The Great Rival to Christianity

My friend Bubba wrote the following to me in an email in June of 2013.

In The Four Loves, CS Lewis points out that, for everything but the love of God, any love that becomes a small-d deity immediately becomes a demon. Any ideology can become an idol, but I honestly think the Left's ideology is an intrinsic rival to Christianity. It's not just that some Leftists go overboard, it's that Leftism requires them to worship at its altar.

Man's two greatest needs is radical change and a sense of belonging. Christ offers both, through regeneration by His Spirit and adoption into His family. Leftism presumes to offer both as well: we know that the world's not right, and the Left offers utopia through revolution, and we know we don't belong, and the Left offers a sense of belonging through the State.

Christianity and Leftism are rival religions, with competing solutions to man's most fundamental needs.

Smart guy, that Bubba, and a devout Christian.

Their kind of conservatism

Charades:

Boy Working

Yes. Everyone who guessed, guessed correctly. And now to the main event.

Just recently, to further promote his forthcoming Dante book, our hard-sniffing Working Boy availed himself of an interview with  "philosopher James K.A. Smith" (Is philosopher a professional designation? If not, can anyone be one? If so, how does one rank Smith relative to philosopher Charlie Brown or philosopher Pogo?).


Naturally, such favors must be repaid, head to tail, and so this tongue bath urging readers to subscribe to Smith's Comment magazine entitled Our Kind of Conservatism.

Here's what we need to figure out, though. In the comments under Smith's article Redeeming Conservatism, a commenter named John Tiemstra puts us on this notice:

OK, just as long as we understand that the real conservatives are people who favor market-based reforms, like cap and trade, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank. Most so-called conservatives these days are not conservative at all, but radical libertarians.

Whoa, really? Forgive me, but that sounds more like the Pelosi-Obama-Reid wing of conservatism to me.

And no "Nuh-huh, nooooooooo, no way, Dude!" from philosopher James K. A. Smith.

Is there a nuanced mystery to this redeemed conservatism too complex for my dense and primitive monkey noggin? If not, where am I going astray from real conservatism? I will say Smith appears to me to be successfully "offer[ing] a posture".

(philosopher and noted poultry critic Keith M. Ionlyhaveonemiddleinitial H.)

Can a band named Diarrhea Planet be any good?

I report, you decide.



I like them all right. Remind me a little bit of Fugazi.

Cardinal Burke for Human Life International

I just received the following in an email from Human Life International, a really great Catholic pro-life group.

Cardinal Burke is a staunch defender of the Church's pro-life and pro-family teachings, and has been great friend to HLI---especially HLI's Rome office. HLI thanks Cardinal Burke for his years of service in the Vatican, and wishes him many blessings in his new assignment!  

This letter from Cardinal Burke was written shortly before his reassignment:

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, 

As Christians today, we find ourselves in a completely secularized society marked by violence and death and by a relativism which has generated profound confusion and outright error regarding the most fundamental truths of the moral law.  

The sanctity of human life, the understanding of marriage as the lifelong and faithful union between one man and one woman, and the role of the family as the first cell of society and the Church have suffered very much in the present culture of death.

Human Life International exists to promote and to defend the sanctity of human life, the understanding of marriage and the rule of the family according to the divine natural and revealed moral law, and, in this manner, to help to transform our society from a culture of death to a culture of life. Human Life International works throughout the world, in over 80 countries, to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel of Life to all peoples and to all nations.

I encourage you to give strong support for the most important work of Human Life International. Please support the mission of Human Life International, above all, with your prayers. The mission of Human Life International depends on the gifts of donors, and I ask you please to be generous also in your financial support of Human Life International. May God reward you!

Invoking God's blessing upon you and your home, while confiding your intentions to the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Joseph, I remain  

Yours devotedly in the Sacred Heart of Jesus and in the Immaculate Heart of Mary,   Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke

Sign of Contradiction

In a Crisis article, Bill Maguire lays out the problem for Bishops who would like to pass off a complete change in Church teaching with regard to marriage, divorce and remarriage as a legitimate doctrinal development. Excerpt:

The problem, then, for those bishops proposing Eucharistic communion for the divorced and remarried isn’t that there hasn’t been a development of Church teaching or that the subject hasn’t already been “thoroughly examined.” The vast body of Magisterial teachings—we could also cite John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Paenitentia (n.34) and Pope Benedict XVI’s Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis (n. 29)—evidence 35 years of thorough examination and signal a significant development and deepening of the Church’s teaching regarding marriage.

On the contrary, then, the conundrum for the bishops is that the definitive examination of the subject and the development of the Church’s teaching on marriage have gone precisely the opposite direction they want it to go.

We will continue to see frustration and anger on the part of liberals who think along the lines "Man, there has simply got to be a way to let divorced and remarried people receive the sacraments! The sacraments are so important to Catholics!" Yes, the sacraments are important to Catholics, and that is why there is already a way for the remarried to receive them: practice complete continence, as the Catechism quoted in the article mentions. That sounds difficult, but since those people put themselves in a difficult situation to begin with, it is hardly unjust, though we are obliged to sympathize with them. Unfortunately this way of gaining access to the sacraments will often be ignored and left untried because it is difficult in fulfillment of Chesterton's timeless dictum.

Pope Paul VI has already given us the response for objections to unpopular beliefs in section 18 of Humanae Vitae.

It is to be anticipated that perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching. There is too much clamorous outcry against the voice of the Church, and this is intensified by modern means of communication. But it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a "sign of contradiction." She does not, because of this, evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical.

Dietrich von Hildebrand: "Mein Kampf Gegen Hitler"

I am currently reading a great new book, My Battle Against Hitler, a collection of entries by Dietrich von Hildebrand in his memoirs translated and edited by John Henry Crosby with John F. Crosby. It's very intense and informative; it details von Hilebrand's intellectual war against National Socialism as well as the events in his own life which occurred around the time of Hitler's ascendancy. These events have to do with basically getting in the middle of fierce arguments and near-brawls with anti-Semites and fascists, having his wife get threatening phone calls, finding out the Nazis wanted to kill him and finally having to flee the country to save his life. And I'm only on page 60! Since I am not very far in the book I'm not ready to review it, but I will be excerpting sections from it here and in the weeks to come. This is from an introductory chapter titled "A Fateful Decision":

What might von Hildebrand have called this volume? We will never know, and given his humility he might have suggested a title which honored his collaborators rather than himself. But he did, unwittingly, provide the title. Searching the pages of his memoirs, we discovered that he had entitled an outline for part for part of his memoirs "Mein Kampf Gegen Hitler"—"My Battle Against Hitler". Thus was the present volume christened.

A lot of his intellectual lectures and argumentation which I've read so far have been against contemporaries who had an idea that collectivism of some type — usually national socialism but sometimes communism — can and should be compatible with Christianity and, in some way, the collectivist concept of community is actually a Christian idea and should be pursued for that very reason. Von Hildebrand referred to this misconception as an overemphasis of the notion of community at the expense of the individual. Here is his response to the erroneous idea:

My talk was the fruit of all the investigations which formed the subject of my book The Metaphysics of Community which had been published two years before. In the talk I sought to make very clear that every attempt to establish a community at the expense of the individual person is not only in itself false but necessarily leads to a misconception of the true nature of community. I pointed out the horror of antipersonalism and totalitarianism, showing their absolute incompatibility with Christian revelation, and I criticized the false thesis of Hegel who held that the state is a higher entity that the individual. Only the individual person is a substance in the full sense, while the state is only a quasi-substance.

At the same time, I stressed the reality and dignity of true community in contrast to every kind of false liberal individualism. All of this was philosophically grounded with great case, yet there was no chance of convincing the other members of the committee, who were not very acute philosophically and who had allowed themselves to be swept away by the Zeitgeist.

The spirit of the age in these encounters mirrors the intellectual bankruptcy and moral corruption in our own. And yet there was something much more threatening at that time because of the will to enact horrible evils in the form of direct violence upon individuals and institutions on the part of Hitler and his followers. I have a friend who invariably brings up Hitler whenever the two of us discuss Obama and his awful policies. Recently I took issue with him. I said "OK, I know what you mean, but you are going to lose at least 50% of the people if you compare Obama to Hitler. Obama isn't scratching people off left and right for opposing him." Hitler was elected, but years before he ever was made chancellor he was organizing fascist attempts at government takeovers. He was way beyond political dirty tricks; he was into violence, threats of violence and destruction to achieve his ends. Reading this book really reveals the fear of that time and place and brings it home to me in an incredibly personal way as a Catholic and as someone with a family.

Charles M. Blow, Race-hustler and Professinal Whiner

I could post a commentary on Charles M. Blow's latest three articles which are even worse in the race-hustling and black victimhood department than normal. But it would actually just make everybody stupider to read them. So I'm going to post something much more intelligent and uplifting which my kids recently showed me.

Rod Dreher, fortunate son

Over at the national edition of Wick Allison's trendy and urbane D Magazine, oddly named The American Conservative, Rod Dreher calls out Ethan Epstein at The Weekly Standard (just as oddly not named "conservative" while actually being so) for criticizing Bruce Springsteen's choice to play John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" at the Veteran's Day "Concert for Valor" on the National Mall. Epstein:

The song, not to put too fine a point on it, is an anti-war screed, taking shots at "the red white and blue." It was a particularly terrible choice given that Fortunate Son is, moreover, an anti-draft song, and this concert was largely organized to honor those who volunteered to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But as readers of EQE already know, Dreher's testicles have not yet descended to the point where he has the courage to make his main point directly, in this case hypocritically and self-loathingly criticizing American military involvements that may later have been second-guessed, including the Iraq War Dreher himself ferociously supported while it was a hot career builder, then later reversed his position on when the opposite point of view filled his rice bowl better instead.

In this instance, Dreher's post ostensibly about Springsteen's song choice (the click bait wrapper) and its criticism (including at The Washington Post) leads incongruously with a full column image of Emmanuel Goldstein Dick Cheney (the comment box bait payload)

The song is not an “anti-war screed”; it is a song protesting the unfairness of the draft, and how the burden of war-fighting fell disproportionately on members of the working class who were not in college, and couldn’t get, say, five Vietnam War draft deferments, like some former vice presidents we could name. In that sense, performing that song last night was perfectly legitimate, even laudatory.

complete with link to a 10-year-old New York Times article.

His carefully vetted disciples in the comment boxes dutifully take up The Weekly Standard/neocon red meat from there with well-trained rodentine reflex.

Well, not all. Aptly named commenter Thomas Aquinas points out

The fact that you have to write this means the song should have not been sung. When celebrating someone’s service, it is deeply insulting to inject anything that would cause division. Why risk upsetting people you are supposed to be supporting?

Controversy, in this case, was not a virtue

No, not a virtue at all, nor Dreher's cynically exploiting the due and appropriate criticism of it by leftist Post and conservative Standard alike in order to suck up to his new isolationist patronage.

So, let's review:

- When he was at National Review, swooning at living in New York City and getting paid the bucks to do so, Rod Dreher loudly supported the Iraq War, and very likely his exhortations in favor of it sent young men and women to die there at no cost to himself.

- During the Vietnam War, Dick Cheney did in fact receive a number of legal draft deferments. He subsequently served as Secretary of Defense and Vice President of the United States. He did not, however, pick Bruce Springsteen's song list.

- Rod Dreher's brother-in-law, Mike Leming, an actual patriot and a veteran, volunteered and served in the Louisiana National Guard, both at home and in Iraq.

- Mike Leming's brother-in-law, Rod Dreher, volunteered to eat oysters in Paris and black truffles in Tuscany.

- Back home, in between those two overseas deployments, he often slept for long stretches during the day because he was depressed about himself.

- He will tell us about that ugly combat in his forthcoming hardback book for sale at something on the order of $20 a copy, the one with Dante in the title (the click bait wrap...well, you already know how that works, now, don't you)

Rod Dreher, fortunate son indeed.

UPDATE (as they say): In the few minutes since I put this post up Dreher has changed the prominently leading image (with its simpering subtitle "A lucky recipient of five Vietnam draft deferments") of Dick Cheney, replacing it with an innocuous one of Bruce Springsteen. Here is the original post I wrote about with the original Cheney image-bait.

"And it was all right"

Wow, what a great mashup. Someone took a video of a tune I'd never heard before called "I see you, you see me" by The Magic Numbers and put it behind VU's Rock and Roll. It totally works in my arrogant opinion.



At first I thought it was one of Warhol's films, which actually it may be. It has that feel. It's hard to figure out when it was shot.

Charles Krauthammer on Jonathan Gruber: "We're hearing the true voice of liberal arrogance"

Daily Caller has the scoop, but this video is a little longer one I found on Youtube.



Text from the Caller piece:

This is exactly what conservatives have been saying for four years, what we’re hearing now is the true voice of liberal arrogance. They believe this. They believe that the voters are stupid, as he said, and they believe that they know the right way, they have to lead the masses to the Promised Land, and they can only do it by deception. And that’s what he said openly: ‘We wanted to get the bill, we didn’t care about how we did it, so we lied about everything. We lied about if you can keep the plan, knowing that you can’t keep your plan. We lied about the fact this would be a transfer of wealth, a massive transfer of wealth.’ Because, as Gruber said, had they known that, it would never have passed. They lied about every aspect of this, and I think that is what has been charged all along.

And it is a scandal of the media that this has to be discovered in the sixth year of the presidency rather than talked about at the time, when it was obvious they were lying about all this. The idea of it being a transfer of wealth was known from the beginning. But they got away with it.

And now another video of Gruber has surfaced where he states that Obamacare passed because “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference.”

I hope Justice John Roberts is watching this drama unfold. Obviously he is numbered among the huddled masses of hapless, duped Americans. If Gruber brings the whole mess down then man, it could be beautiful to watch.

Oh, too funny

Well, readers, the overachieving Topix post titled Rod Dreher is on the cover of the latest Greater B. R. Business Report has just flipped to page 17 where we find Sistah Raccoon being hunted by wild-eyed villagers angry at her "dumb-ass lexicon". This jab from someone named amazingly runoverracoons must have really scared the crap out of our dear sister.

YOU are the one making a fool of yourself. If I saw you in the middle of the road, I would speed up, Raccoon. You think you are funny. But I think you are a disgrace to your community.

Whoa! Sistah had better watch out. She also was awarded the grade of "F" by Observer which I'm afraid sounds like a very officious, er, I mean official title.

I have a funny feeling that all the scorn coming from these righteously indignant folk are playing into Sistah Raccoon's hands, er, paws I mean, and she actually be enjoyin' the back-n-forth. Just a funny feeling. I'm not complaining; I confess I'm enjoying it, too.

Pew Surveys Show Increasing Awareness of Islam's Violent Nature

This is encouraging. Christianity Today posted an encouraging chart in September showing three recent surveys by Pew. The first one was conducted in February of 2014, the second in July and the more recent one in September.

The question in the survey is this: "Compared with other religions, is the Islamic religion more likely to encourage violence among its believers?"

The most striking feature of the chart is that in every demographic slice listed in the 3 surveys the amount of "yes" votes have increased over time. There are a few dips, but in general everyone has become more ready to admit that Islam is violent between February and September of this year. Catholics are up 12% TO 53%, Protestants are up 16% to 59%.

The headline on the image is very misleading. "Most Older Adults Say Islam Encourages Violence More Than Other Religions." This describes one line of the results of the 3 surveys. Do people who slap headlines on articles and other pieces of information bother to read them first? The headline should merely be "Surveys Show More Seeing Islam As Encouraging Violence".

Here is a link to the full Pew study on the matter.

This is good news that people realize the danger of Islam and how violence is part of its true nature. Yes, there are other features of Islam which are good, and many good Muslims. But that is not what the survey is about, nor do those facts really matter in the face of the violent totalitarian ideology of the political Islamism against which we are fighting a war. Those are just the common red herrings which people drag across the path toward the truth about Islam and toward combating the evils which pervade Islamic teachings and actions.

(Note: I should point out that the CT article makes a number of assertions and quotes people making assertions which I in no way endorse. Most of these are attempts to excuse Islamic violence in some way, simply put.)

"Steyer didn't win bupkis."

What's a big election victory without a Downfall Parody? I know that J-Carp will especially enjoy this. All the funnier that Tom Steyer's name sounds like Steiner giving that part of the video another layer of comedic resonance.

Jonathan Gruber Tries To Hide His Remarks

Props to Patrick Howley for uncovering this bit of video from Jonathan Gruber, one of the primary architects of Obamacare.

I decided to post this video, even though many people have already seen it. Shakespeare said "at the length truth will out" so we must be at the length vis-à-vis Obamacare because the truth is beginning to gush out.



Here's the text of the clip:

“Mark [Pauly] made a couple of comments that I do want to take issue with, one about transparency in financing and the other is about moving from community rating to risk-rated subsidies. You can’t do it politically. You just literally cannot do it, okay, transparent financing…and also transparent spending.” Gruber said. “In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in—you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed, okay. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass…Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.”

Of course there were a lot of people who predicted the truth. Avik Roy from Forbes has this to say:

Gruber made an argument that many of Obamacare’s critics have long made, including me. It’s that the law’s complex system of insurance regulation is a way of concealing from voters what Obamacare really is: a huge redistribution of wealth from the young and healthy to the old and unhealthy. In the video, Gruber points out that if Democrats had been honest about these facts, and that the law’s individual mandate is in effect a major tax hike, Obamacare would never have passed Congress.

So this is all sort of infuriating, if you have any fury left. But now we get to the fun stuff.

The University of Pennsylvania which had originally hosted and posted this has now pulled down the video from their site. But this is an attempt on the part of Jonathan Gruber and company to pull their pants up after they got caught. It's already on Youtube, and I downloaded it last night via Keepvid as I'm sure many other conservative geeks did, "just in case". I think it's comical that these people still believe they can say whatever they want in public, but then flip out if anyone quotes them. This story goes hand-in-hand with the story of Lena Dunham sexually abusing her little sister as reported by Lena Dunham in her book. (I like to refer to the incident as "Lena Done-her".)

But that's not all. It appears that the Snopes.com mafia has been called in to cast doubt upon the incident as conservatives have reported it. Here's how they phrase the claim:

"Obamacare architect" Jonathan Gruber recently said Obamacare only passed due to the "stupidity" of the American voter and a lack of "transparency," and video footage of his remarks was deleted from the internet.

Then they call this claim a Mixture of true and false. They accomplish this by pointing out that a Daily Signal article refers to the clip as a "newly surfaced video", which I don't see anything false about, but they paint as a mischaracterization, and refer to the clip as a "newly-circulated video" in their lame conclusion.

While the newly-circulated video of Gruber's remarks is unedited, the comments are neither recent nor complete, and whether the originating source attempted to pull them from the Internet at one point remains unclear.

What in the world remains unclear about what happened? The Snopes page, which is marked 10 November 2014, is pretty high up in the Google search results for Jonathan Gruber currently, about the 7th entry on the first page. Bing has it on the 4th page. Of course I don't have evidence, but this just feels like an attempt at damage control. Snopes has formerly been exposed as untrustworthy and biased, but hilariously the best Gruber and company can get from them is a rating of "Mixture" on the propaganda piece. It should get a rating of Mostly True which they sometimes give out if they're being generous to Gruber, but it appears that even Snopes won't damage their cred further by giving it a False. Factcheck.org doesn't have anything up yet.

Gruber is the fat kid trying to hide behind the phone pole during a hide-and-seek game. His remarks will live on and place him permanently on the elite social-planners' Hall of Shame for calling the American populace stupid, and as a leftist poster child for the ends justifying the means.

Here we go again...

I was reading the Comment magazine post which is referenced by a link Pikkumatti included here when I noticed a little blurb on this page for their next issue. Here we go again, I remember thinking. Looks like more alternative "conservatism", the kind that won't make you unpopular, is completely non-threatening and won't do anything to change the prevailing cultural landscape. No wonder they booked Dreher to write something for the issue.

Here's my, uh, deconstruction of their advertisement:

The Winter 2014 issue of Comment is themed Redeeming Conservatism. Are we out of our minds?

You are out of your minds for publishing a print edition of your rag in 2014. As to your proposed content, you are probably just very confused, arrogant, or both.

If you can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism, this issue is for you.

There is actually a word for people who "can't imagine anything good coming out of conservatism". That word is liberals. So our guess is that, based on how you are presenting this topic, that word describes most of your readership.

Our hope is you'll discover, first, that conservatism is not what you thought it was ("You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.").

Yes, we saw The Princess Bride many times, too. So y'all are going to explain what conservatism is supposed to be. This should be really instructive. But we could read the Wikipedia pages on it for free—just sayin'.

Second, we hope when you encounter this conservative disposition, you might have occasion to take stock and be surprised to find this names a sensibility you already share.

The disposition and sensibility of this new and improved conservatism you are describing will be so much better because you are going to throw out the views you don't like in mainstream conservatism, i.e., what most people call conservatism.

Our goal is to start a conversation that "redeems" conservatism precisely by deconstructing what we tend to identify with conservatism.

Knew it; told you.

Conservatism, as we mean it, is not a recovery project; it's a preservation project.

Whatever that means.

Hilarious Meltdowns on Democratic Underground

Speaking of reactions, the Daily Caller provides us with a great Top 16 Meltdown List from Democratic Underground posts reacting to the wipe-out of all they hold dear and the repudiation of the war-on-women façade with all the other left scare tactics. Here's a shorter list of my faves, along with my own comments.

1. We need to yell louder and cuss harder, dammit!
   
   Unknown Beatle: “What the fuck is the matter with this nation? Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse, and as hard as we try and yell and cuss, no one is doing shit about all the criminality going on with the banks, politicians, and anyone that breaks the law as long as they’re filthy rich. I’m so fucking pissed off right now I can’t see straight. My blood pressure is sky high. I need to take it easy.”
   
   Yes, please take it easy, UB. Have a drink or four.
   
   
2. "Charlatans, Demagogues and Scalawags"
   
   KingCharlemagne: “I am deeply disappointed in my fellow Americans tonight. The suffering that will ensue was and is mostly entirely preventable. So I am disappointed that we shall have to endure this suffering for at least 2 years now because Americans could not see through the lies sold to them by this pack of charlatans, demagogues and scalawags. Yes, the Democrats largely ran away from President Obama after allowing the Republicans to frame the race as “Obama, Obama, Obama” and that bespeaks a party in trouble. But in the final analysis, voters chose to vote against their self-interest and against the interest of their compatriots for what? To ‘send a message’ to Dems? The reality is that things will not get better in the next two years. They will get worse and possibly much, much worse. And so I am disappointed that my fellow Americans chose a path that will cause suffering for their countrymen when I have to believe most of them did not seek to cause such suffering.”
   
   This is how this trudging rant reads to me: "disappointed... suffering... disappointed... suffering... disappointed... suffering... suffering...."
   
   I wonder if KingCharlamagne realizes the racist history of the term scalawag.
   
   
3. Ampersand Unicode contemplates suicide: "Should I just do myself in?"
   
   Ampersand Unicode: ”I’m actually scared — as in can’t-sleep-tonight-Halloween-came-five-days-late scared — of the GOP fascists taking over the Kennedy state. I voted for Coakley but am not optimistic because of all the endorsements Baker has gotten and the past history of electing GOP governors (Romney, Weld). I’m also looking to leave because MA just voted to keep the filthy casinos. Also, there is a gun store that just popped up out of nowhere down the street from my house on a main street. I no longer feel safe in my neighborhood or my state. Should I find a way to move to Vermont where Bernie and the sane people live? Or if I can’t afford to leave, should I just do myself in? I honestly am terrified that we’re living in the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Reich.”
   
   This is the kind of thing that makes me wonder if I live in the same country as some people. I could say the same thing about some conservatives I know personally who routinely compare Obama to Hitler. But it is probably more accurate to say they don't know the facts of history very well. The Beer Hall Putsch happened in early November but the comparisons with the 2014 Midterms end there; people actually got killed! Honestly.
   
   
4. We don't deserve Obama; he should just quit and show everybody
   
   CK_John: “I think the President has to put resignation on the table and not give them the satisfaction of being impeached.”
   
   This is hilarious. The fantasy looks like this: Obama comes in to the room with Republican lawmakers and threatens to resign. He calmly says "I'm just gonna take my Biden and go home." The Republicans are aghast, and realize that the US will be hit with tidal waves and hurricanes if they let Obama step down and unleash the wrath of the global warming gods. They plead with him to stay, but he and Joe Biden raise their hands and ascend into Heaven. It's the leftist version of Left Behind.
   
   
5. Put the lime in the coconut, baby
   
   upaloopa: “So now that we have nothing more to lose how about taking our party on a hard turn to the left. Let’s come up with every progressive idea we can and put together a liberal platform for 2016. Never compromise with the devil”
   
   Please, please, PLEASE do this. There is nothing we love more than seeing your true colors, upaloopa, and watching normal people utterly reject your ideological points one by one. How about the 2016 democrat platform featuring mandatory bathrooms for transvestites, 100% gun confiscation and open borders as the top items? That should be enough to start with.
   

The rest are funny, too. I just wish we could have laughed this hard in 2012.

Latest reaction to my Ruthie Leming book review

I think it's cool when people leave comments—especially positive ones—on my book reviews. Here's the latest comment in its entirety which was left on my review of TLWoRL:

This is a very perceptive review. At times, we tend to take what authors write at face value but you have read between the lines and looked at what was left unsaid as well. In life, over-analysis can be a curse and as someone once rightly said: the unlived life is not worth examining.

Whoaa... "The unlived life is not worth examining." I had never heard that little juxtapositioning. I have a feeling this will inspire some thoughts from people over here.

Scott Walker's win proves that success sells

I believe that Scott Walker's victory in Wisconsin is just as important as the Republicans winning the Senate. His model of fixing states can and will be copied by many Republican governors in years to come. This is because the model is successful, and success sells. Here's an excellent article about this from the Weekly Standard, and here are my favorite paragraphs about how Walker not only destroyed the democrats and their special interest groups but ate their lunch by taking away their base voters:

The key to Walker’s success was his performance among middle- and lower-income voters. Walker won those earning more than $100,000 by 20 points, just as Mitt Romney had in 2012. But he won voters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 by 17 points; Romney only won them by 1. Those earning less than $50,000 Walker lost by 9 points—whereas Romney lost them by 25. As reporter Molly Ball pointed out in the Atlantic earlier this year about that last group, “whether Democrats win these voters by a 10-point or a 20-point margin tells you who won every national election for the past decade.”

Walker won over more of the middle- and working-class for one reason more than any other: His decision to balance the state’s budget by curtailing collective bargaining ultimately proved successful and popular. But it was far from clear that this would be the case when he took on the unions soon after he entered the governor’s mansion.

These people in Wisconsin that voted him would have voted democrat 50 years ago. Why? People used to think the Democrat Party stood for the little guy. And many times they did. But their policies used to work out fine because they didn't consider government intrusion to be their defining quality like they do now. Now that their policies like Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, weaponized EPA, etc. actually hurt all Americans, they are losing their formerly staunch supporters.

I'd really like to see Walker run for President in 2016. There's no reason he couldn't get the Reagan democrat and practical independent voting bloc nationwide. And he'd get the conservative vote out handily.

As the man said, "Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser." Like what's-her-name.