Bent Notes

I haven’t had much to say about where I stand regarding benefit of the doubt for the president-elect.  Certainly it’s on my mind a lot.  There’s no shortage of column space in this world devoted to the subject, that’s for sure. 

After much swirling around of my thoughts and feelings on the matter, I’ve landed on something pretty close to what Michael Medved comes up with in his Townhall.com piece today.  Barack Obama remains, in my estimation, a hardcore leftwinger with truly frightening policy proclivities and a majority of personality traits that I find off-putting if not disgusting.  That said, there is no alternative universe to run to.  He will take the oath of office on January 20.  He is assembling his administration in the most precarious time I have personally ever witnessed.  It would be foolish to wish him anything but the best - the most refined judgement he can muster,  and the most favorable circumstances fate can bestow.

The unfortunate quality of Medved’s let’s-hold-off-and-see-what-he-puts-in-place stance is that, given the dizzying pace with which economic and security-related events are unfolding, as well as the aggressiveness with which Obama is pursuing his vision, it becomes more superceded hourly by developments that we must decry as alarming.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is full of articles, columns and editorial comment that make plain the madness of the FHer regime’s approach.  Everything about it is the exact opposite of a real remedy for the ills of the day.  On page A8, for instance, is a story about how the regulatory machine is gearing up.  Top Obama aide Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, crows that the “agenda is going to be bold.”  “Activists” will run the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the EPA and the Department of Labor.

One can see it coming, like the next stage of a cancer:  The very measures that have damaged and possibly killed our domestic auto industry - unsustainable UAW contracts, CAFE standards - are just the beginning of what the new regime wants to impose on the (formerly) Big Three.  The editorial page of today’s WSJ features a required-reading alarm bell entitled “The Environmental Motor Company.”

Let’s continue to extend the benefit of the doubt where we can as much as we can, but let’s also plainly state things that become clear.  One is the fact that the new administration is going to distort the notion of private ownership of business, base policy on a sham scientific concept (climate change), and seize more of citizens’ assets to pay for it.  This, at a time when the economy is screaming for people to be able to keep more of what they are earning.

The American public voted for this to transpire.  That may be the most disorientingly irrational aspect of our current juncture.  These are not times to expect encouragement for proceeding in a sane and rigorously reasoned way.  The kudos in post-modern America go to those who conduct their affairs in the opposite manner.

The Montana senator gets explicit about where the general FHer approach to health care was headed.

Look for more Politburo members to feel similarly empowered now that we’ve entered the age of Hope and Change.

A Wall Street Journal editorial today makes a point that ought to be obvious but sadly is not in postmodern America - the kind of auto-industry bailout favored by the governor and senator of Michigan would reward the UAW for bloating the budgets of the old-line Big Three carmakers and be unfair to the non-unionized workers at the car plants of Toyota, Honda et al.

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.

Virginia Representative Jim Moran on the “simplistic notion” that wealthy people get to keep their money.

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.

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.

While world markets crash and burn and America’s enemies continue to work their machinations, Bareny Frank says he’d gut the military budget by 25 percent, ladle out another Santa Claus-style stimulus, and of course, increase taxes on “the rich.”

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?

Neo-neocon on the well-honed FHer art of avoiding key facts that would stand in the way of the prevailing template they are establishing.

Your 401(k) is not safe from House FHers.

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.

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.

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.

A Wall Street Journal editorial asking, just what is a “windfall profit,” anyway?

When you hear the Freedom-Hater candidate for prez talk about increasing subsidies for public housing, inhale deeply so you can detect the stench of backed up sewage.

On the day the W says outright - finally - that we need to drill in ANWR, what do the House Freedom-Haters call for?

Nationalizing the country’s oil refineries.

We’re the frogs, and the water’s just about at full boil.

The jack-booted totalitarians in charge of the U.S. Senate aren’t even waiting for the Marxist From Chicago to take office.  They’re pushing a bill right now - as in as I type this - on the floor of their utterly degraded chamber - to impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies.  Of course, those companies can avoid the tax if they “invest” the “extra” profit in alternative energies.

Get a clue, America, before we’re all hauled off to the re-education camps.

Pete Stark and his Socialists have a plan to wreck the economy and make an ignorant populace forget human liberty ever existed.

He Who Doesn’t Walk On Water After All didn’t have a good night at the debate last evening, but his low point came when he addressed the capital gains tax and made a downright ass of himself.