Patriot Room

Revisiting the third party issue. There are many convinced that a third party is unthinkable. I would suggest that it’s unthinkable because people aren’t thinking…and observing.

My friend Beregond lays out historical precedent for what I’m talking about:

Both Perot and Roosevelt founded parties that had the aim of making them president. They invited some others to come along, but in reality the campaign was all about them. Elected officials with good prospects where they were didn’t jump ship, though a relative handful said nice things about the Perot and Roosevelt to hedge their bets. But the fact is that it was a top down structure, and even if Perot or TR had been elected as part of a third party they would have had little support in congress or the state legislatures. The Bull Moose party (officially the Progressive Party) managed to elect a grand total of 17 people.

In contrast, the Free Soil Party elected 14 congressmen and 2 senators in 1848 and was growing in influence as it absorbed Democrats who couldn’t abide slavery. Six years later it merged with anti-slavery elements of the Whig party to form the Republican party. In addition to the candidates the Free Soilers had elected, established Whigs switched to the new party. Lincoln, who later would become the first Republican president, had been elected as a Whig repeatedly since 1834.

What happened when the Republican party was founded was that people from an existing third party, plus people who were part of the major parties of the time found that they held a common set of beliefs so strongly that it transcended the bonds of their earlier political allegiance. Candidates were elected in local elections, then to congress, and it began to snowball. In 1856 Lincoln helped to organize the Republican party in Illinois. A scant four years later he was elected president on the Republican ticket.

As long as the Tea Party stays principle-focused and not personality-based, it will appeal to like minded people across the spectrum, because they’re really only pushing common sense.

And if the ruling class continues to push back against their constituents, a third party won’t just be viable, it will be preferable.

In the most recent statement by the NAACP (I know, it’s tough to keep up–fire a racist, defend a racist, defend a reformed racist, denounce racism, extol it–so confusing) says this:

“We have come to the conclusion we were snookered by Fox News and Tea Party Activist Andrew Breitbart.”

For the past year, the Left has wanted to portray the Tea Party variously as a tool of the GOP, an offshoot of some DC “astroturf” organization, or associated with some major personality like Sarah Palin. There is a method to their madness: If they can associate one face to the whole movement, when that face fails, the movement can be brought down with it. Remember Alinsky? Personalize, yadda, yadda.

And so, too, in the past year, short-sighted and power-hungry poseurs have tried to assume the mantle of Tea Party leader. There are too many to list, and really, they don’t deserve any more press than they’ve received. Rather than seeing a movement to transform the American system, they’ve seen a method of personal aggrandizement, and hopefully, a bucket full of money, too.

Inevitably, these people have huge personal failings which is why they’re looking for a job on the back of the Tea Party to begin with. They are ripe for the media picking: naive and attention whores to boot, they are a liberal’s dream come true. Please say and/or something stupid so we can tarnish the greatest threat to liberalism we’ve known in a generation. Please.

And they usually do. And it’s a mess, locally, and specifically, but so far, no one person has had their wish of Tea Party domination fulfilled so they end up making themselves asses and the movement marches on, free to do good work.

Now, though, there’s a Tea Party caucus started within the GOP. This, of course, is just an outgrowth of the gentle remonstrations by Sarah Palin to shoo the Tea Party into the GOP and discourage talk of a third party–something that I’m fully behind at this writing (that could change if the Republicans keep up their evil ways and end up treating fiscal conservatives, i.e. the majority of Americans, with the contempt the Democrats reserve for their voters).

Again, I don’t think this is a good idea. Period.

Suddenly, a Tea Party Caucus member says something stupid (likely, they’re politicians) and the whole movement is undermined. And guess what happens?

Mock Interview:

CNN anchor: Susie, you’re a Tea Party member in Flatland, Kansas. Do you defend Congressman Head-Up-His-Keester’s assertion that……….

Susie: I just want the government to be smaller and to not increase taxation to expand the government.

CNN anchor: But Congressman Head-Up-His-Keester said that ……. blah, blah, blah. Racism. George Bush.

Susie: I’m just really concerned about spending, and my children, and debt.

CNN anchor: You refuse to denounce Congressman X, then…? Are you a racist?

Susie: Uh…no! What?

The strength of the Tea Party is its ideas and the people working to hold politicians accountable. I do not particularly like the very ones who need to be held accountable to be co-opting the Tea Party brand. Ultimately, I worry it destroys the Tea Party–which started out as a non-partisan group.

Now, many Tea Party candidates will be elected to Congress this cycle. Hopefully, they’ll bring Tea Party values and accountability to what has turned into the ruling class of politicians.

Trent Lott wants to co-opt the rabble. The Left wants to destroy them. One way or another the Tea Party become marginalized and irrelevant.

The goal of everyone in DC is to get anyone and everyone who is interested in fiscal discipline to shut the hell up already. The establishment left and right and media can agree about the Tea Party: They’re a nuisance. Let’s brand them as racist fringey weirdos who are not to be listened to or taken seriously.

So, when I see a guy like Andrew Breitbart labeled as the “Tea Party Activist” Andrew Breitbart, I bristle. The Tea Party movement is bigger and more than one man, even one good man (or woman).

Once the Tea Party gets co-opted by an individual or group, it will be that much easier to destroy it. Watch the Left. Watch the media. Watch Congress. There’s a method to their madness.

Keep the Tea Party of, by and for the people. Keep personality and power out of it.

“In recent days, the issue of immigration has become once more a source of fresh contention in our country, with the passage of a controversial law in Arizona and the heated reactions we’ve seen across America.”(Click here for text of speech)

Mr. President I have news for you. For many Americans this has been -and never stopped being- a contentious issue since before George Bush was president. Especially for the people of the border states who have had to live with threats to their lives and property for decades now. These folks have,in recent days, seen a severe escalation in violence on the Mexican and American sides of the border.(Read More…)

Lots to cover today: The fiscal nightmare that is the Democrat-led 111th Congress comes home to roost in the words of Pelosi and Hoyer. Racism is on full display when the farmer happens to be white. Health-care reform comes into full view with taxes, abortion, and illegals. Did you know Obama’s dad served in WW2 – when he was 6 years old … his dad, that is, was 6. Hunh. And the world of agriculture has a side benefit in Atrazine: Helping gay frogs achieve their gender-identification dream.

Much more. Enjoy.  Here’s the audio link.

Who didn’t figure the Journolist members colluded on stories, hid information they didn’t want to come to light and generally worked together to serve the liberal greater good? No one. We all figured it was happening. To see the obvious evidence, though, is pretty damning.

Question: Will the esteemed journalists on the list report on the Journolist?

Of course, by avoiding the story, they prove the point. They’re counting on the fact that the majority of Americans will never see the story if they don’t report it.

What story? Just that the Journolist could see how the Jeremiah Wright story would hurt President Obama so they deep sixed it. The Daily Caller breaks the story:

“Part of me doesn’t like this shit either,” agreed Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent. “But what I like less is being governed by racists and warmongers and criminals.”

Ackerman went on:

I do not endorse a Popular Front, nor do I think you need to. It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

And I think this threads the needle. If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Ackerman did allow there were some Republicans who weren’t racists. “We’ll know who doesn’t deserve this treatment — Ross Douthat, for instance — but the others need to get it.” He also said he had begun to implement his plan. “I previewed it a bit on my blog last week after Commentary wildly distorted a comment Joe Cirincione made to make him appear like (what else) an antisemite. So I said: why is it that so many on the right have such a problem with the first viable prospective African-American president.

So, they overtly and explicitly decide to call an innocent racist to push forth their liberal agenda.

Remember, these are the same folks who will talk about journalistic ethics, fact checking and the biggest lie of all, objectivity.

Andrew Breitbart, who offered $100,000 to the Journolist member willing to give him the archives says today in the Daily Caller:

Journalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them. Journalists love transparency. As long as they’re not the ones being exposed.

No journalistic steadfast rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called “truth seekers” are guilty of engaging in open political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double down. “Journolist” — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle.

Who knows what other stories the press worked together on to either amplify or minimize depending on whether it hurt the leftist cause. I suspect these stories will continue to drip out drop, drop, drop, wearing away the teensy bit of credibility these people still had.

Ben Domenech notes who is exempted from Leftist wrath:

With the caveat that I don’t know Douthat personally — Jonathan Last thoroughly eviscerated his position on Journolist — this is just an incredible smear. Fred Barnes is a devout Christian and a gentleman, a respected writer who has never given any indication of racist views. The fact that Ackerman would recommend this wrathful and baseless attack isn’t surprising. But it does say something about membership in the menagerie of tame conservatives that where Barnes is maligned by the Left, Douthat is exempted.

I would just note that the left only likes those they’ve co-opted. I respect Douthat’s writing but his moderation is their brand of conservatism, which I would say is toothless conservatism. If Douthat harmed the leftist agenda, he’d be maligned.

Ace says:

And that was the media’s actual attitude, wasn’t it? They mentioned it begrudgingly, but then sought to penalize those asking questions as racists, or suspiciously unwilling to let go of old racial grievances, didn’t they?

The defense will be made, and it’s true to some extent, that the people engaging in these racist strategy sessions are mainly out-and-proud lefties, and so this doesn’t say anything about the broader MFM.

But it does — because the broader MFM may not have been commenting — too careful to weigh in like that and leave tracks — but their representatives were reading. And they seemed to be of like minds.

The participants in the slash and burn campaign to obfuscate the truth of Jeremiah Wright should be ashamed. That’s assuming they have the integrity, ethics and moral compass to even know to be ashamed. That seems unlikely. Oliver Willis, a blogger for Huffington Post tweeted today:

@owillis: u should see the devastation at mm hq today after the breitbartocalypse. we’ll need a star studded telethon.

Beyond shame. They’ve given up any notion of even truth.

So, these guys need to be outed. A Journolist made and given to the public so that people can filter accordingly.

This would all go away if the pretense of objectivity were let go. Just let it go, mainstream media members. You’re liberal. You’re biased. Declare it. At the top of every article, put an asterisk and say who you voted for and how much you donated.

Spare us the sham. It’s over anyway.

In his a speech in the Rose Garden yesterday,  President Obama did what the Wall Street Journal is calling a first: he brought three Americans “who’ve been out of work so long they underscore the failure of his economic program.” It appears President Obama and Congressional Democrats are too busy pointing fingers and passing blame to look themselves in the mirror.  As the Journal writes this morning, “the one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won’t entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation.”  Again, again and again, Democrats in Washington have refused to admit to themselves and to the country that they are in charge. It is their policies that have put the squeeze on American job creators.

This morning, House GOP Leaders will hold their weekly press stakeout at 10 a.m.

Now on to the news …

THE ECONOMY:  President Obama and Congressional Democrats Don’t Understand That Their Agenda Is Hindering The Nation’s Economic Recovery

Democrats In Washington Can’t Seem To Fathom That The Uncertainty Created By Their Economic Agenda Stifles Job Creation. The one possibility the President and Congressional Democrats won’t entertain is that their own spending and taxing and regulating and labor union favoritism have become the main hindrance to job creation. Since February 2009, the jobless rate has climbed to 9.5% from 8.1%, and private industry has shed two million jobs. The overall economy has been expanding for at least a year, but employers still don’t seem confident enough to add new workers. The economists who sold us the stimulus say it’s a mystery. But maybe employers are afraid to hire because they don’t know what costs government will impose on them next.  The Wall Street Journal

Democrats Continue To Ignore The Cost Of Their Own Economic Policies. By A few things were needful in this new financial reform — a resolution authority to truly end too-big-to-fail, countercyclical capital requirements and reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Dodd-Frank bill doesn’t bell The cat on any of these, but slathers so many new rules on The financial system that — as The Wall Street Journal notes — even experts can’t agree on The exact tally. Surely, The compliance costs and The unintended effects will be vast. But who cares? Democrats’ sympathy for The unemployed doesn’t extend to The people who might hire them — or give their employers loans. … Forget The uncertainty created by massive changes in The regulatory environment. Forget The overhang of debt everyone knows will exact its eventual price in new taxes or inflation. Forget The specter of a president hectoring business. Forget The new costs to hiring. Forget all The people who may pray, but assuredly will pay.  The New York Post

The American Public Doesn’t Trust President Obama’s Economic Decisions Because He’s Made The Wrong Choices. Voters lack faith in President Obama making the right economic decisions because, as far as they’re concerned, he hasn’t. The Washington Post

DEMOCRAT SPENDING:  Dem Office Admits That Dem Leaders Aren’t Serious About Cutting Spending

THEY SAID IT!  Rank and File Dem Office:  The Democrat Leadership Have Not Put ANY Serious Budget Cuts On The Table. Peters’ press secretary, Cullen Schwarz, was more blunt, sounding off after failing to hear back from Hoyer’s office.  “Our leadership hasn’t put any serious budget cuts on the table…”  … Peters said Democrats need to consider suggestions that cut spending, even if their districts stand to lose federal funds. “Certainly if it impacts their districts folks will not be as open to that,” he said. “We’ve got to try not to protect sacred cows anymore.”  Politico

A Message To Speaker Pelosi: Stop The Spending. Americans Favor Reducing Deficit Reduction, Not More Spending … Fifty-one percent of the public favors reducing the budget deficit; 40 percent supports spending more to help the economy recover. When asked to prioritize deficit reduction and tax cuts, 51 percent favored reducing the budget deficit, versus 41 percent for cutting taxes.  Compared to readings taken last summer and February, it is the first time that significantly more respondents ranked the budget deficit a bigger priority than spending. … Independents’ opinion on the question mirrors that of the public at large, with 53 percent saying that reducing the budget deficit outweighs spending, and 38 percent saying that spending is more important.  However, it’s a reversal for independents since February, when they held increased spending to be more urgent than reducing the deficit, 51 percent to 42 percent. Congress Daily

HEALTH CARE UPDATE

Small Business Becomes The Target Of ObamaCare. When critics of the legislation alleged during the debate that the enforcement of its many provisions would vastly increase the power of the IRS and empower tax collectors to go where they had never gone before, administration spokesmen reacted in outrage. The president’s critics, they charged, were not just wrong, but lying to scare people. It turns out that the critics were dead right  … we have learned that the IRS will have to hire literally thousands of new agents, auditors and analysts to make sure everyone required to buy into the program does so and to catch those who violate its many provisions as well as to collect the data that will be required of small businesses to help the government collect new taxes to pay for the scheme.  The result is that small-business owners who were promised they would benefit from the new law are up in arms as they discover that they will in fact be targets of an IRS planning to impose even more regulations on the way they operate. The Hill

THE WAR ON TERROR ROUNDUP

Sec. Clinton:  Someone In The Pakistani Government Knows Where Osama Bin Laden Is. Secretary of State Clinton said yesterday that it’s personal between her and the Al Qaeda terror gang, and Pakistan should give up intel on where they are.  “I want those guys,” she said. “I assume somebody in this (Pakistani)government, from top to bottom, does know where (Osama) Bin Laden is, and I’d like to know too,” Clinton told Fox News Channel’s “On the Record” with Greta van Susteren.  New York Daily News

WHAT TO WATCH

Immigration: White House Prepares To Write Off 2010 … President Obama and his political aides privately acknowledge that the government’s decision to sue Arizona over its new immigration law is helping to fuel an anti-immigration fervor that could benefit some Republicans in elections this fall. … The White House plans to use the immigration debate to punish the GOP and aggressively seek the Latino vote in 2012.  The Washington Post

Support For President Obama Plunges to 28% In Arizona. President Obama’s support in Arizona has plummeted to a record low. A paltry 28 percent of Arizonans give Obama a positive review for his job performance, a 12-point collapse since the start of this year, a new poll shows. The nosedive comes on the heels of Obama ordering his Justice Department to file suit against Arizona to block it from enacting a law that would require police officers to verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect might be in the country illegally.   The New York Post

Skepticism On The Rise:  A Record Number Of Americans Feels They Will Not Collect Social Security Benefits. A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view. And a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won’t be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.  Skepticism is highest among the youngest workers: Three-fourths of those 18 to 34 don’t expect to get a Social Security check when they retire.  USA Today

IN OTHER NEWS

• British PM David Cameron:  A Staunch And Self-Confident Ally
• WaPo: National Security Inc.
• Mukasey: Guantanamo Is No Venue For A Civilian Jury Trial

THE SCHEDULE

• The House will meet at 10:30 a.m. for Morning Hour debate and 12:00 p.m. for legislative business.  Today the House will consider multiple bills under suspension.

• The Senate will convene at 10:00 a.m. and begin a period of morning business.  At 2:15, reconvene to swear in Carte Goodwin as member of the U.S. Senate.  Thereafter, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to invoke cloture on H.R.4213, the tax extenders bill.

“The fact that Obama talks differently than Jeremiah Wright (above) does not mean that his track record is different,” wrote Thomas Sowell in March of 2008, sounding a warning that went unheeded by too many of our fellow Americans, in part because of a coordinated legacy media campaign to keep the story off the front pages (see below): “Barack Obama’s voting record in the Senate is perfectly consistent with the far left ideology and the grievance culture, just as his wife’s statement that she was never proud of her country before is consistent with that ideology.”

By Sissy Willis of sisu

“I hear you, but I am really tired of defending the indefensible,” the Nation’s Katha Pollit whined to fellow Journolisters in a rare moment of self-awareness back in April of 2008 as revelations of Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright’s racist rantings threatened to derail Barack Obama’s “historic” presidential campaign, prompting leg-tingling members of the propaganda community to brandish, “the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama,” as Andrew Breitbart crows in triumph this morning. The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong has the gory details in “Documents show media plotting to kill stories about Rev. Jeremiah Wright,” those documents being, of course, leaked emails from Journolist’s membership of “several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists”:

According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.

In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”

“Dressed down, they are nothing but street thugs,” Breitbart nailed it. “Voter intimidation by other means,’ we twittered. They’re cornered now, and they’ll put up a fight, but the new media are closing in, disintermediating via the internet. The blogosphere and Twitter are alive with mockery, top tactic in Glenn Reynolds’s list of ways to thwart the “good intentions” of “America’s Ruling Class.” Twitter buddy Pundit Review captures the spirit:

@owiilis is awake! I’m looking forward to the rationalization, dissembling, diversions and excuses for JournoList. Where’s the popcorn?

Crossposted at sisu and Riehl World View.

A link to “The Schneider Quote” was lying in wait in our Site Meter stats today. Clicking on over to something called “ClimateSight” (above), we were delighted to see that the true denialists who project their own denialism onto us climate skeptics continue to deny at will (see below).

By Sissy Willis of sisu

Reading the entrails of the Site Meter stats is the opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger, who can never get enough. Yes, you, Robert Stacy McCain. Mainly you’re looking for the instant rush of an Instalanche or at least a Malkin-lanche or precious links from that happy few, that band of sisters and brothers that fought with us upon Saint Fiskin’s day. But once in awhile there’s an eye-opening outlier that confirms what you’ve known all along, at least since July of 1990.

Today’s find was the deletion of our “[Inflammatory]” comments from a ClimateSite post on “The Schneider Quote,” a shameless bit of self-revelatory global-warming — that’s what “climate change” was called in those halcyon days of AGW “scientific consensus” — scripture first published in 1988:

On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

Rahm Emanuel would have been proud. We don’t remember exactly what we said, but it was probably similar to the comments we left at one of Pharyngula’s pro-Darwin, anti-Intelligent-Design posts last year, where the commenters were so unaccustomed to dissent that they mistook this Darwinian Libertarian for a “wingnut and creationist,” as we blogged at the time:

“I just looked at Sissy Willis’s blog. The person (I am still not clear what sex/gender the person is) does not seem to be sane,” writes commenter Matt Penfold at PZ Myers’s science blog Pharyngula in response to an admittedly provocative comment we had left there ourselves this afternoon. We are intrigued with Mr. Penfold’s scientifically-challenged powers of research and analysis, not to mention his tenuous grasp of the language: “I also doubt they are calling themselves Sissy with any kind of ironic intent. Which also suggests their grasp of English is as bad as their understanding of climate change, or since they seem to consider the current Pope to be some kind of hero, their grasp of morality.” They/themselves/their? Didn’t you mean she or he, sir? Had Penfold delved a bit further, he might have been puzzled to learn that along with Pope Benedict XVI, Charles Darwin is one of our intellectual heroes. But then for him, the debate is over, the scientific consensus is in, and Sissy Willis is insane. Talk about parallel lives.

Crossposted at sisu and Riehl World View.

The oil spill is a travesty beyond all imagination. It’s hard to get a grip on how awful this all is. Watch this video of Bill Nungesser talking about what’s happening. Once again The Right Scoop, scoops everyone. It very nearly made me cry because of the abject helplessness:

Brian, at The Right Scoop says (go read the whole thing):

The Obama administration’s response to this oil spill is horrible at best, and you can hear it in the voice of this very frustrated President of Plaquemines Parish. What’s sad is that we have to hear his complaints through a video on YouTube, and not from the MSM.

But really, doesn’t it feel like we’ve moved on from the oil spill? Where are the voices in the MSM hitting back against the Obama administration? It’s like Obama says “stand here”, and that’s where they stand. There is no way in hell they would have let Bush get away with this kind of dictator-like control, keeping the press away from the oil spill. No no no, it wouldn’t have happened.

Yes. Doesn’t it feel like this little problem never happened? It’s mind-boggling. Of course, the Nashville floods didn’t happen at all, if you’re the Mainstream Media and DC. Meanwhile a snowstorm in Washington, D.C. dominates the news as if it’s an irreversible calamity.

Newsflash: The Gulf Oil Spill IS a calamity. It is a clear example of a disaster. And the President’s Administration has been gross negligence bordering on willful indifference.

Rush Limbaugh beats the drum today: it’s not left versus right, it’s establishments versus everyone not them, the “other”. He cites this worthy American Spectator piece by Angelo Codevilla [a must-read]:

When this majority discovered that virtually no one in a position of power in either party or with a national voice would take their objections seriously, that decisions about their money were being made in bipartisan backroom deals with interested parties, and that the laws on these matters were being voted by people who had not read them, the term “political class” came into use. Then, after those in power changed their plans from buying toxic assets to buying up equity in banks and major industries but refused to explain why, when they reasserted their right to decide ad hoc on these and so many other matters, supposing them to be beyond the general public’s understanding, the American people started referring to those in and around government as the “ruling class.” And in fact Republican and Democratic office holders and their retinues show a similar presumption to dominate and fewer differences in tastes, habits, opinions, and sources of income among one another than between both and the rest of the country. They think, look, and act as a class.

This is just a taste of a steak of a piece. Please read the whole thing and then consider this from the Politico:

Overall, the 1,011 people surveyed nationally have a very pessimistic take on the direction of the country.

Only 27 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction, compared with 61 percent who think the nation is on the wrong track. Likewise, when asked whether the national economy is heading down the right or wrong track, just 24 percent chose the right track, compared with65 percent for the wrong track.

Yet among the 227 Washington elites polled, more think the country is on the right track, 49 percent, than the wrong track, 45 percent. On the economy, 44 percent of elites think the country is on the right track, compared with 46 percent who believe it is not.

To qualify as a Washington elite for the poll, respondents must live within the D.C. metro area, earn more than $75,000 per year, have at least a college degree and be involved in the political process or work on key political issues or policy decisions.

Details of the Politco poll here.

Well, of course the D.C. crowd thinks are moving in the right direction. Washington D.C. is positively booming. Government is big business these days. Meanwhile, the country languishes and the Dukes and Dames of DC dole out money at the behest of King Obama. They know better than you who needs what.

And no, Republican leaders are no different. Over at the National Review Online a little reminder of the Republican leadership’s spending proclivities:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, sounds like a reasonable guy when he says that Republicans aren’t against extended unemployment benefits, but merely want them offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the budget. In some circles, that’s the very definition of moderation: I’ll go along with your program, but you have to find the savings.

Don’t buy it.

Here’s the pork-laden McConnell’s conquests for Kentucky:

As you might guess, those appropriations requests are more densely packed with pork than a can of Spam — Kentucky-fried pork, of course. Seems the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant needs $116 million of your money. The Forage Animal Production Unit needs $4 million. The biofuel lobby needs a million dollars to be routed to it through the University of Kentucky. Hopkinsville has a narcotics taskforce with its hand out. Raytheon wants $12 million to put lasers on 20mm Gatling guns in Louisville — which at least sounds kind of awesome, but President Obama thinks they can do it with $6 million instead of $12 million. Somebody wants to buy something called Fern Lake and make a park out of it, but they want you to pay for it — $1.2 million. No, there’s no tab for “Cutting Spending,” but if you add up all the stuff that Senator McConnell lists under FH2011 Appropriations Requests, you come up with just about $600 million. That’s a lot of cash — and that’s just the special-interest stuff he’s advertising on his website, not the big-ticket items. So, let’s do some English-major math here: $600 million in feel-good spending multiplied by 100 U.S. senators equals . . . $60 billion, almost enough to pay for those unemployment benefits Senator McConnell is so keen to fight over — twice.

Of course, the Republicans don’t want to stop with the appropriations because they figure it will give them a disadvantage with Democrats willing to buy votes. So Republicans abandon all principle and give voters no reason to vote for them.

Worse, the big Republican class sees the Tea Party movement a threat to their power rather than an affirmation of REPUBLICAN PARTY PlANKS. Hello, fiscal sanity used to be the raison d’etre of the Republican party. No more. So why should voters vote for pretenders and poseurs?

The current Republican leadership has very nearly destroyed the Republican brand. Voters interested in one thing, economic discipline, are turning to the Tea Party.

Here is a blunt warning to the smarty pants set in D.C.: If the Republican party does not change their ways, there will be a third party. It will not have the Ross Perot effect. In fact, it will draw from the Democrat base, too, because it will be based on cutting the expansion of the Federal government.

That message appeals everywhere because it’s a common-sense message. Right now, the Republican party is being given a last chance. But people still don’t trust them and for good reason.

If Republicans want to regain trust with the American people, here’s some suggestions:

1. The current leadership should resign after the November elections. Both Congressman Boehner and Senator McConnell should issue a mea culpa. They should publicly apologize for their gross mishandling of their leadership. They should say they’re sorry for straying so far from core principles. In recognition of their mistakes, they should step down and give the mantle to leadership. This would save the Republican party and quite possibly go a long ways to restoring public trust in at least one party.

2. Republicans should re-embrace, and enthusiastically, fiscal sanity. They better follow through on their repeal of Obamacare. They should make good on their promise to defund it. In short, they should fulfill their promises.

I’m not sure the Republicans recognize the precarious position they find themselves in at the moment. They’re so concerned about retaining the power structure that is, they don’t recognize the new power structure that will be.

Or maybe they do. Maybe that’s why, when the rubber meets the road, they identify better with Democrats than their constituents. The DC insiders close ranks when threatened. Many of the establishment Republicans don’t just tolerate the Tea Party movement, they hate it. And given a chance, they’ll “co-opt them“.

Them. Us….and them.

Who, with a straight face, can say that President Obama cares about creating jobs? The man has shut down the oil industry in the gulf. He has passed a health care law that increases business costs thus limiting job creation. And now, his administration is exposed as needlessly shutting down dealerships costing “tens of thousands of jobs“.

You don’t say….

Back in the day, the question was asked: What’s the rationale for which dealerships are closed? There seemed to be a political motivation. This made it even into apolitical car blogs. At The Truth About Cars:

Even if this is a simple reflection of your average car dealer’s political leaning, there’s a lot of confusion out there amongst ex-Chrysler dealers as to why some got the chop and others didn’t. As you’d expect, as Automotive News reports, emotions are running high.

“I’m too stubborn to quit, and I’m too stupid to go away,” said the owner of Richard Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge in the western Chicago suburb of St. Charles. “I’m going to keep selling cars and fight this to the end.”

“Every time Chrysler said they needed us, we were there for them,” Massarelli said. “Now they won’t even return my calls.”

From a PR perspective, this is a channel stuffed with not good. Severed Chrysler dealers are making a fuss in Congress and federal bankruptcy court, where they’re trying to halt Judge Arthur Gonzalez’ approval (on Wednesday) of the asset sale which will create “new” Chrysler. Perhaps this is a disinformation campaign. Perhaps not. Either way, even if the fix (as in canine fertility) was in, it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop the train from leaving the station.

Yes, well. Incompetence, negligence, willful malfeasance. Take your pick. They all seem to be part of this administration.

The fact is, in order to get the reordered society that Barack Obama seeks, some of the little people have to be lost in the shuffle for the greater good.

Closing the dealerships, giving unions more power, the private sector losing jobs are all necessary and needed to fulfill the ultimate goal of a more flattened society. But as with all things quasi-socialist, it simply doesn’t work.

When taxpaying jobs are killed, the unemployed take more from the public sector, who then need to raise taxes on stressed companies, that will then need to get rid of employees.

The economy is in a tailspin and the Democrats are so ideologically driven they’re impervious to the real-world consequences of their actions. And their actions hurt real people who used to have real jobs.

So yes, the closings were retribution: The Obama administration is systematically punishing what he perceives as the evils of capitalism. The middle businessman, even small mom and pop businesses, are the enemy. They can neither adequately feed or serve the god of government and therefore, they’re expendable.

Animated giff and caption from our October 2008 blogpost “Where has Peggy Noonan been?”: “Even in this room full of proud Manhattan Democrats, I can’t shake that feeling that some people here are pulling for me,” quipped a crowd-pleasing John McCain at last night’s 63rd annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner/Roast to benefit Catholic charities, pausing for maximum comic effect before turning with a melodramatic show of affection toward Senator Hillary’s table to deliver a punchline that left HIllary (above) and assembled A-list guests rolling in the aisles:  “I’m delighted to see you here tonight Hillary.” McCain’s perfect comic timing and razor-sharp material left Obama’s lame offering in the dust. Our fave joke of the night: “The press is really an independent-minded, civic-minded, non-partisan group … like Acorn.”

By Sissy Willis of sisu

In recognition of Peggy Noonan’s coming of (old) age today in her WSJ column, “Youth Has Outlived Its Usefulness,” we are republishing our prescient and timely blogpost “Where has Peggy Noonan been?” from election season 2008. There is sadness in watching the former Reagan speechwriter’s “thousand points of light” go dim, but life goes on, and we can only be grateful for the eloquence of her parting words, a rallying cry for us new media types as we continue disintermediating the powers that be were via the internet:

Son, being an enraged, profane, unmoderated, unmediated, hit-loving, trash-talking rage monkey is no way to go through life.

October 17, 2008. “More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G’s,” writes an exasperated Peggy Noonan in the WSJ:

Hardworkin’ families are strainin’ and tryin’a get ahead. It’s not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say “mom and dad”: “our moms and dads who are struggling.” This is Mr. Bush’s former communications adviser Karen Hughes’s contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that’s too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it’s all now the faux down-home, patronizing — and infantilizing — moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children — sorry, our kids — look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?

We couldn’t agree more re the toe-curling G-dropping, moms-and-dads infantilization of the language that pollutes the public square [Who knew it was all Karen Hughes's doing? … We would have said Oprah!), but political figures as a model for adult behavior? No, Peggy, no. Again the Northeast Corridor Conservative in her starts off on the right foot re Thursday's debate [cf. our own post, "Obama unmasked"]:

[McCain] also scored Mr. Obama on his eloquence, using it against him more effectively than Hillary Clinton ever did. When she said he was “just words,” it sounded like a bitter complaint. Mr. McCain made it a change: Young man, you attempt to obscure truth with the mellifluous power of your words.

… but then goes off the track in her conclusions:

From Mrs. Clinton it sounded jealous, but when Mr. McCain said it, you looked at Mr. Obama and wondered if you’d just heard something that was true. For the first time, Mr. Obama’s unruffled demeanor didn’t really work for him. His cool made him seem hidden.

“For the first time”? Where has Peggy Noonan been? We had Barack Obama’s number way back in December of 2006, when the smooth-talkin’ hope-and-changester, in the wake of Oprah’s ecstatic endorsement, got away with calling us a racist while our fellow Americans from the other side of the aisle and their media enablers were being distracted by “thrills up their legs.”

Note: In googling to find this blogpost from the archives, we stumbled upon another Noonan clueless classic, “Palin’s Failin.’”

Crossposted at sisu and Riehl World View.

This morning, President Obama went to the podium in the Rose Garden to accuse Senate Republicans of blocking an extension of unemployment benefits. USA Today writes, “A Republican filibuster that has three times blocked the extension ‘reflects a lack of faith in the American people,’ Obama said. ‘They’re not looking for a handout. They desperately want to work. It’s just that right now, they can’t find a job.’ The president said ‘It’s time to stop holding workers laid off in this recession hostage to Washington politics.’” The AP adds that Obama “accus[ed] them of holding the public hostage to Washington politics.” All of this is, of course, absurd.

Republicans are simply asking that assistance for the unemployed be paid for at a time when our nation’s debt exceeds $13 trillion and when the country is facing its second straight year of a deficit larger than $1 trillion. As the AP points out, “The $34 billion needed to extend benefits would be borrowed, adding to the nation’s mounting debt.”

It’s particularly audacious for the President to insinuate that Republicans have callous disregard for the plight of the unemployed as his administration is in the midst of a campaign to claim that their failed stimulus bill is creating a “Recovery Summer.” Of course, this was also a day after he returned from a conspicuous weekend trip to a popular vacation spot in Maine.

Even more ridiculous is Obama’s charge that Republicans are holding these benefits “hostage” to Washington politics. In fact, back in November 2009, Obama called fully paid for unemployment benefits “fiscally responsible.” But just during the month of June, Democrats objected to 4 different GOP requests to extend unemployment benefits without adding to the debt. A month ago Sen. John Thune (R-SD) offered an amendment to extend benefits to November, cut the deficit by $55 billion, and cut spending by $100 billion. But even that was unacceptable to Democrats: 57 voted to kill the Thune amendment.

It’s pretty amazing to have the Democrat president accusing Republicans of playing politics with unemployment benefits given this track record from Democrats in the Senate. But it’s even more ridiculous considering what’s going to happen tomorrow: In the afternoon, the new Democrat senator from West Virginia is going to be sworn in, and 15 minutes later he’s expected to join Democrats in using his new government credit card to pay for unemployment benefits through deficit spending by voting for cloture on their bill. So why didn’t Democrats hold the vote last week? They didn’t have the votes for the deficit spending. And yet President Obama is accusing Republicans of playing politics.

In the eight months since Obama called paying for extending unemployment benefits “fiscally responsible,” the debt has grown $1.25 trillion. Does he expect Americans to believe it’s somehow responsible to not pay for them now? On CNN’s State of the Union yesterday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “Somewhere in the course of spending a trillion dollars, we ought to be able to find enough to pay for a program for the unemployed. . . . If we can’t pay for a program like extension of unemployment insurance that virtually every member of the Senate — I think, in fact, every member of the Senate wants to extend, then what are we going to pay for?  When do we start?”

On The Floor

The Senate will reconvene at 2 PM today. Following an hour of morning business, the Senate will resume consideration of the small business bill, H.R. 5297.

On Tuesday, Carte Goodwin (D) will be sworn in as the junior senator from West Virginia. Following that, there will be a cloture vote on the vehicle for an unemployment insurance extension, the House message to accompany H.R. 4213.

From the Communications Center

VIDEO: ICYMI: Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) Delivers Weekly GOP Address On Donald Berwick

McConnell on CNN’s ‘State of the Union’

SRCC: “Fiscally Responsible”

Around the Hill

AP: Obama to GOP: Restore unemployment benefits now

The Wall Street Journal: Obama, Chided by His Party, Aims Fire at GOP

The Hill: GOP wants extension of benefits without ‘gargantuan spending’

The Hill: GOP hits back at Obama in unemployment benefits fight

The New York Times: Changing Stance, Administration Now Defends Insurance Mandate as a Tax

Reuters: Analysis: Obama’s recovery summer can’t shake discontent

The New York Times: TARP Audit Questions Rush to Close Auto Dealers

The Hill: “Senate and House Democrats are headed for a clash this week over funding for U.S. troops in Afghanistan”

The Hill: Chances of campaign finance bill affecting midterms dim

Chicago Tribune: Stimulating waste

CQ Politics compiled an interesting list.  It’s of the top ten fundraising candidates.  Here it is:

The top 10 campaigns banking the most during the second quarter were:

1. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) – $812,000
2. Rudy Moise (D), running in Florida’s 17th district – $657,000
3. Joe Garcia (D), running in Florida’s 25th district – $623,000
4. Tom Ganley (R), running in Ohio’s 13th district – $622,000
5. Jim Renacci (R), running in Ohio’s 16th district – $511,000
6. Michele Rollins (R), running in Delaware’s at-large district – $474,000
7. Sean Mahoney (R), running in New Hampshire’s 1st district – $441,000
8. Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D-Pa.) – $436,000
9. Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) – $427,000
10. Quico Canseco (R), running in Texas’ 23rd district – $425,000

Rep. Bachmann is attracting so much money because in typical whorish fashion, Nancy Pelosi has publicly set the hounds loose on her – at least according to Bachmann.  Here’s an article on both sides of that issue.  I naturally distrust democrats, so the qualification “on the record” by the dems is not persuasive.  Regardless, Bachmann is flipping the target mentality into money.

The above list is 6-4 pubs.  But if you remove the incumbents, and their inherent ability to raise money, the challengers are 5-2 pubs.

All things political comes down to money to get the message out.  With so many races that the dems need to cover, losing the battle at this level just adds to their woes.

Smile.

Anytime Vice President Joe Biden goes in front of the camera, gaffes flow like the Amazon River during the rainy season. Here’s what the VP said Sunday about the Administration’s agenda: “Look, these are gigantic packages to deal with a gigantic problem we inherited. And the vast majority of the American people, and a lot of people really involved, don’t even know what’s inside the packages.” Now THAT is reassuring… The problem with these “gigantic packages” is that they are producing a toxic layer of uncertainty coupled with an unprecedented amount of debt, as job creators nervously wait for the Administration’s next move.  Gigantic packages with unknown contents are not the answer the American people were looking for.

Quote of the Day, from Roll Call: A senior House Democratic aide said Members are particularly eager to tout passage of financial reform in their districts because, unlike health care, the public recognizes that it won’t suffer under it.

Now on to the news …

THE ECONOMY:  The “Recovery Summer” Is Shaping Up To Be Another Season Of Economic Blunders For The Obama Administration

Not Buying It:  The Administration’s “Recovery Summer” Falls Flat With The American People … The administration did not do itself any favors when it released a report on Wednesday saying the stimulus package created or saved millions of jobs.  “Does the White House really think we are buying that unicorn poop?” was one reader’s comment on reuters.com.  Republicans pounced on the report at a congressional hearing on Wednesday with White House economic adviser Christina Romer. They pointed out that Romer had co-authored a paper, released in January 2009, predicting that stimulus spending would cap the jobless rate at 8 percent.   Reuters

President Obama’s Economic Policies Have Failed To Create An Environment Conducive To Job Creation, Lowered The Effectiveness Of Job Training. In the last 18 months, the Obama administration has embraced more promising approaches to training focused on faster-growing areas like renewable energy and health care. But most money has been directed at the same sorts of programs that in past years have largely failed to steer laid-off workers toward new careers, say experts, and now the number of job openings is vastly outnumbered by people out of work.   “It’s such an ugly situation that job training can’t solve it,” said Ross Eisenbrey, a job training expert at the Economic Policy Institute …  “When you have five people unemployed for every vacancy, you can train all the people you want and unfortunately only one-fifth of the people will get hired. Training doesn’t create jobs.”   The New York Times

THE ECONOMY (2):  The President’s Stimulus Continues To Fund Initiatives That Have Nothing To Do With Job Creation

Waste Watch: Stimulus Signs Don’t Create Jobs, Don’t Have A Lasting Effect… Republicans in Congress, notably Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois, think there are better uses of the $787 billion than tributes to politicians who have done nothing more than appropriate money furnished by their long-suffering constituents. He estimates the cost of such signs around the country at $20 million, though the Illinois Department of Transportation says it has spent about $665,000. The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board says it has no idea what the actual cost is. … The best use of the money is for things that would be worth doing regardless—such as repairing and upgrading roads. That way, citizens get something valuable even if the stimulating effect never shows up.  Unnecessary road signs, by contrast, have no lasting or even temporary value.  The Chicago Tribune

Cantor, Republicans Attempt To Eliminate Stimulus Waste Via YouCut. Eliminating the signage was the winning entry on last week’s “YouCut” program. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-7th., and Republican colleagues have been soliciting budget-cutting proposals over the Internet. After six weeks of voting, more than 1.3 million votes have been cast over “YouCut”, Cantor says.  … “Often visible along highways, these signs do not provide any meaningful information and do not create any jobs,” Cantor said in a floor speech Wednesday.  The Richmond Times-Dispatch

Mayor Bloomberg:  The Stimulus Hasn’t Created Jobs. “If you had time, and you really tried to do things that created jobs, I think it’s fair to say that an awful lot of the stimulus monies that were given out would not have been given out that way,” the mayor said. … “It’s been given out. But it hasn’t created jobs.”  The New York Post

ECONOMY (3): The Administration’s Economic Policies Cost Thousands Of Americans Their Jobs …

The Administration’s Economic Policies Cost THOUSANDS of Americans Their Jobs. The report by Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of the Treasury Department, said both carmakers needed to shut down some underperforming dealerships. But it questioned whether the cuts should have been made so quickly, particularly during a recession. The report, released on Sunday, estimated that tens of thousands of jobs were lost as a result. “It is not at all clear that the greatly accelerated pace of the dealership closings during one of the most severe economic downturns in our nation’s history was either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery,” the report said.  The New York Times

SIGTARP:  The Administration Cut Tens Of Thousands Of Jobs Based On Theory, Without Consideration Of The Current Economic Conditions. “Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” said the 45-page report. “Only time will tell” whether the accelerated closures will help the companies’ profitability, the audit said. But Treasury should have “taken every reasonable step” to ensure the closures were necessary and that the benefits to the companies outweighed the economic costs of “potentially tens of thousands of accelerated job losses,” it concluded.  The Wall Street Journal

AGENDA WATCH: Leading Dem Says Lame-Duck Session May Be One Of The Most Significant Ever

Senate Dem:  Lame-Duck Session May Be One Of The Most Significant In History. Senate Budget Chairman Kent Conrad says a legislative session after the Nov. 2 election and before the new Congress is sworn in could be “one of the most significant lame-duck sessions in the history of the United States.”  In an interview with CongressDaily, Conrad referred specifically to the prospect of votes on the recommendations of President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission, which is due to report on Dec. 1. Conrad, who is on the panel, believes it could help lead the country to a sounder fiscal path.  Congress Daily

HEALTH CARE:  Dem Admits That Americans Will Suffer Under The Democrats’ Health Care Overhaul

Jaw Dropping: Dem Admits American People Will Suffer Under ObamaCare. A senior House Democratic aide said Members are particularly eager to tout passage of financial reform in their districts because, unlike health care, the public recognizes that it won’t suffer under it.  Roll Call

THE WAR ON TERROR ROUNDUP

German Bank A Major Outlet For Blacklisted Iranian Companies. The European-Iranian Trade Bank AG—known as EIH Bank for its German initials—has done over a billion dollars of business for Iranian companies associated with Iran’s conventional military and ballistic missile procurement programs, including companies blacklisted by the U.S., the United Nations and the European Union, according to a person familiar with the matter.  Among those companies are units of Iran’s Defense Industries Organization, the Aerospace Industries Organization and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Western officials told The Wall Street Journal. … EIH is on a U.S. Treasury blacklist, and U.S. officials have raised concerns about the recent uptick in the bank’s activities with Germany. The Wall Street Journal

WHAT TO WATCH

Democrats Consider Life in the Minority … It’s the nightmare scenario House Democrats don’t want to talk about: a potential leadership bloodbath if they lose the majority.  The minority offers one fewer leadership slot, which would make for a messy post-election scenario in which Democrats already would be reeling from defeat. Unless Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) or another leader falls on his or her sword, a high-profile leadership fight would be all but guaranteed. … “The sense is that if we lose big-time, heads are going to roll,” one Democratic strategist said.  Roll Call

A Growing Disconnect: While Americans Struggle, Obama’s Washington Is Booming … America is struggling with a sputtering economy and high unemployment — but times are booming for Washington’s governing class. The massive expansion of government under President Barack Obama has basically guaranteed a robust job market for policy professionals, regulators and contractors for years to come. … As a result, there is a yawning gap between the American people and D.C.’s powerful when it comes to their economic reality — and their economic perceptions. A new POLITICO poll, conducted by market research and consulting firm Penn Schoen Berland, underscores the big divide: Roughly 45 percent of “Washington elites” said the country and the economy are headed in the right direction, while roughly 25 percent of the general population said they felt that way.  Politico

Yucca Mountain: President Obama Places Politics Over Policy. A three-judge Nuclear Regulatory Commission panel ruled last month that the Obama administration could not withdraw the application to license the Nevada site to store the nation’s wastes. … The administration has appealed the ruling to the five-member NRC board, which should produce its own ruling in a month. A reversal of the panel’s decision would come as no surprise: Three of the five board members were nominated by Mr. Obama and indicated during their confirmations that they would defer to the policy of the Energy Department on the Nevada site. The board’s chairman has served as a scientific adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), a powerful opponent of the Yucca Mountain plan.  … Taking Yucca Mountain off the table without even seeing if it meets NRC criteria is contrary to the spirit of the commission and would mark the triumph of politics over policy.  The Washington Post

IN OTHER NEWS

• WaPo: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control
• CNN: Obama’s Debt Panel: Hints Of An Endgame
• RCP: Dems Headed For Potential State House Disaster

THE SCHEDULE

• The House will meet at 12:30 p.m. for Morning Hour debate and 2:00 p.m. for legislative business.  Today the House will consider several bills under suspension.

• The Senate will convene at 2:00 p.m. and begin a period of morning business.  Thereafter, resume consideration of H.R.5297, the Small Business Jobs bill.

Says Dan:

“A genuine maverick might try leading on basic Republican principles, like the ones he campaigned on and as Christie is doing in New Jersey. Brown, on the other hand, is largely going along with his liberal state in hopes of gaining re-election. If the Republican base isn’t excited about him next time out, my guess is, he loses to a Democrat based on turnout, alone.”

Yup.

And, exceptions to the rule.

The distressing phenomenon of refusing to call an objective evil, evil, permeates the leftist culture. Just last night the Twitter blogger Queen of Spain got in an argument with a couple conservative friends Brooks Bayne and Beregond about La Raza which means, literally, The Race, over whether they were a racist organization. Even after being presented concrete evidence of their obvious racism, she would not condemn them. That would be judging. That would be wrong.

Well the racists are under no such compunction and judge whites to be usurpers who should be gone or worse, not exist. They view white people as objectively wrong. Whether the Queen knows it or not, by not condemning their belief system, she is supporting and aiding their belief system which is racist and exclusionary, maybe even murderous, and ostensibly, those beliefs run against everything she stands for. Thus the murk of multi-culturalism and “diversity” for its own sake.

When victims of this mentality don’t recognize the threat to their own survival, it’s even worse. Frank Luntz documents a focus group he conducted and it’s covered in by Evelyn Gordon in Commentary Magazine. Here’s what happened as reported to the Jerusalem Post:

The greatest challenge for the Israeli position isn’t in the media. It’s on the typical college campus. Because there, the truth doesn’t matter.

There, day after day, the Palestinian advocates will say anything and do anything and these Jewish kids are totally ill-prepared to stand up and challenge.

We did a session with MIT and Harvard students.

The best of the best. We had 35 people in the room: 20 of them were non-Jewish, 15 were Jewish. And I didn’t tell anyone who was which. And I’d recruited them by telling them “we’re going to talk about Iraq, Iran and the Middle East,” not telling them that the real focus was Israel.

Got them all into the room. It was so crowded that we had kids sitting on the floor. But that added to the intensity. They felt like they were in a dorm room. And within 10 minutes, the non-Jews started with “the war crimes of Israel,” with “the Jewish lobby,” with “the Jews have a lot more power and influence” – stuff that’s borderline anti-Jewish.

And guess what? Did the Jewish kids at the best schools in America, did they stand up for themselves? Did they challenge the assertions? They didn’t say sh*t. And in that group was the leader of the Israeli caucus at Harvard. It took him 49 minutes of this before he responded to anything.

The group is over. It’s a three-hour group. I then say, “Who’s Jewish, who isn’t?” At that point some of the Jewish kids got a little outraged. I dismiss all the non-Jewish kids.

And the Jewish kids are there. And they’re now ticked at me for doing this, you know, “Why have you segregated us?” I said, “I’m Frank Luntz and I’m Jewish, and I’ve been working on this now for 10 years, and you all didn’t say sh*t.”

And it all dawned on them: If they won’t say it to their classmates, who they know, who will they stand up for Israel to? Two of the women in the group started to cry. I got the whole thing on tape. The guys are like, “Oh my God, I didn’t speak up, I can’t believe I let this happen.” And they’re all looking at each other with horrible embarrassment and guilt like you wouldn’t believe.

And I take this tape down, this little DVD, to the Jewish community and I say, “This is what we’ve done – or not done.” It’s not just giving them the facts. It is also teaching them how to say it, when to say it, when to crack a joke, when to acknowledge someone else’s points, when not to be argumentative or judgmental.

The problem that I see is that so many parents in the Jewish community taught their kids not to judge. I’m going to say something that’s a little bit ideological, but I find that kids on the Right are far more likely to stand up for Israel than kids on the Left. Because kids on the Right believe that there is an absolute right and wrong; this is how they’ve been raised.

Kids on the Left have been taught not to judge. Therefore those on the left will not judge between Israel and the Palestinians; those on the Right will. I’ve now been doing this research for eight years.

Yes, this unwillingness to show judgment, for judging simply means discerning between two ways, will cause destruction.

To not discern, to lack judgment, is not a mark of intelligence. In fact, a lack pf perception is as handicapped as being actually blind.

Many Jews in particular have misidentified the problem of the Holocaust as a problem with beliefs themselves. A problem of believing anything too intensely is bad, they reason. So too much patriotism, too much nationalism, Zionism, too much religiosity, too much intensity around any idea is objectively destructive.

The problem is most certainly not intensity of believing, the problem is the beliefs enthusiastically embraced. The problem was wrong beliefs. The problem was that people were afraid to cast judgment on evil beliefs. The problem is that there are better beliefs, which are often more complex and difficult beliefs to live with and promote. The better, life-affirming beliefs are worth fighting for…otherwise, the death-loving and coddling beliefs become promoted.

There are objective truths and lies. There is right and wrong. And silence in the name of diversity around diverse evil ideas means submission and even extolling of the very ideas that would destroy those who tolerate them.

Unbelief is a belief. And those who adhere more strongly to more evil beliefs will trump a silent multi-culturalist every time. And the multi-culti person unwilling to name and shame evil, will be on the receiving end of the spear first. Suddenly, right and wrong becomes obvious in that situation, but it’s too late.

“Sissy Willis. All this ‘Mama Grizzly,’ “Koala Bear,” and “Teddy Bear” talk made me think of this Elvis song,” twittered blog/twitterfriend Cubachi this morning. Check out her blogpost “Governor Christie confirms to me that he tweets” for an example of a powerful and effective Republican, NJ Governor Chris Christie, who listens to his constituents. Possibly related, Glenn Reynolds’s provocative “The King of Anti-Fascism,” wherein the new media’s new-media man argues for the “white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel” as a “cultural immune response to totalitarianism.”

By Sissy Willis of sisu

“Sissy, you are right on, and Brooklyn doesn’t get what this entire post is about. I lived through Perot, and I understand the fears out there that we must keep the Good Ol’ Boys and status quo in place if we want a chance,” writes the saintly Joan of Argghh of  Primordial Slack in a spirited defense of our previous post, where we took presidential wannabe Mitt “RomneyCare” Romney (#fail) to task for “enabling an aide to diss Mama Grizzly Sarah Palin as ‘not a serious human being.’” Romney later apologized in a tweet, but our point is that Mitt Romney, a member in good standing of the Good Ol’ Boys’ Club, isn’t listening to us Tea Partiers. Joan explains:

That would be fine if we were talking about politics as usual. We have moved beyond that at light speed. Anyone who thinks that the measured words, sagacious posturing, and back room deals are gonna save us is sadly out of touch with the alternate universe that is slamming into our own: Obama comes from a completely different world beyond the ken of most Americans, but understood keenly by those of his entourage. What part of “audacity” did we not understand? You don’t challenge audacity with a platform. You put it down with something equally as audacious. “Grizzly moms” are more serious than anything you’ve ever encountered.

Our Beltway Insider of choice, Dan Riehl, has been banging away at the topic forever. This morning he goes after Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for wimping out on the Tea Party racism question:

Such leadership even while [House Majority Leader] Hoyer plays the race card. They wonder why we don’t fight for them, when they are too Oh my goodness goody-two-shoes to fight for us. Washington is a bunch of chickens that line their cages with the Washington Post and New York Times. And all three are full of crap.

“In a recent conversation with a GOP new media type,” he reveals, “I learned that new media to the GOP simply means taking the same old top-down messaging and creating it on websites, or for digital distribution”:

That doesn’t serve them well, as questions from activist bloggers are actually quite different than ones usually coming from the press.

If the Tea Party and blogs continue to become increasingly powerful, this will begin to change. Electing grassroots candidates will certainly help. But it won’t be because the GOP establishment wants it to change. Why should they, when their SOP is message control? Unfortunately for them, you cannot control the message in the era of new media.

Activist bloggers, twitterers and other wordwranglers of the new media have had a good long look behind the curtain, and we aren’t going to take this from the naked emperor any more. Glenn Reynolds has a nifty list of what to do to thwart the “good intentions” of Angelo Codevilla’s “America’s ruling class,” the “patronage and promises” crowd who think they know better than we what’s best for us:

And let’s be honest — the claim that only “professional legislators and staff” are smart enough falls apart once you meet a few of these people.

Crossposted at sisu and Riehl World View.