A Comment Left Elsewhere. . .

A Comment Left Elsewhere. . .

Over at Margaret Soltan’s University Diaries, Margaret links to and quotes from a Heather Mac Donald City Journal piece critical of Sarah Palin because of her speech patterns. Her commenters contribute further, but I left this:

I’ll chime in here. The two-party primary process this year has given us a choice between two excrement sandwiches. I have watched the process, and I am convinced that Dr. Bob of The Doctor is In is right when he says:

For years we have tolerated incompetence, corruption, dishonesty — and yes, greed — in government while looking the other way. On those rare occasions when politicians have made principled stands, we have rewarded them with a firestorm of political assault, full-throated media ridicule and criticism, and enormous financial pressure from lobbyists pouring money into the pockets of those who purport to represent the people. We have elected a government of the people, in the most literal and disgraceful sense: we have elected, and kept in office, those who share our desire for self-gratification and materialistic acquisition at the expense of character, moral integrity, honesty, and prudence. The cesspool which is our current Congress is what we have reaped by our own actions — or perhaps more accurately, by our inaction. We have elected those politicians who are like us in every way — and we hate them for it. They are, after all, created in our own image.

That goes approximately double for our choices of President and Vice-President this year.

And yet. . .

One of the choices we have for President has been surrounded since childhood by avowed Marxists/Socialists. I realize that Antonio Gramsci has won, and that our educational system has been suborned into cranking out large quantities of people who think socialism is a marvelous idea, but now we appear to be at a point where we are about to elect to the highest office in the land a man who would not otherwise pass an FBI background check for a job at the CIA or the Pentagon due to his known associates.

Last Thursday I heard a small Asian lady ask of Wayne LaPierre, “I have only been a citizen of the United States for fourteen years, and I just joined the NRA because I believe in the Constitution and the right to arms. When I see Barack Obama, I see a Communist, and I am afraid. I think he is going to win the election. Does the NRA have a plan if this occurs?” I spoke with her shortly after. She was born of Chinese parents in Cambodia, and was raised and schooled in Taiwan. She studied our Constitution, and made a conscious effort to come to the US and become a citizen. If there’s anyone who knows what a Communist looks like, she should be one.

And yet apparently half the electorate either doesn’t care, or is fine with Obama’s long-time associates.

As I said, Gramsci has won, and the United States is heading into World Socialism just as the Left worldwide has desired.

As Henry Louis Mencken said many decades ago: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

For what we are about to receive, may we be truly thankful.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

See, I am seriously worried, even from this other side of the Atlantic, by certain facts about Barack Obama. He’s seen as a saintly, almost messianic figure, he who’ll change America into a better place, accepted as peer by the international community, where the power of the state will be used to redistribute wealth, and where all races – except those whites who don’t repent for the sins of their race – will proportionally share power, and the government will be your friend and help you from cradle to grave, even saving the fools from the consequences of their folly.

It looks more like a nightmare than a dream to me, even more so if I consider that America is today the only place left where a man can be minimally free in the true sense of the word (there are other places where life is good, but not as free). – Fabio, The Second Version: In Which I Occasionally Embrace Political Activism

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

For years we have tolerated incompetence, corruption, dishonesty — and yes, greed — in government while looking the other way. On those rare occasions when politicians have made principled stands, we have rewarded them with a firestorm of political assault, full-throated media ridicule and criticism, and enormous financial pressure from lobbyists pouring money into the pockets of those who purport to represent the people. We have elected a government of the people, in the most literal and disgraceful sense: we have elected, and kept in office, those who share our desire for self-gratification and materialistic acquisition at the expense of character, moral integrity, honesty, and prudence. The cesspool which is our current Congress is what we have reaped by our own actions — or perhaps more accurately, by our inaction. We have elected those politicians who are like us in every way — and we hate them for it. They are, after all, created in our own image.The Doctor is In, Surveying the Abyss

This was not the best quote from the piece, but it was one of the few capable of standing alone. Read the short essay in its entirety. Several times.

Tough History Coming, indeed.

H/t to Van der Leun.

Quote of the Day

From someone who should know. . .

This is Mrs. Ly Chho, born of Chinese parents in Cambodia, raised and schooled in Taiwan, naturalized American citizen for fourteen years, and new NRA member, along with her husband who couldn’t make it with her to the NRA press conference yesterday evening because he had to work late.


Unfortunately, Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox were a bit late arriving, so the TV cameras left in the middle of their announcement in order to make the 6:30 news deadline, but (unsurprisingly) the NRA has officially endorsed McCain/Palin.

But that’s not, precisely, what this post is about.

After the announcement, Wayne and Chris took comments from the audience – mostly white people over the age of 40 (mostly well over) from what I could see – but this diminutive asian woman stood to ask her question and was recognized.

She asked, as best I can recall:

I am a new NRA member. I have been a citizen for only fourteen years. I believe in the Constitution and the Second Amendment, and when I see Obama, I see Communism, and I am afraid. I believe he is going to win the election. Do you have any plans in place if this happens?

Wayne LaPierre responded that we all have the blood of the patriots who threw the tea into Boston Harbor and stood on the bridge at Lexington and Concord in our veins (metaphorically speaking), and that the NRA would never rest, yada, yada, yada.

But that was a powerful statement from Mrs. Chho. I caught up to her to ask her about herself so that I could write this post. At the moment, the Chho’s do not own a firearm, but they are planning to get one as soon as they’ve gone through some NRA basic training. Mrs. Chho explained that she was educated in Taiwan, and had studied the U.S. Constitution, and had chosen to come to America and become a citizen because of that document. She loves and respects what America is, and Obama frightens her deeply.

And she should know.

Thank you, Mrs. Chho. You are another example of someone who is an American because she thinks she’s an American. It doesn’t matter what her ancestry is, or where she was born or where she was educated. She’s an American, and was one long before she made her citizenship oath.

Damned straight I’m a believer in American Exceptionalism.

Quote of the Day

A coup d’état took place in this country during the past two weeks. If you didn’t notice, perhaps you were distracted by the Dolphins whipping the Chargers, or Tina Fey’s grotesque parodies of Sarah Palin, or perhaps you were immersed in blogs trying to prove that Barak Obama is a domestic terrorist. Regardless of the distraction, while our attention was diverted, a revolution took place. No shots were fired, but plenty of blood was shed. The United States ceased to be a capitalist economy and became a managed socialist state. – Syd from Front Sight, Press, The Suicide of Capitalism

And yes, read the whole thing.

“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

“The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.”

That’s a quote from John Gilmore. I’m here to do my part.

It seems that last week’s Saturday Night Live took some shots at the economic crisis, and – quite pointedly – at a couple deeply involved in it, billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler, and George Soros.

Apparently this didn’t go over too well with the rich and powerful. NBC has yanked the clip from Hulu.com, and is aggressively pursuing “copyright infringement” when it’s posted at YouTube.com.

So the internet is routing around it. For your entertainment, and in conjunction with the “fair use” statement at the bottom of this page, I present you the SNL skit as political commentary:

http://img.photobucket.com/player.swf?file=http://vidmg.photobucket.com/albums/v99/smallestminority/SNLBailoutSkit.flv
Just doing my part!

UPDATE: Apparently an “edited” version is back up at Hulu.com, but this one is the original uncensored clip!

Once You Can Fake Sincerity. . .

Quote of the Day:

There is no end to it — everyone gets the version of Obama that perfectly fits his own world view. It is not hypocrisy. It’s fraud. – Jennifer Rubin, Commentary, “Hypocrisy Doesn’t Begin To Describe It”

Read the whole (short) thing. Especially the last paragraph.

Obama has said it himself, though he used the passive voice:

I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

That link’s not bad either. Nice to see Rubin following a theme.

Thank You, Glenn

Thank You, Glenn

Glenn Reynolds should be recognized as a national treasure. How he manages to sift through the overwhelming amount of material available on the Web and find the valuable nuggets simply astounds me.

Tonight he brings us False but Justified. It’s succinct and to the point, but here’s the money quote:

False, dangerous, misguided . . . and justified. Liberalism in a nutshell.