This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Category: Society

  • “You want to know about my patriotism?”

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     Trying to defend the constant hits to his integrity over the “patriotism issue” Obama took it head on in North Carolina last week according to the Washington Post;

    “You want to know about my patriotism?” Obama said last week in Chapel Hill, N.C. “My patriotism is rooted in the fact that my story, Michelle’s story, is not possible anywhere else on Earth. That the American dream, despite this country’s imperfections, has always been there. . . . That there are ladders of opportunity that all of us can climb. That we’re all created equal. That we’re all endowed with certain inalienable rights — life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. . . . That we’re willing to shed blood for those liberties, we’re willing to speak out for those liberties. . . . That we can make this country more just and more equal and more prosperous and more unified. That’s why I love this country. That’s why you love this country.”

    Well, see there’s his problem – he loves this country because he can change it. He doesn’t particularly like the country the way it is, but he loves the fact he can change it.

    Obama also made a big mistake by saying we can make the country “more equal”. Thomas Jefferson wrote in our Declaration of Independence that “All men are created equal”. Government can’t make people more equal – we’re born that way. Obama even said that…so how can government make us more equal than when we were created?

    Well, Obama’s talking about the socialist “equality” where the government takes things from people who’ve earned things and gives those things to people who didn’t earn them. Our government gives us the equality of opportunity, but Obama wants to buy votes with the promise of equality of life without the equality of effort.

    So, his patriotism is just like his religion – something he wrap himself up in to turn back the slings and arrows and he understands it only superficially so. His patriotism, like his religion is only skin-deep. I don’t care if he doesn’t wear a flag pin, or if he doesn’t put his hand over his heart for the National Anthem, but what I do care about is what Obama understands about what made this country the beacon for freedom in the world – and how it remains so.

  • America ain’t not free

    The Washington Times writes that the Freedom House has decided that the US is not quite as free as we think. Who’s Freedom House? Well, in their own words;

    Freedom House, a non-profit, nonpartisan organization, is a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world. Through a vast array of international programs and publications, Freedom House is working to advance the remarkable worldwide expansion of political and economic freedom.

    Now, I think it’s odd that an organization dedicated to “democracy and freedom” would waste their donor’s dollars looking at the United States while there are pressmen in Canada being silenced by the government, when Bridgette Bardot is facing another trial and fine in france for writing her thoughts in a book. When Christians in Muslim countries are repressed and forbidden to worship as they please. The Zimbabwean government won’t release the results of their election a few weeks ago so Robert Mugabe can stay in power. Evo Morales in Bolivia has unilaterally decided he’ll rewrite constitution. Hugo Chavez is nationalizing every major industry in Venezuela and taking land from farmers and enriching his family with land.

    With all of that going on in the world, what could possibly distract the Freedom House in the US. Well, the usual class warfare crap that brings in the self-hating, guilt-ridden limosine liberals’ dollars;

    The United States gets mixed reviews, for example, when looking at the situation of African-Americans and minorities in general.

    The report notes that over the decades the government has undertaken steps to expunge racism from the law, public institutions, economic life and popular culture. It has mandated affirmative action and adopted policies to encourage political and educational participation.

    “These measures have changed America in fundamental ways. But they have not contributed significantly to an improvement in the state of the inner-city poor,” the report concludes.

    Freedom House finds that U.S. incarceration rates are “jarring,” rising by more than 300 percent since 1980.

    Apparently the Freedom House thinks that our inner-city poor having more free money will somehow make them freer. I’d like an explanation for that. Like Sharon Jasper who gets dragged out in front of the cameras every time someone mentions the urban poor in New Orleans – what with her ample frame, 60″ TV and microwave. That’s how poorly we treat our poverty-stricken inner city dwellers. Shameful, ain’t it?

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    No one can deny that fewer people in prison would make us freer – well, except for all of us hard-working innocent people who’ll spend more time looking over our shoulder for those criminals that’ll be running the streets instead of being in prison. Maybe that’s the fault of a culture that glorifies criminal behavior, not the government.

    Maybe we’ve surrendered all of our freedoms to a government which taken it upon itself to regulate every aspect of our lives. If you look in the Code of Federal Regulations, you’ll see how much of your life is regulated and you don’t even realize it. I’ve even seen where they regulate the size of your theater seats.

    OK, so the report isn’t that bad – but how can you make it seem bad to attract those limosine liberal dollars? Easy, find the most rabidly anti-Bush presenters available;

    Veteran journalists Helen Thomas and Bob Edwards—will appear as guest commentators at the event.

    But they have their work cut out for them;

    Mr. Melia said many of the authors originally focused on the post-Sept. 11 limitations on civil liberties in the country. However, it became clear in the editing process that the prison camp holding terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and monitoring of individuals under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, don’t impact as many Americans as the political process, the criminal justice system and religious freedoms.

    Geez, all of the Bush-related issues aren’t that bad, but I’m sure Helen Thomas can make a few popular-culture, anti-Bush jokes with no basis in reality to get the audience a-tittering.

  • Gas/Food crunch

    I remember when I was in high school, the “green” movement was in it’s infancy. They clung to every “crisis” they could think up. There was a new ice age coming, the world was going to starve to death by the year 1990, we were all going to get black lung disease…blah, blah, blah. Well, it seems that we didn’t starve to death in 1990, so the new greens have decided that they’ll create a food crisis with this bio-fuel idea, and their new idea seems to be working well (The Washington Times);

    President Bush yesterday asked Congress to authorize $770 million to ease the global food crisis, most of which will be focused on Africa, while the administration denied that corn-for-ethanol subsidies are a major cause of the worldwide surge in food prices.

    “We’re sending a clear message to the world that America will lead the fight against hunger for years to come,” Mr. Bush said in a statement to reporters in the White House.

    But agricultural experts testified on Capitol Hill yesterday that high food prices are here to stay, as robust demand for food worldwide collides with record fuel costs to put unprecedented pressure on food prices.

    Although the prices for basic foods like corn, wheat and oil have been soaring, the prices paid to farmers are only a small part of what consumers pay at the store. As much as 75 percent of the retail price of food can be attributed to processing, packaging, transportation and distribution. These costs have also risen substantially, mainly because of high fuel prices.

    “With the average food item traveling more than 1,500 miles before reaching the final consumer, it is no wonder that food costs are increasing,” Tom Buis, president of the National Farmers Union, told the Joint Economic Committee. “When looking back over the last seven years, gasoline prices have increased 198 percent and diesel fuel prices have increased almost 250 percent.”

    Of course one way to solve the gas problem, and with it, the food problem, is to build more refineries and tap into our own oil resources off of our coasts (seein’s how the Chinese and Cubans are already doing it anyway) and in Alaska – but that’s too easy, I suppose.

    The other day I wrote about the Virginia governor who is actually considering raising state taxes on gas. Obama must be his mentor, according to the Wall Street Journal he intends to vote against suspending the federal tax on gas, to save the taxpayers a bit of money;

    A range of economists, including Gregory Mankiw, who was chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, and Leonard Burman, who directs the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, have criticized the proposal because it would save drivers little while encouraging gasoline consumption and depleting the federal Highway Trust Fund. Sen. Obama opposes the holiday for the same reasons.

    But the political popularity of gas-price relief illustrates the uphill climb facing Sen. Obama. After making his plea Thursday at a retirement community in Columbia City, Ind., an older voter asked him why he couldn’t support a gas-tax holiday that would be funded by a tax on oil companies, as Sen. Clinton has proposed, because it would offer some short-term relief. “A lot of us are short term,” she quipped.

    Sen. Obama said that a tax on oil companies should instead be used for long-term investments in alternative energy. He also has reminded voters of his proposed tax cut for middle-class families.

    Yep, that sacred cow for the Democrats, tax revenue. Lord knows we don’t people to get used to spending the money they earned, they might like it. While I agree that suspending the gas tax will do little, either in the long term or the short term, even, it’s still our money – pennies or dollars, any tax cut is good. And I don’t even buy gasoline or pay for the gas that heats my home – I just want the tax cuts for everyone else…that’s how much I hate taxes.

    Of course, the best way to drive down gas prices is to drive less. I haven’t seen any of that going on here in the Metro DC area. The train is still nearly empty everyday and the streets are always full of single-passenger autos. As long as people are willing to pay higher prices, the oil companies and OPEC are always willing to raise prices looking for the ceiling.

  • Enforcing the peace

    A week ago, I first republished an email I received ostensibly from the Swartout family who were attacked while filming an anitwar demonstration in Edinboro, PA. I won’t recount the story, but a link to the first post is here, so you can refresh yourselves. I felt at the time that there was probably more than what we were being told. My buddy Bostonmaggie wrote me earlier that a video was in the hands of Fox News and that O’Reilly planned on doing a story about it tonight, so I thought I’d wait to see the tape before I passed judgement.

    Well, a friend of this blog sent me a link to a copy of the video yesterday on the condition that I wouldn’t make it public until after Fox News broadcast their story on the incident. I’ve been getting antsy all day, everytime I saw an O’Reilly commercial tempting viewers with the tape, but I like getting tips and stuff before Fox News so I kept my trap shut as I promised. If you missed the O’Reilly broadcast, here’s the video.

    (Editor’s note: Apparently, whoever put the video up changed their mind and marked it “private”, but I found the link at GOE-NY)

    The Swartouts weren’t exactly angels, but it’s clear from this video that the antiwar folks clearly escalated the confrontation to violence. I’m surprised that the police didn’t at least take one of those folks off in handcuffs to make a point. As I said last week this will only encourage the antiwar types.

    What put an end to the protests of the seventies was after the unfortunate events at Kent State, at a demonstration in New York City, constructions workers were tired of listening to the constant whining and climbed down from their steel and started beating hippies in the streets. The police were reticent about forcing the Left to behave themselves and decent citizens were forced to put an end to the useless bellyaching and anti-social behavior.

    Am I threatening the Left or inciting the Right – absolutely not. I’m just drawing lessons from history, something the Left has failed to do in this escalation of reactions. The police have a responsibility to establish and enforce boundaries of civil behavior. Throughout history when the authorities have failed to enforce those boundaries, people have taken it on themselves to enforce those boundaries, with much more disastrous results.

    Crossposted at Talon

  • Wright under the bus? Think again.

    Since I turned on the TV this morning and fired up this internet, the only worn out phrase I’ve heard is about throwing someone under the bus. First they told me that Wright threw Obama under the bus in his speech yesterday, then after Obama came out and disowned Wright in public, we hear that stupid bus metaphor again. From Ben Smith on Politico (by way of Blue Crab Boulevard) we get the words that did the deed;

     “I have spent my entire adult life trying to bridge the gap between different kinds of people. That’s in my DNA, trying to promote mutual understanding to insist that we all share common hopes and common dreams as Americans and as human beings. That’s who I am, that’s what I believe, and that’s what this campaign has been about,” Obama said.

    “I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday,” he said.

    Obama also distanced himself from the man in a way he has been reluctant to in the past.

    Don’t count on it – remember it was just days ago that Wright predicted that Obama would have to distance himself from Wright for political reasons – lo and behold Obama did it right on cue. It’s a ploy to convince us all that Obama has changed from the guy he was last month, the guy he’s been for the last twenty years. I also believe that Obama’s parents met in Selma, that he didn’t send an emissary to Canada to calm their fears over his NAFTA stance, that he meant the ‘bitter speech’ to be constructive. Anyone know if the Brooklyn Bridge is still for sale?

  • Wright man, wrong time

    I remember a month or so ago, Barak Obama was trying to convince America, from Philadelphia, that Jeremiah Wright was no different than his grandmother. That the Reverend Wright was just a mainstream preacher in the Black community and the rest of us just didn’t understand his nuance. Apparently, according to the Washington Post, all of that has changed since yesterday;

    “He does not speak for me,” the Democratic presidential candidate said as he campaigned across North Carolina. “He does not speak for the campaign.”

    Obama aides said Wright had rebuffed their recent offers of public relations assistance. They stressed that they had no warning about a media blitz that included an appearance with Bill Moyers on PBS on Friday night, a nationally televised speech to the NAACP in Detroit on Sunday evening and yesterday’s appearance at the National Press Club.

    Obama’s traditional defenders, like WaPo’s Eugene Robinson has also taken up the fight to soften the blow from Wright to Obama’s campaign;

    The problem is that Wright insists on being seen as something he’s not: an archetypal representative of the African American church. In fact, he represents one twig of one branch of a very large tree.

    But listening to the radio broadcast and then watching the crowd as they left the National Press Club yesterday, Robinson would have to convince me that the crowd Wright was playing to also didn’t represent more than a “twig of one branch of a very large tree”. The people leaving the event tried to shame the two Blacks protesting Wright into switching sides, probably in the same way they try to convince their families and neighbors to abandon common sense.

    The hooting and hollering and wild applause inside the event at Wright’s parroting of Leftist drivel just shows how shallow this whole debate over race has become. All you have to do is mention the fact that Dick Cheney was too old to be drafted for the Vietnam War and you get applause. A god-daughter serving in Iraq insulates you from criticism. Having a few degrees and speaking some foreign languages means you’re not a racist.

    It wasn’t that long ago, Wright was on the Obama campaign – after thirty years in the ministry, are we supposed to believe Wright was radicalized in just the last few weeks? Wright just suddenly decided to sabotage Obama’s campaign?

    Now, I’m hearing on Fox News from Steve Doocy, that a Clinton supporter organized the event at the National Press Club.

  • Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club

    I read over at Michelle Malkin‘s, and later at Ace Of Spades, about Jeremiah Wright’s impending speech at the National Press Club for an “NPC Breakfast”. Michele had links to the Free Republic‘s intention to protest there, so I packed up my cameras and headed over there.

    It rained the whole time the Free Republic was outside the National Press Club which probably dampened participation as well. But five stalwarts showed up;

    This gentleman (excuse me for not getting his name) is from Miami and he happened to be in town for another protest and decided to join the FReepers at the National Press Club. His group is Shalom International and he wanted me to tell my readers in the Atlanta area that they’ll be protesting at the Carter Center, Sunday, May 4th;

    While we were waiting for the crowd to let out, I listened to Wright on CSPAN radio. I couldn’t take notes, of course, because I was standing in the rain, but here’s what I heard; the standard anti-war leftist line.

    Somehow he gets moral authority in the discussion because he “sent” his god-daughter to Iraq. I’m pretty sure a minister of a church has alot of god-children, and it stands to reason at least one of them would end up in Iraq sooner or later. But, I’m pretty sure he brought it up to contrast it with the fact that the president’s daughters aren’t in the military because right after he estabished his moral authority by recounting the fact that the woman went to Iraq, he made a point of telling us that rich people use their influence to avoid the war.

    Influence? I wouldn’t call it using influence when your children make the choice to not join the military. I think Wright got confused with the Vietnam when there was a draft and the anti-war Left accused the affluent of avoiding the draft.
    But, from what I heard on the radio, it got thunderous applause from the assembled crowd.

    To the media’s credit, they at least interviewed the FReepers. But I’ve learned that interviews don’t necessarily mean exposure.

    I interviewed Jeff Gannon when he came out (my camera was dying in the rain so the FReepers taped it for me and promised to send me a copy later) and he told me that his impression of the speech was similar to mine. Gannon also claims that Wright made up some of his Bible quotations – I didn’t hear that, but I’ll let the theologians wrestle with it.

    W ell, the crowd came out and they were in rare form. Here’s an example of the type of crowd that was in there;

    That’s Marion Berry, getting in the car, if you don’t recognize him. Jeff Gannon told me that the crowd included Cornell West, the radical black “historian”, several radical Black theologians and whole lot of people I don’t recognize;

    Wright had worked the crowd pretty good by the time they came out. In this video, a woman shouts at our new Jewish friend from Miami “Long live Palestine”. At about a minute and fifteen seconds into the video, another gentleman makes a karate-like kick at the guy from Miami and then again at about a minute and forty seconds.

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    Some elderly Black women pulled Cobie (the big Black FReeper) to the side and tried to change his mind about which side he was on. Cobie, a Navy veteran, Gathering of Eagles member and Veterans for Freedom founder, wasn’t convinced. Another Black man tried to argue with Kevin the other Black FReeper, and that didn’t work either.

    Apparently, the media and the attendees were more concerned about the Black men who were protesting Wright’s hateful talk than with the old white guys who were there. I guess they were all a bit surprised that there are Black people who don’t conform to the prevailing opinion based purely on their race.

    People talk about how brave Wright is for speaking his mind, it doesn’t take bravery to parrot the standard line, Kevin and Cobie were the bravest two people on that sidewalk this morning for sticking to what they believe in the face of the biases of the spittle-slinging mad dogs who just applauded on cue to the weakly hidden racist remarks of an opportunist who found a way to bamboozle his flock.

  • You made a great play, Rick

    Rurik sent me this link from Hot Air, and I couldn’t help but post it. I never saw it happen, and this is the first I’ve ever heard of it – I missed a lot of the 70s and 80s being an infantryman. This happened 32 years ago;

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    Some context from Ed Morrisey;

    In a year-long bicentennial celebration, many wondered if the economic stagnation that had lasted all decade meant that America’s best years were in the rear-view mirror. The commercialized bicentennial festivities felt forced and false. It seemed that pride in our country had dissipated into cynicism and retreat.

    The unprompted, extemporaneous response to Monday’s heroics is the often untold story of that day. Over 40,000 baseball fans saw Monday risk his career by grabbing what could easily have been a fireball to rescue the American flag from a couple of asshats, and suddenly it recalled the real patriotism and passion for America that had been missing in 1976.

    The story from a two-year-old USA Today article;

    Thirty years ago today, Monday became an American hero.

    It was the day he saved the American flag.

    “It was the greatest heroic act that’s ever happened on a baseball field,” Hall of Fame manager Tom Lasorda said. “He protected the symbol of everything that we live for. And the symbol that we live in the greatest country in the world.”

    The Hall of Fame recently voted Monday’s act as one of the 100 classic moments in the history of the game. Monday, who spent 19 years in the major leagues and is a Los Angeles Dodgers broadcaster, will be honored tonight with a video tribute at Minute Maid Park in Houston.

    They’ll replay a grainy videotape that was discovered in 1984 showing two people jumping over the railing in left field and spreading the American flag onto the Dodger Stadium turf. One man dousing the flag with lighter fluid. The other lighting a match. And Monday, playing for the Chicago Cubs, running in from center field, grabbing the flag and carrying it to safety.

    They’ll play Vin Scully’s voice from the radio broadcast: “Wait a minute, there’s an animal loose. Two of them! I’m not sure what he’s doing out there. It looks like he’s going to burn a flag. …

    “And Rick Monday runs and takes it away from him!”

    And perhaps the crowd will duplicate the same reaction as 30 years ago: sitting in stunned silence, then standing, cheering and spontaneously singing God Bless America.

    “It moved the entire crowd,” Monday said. “I don’t remember if we won or lost the game, but I’ll never forget the people singing.”