Month: August 2009

Today’s message from the Ministry of Truth

Disagreeing with any Democrat idea[*1] ,  is Double-Plus-Ungood[*2] .

Be vigilant, Citizen!  Report all Fishy Ideas to your friendly Ministry of Truth at flag@whitehouse.gov.

It is required and commanded from our leader, Big Brother, that you trust those who are better than you.  They care for you, almost but not quite as much as they care for themselves[*3] .

Update:  Glenn Reynolds[*4] pretty much nails this one:

Do you want your medical care controlled by people who think it’s “Un-American” to criticize them?

They have drastically overrreached. The only options at this point are for the proponents to back down off of their hard-line positions, or escalate the conflict further.  One of those paths is that which responsible statesmen would take.  The other is the path of the tyrant.

Remember when?

Remember back in the good old days, when George W. Bush was still President, and Obama tried to sound like a moderate Democrat?

That was then: “We’re going to do all of these negotiations on C-SPAN.”

Now, however, Obama simply says “get out of the way” to anyone who dares raise a voice against him.

The Great Unifier was replaced by the Great Partisan after the election, it seems. Usually, the reverse happens. But, as we’ve been told ad nauseum, Obama’s Presidency is “unprecedented.”

Thought for the day

I’ll leave you alone if–and only if–you leave me alone.

Update:  This sh*t is getting serious.  Oath Keepers[*1] :

1. We will NOT obey orders to disarm the American people.
2. We will NOT obey orders to conduct warrantless searches of the American people
3. We will NOT obey orders to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to military tribunal.
4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state.
5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty.
6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.
7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext.
8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control.”
9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies.
10.We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

I really, really, really don’t want to live through a civil war. I really don’t.  But if I have to, I will side with the Constitution and those who defend it.

Who will save the media from themselves?

US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring:  poll[*1]

More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don’t care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.

And poll respondents who use the Internet as their main source of news — roughly one quarter of all Americans — were even harsher with their criticism, the poll conducted by the Pew Research Center said.

More than two-thirds of the Internet users said they felt that news organizations don’t care about the people they report on; 59 percent said their reporting was inaccurate; and 64 percent they were politically biased.

Here’s the detail[*2] .  Some highlights:

The internet news audience – roughly a quarter of all Americans – tends to be younger and better educated than the public as a whole. People who rely on the internet as their main news source express relatively unfavorable opinions of mainstream news sources and are among the most critical of press performance. As many as 38% of those who rely mostly on the internet for news say they have an unfavorable opinion of cable news networks such as CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, compared with 25% of the public overall, and just 17% of television news viewers.

The internet news audience is particularly likely to criticize news organizations for their lack of empathy, their failure to “stand up for America,” and political bias. Roughly two-thirds (68%) of those who get most of their news from the internet say that news organizations do not care about the people they report on, and 53% believe that news organizations are too critical of America. By comparison, smaller percentages of the general public fault the press for not caring about people they report on (53%), and being too critical of America (43%).
. . .
Across every major news source, Democrats offer more favorable assessments than do independents or Republicans. The partisan divide is smallest when it comes to local TV news, which 83% of Democrats rate favorably along with 76% of Republicans. The differences are greatest for major national newspapers, such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Fully 79% of Democrats rate these newspapers favorably compared with just 41% of Republicans, based on those able to rate them.

Journalism has a problem.  Continuing to loudly proclaim “But we aren’t biased, really, it’s our audience that’s biased!” isn’t going to solve the problem.  Only when journalism as an industry comes to grips with their fundamental biases and prejudices will they begin to recover their trade’s reputation.

Handy pocket definition to “right”

A right is what you can do without anyone else being involved.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (originally, Jefferson wrote “property” rather than “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, by the way) are rights. You have the right to enjoy them, but you don’t have the right to demand that other people sacrifice theirs for yours–they’re rights for everybody, not just the privileged few.

There is a right to health, but there is no right to health care.  When you say you have a right to health care, you’re saying that you have a right to command someone else’s behavior–in this case to command service for purposes of your own, personal, selfish health–without regard to the wants or needs of the person you’re commanding.  There’s another word for that.

Slavery.

Using that ‘logic’ thing

Tigerhawk[*1] links to Ramish Ponnuru, writing at Time.com[*2] :

There are two basic points about health-care reform that President Obama wants to convey. The first is that, as he put it in an ABC special in June, “the status quo is untenable.” Our health-care system is rife with “skewed incentives.” It gives us “a whole bunch of care” that “may not be making us healthier.” It generates too many specialists and not enough primary-care physicians. It is “bankrupting families,” “bankrupting businesses” and “bankrupting our government at the state and federal level. So we know things are going to have to change.”

Obama’s second major point is that–to quote from the same broadcast–“if you are happy with your plan and you are happy with your doctor, then we don’t want you to have to change … So what we’re saying is, If you are happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it.”

So the system is an unsustainable disaster, but you can keep your piece of it if you want. And the Democrats wonder why selling health-care reform to the public has been so hard?

This pretty much sums up the incoherence of the argument for radically re-engineering our health care system.

Of course, this isn’t really about health care at all, it’s about increasing the government’s power over every single one of us–by seizing the literal power to decide who lives and who dies.  And hey!  Who wouldn’t want Obama and his Chicago machine cronies to have that hanging over them?

Tonight, we are all Kenneth Gladney

Kenneth Gladney is the (black) guy who was (allegedly) beaten by a pair of SEIU union thugs in St. Louis, for doing nothing more than trying to make a buck off of the Tea Partiers.  Mary Katherine Ham at the Weekly Standard:

Gladney appeared on Neill Cavuto’s show today, with (his friend and attorney)David Brown. Some reports have called him a conservative activist, but both Brown and Gladney said he’s not. Gladney, who is currently unemployed, was at the event to sell buttons and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to attendees.

“He said, ‘What kind of n-word are you to be giving out this stuff?,’ and he snatched the button board. I snatched the button board back and he proceeded to hit me in the face.”

“They actually broke my glasses off of my face when they started beating me.”

“I was just there to try to make an honest dollar and try to learn something about this type of gathering.”

“I just don’t think anyone should have to go through what I went through.”

He also said he was not paid or asked to be at the event or to start any trouble.

In the video, a black man in a tan polo shirt (Gladney) is clearly being picked up and pulled to the ground by a much larger white man wearing the signature purple SEIU t-shirt (:05).

A black man and a white man, both wearing SEIU t-shirts walk away from the melee after other protesters bring attention to it, and call for police. The black SEIU member, rubbing his shoulder, says at one point, “He pushed me,” as protesters accuse him of attacking the man in the tan shirt. The black SEIU guy sounds like he’s looking for his “keys,” but I can’t be sure. In the background, the white SEIU guy is in a verbal argument with someone in a white polo who says, “You attacked him. You’re going to jail!,” which elicits and “F*** you” from the white SEIU guy.

When Gladney is brought back over to the scene, this time with an escort, he yells, “Where are my glasses?” at which point the black SEIU guy seems to hand something over to him, but it’s obscured.

“What the hell is wrong with y’all?” Gladney exclaims. “Why’d you hit me? Did I bother you?” (0:43)

The camera then pans back to the man in the white polo and the white SEIU guy:

“You attacked that guy for nothing,” says white polo.

“No, we didn’t attack him for nothing,” SEUI guy replied, adding something I can’t understand. (:53)

A black guy, just trying to earn some money, gets rolled over by President Obama’s minions. An apt analogy for what’s happening in America generally right now.  It’s up to Obama now to call off his hit squads and goons, and let the raucous, loud, sometimes uncomfortable but always non-violent American political discussion continue.

If he doesn’t, this will escalate, and not even The One will be able to fully control events if that happens.

The whole world is watching.

U.S. debt tops $1.3 trillion

That’s $1,300,000,000,000[*1] .

Outlays rose by almost 530 billion dollars, or 21 percent, and revenues fell by more than 350 billion dollars, or 17 percent, compared with the amounts recorded during the same period last year, the non-partisan CBO said.

So, what’s the natural response when your spending goes up, and your income goes down?  If you’re the Democrats, the answer is obvious: spend even more money, of course!  And send the thugs around to intimdate anyone who might stand up and wonder if this is really a good idea.

Meanwhile, the national debt works out to be about $4,275 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. today.

It’s you were born today, welcome to the world, little one!   Here’s your bill!