About That Tea Party Thing...

I was just watching Fox News' live coverage of the Tea Party convention. A few thoughts.

1. All that "smaller government" stuff: Right On!

2. All that "lower taxes" thing: Couldn't agree more!

3. All that stuff about "Former" Speaker Pelosi and "Former Senator Reid"; Took the words right out of my mouth!

4. Defend the nation against Terrorists and Illegal Aliens: You said it, Bruddah!

5. Rebuild the American Economy! Drill, Baby, Drill!: Why, I think I'm gettin' the vapors!

I'm diggin' this thing, lock, stock and barrel. And then....It Happened.

Sarah Palin comes on and starts answering questions. She's looking hot tonight, too. She's making sense. I can dig her rap. There's all this "Run, Sarah, Run" stuff, which is a bit contrived and cheesy, but it's obvious that Palin is eating that shit up, despite the attempt to appear all sheepish and demure. Typical politician crap. Pretty much what you'd expect. I'm still with ya, although "Run, Sarah, Run" is a bit too much.

And then She uttered those words...and they lost me. Thanks a lot, Sarah! It was like coitus interruptus.

She said those magic words; "We shouldn't be afraid to be a God-fearing Nation, again!"

Rousing applause.

Sorry, you've just lost me. I might vomit.

I'm not signing on so that some people who believe in an Invisible Man in the Sky can gain political power. Everywhere that's happened, chaos, and societal and technical stagnation most usually follow. I submit as evidence: The Muslim Caliphates, Confucian China, Ancient Egypt, Byzantium, The Mayan and Aztec Empires, Imperial Spain, Europe in the pre-Reformation days. Besides, most of the folks that I personally know who are Born-Again or Evangelical Christians were some of the biggest fuck-ups on Earth before they "found" God. I certainly wouldn't let most of them watch my liquor cabinet, fuck-all if I want them to write the laws in this country.

Because they were usually drug addicts, ex-hippies, drunks, degenerate gamblers, serial adulterers, and the concepts of God and organized religion offered them away to salvage what was left of their self-esteem. It's cheaper than a psychiatrist, and easier than a 12-step program. All you have to do is suspend belief in reality, which, let's face it, ain't all it's cracked up to be. It's a surrender most folks are willing, perhaps even eager, to make, unless they stop to think about it first.

If you believe in a God that gives the "gift" of Free Will, and then demands that you use it in the way She (God must be female, because no man could concoct such a system of contradictory bullshit and still demand to be worshiped) wanted you to, and if you don't you're doomed, then you might be out of your mind. If you believe that "God has a plan" and "works in mysterious ways" and don't recognize that as a substitute for "I really don't know why things happen the way they do, and I can't be bothered to expend braincells to think any on it", then no wonder you fell for religion in the first place.

However, I'm not all a rainy day when it comes to Faith. If you have it, and it helps you, and it gives you some sort of direction and moral compass, then fine. I just don't have to hear about it (it's all some of you can talk about!), and I certainly don't want you to run a country based on the idea that God talks to you, She answers prayers, or that the Bible is the Ultimate Guide to Everything in the Universe. It's a book written by a bunch of guys with an agenda. So were Mein Kampf and Das Kapital, and people said the same things about those books, too. (Before you start flooding my inbox for daring to equate the Word of God with Communism, you should know that without Jesus, there could be no Karl Marx).

I was raised a Roman Catholic, and attended Catholic schools from 2nd through 12th grade. I probably have had more religion tossed my way than many Evangelicals. It's my considered opinion that it's a tremendous load of crap. And no, that isn't because I've been brainwashed by the Evil Papacy and Denied the True Word, it's because in the final analysis, religion preys upon human emotions: fear, envy, uncertainty, ignorance. It's intention is to manipulate people's emotions in such a way as to affect their behavior, usually in a way which is supposed to benefit The Church (whichever one that is) rather than the individuals who make that church up.

Many people have complained that they haven't been able to get into the Tea Party Convention, and others have complained about the fees required to get into some of those workshops and speaking engagements, and with the frequent references to God flying around there, it's possible that the Godbots Who Can Afford to Be There might be trying to keep their politically-aligned, but probably pagan, compatriots out.

Maybe because for those who have been barred, while may share the ideals of Liberty being discussed, they might not share the Blood of the Lamb.

Until I see something that proves it otherwise, I'm calling this what it appears to be; the same WASP elite (you know, the "Real Americans" -- the rest of us are just visitors to them), bearing a new version of the the White Man's Burden, and commanded to create the New Jerusalem -- the people who Liberals say really run the GOP, and who complain loudly that they really don't -- simply trotting out a new shade of lipstick on the same old pig.

Same crappy taste, nice new package.

If this was truly representative of what the Tea Party hopes to become, then they're making a huge mistake; the Republican Party failed because it was led astray by the prospect of divvying up political spoils to their own advantage in much the same way that democrats had done for generations. Not because it wasn't "faithful" or God-fearing enough -- that's Muslim talk; attributing failure, defeat or setback to a lack of piety, rather than a lack of reason.

If you think you can recreate the Republican party, and make it stronger, by doubling down on Faith, rigorously enforcing srtict orthodoxy, punishing or suppressing independent thought and conscience, then you're delusional. Doing things like that only turns you into the political version of the Ottoman Turks, The Persian Satraps and the Imperial Japanese -- cultures that all ultimately failed. Spectacularly.

Our current problems are here not because we don't pray enough. They're here because we don't think enough.

Less God, more brains, please...

Discuss.

Obviously-Stupid People Don't Belong in Public Office...

I must admit that I had no idea just who Kirsten Gillibrand was before she moved in to take Hitlery's Senate Seat. I can now see why I had no idea who she was: she's obviously stupid. Stupid people usually don't make the news, or even appear on the public's radar screen unless they manage to kill themselves while inflating their pool toys with the exhaust from the family Suburban whilst inside a locked garage, or they walk into the local emergency room with half a dozen Coke bottles stuck in their ass, indignantly insisting through the hails of derisive hospital-staff laughter that "I have no idea how they got there..."

You know, unless they're Darwin Award candidates, most people ignore stupid people, and they are allowed to live quiet, unassuming lives wallowing in their own ignorance and filth.

Unless they're stupid people who take up politics as a career, believing (and often proving!) that there's people out there even dumber than they are! In a perfect world, Kirsten Gillibrand would be anonymous, except to the people who loved her. But, even the most terminally doltish can have an ego sometimes, and so she entered politics, and proved so stunningly adept at stupidity that her party tapped her for a position which fairly screams for her particular brand of talent (that is, shut up and vote as we tell you to): U.S. Senator.

Now, Gillibrand is desperate to keep a job she really had no right to, that she didn't have to work for, and for which she was always intended to be little more than a mere placeholder. She shouldn't be: her only competition to date is another carpetbagger, Harold Ford, and I can say that New Yorkers -- after Hitlery's magnificent reign and Bobby Kennedy's rest stop in the Senate before he became the Second Kennedy with a Hole in His Head That Wasn't There At Birth -- have probably had quite enough of carpetbaggers, thank you. However, Gillibrand is probably under the mistaken impression that in order to keep this job that she didn't earn, that she'll have to "out-Left" Ford in a primary. That's Harold Ford, who has no connection to New York, no history here, and who probably couldn't win in this state if he handed out five dollar bills and handjobs at the voting booth (unless he manages to make the race about Race, in which case, all bets are off ). The only way to out-Left a Leftie in New York is to attach yourself to the Loopy Left, a collection of aging hippies, head cases, drug-legalizers and college-age Goths who refuse to ever grow up and shed the self-loathing that invades everything they do. There's electoral gold in them thar' hills, you know. She's now stumping with Van Jones, former Obama Green Energy Czar, Unrepentant Communist and 911 Troother, burnishing her far-left street cred, and on the plus side; Van Jones is yet another black man victimized by 'the system' and the "media" (especially by Glenn Beck). That's pure red meat -- goddamned Fillet Mignon! -- for the Recipient Classes of New York State.

They'll rally around a brother who only repeats what most of them stupidly believe, anyway. Wasn't no 19 Arabs who knocked down the Towers; only white people, like Joos and George Bush, could or would do something like that. But, I digress...

The New York Republican Party is a dysfunctional, muddle-headed bunch of idiots who couldn't organize a feeding frenzy in a shark tank, but one wonders if this race just isn't easy enough -- even for them! -- to swipe handily. Your democratic choices here will either be a really dopey second-stringer chosen for her ability to be led by the nose by Chucky Schumer (Gillibrand), or two men who have no record of accomplishments of their own, but who can point to the legacies of their fathers (Harold Ford, Jr, or Andrew Cuomo, if he decides not to run for Governor). Against this, the Republican party could probably run a three-legged German Shepherd with a speech impediment, and maybe win handily. But fear not; the NY Republican party will make every effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and probably recycle perennial loser Rick Lazio.

For those of you who have forgotten, Lazio is the guy the NY Repubs always tap (doesn't he have a real job?) when their primary candidate has to unexpectedly drop out of a race, and they need to stand someone to absorb the agony of defeat. Lazio stepped in for Rudy Giuliani when he dropped out of his Senate race -- and handed Hillary Clinton a victory by pulling an Al Gore and invading her personal space during a televised debate -- and I think (I'll have to check), he's lost at least two other races where he almost-literally parachutes in at the proverbial last minute. Rick Lazio should be sent to Afghanistan to run for the Taliban seat in the Hamid Karzai government, where his flair for spectacular loses might actually be of use to both his party and country.

As for Kirsten Gillibrand, anyone who would be seen with van Jones espusing 9/11 conspiracy theories in the very city most devastated by those attacks proves just how stupid she really is. We have enough morons in the Senate as it is. She should probably quit now.

And then maybe New Yorkers might find someone capable of breathing without mechanical assistance to run for public office in this state...of either party?

It's Crowded Under the Obama Bus...

Word is that Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, is in deep doo-doo.

As if refusing to treat terrorists like prisoners of war, or harboring Justice Department lawyers who once defended terrorists, or even accusing his own country of racism weren't enough, we are now learning that Mr. Holder runs his little judicial fief as if the people of this country, and his boss the President, don't exist. At least, that's the narrative the Obama Administration is starting to put out.

How else to explain his reasons as to why the Underwear Bomber was Mirandized within an hour? Why CIA Agents and Navy SEALS are legally harassed for doing their duty to their country? Why Black Panthers who stand armed vigil outside polling places for the purposes of intimidation aren't prosecuted, and why Congress has to repeatedly ask Holder the same questions that he apparently refuses to answer?

The rumblings are starting; "Eric Holder Must Go."

Just like Reverend Wright had to go. Just like Michelle had to be taken out of the public spotlight. Holder might soon be lifted clean out of the public view in the dark of night like Van Jones. You make Barry look bad, you threaten his approval ratings, you garner criticism from the Right and Bill O'Reilly, and you get run over.

When Bill Clinton had to get rid of inconvenient political liabilities they usually turned up dead, like Vince Foster, leading some people to use the term "Arkancide" for any Friend of Bill who fell out of favor and threatened his public image and political fortunes. By the last count that I'm aware of (and I'll admit, I have no evidence except what's been written on the Internet, so take that for what it's worth!), I think it's something like 56 people personally associated with Bill or Hillary, or their alleged underhanded-dealings who have died. Most under bizarre or questionable circumstances, either during their reign as Redneck King and Queen of Dogpatch (Arkansas), or as Co-Presidents of the United States. I don't mean to imply that Clinton had them killed (that he gave an order, that he assassinated then, nor to imply any overt action by the former President and his Trained Walrus with a Wal-Mart wedding ring), just that these folks died, and usually after they had been associated with some sort of scandal involving the President. Fifty-six people is an awful lot of coincidences, though, isn't it?

I wonder what you call it when you're about to be, symbolically, murdered by a Chicago Community Organizer? Send your suggestions for this new political term to the e-mail address above!

In any case, you wonder what runs through Eric Holder's head, and then you wonder how much of what Holder does (or rather, doesn't do) accurately reflects the orders he gets from his Boss? Does Holder really believe that the law-enforcement model of anti-terrorism works (despite evidence to the contrary that it doesn't), or is he simply "following orders", which, when that course of action becomes politically suspect, he must suffer the penalties for in order that Obama keep his skirts nice and clean? Stalin used to do that too, I hear.

Either way, someone has to go. It appears that Eric Holder is about to get sacrificed so that Barack Obama may maintain the illusion that he, ultimately, isn't responsible (have you ever met a man with so much responsibility who is ultimately so un-responsible, and perhaps, irresponsible?). A rogue Attorney General reigned in by a President who needed to 'pivot'...that'll be Eric Holder's political epithet.

Then he can go back to the lucrative terrorist defense attorney trade. It's what he was doing before he got this job, I think.

As an aside, there is an implication that Lindsey Graham, the annoying Senator from South Carolina, needs Holder's pelt as political cover to help Obama close Guantanamo Bay. If this is so, then Lindsey Graham is an asshole who should be voted out of office as quickly as possible. He obviously doesn't have the country's best interests at heart if he's willing to do something like that.

South Carolina Tea Partiers: you may have to find a candidate to run against Lindsey Graham. Think about it.

Barrel Bombs?

The "militants" who are a constant threat to the security of Israel have been reduced to this:

Filling barrels with explosives and floating them off Israeli beaches, hoping the will float ashore to be detonated... by cell phone. Doesn't that mean someone has to watch the barrel? What kind of a job is that for any self-respecting child-murdering, terrorist scumbag? What is this world coming to?

Some see it as a desperation move; the old methods of explosive vests, blowing up public transport, sending the mentally-ill into crowded markets with bombs attached, indiscriminately launching unguided rockets into schoolyards and public parks, no longer work. The Israelis haven't packed up and left, the West still exists. All that's been accomplished is that the Israelis simply respond by maintaining an ever-tighter blockade of the Palestinian 'Authority' that makes it difficult for the sand-niggers to smuggle weapons and explosives into the country for use against Jews.

Others see it as a means of distraction and misinforming the Israelis and Western nations, making it look as if the Palestinians are reduced to such pitiful attempts to kill Jews and Christians, which will be taken as a sign that Hamas and Hezbollah are on their last legs. Straightway, certain self-destructive segments of Western society will leap headlong to their defense on "humanitarian grounds" and give it a shitoad of money. If the embargo and blockade are severe enough to deprive the terrorists of explosives, it must, certainly, be depriving them of milk and bread, too. This is the regular modus operandi of the Palestinian Authority; it takes desperate action against Israel, highlights the self-inflicted "suffering of the Palestinian People", and Europeans who hope Hamas finishes the job Hitler started, shower them with cash.

Let them starve, I say. That's fewer we'll have to waste bullets on later.

There's another school of thought that paints such laughable (I'm not laughing; it's an explosive barrel, you moron!) attempts as a sign that maybe The Terrorists aren't exactly the brightest people on the planet, and that perhaps the tone of those who espouse the War on Terror is a bit too shrill, designed mainly to frighten people into the voting booths, or that terrorism is used as an excuse to denude our citizens of their Civil Rights unjustly for sinister ends. After all, the people who invented the barrel bomb are the same folks who invented the shoe bomb, and the great technical leap forward in that design was the Underwear Bomb; we're not dealing with the smartest, most-insidious people here, you see?

The point, in case you've missed it, is not to refine the technical sophistication of either their bombs or their plans. Their aim is to destroy airliners full of innocent people. The idea that a bomb went from someone's shoe to someone's jockstrap may seem ridiculously simplistic in a 6th-grade-giggling sort of way, but the idea that someone is out to kill hundreds simultaneously with as little effort or expense as possible is still a frightening one. The continual march towards that ultimate goal is what is important, not the technical means.

We're not fighting people who are out to razzle-dazzle us with their expertise and skill; they just want us dead, and in that battle, any weapon they manage to cobble together, no matter how seemingly laughable, is still a deadly threat.

A Call for Civility?

Who was that masked man, the one who stood before Congressional Democrats and claimed that he wanted to be a Uniter and Not a Divider? Where have I heard that ideal expressed before? My memory is failing me, and I...oh! Now I remember; that's what the last President -- you know, the one the current ones party called a knuckle-dragging idiot and warmonger?-- said about the bitter, partisan tone of our politics! Could it be that the Exalted One is yet again reaching back to the last Administration to find a policy idea that might actually work?

Because, you know, Obama's got this Copy Bush shtick down pat: today he wants civility in our political discourse, the other day in the State of the Union Address it was all about tax cuts. Gitmo, that symbol of Bush's auto-da-fey against brown people, is still open. The man that many of Obama's supporters said didn't lift a finger to save people of color in New Orleans is the first guy Obi Won goes to...to help save people of color in Haiti. You would think that Obama was secretly in love with the Bushman and his policies, the very one's he criticized relentlessly and unfairly during his own voyage to the White House.

Or, you could just conclude that Barack Obama is a cynical man who will do whatever he thinks he needs to maintain that coveted 'personal approval rating', an keep his dwindling re-election hopes alive. Perhaps the President could begin this new call for civility in our politics himself with a personal example; he could apologize to George W. Bush for all the mean and nasty things that democrats have said about him... before stealing his policies!

Another thing; could the President, perhaps, a) get off my television screen for a couple of days, and b) stop whining about everything under the sun? Civility might follow if perhaps you stopped lecturing at the masses, implying stupidity on their part, and crying like a bitch about how hard your life is; you asked for the job, now man-up and do it. Familiarity breeds contempt, you know; I would have more respect for you if I saw less of you, and was otherwise convinced that your were working and your teleprompter was not. I see you more than my wife...if I had one.

This President takes opposition personally, too. He has a very thin skin, and a very thick skull. He apparently doesn't listen to anyone (especially not himself, because if he did, he'd realize just what an ass he's making of himself), unless they're criticizing him; and then he only hears the criticism and not the reasons for it. Then again, if he listened to the reasons for the criticism it might cause a thoughtful, less-ideologically driven man, to review his policies and perhaps change them. This President only changes for the television cameras; all that talk about 'pivoting' and 'co-operation' is just so much horseshit. Perhaps another way to return some civility to our politics, Mr. President, is to stop being such a baby, and realize that you can't always get what you want. And no, opposition to your policies is not the same as opposition to you, you dummy!

I also liked the part where The Savior said we should stop watching television. Well, since he's on it all the goddamned time, maybe I will. At least I could save myself from six hours a day of Presidential lecturing (Ed. Note: I turn the television off whenever the asswipe hits the airwaves, anyways, unless it's a major speech and not the usual "I won, give me what I want you dumb-as-dogshit-peasant-assholes!) . But the idea that a public that is informed about what it's so-called leaders are doing is a bad thing, because it leads to partisan wrangling, is a laugher. Tell the truth, Barack; you don't us watching, you don't want us knowing. It's why you broke your eight promises about C-span and health care. As far as you're concerned, the television has but one use; to bring your divine visage into our living rooms where you will dispense golden-honey-touched wisdom, and we will simply conform and obey.

I politely respond; Fuck you. You can't have civility when you believe I'm not an independent person capable of rational thought, incapable of being given differeing points of view and sifting it all to arrive at a conclusion. That indicates a basic lack of basic respect on your part. If you don't respect me (and you don't; you only want my money so that you can give it to people who deserve fuck-all to buy their votes and adoration) and treat me like an idiot, don't be surprised when I harbor a singular and intense dislike for both you and your policies.

And no, that doesn't make me a racist, either. This whole black victimhood routine is wearing incredibly thin; a half-black man is now in the White House, a half-black man that a decade ago Je$$e Jackson and Al Sharpton would have condemned as not being "authentically black", until he looked like he could actually win an election. Now he's the greatest half-black man in the universe and to gainsay him is to be accused of all sorts of vile intent. Fuck the race-baiters, too, for they have no respect for me and are, likewise, not truly interested in this call for civility, either; they get rich on incivility.

The only white man obsessed with Barack Obama's racial heritage is Chris Matthews.

Civility, Mr. President, requires that you do a few things before the rest of us follow suit;

* Apologize to George W. Bush for eight years of merciless ridicule from the brain-dead Left, and admit that he was right on a number of things, admit your own mistakes, evaluate your opposition honestly and thoughtfully. It's not all about you.

* Tell Nancy and Harry to shut their pie holes and slither back under their rocks.

* Stop whining about the lousy hand you've been dealt and roll your sleeves up. You wanted the job, now do it. Take some responsibility, and stop leaving things to Harry and Nancy and Rahm. You are the President of the United States, not them.

* Stop playing the race card when answering your critics honestly becomes inconvenient. It's supposed to be a hard job. Get used to it. Stand or fall on your own work. It's what real leaders do.

* Get off my TV screen, and go to work. Less time before the 'prompter, more time behind the desk. I get the distinct impression that you give so many speeches because it means avoiding the real work of being President.

* Fire Robert Gibbs. He is, without a doubt, the second-most annoying human being on the planet (Keith Olbermann is first). Whenever I see Gibbs, I'm reminded of that recurring dream where I'm sliding down a bannister naked, and it turns into a razor blade and there's a vat of lemon juice waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. He's nasty. He's rude. He increases the nation's blood pressure and pucker factor everytime he oens his mouth. Ditch him; it would be a visible sign of helping ot achieve that 'civility' you desire.

* Michelle was on television the other day with a mug that could curdle milk. She looked positively menstrual on GMA the other morning. Keep her at home, please. That would be yet another visible symbol of your quest for "civility". Your wife, Mister President, is one of the most ungracious, self-absorbed people in America today. Keeping her out of sight might be a good idea.

Perhaps if you did these things, you might finally "change the tone" in Washington.

The New New Deal...

Barack Obama is fascinated with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So much so that he believes that the way to rescue the American economy from it's current doldrums is to repeat the FDR example, in fact, to out-FDR FDR himself, and have the Federal Government spend every cent in sight -- and then start printing even more money to spend.

This was the driving principle behind the so-called Stimulus bill; a little pump-priming, in the form of government spending on everything from paper clips, to jock straps, to heavy construction equipment, would be just the thing. Flush with federal cash, the theory goes, the private enterprises who received all that Stimulus would then be in a better position to do things like expand operations and hire more workers, or invest that capital in new equipment and other improvements.

According to the Obamatards and the people who think like they do, it was exactly this sort of spending -- the sort the FDR championed -- that rescued America from the Great Depression.

Actually, that is revisionist history, and it's usually repeated by people who can't find their own bottoms with both hands and a road map.

The Second World War is what brought America out of the Great Depression, not the New Deal.

American industry only reached it's pre-Depression output sometime around late 1942, a decade after FDR took office, and right smack in the midst of a global war. The United States not only needed food, equipment and armaments -- but so did our allies -- and the only places these could be found were Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans and Chicago. Producing tanks, bullets and landing craft, under conditions of the federal wage and price controls implemented during the War, was much more lucrative than making pots and pans, chewing gum, or comic books was during peacetime.

Supplying the Allies to fight the goddamned Nazis and Japanese is what rescued the American economy. In one of those ironic tricks of history, it was also the very same war that kept it on top of the heap for the next 30 years; the United States was the only major industrialized nation that had not been bombed flat, invaded, or otherwise fought over in the Second World War. The War kept our industrial opponents out of the game for a generation, often more. The Europeans and Japanese had to rebuild much of their infrastructure and re-order their societies, and often faced labor shortages caused by the massive casualties they had suffered. Stalin made the decision to delay recovery from the War in order to devote capital and manpower to perfecting his police state, the development of nuclear weapons, and the Space Race. Whereas Europe and Japan emerged from economic chaos in the 1960 or 70's, Russia was still mired in it right up until the Berlin Wall fell.

But, they caught up nonetheless, and worse, new players have emerged: China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, South Korea, that can produce just as quickly, far more cheaply, and with a similar level of quality. And they have spent massive amounts of money to build and maintain modern factories, while ours simply decay until some yuppie decides to recycle them as prime condo-lofts.

Unless Barack Obama is willing to invade another country, or butt in on someone else's war, the Old FDR formula will no longer work.

The global playing field is much too even now, and spending lavish amounts of cash in the hope of saving businesses who a) don't really have much of anything to sell, and b) don't have a huge, double-your-exports-overnight sort of demand for what little they do make, is simply a waste of money. Mostly because the recipients (the CEO's) are more likely to just take it and stick right in their pockets; they have no incentive to expand, and the rest of the New New Deal (Obamacare, Nationalization of the banks and private industry, highest tax rates on the planet) only scares them shitless about whatever future prospects they may be thinking about.

Obama needs to learn two lessons from the example of FDR (mostly about how wrong he was):

1) Wars lead to economic expansion and revolutionary technical innovations. If Obama really wants to "save" the American economy, then he can start one, or he could simply just stop treating terrorists like shoplifters and start slaughtering Muslims in numbers large enough to dissuade the others from strapping on TNT boxer shorts. A little less "War on Terror" and a lot more "War on the Source of Terrorists", and the economy will simply start humming as military orders pour in, and our industry starts finding new technologies to support the warfighters in bioscience, medicine, communications, weaponry, metallurgy, aerospace, and so forth. We'll also solve that Homeland Security problem while we're at it.

2) Social Security accounts for a significant part of current budgetary problems, and is one of the biggest factors behind today's soaring deficits. It pays out far more than it takes in as people live longer then they have any right to expect. That's when it's not being raided by successive Congresses who need to fund Belly-button Lint Museums in West Buttfuck, Montana, Establishing grandiose entitlement programs that ultimately cannot sustain themselves is a really bad idea. Expanding yet another (Medicare) to care for people who don't even pay taxes (like illegal aliens and 'The Poor'), is even worse.

The Economic supremacy this country enjoyed between 1942 and about 1980 had nothing to do with Federal Spending, or pump -priming, or the vaunted New Deal of the Sacred FDR; it was mostly accomplished because the rest of the industrialized world required a generation or two to recover from the Second World War. The rest of the planet was in smoking ruins, millions had died, after all. The days when American labor can squeeze ridiculous concessions from management -- simply because "American Made" was the only game in town, and business so lucrative, that Management was able to afford what amounted to Danegeld (extortion) to Union Labor -- are done. The rest of the world has recovered.

We have no industry, to speak of, that makes anything the rest of the world actually wants, or cannot make for itself. What little industry there is, is more or less either Federal Property (GM), or depends entirely upon the U.S. Government in some form for the majority of it's business (General Dynamics, Boeing, for example). Pump-priming doesn't work for these guys because the industrial model of 1930 is no longer operative.

I wonder when someone will get around to telling his Infernal Majesty that wishing to return to some golden age that never really existed is usually considered a Conservative trait, and that he should, perhaps put his kids' 5th grade history books down and get with the program.

FDR failed, but was rescued by circumstances. The sooner you learn that, the sooner you can admit to your mistakes and take corrective action, Mr. President.

The End of the Religious Right?

Vis-a-vis the recent victory of Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate special election; Conservatives (of the God, Guns and Gays variety) have been crowing for two weeks now that a "real" Conservative has been elected, and this proves that the country is moving "to the right".

Frankly, I think this has always been a right-of-center country, it's just that every so often some event takes place to shake people's confidence, and then they panic and do dumb things. Like vote for a guy with a resume so thin you wouldn't hire him as night shift manager at the local Taco Bell. Eventually, they realize the error of their ways, and they correct their mistakes. Scott Brown is simply one of the first opportunities to correct a mistake.

Anyways, here's a few things that "Real Conservatives" -- the Rush-listenin'-flannel-wearing, tobaccy-chewin'-God-fearing-gay-bashin'-RPG-ownin'-NASCAR-lovin'-Gee-my-first-cousin-has-a-purty-mouth-sort-of-Real Conservative-that-doesn't-have-a-thought-in-his-head-that- didn't-originate-in-Scripture -- not the I'm-calling-myself-a-conservative-because-I-liked-Reagan-but-otherwise-couldn't-find-my-own-ass-with-both-hands-and-a-flashlight-or-tell-you-what-Conservatism-is-Conservative-- should think about:

First off; Scott Brown is Pro-choice. I've been told a million times that "no Real Conservative could be Pro-choice". It's why Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney will never be elected President, or even garner the republican nomination (Romney changed his pro-life stance -- and so did George H.W. Bush! -- but then Romney was found guilty of that other Conservative no-no; flip-flopping. This crime, changing your mind, it seems, is considered worse than child rape to a Real Conservative...despite the fact that you now agree with him! )That you once held a contradictory opinion is enough for you to be sentenced to a lifetime of RINO-Pink-Repub-Fag-Lover insults from the Right Wing Taliban.

As of this particular moment, I wonder just how many of those "Real Conservatives" still don't know that Scott Brown is Pro-choice? I wonder what they'll have to say when they find out? I would also like to be a fly on the wall when the rash of "new, energized, Conservative" candidates that Micheal Steele (another idiot) is talking up finally arrives. Those that run this November will mostly be Fiscal Conservatives, many of whom could give a flyin' fuckin' fig about Abortion or Gay Marriage. They're all about cutting budgets and killin' Arabs. . After all, this is the country's current temperature: we want people who'll snip coupons, scrounge pennies and pour over the books in Washington, in order to set the fiscal house in order. Candidates who want to Kill Terrorists by the Thousands. And the things that "Real Conservatives" care about -- like who's fucking who and the question of whether the act and position may fall under any Scriptural prohibition -- will fall by the wayside.

Then again, perhaps someone did know, because the republican party (proving once again that it has the ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory) went ahead and set up a regime to enforce strict Conservative Orthodoxy; any candidate running as a republican who doesn't represent the entire party platform will not receive money or aid from the RNC. Classic republican stupidity; at a time when the possibility of finally vanquishing liberalism for a very long time finally arrives in the issue of fiscal restraint, the God, Guns and Gays wing of the party makes sure that if you aren't front-and-center on abortion and gay rights, you're pretty much on your own.

I'm certain those candidates who may have been put on notice absolutely jumped for fuckin' joy when they heard this. Because now they can run with help from the Tea Parties around the country, and don't have to rely on the republican brand which leaves just as bad a taste in people's mouths as does the current democratic party. This November, whenever a liberal democrat tries to tie one of these candidates -- the ones that espouse republican ideals, but don't have republican backing because they're social moderates -- to the evil republicans, he can quite honestly say "fuck Them, I'm running as an Independant!", and can then point to the lack of Republican party support for their campaigns and candidacies.

Unless these guys seem about to win with a week or less to go before Election Day, in which case, the Republican Party will, belatedly, parachute in to help him "cross the goal line", and pretend that it supported the winning candidate all along. It's good for that sort of transparent front-running, just like democrats were when they dumped The Haircut (Edwards) for Hitlery, and then abandoned her like a $5 hooker for the Obamatard.

Does all of this spell the end of the Religious Right as a force in American Politics? Probably not: at present, people's priorities are simply being re-ordered, and God fell down the list...somewhere between "Try to keep my house", "learn how to darn socks" and "acquire a taste for canned goods". Abortion and Gay Rights fell with Him, and so, the influence of the Religious Right is lessened, but they will be back; when the country is flush with cash, and things are relatively stable, and people have time to devote to fantasies of Invisible Man in the Sky, who's supposedly-omniscient, but somehow always broke...

Douchebag of the Week (2/01/10): Barack Obama...

This week, the award is given to his August Majesty, the Bringer of Hopenchange and Light of the World, the current Resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, for his steadfast conviction that despite evidence to the contrary, he is most certainly not an ideologue.

How rich it was to watch The Anointed One lecture republicans about the importance of bi-partisan solutions to the Country's problems, decrying the politics of personal destruction and insisting that he'd come in friendship to ask for simple co-operation in the matter of helping him to destroy what's left of the United States of America.

This, from the man who insists that he's entitled to see whatever hare-brained scheme his fevered imagination (more likely Rahm Emmanuel's fevered imagination) tosses out because, quite simply, "I won..."

Barack Obama, as I have said on this page many times before, simply doesn't understand the terrain he's hiking on. He believes that opposition to his personal vision cannot truly be principled, and must simply be driven by partisan politics, ill-will and ignorance. He believes that his wrong-headed agenda runs into a brick wall of misconception, and that if he continues to simply explain himself and his policies further -- something that despite all of the words he spews, he never manages to actually do -- even the most stubborn critic will crumble before his flawless logic and obvious good intentions.

Why shouldn't he think that way? That's how he arrived at his current station, isn't it? He talked a broad movement of the desperate into existence, he sold the American voter a vision of America that was all rhetoric and no substance, and he continues to think that he can continue to do so indefinitely. The problem with Barack Obama, according to Barack Obama, is that the rest of us are just too dense to understand Barack Obama and so we must have things continually explained, and re-explained, and re-re-explained and re-packaged until we're either worn out from all the talking, or we finally see his Brilliant Vision.

Barack Obama believes that the opposition to his policies is one of mere perception, and not efficacy. That he's entirely right, and the rest of us are dimwitted donkeys who just haven't been able to understand his subtleties.

"I won..." is not so subtle. "It's someone else's fault..." is not so subtle. The "They say..." or "Some say..." strawman arguments have all the subtlety of a chainsaw. President Obama believes that popular insurgent candidates in three key battleground states are not a repudiation of his and his party's reckless policies.

I wonder if Obama's teleprompter has a "Braille" setting; he clearly needs it.

He can 'pivot' all he likes; he can claim to assume the mantle of fiscal restraint...but always 'later' or at least beginning next year...and then trot out a $3 Trillion budget. He can call for help in solving the 'Health care crisis', but he conditions the request with a caveat; the help is only useful or wanted if it means he gets what he wants. He believes he can scold the Supreme Court in public for striking down campaign finance laws that are clearly unconstitutional, while obviously never having read the actual decision itself, and worse, after having benefited from the very provision they declared null-and-void. I wonder, how many Obama campaign contributions have the name Mickey Mouse and an address in Indonesia attached to them?

For being the biggest bullshit salesman in American, the biggest whining crybaby, the greatest dodger of responsibility in American history, President Obama is graced with this week's Douchebag of the Week.

Snip 'Em...Preferably with Something Rusty and Blunt...

Ricky Gervais simply says out loud what every Progressive has been thinking for 100 years.

Normally, I could give a shit about anything that has to do with the world of entertainment, or Hollywood. I find people who are obsessed with celebrity to be drooling idiots -- on a good day. However, this item caught my eye for a specific reason;

What makes this story...er...interesting, is that many of the same people who apparently have recoiled from Gervais' view about poor and irresponsible people, would have no problem at all with a young woman terminating an 'unwanted' pregnancy by having her baby's head pierced with a pair of surgical scissors, it's brain pulverized by stirring with those scissors, and the remains sucked out of the womb with a vacuum.

What's worse, is that the same argument Gervais is making is the same one the worst of the Progressives and Liberals have made for decades defending the practice of abortion, and as an excuse for some of the worst excesses of man; the Death Camps of Nazi Germany, and their American counterparts in Lynchburgh and Tuskegee. The Progressive belief that mankind is 'perfectible' is the driving impulse behind the forced sterilization of blacks, the mass incineration of Jews, and the tragedy of million of lives taken before they've even begun.

When you advocate for a brand of politics which puts no value on some categories of human life, you are ultimately advocating for a politics which eventually puts no value on human life at all. Gervais' real crime, some Progressives might say, is that his list is way too short....

The Honeymoon's Over...Now Let's Get Divorced...

The Wall Street Journal this morning reports that the Obama Mystique has been ruined. Mostly by Obama himself, but I'm sure that somehow, we'll be hearing that Barack Obama failed because America is a racist nation that couldn't take a Black Man in the White House for about the next five decades or so. Several 'scholars' will make a few million bucks on worthless books that 'study' that premise, and a new generation of poverty pimps will have a new bloody shirt to wave, and the thing will have run it's natural course and ultimately, be forgotten.

But, I think the effect that Barack Obama has had, and will continue to have, is much more profound. To start, there's the matter of what damage he can manage to do to the apparatus of government, and the precedents he sets in exceeding Presidential authority, or even Constitutional restrictions regarding the separation of powers. There will be a lagging cultural residue of Obamania that will be noticeable for a while, but eventually will fade away as people begin to realize that the whole thing was rather silly to begin with. There will be a vocal minority that will continue to believe that Obama was the Savior of Us All, but they're mostly brainwashed Hippies, dopey College Kids who will eventually grow up, and Blacks so consumed by Hatred of Whitey that logic and reason can't find a way into their narrative of racism.

In the short term, The Obama Mystique will probably serve a few useful ends; from now on, for the foreseeable future, Americans will be much more circumspect about who they vote for. They'll want to get beyond the slick marketing and Chris Matthews' tingly leg, and want to stick to the Old Script: Experience, Competence, Knowledge, and Substance. If this disaster makes the American Voter a more careful shopper, we'll owe Mr. Obama a debt of gratitude for that at least.

On the minus side, though, I think Obama's failure (and it's mostly a failure of his own making) pretty much kills the idea of another Black President for a very long time. Even one with an 'R' next to his name. Obama's brand of Black-Liberation-Theology-Meets-Karl-Marx-Social-Justice-and-Alinsky-Style-Ninja-Activism, is probably dead, at least for as long as it takes for it's practitioners to take it back underground, give it a facelift, adapt it to a changing culture, and re-emerge in another two or three decades.

The death of that sort of political philosophy is probably the best thing that Barack Obama will ever accomplish, Nobel Prizes for being black, notwithstanding.

Quick! Someone Tell Homeland Security!

What are the odds of this happening?

Maybe they should just start searching anyone named Mohammed as soon as theyget within spitting distance of the airport? But then, that might be profiling, and would lead to this sort of judicial stupidity.

Great defense for online pedophilia, huh: I did it, but it disgusted me so much that I enjoyed it. I thought we were supposed to be killing these people by the thousands over on the other side of the planet? Apparently, we're not killing enough of them. Maybe we should start? Then we can start on that other existential threat to civilized society: lawyers.

They Don't Know When to Quit, Do they?

Democrats are doubling down, hoping to brazen out and procedural-trick their legislative agenda into existance before the November Mid-terms makes it all by impossible to turn America into The Soviet Union... only with Toilet Paper.

Mark Steyn sums it up and makes sense of it all.

This Is Why The BBC Sucks...

And why it's quickly becoming the "Gordon Ramsey and Top Gear" Channel. Because it tolerates, even promotes, rubbish like this. You know, for an organization that claims it's primary aim is to inform the British people about the rest of the world, it seems to find people of the worst caliber to do so, and that only causes one to conclude that the BBC is near-absolutely worthless as a source of information.

I watch BBC World News America often, and quite frankly, this article is par for the course. It's difficult to actually explain something you don't actually know while pretending to be an authority. That the BBC calls this sort of thing "journalism" is laughable. The author, a Dr. Runciman, begins with the unproven and unprovable premise that Obamacare is of absolute benefit to everyone, and that only a fool would see it differently. He takes this as being universally-understood, like the water being wet, Tinky-WInky being gay, or Janeane Garofalo being permanently menstrual. A point so irrefutable as to stand like the Rock of Gibraltar; unassailable, unquestionably substantive, so....rocky and gibraltar-y as to defy gainsaying.

Listen, just because Britain has a National Health Service that tolerates dirty hospitals, dead patients left on gurneys in hallways, lack of equipment, crappy service and denial of medication or procedures as cost-savings, it doesn't stand to reason that America should have one, too, or that it's worth the expense that the Obamatards and the Democratically-controlled Congress believe we taxpayers (because they won't have to pay a dime for it, and can keep their gold-plated insurance plans) should have to pay for it.

We don't have to be like you, nor think like you, but that's not the ultimate point of your article. If it were, the BBC would never have allowed it to be printed or broadcast. Your secondary point is to simply call Americans you disagree with names behind the shield of "journalism", which makes you a pansy. That's what a certain class of British people, like the self-appointed elites at the BBC, have done ever since Yankee Doodle Went To Town. Your primary point, however, is to try to explain to your own overtaxed and under-served citizens just why their less-than-stellar eyedrops-and-bandaids-for-everyone system is superior to Americas market-based system, and just why the American example of revolt against "Obama's reform" should not be copied in Britain.

Mostly because leftist elites, like Dr. Runciman, are frightened by the recent electoral rise of the British Nationalist Part (the new Fascist party), something which he obviously equates with the American Tea Party movement, itself a main factor in the war against Obama Care. He sees the rise of British Fascism and American Tea Parties as being essentially the same thing, and that the first aim of these American Nazis is to ensure that the "poor" don;t get the things they rightly deserve. Much like BNP members who scream that the Native-born (meaning White) British should be first in line for government largesse. But there is a far more important set points in play here; we reject Obama care not because we're a nation of racists and fascists, we reject it because it's proving to be overly complex, costs too much, is obviously polticially-motivated, and cant guarentee even a minimum level of services.

But that's not really Dr. Runciman's argument. His aim is to try to explain why British people speaking against their own government healthcare (and in fact, any government-run program) is not such a good thing.

Primarily, Doctor Runciman is content to make this argument by finding several different ways of saying "Americans are stupid" and that's somehow supposed to represent an actual reportage of the facts. Your typical BNP yobbo is supposed to be frightened of being seen as acting like an American if he thinks some pansy at the BBC might think him stupid, right?

Dr. Runciman begins the demonization process with this little tidbit about the Town Hall Meetings:

"What happened was an explosion of rage and barely suppressed violence... "

I didn;t see any "rage". I saw "outrage", but no foaming-at-the-mouth-murderous-rage. He fails to note that the majority of the violence was perpetrated by Union Thugs allied to the democratic party, or "citizen's groups" -- like ACORN, the Black Panther Party, and others --who are (or at least were) protected by the democratic party establishment. In one of the more famous incidents of violence, a man in St. Louis was beaten by members of the SEIU on camera. These men have yet to be investigated or have charges brought against them, and I can promise Dr. Runciman, none of them was a conservative. They were muscle bussed into the meeting specifically to intimidate the opposition.

And by the way, what the Obamatard and Congress are offering is NOT "reform". If it were reform, it would still be recognizable as the American Medical System. Firstly, what they are offering is a fundamental loss of liberties disguised as compassion; once the government has the responsibility of keeping you alive, it then has the right to tell you how to live, depriving yo uof the right of choice. Second, is the problem of expense. Government never does anything efficiently or cheaply, primarily because the nature of bureaucracy is to expand and entrench itself, and because it's not subject to the forces of market capitalism (being taxpayer-funded, and immune to lawsuit), it has no reason to be efficient, fair, consistent or even logical in it's activities. Finally, the expense of such a system cannot be born by a tax base which already loses upwards of 40% of it's income to taxes on all levels before it even sees it's paycheck, and in which the greatest Federal expenses are entitlement programs which never gear benefits to economic realities. The American National Debt now stands at just over $12 trillion dollars, roughly equal to Gross Domestic Product.

The money to pay for Obamacare can only come from two places: the taxpayer, who can't afford it, or borrow it from China, which simply puts the taxpayer in deeper debt.

Undeterred by those facts, Dr. Runciman than goes off the rails and comes up with this pearl of wisdom:

"But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help. Instead, to many of those who lose out under the existing system, reform still seems like the ultimate betrayal. "

Those who oppose "reform", Doctor, are simply those who are expected to pay the most for it and derive the least benefit from it. The "System" isn't designed to help them; it's supposed to help politically-selected groups like Blacks, Illegal Aliens and Union Workers, who will be reliable democratic party voters for eons to come. It's a "betrayal" to those people (the bproposed beneficiaries) because they're under the impression that they've been promised something "for free", or at least, at someone else's expense. So, why shouldn't they feel "betrayed"? They thought "The Rich" would finally be getting their comeuppance and "The Poor" would benefit (by the way, the average "Poor" person in the U.S. has a cellphone, a rent-stabilized or state-subsidized apartment, most have cable TV, air-conditioning and automobiles, and pull in about $36k a year in government benefits with no tax responsibility whatsoever).

However, all this "bending the cost curve down" that Obama talks about runs into a problem: there aren't enough "rich" to soak for it. The "Rich" is a category the Obama Administration keeps defining downwards; he started at $250k a year, then it became $200k, then $125K, and now some estimates of the current bill before the Senate estimate that people earning under $50k will be paying higher taxes to see Obamacare become a reality. So long as someone else pays the bill it's the greatest thing since penicillin, otherwise, if you have to stick a crowbar in your own wallet during a recession and with no guarantee of employment, then it's a betrayal.

But see, finding all that stuff out would be, like, work, and if there's one thing pseudo-intellectuals hate to do, it's work (it's why they became intellectuals, you know). So, not having all the above at his disposal to condition his thinking, Dr. Runciman then leaps into the minefield:

"It might be tempting to put the whole thing down to what the historian Richard Hofstadter back in the 1960s called "the paranoid style" of American politics, in which God, guns and race get mixed into a toxic stew of resentment at anything coming out of Washington."

There we go! I was wondering when we'd get to the Bitter Clingers accusation. Took you long enough, Doc; Andrew Sullivan would have had it in the first paragraph. Yes, people who don't like the idea of taxpayer-funded-government death camps disguised as hospitals advocated by a black man are all shotgun-toting-redneck-racists who wish Jim Crow were still in effect. I'm not sure if Dr.Runciman has ever been to the States (I've been to Britain eight times, myself, and every time I made an effort to get out of London -- which is New York with a funny accent and politer pigeons -- and got into the countryside to actually meet real people), but I wonder if he's ever left the Upper East Side, or rubbed elbows with the great, unwashed masses he accuses of racism? Someone who could write that doesn't know jack-shit about Americans, never mind the attribution to a noted (uber-liberal) historian.

But the good Doctor is unaware of the danger of making sweeping generalizations without obvious first-hand knowledge, because he continues:

" They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots...."

Yeah, we'd rather just have it foisted upon us without a word of explanation at all. Like how the EU does it. You know, you can overdo that whole "democratic process" thing if you're not careful. Better to just pass the legislation in the dead of night, behind closed doors and then explain what you've done afterwards, just before you stick us with the bill, or just as John Q. Douchebag is about to be wheeled in for the double-bypass he waited 11 months to get approval for. If only we Americans were like you enlightened "Europeans" and just meekly accepted what our betters have crafted in our name, the world would be such a different place...

Doctor Runciman then goes off on a tangent to present an example of Americans' obstinate stupidity and appalling lack of servitude to it's ruling class. An excerpt from a book (I won't reprint it here, but it's in the article) which purports that Liberals are Always Right But Just Make Terrible Arguments -- by, amazingly! "A frustrated Democrat" -- who also happens to be a psychologist. Which means he's twice the bullshit artist for the same, low price. That example is from the 2000 election when supposed-idiot George W. Bush wiped the rhetorical floor with a not-quite-yet-environMENTAL billionaire juggernaut, Al Gore. The implication is that Gore's good ideas, backed up by all the wonky polls and apparent grasp of facts, were unable to stand up to the relentless ridicule of George W., and Al Gore went down to defeat, taking his brilliant policies with him.

And we're supposed to believe, what? Good, self-interested Americans with half a brain and not a whiff of racism about them should have elected Gore in a landslide? Instead, they fell for the wily rhetorical tricks of George W. Bush, and Al Gore and his superior ideas were doomed to electoral defeat?

(It always amazes me that it is (conveniently) forgotten that the World Left considered George W. Bush just slightly smarter than the retarded Kennedy, and incapable of putting together a coherent sentence. Yet, somehow, he becomes Cicero, Pericles, Lloyd-George, and Cardinal Richelieu all rolled up into one just when he needs to be in oder to destroy the brilliant ideas and world-vision of the Left? I'm supposed to take people who can think this way seriously?)

Word of advice, Doctor: if ever you wish to win an argument in which your premise is that the American people are too stupid to obey their obvious self-interest and hitch their fortunes to a cabal of evil rich white men who are even dumber than they are -- don't use Al Gore as your example. Seems to me the enlightened Left hitched their wagon to Gore's star, and he led them to defeat -- at the hands of a man they consider a cretin, no less. You've already lost the argument as soon as you mention Gore. Al Gore has absolutely zero credibility in this country. He's claimed to have invented everything from breathing to the Internet. He's claimed that he and his wife were the inspiration for Love Story, and probably Pygmalion, Romeo and Juliet and Lady and the Tramp, as well. He's disgraced himself by trying to sue his way into the White House, after failing to get the votes in Florida selectively recounted to his advantage. He's seen as one of the primary perpetrators of a scam which has enriched him, and which threatens to destroy our economic well-being --Man-made Global Warming -- which is being even further discredited on a daily basis.

As soon as you start talking "evil rich men" and you try to portray an Al Gore, Bill Clinton, John Kerry or anyone named Kennedy as the hero of the proletariat, you've arrived at the battle completely unarmed.

Not content with this already-pitiful display of stupidity and cluelessness, the Doctor can't help himself but to continue thus:

"Obama's administration made a tremendous mistake by not immediately branding the economic collapse that we had just had as the Republicans' Depression, caused by the Bush administration's ideology of unregulated greed. The result is that now people blame him."

Okay, I don't even know where to begin! The Doctor apparently doesn't watch American television (why should he? He works for the BBC!), because Barack Obama only complains about the economic crisis being George Bush's fault 72 times a day. And when he isn't doing it, his surrogates are. It's always "I've inherited this..." or "George Bush did that..." I don't think Barack Obama has been remiss in placing blame anywhere; it's the only thing he's good at, frankly, and "unregulated greed" was the result of Democrats not taking the Bush Administration position that the mortgage market needed serious reform, six years before it imploded, because Chris Dodd was (figuratively) in bed with the mortgage lenders, and Congressman Barney Frank was literally between the sheets with them.

This is why people who don't know the first thing about the United States, it's people or it's politics, should never be allowed to write a fucking thing; they only end up making poor arguments and looking ridiculous. You start to conclude that Doctor Runciman must live in a cave, and then he proves it. He contends that the Success of the American Right (it was so successful that it got voted right out of power in 2006 and 2008!) can be explained away, thus:

"Thomas Frank, the author of the best-selling book What's The Matter with Kansas, is an even more exasperated Democrat and he goes further than Mr Westen.He believes that the voters' preference for emotional engagement over reasonable argument has allowed the Republican Party to blind them to their own real interests. The Republicans have learnt how to stoke up resentment against the patronising liberal elite, all those do-gooders who assume they know what poor people ought to be thinking. Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America's poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest."

We're back to that other cherished rubric of the Left (the first being that Americans are dumber than dogshit): we Americans just love to beat up geeks. We hate those who appear smarter than us. We torment those who are different; we misunderstand them, we fear them, we go out of our way to belittle and denigrate them. We are deathly afraid of people who wear glasses, sip Chardonnay and use big words. The leftist icon of the Powerless, Helpless Intellectual, with his Coke-bottle glasses, domed forehead and stalk-like neck, gets trotted out yet one more time. They're martyrs to the cause of helping their fellow men who don't appreciate their eforts, you see?

Of course, the implication is that we're just too stupid to understand them, and when people lack understanding they embrace fear and violence and reactionary politics, which brings us back to the original problem -- even when Liberals insist they aren't being patronizing, they still fucking are. Insufferably so. Add their insufferability to their extremely bad ideas (that none of them ever expects to pay or take responsibility for, or suffer the consequences of), and you can see why people "vote against their own interests". It's not because we're nosepicking retards, but because we're smart enough to recognize a turd no matter how well you've polished it with faux-intellectualism and statistics.

If you thought the hole he was digging was deep enough by now that Doctor Runciman may have struck water, guess again. He quotes author Thomas Frank, again:

"You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining. It's like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy... authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made."

See? We're back to "These Americans are stupid". Doctor Runciman keeps coming back to the same argument he made in his first paragraph, only now he has a "noted' author to back him up. That's one historian, one author..that's TWO intellectuals! How can you argue against that? To a certain extent, he's right; we are idiots...that's how Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Janet Napolitano, the late-Ted Kennedy, the unfortunately-not-late Robert Byrd, and Barack Obama got elected to office in the first place; stupid, often-desperate, people cast ballots for them. In other words, they were elected by the very people Runciman insists are a) the majority, and b) have the most to gain with Obamacare, but are c) his biggest opponents.

(Ed. Note: The French Revolution, incidentally, set out to depose a king in the name of egalitarianism, only managed to slaughter tens of thousands in the name of Political Correctness while it hypocritically screamed "Brotherhood". It brought a dictator (Napoleon) to power -- twice --who led the country to utter ruin in a series of decades-long Continental Wars. Miraculously, the Revolutionaries then somehow managed to restore the discredited monarchy -- as a more-reasonable alternative to Revolutionary Government and the Brotherhood of Man -- by the time it had run it's course. If you're going to use the French Revolution to decry the innate "unfairness" of the American System, at least be truthful about what it did and what it ultimately accomplished! If your argument is that Statist solutions are best, the French Revolution is perhaps the worst example -- next to Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union -- to make your point with!)

The Left, the very people who claim to be representing this great mass of stupid, desperate voters, has control of all three visible branches of the American government, and had veto-proof majorities before the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts, so the question, Doctor, is not "Why are Americans so stupid as to fall for a Scott Brown and this Tea Party nonsense to their own detriment, and not get a National health service?", but "why didn't Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama bring this thing in for a landing while they could?" They didn't do it, Doctor, because the members of their own party, the ones who feared for their professional lives in Congress, stopped them dead.

Not Town Hall Meetings, not Tea Parties, not "fake authenticity" or "rage and violence"; the democrats would have continued with the disaster that is Obamacare if they had not been stopped by their own members.

Because those three (Reid, Pelosi and Obama), and the "Blue Dog" democrats, are symbolic of just what truly is wrong with the American political system; it's not the voters, Dr. Runciman, Mr. Westen, and Mr. Frank, its the fucking politicians. That's where the real issue of self-interest lies. The Halls of Washington are full of self-absorbed morons who live in an artificial isolation of polls, policy papers and lawyerly language, who believe they are entitled to earn their living on the taxpayer teat and exercise the power of political office, and make a life-long career out of it. As soon as that rice bowl appears threatened by angry voters, see how quickly committed "public servants" suddenly lose their nerve? These people have absolutely no idea of what the Common Man faces in his daily life, how he thinks and feels, so how can they be expected to understand what we want and what we need, especially if their only interest is in keeping their cushy job? Whenever they try, they simply step all over thier own interests and then stick a future generation with the bill, and this is the real issue. It has nothing to do with " the appearance of authenticity"; These Lefties are the people who laughed at G.H.W. Bush because he apparently didn't know the price of milk or what an electronic supermarket scanner was, but thought that an effete John Kerry wearing trendy yellow spandex biking outfits, or a Micheal Dukakis talking up Belgian Endive as guarenteed economic boon, were somehow "regular guys" whom the public could relate to and follow unquestionably, while the great majority of them simply lived the good life that comes with privelege and political station.

It's the Irresponsible-Congressional-Democratc-Dukakis-Kerry model of public policy that got us into the trouble we're in. It's why U.S. Sentaors expect to be bribed to vote for legislation their party considers essential, and which BBC "journalists" consider "beneficial". That's why we reject it even more now, you dolt!

Douchebag BBC article writer finally finishes chasing his tail:

"This is a culture war but it is not simply being driven by differences over abortion, or religion, or patriotism. And it is not simply Red states vs. Blue states any more. It is a war on the entire political culture, on the arrogance of politicians, on their slipperiness and lack of principle, on their endless deal making and compromises. "

FInally, an ounce of truth. Somehow, you think Doctor Runciman believes this is a bad thing.

It's a good thing he writes for the BBC, Doctor, because if he had to actually write for a respectable journal that wasn't supported by extorted tax dollars, he'd be in deep trouble.