Category: Uncategorized

Hate

KevinLeave a comment

Hate

Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents. It pulls and whirls the individual away from his own self, makes him oblivious of his weal and future, frees him of jealosies and self-seeking. He becomes an anonymous particle quivering with a craving to fuse and coalesce with his like into one flaming mass. (Heinrich) Heine suggests that what Christian love cannot do is effected by a common hatred.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil. Usually the strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil. When Hitler was asked whether he thought the Jew must be destroyed, he answered: “No…. We should have then to invent him. It is essential to have a tangible enemy, not merely an abstract one.” F.A. Voigt tells of a Japanese mission that arrived in Berlin in 1932 to study the National Socialist movement. Voigt asked a member of the mission what he thought of the movement. He replied: “It is magnificent. I wish we could have something like it in Japan, only we can’t, because we haven’t got any Jews.” – Eric Hoffer, True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Hatred is the most powerful emotion in politics. At present, American liberals are not fighting for an Obama presidency. I suspect that most have only the haziest idea of what it would mean for their country. The slogans that move their hearts and stir their souls are directed against their enemies: Bush, the neo-cons, the religious right.

In this, American liberals are no different from the politically committed the world over. David Cameron knew that he would never be Prime Minister until he had killed the urgent hatred of the Conservative party in liberal England. A measure of his success is that hardly anyone now is caught up by the once ubiquitous feeling that no compromise is too great if it stops the Tories regaining power. Hate can sell better than hope.

When a hate campaign goes wrong, however, disaster follows. And everything that could go wrong with the campaign against Palin did. American liberals forgot that the public did not know her. By the time she spoke at the Republican convention, journalists had so lowered expectations that a run-of-the-mill speech would have been enough to win the evening.

As it was, her family appeared on stage without a goitre or a club foot between them, and Palin made a fighting speech that appealed over the heads of reporters to the public we claim to represent. ‘I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion,’ she said as she deftly detached journalists from their readers and viewers. ‘I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.’ – Nick Cohen, “When Barack’s berserkers lost the plot,” The Guardian

Quote of the Week

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Week

Forgive me, I’ve been ill. This is the first time I’ve seen this. If you haven’t, you absolutely need to read the whole thing, print it out and spread it around. Media Still Doesn’t Get It, from Ace of Spades, authored by Slublog. A masterful fisking this piece of slime by Roger Simon (no, the other Roger Simon). The quote:

You want to know why conservatives roared last night when the media was bashed and why many of us have spent the week in a simmering rage? It’s because you’re hypocrites. You claim to be objective, yet have spent the past few days absolutely smearing a woman and her family because she had the audacity to be a conservative Republican. You have expended more time and effort discussing her daughter’s sex life than you’ve spent looking into the business and political associates of the Democrat candidate for president of the United States. When you did explore Palin’s actual record, you have often done so with little regard for the truth. You and your colleagues have relinquished your right to be taken seriously as honest brokers of information.

And what this column shows me is that you know it.

I’m serious. Read the whole piece.

I can hear Bernie Goldberg saying “I told you . . .”

I wonder if anyone knows how to get in touch with Bernie. I’d bet there’s a bunch of us pajamahadeen who would like to interview him over these latest, most blatant examples of Bias and Arrogance.

And not one “legacy media” outlet that will touch him.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

Bill Whittle strikes again:

Newt Gingrich’s fire-breathing army of young reform Republicans who stormed congress in 1994 grew, in about a decade, into the party of Duke Cunningham, Trent Lott, and the Bridge to Nowhere. I watched this unfold — especially after 2004 — and time and time again, the core conservative values of discipline and responsibility were betrayed, mocked, and ignored. Restraint is not an easy sell in a society this affluent — not compared with the view of government as a bottomless bag of candy. That’s why we’re supposed to be the party of adults.

Power corrupts, and I believe there is no power more intoxicating and corrosive than the ability to spend other people’s money at will. If Newt’s Army could go so far astray, you can bet the country was disillusioned, disappointed, and furious — not just ready for change, but eager for it, even change as ethereal and diffuse as what Senator Obama has been peddling. We lost the Senate and the House in 2006 because of this. We were going to lose the presidency in 2008 for it. And we deserved to lose it.

RTWT.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

From a post and comment thread chock-full of ’em:

September 2nd, 2008. The 2008 Election ended this morning as a vast cadre of liberals, progressives, Democrats and like minded journalists lifted the white flag and surrendered.

We surrendered something a whole lot more valuable than our vote. We surrendered our principles. We surrendered our core values.

We surrendered all hope. We surrendered our shared dreams that our daughters would inherit a better world, a world of promise, equality, justice, fairness and honor.

We had dreamed of a world where our 17 year old daughters wouldn’t be striped naked and raped on the front page of the New York Times, above the fold.

We dreamed of a world where a candidate, man or woman, could run for the highest office in the land and not be “swiftboated” with sexual lies and slander so vicious, so cruel, so gross and destructive that they actually wither our very soul.

I actually believed we were better than that. I actually believed “swiftboating” was the sole property of Republicans. I actually believed we wanted to debate the issues. I actually believed we wanted the real change so eloquently promised by Senator Barack Obama. I actually believed we wanted a better world for our sons and our daughters.

So I thought the extremely bizarre story, so obvious a blatant lie, that somehow appeared in The Daily Kos, claiming Governor Sarah Palin had somehow faked her own pregnancy to cover up for her wayward teenage daughter would be laughed off and quickly vanish from the Kos pages like the trash it was. It was a joke, A sad, sick joke.

But instead of the aborted fetus it should have been, it was born full grown into the waiting arms of liberal bloggers and journalists, who quickly passed out cigars and congratulated themselves as proud mamas and papas. All this in spite of the fact that absolutely everyone knew the story was an absolute lie.

The only thing we aborted was the truth. – The WIZARD, Fkap, It’s Over. We’ve Lost.

RTWT, AND the comments.

From the comments, my favorite:

The Left abandoned millions of people in Vietnam to be chopped up and destroyed.

Principles of classical liberalism were abandoned by the fake liberals, decades ago.

It is only now, now when people are paying attention to a huge influx of information, that they are starting to get the clue. Maybe with 9/11. Maybe with Afghanistan and how the Left turned against Bush’s war there to free the Afghan women. Maybe Iraq. Maybe now. – Ymarsakar

But probably not.

Oooookay. . . .

KevinLeave a comment

Oooookay. . . .

Bob Parks of Black & Right wrote a piece on the Left’s attack on Sarah Palin which was picked up by the site Booker Rising.

The commentary there is . . . illuminating. Example:

. . . one wonders if the porch-simian collective imagines that there’s a place for its membership in that apocalyptic white separatist refuge being extolled here by Palin’s pastor;

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2…for- itself.html

I do invite you to watch the videos. It pretty much puts to rest the idea that Palin is not a fundamentalist evangelical Christian. But I didn’t hear anybody damning America. I didn’t hear the pastor blaming anything on “poor, black, PEOPLE!” Not one mention of “chickens coming home to roost.” Also, this isn’t Palin’s pastor, she’s visiting a church in another town, as I see it.

But really, “porch-simian collective”?

Another:

Palins pick as VP simply shows the dearth of conviction that really exist on the right. They do not love America, or its highest ideals; I do not care what anyone argues, Conservatives/Whites, love the privileges they believe America entitles them.

Absolutely no conviction at all; Instead of chants of “country first” or even “USA, USA;” the party and their sycophants should be bellowing “White Pride World-Wide”, and be done with it!

You know, I knew there were people out there like that, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen one.

Another:

CNN is now totally in the tank for Sarah Palin. They failed with Clinton, and they failed with McCain, and know they’re going to fail with this fourth rate loser. CNN has now been totally exposed for the bought and paid for verminous swine corporate establishment propaganda network that they are.

I cannot help but wonder what color the sky is on that guy’s planet.

One final one:

Sarah Palin is the Republican attack dog now, in the words of Chris Matthews, a torpedo aimed at the Barack Obama campaign.

Now we know why they call her the “barracuda”.

And I agree with Dark Star, I think placing her in a direct adversarial position to Barack Obama is the Republican plan, and it’s also a deviously subtle way to play the race card. The old Black boogie men assaulting the innocent virginal white woman. It’s a classic racial theme.

Now these are NOT the majority opinions expressed – they aren’t even a particularly high percentage, but the mentality is (to sheltered little-ole-me) a bit shocking. Thankfully, these commentators are countered by other voices there.

This is Sobering

KevinLeave a comment

This is Sobering

Bob Parks of Black & Right considers the questions of “What happens if Barack Obama wins in November? And what if he doesn’t?“

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbzuJJVKDTM&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
If you’re inclined to, throw some money Bob’s way. He’s trying to raise $1,000 to cover his daily operations by the end of October. There’s a “Chip In” button on the right side of the blog.

(h/t Curmudgeonly & Skeptical2 – I’m going back to bed.)

Under the Weather

KevinLeave a comment

Under the Weather

My wife gave me whatever the Virus of the Week is that is running around her work (usually I’m immune to anything she brings home – which irritates her to no end), but this bug is kicking my butt. I had a helluva hard time staying awake today, and my a** is dragging. No blog for you (or not much of one) for a couple of days. Sorry. I’m going to go to bed and read. And sleep.

I’ll have to catch tonight’s episode of Gun Nuts: The Next Generation on podcast.

Quote of the Day

KevinLeave a comment

Quote of the Day

With regard to the way the Lenin-Red end of the intarw3bz spectrum has behaved in the last 24 hours, well, when people force themselves to be so Excruciatingly Politically Correct for 24 hours of every day, it’s shocking how misogynistic and racist they can get if you put an R after the name of a target. I haven’t seen such bigoted vitriol since the Clarence Thomas nomination.

Remember kids, it’s the hit dog that yelps. – Tam, Quote(s) of the Day

It’s called “projection.”