Category Archives: Politics & News

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Pravda

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My friend Dean “Dino” Russell is a roofer in the middle Keys. Dancing about on roofs all his life has made him the most physically fit man in the Home Depot; it also gives him an overview of life. He is the third-most conservative man I know.

This morning, Dino emailed me a copy of the CyberAlert compilation of news items reported in the daily BiasAlert. Calling itself “America’s Media Watchdog,” the Media Research Center News Analysis Division “document(s), expose(s) and neutralize(s) liberal media bias.”

The following examples aren’t very exciting but they lead to an important discovery about the “news.”

Tuesday July 13, 2010

1. Matthews to Democrat: What Percentage of Republicans Would You Put In the ‘Nut Bag’?
Chris Matthews, on Monday’s Hardball, brought on his own personal Congressman, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen, to review how his party was going to distinguish themselves from the GOP in the midterms with Matthews asking the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee head if they were focusing on all the “crazy” Republicans, or in other words “nut collecting.” Matthews, after playing a clip of Barack Obama singling out Republicans Joe Barton, John Boehner and Roy Blunt, also reminded Van Hollen the President missed another “crazy” person with “B” name as he proclaimed: “If you’re going out looking for nuts, it would seem like you’d put [Michele Bachmann] in your basket.” Matthews even tried to pin down Van Hollen by demanding: “What percentage of the Republican Party would you put in the nut bag right now?”

Yawn. Chris Matthews is a syndicated “commentator,” not a reporter. Beck probably asked a guest “What percentage of Dumbocrats would you put in the ‘nut bag’?” yesterday, too.

2. CBS’s Schieffer Interviews Eric Holder, Ignores Black Panther Case
While devoting all of Sunday’s Face the Nation to an interview with Attorney General Eric Holder, CBS host Bob Schieffer failed to ask a single question about the Obama Justice Department dropping a voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers or allegations that the department has adopted a policy of ignoring such cases. At the end of the interview, Schieffer even asked about Holder’s infamous comment that the United States was a “nation of cowards” when it came to discussing race. However, the Face the Nation host failed to use that comment as a transition to the Black Panthers case, despite the fact that former DOJ attorney Christian Adams recently testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, accusing the department of adopting a policy of refusing to pursue voter intimidation cases that involved black defendants and white victims.

Yawn again. I watched FTN and included some of it in Sunday’s commentary. Bob Schieffer didn’t ask General Holder about a lot of things. He didn’t ask about U.S. v. Microsoft. He didn’t ask about Goldman Sachs. He didn’t ask about ACORN. He didn’t ask about the voter intimidation accusation made by Christian Adams.

Some of his questions were softish but they weren’t bad.

3. No Balance Required? MSNBC Features Only Pro-Gay Side of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Debate
MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer on Monday appeared baffled as to why more U.S. politicians weren’t ‘standing up’ to demand the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” touting it as “a civil rights issue.” In the span of two hours, the cable network featured a gay member of the military and a conservative to discuss the issue. However, both guests favored allowing homosexuals to serve openly.

That is the most troubling of these examples, although not surprising. Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) criticized Brewer live on the air; he said she was “absurd”, “fundamentally dishonest”, “irresponsible” and lacked “integrity” for her handling of interviews. She’s allegedly a news anchor, not a commentator and did her time as general assignment reporter. We should expect better.

None of this should worry us but for one terrible truth: the American news audience — including Dino and Rufus — has come to believe that Brewer and Colbert and Matthews and Beck and Limbaugh and O’Reilly are reporters and what they do is news.

Paranoia

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My friend Rufus is not paranoid. “Besides,” he said, “Even paranoiacs can have enemies.”

Rufus has stated that a Korean torpedo may have taken out Deepwater Horizon, that the ObamaNation tried to destroy the entire banking and insurance industry in order to nationalize health care, and that the ObamaNation did deliberately crash the entire economy in order to steal General Motors from its owners.

I don’t believe the latter theory.

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel said in an interview quoted in the NYTimes. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

I do believe the ObamaNation took advantage of the crashed economy to steal General Motors from its owners simply because they could.

Conspiracy theorists espouse clandestine liberal plans against the common citizens, extravagant murder plots, and other schemes that explain major political and historical events.

Some conspiracy theories have been advanced by government insiders themselves including the Vast International Communist Conspiracy (McCarthy’s right wing accusations of disloyalty, subversion, and treason during the Second Red Scare) and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (Hillary Clinton’s left wing defense of Bill during the Lewinsky scandal when she called Monica’s claims the “latest in a long, organized, collaborative series of charges by Clinton’s political enemies.”)

We now know all of those charges were false, and yet …

Rufus makes a good argument linking North Korea’s torpedo attack on a South Korean warship to a possible torpedo attack on Trans Ocean’s Korean ties (Hyundai built the Deepwater Horizon).

Rufus and I both made a good argument showing that when governments drive insurers out of the business, only the government is left to supply the need. Whoda thunk a Chicago pol could understand supply and demand?

And there are plenty of examples of government overstepping its bounds. The City of St. Albans here told a local store owner he couldn’t paint his building yellow. President Barack Obama ordered General Motors boss Rick Wagoner to resign (and that was a year before he ordered Carl-Henric Svanberg to suspend BP’s dividends).

“Look at that Vermont man charged with downloading child porn,” Rufus said. 23 year old Michael Liberty pleaded not guilty to three charges in Burlington last week. Police say they found several images of child pornography on his computer after tracking his downloads; Liberty said he had deleted any child porn he had accidentally downloaded.

“Did you ever wonder how the cops found Liberty?” Rufus asked. “NSA does keyword searches on every U.S. phone call, and Comcast examines every byte that goes over its Internet system to decide whether to throttle its customer usage.

“What’s to keep Comcast from looking at the content you download?” From there, he thinks, it is a short step to slowing competitor’s content or tattling to the very regulators who will approve the NBC deal.

Comcast, the largest U.S. cable company on its way to world domination, is buying control of NBC Universal for $13 billion.

“Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence,” Napoleon Bonaparte warned us.

Supermarket ID cards. ISPs seeing our mail. Local governments telling us what to paint. The nation’s highest official telling us what to think.

Whether malice on the part of the Washington ruling class or incompetence on the part of the voters, we Americans have given up our strong, independent, problem-solving ways in favor of temporary … comfort.

And it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to notice that.

I.R.V.

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Early voting starts today in Vermont, 45 days ahead of Primary Day. I can’t believe the Demorats refuse to institute Instant Runoff Voting for their primary elections. Demorats have five candidates vying for governor and IRV is the only way to determine the real will of the people.

Attention Sympathizers!

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I had a dream. I can promise you that no pepperonis died in the making of my restless slumber.

Sympathizers, Listen up. I dreamed that Vermont has passed a law requiring Vermont cops to arrest Asian people they suspect of passing counterfeit money in Quick Stops. The Secret Service reports that producing or using illegal counterfeit money is a federal crime that carries a maximum sentence of death (life imprisonment is usually the maximum penalty).

The ACDL (Anti Counterfeiting Defamation League) has organized the first of a series of simultaneous marches in Montpelier and Burlington to protest the law; Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vermont) (no relation to the Colonel) has written the Justice Department to insist that they sue the state to block its enforcement law.

Sen. Sanders charged that the Vermont law “crossed a constitutional state line” and threatens to launch a “patchwork of state and local anti-counterfeiting policies throughout the country” banned when federal law usurped local authority. Further, Asian rights advocates say the law improperly targets Asians based solely on their race and ethnicity.

The hits just keep on coming. I dreamed that Florida has passed a law requiring cops to arrest black people they suspect of using stolen credit cards in Quick Stops. Illegal credit card fraud is a federal crime that carries a maximum sentence of death if you are black in the South (life imprisonment is usually the maximum penalty).

The ACDL has also organized the first of a series of simultaneous marches in Tallahassee, Miami, and Key West to protest the law; Sen. Sanders has written the Justice Department about this one, too, to insist that they sue Florida to block its enforcement law.

Sen. Sanders charged that the Florida law “crossed a constitutional state line” and threatens to launch a “patchwork of state and local anti-credit card fraud policies throughout the country” banned when federal law usurped local authority. Further, black rights advocates say the law improperly targets blacks based solely on their race and ethnicity.

Number 3. I dreamed that Arizona has passed a law requiring cops to card anyone they suspect of being in this country illegally. Illegal border crossing is a federal crime that carries a maximum sentence of death if you are an al Qaeda representative but $10-15/hour for life if you are Hispanic (a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world as long as it is Mexico is usually the maximum penalty).

The ACDL has also organized the first of a series of simultaneous marches in Phoenix and neighboring Scottsdale to protest the law; Sen. Sanders has written the Justice Department about this one, too, to insist that they sue Arizona to block its immigration law.

Sen. Sanders (busybody that he is — hey it’s my dream) charged that the Arizona law “crossed a constitutional state line” and threatens to launch a “patchwork of state and local anti-immigration policies throughout the country” banned when federal law usurped local authority. Further, Hispanic rights advocates say the law improperly targets Hispanics based solely on their race and ethnicity.

Attorney General Eric Holder said he wants to nip the state laws I dreamt up in the bud because they “contravene federal policy where it comes to enforcement.”

On Face the Nation this morning, General Holder called the ten unregistered Russian agents “illegals.” The FBI, he said, spent 10 years investigating them.

The Feds sent the Russians packing last week, something Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer says the Feds can’t seem to do with any other illegals.

If you see yourself in my dream examples, you might ask yourself WHY ON EARTH ANY AMERICAN CITIZEN WOULD CONDONE LAWBREAKING.

It is worth noting that the term “illegal” in a person’s description usually connotes “breaking a law.” And that’s no dream.

Independence or Bust

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I feel independent today.

[Image]Yesterday the 30th rendition of our local annual summer festival, Bay Day, fell on Independence Day. It was a day with far more than fireworks in St. Albans Town Bay Park in northwestern Vermont; it was a family day with a triathalon, lakefront games, sports, fair food, fireworks, and continuous live music. I book the music.

The Summer Sounds concert series starts on Bay Day each year and our kickoff yesterday was inspired. Carol Ann Jones and The Superchargers performed an Independence Day tribute.

Ms. Jones sang an Irving Berlin song at the end of her third set. God Bless America is the unofficial national anthem of the United States. Andre Maquera closed the show as the fireworks flew with a guitar solo of the Star Spangled Banner. In front of the stage, on his knees in the single spotlight, he shot down enemy rockets with his guitar and we heard the guns firing.

Inspiring.

Independence doesn’t come cheaply. Specialist Ryan Grady, 25, of West Burke was killed by an IED near Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan last week. “He made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of a nation that he both loved and served” as a member of the Vermont Army National Guard, Maj. Gen. Michael Dubie said. He is the first Vermonter to be killed since the National Guard deployed.

We dedicated the concert to the Vermont Guard and we remembered Ryan Grady when the fireworks lit the darkened sky.

I feel particularly independent today of the bozos who want my town to take down its Christmas tree but won’t dare to offend anyone who would have an ayatollah take over City Hall. According to the Huff Post, President Obama “rebuked the old chestnut that the United States is a Judeo-Christian nation” during a press conference he held in Turkey last year.

That old chestnut ?

I’m not very religious in an organized way but I went to Sunday School and drilled the catechism. I can recite the Apostle’s Creed and I know the Lord’s Prayer with and without the doxology, with debtors or with trespassers. That said, the evangelicals worry me. Pretty much anyone who trespasses against me does. If you, dear reader, didn’t understand this paragraph, we have little to talk about.

See, I also know that the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence knew somebody’s God was lurking in our founding and I know that the 1892 Supreme Court decision that “this is a Christian nation” affirmed it.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator…

On the one hand, I’m very glad the Ayatollah Obama is not the head of the state church. On the other hand, it worries me that the ayatollahs of godlessness would assure that our kids grow up without the cultural teachings that make us the Good Guys. America is changing from a strong, independent leader to a nation of appeasers.

“Dear Mr./Ms. Bozo:
I don’t mind offending you. Nope, I don’t mind that at all.
Sincerely,
Me.”

Ryan Grady didn’t die because of oil no matter what some evangelical trespassers might think. Ryan Grady died so those bozos could say out loud that this nation never heard of God.