Commentary and analysis on American politics, culture, and national identity, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, and the state of education
- from a neoconservative perspective! - Keeping an eye on the communist-left so you don't have to!
Check out Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove's discussion of President Obama's healthcare address:
Also, The Swampreports that GOP Rep. John Shimkus walked out on the speech. The dude bailed with just a couple of minutes left. It's disrespectful, sure. But given the general consensus on how brutally partisan was Obama's speech, I don't blame the guy. Decorum's not what it's all cracked up to be when you're supposed to be showing deference to a habitualliar.
What we learned in the last month is that people who have been energetically organizing, filling town halls and high-school gymnasiums, and staging protests for most of their lives are more than a little dismayed to find out that the other side can do it, too. There will always be a risk of unrest at any political protest, left or right, and that risk increases with the emotion and energy surrounding the debate. And it will always be important to call for civility in heated debates, and to treat public forums and our right to speak in them with the respect they deserve.
Congressional Democrats interrupted President Bush's speech on entitlement reform in 2006. Bush's opponent cheer wildly as they rise in response to Bush's assertion that Congress did not act on his reform agenda in 2005. Via Gateway Pundit. Then-Senator Barack Obama was one of the Democratic obstructionists in attendance.
Mark Tapscott discovers a nugget in the analysis provided by the Congressional Research Office on HR3200, the House version of ObamaCare coming to the floor. While Barack Obama insists that the idea that ObamaCare will cover illegal immigrants is a "myth," the CRS points out that the bill does nothing to prevent it. Since HR3200 doesn't require people to establish citizenship or legal residency before applying to exchanges for health insurance, including the public option, taxpayer money will certainly flow to illegal immigrants:
Congressional Research Service (CRS) says this about H.R. 3200, the Obamacare bill approved just before the recess by the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA:
"Under H.R. 3200, a 'Health Insurance Exchange' would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange."
"Under H.R. 3200, a 'Health Insurance Exchange' would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange."
Two out of three Americans who watched President Barack Obama's health care reform speech Wednesday night favor his health care plans — a 14-point gain among speech-watchers, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation national poll of people who tuned into Obama's address Wednesday night to a joint session of Congress.
Actually, the whole speech is clever. He’s trying to re-brand himself as the great compromiser, and everyone else as partisan. And, as I predicted earlier, he’s emphasizing the good things about the plan and not answering any the criticisms in any detail or substance. If you believe he’s an honest broker and telling the truth, it sounds great—who wouldn’t be for affordable and better health care for all? He’s banking on the fact that many people still want to like him and are disposed to believe him, as well as the economic ignorance of most Americans.
People who say bad things about my health care plan are liars and dreadful human beings. There needs to be more civility in this discussion. Bush caused 9-11. People who say bad things about my health care plan are trying to scare people, and everybody’s going to die if we don’t get this thing passed now.
I was rolling on the floor a couple of weeks ago during a rerun of Saturday Night's 2008 vice presidential debate. Scroll forward at the video to see Jason Sudeikis' Joe Biden explain that he's not a Washington insider because he comes from Scranton, PA, "the absolute worst place on earth ..."
So just now, when the cameras went live for the GOP response to President Obama's ObamaCareaddress, I seriously thought it was a skit. But just for a minute! Honesly, no offense, but I'd never even heard of Rep. Charles Boustany before - but the dude should be on Saturday Night! Or at least, let's get a great comedic send-up of his response tonight. Seriously, watching Jason Sudeikis - my pick for Rep. Boustany - will be at least as funny as Kathleen Sebelius' response to President Bush's State of the Union Address in 2008! As the New York Times points out:
Representative Charles Boustany of Louisiana, a surgeon, has delivered a brief Republican response. He has the same problem typical of those who deliver such responses (and not, in his case, just relative anonymity) — he is standing by himself somewhere, without the animation that comes from interacting with a live audience ...
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it's the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn't picky in this regard). This is the argument for an "economic dictatorship" pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It's the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.
Actually, I found another angle on this over at Ordinary Gentlemen. It appears that the Ordinary Gents have turned over a lot of the front-page blogging to a new Ordinary Gentle-Lady, "Jamelle." I have no idea who she is, but reading her stuff confirms that Ordinary Gentleman has completed the transition to a hardline leftist blog after flirting with the idiotic "liberaltarian" scam for most of the year. At least with Jamelle, who joins the explicity neo-Stalinist Freddie, these Sullivan-myrmidons can quit their stupid game of ideological musical chairs. (And E.D. Kain is the worst. Dishonest, deceitful, the guy simply masks a deep-seated hatred of right and good in the most opaque amalgam of liberaltarian bull.)
Anyway, what gets me going about these creeps is Jamelle's fundamental affirmation of one-party authoritarianism, with a little twist in favor of regime change USA:
The only thing I’d add to Friedman’s analysis is ... that it is a little inaccurate to describe the Democratic Party as singular or unified in any ideological sense. In reality, or at least as far as congressional Democrats are concerned, the Democratic Party is more of a loose coalition between a broadly center-left party (based in the Northeast and the West Coast) and a broadly center-right party (based in the Rust Belt, and rural areas throughout the West, Midwest, and the South). For liberals, this isn’t particularly good. Under a functional legislative system, where majority rule was given deference, this wouldn’t pose too much of a problem; the center-left party could rely on the center-right party to help craft and pass broadly acceptable legislation (while the right-wing party languished in irrelevance). The way it stands however, the right-wing party has pretty significant veto power over nearly every piece of legislation, which effectively means that any given piece of progressive legislation has to go through two conservative filters.
To take it back to Friedman’s point though, the fact of our tri-party legislature acts as yet another obstacle to one-party governing, since there simply isn’t enough ideological cohesion and group loyalty within the Democratic Party to pass anything approaching ambitious legislation. The real solution, of course, is a complete restructuring of our legislature into something approaching a Westminster-style parliamentary system, with multiple member districts and executive branch drawn largely from the legislature. However, since that is also incredibly unlikely, we’ll probably have to look for other ways to make Congress more responsive to the majority party (like eliminating the filibuster, or revamping the committee system!).
For those in the know, the Westminster model is often referred as an "elective dictatorship." The prime minister is drawn from the majority in the Commons, and the party in power can fall on a vote of no confidence. There's really no incentive for MPs to pull down the government, however, since that means that they'll have to go before the voters in a new election. Sure, it's a long way from Westminster to an authoritarian one-party regime. But what's interesting in Jamelle's case is the outright hostility to American constitutionalism. A solid reading of James Madison or the Federalist Papers indicates that the structure of American political insitutions works to prevent tyranny. To do away with the presidential model is revolutionary AND authoritarian. No serious analyst makes such proposals. And this mention of abolishing the filibuster is more hostility to the protection of minority rights. Leftists just don't care about democratic safeguards - they're all about power, the more demonic the better. Jamelle's piece is a good indicator of just how whacked are the folks at Ordinary Gentleman. The rank attacks on conservatives we see over there, including Sarah Palin, reveal not only a total alienation from genuine heartland values, but a mean-spiritedness that's inherent to leftists politics.
These folks are awful people. Jamelle's commentary just confirms that Ordinary Gentlemen have become the same kind of liberal fascists that Jonah Goldbergsees in Tom Friedman.
The lesson the war supporters have learned from all of this is that the Rules Of Engagement suck ....
For the few who still remember Vietnam this should sound very familiar. Once you got out of the major cities in Vietnam the war wasn't about communism VS western capitalism it was about occupation by foreign troops. They supported the Viet Cong because they saw them as freedom fighters.
The lesson should be that we are in another quagmire - fighting another war that can't be won without killing most of the population.
Readers may recall that Newshoggers backed "the resistance" in Iraq, and literally cheered al Qaeda's use of mentally-impaired female suicide bombers as a "brilliant" strategic adaptation against American forces.
Here's Che Guevara, the postumous pop-star of today's radical left, attacking U.S. imperialism in Latin American at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis:
The city's already spending $4 billion on infrastructure repairs to the area's underground pipe system, but soon enough we'll see some leftists use the incident in making the case for another Obama stimulus. Will Matthew Yglesias answer the call?
In case your only source of news is ABC, CBS, NBC and/or The New York Times or, as the White House was hoping, you were out doing things with your family this long weekend and didn't check the news (which was released after midnight Sunday so it wouldn't be in any papers) the green jobs "czar," special adviser to the president, Van Jones has resigned.
But here's The One Thing: My phone, e-mail and Twitter were hammered all weekend with people offering congratulations. First, let me say I'm not the one to congratulate. I can go on and on about this stuff, but if you don't care and it doesn't connect with the American people, what I say doesn't matter.
So let me start with the good news: You still have power and clout in Washington. In many cases, your representatives in Washington knew nothing about Van Jones. You were educating them and it wasn't until late last week that a few brave political people began to speak out.
But here's the bad news: When this came out and people started to say congratulations, my first response was: You still don't get it. This was a victory of sorts, but only for those playing political games. I'm not doing that and I don't think you are either.
You are trying to protect and defend the Constitution. President Obama was hoping that this would go away. One of the headlines from the Politico this weekend was: "Beck Up, Left Down."
You are trying to protect and defend the Constitution. President Obama was hoping that this would go away. One of the headlines from the Politico this weekend was: "Beck Up, Left Down."
I read the article a couple of times. Van Jones said this was a vicious smear campaign. Van Jones was able to resign, not be fired. And, during his resignation, he placed the blame on others, not himself.
What Van Jones doesn't understand is that I didn't bring down Van Jones; you didn't bring down Van Jones; Van Jones brought down Van Jones.
Is it a smear campaign to quote Van Jones' own words?
The job market for political scientists, like the markets for most academic fields, is a lot tighter this year than in the recent past. The American Political Science Association, which held its annual meeting here over the weekend, didn't release data on the job market, but everyone here agreed that things have gotten tight.
At a session for graduate directors, one woman talked about how she is trying to help not only those finishing up their dissertations find jobs, but those from last year who are working as adjuncts, with little by way of a living wage or job security. She said she found herself wondering when she should tell her students or graduates, if they can't find tenure-track jobs, that "this just isn't going to work out" and they should look for work elsewhere.
It was a sense that the job market just isn't what it used to be (and not only the scarcity of jobs) that led the political science association, for the first time at its annual meeting, to bring graduate directors together to hear from a panel and to trade ideas about the job market. The meeting was a mix of trend analysis, philosophical debate and tips for how to better prepare graduate students to find jobs in the field. In discussing tips, many times the political scientists found themselves recommending actions that might help on the job market, but that they weren't sure were ideal for graduate education.
A lot of the discussion is not that different from the kind of talk I used to hear 10 years ago at UCSB. Landing a tenure-track post at that time was hard. Now things just sound worse. As always, there's a premium on publications, even during the third year of grad school. I remember, back then, UCLA's political science department requiring students to write for publication. These are "qualifying papers," designed as pre-publication research. Students can't advance to candidacy without them. The assumption is that students would't be competitive job candidates without published research, and it's more true than ever.
Inside Higher Ed also notes that departments are seeking candidates skilled at generating external grant funding. It makes sense, if college budgets are tight, why not higher young scholars who'll bring in money? There's an interesting discussion of the online "job rumor mills," which weren't around when I was on the market. I guess the problem of anonymous posters and the "hate factor" aren't exclusive to the political blogosphere.
Anyway, I'm just glad I found a job teaching when I did. I'm in my 10th year at LBCC and I have few regrets, although I think most folks secretly wish they were at Harvard holding forth. But life in academics being what it is (competitive mostly), I can't complain.
As a professor who trains students seeking university transfer, I'll never advise a student to forego the dream of becoming a political scientist (and that's the sort of the conclusion you get from Peter's post). The main thing is not necessarily for folks to actually become a Harvard professor. The ideal is to have lived a life of ideas and engagement, to have made a profession out of studying politics. And that'll be all the better if one finds a spot at an institution of higher education, even at community college.
The image is from Pat Dollard, "Obama’s Race War: “Wake Up, Conservatives”, Wake Up Americans." I can't tell you how perfectly the title of that post sums up how I see this administration. I had generally nice things to say about the president's address to students today. I like the message of personal responsiblity. It's just not authentic coming from this White House snake-oil salesman.
Even more disturbing than learning that the White House and NEA are using the arts to address specific issues, is to learn what was discussed on this new conference call. Rosenbaum mentions that there was much talk of “leveraging federal dollars” to get artists and cultural organizations involved in social-service projects.
Leveraging federal dollars? This is the problem with marrying issue specific topics, like health care and energy, with a group that is funded by tax dollars; it increases the potential of taxpayer-funded propaganda.
Another historic, monumental speech from the 44th President of the United States. He's averaging about one of these every three weeks now, isn't he?
To say that this President is overexposed is an understatement. He was overexposed six months ago when he let his kids appear on the cover of Jann Wenner's trashy supermarket celeb mag. I'm not sure what prefix to use, but "over-" does not sufficiently describe a President who is now doing 30-second spots for George Lopez's new late night show on TBS. Seriously.
I'm just glad the tea parties are having such a phenomenal effect, and that the historical abomination of Obama 44 is inceasingly looking like a one term deal. January 2013 can't come fast enough for this country; although, in consolation, I'm confident that Obama's inexperience and overreaching are sealing his rep as the worst president ever.
Of the ten minutes I caught, I'm not thrilled by President Obama's exhortation to succeed for "the country" and to do new things, like volunteering. But other than that, he made agood speech with a powerful message of personal responsibility. I agree with Newt Gingrich that students should be encouraged to read it. There's a powerful utility in sharing those stories of hard work and perseverance, and I imagine with Obama the drill will go down better coming from a "brother," especially in disadvantaged communities.
Reading the text yesterday, Joanne Jacobs called it an excellent speech; and she addressed the concerns I noted above:
Should he tell students they have a duty to their country — not just to themselves — to become the problem solvers and innovators of the future? It’s not what I would call a radical idea. These are old-fashioned American values.
Yes, they are old-fashioned. But we can't take those ideas away from the personal context in which they are presented. Parents don't like this president pitching personal responsiblity to them because they don't like his agenda of radical change. It doesn't help when Obama's allies in the entertainment/media industry push authoritarian "pledge drives" or when the White House itself launches "snitch" campaigns to track dissenters. Previous presidents did not have that baggage. So the Obama speech to students can never be as effective as was true for President Reagan or President H.W. Bush. Obama's HopeAndChange agenda has created an unprecedented regime of conformity, and the administration's "goals for students" learning packet indeed takes on a disturbing "Obama Youth" aura amid the ugly school-age intolerance the president has engendered.
It turns out that Charles Krauthammer, speaking of Van Jones during Thursday's Fox News All-Stars, suggested that:
I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist.
Well, it's not that pathetic, at least not to all the young people enthralled with communist paraphernalia (Che chic comes to mind, but Obama-mania is Soviet-like in its cult of personality). These are the same young people who routinely demonstrate under the neo-Stalinist banner. I write about it all the time. I think that, actually, the further we're removed historically from the brutality of Soviet rule during the Cold War, combined with the popularization of a pseudo-hip antiwar-postmodernism, there's no real recoil against the idea of Marxist-Leninist ideologies. Folks even laugh when they hear the word "communism," since that's, well, ancient history for many. Now it's "progressive" to praise Castro's healthcare regime, and that's not just by idealistic college kids, but by members of Congress!
It should be apparent by now that Communism never died. The Soviet Union died. Being a Communist, or a neocommunist, is not an intellectual anachronism at all — it is quite the fashion in the academy and our other institutions. Does Charles not realize, for example, that Obama's friend Bill Ayers — who proudly calls himself "a small 'c' communist" — was in 2008 elected vice president for curriculum of the American Education Research Association, the nation's largest organization of education professors and researchers? (See Sol Stern's profile of Ayers and education, here). I'm not sure "pathetic" is the right word, but what is a perilous intellectual anachronism is the belief that the communist threat ended 18 years ago.
The Jones incident, moreover, does not indicate that "we had a communist in the U.S. government." To the contrary, as I argued last night, we have a U.S. government in which Van Jones was quite consciously selected because his views are representative of the president who made him the "green jobs czar." Van Jones isn't Alger Hiss. There's nothing covert about him. He didn't snooker Obama into bringing him aboard. He is who he is, and that's why Obama wanted him. Having a Communist in that job was perfect since the "green jobs" initiative is an important part of the hard Left's agenda to use environmentalism as an additional justification for usurping command of the economy.
In fact, the death of the Soviet Union has actually been a boon for neocommunists. Now, Obama and his fellow travelers like Jones, Ayers, Wright, Klonsky, and ACORN, can spout all the same totalitarian, anti-American, central-planning ideas the hard Left has always pushed, but in the abstract — under such mushy labels as "social justice" and "green jobs." That is, they are liberated from having to defend the Soviet Empire, which, until 1991, was a living, breathing, concrete example of how horrific these ideas are when put in practice.
What's interesting to me is how our netroots "progressives" see Van Jones as a perfectly decent guy - I mean a really, really good guy! (That's what Baratunde Thurston argued last night at his excreble post, "When Will This White House Learn You Cannot Negotiate With Terrorists?")
I first met Van Jones when he was honored last year by the Campaign for America's Future at their gala dinner. He was being swarmed by all of the liberal institutional elite, who just could not be more full of praise for the impressive environmental leader and prison reform organizer. Everybody wanted Van Jones on their board. Everyone wanted him at their fundraisers. Everyone wanted a piece of his formidable limelight.
Yeah, formidable. "Hammering" Jane also had kind words to say of the Baratunde screed, "It's an incredible piece." She also likes Carl Pope's allegations of a high-tech lynching of Van Jones.
And recall the fawning over at Gawker, "here we have a radical youth turned respectable liberal ... And he's a great person to have in this administration—he is a genuine environmentalist and the only special interest he's beholden to is poor people ..."
See, he's just a "great guy." Except that, frankly, Jones isn't a "great guy." He's a mean, nasty guy, with a long history of anti-Americanism and hard-left-wing agitation. He is, thought, the real thing - a communist, and that fact has leftists slobbering all over him. That's what I mean when I say there are "no enemies on the left." By calling themselves "progressives," today's neo-communists seek respectability.
For far too long, Americans have tolerated encroachments on their liberty; expansions in the reach, size, and power of government; and the incremental abrogation of Constitutional restrictions on same because it was going on clandestinely, behind closed doors (below the radar might be a better way of putting it). It’s also why I said a while back that Obama’s ascension just might’ve been the best thing that ever could have happened to this country ....
To clean out a rats’ nest, you first have to be able to see the damned rats. Jones will slink off to another sub-surface “community organizer” type job, perhaps even on the federal payroll, and another just like him will take his place ... quietly, without much in the way of fanfare. It’s up to the rest of us to keep our eyes open for it — to stay awake, so the Democrat Socialist rats won’t find it so easy to steal what little remains of our freedom, and remake what’s left of our Constitutional republic.
Tomorrow your BFF Barack will be speaking to all the school children in the land! He has asked me to speak to you tonight about what he wants you to do to prepare it ...
And remember: if you hear anybody saying bad or nasty things about Barack, please send me an e-mail with their names and addresses at: reportbadpeoplenow@gmail.com
Joe The Plumber (Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) has confirmed with organizers of the Tea Party Express that he will speak at Tuesday's Tea Party Express rally in Brighton, Michigan.
Organizers of the Tea Party Express bus tour arriving in Washington later this week planned their route to go though Democratic congressional districts they consider vulnerable.
"What we did was take a map of the United States and then we went head and pin pointed the members of congress that merited our attention and then we looked at those that might be politically vulnerable," said Joe Wierzbicki, a strategist with the conservative PAC Our Country Deserves Better, who are organizing the cross country Tea Party Express tour.
Topping the group's target list in the Senate is current Democrat, and former moderate Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. The Tea Party Express makes four stops in Pennsylvania later this week.
"Arlen Specter has always been a top priority for us, because as long as you had a prominent Republican who was providing the Democrats the means to push through this massive expansion of government, that certainly made him a top priority," says Wierzbicki.
Other Democratic senators on the groups list include Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Connecticut's Chris Dodd. The tour made five stops in Nevada, and plans three stops in Connecticut.
On the House side, first-term Michigan Democrats Mark Schauer and Gary Peters are on the group's target list. The tour plans four Michigan stops.
"We decided to do this tour across the country, mobilize the people in these communities, so that subsequent to this tour we can then go back and start prioritizing these targets for the express purpose of running ads and grassroots campaigns to defeat these members of Congress," said Wierzbicki.
The Our Country Deserves Better PAC says the Tea Party Express is not a partisan group.
When the "tea party" movement kicked off in April to protest record federal spending bills, trillion-dollar deficits and higher tax burdens, its members were fiercely independent and opposed any suggestion that they bond with a larger umbrella group, preferring to work within their local communities.
But that go-it-alone approach is changing as a result of the war over health care, and the Tea Party Express tour is leading the way.
The Tea Party Express - a caravan of buses, speakers and entertainers who have been holding protest rallies in cities and towns across the country - is heading to Washington, where on Saturday, up to 50,000 demonstrators are expected to march on the Capitol in a full-scale political offensive to persuade lawmakers to reject the health care overhaul bills that are pending in the House and Senate.
"What we are seeing across the country is not only increasingly larger crowds but a greater determination to hold members of Congress to their opposition to the health care plan. They are angry and feel they've been ignored, and they don't like what Congress has done," Joe Wierzbicki, national coordinator of the Tea Party Express, said in a telephone interview as his 45-foot bus cruised through Texas last week on a 17-day, 34-rally tour that will end in Washington on Saturday.
A large force of conservative and libertarian organizations is helping sponsor the event, including Tea Party Patriots, ResistNet, the National Taxpayers Union, Young Americans for Liberty, the Ayn Rand Center, Heartland Institute, Free Republic, Institute for Liberty, the Tea Party Express, FreedomWorks officials said. FreedomWorks, headquartered in Washington and chaired by former Rep. Dick Armey mobilizes volunteers for conservative causes.
"The politicians in Washington who think this movement is 'astroturf' had better think again. This is the grass roots coming alive," said Dennis E. Whitfield, executive vice president of the American Conservative Union. "This is beginning to take root across the country. This is for real."
Breaking news from New Lenox/Joliet… the sheriff’s office is reporting to us that the crowd estimate for the rally here is 10,000+ and they are shutting down a portion of Interstate 80 for traffic control do to the massive influx of people.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. Thank you for shopping through my links.
