In my recent interview with J.C. Watts, he took issue with Mitt Romney’s controversial comment, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”
Romney’s supporters claim that the media has used this quote out of context, but Watts doesn’t see it that way. “I didn’t take what he said out of context,” the ex-congressman told me, “I took it in context. What he [Romney] was saying was, ‘Let’s keep people trapped in poverty, and if we need to give them a few more food stamps … we’ll do that.’”
Otherwise dependable conservatives appear to be losing their minds in their zeal to vanquish the media-created first family from the White House. Ann Coulter, a one-time paragon of hard-core conservatism, has confirmed a growing suspicion that she possesses a latent liberal streak. By endorsing and singing the praises of Mitt-the-Flip, her open affection for left-wing nasties like Joy Behar and Bill Maher no longer appear to be anomalies.
Not one to leave bad enough alone, Coulter did a spin piece last week on Romney’s Obamacare model titled “Three Cheers for Romneycare,” which ended with, “Romney is the most electable candidate not only because it will be nearly impossible for the media to demonize this self-made Mormon square, devoted to his wife and church, but precisely because he is the most conservative candidate.”
Seems like we’ve been here before … many, many times. Whitney Houston’s tragic death is the latest in a long string of drug- and alcohol-related celebrity deaths, going back to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in 1970, Jim Morrison in 1971, Elvis in 1977, Andy Gibb and John Belushi in the eighties, and, of course, Michael Jackson in 2009. And these are just a few of the names that come quickly to mind.
When a show-business icon dies prematurely, we tend to focus on his/her death rather than the life that led to that death. In the case of Whitney Houston, her travails were in the news so much over the years that even I — not a frequent showbiz reader — was aware of them. Anyone who watched the evening news couldn’t help but know about her bouts with drugs and alcohol, and, perhaps even worse, her fifteen-year marriage to a man who physically abused her.
When a longtime reader sends me a well-meaning but anti-liberty, anti-free-market e-mail, it makes me question my own writing skills because it means that even though he may thank me for what I’ve taught him over the years, his words make it clear that he doesn’t really understand what I’m saying.
Such was the case with an e-mail I recently received from a long-time reader that read, in part:
Most men speak of their mothers as angels, and in that regard I guess I’m not unique. Some would probably argue that my mother was not unique either, that she was merely one of millions of moms from the greatest generation.
Modern-day feminists would have been horrified by Mom’s lifestyle. Her day-to-day world consisted primarily of cooking, shopping, keeping her home running smoothly, and, above all, taking care of her children. I think she just assumed that these were the most important things in every woman’s life.
On Hannity last week, the king of vulgarity, Jerry Springer, kept hammering home a puzzling point — that Barack Obama needs additional stimulus money so the government can hire more people. After all, he said, “the private sector can’t employ everyone.”
Now that’s one I’ve never heard before. The private sector can’t employ everyone, therefore the government needs to take more money from working people and “create” jobs for people who aren’t working? Springer’s comment was, of course, code for more redistribution of wealth.
Every time you think the media is about to run out of ideas for transforming a nonstory into a spectacular news event, they manage to come up with yet another gem. That said, forgive me for adding my two cents worth to the Bain Capital brouhaha.
Those who know Newt Gingrich best have long predicated he would implode, even after he shot to the top of the polls, which he managed to do by cleverly playing the role of the calm, intellectual, peacemaking elderly statesman who was above the fray. So Gingrich’s angry obsession with taking down MittMan, even if it means destroying his own chances of winning the Republican nomination, is not surprising.
The Iowa caucuses spotlighted everything that’s wrong with politics in this country … everything that’s wrong with a republic devolving into a democracy … everything that’s wrong with entitlement-driven America.
Media cheerleaders valiantly tried to create a Super Bowl-like atmosphere around the Republican presidential candidates’ first test in Iowa, but I was so turned off that I watched very little of the coverage on election night. I make it a practice not to see bad movies more than once, and this was a very bad political movie I had seen many times over the years.
It’s been quite humorous watching Dick Morris switch modes — from dismissing Ron Paul as a nut and a crackpot to hysterically warning people how dangerous he is. In one of his recent lunch videos, Morris ranted nonstop about Paul, going so far as to say, “He is the most radical, liberal candidate running.” Then, on The O’Reilly Factor, Morris said, “I think that he is absolutely the most liberal, radical, left-wing person to run for president in the United States in the last fifty years.”
Strange, because I’ve known Ron Paul for more than thirty years, and I see him as one of the purist conservatives in Washington — and certainly the most conservative person in the current field of Republican candidates. I’m talking about true conservatism, which Ronald Reagan accurately described when he said, “The very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism.”
If there’s one thing that bothers me this time of the year, it’s seeing ex-servicemen in wheelchairs or sporting titanium arms and legs on television. If peaceful, rational humanoids from another galaxy landed in the U.S., I have to believe they would be appalled. I can just hear them asking, “Who sent all these healthy young men and women off to be maimed and killed?” And, “Did the people who sent them lead the charge into battle?”
Many argue that having the lives of thousands of young adults destroyed — or lost — is the price of preserving our freedom. And during World War II, when America was a very different nation, most people had no trouble buying into that proposition. But in today’s corrupt, semi-socialist America, the biggest threat to our freedom comes not from abroad, but from the criminal class in Washington — and, unfortunately, no one is talking about invading the nation’s capital.
The most predictable governing body on the planet, the United States Congress, is once again doing some of its sleaziest sleight-of-hand work at year’s end, with the comfort of knowing that we lowly proletarians are focused on holiday festivities. The average American is totally confused about the flurry of year-end legislation and political posturing coming out of the nation’s capital, and with good reason: Politicians work hard at creating confusion.
Now, let’s see if I understand this. The Dems want to “cut taxes” by extending a “tax holiday” on some of the money workers pay into the Social Security retirement “fund.” Could it be that Democrats aren’t as liberal as some of us have believed them to be? After all, they can’t be so bad if they actually favor a tax cut.
Oops! The presidential pretender went and did it again. A lot of red ink has passed over the socialist dam since he unthinkingly told Joe the Plumber that he wants to “spread the wealth around.”
Or since he told Charlie Gibson that “It’s a matter of fairness” when Gibson repeatedly asked him to explain why he would want to raise the capital-gains tax when the historical evidence proves that higher capital-gains taxes actually decreasegovernment revenues.
Even after three years of thugocratic government, there are still many conservatives and libertarians who cannot bring themselves to believe that Barack Obama is anything more than a “big-spending liberal” who is simply misguided. True, some have finally thrown in the towel and sparingly use words like socialist and socialism to describe Obama and his policies, but terms like communism and dictatorship are uttered only by those whom the establishment considers to be extremists.
Much to my fascination, most conservative media pundits continue to scratch their heads and insist that “Barack Obama is just in over his head” when talking about his “failed policies.” The idea that he is actually trying to destroy the last vestiges of the free market and freedom in America is such a radical thought that their mainstream minds will not allow them to even consider it.
The shopping mantra for American consumaholics this year is, “We know the future is hopeless, but we’re not going to allow the bad economy to ruin our holiday season.” If you doubt their determination to let the good times roll, just ask the crazed shoppers who were pepper-sprayed on Black Friday at a Los Angeles Walmart by a woman who wasn’t about to miss out on one of the most sought after necessities of life — the new Xbox.
Of course, those who were merely pepper-sprayed got off easy. Being at a Target, Best Buy, Walmart, or Kohl’s store last weekend made Kandahar seem like a safe haven. During the three-day Thanksgiving shopping marathon, some consumaholics were punched, elbowed, stabbed, and even shot. You have to admire the brave men and women who put themselves in harm’s way to get their fair share of discounted playthings that they desperately needed to keep their gray matter anesthetized.
The past couple of months, I’ve taken to biting my nails again, something I haven’t done since I was a teenager. In fact, the media have had me on the verge of a nervous breakdown with their coverage of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (“Super Committee”).
I can’t tell you how stressed I’ve been thinking about the gut-wrenching task these hardworking, upstanding men and women have been facing. The thought of them having to find a way to cut spending by $1.2 trillion by November 23 or face automatic, across-the-board spending cuts has caused my anxiety level to go through the roof.
The Penn State scandal is so disturbing that it’s hard to even write about it. When I first heard Joe Paterno had been fired, I thought perhaps it was an overreaction on the part of Penn State’s board of trustees. But as I read about some of the gory details of the case, I quickly realized I was wrong. As it turns out, Joe Paterno is a split legal hair away from being guilty of covering up a heinous crime spree that staggers the moral imagination of the average American.
As we all know by now, in 2002, assistant football coach Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant at Penn State, allegedly saw defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky sodomizing a ten-year-old boy in the locker-room shower. To his credit, he immediately reported the incident to Coach Paterno.
As the election season revs up, bull-slinging, the favorite sport of the criminal class east of the Potomac, is in full bloom. Some of the best zingers we’ve been treated to lately include:
Che Obama, at the G-20 in France, saying, with a straight face: “I have to tell you, the least of my concerns at the moment is the politics of a year from now.” Sure, Barry.
Nancy Pelosi, at a recent press briefing, saying, with a straight face: “If President Obama and the House congressional Democrats had not acted, we would be at 15 percent unemployment.” Sure, Nancy.
Joe Biden saying, with a straight face, that if Obama’s $447 billion “jobs bill” (i.e., stimulus package) is not passed, there won’t be enough police to prevent rapes and robberies. Sure, Joe.
I’m willing to bet that when Obama was growing up, he was jealous of anyone on the playground who had more marbles than he had. He became obsessed with taking their marbles (or as he called it, “redistributing” them). And I’ll bet he was good at it. So good that nobody wanted to play with him. I imagine him sitting alone in his room, dreaming of someday running the country, making all the rules and taking marbles away from everyone.
Increasingly, it appears that the far left has found a straw dog to replace its long-cherished, but now embarrassingly discredited, global-warming hoax: “unequal distribution of wealth.”
Of course, class warfare has been around for thousands of years, so it was just a matter of reviving a tired old idea. And, unfortunately, it’s an idea that works nearly 100 percent of the time — at least with those who are ignorant of history and unwilling to study or think.
As liberals go, I actually had a touch of like for Joltin Joe Biden in his Senate days. But since he got in bed with the Marxists in the Executive Branch, it’s become increasingly difficult to give him a pass. Even so, I feel compelled to cut Joe some slack by blaming his maniacal remarks on mitigating circumstances — the fact that he’s a bona fide idiot.
Thus, when the Delaware Dimwit said that paying taxes is the most patriotic thing an already overtaxed American citizen can do, it wasn’t out of malice. Truth be known, I don’t believe he has any idea why he says such things. As near as I can tell, he simply appears to be on progressive autopilot.
There are at least two conflicting views of the Occupy Wall Street mob(s). One is that the media is overplaying the protests and that they are much to do about nothing. The idea is that the protestors are primarily a bunch of idealistic kids living out their fantasies of the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out crowd of the sixties.
At the other extreme is the view that the protests are the start of a worldwide left-wing revolution promoted by communists, union Mafiosos, and a variety of down-with-the-rich misfits. While I believe that the goofy, confused kids — who can’t seem to coherently explain why they’re protesting — are being used by the heavyweight, behind-the-scenes players who are funding the protests, that’s beside the point.
The dreams-from-my-father moment appears to be nearing as riots, sit-ins, and protests grow throughout the country. “Social-justice” miscreants — a whole new generation of sixties hippies — have escaped their cages and are running wild in New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Chicago, and other U.S. cities. And, make no mistake about it, they’re looking for red meat.
This weird mixture of commies and cuckoos are ecstatic over what BHO’s policies have done to the U.S. economy in less than three years, and must surely be drooling over the thought of five more years of economic destruction. They believe, or at least they believe they believe, in the greatest of all contradictions — that by destroying wealth, there will be more wealth to share with “the masses” … you know, like in Mao’s China, Lenin’s and Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Castro’s Cuba.
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I had an appointment in Arlington, Virginia. As we were walking toward our destination, we noticed a thin, elderly lady standing near the street corner. She was exceptionally well-groomed, and dressed in a colorful, neatly pressed outfit.
Leaning on her cane, she was looking around in what appeared to be a confused manner. We were concerned, because it was a very hot and humid day. As we approached her, my wife asked if she needed any help. She smiled sweetly and said that she was looking for her bank, but was not certain she was walking in the right direction.
As BHO and his far-left comrades in arms continue to beat the drums of class warfare, they leap from one outrageous argument to another. The latest is that “government taxation is Christian.” Really? Does the bible actually say that government has the right to take money from individuals by force and hand it to others? Hmm … I must have missed that.
Other than Obama’s newest spiritual advisor, true-believing communist Reverend Jim Wallis (who replaced Obama’s previous spiritual advisor of twenty years, that paragon of patriotism, Jeremiah Wright), you don’t hear a whole lot of people seriously trying to make such a claim. Something about a giggle test, I think.
Every year or two, progressive New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually says something I agree with, like when he recently warned that there could be riots in the streets of America if the economy doesn’t improve. On his weekly radio show, Bloomberg said that a lack of jobs is causing people to become desperate. “The damage to a generation that can’t find jobs,” explained Bloomberg, “will go on for many, many years.”
But Bloomberg and I parted ways when he praised Barack Obama for offering a proposal to create jobs and improve the economy. “At least he’s got some ideas on the table, whether you like those or not,” he said. “Now everybody’s got to sit down and say we’re actually gonna do something, and you have to do something on both the revenue and the expense side.”
As news outlets and financial analysts continue to warn of a possible “double-dip recession,” the real world’s invisible depression continues to become more and more visible. As the Fed continues to print fiat currency and the government continues to borrow money it can never repay, markets gyrate evermore wildly.
Good professional traders who know how to profit in both up and down markets should, as always, do well as the American Empire continues to collapse. But it’s going to continue to be a bloodletting for the average investor. As I’ve said many times over the years, I can envision a DJIA at 2,000 or at 100,000 — depending on whether we have a deflationary collapse (which all politicians mortally fear) or a runaway inflation.
As Voice of Sanity subscribers know, early in 2009 I first started writing about the possibility of the HillBillies, the world’s first and only two-for-the-price-of-one political combo, challenging Barack Obama once it became obvious to a majority of the anesthetized public that the would-be emperor had no clothes.
Don’t get me wrong. BHO has accomplished almost everything I expected of him — universal healthcare, a trillion-dollar stimulus giveaway, debt-ceiling increases that have brought the U.S. ever-closer to default, business-crushing regulations intended to bring the private sector to its knees, encouraging union thugs to engage in violent uprisings from coast to coast, appointing far-left radicals to important positions in the White House, sending a thumbs up to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and the PLO while constantly chastising Israel … no need to go on, as your own list is probably longer than mine.
Like millions of other Americans, I experienced a wide range of emotions on Sunday as I watched both the replays of 9/11 and the ceremonies honoring the victims. First, of course, I felt great sadness for those who perished on that infamous day in 2001, as well as for their families.
Watching and listening to the soon-to-be seventy Paul Simon sing “Sound of Silence,” the song that propelled him (and Simon Garfunkel) to fame at the tender age of twenty-five, was like being in a time machine. I tell you, it gave me goose bumps.
My, my, look what we have here — Marco Rubio birthers crawling out from under their collectivist rocks, sensing it’s payback time for the birthers who have been challenging Barack Obama’s eligibility for more than three years.
But there’s a huge difference between these two birther groups. Notwithstanding the insistence of even Fox News commentators to wave aside the question of Obama’s birth certificate, the reality is that, to this day, no one has seen proof that Obama was born in the United States.
This article is not so much about politics, but, rather, psychology, wisdom, and understanding how the world works. More specifically, it’s about an age-old topic — fame is fleeting.
In one of his classic works, The Bridge Across Forever, Richard Bach poetically cautioned, “To be handed a lot of money is to be handed a glass sword, blade-first. Best handle it very carefully, sir, very slowly while you puzzle what it’s for.”
Mitt Romney keeps reminding us that he knows how to create jobs. Given that we already have an egomaniac in the White House who keeps insisting that his big-government programs will create jobs — even though he’s never created a single private-sector job in his life — Romney’s claim makes me a bit nervous.
If by “creating jobs” Romney means instituting more government policies to “help” small and large businesses succeed, beware. That’s the kind of help that has continued to destroy what is left of the American economy.
If you like excitement, it doesn’t get any better than Washington, D.C. this past week — an earthquake and a hurricane in the space of five days. We already had our hands full with a man-made disaster known as the federal government.
Though both of these natural disasters were highly unusual for the nation’s capital, the truth is that D.C. and most of Maryland and Northern Virginia escaped two bullets. The earthquake did very little damage and Hurricane Irene could have been much worse. We had a lot of rain and winds in the twenty-five-mile-an-hour range in our area, but, overall, we were lucky compared to what happened to the Outer Banks in North Carolina, New Jersey, New York City, Long Island, and much of the northeast.
