Unions violate the natural competitive individual spirit, providing disincentive to excel, produce and maximize potential, and instead incentivizing mediocrity. Why go the extra mile when we can get there off someone else’s effort? With public sector unions, since the workers indirectly command influence over the people who write their paychecks, supervisors have far less direct say or evaluative input into the performance or productivity of their employees.

We all almost intuitively understand this. And that’s because we’ve all been one of the 500 people in line at the DMV while workers chat with each other at the copy machine. We have seen firsthand what virtually iron-clad job security does to customer service and the work ethic.

You can’t fire a lazy, underperforming or incompetent unionized government worker without spending a considerably large amount of time, money and effort. Which is part of the reason going to the DMV is such a nightmarish experience. And part of the reason why the line at the post office is so long. And part of the reason why your kids can’t read.

That last one is particularly galling. You may have heard of the so-called rubber rooms, where teachers accused of wrongdoing or incompetence were sent to spend day after day knitting or playing cards while receiving full pay and benefits. Some of them lingered in the rubber room for YEARS. An appalling waste of taxpayer money, no doubt – but one could argue that the rubber rooms are a better location for incompetent teachers than the classroom.

Those teachers in Wisconsin who are so up in arms about having to contribute a bit toward their own health benefits (like the rest of us do)… the ones who called in sick and forced schools to close… well, the Department of Education says that 2/3 of their 8^th grade students cannot read proficiently. TWO THIRDS. This is despite the fact that Wisconsin spend more per pupil than any other Midwest state. Well, it may be BECAUSE they spend more per pupil, because the spending isn’t going to help kids learn to read. It’s going to pay for those gold-plated benefits.

It’s not for the kids. It never has been, it isn’t now, and it never will be – as long as teachers are unionized.

Next: The unions show their true colors with outrageous thuggery…

3. Your arguments are suspect if you have to resort to goon behavior to make your points

Writing this article, and trying to include the latest examples of union thuggery out of Wisconsin (and other states) has been an exercise in working with moving targets. I would no sooner get the latest episode into my notes than another would be reported. And the hits – sometimes literally – keep comin’.

Like this goon, who hit a young woman who caught his classless comments on video as he demonstrated outside the offices of FreedomWorks.

Other union protesters made sexually degrading comments to female lawmakers at the Kansas statehouse. And if they’re not busy attacking women, union members also enjoy attacking minorities who aren’t marching in leftist lockstep. Like the black Tea Party member asked if he has any children that he claims. Or the man told he is a bad Jew for not supporting the unions.

In Idaho, where you’d think conservatives would be shown a little more respect, the school superintendent (who has proposed some truly courageous education reform) has had his car trashed and his mother harassed. His mother! And the union had the sheer effrontery to demand HIS apology, for calling them “thugs.”

They are really unhappy when Fox News shows up, because Fox News tells all the sides of the story, and they only want their side told. So Rupert Murdoch’s network must be shouted down at all costs.

It’s called projection. When party A accuses party B of something that party A is really guilty of. Insert “unions/Democrats” as party A and “Tea Party” as party B, and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about. I’ve just posted, on one little webpage, more evidence of thug-like behavior than the Tea Party was ever accused of.

Astroturfing? It was not happening at the Tea Party rallies, but it’s happening here.

Violent rhetoric and nasty signs? Ditto.

As Michelle Malkin masterfully demonstrates, these people did not read the president’s civility memo.

Note to union goons: The ends do not justify the means. Morality means something.

Side note to union goons: Some of your protesters are certifiable.

Next: Is there a connection between the unions and socialists or communists?

2. There is an absolutely indisputable link between public sector unions and socialism/communism

This isn’t really surprising. Public sector unions, in particular, represent a microcosm of socialism, in that wealth is redistributed. It is taken from producers (taxpayers) and given to deadwood (DMV workers).
Another word for this is theft. Stealing productivity of one person or group actually serves as an incentive to underproduce for both groups. Again, that natural tendency to follow the path of least resistance.

That’s the philosophical proof. But let’s get down to reality.

Mike Imbrogno is an executive board member of AFSCME. At a recent meeting of the International Socialist Organization, he issued a veiled threat against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Yeah, yeah, all kinds of leftists are threatening Scott Walker. The most important point is, he was at the INTERNATIONAL SOCIALIST ORGANIZATION. He also writes for a fun little website called SocialistWorker.org, where he penned this:

“This battle won’t be won in the offices of these right-wing pigs. It will be won by framing these political questions in the streets.”

It’s not just one guy. Socialist groups have been marching in Madison since the protests started, and the unionists are being supported by groups like the Maoist Revolution Communist Party and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party. Read all about it here.

Of course, America’s own favorite socialist group, Obama’s Organizing for America group, was right there at the beginning, stoking the fires in Wisconsin… an effort reported in the Washington Post, which made it difficult for Obama & Co to deny when they tried to back away from their involvement as the rest of America indicated this wasn’t their definition of hope and change.

Next: NEWSFLASH! The media completely misses the point…

1. The taxpayers ARE the working people of America

I understand the Green Bay Packers are very popular in Wisconsin, so it’s really a slap in the face to hundreds of thousands of fans that team captain Charles Woodson issued a statement supporting the union protesters:

“I was proud when many of my current and former teammates announced their support for the working families fighting for their rights in Wisconsin…”

Newsflash, Charlie buddy. The working families of Wisconsin are the ones getting screwed by these unions. There are way more of us than there are of them. Why aren’t you supporting our rights?

I guess I can’t be too hard on a stupid football player. He has his own union, after all, because heaven knows his big kazillion dollar salary needs union protection. Or something.

But where is the media in all this? They are completely missing the reality that the people of Wisconsin – as well as most of the people in America – just voted for people who would take on the unions. In some cases, the candidates in question (like Scott Walker) were crystal clear about this during their campaigns. They were voted in to do this job for the taxpayers – but the media can’t wrap its pretty little head around that fact. George Stephanopoulos actually went to bat for the unions with Scott Walker. Meanwhile, celebrities spew on about saving the middle class, while ignoring the fact that (a) we are not a class system society and (b) even if we were, most of the middle class DOES NOT BELONG TO A UNION.

The mainstream media is not questioning this idiocy.

We also don’t see them reporting on the costs of these protests to the Wisconsin taxpayers (thanks to the right wing blogs, we at least have the information).

Journalists are supposed to act as the “fourth estate” – ferreting out and reporting on corruption and lies. But they are missing virtually every aspect of this union story: from their failure to draw parallels on the civility issue, to their failure to question union talking points, to their failure to tell the story, at least on occasion, from the taxpayer perspective.

But what else can we expect from the media but a giant FAIL. After all, they tried to keep Scott Walker from being elected in the first place, as a union spokesman revealed during the election.
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This is an ugly story, bound to get uglier. Especially since the media (apart from Fox News, Rush, and the blogosphere) is not doing its job. It falls to us, as individuals, to insert some sanity into the arguments. These ten talking points deserve wide dissemination. Take them to Facebook, Twitter, and the office water cooler (but be extra careful at work). Let’s start winning hearts and minds with the truth.

Amaze and Irritate Your Leftist Friends on Oscar Night

2011-02-22T11:51:00.000-08:00

The Academy Awards are a BIG DEAL here in La-la land. Of course, people from all over the world do watch, but when the L.A. Times refers to Los Angeles as a company town, Hollywood is the company they’re talking about. I’ve lived in lots of other cities, but this is the only one where it seems almost everybody has an “Oscar party” they can attend, and by that I do not mean one of the myriad of black-tie events actually associated with the award ceremonies, but simply a house with a big screen TV and munchies.

If you decide to party with Oscar, wherever you may live, may I recommend that you proceed with great caution when selecting your fellow revelers. In other words, try to go with a conservative crowd. Now, granted, they’re less likely to give a rip what Hollywood is up to in the first place. But if you get stuck in a room full of lefties, they’ll all sit enraptured during the most ridiculously offensive political speeches by presenters and winners, and your blood pressure will be the worse for it. The Oscars have a long and rich history of offering up such tripe, and this year has several potent possibilities for some serious speechabuse. Perhaps you can work up some kind of drinking game – maybe a shot for every mention of homophobia, or Islamophobia, or unionphobia (that one might actually be pretty big this year… as of this writing, I haven’t heard of any bigmouthed actors heading to Madison to show support for the plight of the oppressed public employee unions… so Oscar night might be perfect to take a BOLD AND COURAGEOUS STAND that everyone in the auditorium will self-righteously applaud!)

ANYWAY. Here are some things to watch for, cheer for, sneer at, or amaze your friends with, on Oscar night. We’ll use the ten best picture nominees as a framework, because each one can be a jumping off point for something of interest - after all, there are less than six degrees of separation between any two things in Hollywood.

Let’s start with some kinda strange stuff from NPR…

10. Toy Story 3 – embracing your inner child

It is nearly universally agreed-upon that Toy Story 3 is truly a movie to love. A poignant storyline (toy owner Andy is all grown up and headed to college), top notch Pixar animation, and a director from the best cinema school in the country (Fight on, USC Trojans!).

However… the movie motivated some seriously weird doin’s over at National ~~Politicallyleft~~ Public Radio. In all fairness, it’s been kind of a weird week for public broadcasting, what with Big Bird being hauled over to the Capitol to shill for taxpayer funding and all.

Even that weirdness pales in comparison to this, which is... well, a little creepy.

NPR's Bob Mondello was inspired by character Andy wanting to hang on to one toy:

“When I got home, my partner reminded me that I’d done that too: Sitting on the shelf in my office is Mr. Teds, the teddy bear that accompanied me to the hospital when I got my tonsils out.”

Here is Mr. Mondello, sans partner but cradling Mr. Teds:

: Disturbing, no?

And he goes on:

“When I mentioned this at work, it turned out that a lot of other NPR folks had kept a buddy from childhood, too. And since Mr. Teds hadn’t been able to pal around with any other toys in a lonnnnnng time, I suggested that they bring a few of them in for playtime.”

If YOU are feeling playful like Mr. Teds, you can join in the fun here, as NPR staffers show off their favorite toys, games and books. (I was pretty disappointed that Vivian Schiller didn’t bring in her “Fun with Free Speech” game… but one of the staff members does have a stuffed “earth” that she says boasts both the Soviet Union and East Germany – hey, the world as NPR likes it!)

Next: Gay pride on parade…

9. The Kids Are All Right – uh, no they’re not

This is the easiest movie on the list to cross off your list to watch, because it’s a politically correct mish-mash that could have been churned out by the publicists at GLAAD.

That’s all you need to watch. I’m going to save you the price of a movie rental and two hours of your life. You’re welcome:

Nic and Jules are lesbians who got “married” and each got impregnated by the same anonymous sperm donor and thus have two children. These children are named Joni (after Joni Mitchell) and Laser (after… lasers?). Nic is the breadwinner and is more strict, while Jules is more relaxed and stays home.

See? They’re just like a traditional family! Well, except for the lesbian part and the sperm donor part. And the naming your kid Laser part.

Anyway. Laser and Joni find their biological father, Paul, with the assistance of a helpful sperm bank. Jules starts an affair with Paul because she doesn’t feel that Nic appreciates her.

See? They’re just like a traditional (dysfunctional) family! Well, except for the having an affair with your own sperm donor part.

Now – if the filmmakers had REALLY wanted to be courageous, they should have had Jules stay with Paul.
But of course, “turning straight” is verboten in Hollywood. So Jules dumps Paul and lives happily ever after with Nic.

The message of “Laser and Joni Have Two Mommies”? Well, to hell with the need for a father figure, for one thing. And of course the overarching message –

See? They’re just like us!

Who writes this stuff? Well, Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg wrote this particular stuff. Not cheering for them to win Best Original Screenplay, since this is neither “best” nor particularly original, no matter how “edgy” they think they’re being.

Next: Why you might not be able to watch the Academy Awards at all…

8. 127 Hours – that’s how long the Oscar broadcast is going to feel…

127 Hours is the dramatization of a true story about one Aron Ralston, a young outdoorsman who made the extremely ill-advised choice, one spring day, of rock climbing in a remote area without informing anyone where he was going. When his arm got pinned under an 800-pound rock, and after five days with nothing but a liter of water and not even a jacket, he… well, I feel kind of bad for ruining the last movie for you, so I won’t say anymore. But it’s gross.

Actor James Franco is nominated for Best Actor for the role, which is why it’s kind of bizarre that the Academy chose him to host the awards ceremony. In the past, hosting duties have fallen to bigger names who aren’t on the ballot. But James won’t be alone up there at the podium. Oh, no. In fact, he might not be able to get a word in. Because the Academy is pairing him with an up-and-coming actress who has already distinguished herself as the owner of a big, BIG mouth.

Anne Hathaway, who burst onto the public scene in The Princess Diaries, has proven herself to be a royal pain in the arse. For your reading pleasure, consider a few choice nuggets of little Anne’s wisdom.
On how to prioritize pressing world issues (Finally! Someone clears this all up!):

“My own personal feelings about it is when the world is kind of perfect, and we have those two things – when we’re at peace and everybody has a good job – although we should be working on these at the same time, I don’t mean to imply otherwise, I’m a really big advocate for health care and of course my heart lies with education.”

Of course. On Obama:

“It was around the time that he gave his speech on race that I just said, ‘I can’t deny how I feel about you, Barack Obama. I want you to be the president. I want you in the White House… when he’s president, we’re going to find people changing on the inside.”

Hmmm. Is this what change on the inside looks like?

Ignorant and opinionated – always a winning combination in a Hollywood starlet. PLEASE. SHUT. UP.

Next: Getting in the ring with a loser…

7. The Fighter – sordid tale with a sordid star

Another movie about boxing. Lots of people get hit, both in and out of the ring. Lots of people swear lots of times.

Actor Christian Bale is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role as the one-time up-and-coming boxer who has deteriorated into a walking skeleton of a crack addict. Bale lost a lot of weight to play the role of Dicky Eklund, and Hollywood likes to reward that kind of thing, so he may have a shot.

Considering that Bale is known for having a foul temper and possibly assaulting female members of his own family, betcha thought he was the sordid star of our headline. But you would be wrong!

Not nominated for Best Actor is Mark Wahlberg. That’s kind of refreshing that he didn't get a nod, because he’s a piece of work. Besides starring in two of the worst movies ever (the crassly anti-American Shooter, and a pig wallow in porn called Boogie Nights), the former rapper known as Marky Mark has an actual rap sheet. It involves throwing rocks at black schoolchildren while calling them the n-word, and attacking several Vietnamese men, blinding one and knocking another unconscious, while calling him, according to widely available reports, "Vietnam f-word-ing s-word." Well, he didn't really call him f-word-ing s-word. That would have been awkward. But you know what I mean.

Anyway, Wahlberg was charged with attempted murder, sentenced to two years, and served a whopping 45 days. He admits he has never tried to find the people he hurt and make amends. But who cares! He’s a really good actor, and he gave money to Obama, and to John Kerry! So it’s all good.

And although he didn’t get an acting nomination, he’s one of the producers of the film, which means he’ll get an Oscar if it wins Best Picture. Not cheering for that, either.

Next: It’s not just boxers getting hit this year – ballet takes a beating…

6. Black Swan – good vs. evil in a tutu

Think of all that is beautiful about the ballet. The grace, the elegance, the athleticism. The music (like the timeless Tchaikovsky classic Swan Lake). The artistry.

Okay, now turn that all on its head in a horror story of insanity and death. Welcome to Black Swan!

Ballet in general, and the New York City Ballet in particular, really do take a beating in this film. We see the freakishly deformed feet and bleeding and blackened toenails of a prima ballerina. We see her constantly vomiting. We see drugs and backstabbing, sexual politics, and nasty, manipulative, desperately unhappy people who do many unpleasant things. And when the star’s descent into madness really kicks in, we see a lot worse.

This is not the year’s best feel-good movie.

But it’s not even the year’s best feel-bad movie. I tend to agree with reviewer John Nolte over at Big Hollywood, who doesn’t really place this film in the top ten at all.

He points out, rightly so, that director Darren Aronofsky takes his central character down the road well-traveled:

“… her whole dilemma is yet another cliche. The good girl having to find her darkside? This is a completely played out concept, especially in the genre of films surrounding the arts. Imagine how much more fresh and interesting the story would’ve been had these those roles been reversed, with the bad girl having to find the good in herself to inhabit the White Swan.”

He nails it. Again, we are treated to the spectacle of Hollywood doing what it always does, and then congratulating itself for being so brave, innovative and daring. Wish they had it in ‘em. And I’m not really feeling Natalie Portman’s portrayal of Nina as Best Actress, either… but she’s the favorite.

Ultimately, this good vs. evil, white vs. black swan story has no happy ending, and is pretty unsatisfying.

Next: Good vs. evil in an setting 180 degrees away from Manhattan…

5. Winter’s Bone – huh?

I know. I watched it and I’m still not exactly sure why it’s called that. And as my husband said while screening it, “this doesn’t exactly move along at a good clip, does it?”

No, it does not. Part of the plodding feeling probably comes from the over-the-top grimness of the setting. The primary color of this movie is gray. Families living in extreme poverty in the Ozarks, enduring squalor and (sometimes) hunger – a father on the run from the law, a mother who’s crazy, relatives and neighbors involved in all manner of illegal activity and general unpleasantness (there’s a lot of domestic abuse hinted at), and the threat of complete destitution. Like Black Swan, this ain’t no walk in the park.

However.

The central character of Ree, the 17-year-old daughter willing to take heroic measures to protect and provide for her little brother, little sister, and incapacitated mother – well, Ree is a profoundly good person facing a formidable challenge. One can’t help but compare Ree’s tremendous obstacles with the artificially-induced agony in Black Swan. Likewise, mostly-unknown actress Jennifer Lawrence, who probably doesn’t have a prayer of beating Natalie Portman, offers a truly nuanced performance worthy of an Oscar.

And director Debra Granik (not nominated for directing) shows us little flashes of goodness and warmth in the midst of the otherwise unrelenting bleakness – like the Army recruiter who insightfully and gently offers Ree some good advice. Just about every character is fully formed and multi-dimensional, capable of being evil and capable of being good. Just like we are in real life. This isn’t nearly as beautiful a movie to watch (and hear) as Black Swan, but it is a much better story. Perhaps Granik will win an Oscar, however, as she and her writing partner are nominated for Adapted Screenplay.

Next: More on the good vs. evil front…

4. True Grit – the Coen brothers take on a classic

Which is better – the original, or the remake? (Although the Coens insist it’s not a remake; they say it’s just a different movie based on the same book. Uh…okay.)

John Wayne, one of the only true conservatives ever to come out of Hollywood, won the Best Actor Oscar for this role, Marshall Rooster Cogburn, way back in 1969. A proud anti-Communist. An icon.
Jeff Bridges, enormous contributor to Democrats big and small, including some of the most vile.
I don’t even think this is a fair fight. But hey, judge for yourself:

True Grit: 1969 vs 2010 from Amfidiusz on Vimeo.

Although I prefer the Duke, both movies explore the ins and outs of good vs. evil and the sacrifices and consequences associated with indulging in one at the expense of the other. The new version does boast young Hailee Steinfeld, who is particularly appealing as the daughter bent on bringing justice to the man who killed her father, and pays a hefty price for that pursuit. If Hailee wins, she will be among the youngest Oscar winners ever (but Tatum O’Neal still holds the record for Paper Moon at age 10).

Next: The film that defined a generation!!!!

3. The Social Network – believe the hype, be the hype

Whatever.

There. I just used a catchphrase popular with the generation in question to off-handedly dismiss The Social Network. This is not a Best Picture. It’s just an entertaining movie about a really smart guy who made it big. Well, he made it REALLY big, but still.

It’s fun to watch. Set at Harvard, the movie offers an inside peek at life at the academic top. And the dialogue is clever and witty. Too clever and witty, in fact. I kept thinking the same thing that crosses my mind when watching certain TV sitcoms – nobody talks this way without a screenwriter putting words in their mouth. Doesn’t ring true. So it’s hardly fitting that this script is up for Best Adapted Screenplay – every other movie in this category is better-written (127 Hours, Toy Story 3, True Grit and Winter’s Bone).

Ah, but Hollywood loves the writer benefitting from this unearned largesse. Aaron Sorkin, who is suffering from perhaps the worst case EVER of Palin Derangement Syndrome, is a leftist bad boy who’s always got something (ill-conceived, ignorant, nasty and arrogant) to say.

Did I mention arrogant?

He just makes my skin crawl. I’m not a big fan of how he depicted most of the young women in this movie, either. Girls who can’t wait to get on their knees and service a couple of nerds in a bathroom, all because they started a website? Sounds like someone was indulging in his own little fantasy. *CoughAaronSorkincough*.

It may be fascinating to speculate (because, after all, it’s not exactly a documentary) on how this amazing tool we all use, Facebook, came into being. But I feel sorry for any generation that feels THIS is their definitive film.

Next: Drilling down to two movies that deserve to be at the top…

2. Inception – blowing your mind

All right, we may as well get this out of the way right up front. The first mind-blowing aspect of Inception is that its cast is mind-blowingly numbskulled. Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Page are freakin’ babbling idiots. But don’t take my word for it:

Anybody else thinking what I’m thinking about Little Miss Know-it-all Ellen Page, and her lackey Gordon-Levitt? Is a hard slap across the face involved? Yeah, I know. Shame on us. Civility and all. Ah well, at least we didn’t make Hitler posters of them!

Anyway – admitted and acknowledged: This movie boasts one of the most remarkably dimwitted and yet smug casts ever put together on film.

Now that we have THAT out of the way… director Christopher Nolan (who did not get a directing nomination, but is nominated for Original Screenplay) has crafted an amazing movie. Ah. Maze. Ing. If you can suspend your distaste at his motley band of actors, you’ll be rewarded with something unlike anything you’ve seen before – and yet it’s all strangely familiar. Like déjà vu.

Yeah. It might just literally blow your mind.

My favorite thing about Inception was the collective gasp, in the packed opening-night-in-L.A. theater, that accompanied the final moment of the movie. Sucker punch! In a good way.

Next: We all know it’s going to win, right?

1. The King’s Speech – soaring above

If you had told me that my favorite movie of the year would be about an erstwhile monarch of the British Crown who stuttered… I would have told you my favorite movie of the year was Inception. But I would have been wrong.

See, I don’t even LIKE the Royals. I don’t understand the American obsession with them. Didn’t we fight a war to get away from these leeches? Aren’t our principles based on the ideas of all men being created equal, which is utterly at odds with the idea of monarchy? I mean, yeah, all little girls want to grow up to find Prince Charming and all – but he sure as heck doesn’t look like that loopy envirowack Prince Charles, or his equine-resembling son who’s already sporting an unbecoming receding hairline.

I know, I know. It’s not nice to make fun of the way people look. But really, what else are the Royals there for? They’re sure as heck not contributing much to British society. They should at least be pretty.

So I guess I’ve made my distaste for monarchy pretty clear.

But movies are all about the STORY. A great story can be about almost anything – and if populated with interesting characters, humor and heart – you’ve got a winner. Throw in an amazing director and a couple of consummate actors, and you just might have a shoe-in for Best Picture. And Best Director. And Best Actor. And Best Supporting Actor. And Screenplay. And maybe a few more.

Based on real events, this is the story of the current Queen’s dad. It doesn’t offer a sentimental view of the Crown, but paints a picture of royalty that seems fairly even-handed. It doesn’t seem an immensely attractive lifestyle, but it certainly doesn’t seem an awful burden, either.

Like Social Network, King’s Speech has a great deal of cleverly-written dialogue. In this case, however, it is at least within the realm of imagination that the characters may well have spoken this way, at least on occasion. But Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth absolutely breathe glowing life into the script with performances that capture the viewer’s heart.

I know, I know. Rush and Firth are probably flaming leftists, as well. Firth, in particular, has been a well-known champion of leftist causes in his home country. And based on early talk about one of his next big projects, I may be broadly denouncing him next year around this time.

But for now, just as I did with that hideous little troupe in Inception, I am going to ignore the politics of the actors in this beautifully-fashioned film.

A quick word about the music. As a classical music fan, I enjoy the creative use of great masterpieces to score a movie. I know Beethoven is overused, but the use of a movement from Beethoven’s 7^th symphony to underscore the climactic “king’s speech” is both powerful and deeply moving.

One more quick note: This movie is rated R. For the dumbest possible reason. You'll know when you see it. But when you consider the soul-numbing dreck that gets a PG or PG-13 and thus is corrupting the souls, hearts and minds of our children - the fact that THIS movie is (theoretically) inaccessible to them is appalling.

Anyway. The King's Speech is awesome. No, the audience didn’t gasp in awe at a last-second plot twist. But we left the theater with our hearts uplifted and our spirits soaring a bit higher than when the movie began.
That is the highest calling of any art form – to lift the human spirit. And that is why The King’s Speech should – and most likely will – be lauded as 2011’s Best Picture.

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Well, there you have it. A compendium of trivia, kudos and snarks to enrich your Oscar night experience.
Or... you could ignore the red carpet, turn off the TV, and read a good book, right?