Bent Notes

Al Franken, that embodiment of the nexus of childishness, the totalitarian impulse and mediocrity, takes his Minnesota recount loss to court.

And Harry Reid appears to have his back.

The FHer way: find a judge to give you the results you couldn’t get by constitutional means.

It’s 9:50.  The Chicago Marxist has 200 electoral votes.  I don’t have much to say.

I know I won’t watch any Grant Park Triumph-of-the-Will gloatfest.

This was such a glorious country.  We showed the world so much about freedom and possibility and dignity and how to create prosperity.

I think I’m going to go to bed.

It’s early afternoon.  There’s still this resolve to see things optimistically on the part of my people, both personal friends with whom I’m in touch as well as the boggers I’m reading and the talk-radio hosts I’m listening to.

The situation in Philadelphia - Black Panthers blocking a polling place - is getting a lot of attention right now.

Part of me is emotionally exhausted and part of me is on fire.  It’s weird to be host creature to both states simultaneously.

I only knew one person in the line at my polling place, an artist buddy of mine whom I know to be a consistent FHer voter.  It was so weird to make small talk with him about what’s going on around town musically, and then watch him get behind the machine, knowing full well what he was doing, what buttons he was pushing.

At the risk of sounding like some therapist’s patient, I am wondering what I do with this thought I harbor whenever I come in contact with someone who I know full well voted the FHer ticket.  There’s a lot of someones in that category - social friends, professional associates, relatives.  The inescapable fact is that there is some level on which they are the enemy.  These are people who have taken a concrete action which jeopardizes my freedom and my future.  So, as I say, wht do I do?  I can’t jettison the lot of them and re-people my life. Plus, most of them are nice, even wonderful, if horrifyingly misguided, folks.

I know one thing.  Whether Mr. Reasonable Gentleman can squeak through, or whether the Chicago Marxist emerges victorious, there must be a from-the-ground-up reassessment of how to get conservatism to flourish again.

The first principle by which we must be guided is zero tolerance for anything less than total clarity. No McCain-esque distractions and vacuous platitudes about “fighting the status quo in Washington” or “fighting for what’s right for America” or “putting country first.”  Such crap means nothing.  An FHer could utter the same phrases.  Indeed, the Chicago Marxist does employ very similar rhetoric.  No, what we talk about are the specific principles for which we’re willing to fight to the death: the original intent of the Constitution’s framers, free-market economics, American exceptionalism, an America that does not hesitate to respond fiercely and ruthlessly to its enemies’ provocations, and America that demonstrates unwavering loyalty to nations that share these principles, the primacy of family as the basic unit of human organization, and a culture characterized by dignity, depth, decency and real inspiration.

We must expect loud arguments amongst ourselves, finger-pointing and bitterness.  Obviously, the wheels came off our movement and we must find out why.  This is why we’d all be well-advised to enter into this foundational examination with as much prayerfulness and mindfulness of our common aims as possible.  Eventually, the the useless sand of confusion will get sifted out and the nuggets of what we were seeking will be all that remains on the fine-mesh screen.

I look back at this year - my personal successes, some episodes of illness in our household and family, memorable times with friends, the spring’s tornadoes and floods, the spike in gas prices, the financial meltdown, the embrace by a frighteningly large segment of the population of socialism - and ask myself what it all has taught me.  I’d say that the biggest lesson at this point is that, in human life, the visceral and the spiritual are inextricably intertwined.  In fact, I’m sort of considering the possibility that the more one progresses on the spiritual journey, the more reality’s upside-the-head aspect becomes impossible to avoid.

Sure on the surface, it looks like his forthright assertion that his cap-and-trade scheme’s effects of “skyrocketing prices” for coal-engendered energy and the bankrupting of the coal industry is all about his principled fealty to pristine air.  Don’t kid yourself.  It’s all about a Stalinist thug’s lust for absolute power.

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.

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.

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.

What happened to a Republican Oklahoma woman when she responded candidly to an Obama volunteer.

74 percent of CEOs surveyed by Chief Executive magazine think the Chicago Marxist’s economic policies would be a disaster.

1994, Citibank.

I think all of us recall our parents saying, in response to our trotting-out of evidence that we were the only ones among our peers who wouldn’t be participating in some social activity, “I don’t care if all the twelve-year-olds in the world are going to be doing it; you’re not.”  The underlying message was that majority opinion about the merit of something has nothing to do with whether it makes sense or is good from a moral standpoint.

I think about this not only terms of poll numbers showing the relative appeal of our two major parties or two major persidential candidates, but also an assumption I get tossed at me in conversations with left-leaners, either in person or in BN discussion threads. 

It’s actually rather amusing to see this looks-like-your-people-are-getting-their-commeuppance stance interjected into the current state of affairs.  “Republicans are about to get hammered because the people want a change after eight years of what they’ve been handed.”  It’s a bit like they’re assuming you had a stake in a particular pop singer making it to the American Idol finals when a little real observation would have shown that you were rooting for the warbler of arias.

The irony is that, in terms of the words being uttered, there is complete agreement.  Absolutely, if the Pubs get hammered, they have themselves to blame.  The departure lies in why each side thinks this is so.  What the left-leaners mean by this is that the Iraq invasion was a mistake, the Patriot Act was a heavy-handed intrusion into privacy, the unchecked free market widened the gap between haves and have-nots and so on.  No, if the Pubs get trounced, it will be because they indulged in pork-barrel spending as flagrantly as the FHers, let the State Department turn our foreign policy into mush, didn’t insist  on up-or-down votes for judicial nominees, and let our borders continue to be sieves.

To paraphrase dear old mom and dad, it doesn’t matter if the entire population behaves like lemmings and goes over the cliff, free markets, a foreign policy based on an understanding of history, and fealty to Greco-Roman / Judeo-Christian values and principles are always right, and departure from these approaches is always wrong.

Yes, it’s wonderful when you get elected leaders like Dutch and Newt - and, to use current examples, Jeb Hensarling and Mike Pence - who stand for these things, and we constantly fight to bring that about, but the political brand name more closely associated with them being in bad shape has nothing to do with whether we’ll keep affirming them.

If John McCain beats Barack Obama, freedom’s prospects will only be marginally better.  We’ll still have big-time work cut out for us.  We’ll still be choking on that “green” hooey, and kiss-it-and-make-it-well schemes like the Treasury Secretary directly buying up bad morgages.  “Comprehensive” immigration policy. 

In fact, about all we could count on in the way of sensible positions would be low taxes and resolve toward our enemies.  So, yes, when push comes to shove, it is , however incrementally, better if Pubs do well.  They are capable of responding to wake-up calls, as opposed to FHers, with whom it’s just fine if it all goes to hell, as long as they have power.

We’re - I mean conservatives - not going anywhere.  We’re not in decline, our vision isn’t diluted or distorted, and our energy isn’t sapped.  What makes sense and what is right doesn’t change.  We’ll continue to live accordingly and work at persuading our fellows to do likewise.

The task is just a little more daunting if The FHers make a totalitarian police state out of the country.

What is there to say?  McCain is saying the good stuff where the good stuff needs to be said.  Low taxes for everybody.  Awful where you’d expect him to be.  Global warming is real.  Reach across the aisle and get things done.

Obama is being his Stalinist, redistributionist self.

No surprises as of 9:47, which means I’m not too encouraged.

Tom Brokaw is kind of fun to watch with this “gentlemen, I’m just trying to adhere to time rules you both signed off on” thing he’s got going.

UPDATE: Turns out I do have more to say.  The Chicago Marxist is saying health care is a right.  Can’t say how he’s going to pay for the “lowering of costs” for small businesses’ health benefits for employees.

The Chicago Marxist is standing by his opposition to the Iraq invasion.  Oh, jeez, here comes the diminished-respect-in-the-world crud.

Now, I’m getting bugged at Tom Brokaw.  He comes up with his own question about “non-combat use of military forces.”  What a nonsensical distraction.  For God’s sake, everybody, Iran is weeks away from having a deliverable nuke.  Russia is collaborating militarily with Venezuela.  Can we leave the “humanitarian” stuff to the packers of boxes of powdered milk?

 Intelligent audience question about Pakistan’s sovereignty.  The Chicago Marxist begins his response with that eye-off-the-ball-by-getting-preoccupied-with-Iraq meme.  He says a few things - help the new government of Pakistan, etc. - and winds up saying that should push come to shove, yes, you go in after al-Qaeda.

Actually, that is indeed the deal, but McCain is right that it’s a bit premature to bluster about it.

I’m so often wrong about how these debates are going when I make my real-time assessments, given that I generally have a snoot full of cocktails and dinner wine by the time they get going, but this looks like less than the degree of decisiveness McCain needs tonight.

Well, now, hold on.  McCain is getting into Petraeus’s success and The Chicago Marxist’s refusal to admit being wrong about the surge.  Maybe Mav is kicking more ass than I’m taking into account.  NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine. 

THe Chicago Marxist gives a pretty doo-dah response.  “We need to see these challenges before they happen.”  Kind of like the warnings Clinton and Gore issued about Saddam Hussen ten years ago, Senator?

Tom asks, “Is Russia today an evi empire?”  A doo-dah waste of debate minutes if I ever heard one.  I do like McCain’s answer: “Maybe.”

Oooh, good question.  Navy guy asks about supporting Israel if it has to go after Iran.  Mccain stalls, treads water saying “Iran is a threat with its nuclear program.”   Well, duh.  Tough sanctions to modify Iran’s behavior.  We can never allow a second holocaust.  Nothing substantive in the way of an answer to the Navy guy’s questions.

Ditto the Chicago Marxist.  Blah blah blah.

Talk to the bad guys.

Ah, I see there’s still a half bottle of that California zinfandel left. 

It was such a great 230-year run.

POST MORTEM: John McCain is a tired old has-been with a half-baked, weirdo worldview who probably isn’t up to saving America from an interim period of Stalinism, followed by defeat at the hands of ourenemies.

Have you noticed the meme being puked on command by the Chicago Marxist’s camp all day today whenever asked about the Ayers connection?  It’s instantly “I think the American people want to talk about the big issues, whether they’ll be able to keep their jobs and houses and retirement accounts.”

Th paraphrase the Chicago Marxist, a leader must be able to focus on a few things at a time.  We can examine his freedom-hating career and life and still obliterate his freedom-hating position on what to do about our current economic situation.

He was buds with Ayers and knew about his past. 

There, that one’s dealt with. 

 His tax hikes on capital gains, corporate earnings and inheritance - and let’s not forget the incomes of people making over $250,000 - would be disastrous. 

And the economic front involves his connections as well.  Frankin Raines, Jim Johnson, ACORN’s bank fairs that were staged to intimidate lending institutions to grant mortgages to unqualified borrowers.

There, that one’s dealt with.

At least here.  Let’s just hope The Maverick gets both messages across this evening.  

To get at documentation about fraudulent voter registration.

 The only real problem for me, and all my homies here at BN, being that our freedom, and this Western civilization that has made our lives so liveable, goes down the tubes if you don’t get a clue, and pronto.

 This s— of not letting your campaign bring up Rev. Wright is not just suicidal but genocidal.

1.) This constant use of the term “middle class” by Biden and the Chicago Marxist.  It’s being employed to plant the notion of a zero-sum game in voters’ minds, as if tax “breaks” for corporations or “the wealthy” somehow somehow deprive “ordinary” Americans of income.  Pretty easy to demolish, really.  Point out that some 40 percent of U.S. households don’t pay any taxes, and the top 10 percent of earners pay well over 50 percent of the nation’s taxes.  Then point out that the Chicago Marxist is being disingenuous to the point of intelligence-insulting with his condemnation of “tax breaks” (grrrrr, there’s that term again; I’ll get back to that one shortly) for corporations that “ship jobs overseas.”  They do so PRECISELY BECAUSE THEY FIND A MORE FAVORABLE TAX ENVIRONMENT IN SOME OTHER COUNTRY.  The whole thing can be condensed to a soundbite-sized rebuttal: No one in this country - no individual or business - needs to pay once cent more in taxes.

2.) The Chicago Marxist’s health-care proposal.  As with all FHer schemes, there are two parts to this one: the Santa Claus part, and the how-we’ll-pay-for-it part.  Here’s how you nuke this one: the Santa Claus part involves a narrowing of the individual’s range of choices, and the second part involves naked wealth redistribution.  (See item one and the theft of the money of those with incomes over $250,000.)  That’s really as wonky as you need to get.  Again, this one can be condensed to a soundbite that tells the whole story: SENATOR OBAMA, IT’S NOT YOUR MONEY.

Oh, yeah, and demolish this business about tax “breaks.”  Once again, it’s an attempt to get voters to think that high tax rates for a particular group were some kind of baseline, and that any subsequent lowering of that was some kind of deviation, a momentary respite because the government, benevolent entity that it is, wanted to give them a leg up for a little while, and that now it’s time for such a group to return to “patriotic” levels of coughing up its money.

The American people aren’t idiots.  If this stuff were expalined to them exactly like this, they’d see what was really going on.

. . . no longer stands for “mainstream,” but rather “Marxist Suck-up.”

Exhibit A is Douglass Daniel’s AP “analysis” of Sarah Palin’s remarks referenced in the last post.  In the first paragraph, he used the term “racially tinged,” and I thought, Huh?  So I read down a few more graphs, to where he says that, Palin and the McCain campaign run the risk of her “not the way we see America” comment being perceived as racist, “whether it was meant that way or not.”

Well, s—!  No one was going to see it that way UNTIL YOU ENGAGED IN THIS VULGAR RACE-BAITING, YOU STINKING TOTALITARIAN CHUNK OF DOG VOMIT!

Then there’s Tom Brokaw’s characterization of Bill Ayers as having evolved from a “radical” into an “educational reformer.”

When I first heard Sean Hannity declare that 2008 marked the death of the profession of journalism, I thought it was a bit overheated, a purple moment of talk-show hyperbole.

No, he is spot-on.

Well, Barracuda, you’re definitely doing what I said you needed to do in the last post.

Beautiful.  Magnificent. Marvelous.

“We gotta start telling the electorate what the other side represents.”

I’ve felt, since I saw her debut as veep candidate in Dayton, that it wasn’t the gosh-darn factor, the record of leadership in Alaska, or the strong marriage and big family that was what mainly made her a formidable asset.  I could just see that, within that snappy, attractive package was someone capable of waging war.

As I’ve said for months here at BN, you don’t go up against the Freedom Haters with anything less than a war mentality.  Even a fourth-generation military man like McCain doesn’t understand that.  Left to his own devices, he’d roll over for his own public, nationally broadcast disemboweling.

Fortunately, he has Barracuda now to be fierce for him, and for us.

Pour it on, Governor. Hourly, for the next thirty days.