Ruminations on music, culture, America and the world stage
Neo-neocon points out that Rolling Stone was quite up-front about Rev. Wright and The Chicago Marxist’s radicalism in general in February 2007. Neo-neocon has highlighted in boldface the most telling passages ffrom the description.
. . . for strongly condemning what’s been going on in Toledo, which is a foretaste of the Stasi-like means of dealing with those who dare to exercise their constitutional freedoms that we can expect once the FHers institute one-party rule.
Audio from his appearance on a call-in show on a Chicago public radio station in 2001.
If this guy doesn’t horrify you, you have voluntarily become an idiot.
. . . because MSM outlets like the LA Times will be revived from their flatline status and empowered to dispense the party line and keep a lid on the truth.
Barack Obama, Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were all at the big dinner for Rashid Khalidi.
We don’t have to wait for election day for things to get grim and sinister.
Last night at the annual gala fundraiser for the Columbus Area Arts Council, I received the Mayor’s Arts in Education award.
I’m awed, humbled and honored. You just never know who’s observing you as you make your way through life. And to have such an observer conclude that you’re making a contribution. Now, that’s the really good stuff.
And he gets an award from some “affordable housing” outfit.
Remember, this guy’s homosexual lover was a bigwig at Fannie Mae when the wheels started to come off.
Can the madness be stopped?
Since my conversion to conservatism happened over twenty years ago, I’ve had plenty of election cycles to learn how to process all the feelings I have about knowing how most of my friends and professional associates are going to vote. It’s not been easy, and when I thought the situation warranted it, I’d speak up – come out, so to speak. And, of course, there were ongoing policy schisms even between elections. People at a Unitarian-Universalist “fellowship” in which I once was active still recall the day I stormed out of a service over the minister’s use of his sermon to bash Reagan’s Central America policy. During my stint as board chair of the Indiana Council on World Affairs, I wasn’t always completely successful about biting my tongue.
Several factors, some obvious and noted elsewhere, make this campaign season different. I wouldn’t be the first to point out the fact that this year’s FHer presidential candidate is far to the left of anyone that party has ever fielded, including McGovern and Carter. There’s the unavoidable hooplah about his race, and there’s his perfect suitability for rock-star status, and the MSM euphoria about that.
The perfect-storm quality of the scenario shaping up this fall, though, stems from the combination of the above factors with the inevitability of larger FHer majorities in both houses of Congress than were established in 2006. Harry “This war is lost” Reid, Nancy “There’s-been-Catholic-debate-about-when-life-begins-going-back-to-the-third-century” Pelosi and Barack Chicago-Annenberg-Challenge-ACORN-Rashid-Khalidi-corporate-tax-hikes-talk-to-Ahmadinejad-federal-judges-who-decide-based-on-how-beleagured-groups-in-society-feel-citizen-of-the-world-who-will-stop-the-rising-of-the-seas Obama will form a triumvirate, a triumvirate that, unlike the ideologically muddled George Bush or John McCain, will have a keenly precise vision of the direction in which they want to take this country. When they sit down and roll up their sleeves and say, “Let’s get to work,” horrifying things are going to happen quickly in the United States of America.
I guess I’m saying that, as I would look at friends’ yard signs, bumper stickers or lapel buttons in election seasons past and shake my head or, in rare, generally carefully chosen situations, start something, even in my rage and frustration and sadness, I was bolstered by a backdrop of confidence that in a big, free, prosperous, rambunctious country like ours, any damage caused by the reification of their vision could eventually be undone. After all, I’d seen the startling change from the Jimmuh years to the Dutch years.
What the nice folks down the block, the folks I serve on boards and committees with, teach with, get gigs and writing assignments from, order crab cakes and wine from, party with are lining up with this year is the permanent alteration of this country’s basic character. What they’re signing onto is the curtailing of my freedom. What they are casting their lot with is the tipping of this economic downturn toward deep and long recession. They are, as Joe Biden said in a moment of indulging that goofy candor of his, ensuring a grave threat to the United States and a weak U.S. response to it.
They are just fellow citizens, fun, interesting people, people with car payments and/or kids in college and/or exciting career opportunities and/or interesting hobbies, just my buds and neighbors and colleagues. But they are about to deliver me, themselves and a civilization that has led the way in bettering the world for thousands of years into a darkness they haven’t stopped to consider.
Bill Ayers on how to deal with comrades for whom re-education didn’t take.
The FHers aren’t even trying to candy-coat what they have in store now. Barney Frank, for instance, makes it quite plain.
That, and the Joe Biden world-will-test-brilliant-young-president remark, ought to be game-changers. They’ll certainly tell us whether there’s still a critical mass of sanity in this country.
It’s a marvelous autumn Sunday morning – colors nearly at their peak. I’ve had a great weekend so far. Great gig Friday night with Carolyn, my violinist collaborator. We added some new tunes, got lots of positive response from the crowd. did a great radio show Saturday morning. Took Mrs. BN to the airport yesterday afternoon, then went to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a while, then went downtown in Indy for some beers and wings.
It’s just noon and I’ve already written in my journal, gone to the gym (chest, arms and cardio) and church, and now I have some Sunday-dinner chicken in the oven.
I must be pretty good at compartmentalizing, because I am grateful for and gratified by all these things, but I also still feel that undercurrent of nausea and doom I’ve mentioned in some recent posts.
At the gym, I caught a bit of McCain’s appearance on Chris Wallace’s show on Fox News. The dread I felt duting the primaries is back full force. This guy is beyond lame. In a response to Chris’s question about whether he has become too focused on attacking THe Chicago Marxist for the Ayers connection, he drools the same lame, meaningless, harmful sputum about “reaching across the aisle,” “Americans hurting,” and “getting the economy back on track.” Nothing about how The Chicago Marxist’s tax policy, financial-meltdown policy, energy policy and health-care policy are completely to be expected given that his views were shaped by the likes of Ayers, Wright, Frank Marshall Davis, Saul Alinksy’s “Rules for Radicals” and Democrat immersion in general. No a word.
Then there’s the fairly-official leaking of probable cabinet choices, basically the same lineup Bob Beckel predicted and to which I linked a few posts ago. A Who’s Who of defeat and socialism.
Then there’s the Colin Powell endorsement. Of course, we always knew he was from the same mush-head wing of the GOP that gave us W and McCain, the wing utterly lacking in any kind of consistent worldview or set of core principles. Nice people with good hearts all, but, and I mean this will the utmost seriousness, ultimately intellectual lightweights. Hell, Powell comes right out and says that more conservative appointments to the Supreme Cout would bother him.
As I say, I must be good at compartmentalizing. Or maybe I’m just savoring these final days of the normal, free, prosperous American life I’ve experienced for fifty-three years. My fridge is full, as is my inbox for writing assignments. Some good gigs on the calendar. Time to savor the moment. A year from now – no, I can’t go there. Not on this gorgeous Sunday. I just can’t.
During the primary season, when it looked increasingly likely that John McCain would be the GOP nominee, it was hard not to despair. Except for the never-in-the-running Ron Paul, none of the candidates was further away from a consistent and robust conservative vision. Where is a succinct defense of human freedom, American exceptionalism and common sense going to come from, we howled into the darkness.
Once he was nominated, things didn’t improve until that late Friday morning in Dayton when Barracuda made her national debut.
She was, and remains, a repository for our principles, values and passions, but it quickly became clear that her persona was too fraught with particulars for the focus on her to remain on the level of ideas.
I’ve – and I know I speak for millions of us – have been walking around in a state of combined numbness and nausea for the last few weeks as McCain has proceeded true to form. Lame debate performances, poisonously harmful crud about how “you wouldn’t have to be afraid of an Obama presidency,” a muddied message on the roots of the current economic mess. When I could muster up enough hope to pray, it would be for some vessel from which to dispense the conservative message with unmistakable and instantly appealing clarity to any and all Americans still capable of actual thought and mature reasoning.
He came along this week. It started with his question to The Chicago Marxist about raising taxes, which pointed up in less than fifty words the naked socialism of what TCM’splan is about more forcefully than all the blog posts devoted to the subject here and at hundreds of other freedom-loving sites. Then came his round of appearances on various MSM outlets yesterday in which he got the chance to share his – our – views on a few other subjects, such as immigration.
Then this morning came Biden’s inevitable attack. What’s the applicable word here? Arrogance doesn’t do it justice, nor does hubris. What’s the proper way to characterize the mockery of someone who stands up for the right to keep his own hard-earned money rather than turn it over to the government for the furthering of totalitarianism?
We know just enough about Joe. He’s healthy fit, smart, articulate, good at what he does, and ambitious. If ever there was a public figure, which he now is, about whom family arrangements, tastes in food sports or music, mode of transportation, or even level of formal education was not relevant to the thunderous undeniability of what he said that made him famous, it’s Joe the Plumber.
He wants the America we’ve had for 230 years, not a socialist dictatorship.
Again, a figure perfectly suited to populist rallying has emerged to give John McCain yet one more shot at, as Rush puts it, “being dragged over the finish line.”
That these out-of-nowhere lifelines keep appearing despite McCain’s indifference to the only vision that can prevent the end of the American experiment I take as evidence of a God who is indeed on our side.
First time the Indianapolis Colts have ever played at home with sunlight beaming onto their helmets.
The game was a classic example of what early momentum can do for your attitude. One kind of wonders the point at which Baltimore saw the writing on the wall.
One of those figures in rock and roll history that have come to be overlooked as the years have unfolded, but whose combination of kitsch in presentation and breadth in what he presented (Lovin’ Spoonful, Shangri-Las, Peter, Paul & Mary) spoke more about what 60s pop culture was really about than a lot of the stuff that gets examined nowadays. Host of a Los Angeles-based syndicated dance show that was about three tiers down in production values down from Shindig, Hullabaloo and American Bandstand, he specialized in corny antics like this exercise-bike ride to the Georgie Fame record “Get Away.”
He went on to host game shows and has a daughter in country music.
Age 81.
That beacon of clarity, that national treasure John Bolton on the implications of delisting North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism days after NorKor’s missile tests and kicking-out of IAEA inspectors.
Your required reading for today: WSJ editorial on what a load of hooey the 95-percent-of-households-get-tax-cuts line is.
There are seven “tax credits” that are key to the Chicago Marxists plan. Six of them are “refundable,” which means you get a damn check from the US Treasury whether or not you have any tax liability.
Now, consider the size of the increased burden on that other 5 percent – the most successful and job-creating among us.
Now consider that these “credits” get phased out for the lower-income folks as their incomes rise.
It’s really quite simple what The Chicago Marxist proposes to do: seize money from successful people using the state’s monopoly on the legitimate use of force, give it to other groups, and then discourage those groups from aspiring to success themselves.
There are a lot of “smoking-gun” videos and other snippets of documentation of The Chicago Marxist’s true worldview and agenda floating around now, and that’s very good. I really hesitate to assign superlatives to any of them, but this one – his assurances to the crowd at an ACORN converntion in early 2007 – may be the most directly damning.
Send it everywhere.
Remember, during the Chicago Annenberg Challenge days, Obama shoveled all kinds of grant money into Bill Ayers’s programs.
This is the educational model they were putting forth.
