Punk Rock Lives

Cluster14 Comments

Very seldom does one article capture everything you have been thinking but that is exactly what I found this morning with this excellent article from Kurt Schlichter over at Townhall. Progressivism is over. It’s stale. It’s status quo. It’s predictable and worse yet it is a failure. I know some people were offended by my opinion on the current crisis we are facing with the border, but my opinion is based in the reality that we have to shake things up. We have to not be afraid to offend some people. The status quo, i.e. progressivism is not working. It’s not ok to have children out of wedlock and depend on food stamps. It’s not ok to father children and then abandon them. It’s not ok to expect that someone else pays for your birth control. It’s not ok to stone women to death and deny the right of another ethnicity to exist. It’s not ok to sell drugs and kill people. It’s not ok to have children and then send them to another country for someone else to raise. It’s not ok to lie to win an election. I am sick and tired of mealy mouthed, politically correct, even tempered, non offensive political bullshit.

The music of liberalism doesn’t move us, it doesn’t change us, it doesn’t excite us. It’s just there, aural wallpaper designed to keep us quiet, to get the liberals through one more election cycle, to help them hold power just a little longer.

Exactly. Whatever the progressives have to do to win another election they will do because they have no shame, no principles, no morals and no guts.

There’s no energy left in liberalism, no excitement, just more rules, more controls, everything the punks hated. You can’t say this, you can’t think that, everybody read the memo – today we’re scheduled to be angry at people don’t want to subsidize our birth control! Oh, and make sure you obtain a videotaped, notarized consent form before you kiss your cisgender hook-up.

One of my favorite movies is Miracle, a movie about the 1980 US Olympic hockey team and Coach Herb Brooks (Kurt Russell) had one of the best pre game speeches I have ever heard, and part of it is now a pre game speech for conservatives:

This is your time. Their time — is done. It’s over. I’m sick and tired of hearin’ about what a great hockey team the Soviets have. Screw ’em!  This is your time!! Now go out there and take it.

That’s the attitude we all need to have. Screw the progressives. Screw Putin. Screw the drug cartels. This is our time. It’s time to be rebellious and stand up for moral clarity. It is time to say enough is enough. There is nothing wrong with being an extremist and I wear that label as a badge of honor. It’s time to be politically incorrect. It’s time to offend people and shake up the status quo. Who’s in?

 

The Makings of a Progressive

Cluster33 Comments

If you believe, as I do, that we are living in surreal times, then you only need to consider that the reason why is because we are dealing with a surreal political opponent. The conservative opponent, the progressive, is made up of many moving parts, none of which have any moral grounding, feeling of shame, or basis in principle. To be a progressive, you must consider personal intent as the only measure of political success, you must have the ability to lie to yourself and your audience with no compunction whatsoever and with zero impunity, you must never hold a fellow progressive accountable, and you must subscribe to consensus through conformity. There is very little room for dissenting opinion in progressive circles and those who do stray from the consensus are shamed and humiliated and called “uncle Tom’s” or “extremists”. It’s quite easy to be a progressive actually and that’s the appeal of the movement. It doesn’t require any real critical thinking as the “group think” phenomena of the movement will form your opinion for you, It doesn’t require any personal accountability because there is always someone else to blame for your actions whether that be “old white Christian men”, or “unseemly corporate profits” otherwise known as social and economic justice, and it doesn’t require any admission of fact because results simply do not matter. If you had the right “intention”, well then the results of those intentions are not of material concern – you simply lie to yourself and those in front of you and move forward with nary a concern. This phenomena has been on full display throughout the entire Presidency of Barack Obama (if you like your President, you can keep him), and is seen very often in the actions of Harry Reid (he who refuses to bring any House GOP legislation up for debate yet blames the GOP for obstructionism), Nancy Pelosi (we must  pass it to find out what’s in it), Joe Biden (they’re going to put y’all back in chains), and Hillary Clinton (at this point what difference does it make). They are shameless, reckless, and lie as easy as they breathe.

Consider the progressive media echo chamber, MSNBC, and this excellent article which succinctly points out the alternate reality progressives live in. MSNBC has taken the art of political spin and demonization to new level, and shamelessly supports a political party in a manner that rivals only that of possibly the North Korea News Agency, or Pravda. And honestly, I have seen more objective reporting from Pravda.

It is impossible to have a coherent debate with any progressive simply because we are grounded in reality and they are not. We hold ourselves accountable, they do not. We have respect for the truth, they do not, and we subscribe to independent critical thinking through the issues, and of course they do not. In fact, the responses from progressives have become so predictable that any debate is simply an exercise in redundancy. To defeat this destructive monolithic movement will not be easy as their masses are wide and their allegiance’s are strong, but it must be defeated. Debate and compromise are pointless.

The Police Problem

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Over at National Review Online, A J Delgado points out that it is time that conservatives stop reflexively defending the police when they make errors:

…it’s time for conservatives’ unconditional love affair with the police to end.

Let’s get the obligatory disclaimer out of the way: Yes, many police officers do heroic works and, yes, many are upstanding individuals who serve the community bravely and capably.

But respecting good police work means being willing to speak out against civil-liberties-breaking thugs who shrug their shoulders after brutalizing citizens.

On Thursday in Staten Island, an asthmatic 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, died after a group of policemen descended on him, placing him in a chokehold while attempting to arrest him for allegedly selling cigarettes. A bystander managed to capture video in which Garner clearly cries out, “I can’t breathe!” Even after releasing the chokehold (chokeholds, incidentally, are prohibited by NYPD protocol), the same officer then proceeds to shove and hold Garner’s face against the ground, applying his body weight and pressure on Garner, ignoring Garner’s pleas that he cannot breathe. Worse yet, new video shows at least eight officers standing around Garner’s lifeless, unconscious body.

Who can defend this?…

No one can, of course.  On the other side of it, Jack Dunphy – the nom de post of a police officer – points out, correctly (though involving a different case), that the police are often put in a very difficult position by the forces of the left: if they do something, they can be blamed and if they fail to do something, they could just as well be blamed. Pointing out that videos of alleged police misconduct are often either edited for dramatic (and political) impact or simply incomplete, Dunphy shows that the police do have a hard time of it in our modern, lawyer-ridden, political correct era.

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Another Blow to the ACA

Cluster12 Comments

A federal appeals court delivered another body blow to the ACA today declaring that the subsidies handed out on the federal exchanges violate Section 36B of the ACA which explicitly states that subsidies are available only through the State run exchanges. You would think that this would give Democrats reason to pause, and reflect on how the bill was written and hastily passed on purely partisan votes, but true to form the message from the White House is:

“it was obvious” that Congress intended subsidies, or tax credits, to be issued to Obamacare enrollees regardless of what kind of exchange they used to buy insurance.

“Obvious” means nothing in legislation and “law professors” should know better. To date there have been 41 unilateral changes to the poorly written, poorly implemented ACA that has resulted in my personal premium increasing by 70%+, and the cancellation of millions of other policies despite the “promises” by the POTUS. You would think that the way the bill was crafted, the rise in premiums and the cancellation of policies would have been “obvious” as well, but somehow that observation escaped them.

Now of course the Democrats will appeal this ruling and hope that the next court will rule on the wishes of the party rather than the rule of law. If that does happen, then this country will slip yet another notch into the “banana republic” territory, and give more emphasis to the Congressional lawsuit against the POTUS. The language in the law is very explicit in where and when subsidies can be administered, so if the Democrats are concerned with the rule of law, something of which they like to lead people into believing, then a rewrite of the legislation would be required. However considering that the favorability of the law that was sold on lies is very poor, passage of a rewritten version is not very likely, hence the Democrats need to continue to push this through the courts until they find one that is favorable to their “intentions”.

As it stands now, this ruling and the many other unilateral delays and exemptions have done much more to gut this bill and portend it’s failure than anything the Republicans have done.

 

People Are Wising Up

tiredoflibbs17 Comments

Remember this woman: “Obama Will Pay For My Gas And Mortgage” – Peggy Joseph 2008

Peggy Joseph now: “He Lied About Everything”
“Just like the Wizard of Oz, Obama has turned out to be nothing more than a man behind a curtain,”

http://dailysurge.com/2014/07/peggy-joseph-obama-will-pay-gas-mortgage-lady-now-says-lied-everything/

While at a Chicago protest (I am sure these individuals voted for obame twice):
“Barack will go down as the worth president ever elected, Bill Clinton was the African-American President,” one resident said, in response to the president’s performance on the job, “President Barack needs to pay attention to Chicago, if he can not pay attention to Chicago and the African-American community, he needs to resign.”
http://rebelpundit.com/chicago-southside-residents-go-off-on-obama-over-amnesty-worst-president-ever-elected/

This is confirmed by Quinnipiac poll:
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-obama-worst-president-since-wwii-108507.html

“Forty-five percent of voters said the U.S. would be better off with Mitt Romney serving in the White House”
“Fifty-four percent of voters say the Obama administration is not competent at running the government.”

UPDATE:Shock Video>>> Blacks Met With Hostility, Harassed at Annual NAACP Convention

Nooo… not by the TEA Party as the leftist dumbed down talking points command.

All in all – nothing is really surprising if you are an independent thinker and not caught up in the “Cult of Personality” as are the mindless proggy drones.

Turley’s Testimony

Cluster13 Comments

In all of the chaos that has been swirling around the last week or two, i.e.; the border crisis, the Malaysian airliner, and the Gaza Strip, what has been lost or certainly under reported is the very important Congressional lawsuit against Executive Authority. Notable George Washington University law professor and admitted Obama supporter Jonathan Turley testified in front of Congress this last week in support of the lawsuit, and his testimony was very compelling and should get the attention of anyone who respects the Constitution and the founding of our country. Turley warns not only of unlawful unilateral changes to legislation by the executive branch, but also of the “fourth branch” of government, and the increasing power of agency deference, and the enactment of law through regulations. The testimony is found in full text here, and is a good weekend read. Many of us here have spoken to this issue quite a bit calling for the need to limit the size and scope of the federal government, and to see that the House, through elected representatives, and the States assert their Constitutional authorities. Unfortunately, in the face of those statements, we have been called racists and extremists by the very people who either support the expansion of unilateral power and the departure from the tripartite system our founders intended, or by those who are so willfully ignorant they pose an extreme danger to our republic. I contend it is the latter. In his testimony, Turley explains how he sat in bewilderment when the President stood in front of the Congressional body and told them straight up that he would go around them if they failed to act and many of them stood up and cheered. How sad is that? Congress cheering a President that promises to strip them of their elected responsibility. This lawsuit must go forward, and it must succeed, and this is just the first of many actions the people must engage in to regain control of this government, and of this country. Below are some excerpts:

While the President is clearly exasperated by the opposition that he has encountered in Washington, the Framers created a system that often forces compromise between factional and political groups. That legislative process tends to produce laws with a broader base of support and, frankly, a better product after going through the difficult revisions and conferences. What emerges is not always perfect but it does have the legitimacy of a duly enacted law. It is that legislative process that is the key to the success of the American system. Thus, the loss caused by the circumvention of the legislative branch is not simply one branch usurping another. Rather, it is the loss of the most important function of the tripartite system in channeling factional interests and reaching resolutions on matters of great public importance. 

The rise of this fourth branch in our tripartite system raises difficult questions.65 Today, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations. Adding to this dominance are judicial rulings giving agencies heavy deference in their interpretations of laws under cases like Chevron. Recently, this Supreme Court added to this insulation and authority with a ruling that agencies can determine their own jurisdictions — a power that was previously believed to rest with Congress. In his dissent in City of Arlington v. FCC, Chief Justice John Roberts warned, “It would be a bit much to describe the result as ‘the very definition of tyranny,’ but the danger posed by the growing power of the administrative state cannot be dismissed.”

What a Mess

Cluster2 Comments

Today’s news of the Malaysian Airliner just underscores the frightening fact that radicals, rebels and mal contents are running amuck in the void of world leadership. The “leading from behind” strategy of this president is a glaring failure. It would be nice to see our President get out in front of a crisis for once and take a strong moral stand, and this is the perfect opportunity to call out Putin for aiding and abetting these separatists. This is the opportunity to shame and marginalize Putin in front of the world and timing is important, but where is our President at a time when he should be standing up against aggression? At another fundraiser. In the Hampton’s no less. Palling around with the rich and the elite. It is beyond belief how disengaged and disconnected this President is, and if he doesn’t want the job, which all indications are that he doesn’t, he should do us all a favor and resign.

Hamas is in full attack mode, ISIS is strengthening their hold on Iraq, Libya is a jihadist breeding ground, Iran continues unabated, and terrorists of all stripes are having a field day. On the domestic front, our border is a sieve, our GDP and labor rates are shrinking, and the Democrats biggest concern is that women may have to pay a few extra bucks a month for contraception.

How is this Hope and Change working out for you?

UPDATE: I have a feeling that within the year, another attack similar to 9/11 will occur. Either here, in Western Europe or in Israel. The radicals of all stripes have gained momentum and grown in confidence over the last several years, and I think they are currently positioning themselves to carry out such an attack. Another big one is coming folks, it’s just a matter of when.

Secession is the Answer Update

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Well, it’ll be on the ballot in California in 2016:

A proposal backed by venture capitalist Tim Draper to divide California into six states has received enough signatures to make the November 2016 ballot, according to the nonprofit Six Californias…

I expect it to be crushed at the polls – the last polling on it showed 59% of Californians opposed.  But, you got to start somewhere; in a democratic republic, nothing happens right away and, very often, the first time something is tested on the ballot, it goes down in flames. It takes education and political activity to bring something to majority support – and this is something that needs majority support.  In fact, this is the single most American political proposal in more than 100 years.  After all, the Founders were secessionists.

Draper’s proposal will fail – and part of the failure can be traced to the way he’s drawn the borders of the Six Californias. The purpose of secession in California is to free the people of California from the oppression of those who currently run California – San Francisco, Los Angeles and the Sacramento area. That should be one State, rather than being broken up into three…and the one State shouldn’t be rewarded with the Lake Tahoe area, especially as Tahoe has nothing in common with the Pacific Coast area it’s shackled to in Draper’s plan. No, no, no: liberal nitwits in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento have made California into a mess where a lot of people would like to get out – and no one other than the nitwit liberals of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Sacramento should be stuck with said nitwits. Draper’s “Jefferson” should be called “Northern California” and it should include the Tahoe area. Central California (though Central California could be called either East California or West Nevada) and South California are fine – so, with those modifications, you actually get Four Californias, not Six…and that would have a better chance of winning votes.  Of course, the other part of possible failure is that the poorer areas of the State (in my division, Northern California and Central California) might be scared off from secession because they would technically lose some benefits of taxes in the rich areas…but even here, a good public education campaign can show that what they’d lose in State spending they’d more than gain in economic growth by not being tied to the anti-growth liberals in West California (ie, SF, LA and Sacramento).

Getting back to the basics of it all, the primary purpose of secession is to provide political organisms which are united by a general set of common interests and thus are protected against rapacious or indifferent outsiders. That is, ultimately, what American government is all about.  The British government was rapacious and indifferent – and so we cut ourselves loose from it and made a government which wasn’t.  Or, more accurately, 13 governments which weren’t and which ceded enough of their power to a central government to protect us against foreign encroachment. To be sure, the theory can be carried too far – as it was in the Civil War when the South had all the protections it needed in its local relations, but decided to pull out altogether because they worried that at some theoretic point in the future, someone from the North might want to intefere directly in Southern life. But because someone once took it too far doesn’t mean the essential principal is wrong.

Not only does California need to be broken up, but so does New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nevada and probably several other States where population and economic changes over the past century have caused various parts of the States to develope organically into entities which have little or nothing in common with other parts of the State.  Take, for instance, Nevada – back when Statehood was secured, mining was pretty much it for the State; it is what Nevada did.  But now over time changes have come over it – mining is still huge but only in the northern part of the State, while the south (ie, Las Vegas) is nothing but gaming and tourism.  These days, Neavda politicians in the south of the State greedily eye mining profits in the northern part of the State and propose to tax such profits to pay for things in the southern part of the State (and, of course, dependent upon gaming and tourism – ie, bribed by gaming and tourism industry lobbyists – southern Nevada pols never seek to tax heavily their own gaming and tourism)…but what matter is it to, say, a person living in Winnemucca what the class size is in Las Vegas?  Why should a mine which pays enough taxes for the locals in Winnemucca (and provides good jobs for people in Winnemucca) pay for the schooling of kids in Las Vegas?  The State should be broken up – so that Tourist/Gaming Nevada will have to take care of it’s own while Mining Nevada will take care of it’s own, with neither being able to do anything to the other.

Now, to be sure, such a break up of the States would result in more Senators – which is not necessarily a good thing.  But it would also be a bit more fair – and I think we’d also have to increase the size of the House from 435 members to right around 651 in order to ensure good representation of the people. But the resultant government – at the State and federal levels – will be more responsive to the needs and desires of the people, and less able to be controlled by the fat cats of a few large, urban areas. Ultimately, I think it would strengthen the union if there were more parts to it – and that is why I praise this effort in California and hope that it will grow and spread over the next few decades.

 

 

 

 

Odds and Ends Open Thread

Mark Noonan35 Comments

As far as the situation in Gaza goes – every drop of blood spilled is the responsibility of Hamas.  They are the people pledged to the destruction of Israel; they are the people who make the rockets to be fired pretty much at random into Israeli territory. Until Hamas gives up that sort of nonsense, the war is their fault – as are all the deaths, on both sides. As an aside, I don’t trust Hamas’ word, at all – so stories and pictures of alleged Palestinian deaths mean precisely zero to me.  Unless and until a completely neutral third party (and the UN and the MSM are not neutral, third parties) verifies such deaths, I put them in the realm of “possible” rather than actual – understanding, of course, that if there have been civilian deaths in Gaza it is (a) Hamas’ responsibility in general and (b) often deliberately and purposefully Hamas’ responsibility as they put their military forces right behind women and children – because they are cowardly terrorists and know no other way to fight.

A bit of a global warming hoax update:

If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.

Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.

At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.

Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.

“The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”

Impressive, indeed – I’m sure that Al Gore and the rest of the science-denying anthropogenic global warming fanatics will soon get on their private jets to fly around the world telling us to cut our carbon emissions.

For the zillionth time, Attorney General Holder proves that he is a racist:

Attorney General Eric Holder said Sunday he and President Obama have been targets of “a racial animus” by some of the administration’s political opponents.

No, Eric, we don’t like you and your boss because you are a pair of corrupt, stupid, arrogant jerks.  Really has nothing to do with your skin color, at all; that you think it is the result of white racism proves you are a racist – figuring that white people have a built-in racial animus is a racist belief.

“Smidgen” apparently means “so much that it slops over“:

The two items in question are ones which we’ve already discussed here. One – perhaps the most damning in recent months – was the shocking (meaning, not shocking) revelation that Lerner had previously told her co-workers that, “we need to be cautious about what we say in emails” and wanted to know if instant messaging texts were recorded.

The second was the oh-so-understandable “misunderstanding” about whether or not she had printed out any of her e-mails. And let’s face it… who can be sure what was meant when somebody asks you if you printed something? Did they mean “print” the documents, or print print the documents? It’s all terribly confusing.

Lerner, et al know they are completely secure as long as Obama is President – but they’ve got to be worried that a GOP just might manage to get into office in 2016 – and the statue of limitations will not have expired come January 20th, 2017. Now, to be sure, our RINO half will be wanting us to MoveOn…but there’s still that chance that the next President might decide to review all this…and if he does, then a very large number of highly placed bureaucrats and elected Democrats will be going to jail.

Well, heck – it looks like we do leave people behind.

When McCain says the borders aren’t secure, you know you’ve got a problem.  Remember, I’m the amnesty supporter here…but we’ve really got to deport a very large number of people in order to just make it clear that you can’t just waltz in here without so much as a “by your leave”.

If you’ve heard the stories about Gaza not having bomb shelters, then think again: Gaza does have bomb shelters – for the bombs.  The people?  F ’em; the more that die, the better it is for pro-Palestinian propaganda.

Did you know the GOP might win the governorship of Hawaii?  Hope and Change might work out for us, after all.

Reid continues his career as an acute national embarrassment.

Media bias – its a feature, not a bug.

If the economy is in good shape, why as U.S. power usage flat lined since 2006?  As an aside, there are 20 million more people in the United States than there were in 2006.

Intellectual Idiocy

Mark Noonan27 Comments

Matt McCaffrey over at MisesEconomicBlog makes note of a common trait among our intellectuals:

…“For [a revolutionary] atmosphere to develop it is necessary that there be groups to whose interest it is to work up and organize resentment, to nurse it, to voice it and to lead it.” Enter the intellectuals.

The intellectuals are a paradoxical product of the market economy, because “unlike any other type of society, capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” Like Hayek, Schumpeter described intellectuals broadly as “people who wield the power of the spoken and the written word.” More narrowly, “one of the touches that distinguish them from other people who do the same is the absence of direct responsibility for practical affairs.” That is, intellectuals do not participate in the market (at least not in the areas they write about), and do not generally rely on satisfying consumers to earn a living. Add to this their naturally critical attitude—which Schumpeter argues is the product of the essential rationality of the market economy—and it is easy to see why intellectuals would be hostile to the market.

In other words, intellectuals are often out of place in entrepreneurial societies. The growth of the intellectual class is not a response to consumer demand, but to the expansion of higher education. Passing through the higher education system does not necessarily confer valuable skills, but it often does convince graduates that work in the market is beneath them…

That is all very true, but I’d add something else to it: our intellectuals are, for the very largest part, amazingly un-intellectual. For people who pride themselves on an alleged ability to think, they don’t think about much – and this is mostly because they don’t know very much. Marx wrote a book about what the laboring class wants when he had never done a lick of laboring work in his life. Lenin wrote a book about the development of capitalism in Russia when he had never entered the marketplace, at all.  What on earth could such men think they were writing about?  It’d be like me trying to write an in depth, philosophical work about surgery. I might have some interesting comments to make on the subject, but to take me for an expert in it, no matter how much I claim to have thought about it, would be absurd. Unless you get out there and see how its done, you’ll never really know.

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