Archive Listing
February 7, 2011 - January 31, 2011
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Worth a Second Look
Who is
the fuehrer?
REWIND. This clip has been kicking around for years now, re-captioned whenever some new disaster strikes the political scene. When Eduardo tossed this version into the Comments section, I didn't even watch it. Until today.
Now I think it's interesting. Why? Because 'Hitler' isn't Obama, which is what I'd assumed before I watched. He's someone else. Who? Maybe the editor or publisher of The New York Times. Maybe Harry Reid. Or George Soros. All of which means we're being asked to identify the real left-wing power structure that's pulling the strings behind the scenes. Besides which, the captioning is spot-on: deft, clever, and beautifully timed. It's a keeper, this one.
Part of my resistance had to do with the inefficacy of the Hitler analogy. Yes, I know that Hitler's national socialism was more left than right, but nobody knows anything anymore, and I guess I've been willing to live with that. Which leads me to a second Second Look recommendation. Glenn Beck's documentary "The Revolutionary Holocaust." I didn't tune in. To me it was all old, old, old. Good that Beck is educating himself about the most horrifying leftist regimes of the twentieth century, but anybody who pretends he doesn't know how it was is just lying to himself and everyone else, right?
Wrong. I should have known. The people who wear the Che tee-shirts have NO idea. Beck is right. The glaring, inescapable truth about these regimes has been suppressed, even at Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley. Soooooooooo depressing. But true. Thank you, Glenn Beck. What's that saying about how a child shall lead them? Can't remember it. But dead on in this case. DEAD on.
Even if you think you know the history, watch "The Revolutionary Holocaust." All of it. Then email the links to all the other people you know you think know the history. Admit right up front that Glenn Beck is a maniac. Then tell them to watch it anyway.
Like I'm doing here. You see, it's not as hard as it seems. Even a maniac can perform a public service. Like Glenn Beck just did.
posted at
6:55 am
by
InstaPunk
Smerconish Hears the
Light
Michael Smerconish, man of principle. He would never pander to his audience.
Below, we say something about 'sorry ass.' Apologies up front for that. Sorry.
SMERC MUCH? On the long list of things we're tired of, Michael Smerconish is, well, on the list. How perfectly appropriate that he would play along with the latest Democrat gambit of defending Obama via sock puppet:
A letter defending Obama, over the signature of one "Ellie Light," drew some attention after it became clear that the same letter had been published in some 60 outlets, listing different, local hometowns in different newspapers.
The episode provoked various theories around the Internet, including that the letter writer was, in fact, Barack Obama himself. I first published he letter because it seemed to crystallize an argument that Democrats were struggling to make. Light wrote:
But today, the president is being attacked as if he were a salesman who promised us that our problems would wash off in the morning. He never made such a promise. It's time for Americans to realize that governing is hard work, and that a president can't just wave a magic wand and fix everything.
Well, the mystery may be over. A woman who said her name was, in fact, Ellie Light called this morning into the radio show of Michael Smerconish, a national talker based in Philadelphia who has been friendly to Obama, to clear things up.
"I'm only me," she said, identifying herself as a traveling nurse who works for 13-week stretches at hospitals around the country, and whose primary residence is in Southern California.
"I need to own up – I did misrepresent my home town in some places," Light told Smerconish. Her logic in faking the addresses is one familiar to advocacy groups: "If I thought it was written by a neighbor of mine, I would give it more credence."
Light mused on why the letter was so widely circulated: "My letter was pretty darn good. It took a long time to write. I took more interest in honing it than most people take today."
"I don't know why others are not making
the observation that, Why
are we all abandoning the president we so adored so quickly?" she said.
Is it serendicity
again? I've been thinking about Smerconish. After
all, he's the one-time Republican who endorsed Obama to a Philadelphia
radio audience that went 95 percent to 25 percent (yeah, Philadelphia
poll watchers see DEAD people, routinely)
back in November 2008. His argument at the time was that Obama was more
serious about catching Osama bin Laden than McCain was. Right. Which is
why we thought of Smerconish when Robert Gibbs said this the other day:
You know, to us, it sounds like the Obama administration has come to regard bin Laden pretty much the way the Bush administration did -- as an annoying figurehead who's less trouble where he is than he'd be if we actually caught his sorry ass. Yeah, McCain didn't want to capture him either, because it'd be bad publicity if a president shot a prisoner point blank in the head with a .45 instead of putting him in touch with a crack criminal attorney from Chicago. Which is undoubtedly why Smerconish decided Obama was so much more trustworthy on all matters pertaining to al qaida and the War on Terror. Unless it had something to do with the political propensities of his Philadelphia radio audience instead. How's that working out for you about now, Mikey?
We think about Smerconish because we never ever listen to Smerconish. He's the best living proof that moderates are not necessarily safe or sane. They can be way creepy too. Like Smerconish.
posted at
12:36 pm
by
CountryPunk
The REAL value of
Intellect:
Freedom from accountability
Freedom from accountability
Himself. Ain't we smart?
DADDY'S LITTLE WART. God knows, we've criticized (and praised) William F. Buckley here in the past, but at least the man was consistent with his own line of argument. Now we get THIS, which is as shocking as it is stupid:
Daily
Beast columnist Christopher Buckley procured an early
draft of President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union speech.
My fellow Americans,
Tonight I can report to you that the state of the union, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent, is a 9.8.
Now, you may ask—and I wouldn’t blame you for asking—how I came up with that number. You might be saying to yourself, “Wait a minute. I’ve got no job, no health insurance. My house isn’t worth half the amount of my mortgage, and I just got called up by the National Guard to do a fifth tour in Afghanistan. How the heck did he come up with 9.8?”
So it’s a good and valid question. And the answer is that 9.8 is pretty good, considering the mess my predecessor and the Republicans left me. Fair enough? I think so.
A year ago, I inspired the nation to have the audacity to hope that I would change the political culture in Washington. Now, it turns out I’m another hack politician.
I want to acknowledge some folks in this chamber here tonight. The cipher-faced, light-skinned fellow right behind me is Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, from the great state of Nevada, home of gambling, legal prostitution, and empty nuclear-waste facilities.
Over the last year, Harry has managed to do something I wouldn’t have dreamt possible: make me look like a total tool of the political establishment. How did he manage that? How did I manage that?
A year ago, I inspired the nation to have the audacity to hope that I would change the political culture in Washington. Now, a year later, it turns out I’m another hack politician—from Chicago, where, believe you me, we know a thing or two about hack politics.
I was going to set a new standard. Now I’m just a complicit bystander as Harry bribes, among others, a senator from Nebraska who wants his state to get a free pass on Medicare—in return for his vote on a health-care reform bill that would make the Founders weep, or throw up. Or both.
What a difference a year makes. But I’m pleased to report that before I came up here tonight, I was able to sign a contract with my publisher for a new book. I’m going to call it The Audacity of Oops.
As you know, it is customary procedure, during a State of the Union, for one Cabinet officer not to attend, so as to provide continuity of government in the event someone, say, flies a plane into the Capitol Building or sets off a nuclear bomb or what-have-you. Tonight, you will be reassured to know that Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security is at an undisclosed location, making sure that, as she would put it, the system goes on working.
I can further report that Secretary Napolitano has come up with an ingenious plan to prevent a recurrence of the Christmas bombing attempt. From now on, all planes flying into the United States will carry not air marshals but Dutch artists. For we now know that when it comes to disabling well-born Nigerians attempting to detonate their underpants, Dutch artists are proven first-responders.
Meanwhile, we must, and will, continue to strip-search 82-year-old white, Protestant grandmothers and 2-year-olds, lest we annoy the tender sensibilities of Muslim countries that practice, among other time-honored religious rituals, genital mutilation of young women, live burial of homosexuals, and stoning and beheading of adulterous women. God forbid we should upset them. We’re Americans. We’re better than that.
And now, let me say a word or two about a subject that I have not had time to address much this past year, what with arranging summits between the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police, and aggrieved Harvard professors, to say nothing of flying to and from Scandinavia to pick up gold medals—namely, the economy.
Frankly, the economy is not what it should be, which is why the state of the union is a 9.8 instead of a perfect 10.
I called in the smart folks in my administration, many of them educated at Harvard, and I put it to them directly. I said, “Is this my fault?” And to a person they said, “No, sir! No way!”
I said to them, “Well then, whose fault is it?” And they said, “It’s the bankers, Mr. President. The scum-sucking, stimulus money-accepting, bonus-awarding, self-regarding swine who inhabit the street of shame and infamy, the harlot’s den known as Wall Street.”
I said to them, “And what are we going to do about them? We can’t hang them all. We don’t have enough rope. And anyway, rope is expensive and I’m trying to cut the deficit. Ideas, people. I want ideas.”
So tonight I can announce to you, my fellow Americans, the creation of a bipartisan commission to study how to kill the bankers in an efficient and hemp-sensitive manner.
Now, it is customary on these occasions, after offering the American people bromides and yes, even downright lies about how well the nation is doing, to acknowledge American heroes sitting in the gallery.
Unfortunately, no pilots have landed planes in the Hudson River lately, so we don’t have any of them. But there are a number of Dutch artists with us tonight…
draft of President Obama’s upcoming State of the Union speech.
My fellow Americans,
Tonight I can report to you that the state of the union, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being excellent, is a 9.8.
Now, you may ask—and I wouldn’t blame you for asking—how I came up with that number. You might be saying to yourself, “Wait a minute. I’ve got no job, no health insurance. My house isn’t worth half the amount of my mortgage, and I just got called up by the National Guard to do a fifth tour in Afghanistan. How the heck did he come up with 9.8?”
So it’s a good and valid question. And the answer is that 9.8 is pretty good, considering the mess my predecessor and the Republicans left me. Fair enough? I think so.
A year ago, I inspired the nation to have the audacity to hope that I would change the political culture in Washington. Now, it turns out I’m another hack politician.
I want to acknowledge some folks in this chamber here tonight. The cipher-faced, light-skinned fellow right behind me is Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, from the great state of Nevada, home of gambling, legal prostitution, and empty nuclear-waste facilities.
Over the last year, Harry has managed to do something I wouldn’t have dreamt possible: make me look like a total tool of the political establishment. How did he manage that? How did I manage that?
A year ago, I inspired the nation to have the audacity to hope that I would change the political culture in Washington. Now, a year later, it turns out I’m another hack politician—from Chicago, where, believe you me, we know a thing or two about hack politics.
I was going to set a new standard. Now I’m just a complicit bystander as Harry bribes, among others, a senator from Nebraska who wants his state to get a free pass on Medicare—in return for his vote on a health-care reform bill that would make the Founders weep, or throw up. Or both.
What a difference a year makes. But I’m pleased to report that before I came up here tonight, I was able to sign a contract with my publisher for a new book. I’m going to call it The Audacity of Oops.
As you know, it is customary procedure, during a State of the Union, for one Cabinet officer not to attend, so as to provide continuity of government in the event someone, say, flies a plane into the Capitol Building or sets off a nuclear bomb or what-have-you. Tonight, you will be reassured to know that Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security is at an undisclosed location, making sure that, as she would put it, the system goes on working.
I can further report that Secretary Napolitano has come up with an ingenious plan to prevent a recurrence of the Christmas bombing attempt. From now on, all planes flying into the United States will carry not air marshals but Dutch artists. For we now know that when it comes to disabling well-born Nigerians attempting to detonate their underpants, Dutch artists are proven first-responders.
Meanwhile, we must, and will, continue to strip-search 82-year-old white, Protestant grandmothers and 2-year-olds, lest we annoy the tender sensibilities of Muslim countries that practice, among other time-honored religious rituals, genital mutilation of young women, live burial of homosexuals, and stoning and beheading of adulterous women. God forbid we should upset them. We’re Americans. We’re better than that.
And now, let me say a word or two about a subject that I have not had time to address much this past year, what with arranging summits between the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police, and aggrieved Harvard professors, to say nothing of flying to and from Scandinavia to pick up gold medals—namely, the economy.
Frankly, the economy is not what it should be, which is why the state of the union is a 9.8 instead of a perfect 10.
I called in the smart folks in my administration, many of them educated at Harvard, and I put it to them directly. I said, “Is this my fault?” And to a person they said, “No, sir! No way!”
I said to them, “Well then, whose fault is it?” And they said, “It’s the bankers, Mr. President. The scum-sucking, stimulus money-accepting, bonus-awarding, self-regarding swine who inhabit the street of shame and infamy, the harlot’s den known as Wall Street.”
I said to them, “And what are we going to do about them? We can’t hang them all. We don’t have enough rope. And anyway, rope is expensive and I’m trying to cut the deficit. Ideas, people. I want ideas.”
So tonight I can announce to you, my fellow Americans, the creation of a bipartisan commission to study how to kill the bankers in an efficient and hemp-sensitive manner.
Now, it is customary on these occasions, after offering the American people bromides and yes, even downright lies about how well the nation is doing, to acknowledge American heroes sitting in the gallery.
Unfortunately, no pilots have landed planes in the Hudson River lately, so we don’t have any of them. But there are a number of Dutch artists with us tonight…
Which sort of reminds me about the biggest hole there is in media, be it mainstream or new: NO ACCOUNTING.
I've made predictions here, and I've been more right than not, though I pretend -- like everyone else -- that I'm always right. I got that from my favorite rock band, the Rolling Stones, who started calling themselves "The Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World" and repeated it until everyone consented and repeated it themselves as if it were true.
Now I'm going to beat up on Christopher Buckley. Not because he's the only malefactor in this venue. But because he's the most evidently odious one. He said this in the run-up to the election:
Let me be the latest
conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama
bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer
alive. They’d cut off my allowance....
I am—drum roll, please, cue
trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast
(what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the
pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column...
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian....
Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian....
Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.
Now he wants us to read him seriously as a witty commentator on the state of the Obama presidency. Not buying. Obviously. He's the callow, fortunate offspring of a much better and wiser man. Not at all uncommon. Abilities do seem to skip generations. His son, if he has one, may well be a force to be reckoned with. So it's okay that Christopher Buckley is an empty suit. I'll say no more about it than that.
BUT. In this day and age of 24/7 news coverage, new and old media, and obsessive coverage of the media as a story commensurate with the news itself, isn't it time that SOMEBODY started tracking the predictions so-called pundits make?
I know Rush Limbaugh has an accounting firm on retainer for the purpose of monitoring his predictions. He's still at 98-plus percentile accuracy. Yet everywhere else, we're asked to give our faith to talk-show pundits whose records of past predictions are about as transparent as the congressional health care negotiations.
Is anybody keeping score on Bob Beckel, Karl Rove, Michelle Malkin, Arianna Huffington, Lawrence O'Donnell, Dana Perino, Paul Begala, Dick Morris, Juan Williams, Charles Krauthammer, Andrew Sullivan, Bill Kristol, and all the other know-it-alls who presume to tell us what is, might be, and will be? Wouldn't it be great if we could see, as soon as they open their mouths, how their past predictions have fared in the context of real outcomes and results? And the rating system should be scaled and weighted in accordance with the importance of their predictions and advice. (For example, a pundit who told us to vote for Obama because he was, uh, cool should have that prediction hung around his neck forever.)
Especially when they tell us we're ignorant and uneducated for not listening to their received wisdom. Mister Buckley.
What do we get instead? Smart guys who make a living from predicting things that never happen. That's what ESPN and the NFL Network are for. Oddly enough, they keep better track of past predictions than the news organizations do. Not as well as they should. But better.
All in all, some accountability would be nice. Especially when it comes down to entities that are "too big to fail." Like the federal government. Unless you went to the right schools, of course. Meaning there won't ever be ANY accountability for what you blow out your ass. Graduates of Harvard and Yale NEVER fart. Or didn't you know that? Well... just ask Obama. I'm sure the closest he's ever come to a fart is a high-pitched squeak his Princetonian wife thought was a spontaneous expression of delight by yet another NYT columnist. And so it goes...
snarkandboobs 
ohthehugemanatee
