Washington's Wake

Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category

On HotAir.com, Dr. Zero had a great post today, where here made the point Democrats break the law to hoard billions in slush fund cash for upcoming elections.

This is the fundamental thing that I struggle with every day. But really, it’s not democrats. I suppose at some point it was, but now, it doesn’t have to be. They won the debate years ago, right under the noses of actual Americans. Now, basic assumptions by the vast majority presume that the felonious thieving notions of progressivism and the democrats are not only moral, but wise and compassionate.

Conservatives don’t even realize that they undermine their arguments when they even accept federal programs like medicare, medicaid & social security as legitimate. The argument is lost as soon as you ‘protect them’ – obviously then the argument is completely lost because 99% of everyone in the country takes that all for granted.

I have little or no hope for the country – never mind the world as a whole. When I can listen to the radio and hear the basic argument that government needs to control the health care market — not from a liberal but from a conservative – because ‘fat smokers are raising MY rates, and how much worse is it going to be as the childhood obesity rate continues to rise from 60%.’

This sort of busybody logic has infiltrated so utterly and completely, this notion that we are our brother’s keepers is so universal, that every solution to our problems takes for granted that government MUST solve the problems for the majority at the expense of the individual.

Liberty is dead.

Yes, democrats are felons and thieves, but so are Republicans, and for that matter most likely so are you.

This week has been a pretty wild one for the healthcare debate. There are so many things that are going through my head on this, but the one consistent thing is, “For God’s sake, I hope they don’t have the votes.”

I’ve heard many people say it, including Rush Limbaugh yesterday, that we can’t really count on Stupak and those dozen democrats to hold their ground. I think that’s a very good point. It is possible they will, but it seems more likely that they’ll be bought off with some-something that gives them cover.

Nancy Pelosi, with all of them, had 220 votes. But let’s say she lost them. She has also lost some votes to death and now, the third resignation or retirement with the whole Massa sex scandal. I believe that the death vote gets taken out of the total entirely – I’m not quite clear on the resignations count, whether they drop the total votes needed to 215, or it’s still 217.

Regardless, her votes are dwindling, and the public is solidifying in opposition, and the election is drawing closer and closer. It seems to me that they have at best 3 more bites at the apple, simply due to the time factor. Honestly, I’m unwilling to think they’re smart enough to give it up until they are broken completely. Including a possible lame-duck congress move.

But anyways right now, without any expert knowledge it sounds like she has about 203 votes and needs at least 215. My understanding is she probably doesn’t have that many, and that she’s a lot more than the apparent dozen votes short. I’m not optimistic or pessimistic, but realistically, it does look like a long shot for Pelosi to push that through. If she does, I will give her this much credit, she might be the most hideous and evil Speaker ever, but man, she is good at getting her way.

Ahhh… 2009.

What a year.

At what other time in history was the US President declared to be “sort of  God” (Newsweek’s Evan Thomas) or the KGB “an honorable place to work” (Ted Turner)?

Oh, and apparently, BO is the last Kennedy.

Hot Air’s got the story, the generic poll has the republicans up and up big.

Voters not affiliated with either party continue to heavily favor Republicans, 44% to 20%.

Ouchies. The dems have got to be panicking.

Let’s be honest. The independents in this country gave the election to HRH The Sun King.

Can you say buyers remorse?

Of course these are all “generic” polls with no real race in the near future until next year’s elections. I’m sure there’s still some way for the republicans to screw this up. They’re just as incompetent as the dems, unfortunately for the country.

There have to be at least a half-dozen hot spots, where the results of a flair up have global implications. At what point do all these dots become connected, and all hell break loose?

It seems to me that the build ups to both world war I and II were similar. Not only in the depth and breadth of discontent, but also the dearth of leadership, and the denial spewing forth from the most respected folks in the world. No one, particularly those in charge, wants to believe that messes of this proportion could be taking place on their watch.

So, looking at North & South Korea, Venezuala & Columbia, the presidency situation in Honduras, the admission that gold is becoming exponentially more difficult to mine, the upcoming non-democratically selected EU presidency, the Fort Hood Massacre, the Obama administration’s inability to make a decision.. seeming of any sort, the weakening of the US Dollar, the weakening of the US Economy with debacles in both health care in cap&tax, the instability of the US Housing Market, the Weakness of US Banks, the volatility of the stock market, the continued weakening of support for the US as a world leader, the saber rattling of the Russians over US relationship in eastern Europe, and the middle east, the continued belligerence of the Chinese… and the list goes on and on… at what point should we be afraid?

At what point do some dangerous number of US Troops quit due to the lack of proper respect from the administration? When do Generals start quitting? When do the first wave of major US Corps leave the US for better economic environment? When does the emigration number start to be a concern? What happens when thousands perhaps millions of Americans are incarcerated for lack of healthcare – not because they can’t have it, but because they are acting out in civil disobedience? If the US starts heading to civil war, at what point do other nations explode in violence and civil war?

It just seems to me th at there is a lot going on, none of it good, and most of it due to a complete lack of understanding of the nature of freedom.

Damn it all, why did we have to elect a tyrant?

Reason has a review of a new Ayn Rand book. It’s a decent review of a book written by someone that wasn’t either an acolyte of Ayn or someone who hated her.

Sources from The New York Times to the United Kingdom’s Guardian agree that 2009 is the Year of Ayn Rand. Fortuitously surfing the wave of Rand fascination is the first thorough and largely unbiased book about her life and ideas by a serious American academic, one neither a personal friend nor a bitter enemy of the controversial Russian-born novelist and philosopher.

Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, by University of Virginia historian Jennifer Burns, delivers a smart assessment of Rand’s life and ideas and how they influenced each other. On what her book’s title promises—the connections between Rand and the American right wing—Ms. Burns is less convincing, though she does provide enough data to make it clear why Rand has never really been a “goddess” to the American right.

It does sound like an interesting book and one to take a look at.

I was reading Michael Medved’s piece this morning and it really strikes me that more than just understanding the differences, conservatives should take advantage of them. It seems to me that this is essentially what Ronald Reagan did.

Medved Said:

The more that conservatives understand and adopt the idea that attitudes toward America divide the left and right everywhere, the better our chances of building durable majorities.

And he’s exactly right. Ronald Reagan built his base on optimism and understanding that the pessimistic left is always doomed to failure by their attitude. Rush Limbaugh is constantly preaching on and on about being optimistic about America – and he’s right too. Whatever strategy the conservative movement uses (and fuck George W. Bush if he doesn’t think there is one) it must understand optimism is only way to win, and the liberals can not ever understand that.

It is a huge advantage to be able to understand one’s opponents when they can not understand you.  Americans will always respond to the positives greater than negatives, love over hate, strength over weakness and truth over lies. The republicans lost their way and it is time for conservatives to remind them. Republican party can not survive if it is not a safe home for the conservatives.

Yesterday, when I was talking about how conservatives should be arguing, I was referring to the strategy that Sarah Palin used today in her response to the president’s speech last night.

I really appreciated a comment by JP on Hotair when he said “It is no time to bend over and just smile and nod while the man Lies through his teeth to the American People, paticularly on an issue that will fundamentally change American and Politics in AMerica, till we collapse anyway.”  I think Mrs Palin stuck to that philosophy as she responded.

Her response did three vital things:

a) Correct the record

b) Expose the flaws in the underlying assumptions

c) Demand honesty

Conservatives who allow wishywashy assumptions to stand, such as the official response’s “we agree Americans want…” allow the administration to get away with defining the wants of Americans in the ways that most benefit their arguments. Mrs. Palin breaks that convention and in doing so champions the fundamental cause of freedom that underlies the entire debate.

I am rather disgusted by this notion that Republicans are ‘standing with their arms folded saying no.’ If folks don’t disabuse people of that notion, the argument is lost.

There is currently a three pronged attack from the left, and I think it’ll be effective in time to salvage both majorities in 2010 and hold the presidency in 2012 unless conservatives wise up. The attacks are about framing everything that happens in terms of Republcians part of the problem not the solution.

1) Republicans have no ideas.

2) Republicans are stupid/radical/cruel/ignorant (any other ad hominem you wish to insert here)

3) Republicans made this mess.

The ‘arms folded saying no’ remark clearly frames the Republicans as petulant fools who offer nothing. I have heard dozens of ideas floated by serious republicans, most of which I hate, but that doesn’t’ mean the ideas aren’t out there or being offered up. It means the majority chooses to ignore them and frame them as unserious.

The Sarah Palin attack today is a continuation of the ‘republicans are stupid’ vein of attack. First attack dog takes a bite, gets blood in the water.Now, over the next few days, she’ll be smeared by progressively more and more respected reporters, and all the while conservative pundits will be on the defensive.

The last one, i expect to hear a lot of in the speech tonight, since these attacks are coordinated by the Democratic National Socialists .. aka the NatSos. I expect Obama to combine the framing of the conservatives as do-nothing ignoramuses with the revised history that squarely places all blame for this mess on the Republicans.

Not only Bush but the purported ‘republican congress’ which, by my estimation never had a clear majority during the Bush years. While, yes, they did have majority numbers, they were soft. They were so rife with ‘moderates’ they could never actually move meaningful legislation. Bush’s tendency to compromise only made matters much much worse.

If the conservatives want to win the argument, they are going to have to be MUCH more forceful in their defense and attacks on Democrats. this is very hard seeing as Democrats (aka Verucacrats) have advantages of resources (cash), higher ground (majority in congress) and infrastructure (media). Conservatives have advantage of real numbers, philosophical consistency and realistic view of the way the world works. But since the left continually defines the language and the debate, it’s hard to see how the right is going to get back in the game.

If I were coordinating the response I would consider these things:

a) Ridicule. This works. They are laughable fools and they should be exposed loudly and often as such. They are not serious people and they are not serious thinkers. The majority of the voices from the left are caricatures . While it isn’t very funny that they’re in power, we should still laugh at them. Laughter is far more piercing than vitriol.

b) Call them liars every time the lying liars lie. Undermine the trust the public has in them. AND, don’t lie. Period. Don’t do it. Tell the truth, even if it hurts you. Don’t spin the truth. Don’t exaggerate the truth. Just tell the damned truth. Verucacrats are spoiled, selfish liars – they don’t even realize they’re lying. It’s more of a reality deficit disorder.

c) Correct the record. Do not allow them to rewrite history. They are responsible for the myriad failing government ponzi schemes and they need to own it.

d) Steal their words. Whatever words they use, steal them and use them as they were originally intended. Do not allow them to spoil the language - it is the currency of politics and the way ideas are created. Once they have destroyed the words that describe the problems and the truth, then neither are accessible in the future.

e) Make ideas public and welcome debate. Don’t be squeamish about the debate. Let everyone argue with the ideas. If they are rational and if they are real, and if conservatives fight for them and defend them then they will win out. But as long as the media keeps conservative thought hidden, obscured and reviled, then this fight is lost.

Right now, Conservatives are losing badly and unless they change their tactics and devise a cohesive strategy, any chance of restoring the Republic is gone. Letting the debate constantly reflect the twisted mushy minds of the masses led by emotion rather than reason is not going to win anything ever.

So ABC, they of the legacy media, have decided to hype the “hate” groups that, you know, hate HRH The Sun King. They have a shiny story that even says so.

And in New Hampshire, another man stood across the street from a Presidential town hall with his gun on full display.

Quick, queue scary music.

Ya know, you guys from Manhattan and DC might want to get out of the air conditioned offices. We here in the Granite State, you know the Live Free or Die state have this thing called open carry. Amazingly enough, in some states it is absolutely and perfectly legal, and I hear we even have this thing called the 2nd Amendment, though it’s not taught in those liberal bastions, that allows us here in the NEW HAMPSHIRE to openly carry a hand gun.

I know, who would have thought that a “major” legacy news agency wouldn’t bother to, you know, check their facts.

Sigh…

Meanwhile let’s go over some real hate groups.

An African-American man from Mississippi admits posing as a white supremacist to send a death threat across state lines by Facebook.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says 20-year-old Dyron L. Hart of Poplarville pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court to making a threat in November 2008.

Hart admitted creating a name and using a white supremacists’ photo to pose as a white man who planned to kill blacks because Barack Obama had been elected president.

Er, ok, maybe not that real hate group.

How about people being physically threatened while they exercise their fundamental right to participate in their republican country?

The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.

And in case you think this was a VRWC type of situation, we have this quote.

A poll watcher who provided an affidavit to prosecutors in the case noted that Bartle Bull, who worked as a civil rights lawyer in the south in the 1960′s and is a former campaign manager for Robert Kennedy, said it was the most blatant form of voter intimidation he had ever seen.

In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”

He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”

So all you crackers out there, don’t forget to bow down to HRH The Sun King while the legacy media cooks up scary stories that are nothing while ignoring real cases.

Of course that’s why no one is reading their newspapers or watching their tv shows. But hey, it’s a good thing they have all those layers of fact checkers and editors. Makes it easier to layoff people when you can prove quite easily that they’re incompetent beyond belief. Because you know, why let facts get in the way of a good story.