Ronald Reagan explains exactly what Obama is doing, and Obama explains exactly what he’s doing. Amazingly, the explanations match up perfectly. Reagan has Obama nailed.
Via Riehl World View.
It’s the Endarkenment, folks, writ plain, writ loud and proud. Obama’s accomplishing exactly what he and his mentors intended.
Over at Protein Wisdom, Darleen Click takes apart Al Gore’s op-ed in the Fish Wrap of Record, the New York Times, in which Gore inadvertently tells the truth, and pulls aside the progressive curtain. It’s a must read.
Click highlights this immortal line as a pull quote:
From the standpoint of governance, what is at stake is our ability to use the rule of law as an instrument of human redemption.
[Correct Darleen's name; see comments.]
Increasingly, I’m coming across articles on the fundamental contradictions of the liberal view. And increasingly, the root of the liberal view is that smart people are liberals, and liberals are smart people, and that smart, liberal people know better than everyone else how we all should live our lives.
The problem is, “smart” and “liberal” aren’t synonyms, and worse, far worse, “smart” doesn’t trump “local” and “personal”. A dumb man swinging a hammer on the scene very often trumps a smart man answering an email a thousand miles away, because the local guy knows intimately exactly what his situation is.
M.K. Freeberg, in The House of Eratosthenes, draws attention to yet another thread in the same hangman’s noose:
What we have here, I think, is a confusion between wisdom and irony. If you listen to these people prattle on for a good long time, you’ll notice something rather shocking: The “smart” decision, with regard to each and every question that comes up, is never, ever, ever ever ever the simple one.
Global warming is more dangerous than radical Islamic terrorism.
Queen Latifah is sexier than Beyonce Knowles.
To keep from going broke, we’ve got to spend more money.
A real man is in touch with his feelings and isn’t afraid to cry.
If there is a problem, the best thing to do is to make sure no one can ever make a profit producing a solution to it.
If innocent people could be harmed by a terrorist act, and it could be prevented by bringing physical pain to an evil man, decent people will make sure this doesn’t happen and let the innocent people go ahead and die.
If you’re a baby and you’ve crossed that Magical Vaginal Finish Line you’ve got rights to womb-to-tomb health care, a living wage whether you’re competent or not, a vote in all our elections whether you have common sense or not — but if you’re not there yet, then you don’t even exist as a person. It’s a matter of inches, and that’s just the way it is!
This is the part that scares the hell out of me. These people are not capable of recognizing or responding to the situation in which the simple, common sense answer is the right one. Right, as in — go ahead, put on a magical thinking cap and boost your IQ by a thousand points, you’ll still decide it the same way. This doesn’t work for them, because in their world you have to show off your smarts by deciding the opposite.
Therefore, when this happens they will consistently demand the choice that is made by these smart people, is the wrong one.
Read the whole thing. Freeberg is a very smart guy; he just doesn’t assume his smart is better than yours.
Everyone’s been linking this, and for darn good reason.
There are forces out there that want you to destroy yourself, that tell you that you are worthless, that you are surplus to requirements, that the very Earth rejects your burden.
They are the same forces telling you that you hurt everyone around you, that you are too stupid and ignorant to run your own life, that they know better than you what you should want and how you should live.
They are the same forces telling you that you are too old, too fat, too fecund.
They are the same forces telling you that your life should be easy, simple, fun; and that if it’s not, you should just give up.
They are the same forces telling you to kill your babies in your womb, because you need to find a perfect mate, find a career, find yourself.
They lie.
This is the truth:
If you’ve been telling yourself that no one will miss you when you’re gone, you are wrong. Your suicide would tear a hole through the future, and nothing could ever fill the space where you used to be.
Read it all. Somewhere in there you will find your reason to defy those who tell you to lay down and die.
The worst thing? The very worst thing?
They are the ones telling you that they bring hope, and change, and help.
They lie.
They are evil.
Hey, Mouth Breathing Breeders! You aren’t doing your job! Get with the program!
Mark Steyn:
What’s happening in the developed world today isn’t so very hard to understand: The 20th-century Bismarckian welfare state has run out of people to stick it to. In America, the feckless, insatiable boobs in Washington, Sacramento, Albany, and elsewhere are screwing over our kids and grandkids. In Europe, they’ve reached the next stage in social-democratic evolution: There are no kids or grandkids to screw over. The United States has a fertility rate of around 2.1 — or just over two kids per couple. Greece has a fertility rate of about 1.3: Ten grandparents have six kids have four grandkids — ie, the family tree is upside down. Demographers call 1.3 “lowest-low” fertility — the point from which no society has ever recovered. And, compared to Spain and Italy, Greece has the least worst fertility rate in Mediterranean Europe.
So you can’t borrow against the future because, in the most basic sense, you don’t have one. Greeks in the public sector retire at 58, which sounds great. But, when ten grandparents have four grandchildren, who pays for you to spend the last third of your adult life loafing around?
Meanwhile, we ecologically responsible metrosexuals will be modeling our new trousers.
Mark Bennett at Defending People thinks a client of his was discriminated against because of his race: white.
But read the facts of the case:
I had a client recently—call him Sam—who got in the law’s bad graces for some conduct involving alcohol and the brandishing of a firearm in his garage while his young daughter slept upstairs. The daughter—well-fed, well-loved, well-adjusted and well-cared-for—was never in any danger and never even knew what had happened.
Only a total idiot would think it was a good idea to take that child out of that home, but CPS was all over Sam’s case, questioning his daughter at school, filing suit against him, threatening to take her away from him and his wife. By spending a bunch of money on lawyers, Sam and his wife were able to fend off CPS and keep their very lucky child in their home.
Bennett then recounts another case where an eight year old girl starves to death because CPS repeatedly ignores signs of neglect.
In the first case, the parent was white; in the second, black.
I think there was bigotry, but not against race. My comment on DP [still awaiting moderation]:
One factor jumps out at me far more than race:
Sam’s case involved a firearm. I believe, based on many other stories I’ve read (i.e., anecdotal avidence) that CPS workers have a very strong prejudice against firearms and firearm owners.
Of course, Sam behaved irresponsibly. However, he in fact caused no harm. He very properly should have been rebuked with a fine. I think a mandatory gun safety course would be an excellent step. I might even support his gun being confiscated for a repeat offense.
But to confiscate his child? When no harm came to her or anyone else?
There is indeed prejudice here, outright bigotry. But it’s not against Sam’s melanin deficiency. It’s against his exercise of the Second Amendment.
I’m more than a little rushed this morning, but I have to point to Eric S. Raymond’s excellent analysis of the collapse of the Anthropomorphic Global Warming movement, calling for “The Naming and Shaming the AGW Fraudsters”:
The best reason not to relent, to name and shame the fraudsters and shatter their reputations and humilate them — ideally, to the point where there’s a rash of prominent suicides as a result — is this:
If we don’t destroy them, they’ll surely ramp up yet another colossal, politicized eco-fraud.
The segment Raymond has identified as zombies and greenshirts I’ve heard elsewhere named as watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside.
Oh, and don’t miss his conclusion:
The key point — and the reason the AGW frauds need to be shamed and punished — is that the political background conditions favoring this kind of fraud are still in place.
That is, the zombies and green-shirts still have a powerful interest in magnifying scientific errors that suit their agendas into politicized crusades that could produce error cascades just as huge. Somewhere out there, there are now-innocent scientific research groups who could become the next decade’s version of the “team”, degenerating into fraudulent conspiracies as careerism draws them in, the political villains cheer them on to rationalize the power-grab of the week, and the Gaianists gamely but stupidly try to do the right thing.
I’m even prepared to hazard a guess where the next fraud would be ginned up from: environmental toxicology and what are called “endocrine disruptors”.
[Emphasis ESR's]
Absolutely, read the whole thing. This is one of those lens articles that brings an entire scene into focus.
update:
From the Devil’s Kitchen, an excellent explanation of the decision tree we should be using :
and the very simplified tree actually in use:
WizardPC, manning the Walls of the City, points out that the new TSA directives promulgated in the wake of the Christmas Bombing, works in exactly the same way as current gun regulations:
- Unaccountable Government Agency with the power to ruin your life over seemingly minor transgressions? Check!
- Assumption that you’re up to no good based solely on lawful activity? Check!
…And three more items. As one of Wiz’s commenters notes, this only applies to international travelers, but come on, people, do you really believe that officials like Napolitano don’t want to impose them universally?
After all, many of our current gun control laws got started after the Civil War, and were only supposed to keep uppity black folk from resisting the KKK and other bastions of law and order; they were never intended to be used against decent white Americans.
If the system worked, as “Nappies” Napolitano claims, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would not now be in the hands of the Justice Department.
He’d be in military hands, in Guantanomo, and would at this moment be in the process of being persuaded to spill his guts on who supplied him with a defective bomb. He might be allowed to watch with the rest of us as the homes and capitals of those responsible were obliterated. He’d certainly be hearing, and possibly watching, the Current Occupants at Gitmo being shot. Then it would be his turn. They would all have been offered a last meal of pork sausage and beer.
If the system worked, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would never have attempted what he did, because his sponsors would either be dead, or would know better than to attack an American target.
If the system worked, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would indeed be in this country, attending engineering school, being a good student, and preparing to go back home to bring his nation into the modern era.
If the system really worked, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be going to school in his own country, and that school would be almost as good as almost any place he could have gone to here, and his country would be a substantial economic competitor to the US, like Japan after WWII.
And if the system worked, Barack Hussein Obama would be the junior Senator from Illinois. At best.
Look, this is all over the place. It’s so obviously, blatantly wrong, nobody’s saying anything insightful about it. All you can really do is bug out your eyes and scream incoherently, or just sigh and click on to the next post, or go watch a movie or something.
Ladies and gentlemen, the finest hands your country is in [0:30]
“Baghdad” Janet “Nappies” Napolitano, Head Nanny:
One thing I’d like to point out here is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action.
Even CNN’s commentator can’t quite keep the disbelief out of her voice. CNN is not playing with The Team on this one.
Some of the passengers did indeed do the right thing, although Nappies and her minions have done everything possible to render the passengers helpless.
Then there’s this:
We have no suggestion that he was improperly screened.
He got on the plane despite being on watch lists and despite warnings from his own family. How is that not “improper screened”?
This is never going to work if both the terrorist’s and the Administration’s pants are on fire.
Jonah Goldberg says the obvious about as well as anybody:
It is her basic position that the “system worked” because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was “foiled” by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically.
…
If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.
Although Goldberg is generous (”patently unqualified hack”), you should read the whole thing; it’s short.
Oh, and I can’t pass over this [0:39]:
Within literally an hour to ninety minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred.
When seconds count, TSA is an hour away, at least. With advice, not actual, you know, help.
Goldberg is far too generous. Napolitano, and the administration she is a part of, is not unqualified.
They’re on the other side.
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