A Liberal Figures it Out

Posted by Mark Noonan in Campaign 2010 on January 21st, 2010 at 01:39am with 9 responses.
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But will anyone in charge pay attention?

….In 1996, Mr. Clinton was the first Democrat to win re-election since FDR—expanding the electoral map once again into western, southern, and sunbelt states. He did so by creating a new ideological hybrid for a still-progressive Democratic Party: balanced-budget fiscal conservatism, cultural moderation, and liberal social programs administered by a “lean and mean government.” This New Democrat combination appealed to Ross Perot independents concerned about deficits, and also to traditional Republican suburbanites who were culturally moderate on issues like abortion and gay rights but opposed to high taxes and wasteful, big-government bureaucracy.

Then, in 2008, Barack Obama added something extra: a commitment to a “new politics” that transcended the “red” versus “blue” partisan divide. He explained this concept clearly in his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote speech and during his 2008 presidential campaign. It meant compromise, consensus and bipartisanship, even if that meant only incremental change. The purists on the left of the Democratic Party who demanded the “public option” or no bill at all apparently forgot that candidate Obama’s health-care proposal did not include a public option; nor did it include a government mandate for everyone to either purchase insurance or pay a significant tax approximating the cost of that insurance—the “pay or play provision” in both the Senate and House bills.

Bottom line: We liberals need to reclaim the Democratic Party with the New Democrat positions of Bill Clinton and the New Politics/bipartisan aspirations of Barack Obama—a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big-government solutions.

That’s what Massachusetts Democrats and independent voters were telling national Democrats yesterday. The question isn’t just, will we listen?…

Of course I would disagree that the people want liberalism even if done by careful compromise – but the point made is fundamentally sound: Democrats need to drop the left and come back to the center if they hope to survive. Right now, with the course Obama has set, Democrats are heading for disaster in 2010 and 2012 isn’t look to hot, either. And, remember, in 2012 and 2014 it is the Democrats who will have a whole bunch of first-term Senators up for re-election, many of them in strongly GOP States…failure to change course could, by January of 2015, result in as many as 65 Republican Senators to go along with a House majority and control of the White House. Such power given to the GOP – if matched with a desire to really reform (which is becoming a white-hot passion) – would spell doom for liberalism.

I don’t think Obama has it in him – certainly, Pelosi doesn’t have it in her and Reid has sold himself entirely to the left: he needs massive campaign funds in order to keep his seat and the price being demanded is liberalism, liberalism, and more liberalism. Time will tell…

Conservatives Outnumber Liberals 2 to 1

Posted by Mark Noonan in Uncategorized on October 27th, 2009 at 05:20am with 54 responses.
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Doesn’t this just cut you liberals to the quick?

Conservatives continue to outnumber moderates and liberals in the American populace in 2009, confirming a finding that Gallup first noted in June. Forty percent of Americans describe their political views as conservative, 36% as moderate, and 20% as liberal. This marks a shift from 2005 through 2008, when moderates were tied with conservatives as the most prevalent group.

Poor, little liberals – you managed to sucker the moderates in to voting for Obama, but now the mask is off and people are running back to conservatism.

2010 and 2012 will just be soooo much fun!

Phrase of the Day

Posted by Mark Noonan in Announcements on August 21st, 2009 at 10:19am with 16 responses.
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Can’t just sit there hoping Obama’s warmed-over FDR/Carterism will do the trick:

As our case is new, we must think and act anew. – Abraham Lincoln

Time to shake off the shackles of a century of liberalism and start heading in a new direction – and some times, in order to go forward, one must go back to where one screwed up and choose the right path, this time.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

Posted by Matt Margolis in Twitter on June 28th, 2009 at 08:15pm with Comments Off.
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Twitter Updates for 2009-06-26

Posted by Matt Margolis in Twitter on June 26th, 2009 at 11:48pm with Comments Off.
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The (Liberal) Death of California

Posted by Mark Noonan in Economy, General Government on May 4th, 2009 at 05:19pm with 62 responses.
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Well, it is dying from Applied Liberalism:

Under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the best governor the states next to California have ever had, people and businesses have been relocating to those states. For four years, more Americans have moved out of California than have moved in.

California’s business costs are more than 20 percent higher than the average state’s. If, since 1990, state spending increases had been held to the inflation rate plus population growth, the state would have a $15 billion surplus instead of a $42 billion budget deficit, which is larger than the full budgets of all but 10 states.

Since 1990, the number of state employees has increased by more than a third. In Schwarzenegger’s less than six years as governor, per capita government spending, adjusted for inflation, has increased nearly 20 percent.

While the government shares a large amount of the blame for California’s woes, we must not let the people of California off the hook. As one small example, 63.5% of the people of California in November of 2008 essentially voted to kill California’s poultry industry, as well as greatly decreasing the pig and cattle industries. This was done via Proposition 2, Standards for Confining Farm Animals – a measure which, among other things, prohibits chickens from being kept as chickens are kept in our egg-producing farms. The chickens – egg-layers destined for the soup pot, in the by and by – must be allowed to stretch their legs…thus vastly increasing the cost of production to the point that such businesses will either die, or move to other States. Prevention of cruelty to animals has been conflated with Chicken Run and so the people of California voted for a nonsense, “animal rights” bill.

On and on it goes – Californians have doomed themselves at the behest of the liberal elite who sucker then, again and again, into backing suicidal ballot initiatives which, curiously enough, never seem to adversely affect the ability of the liberal elite to remain rich and powerful (you know, you can get a ban on smoking in California but you can’t seem to force the rich liberals to provide public access to the public beaches in Malibu). The fact that the liberals in California government are just quicker about destroying the goose which lays California’s golden eggs doesn’t change the fact that Californians have got the government they deserve…and they’ve gotten it good and hard.

It is to be hoped that, finally, the people of California will recover from their liberal stupor and that California conservatives will finally get their act together and provide a credible alternative to more of the same liberalism. Of course, it could be too late – the people with sense in California seem to have been moving out of late (as George Will points out, for the past four years more Americans have moved out of CA than moved in), so there simply might not be enough Californians with the wit to draw the proper conclusions. Meanwhile, it is our conservative job nationally to highlight what liberalism has done to California, and make people understand that it is just what Obama and his Democrats want to do to the rest of the United States – make us into a nation of double-digit unemployment but laws to protect the rights of chickens while the State pays for abortions…

Will we be able to do it? Will we, that is, be able to educate the people faster than Obama can destroy America? Time will provide the answer…

The DC GOP Must be Forced to Work for Us

Posted by Mark Noonan in Republicans on April 30th, 2009 at 08:43am with 11 responses.
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Scott Ramussen has some trenchant comments about the DC GOP and the political scene in general:

To be relevant in politics, you need either formal power or a lot of people willing to follow your lead. The governing Republicans in the nation’s capital have lost both on their continuing path to irrelevance.

The disconnect between D.C. Republicans and Republicans throughout the country has been growing for nearly 20 years, but it became more intense and noticeable during the waning years of the Bush administration.

Perhaps the final straw was the $700 billion bank bailout plan pushed through Congress last fall despite strong voter opposition. For all the furor unleashed this spring by congressional Republicans about President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan, the Bush-era bailouts last fall were approved with virtually no advance notice and no guidelines as to how the money would be spent. Looking back, most voters and nearly eight-out-of-10 Republicans now believe the bailouts were a bad idea.

The April 15 “tea party” protests, viewed favorably by 51% of Americans, were fueled as much by anger at the bailouts as anything else. Many Inside-the-Beltway Republicans chose to distance themselves from the events, and many tea party participants were happy to express their anger at both Beltway Republicans and Democrats…

…The gap between Beltway Republicans and the Republican base is part of a wider gap between the Mainstream and the Political Class. On many issues, the gap between Mainstream Americans and the Political Class is bigger than the gap between Mainstream Republicans and Mainstream Democrats.

But Political Class Democrats control Congress and the White House while their GOP counterparts have little in the way of power and influence to overcome the disconnect with their base. One immediate result of this is that senior senators like Arlen Specter and John McCain now are facing primary challenges. Other challenges may follow. It used to be possible for Republicans in Washington to argue that they needed someone like Specter or McCain to hang on to the majority but no longer.

Look for the Republican Party to sink further into irrelevancy as long as its key players insist on hanging around Congress or K Street for their ideas. The future for the GOP is beyond the Beltway.

It is, as the great Ronald Reagan once pointed out, a time for choosing. In that year of 1964, Reagan pointed out the stark differences between the conservative, Republican worldview and the position of the liberal Democrats and their “less-of-the-same, go-along-to-get-along” Republican fellow travelers. The net result of that election was, of course, a complete wipe-out of conservative, Republican ideals at the polls. I mean, our defeat that year was positively embarrassing. But it was ok – we eventually carried those exact principles into the White House and by them saved America, preserved liberty and destroyed the USSR. We conservatives are now faced with a the same opponents Reagan faced – those liberal Democrats and their “can-I-be-your-friend-Barack” RINO fellow travelers. We can only beat them by reaffirming the core principles of conservative Republicanism and then fighting like mad – as the Gipper did – to enact them into law.

There are some good men and women in the Congressional GOP – but they seem too cowed by those members of the caucus who want to get along with our opponents. As I noted earlier, it seems that Orrin Hatch (R?-UT) wants to scratch Toomey from the GOP lists in Pennsylvania and find a “Beltway-Approved” candidate to take on Arlen Specter. Toomey is the man who would have rid us of Specter in 2004 except Specter prevailed upon the GOP – including President Bush – to back him to the hilt. Toomey is the instrument by which we exposed Specter for what he really is and got him out of the party. Toomey is the clear favorite of the Pennsylvania GOP…and Hatch is at least implying that if Toomey is the GOP nominee, the Beltway GOP won’t back him. What kind of nonsense is that?

The kind of nonsense the powerful are used to imposing on us. They are instructing us not to get too above ourselves and, also, that if we want to win we need to find people who will stab us in the back after the election is over. This is Beltway logic – but it is betrayal of the people of the conservative, Republican movement who pour out their sweat and treasure in the hopes that the leftist tide will be turned back for good. There is no point in winning if “winning” means enacting Democrat-lite policies. Democrats like Democrat policies, and that is fine – let them run on them and, if they win, enact them into law…more power to them and God bless them all…but we’re conservative Republicans and we want to not only run on conservative, Republican principles, we want to govern on them, when we win. Anyone who can’t be part of this had better hit the road, as far as I’m concerned. We don’t need people who don’t have the heart to fight.

Do keep in mind that conservative, Republican principles cover a lot of ground – there is, indeed, the Big Tent of Ronald Reagan…but this Big Tent does have some rules, among them are that taxes shall be low, budgets shall be balanced, gun ownership shall be an individual right, worship shall be free, national defense shall remain strong, the people shall rule themselves in their local communities, the judges shall be strict constructionists…you can be pro-choice and be part of the movement. Heck, you can be in favor of abortion, gay marriage and environmentalist whackoism and still be part of the movement…as long as you don’t want to force the States and the people to keep abortion legal, enact gay marriage and be green if they don’t have a mind to do so in their States and local communities. What you can’t be is someone allegedly pro-life, anti-gay marriage, anti-environmentalist who then goes and cuts us off at the knees by voting for some ridiculous tax and spend liberalism, or who votes to approve a judge who wants to impose liberalism via judicial fiat, or who allows himself to be stampeded by MSM shouting into some unwise, but fashionable, course of action. Better ten Giulianis in the Senate than one Specter.

The Beltway GOP had better sit up and take notice – Specter is just the first RINO we’re forcing out. The rest will go, too, unless they mend their ways right quick. We’re not asking anyone to abandon what they consider core principle – heck, we’d be insulted if anyone asked us to do that – but if you claim to subscribe to a principle then you’d better darn well do so, whatever the immediate, personal, political consequences. And if your core principles don’t extend to limited government, individual liberty, local control and the rest then there is a party for you – it is called the Democrat party. Get on board, or get out; that is the stark choice for all RINOs.

Mad as Heck…

Posted by Mark Noonan in Corruption, Economy, General Government on March 19th, 2009 at 09:29am with 31 responses.
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…and not going to take it any longer? Victor Davis Hanson notes:

There is a populist anger out there, hard to calibrate exactly, but growing nonetheless. Here’s what I think people are saying: Wall Street gets bailed out, despite billions that the masters of the universe skimmed off. Meanwhile our retirement accounts are crashed. Then the government bails out those ‘homeowners’ who failed, often due to their own greed and foolishness, not those who played by the rules: so default on your over priced home that you should have never bought, and the fed is there to bail you out; put away $1,000 a month in your 401(k)—and tough luck.

No new taxes of course for “all of us” except the evil “them,” but rumors still somehow abound that health care benefits will be taxed, carbon emissions will be taxed, and even veterans will pay for their care via private accounts before drawing on VA resources. And why would not Obama resort to more bait and switch to pay for a $3.5 trillion budget—when that proverbial evil 5% simply does not have the wherewithal to make up for the 50% who pay no federal income tax at all?

This growing unease is a weird sort of prairie-fire populism, focused on both Wall Street and still more the government. (Who is worse, the AIG execs that praise capitalism, then want federal handouts to ensure their bonuses, or the incompetent and unethical government who feeds them the cash [”hope and change”?]—or we the poor fools who will keep working to pay for all this?)

Where it all leads I don’t know.

I don’t know, either – but I’m pretty certain that liberalism isn’t doing itself any favors right now. When Rasmussen for the first time in years picks up that GOPers are more favored than Democrats in the “generic” Congressional ballot, we’re clearly seeing a political whirlwind on the horizon. Will it actually benefit the GOP? Can’t say – people are still pretty ticked off at us, too. 2010 might be an excellent year to run as an Independent. Main thing – if a person is a smart politician, he won’t want to be identified in any way, shape or form with the Powers That Be in Washington at the moment.

I think what is happening is that people are, finally, getting fed up with it all – the lies coming out of Washington have gone from brazen to stupid. Its so obvious that, say, Dodd is lying to us about what is going on and what part he had in it – and the rest of them are only slightly less nauseating in their attitudes towards the people. When Obama tries to claim a populist mantle in this by grandly saying he’s responsible, people are seeing right through it – he’s saying he’s responsible as if he’s not, but willing to sacrifice himself for us and we’re supposed to think he’s such a swell guy for doing this…BS, Barry; we know that you really were responsible for it, and if you really wanted to take responsibility for it you’d be working for a repeal of your Spendulus so it could be re-written with a bit of honesty and common sense thrown in to the mix. Maybe on a re-do we can actually not pass the bill until everyone’s read it?

A little revolution, now and then, is a good thing. And we need it, dear people, we need it.

Barack Obama: Not Ready for Prime Time

Posted by Mark Noonan in Barack Hussein Obama on March 16th, 2009 at 09:06am with 46 responses.
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Yep:

…the heart of the matter: the doubts about Obama himself. His famous eloquence is wearing thin through daily exposure and because his actions are often disconnected from his words. His lack of administrative experience is showing.

His promises and policies contradict each other often enough that evidence of hypocrisy is ceasing to be news. Remember the pledges about bipartisanship and high ethics? They’re so last year.

The beat goes on. Last week, Obama brazenly gave a speech about earmark reform just after he quietly signed a $410 billion spending bill that had about 9,000 earmarks in it. He denounced Bush’s habit of disregarding pieces of laws he didn’t like, so-called signing statements, then issued one himself.

And in an absolute jaw-dropper, he told business leaders, “I don’t like the idea of spending more government money, nor am I interested in expanding government’s role.”

No wonder Americans are confused. Our President is, too.

Obama can get past all this – but it will take a radical change of view; and therein lies our real problem: I doubt that Obama even realizes that he’s got a problem. Product of liberal education and locked within the liberal ivory tower, Obama seems entirely unaware that there is something other than liberalism in the world. If Obama lacks the courage and judgment to change course as necessary, then he’s just going to keep bulling ahead regardless of consequences, and that would be disastrous for us, and for the whole world.

This is what we get when we vote for “hope and change” rather than actual policies. The youngsters who so ardently supported Obama have the excuse of youth and ignorance – but for all of those who have taken an adult’s place in the world over the past 10 years, to vote for Obama was to vote for the man obviously unready to be President of the United States. This is not to say that Obama isn’t a smart man, nor to say that he doesn’t have the stuff of Presidents within him – its just to say that he wasn’t ready. Perhaps after a full term in the Senate, or maybe had he become governor of Illinois, or a cabinet secretary in someone else’s Administration – then he would have obtained that practical experience which would, if he’s as smart as people say he is, modified his worldview to admit that, just perhaps, what sounds good in a college lecture might not be entirely applicable to real life.

An unready, inexperienced man in the White House surrounded by political sharks who do, indeed, know how things work – a recipe for disaster, unless Obama finds some wellspring of strength and some people who will be unafraid to tell him the worst. It could get rather ugly over the next four years.

Liberals Shake Down Charities

Posted by Mark Noonan in Corruption, Democrats, Kook Left on March 8th, 2009 at 09:50am with 13 responses.
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The disgusting nature of liberalism, at its worst:

…now the philanthropic world has something else to worry about. Today the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a research and advocacy group, will release a report offering “benchmarks to assess foundation performance.” Its real aim is to push philanthropic organizations into ignoring donor intent and instead giving grants based on political considerations.

The committee is part of a rising tide of politicians and activists who are working to change the face of American philanthropy — and not for the better.

The report, titled “Criteria for Philanthropy at its Best,” advises foundations to “provide at least 50 percent of grant dollars to benefit lower-income communities, communities of color, and other marginalized groups, broadly defined.” The committee looked at 809 of the largest foundations in the country, whose combined three-year grants totaled almost $15 billion, and concluded that the majority of foundations are “eschewing the needs of the most vulnerable in our society” by neglecting “marginalized groups.”

Two years ago, an advocacy group in San Francisco called Greenlining began releasing similar reports. Greenlining’s aim then was to pass legislation in California mandating that foundations report to the public the percentage of their dollars given to “minority-led” organizations and the percentage of their boards and staffs made up by racial and ethnic minorities. The legislation was dropped when several foundations promised to donate money to causes Greenlining favored.

Now Greenlining has put out reports in Florida, Pennsylvania and New York trying to shame foundations into distributing grants differently, as well as pressure them into recruiting more “diverse” board and staff members. The NCRP report picks up on this theme to suggest that foundation boards and staffs should include people with a “diversity of perspectives.”

To translate from the liberalese: “This is a nice, little charity you have going here – be a shame if something were to happen do it. Know what I mean?”

Real charities – to differentiate from the more bogus charities which go by the name of ACORN and PUSH, for instance – have to achieve results in order to keep the donations coming in…and there are just tens of billions of dollars floating through these hard working and dedicated charities. And what the heck does all that money do? Buy food and clothing? Provide a little medical care? What’s that all about? Liberal layabouts need some swag – and so the shakedown is on. Having already held up the government and corporations for ransom, the only large pot of money untapped by corrupt liberal “charity” groups is, well, charity money. You kick in that $5 to United Way, and now you can be pleased to know that 10 or 20 cents of that money will flow over to some “community organizer” who lives in a rich neighborhood while “organizing” a poor neighborhood.

Cool, huh?

Welcome to Barack Obama’s America, boys and girls.

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

Posted by Mark Noonan in Social Issues on March 1st, 2009 at 05:13pm with 48 responses.
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Victor Davis Hanson points the finger at the right culprit for the conservative defeat 2006-08:

Conservatives created Barack Obama and his vision of the Europeanization of America, and so have themselves to blame for the current recessional, as the present as we have known it fades into the past..

Let me explain. Yes, I know that the 2000-01 recession, Hurricane Katrina, two wars, and a $1 trillion hit after 9/11 made fiscal discipline hard. But being a conservative in America these days is hard—and one gets very little leeway or second chances. Not disowning a Ted Stevens and instead pointing to a Charles Rangel or John Murtha or William Jefferson is fatal for a conservative. We expect such things from a promiscuous spender, but cannot tolerate it from a professed budget hawk. (emphasis added)

Not just these days, but all the time. It is always hard to be the conservative – conservatism is a defense of hard, you-can’t-get-out-of-it, must-do-the-right-thing-even-if-it-hurts, Truth. Who do you want as your friend: the guy who says you have to mow the lawn before you head to the beach, or the guy who lets you off the hook for lawn mowing? Sure, we know the lawn has to be mowed, but its such a nice day…we conservatives are the people who throw the cold water of truth and responsibility on to the blazing fires of liberal hopes and dreams. Makes for a tricky bit of politics.

Hanson goes on through the linked article to talk about what, exactly, we messed up on and I highly recommend reading the whole thing. What I’d like to do is put my two cents in on what we might do in order to advance conservatism in such a manner as regains power.

At bottom, as I’ve said before, conservatism is a defense of Judeo-Christian civilization. This is what conservatism arose to defend – once liberalism started to question the basics of our civilization (the existence of God, the existence of revealed morality, the worth of inherited traditions, etc, etc, etc) in the so-called “Enlightenment”, conservatism arose to defend the basics against this assault. It is a curiosity of politics that liberalism, as a thing, pre-dates conservatism. There was no need for a conservative defense of what everyone accepted as the basics – there were political arguments, but they were about how to apply the basics to current conditions, not over whether the basics were true, or not. Liberalism changed all that, and we’ve been engaged in this battle ever since.

And in this battle we have won at times, and we have lost at times – but over the past 100 years its been mostly plain ruination of Judeo-Christian civilization. This is because conservatism, round about the turn of the last century, ceased to be a defense of eternal verities and became a rear-guard action seeking to merely slow down liberalism’s advancement. As liberalism advance from foolish lie to absurd lie, conservatism became more interested in just ameliorating the effects of the absurd lie, rather than going after the foolish which underpinned the absurd. Reagan, Thatcher and a few others attempted to arrest this continual ratchet to the left and even try to turn it back a bit, but they ended up being, at best, only partially (and temporarily) successful. Faced with the heavy lifting of turning back liberalism, Reagan, Thatcher et al were weakened by conservatives who didn’t understand that liberalism, in and of itself, is the problem and/or who simply didn’t want to do the hard task of advancing conservatism – its seems nice to be liked, and a lot of conservatives just didn’t want to bother doing things which would get them insulted in gross terms.

There is a curious bit of good fortune we’ve now run into – it is Judeo-Christian civilization which is now the revolutionary threat to the established order. Especially as President Obama seeks to remake America in a completely liberal image, it is our views which assert a radical change to society is necessary for justice and peace to be established. In losing the fight to maintain Judeo-Christian ideals as central to our civilization we have now placed such ideals in the exact position they were when they first became the rather earth-shaking idea – ie, we’re back now, in a sense, to the 2nd century, attempting to convince a world gone mad with a degenerate paganism that we offer the only real solution to the problem. The thing about the revolutionary is that there is an inherent romance about being on the outside, battling desperately for a cause.

What is Obama doing? Propping up the status quo – he’s going to bail out the banks which are part of the problem, bail out the mega-corporations which are part of the problem, bail out the unions which are part of the problem, protect the political ruling class which is part of the problem…and all to the cheers a pagan popular culture which also part of the problem. Obama just promises to do more of what messed us up to begin with – and as it all falls apart, and it will, that will be our opportunity to show that its all bad, and all of it has to go and be replaced by what we offer – sobriety, solidarity, hard work, thrift and self-sacrifice. A world with, perhaps, a lot less glamor, but with a lot more happiness and peace.

A drunken, diseased society will soon be entirely out of options and casting about for a life line – we offer it. Or, more accurately, we can offer it. We can offer, that is, pure conservatism – purified from its liberal accretions, no longer trying to be “less of the same” and no longer concerned with the insults which will be hurled at it. We can offer solid families rather than loose collections of individuals, genuine work as opposed to corporate/bureaucratic paper shuffling, charity rather than welfare, service rather than dependency, art rather than obscenity. Or we can try to trim our sails and become “liberal-lite” – well dressed and well-mannered tax collectors and military defenders of a dying people.

The choice is ours.

Liberal America, Part 1

Posted by Mark Noonan in Immigration, Justice System, Kook Left, Social Issues on February 10th, 2009 at 02:24pm with 63 responses.
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The first in an unfortunately continuing series of what happens when liberalism occurs:

An Arizona man who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as “the avenue of choice” for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett’s wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

Here we have the confluence of liberal ideology on immigration, property rights, civil rights and judicial activism. To think that an American citizen can be hauled into court by illegal immigrants shows just how out of touch liberalism is with reality – and only because liberalism exists is there anything other than laughter at any foreigner, illegally come into the nation, bringing such a suit. They have no standing – they have no business being here; they should be arrested for harassing the rancher, not accorded respect in our courts.

Thank you, liberalism.

Dealing With the Ugly Liberal

Posted by Mark Noonan in Democrats, Kook Left on January 25th, 2009 at 04:44pm with 42 responses.
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Sherman Frederick at the Las Vegas Review-Journal hopes that adulthood comes to some on the left, even if it comes late:

In case you missed it, when President George W. Bush was announced to the crowd, some booed loudly, shocking even the commentators on the official Obama network, MSNBC. One section of onlookers sang, “Nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye.” And, finally, as Bush left the White House, one deep thinker took the opportunity to give the “one-finger salute,” thus saying more about himself than anything else.

This from a movement that fancies itself all about peace, love and global karma.

Now look, it would be a mistake to paint all Democrats and Obama supporters with the actions of these few on Inauguration Day. And, according to news reports, some in the crowd tried hard to shush the boo-birds. That is a hopeful sign.

But let’s also not ignore the obvious. There is a growing faction of the American left that seeks revenge more than righteousness.

Intolerant of dissenting views, this faction thinks as comedian Janeane Garofalo does that some members of the opposing political party should be “jailed.” Terrorist acts (such as mailing envelopes of white power to Mormon temples because the gay marriage vote in California went the church’s way) are seen by this faction as understandable and acts of legitimate political expression.

There is also an ugly racial component to it. We first saw it with Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who said, among other things, that white America had deliberately inflicted black Africa with AIDS.

When the Rev. Wright first hit the national stage, we hardly knew what to make of his irrational and separatist statements. Consequently, we pretty much ignored the substance of Wright’s racially divisive rhetoric and focused on it as a day-to-day political story. It made us more comfortable, I think.

But in light of the things we saw at the inauguration, it may be time to revisit the dangers of intolerance and hate — no matter the color of the person who makes them — and nip this ugly mean streak in the bud.

As our president said, it is time to grow up.

The word “tolerance” to the left means “agree with the left”, but real tolerance means “you may do your business without let or hindrance from me”. One doesn’t have to like President Bush and his supporters, but in a pluralist, democratically governed republic, one does have to tolerate them…and part of tolerance is not doing hateful things to them, such as booing their presence at a solemn moment, or demanding they be arrested for imagined crimes. We here on the right were soundly beaten at the polls last November, and that should be satisfaction enough for liberals – but its not, as we see in so many comments and actions by liberals since the election.

The ugliness of the left stems, I believe, from the fact that their worldview isn’t true – defending a false front, they are forced ultimately to rely upon intimidation and the politics of personal destruction to maintain their position. What this means is that as things go forward towards ultimate disaster for liberalism, our liberals will become more rather than less nasty – only those who admit their error completely will be able to free themselves from an all-consuming hatred and bitterness.

If you think that in 2008 we saw the most nasty, hate-filled and dishonest campaign possible from the liberals, then you just haven’t seen 2012, yet.

What is the GOP to Do?

Posted by Mark Noonan in Republicans on January 25th, 2009 at 08:41am with 62 responses.
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Kristol offers some cautions and some hope:

Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval–or fearing disapprobation–should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.

Everyone looks back nostalgically to 1993-94, the last time Republicans were out of power, but that example is a bit misleading. In 1992, Clinton had won only 43 percent of the vote, and the Republicans had gained congressional seats. The successful Reagan years remained fresh in voters’ minds. The task was simply to reclaim and revivify the Reagan agenda. The task today is both harder and less well defined.

The situation is more like 1977. For one thing, given the unlikelihood of Republicans taking back Congress in 2010, it requires a four-year horizon rather than a two-year one. More important, it requires serious rethinking in fundamental areas. Consider how far the party moved from 1977 to 1980. It was a period of vigorous, even hectic, political, policy, and institutional entrepreneurship, among conservatives both old and new. Thanks to the controversial efforts of backbenchers like Jack Kemp and Bill Steiger, the party rejected green eyeshade budget-balancing and embraced pro-growth supply-side economic policies. Thanks to the emergence of the neoconservatives, Kissingerian détente gave way to Reaganite freedom-fighting. Religious conservatives moved en masse to join the ranks of the GOP. All of this in four years.

The revival of the GOP has to come from the ground up and from outside Washington – from the ground up because we need fresh blood, new faces and bold, new ideas of reform; from outside Washington because the healthy contempt most Americans feel for the people who run government is simply going to get stronger and broader-based as Obama and his Democrats set America rolling on the slow-motion train wreck which will be the Obama Administration. We don’t want to be identified at all with what is going on in DC, except in as much as we can be involved in opposing the clearly bad bits of Obamanomics and offering those bold, new proposals as a counterweight to the Democrat plans.

It is time that we started looking our selves in the mirror and realizing that there’s no Reagan out there to come rescue us. Indeed, if we pay close attention we’ll realize that Reagan wasn’t able to do half what he wanted because the GOP simply sat around waiting for Reagan to do it. No one man can ever do it all (and Obama should pay attention to this truth…but I don’t think he even suspects it exists) – each must play his part, large or small, to advance the cause. If we want to have a conservative government in the United States which will undo the social, political and economic damage liberalism has inflicted over the past decades, then we’re going to have to make it happen – person by person, precinct by precinct, State by State until we get it done.

Nothing can be left off the table and no area of the country can be conceded to the Democrats – while it is certain that prayer in public schools and banning abortion won’t play well in, say, Los Angeles there is the fact that there are plenty of people in Los Angeles who want strong defense, low taxes, secure borders, less burdensome regulation, etc, etc, etc. We can put candidates up all over the country, and we should – because conservative ideals are for everywhere; because liberalism is bad everywhere and must be opposed; because if we even get the liberals to spend 10% of their effort holding their own, that works to our overall advantage.

While adhering to the core values of conservatism (limited government, low taxes, free markets, individual liberty, etc), we must be willing to mix it up and play take away from liberalism. We have to change the terms of the debate – we have to cease having the debate being over whether or not we’re rat bastards and change that debate into a question of who can best govern the United States in the interests of the average American?

The Day Belongs to Conservatism

Posted by Mark Noonan in Barack Hussein Obama on January 21st, 2009 at 09:04am with 25 responses.
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Hard to say that the day after The One was inaugurated? Not at all. We’ve got it all, they’ve got nothing but image.

I did end up having to see a good deal of yesterday’s activities…the management decided to put it up on the office monitors. I plan on filing an OSHA complaint, as I got a sick headache what with all the oozing Obamania. It was a bit surreal to watch – there was Obama; handsome, happy, young and in charge…and all the while it just seemed as if I were watching my dearly beloved mother enter into a slow motion train wreck. Its going to be a long four years, in a lot of ways.

Our liberals will dispute this, but the plain fact of the matter is that Obama’s economic policies are going to increase the debt, increase inflation (though this might be a year or two in the future), increase unemployment, increase interest rates, lower productivity and lower real wages. We don’t guess this will happen. We don’t think this will happen. We know this will happen. How do we know? Because every time the Obama plan has been tried, it has resulted in this…and as Obama appears set to really, really go whole hog into tax and spend liberalism, we can just expect things to be worse than they were in the past. We might all start longing for the relatively prosperous days of Jimmy Carter.

For those of us with faith, this will all be ok – we know that any trials sent our way are blessings from God so that we may better become good and faithful servants. But for those on the other side…well, they’re going to get a rude awakening and they will be both disorientated and angered. So, we’re going to have to carry the ball – helping as best we can to curb the worst excesses of the Obama policies, bucking up the flagging spirits of liberals who will start talking “malaise” and “era of limits”, as they were under Carter, and generally keeping the country up on the rails until we can get Obama and his Democrats booted out of power.

The one thing I do caution us against is Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS); it is tempting to hammer back exactly as they hammered our guy, but that is ungenerous as well as counter-productive. Remember, for quite a while now Obama will be suffused with an unearthly glow. As his policies cause the country to crater, the MSM and the Obamaniacs will desperately try to spin any good news as the be all and end all of great leadership. When things really fly apart and we’re sitting with a hugely expanded debt, high unemployment and inflation eroding our money day by day, the real fanatics will still insist, in spite of all evidence, that Obama is The One and will pull us out of it. No sense provoking them unnecessarily – a gentle rebuke will do, if anything is needed at all. Our task is to be prepared with alternative policies to map a way out of the liberal morass, ready to go when needed during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Hating liberals won’t help us craft these alternate policies, nor help us discover and groom the leaders we’ll need to both win the elections and carry through the policies.

America made a mistake – we elected a well meaning but clueless tax and spend liberal. So be it. The American people made their choice and now we’re all going to have to sit tight and ride it out as best we can. No matter how bad it gets, we’re still Americans and thus capable of enduring anything and emerging triumphant at the end of it. America will correct its mistake, in the by and by – our job is to be prepared for when the American people realize their mistake.

So, have at it with gusto – take no guff from liberals who are going to insist that the debate is over and that no longer is dissent the highest form of patriotism. Don’t worry about the accusations of racism which will be hurled against you – they were going to do that anyway, and you might as well score some points while they’re doing it. Don’t be stampeded by the dark hints of social breakdown if The One were to lose in 2012. And, most of all, don’t take them too seriously – and when they really screw the pooch, don’t laugh at them. Well, ok…go ahead and laugh, but try to hide it when they’re standing right next to you.

When Tax and Spend Liberalism Meets Bankruptcy

Posted by Mark Noonan in Barack Hussein Obama, Economy on January 8th, 2009 at 09:23am with 33 responses.
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The One has advised us that we’re to have trillion dollar deficits for at least some years. Only one thing wrong with that – we don’t have that much money, and as the rest of the world slides into recession, there will be no one to loan us that much money Additionally, there are practical difficulties of getting Obama’s plan passed:

The forecast Wednesday of a jaw-dropping $1.2 trillion one-year federal budget deficit will make it harder for President-elect Barack Obama to win broad support for a massive stimulus package that would add even more to the red ink.

With his party controlling both the House of Representatives and the Senate, Obama’s still likely to get the OK for spending and tax cuts that cost $1 trillion or more over two years and are designed to jump-start the economy and create or save 3 million jobs.

However, while many economists, business groups and politicians agree on the need for something dramatic, Obama now concedes that he’ll have to wait until February to get a bill to sign. He’ll probably find conservative “blue dog” Democrats as well as Republicans balking at the idea of borrowing another $1 trillion on top of this new annual deficit.

They could deny Obama the kind of broad, bipartisan approval that he hopes will signal not only that he’s changed the political culture of a divided Washington but also that he’s put forward a plan that’s widely popular. Such approval is crucial as he moves to rebuild trust in the government and the economy.

We conservatives will find it endlessly amusing that the liberal Democrat plan to allow people who can’t afford a home to get loans is what triggered the de-facto national bankruptcy which will, in turn, defeat the liberals’ plans to remake America now that they’ve regained full power. Bankruptcy? Yeah – I understand that the total liability of the federal government – including unfunded mandates like Social Security (which you liberals prevented us from fixing and which will now add to our amusement as you stare in slack-jawed disbelief at the result of your own purblind idiocy) – exceeds the total wealth of the American people. Part of this imbalance is caused by the collapse in home values, but the inflated home values were probably just masking reality for a while. Essentially – and make no mistake about it, President Bush and plenty of Republicans share blame on this, including yours, truly who didn’t fight hard enough against spending – we’ve spent ourselves into oblivion. And Obama wants to spend an extra trillion or so per year to fix America!

It is now time for retrenchment and reform – we need to drastically cut spending and completely overhaul the way we do government business. Curiously enough, if Obama would put himself at the head of such a reform movement, he’d probably be able to carry it off – and secure for himself not only re-election in 2012, but a high place in American history, alongside the likes of Lincoln and Reagan. The problem is that Obama has just created the post of “chief performance officer“, as if adding one more bureaucrat to the mix will suddenly get our government working efficiently for the good of the American people. I mean, I do admire the spirit there, Barry, but I’m sorry that I’m suppressing convulsions of laughter…its like someone is writing a comedy script to satirize the Obama Administration…but this is for real. We need bold, new initiatives – we’re getting window dressing. What’s next? Bureau of Hope within the Department of Change?

We can’t tax more money, we can’t borrow more money – we can print money, and I’ll bet that Obama will try a bit of that, thus bringing us into a replay of the 1970’s “stagflation” (for you youngsters, this is the “impossible” situation where you have both a stagnant economy and high inflation). If only the blinders would come off – and I pray they do. After all, FDR ran as a tax-cutting, budget balancer and wound up the big spender…perhaps Obama’s run as a big spender will wind up as a tax-cutting, budget balancing Administration?

We can hope – and that would, indeed, be a change.

The GOP Won Big in 2008

Posted by Mark Noonan in Campaign 2008, Republicans on January 1st, 2009 at 06:45pm with 11 responses.
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In Tennessee, at least:

On Election Night, voters spoke loudly with the echoes reverberating still today. In Tennessee, John McCain carried the state with 57% of the vote, Senator Lamar Alexander was re-elected with 65%, and fourteen new Republican legislators were elected yielding a Republican Majority in the General Assembly for the first time since 1868.

Voters elected legislators that carried the same values and principles that are held by average citizen in these districts. Those values and principles are pretty simple.

* Taxes and spending: The government should live within its means and oppose higher tax bills to fund a bloated budget; the voters know government needs to cut spending.
* Gun Rights: Voters want commonsense carry laws making it easier for them to protect themselves and their families.
* Local economies: Families in their community know that improvements are needed by investing in transportation and education infrastructure to support existing jobs and recruit new businesses. They are tired of the powerbrokers in Nashville increasing entitlement programs instead.

Candidates, who displayed the courage to challenge Democrat incumbents and in open seats were solid, qualified individuals. They were not just “known” in their communities. They are people that truly represent the values of their communities.

We believe this is what our founders intended with citizen legislators. The hard work and time commitment that is necessary to run campaigns are a good test of how hard each legislator will work for his or her district. The people of these districts will be well represented by their new representative’s principled leadership.

But it should be noted that Alexander out performed McCain by 8 percentage points – and had McCain jazzed up GOPers as much as he should have, we might have had a different result nationally.

The Tennessee GOP showed how its done – in an anti-GOP year with arguably the most unpopular GOPer ever in the White House, the Tennessee GOP clobbered the Tennessee Democrats. We have to get back to our roots, and back to the people – the left talks a great game about being for the people, but what they are really for is themselves…and for too long now, too many GOPers have aped this attitude, and now we’ve paid the price for it, and very deservedly.

It will be a long, hard road back to national power and it may even take a decade or two to complete (though I do think we have bright prospects for 2010), but it is a road we must travel for the sake of the nation. Liberalism, that dead dog of the past, will have its day – and it’ll be our job to ensure that it is the very last day liberalism ever has.

Christianity and Conservatism (Bumped)

Posted by Mark Noonan in Republicans on December 20th, 2008 at 02:59pm with 261 responses.
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(Ed. Note: We seem to be enjoying this one, so lets keep at it.)

There has been much discussion in conservative circles since the election about whether the “religious right” caused the GOP defeat. The theory is that “religious conservatives” have turned off too many people and thus McCain was unable to successfully reach out to the middle. Gay Patriot West notes the issue:

Kathleen Parker has a very good essay today in National Review where she frequently echoes my views on social conservatives and the GOP. Interestingly, she’s a little harsher on social conservatives than I am. I disagree with her suggestion that social conservatives try to “make their arguments without bringing God into it.“

They should be able to make a case for their political views through their faith. That said, I do think she’s onto something when she encourages them to make their case through logic and reason as that tactic might better resonate with voters.

Here is where I totally agree with her:

As long as the religious right is seen as controlling the Republican party, the GOP will continue to lose some percentage of voters, and that percentage likely will increase over time as younger voters shift away from traditional to more progressive values.

As I’ve written before (and this is a topic to which I’d like to devote more attention in the coming weeks and months), the GOP needs to find a way to accommodate social conservatives without being dominated by them.

Should we do that and put forward a consistent conservative message on the economy which resonates with voters, we’ll be back in 2010, if not before.(emphasis in original)

I think we should be clear – the phrases “religious right”, “social conservatives”, “religious conservatives”, etc are code words for “practicing Christians who are politically engaged”. And I worry that this bit of discussion will boil down, for some, to a question: how do we keep the Christians on-side without actually advancing their agenda? I get the strong sense – not from Gay Patriot, I should add – of contempt for Christians from conservative elites who want our votes and donations, but don’t want to be troubled with all that, well, Christian stuff. But to be conservative in the United States means to be, at bottom, a defender of Judeo-Christian civilization – you can’t, as it were, be a conservative unless you are a member of the “religious right”, at least in the sense of broadly advancing the agenda of the religious right.

If you are not conserving Judeo-Christian civilization, then what are you conserving? To me, to be a conservative without the Christian bit is to be what Chesterton considered conservatives of a hundred years ago to be – people who conserve the liberal agenda. I prefer to be a conservative who conserves our civilization – which means, in turn, that I conserve the Judeo-Christian worldview. Being a conservative can, at times, mean being someone in favor of revolutionary change. Grasping this comes once one understands that some aspects of liberalism have gone so entirely wrong (sexual revolution, eg) that only a complete uprooting of it and a restoration of the old ways will do – and even though one is attempting to restore, the overturning of what is works out to be a revolution.

In my battle for conservatism, I’m battling for freedom of worship; life; the family; individual liberty; respect for private property; local control of affairs…all of these are Judeo-Christian ideals. Unfortunately, too many conservatives have come to the conclusion that conservatism means the defense of things like capitalism (brought to us by liberalism), individualism (brought to us by liberalism – and something different from individual liberty, but that’s another post); the bastard child of individualism, a right to privacy (brought to us by liberalism), strict immigration controls (brought to us by liberalism); legally sanctioned usury (brought to us by liberalism); fiat money (brought to us by liberalism), etc, etc, etc. Liberalism has also, of course, brought us things like socialism, so a conservative battling for capitalism will find himself hotly engaged with liberals battling for socialism, but both of them are battling for liberalism, just different interpretations of it…and that they are so starkly different highlights the basic incoherence of liberalism which grows out of its fundamental flaw, the conception that mankind is perfectible by human agency. And just as conservatism is fooled or fools itself into fighting for liberal things, so is conservatism incoherent.

There is room at the table for a wide variety of opinions in conservatism. Indeed, so varied are the problems facing us that prudence dictates that we not be too rigid in our means of meeting the issues of the day. As long as core, conservative principles – properly understood – are adhered to, we’re doing ok. I am not all knowing and all seeing. I have plenty of flaws, gaps of knowledge and my own bits of pigheaded adherence to received ideas. But if we are to do a conservative thing, then let us be genuinely conservative.

And so, the problem is not how to mesh conservatism with Christianity – they are essentially one and the same – but how to mesh conservatism with a society damaged to its core by liberalism. All who adhere to conservatism have a role to play here, so let us all leave off – as Gay Patriot has wisely done – all talk of whom to purge. We need to unite on what we agree on, and battle against those who war against us all, the liberals.

Being Politically Incorrect

Posted by Mark Noonan in Life Issues on November 23rd, 2008 at 08:44pm with 30 responses.
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It is one of the more fun aspects of being right-of-center, ya know? While our liberal friends wet their beds over what to say and wear, we on the right get to see things as they are – and Victor Davis Hanson has 10 un-PC things to say, this one striking me as most important:

The K-12 public education system is essentially wrecked. No longer can any professor expect an incoming college freshman to know what Okinawa, John Quincy Adams, Shiloh, the Parthenon, the Reformation, John Locke, the Second Amendment, or the Pythagorean Theorem is. An entire American culture, the West itself, its ideas and experiences, have simply vanished on the altar of therapy. This upcoming generation knows instead not to judge anyone by absolute standards (but not why so); to remember to say that its own Western culture is no different from, or indeed far worse than, the alternatives; that race, class, and gender are, well, important in some vague sense; that global warming is manmade and very soon will kill us all; that we must have hope and change of some undefined sort; that AIDs is no more a homosexual- than a heterosexual-prone disease; and that the following things and people for some reason must be bad, or at least must in public company be said to be bad (in no particular order): Wal-Mart, cowboys, the Vietnam War, oil companies, coal plants, nuclear power, George Bush, chemicals, leather, guns, states like Utah and Kansas, Sarah Palin, vans and SUVs.

A very large percentage of the American population is primed for slavery – to become the mere cogs in a totalitarian machine. This is because a very large percentage of Americans simply does not know what is what. I’m stunned at times at what people don’t know, and at what they do know which isn’t so…probably 9 in 10 Americans can state at least some part of one of the many bogus conspiracy theories explaining the Kennedy assassination, but I’ll bet not 1 in a 100 can identify what happened at Leyte Gulf. Too many of us know too much that didn’t happen or is irrelevant; too many of us don’t know the things necessary to make an informed decision – and thus the continuing strength of liberalism.

Part of this state of affairs is intentional, part of it the result of sheer laziness. The intentional part comes in from those elements of the left who despise, out of ignorance, the civilization they live in, the laziness part of it comes from the fact that a government employee gets paid the same regardless of whether the kids in school learn much or learn nothing…and its much easier to teach them nothing. The upshot of all this is people who think that “rights” means the right to wear strange clothes and have sex; that freedom is the ability to be irresponsible with no consequences; who believe “question authority” means “reject authority without question”; that evil doesn’t exist; who’s knowledge of history would embarrass an 8 year old of 100 years ago. Such people are easily convinced that a cartoonish, two dimensional fairy tale reflects reality – and are also people easily convinced that a particular person and/or movement has all the answers and, furthermore, that to oppose such person and/or movement is not just mistaken, but pernicious.

My view is that a majority of Americans still knows enough of what actually exists and what actually happened to control, for the moment, the ultimate destiny of the United States. I could be wrong – we could have already tipped over into majority-servile in our population. If that is the case, then the enslavement of the American population to its ultimate destruction will proceed unchecked from now until such time as an outside power raises its banner over Washington, DC and proclaims the end of the United States of America. If such is the case, then my fellow Americans will have obtained nothing more – and nothing less – than their desire. People do get the government they deserve – and usually get it good and hard, as Mencken once noted.

As for me, it is my duty to do what is right, as best as I can determine it – even if I were to end up a minority of one. There really is no reason for anyone to ever despair. Ultimately, good will triumph over evil, even if a particular nation in existence today – and which has done much good in the world – fails to survive until that ultimate victory. The torch of reason and morality is inextinguishable, no matter how obscured it can be, at times. So, into the battle I go, convinced of victory – and pitying rather than hating those who oppose me, because they have so sadly limited themselves in the enjoyment of knowledge.

Kook Left Discovers the Meaning of “Chump”

Posted by Mark Noonan in Barack Hussein Obama, Democrats, Kook Left on November 22nd, 2008 at 01:49am with 24 responses.
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Seems that the kook left actually thought that by backing Obama, they’d be brought in to run things:

In two politically shrewd bids to begin gaining support from the over 57 million Americans who voted for his opponent only weeks ago, Barack Obama backed Senator Joseph Lieberman’s proposition to retain chairmanship of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and the president-elect is seriously considering the appointment of Hillary Clinton, the junior senator from New York, for the secretary of state cabinet position. The harshest criticism has not come from the Right (which battled Hillary Clinton for years) but from the Left.

Segments of Obama’s more radical supporters — mostly those who were quick to embrace the most liberal viable candidate — are not happy with his most recent political ploys. In their eyes, Lieberman betrayed the party by criticizing now President-elect Barack Obama and, even worse, by backing John McCain for president and speaking at the Republican Convention. And the possibility that Clinton will be added to the high level position of secretary of state is a far cry from Obama’s call for “Change.”

Kos, from the radically left DailyKos, called the decision to keep Lieberman as chairman of his committee “idiotic.” And, in another post, the radical Left’s standard bearer derided the Democratic Party as being “spineless capitulators” for allowing Lieberman to keep his post.

It is amazing, at times, what people entirely divorced from reality can convince themselves of – such as the way the left convinced itself that a product of Chicago’s hopelessly corrupt Democratic machine would be someone other than a slick operator determined, above all else, to advance his prospects and protect his viability. Sure, lefties, Obama played your favorite music early on in the primaries – because he knew you were suckers and would fall for it. But didn’t you notice that once he had it sewn up that he was moving away from you? There will be some liberalism over the next four to eight years, but if anyone out there thinks that Kossacks and Michael Moore will have a say in what gets done, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya…

There is a sucker born every five minutes – and most of them, it would seem, wind up liberals.

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