I was talking to a reader the other day and this video came up in conversation. She hadn't seen it, so I'm posting it. I think Jonah G. remarked on it in his Liberal Fascism blog.
Hey--was that a sieg heil at the beginning? Nahhh...
Yeah, give a man a schnoz.
This video gives me hope; I can imagine someday junior high and high school kids watching old Obama propaganda and just laughing their asses off. "Who was that guy? How did he get elected? Were people really that stupid?"
Troy Senik is a speech writer who formerly wrote for G. W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Newt Gingrich. And his dissection of Obama's State of the Union Speech is so choice that I'm not going to excerpt any of it here, you have to read the whole thing. But I will say I especially loved the part about "the President’s attempt to transfer the totemic appeal of some working-class hero to himself by placing him or her in the House gallery."
One of the things I love about William Donohue from the Catholic League is that he is a master of using the fewest words possible to sum up his arguments. Take this concluding paragraph from his latest press release regarding the ridiculous Prop 8 trial:
Plato condemned sodomy. Jefferson thought it should be a felony. Neither was Catholic. And neither they, nor the Catholic Church, ever thought it was okay for gay bashers to act out their hatred. That this even needs to be said doesn’t speak well for where [attorney David] Boies wants to go.
I haven't been able to locate any transcript of Boies's full remarks online or I'd provide a link to them. I'm sure they contain enough insulating circumlocution to avoid setting off the bigotry meters of the thickheaded, but Donohue's is much sharper as is ours.
That is, if they’re really mad at him at all. Obama whines that Massachusetts voters are really blaming him for someone else’s mistakes. Guess who?
George Bush, of course.
“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office. People are angry, and they’re frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs tried to shovel the same stuff Wednesday, saying that the “anger and the frustration” that swept Brown to victory on Tuesday swept Obama to power a year ago.
Except, wait a second. Obama was carried into office on the wings of the flying unicorns called “hope” and “change,” not “anger” and “frustration.” Besides, if voters are frustrated with the slow pace of reform, why did they just elect a guy promising to slow down Obama’s agenda?
I know a lot of people won't believe me when I say this, but I honestly wish that Obama wasn't so awful. But I truly do. If he were more calculating and triangulating like Clinton he would arguably cause more trouble for the conservative movement, but maybe that would be better for America. When I hear callers to talk shows complain that there aren't enough conservative leaders emerging or speaking out presently I always think the same thing: why should they attack an opponent who is busy pouring gasoline on himself and about to strike a match?
"Barack Obama has yet to make a significant contribution to the Indonesian nation. We could say Obama only ate and shit in Menteng. He spent his subsequent days living as an American," the web page says.
"For the dignity of a sovereign nation, Barack Obama's monument in Menteng Park must be removed immediately."
As the kiddies would say, Obama is soooooo last year.
I've been noticing a meme in the some conservative blogs/vlogs (RedState, PJTV, etc.) which seeks to establish an either-or dilemma for Senator-elect Brown's victory, i.e., they're pitting the GOP against the Tea Party movement. I have no desire to engage in armchair quarterbacking after such a stunning victory, nor do I wish to beat the dead horse of the GOP's faults or the dead pony of the Tea Party movement's blind spots. I merely want to point out that on the same day I heard about Scott Brown's rising poll numbers on the Michael Medved show I received a call from the National Republican Senatorial Committee asking for money for Brown. After verifying with them that every penny I contributed would be used to help him pull off a victory, I gave them my Visa card number. The idea that if Republican party officials don't show up with bullhorns then they shouldn't receive any credit is absurd, especially in a state like Massachusetts where independents and Democrats (22%) helped him to carry the day.
So we should give credit where credit is due. Yes, it's true that grassroots mobilizing was more on display in the race, especially in regards to the contrasting of homemade Brown signs and pickup trucks with Coakley's last-minute fundraiser in the Sonoma Wine Bar. But to the eager beavers who recently discovered politics, you might be surprised at the wealth of strategic information which can be provided by a large political organization like the GOP. Any candidate would be a fool not to take advantage of this affiliation and rely on their "ground game" alone. It's a both-and strategic alliance which hopefully will continue throughout the year and provide more victories in November.
Now: here's what might constitute one of the lowest moments in the last several days for Martha Coakley. I heard it on Medved's show first; he put it to a hip-hop beat complete with a police whistle--hilarious.
"Remember the dream and act on it!" Zzzzzzz.... This reminds me of the sort of meaningless pap delivered with a vacant, passionless anger and belabored over-pronunciation (we speak English, OK?) that I've heard served up by sixty-something plainclothes nuns who are usually dressed in garb similar to Coakley's and are given a big moment to say something at Mass, sometimes in lieu of a proper homily delivered by the celebrant.
Great line at the end: "I know that all of you who are gathered here today to celebrate Martin Luther King also have made that commitment and understand how important it is that tomorrow we act on the dream and we make sure that we allow me to continue that work.... BECAUSE IT'S NOT ABOUT ME ANYMORE AND IT NEVER WAS...." Oh, is that too funny? Well, she's right. It's not about her anymore, lol.
"A new Quinnipiac national survey shows the public evenly split on President Obama's job approval rating. The 45% job approval is his lowest to date in the Quinnipiac poll, and his 45% disapproval rating is his highest.
...
The public is equally split at 45/45 on the question of whether President Obama's first year in office was "mainly" a success or a failure. Among the crucial group of registered Independents, 40% view Obama's first year as a success while 47% view it as a failure."
How's that hope and change working out for you? I think at this point all 40 ounces are gone.
James Kirchick pulls the curtain on the "no politicizing" wizard. Excerpt:
Rather than engage its critics, the White House adopted a holier-than-thou approach to the controversy. "The President doesn't think we should play politics with issues like these," spokesman Bill Burton told reporters.
That's strange, for the supposed gravity of an issue hasn't stopped liberals from "playing politics" with other matters they deem to be of life and death importance - or from "playing politics," repeatedly, with national security in the past.
The truth is, politicization of an issue ought not be an accusation at all. It's by politicizing issues, no matter what they are, no matter which party does it, that we debate them. And it's through debating them that we engage in the democratic process.
But that reality hasn't stopped Democrats from hurling around the term like a grenade.
He then goes on to remind liberals blasts on the megaphone like Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 and hysterical howls about Halliburton. His conclusion:
Determining which issue isn't kosher for "politicization," then, becomes a form of special pleading. We all have our sacred cows, and it suits us to declare certain topics off-limits. But in a country where the powers of the state derive from those it governs, it's inevitable that practically everything under the sun will emerge as a subject of political debate. Rather than bemoan this, we ought appreciate just how lucky we are to live in a democracy where we have the luxury to complain about the amplification of politics, as opposed to their suppression.
I think Kirchick is right about this. It may be noble to let politics "stop at the water's edge", but it doesn't represent good debate strategy. Of course, squelching ideas is much more a tactic of the left as we can see from the President's pompous rhetoric about "tired old arguments" an the like. The speech protected by the First Amendment is first and foremost political speech and it should be always welcomed by Americans. If you disagree with it, use your own free speech rights to combat it. Trying to get your opponent disqualified is not American.
I got a kick out of this article. Those who argue that rock and roll is nothing more than nostalgia can use 2009's top sales as a centerpiece for their argument. I know that MJ wasn't really white, but he was getting pretty close. I also know that Paul and Ringo are still alive, thanks.
Excerpt:
Unsurprisingly, Michael Jackson was the year’s best-selling artist, as the singer’s June 25th death led to a massive resurgence of his catalog. In total, the King of Pop sold 8,286,000 units in 2009, easily beating out the 4,643,000 combined albums Swift sold last year. Jackson’s 2003 compilation Number Ones was also the year’s third-best-selling album, totaling 2,355,000 units sold. Jackson came in at Number Three on the top-selling digital artists chart.
In a year that featured new releases by U2, Green Day and Pearl Jam, it’s surprising that the year’s best-selling band is, well, no longer a band. As Rolling Stone previously reported, the Beatles’ best-of collection 1 was the decade’s top-selling album, and 40 years after the breakup, the Fab Four were amazingly also the top-selling act of 2009. Thanks to their remastered catalog, the Beatles sold 3,282,000 units in 2009 without the aid of digital music services, placing the group third behind Jackson and Swift and in front of Boyle on the 2009 top-selling artist chart. Additionally, Abbey Road was the year’s best-selling vinyl with 34,000 copies, beating out Jackson’s Thriller and Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion. Radiohead, however, was the year’s best-selling artists on vinyl with 45,700 records combined.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue calls attention to the decision of President Obama to renominate Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel:
Most of the critics of Dawn Johnsen focus on her strong pro-abortion record. While that is disturbing, a pro-abortion president can be expected to staff his administration with such persons, and no one doubts President Obama’s position on this subject. But it is an entirely different matter when a president selects bigots to work for him.
Dawn Johnsen is not someone who simply takes issue with the Catholic Church’s pro-life position: she wants to punish the Church. In the late 1980s, she joined a cadre of anti-Catholics to strip the Catholic Church of its tax exempt status. The charge? The Church was guilty of violating IRS strictures because it took a strong pro-life position. The lawsuit failed.
The person who led this assault was Lawrence Lader, co-founder of NARAL with Dr. Bernard Nathanson. (Nathanson later dropped his pro-abortion position, became a strong pro-life advocate and converted to Catholicism.) At the time the two men founded NARAL, Lader, according to Nathanson, liked to refer to the Catholic Church as “our favorite whipping boy,” maintaining that his goal was to “bring the Catholic hierarchy out where we can fight them. That’s the real enemy.” (Italics in the original.) That was in the late 1960s. Twenty years later, Lader published a vicious book assailing the Catholic Church, and it was at this time that he launched his bid—assisted by Johnsen—to break the Church.
This is who Dawn Johnsen is. She is a person who is so fueled with hatred of the Catholic Church that she would like to destroy it. Having failed to secure her appointment last year, Obama has decided that he just can’t proceed without her. How telling.
Johnsen is not the first anti-Catholic chosen by Obama, but she is by far the most extreme and the most dangerous.
Bigotry is like potato chips, I guess. Or maybe crack. Addictive.
