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I Want a Divorce

Mark Noonan

Ed. Note: Got this by e mail – if anyone knows who authored it, please let me know so I can assign proper credit:

American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.

You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. You are however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We’ll keep the HOT Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,

Real America

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S. And we won’t have to press 1 for English.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

Matt Margolis

Crisis in Honduras

Mark Noonan

Wonder if Obama will keep as hands off here as he has in Iran:

Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya said he awoke to gunfire in his home and was still in his pajamas when the military forced him to leave the country Sunday.

Zelaya, a leftist elected in 2005, had found himself recently pitted against other branches of government and military leaders over a referendum planned for Sunday that could have allowed the president to run for another term.

Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal, and the military and Congress agreed.

Despite the military and Congress’ position, Zelaya pressed forward, vowing last week that he would push for the referendum. His four-year term ends in January 2010, and under current law he cannot run for re-election.

Obviously a very confused situation – as a general rule, we should back the legitimately elected President…on the other hand, the legitimately elected Legislature and properly established judiciary are saying that the President is breaking the law. Now the military has broken the law by removing the President. So, what to do?

Tread very carefully but let everyone know that maintenance of normal relations will require a very swift restoration of completely democratic governance in Honduras – no junta, no dictator. No going slow on democracy in the name of “stability”.

Educated Ignorance

Mark Noonan

A subject for discussion: The problems of our world today can largely be traced to people who think they are educated, but who are actually just indoctrinated.

I haven’t been able to locate any recent polling on it, but a 2003 poll by Gallup revealed that 75% of the poll respondents believed that more than one man was involved in the assassination of JFK. I’ll bet that this figure would hold true today. There is only one, tiny thing wrong with the concept that people other than Oswald were involved – there isn’t even the slightest bit of evidence to indicate someone other than Oswald was involved. I know, some people out there are already going, “but what about the…” and “didn’t you know about the…”…yes, yes; I know. I’ve heard them all. All of the assertions underpinning a conspiracy are based on outright falsehoods or gross misrepresentations of the data. A screwball killed the President for utterly screwball reasons. Its tragic – but that is, also, the end of the story.

Why is this important? Because it illustrates how utter nonsense can be imprinted on the national consciousness – in other words, it shows that we can be indoctrinated…and if a poll shows 75% believe that multiple people had a hand in killing Kennedy, that means that a very large percentage of the educated believe such nonsense. We have vast amounts of knowledge continuously at our fingertips – we have, for the first time in human history, the ability to learn whole, new fields of knowledge just by clicking on a computer screen. And yet we are a startlingly ignorant people. We believe stuff fit for fairy tales.

We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t tell truth from a lie – which situation is a delight, no doubt, to he who started the lies, but which is not conducive to maintaining freedom and justice in America. We are educated enough to make an atomic bomb, but too ignorant – in a lot of ways – to be trusted with it. We need to start being a lot less ignorant, lest we wind up slaves with MBAs.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

The commonality between socialism and democracy:

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Hating Obama as Much as Bush

Mark Noonan

So much for the “change” part of “hope and change“:

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis — and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price — and that price might be America’s position as a global power.

In his fight against terrorism, Bush had the ideologue Dick Cheney at his side. “We must take the battle to the enemy,” he said — and sent out the bomber squadrons toward Iraq on the basis of mere suspicion. The result of the offensive is well known.

Obama’s Cheney

Obama’s Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama’s senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers’ self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.

That’s harsh, to say the least. Stripped of its bizarre anti-Bush views, what we have here is the default position for European elites: utter contempt for whomever happens to be President of the United States.

You can’t change this – its built-in; anti-Americanism is so ingrained in the world that nothing short of the end of America would stop it. Used to be, of course, that the default position was to be anti-British…back a century ago when Britain was the world’s most powerful nation. Britain dropped out and while there might be the odd stab at Britain from time to time, most of the fire of the world is reserved for the United States…and this is simply because we are the most powerful nation in the world, because whatever happens in other countries is trivial compared to what happens in ours and, most importantly, because self-absorbed and self-important intellectuals just can’t stand the fact that those yokels in the USA have that much power.

Obama still has the aura of a rock star and thus can still draw large, worshipful crowds…but that is a vanishing commodity. No matter what Obama does over the remainder of his term, he’ll find the world growing ever stronger in expressions of hatred and contempt for us…which things are entirely unimportant because righteous indignation doesn’t do anything to anyone. If Obama has an sense at all, he’ll swiftly stop trying to kowtow to foreign opinion and just get on with it…but I doubt that Obama has the simple guts to put up for long with opposition…he’ll continue to try to curry favor, which will result in more contempt, which will result in more favor currying….it could get rather nauseating over the next couple years.

It is Time to Restore Public Morality

Mark Noonan

And no issue is better to start on than the Sanford issue:

What a public relations nightmare Mark Sanford’s revelations about his affair present to the GOP.

But I suggest that we not concern ourselves with public relations, or with sympathy for Sanford. And we should certainly not follow the path taken by Democrats, whose betrayed wives, like Elizabeth Edwards, go on a book tour or try to rationalize their husband’s affairs, as Hillary Clinton did.

Sanford’s affair proves that one’s personal life — contrary to the claims of the “Clinton lied but no one died” contingent — does affect one’s ability to govern. Sanford’s disastrous press conference revealed that he is a man still torn between his mistress and his wife. That as a governor he could take off for Argentina and place his state in jeopardy proves that the emotional turmoil of an extramarital affair clouds one’s thinking and actions. It gives the lie to the claim that one’s personal life has nothing to do with job performance. It proves that politicians’ personal lives should be the subject of scrutiny. Only a conscienceless person could carry on an affair without it clouding his thinking. Of course, there are the sociopaths, but we don’t want them in office either.

It is tremendously useful that it was Sanford – an strongly conservative man – who shall be our poster-boy for the revivification of American political morality. By stating clearly that we want Sanford to resign – or will gin up a primary opponent, should he seek office under the GOP banner – we will lay down the marker: our side believes, correctly, that there is no difference between private and public morality. You cannot be an honest governor and a dishonest husband – you are either honorable, or you’re not, and there’s an end on it.

For too long throughout our society we have tolerated boorish, immoral and disgusting behavior from the Powerful – from arts to politics to business, there is really no sin we haven’t passed on in silence. A business man divorces his wife of 30 years to marry a young girl – we don’t do anything. An actor is caught cheating on his wife – we don’t do anything. A President is caught having adulterous sex with a subordinate – we don’t do anything. Oh, there is a lot of fireworks in these things – but nothing is actually done.

We don’t force the miscreants out of public life. We don’t force them to confront their crimes. We don’t make them pay the price of their oath-breaking. Complete social ostracism is the only means of protecting society against predators who would use their power and position to gratify their lusts. Put a man at risk of losing everything, and he’ll be a lot more wary about risking it all…cost him nothing or, indeed, give him a de-facto reward for infidelity, and the levee is down, in comes a flood of immorality.

Sanford must go. Ensign must go. The GOP should extract pledges from its candidates that they will never break an oath – and if they do, they’ll immediately resign all positions. At the bare minimum, a politician should be forced to keep his word – and if we demand it, they’ll do it.