Noted ‘conservanerd‘ David Brooks has abandoned all pretense of conservatism in his latest New York Times column titled “The Mother of All No-Brainers.”  It’s pretty clear that he believes that his readers are the brainless ones – rarely have so many shaky premises, false assertions and heapin’ helpings of pure nonsense been gathered into one NYT opinion column.  That’s saying something.

Brooks is Obama and Axelrod’s favorite pseudo-conservative for a reason: his creepily slavish devotion to the idea that we mere drones need to be guided, led and – sadly yes, controlled – by a coterie of Ivy League-indoctrinated betters who will lead us out of the darkness of our sad little lives.  These wise leaders may be identified by the crease in their slacks – Obama’s sharp press famously demonstrated to Brooks that The One would be The One.  It’s that kind of profound insight that has made David Brooks the most popular conservative pundit among those who hate and despise everything conservatives stand for.

Let’s take a quick look at the cheesy rhetoric and flabby thinking that this servant of the failed status quo put out on the Fourth of July.  It’s a wonderful illustration of how liberals argue – and provides a lesson in countering the nonsense.

The Republicans have changed American politics since they took control of the House of Representatives. They have put spending restraint and debt reduction at the top of the national agenda … Republican leaders have also proved to be effective negotiators.

First, he sucks up to the conservatives.  This is to try and make us think he is one of us, that he speaks as a friend instead of the house servant of his lefty overlords.  Feel your defenses crumbling?  Then:

[The Democrats] have agreed not to raise tax rates.

Wait, what?  Since when have the Democrats agreed not to raise tax rates?  Isn’t the President still talking about raising the rates next year, or is that one of those inconvenient truths?

[The Democrats] have agreed to a roughly 3-to-1 rate of spending cuts to revenue increases, an astonishing concession.

Hold on … weren’t they agreeing not to raise rates just a sentence ago?  Or are these “revenue increases” – don’t you love euphemisms? – all going to come from wiping out the scourge of corporate jets?  Whatever.

And wait a second – exactly who has agreed to this 3-to-1 ratio?  It best not be someone on the GOP side unless she or she wants a well-funded primary opponent next year.

Watch out, because these harmless “revenue increases” are “to close loopholes and eliminate tax expenditures.”  The “tax expenditures” language is priceless – as if the government “spends” money by not taking it.  And the “loopholes” are the same kind of deductions that every business takes – deductions merely being a recognition of costs since what is taxed is profits.  David, if you want to get on board with a low corporate tax rate and wipe out most all deductions, we conservatives might be on board.  But you don’t.  You want to raise rates without raising marginal rates; the sneaky way to do that is make more income taxable by eliminating deductions.  And you think your readers are too stupid to see that.

And now comes the good part.

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It’s mildly entertaining to see the same brilliant media folk who blew their analysis so badly during the last election, struggle to try to figure out the next election.

First, you can ask the legitimate question of why those who so totally missed the mark in 2010 are allowed back in the room to pretend they can figure out 2012, but “progressive” media are not real keen on change. If you used Dan Rather in 2010 you still have his cell number, so you call him again to fill the seat in 2012. Forget whether the analysis is accurate or insightful, you just need another leftist there to confirm the views of the host and the other leftists on the panel.

The “company line” before the last election was that the tea party would have little or no effect, or a negative effect on Republicans chances. These are the same people who are telling us that the movement is now dead and will have no effect on the next election.

After a while you get the distinct impression that these supposed expert analysts are telling us what they hope becomes true, instead of what will actually happen. Imagine that.

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I watched the LA Lakers and Golden St. Warriors going through their pre-game routine the other night and saw them wearing “NBA GREEN” on their warm-ups.

“How great is this, the NBA is finally admitting that it’s all about the money,” is what I told my wife. “A pro-sports league being honest, I wonder how the media will react.”  She quickly corrected me and told me what I already knew. The NBA has an effort to “go green” by trying to save the planet, or something to that effect. How thoughtful of they who have 30 teams who fly around the planet playing 82 games each of a regular season, plus a long pre-season and an even longer post-season. But then can celebrate how the Oklahoma City Thunder planted 14 trees. If we ever see Dale Junior driving a Chevy Volt in a NASCAR race, then we can declare The End is near.

One thing I know is that sports and its media are just as liberal as their newsroom counterparts.

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While praying for the recovery of the Safeway victims all last week, we also documented the media’s attempts to defame the tea party by tying the actions of Jared Loughner to the conservative movement — all of this done while lecturing America on civility and rhetoric:

Pointing Fingers Rather Than Saying a Prayer

Media Praises The New Civility

Thoughtful, On-Target Palin Responds To Attacks; Left Loses Last Grip On Reality

Tucson Aftermath Not the Left’s First Political Witch Hunt

A Modest Proposal to End The Progressive Media Tuscon Hate Talk

How the media wanted Loughner to play out

Fire Krugman, Olbermann Now For Blood Libel Against Palin, Americans, In AZ Shooting

The Sheriff and The Media

YouTube Asked to Remove Video of Left’s Threats Against Palin

Targeting A Media Beneath Contempt

Maddening Rhetoric

Media Racially Profiles Giffords Shooter

The result? Death threats against Sarah Palin are at an all-time high, I myself have received threats as has Andrew Breitbart (who made the first call for civility last Saturday), Big Journalism contributor Liberty Chick, talk radio host Jon Justice, and more hardworking conservatives and tea party activists than I can expediently include, including many who do not wish for their circumstances to be known as they are fearful for their families. Yesterday during a taping for a national broadcast, Tucson Tea Party organizer Trent Humphries had his life threatened on camera by Eric Fuller, a victim of the Safeway shootings.

Despite zero evidence to connect Loughner to any conservative, despite the President’s words that discourse “did not cause this tragedy. It did not,” none of the insinuations, suggestions, or coverage presented above from certain media and leftist blogs has been corrected, retracted, or remedied by way of apology.

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All rally around the Civility Pole.

The latest example of supposed civility is nothing more than a “made for TV” battle cry that the media will love. Mark Udal of Colorado proposed that Congress sit in no particular political side of the aisle for the upcoming State of the Union Address.  Udal proposed this in a letter to his colleagues pointing out that there’s nothing in our founding documents saying that lawmakers must sit in separate parts of the Capitol Building during the speech.

He’s right, it’s not specifically written in the Constitution, but he must not have read Federalist Paper 10, or James Madison Rules America, by William Connelly Jr. Either will give him a good look at the Constitutional origins of partisanship.

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, Udal knows the media will take this “ball of supposed bi-partisanship” and run with it. Democrats don’t have to appear as bi-partisan as Republicans because they have the media doing their dirty work for them every step of the way. Democrats have the luxury of knowing they can sit in their Ivory Tower of Unity and the activist old media will be there to give them cover.

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Any time someone commits an act of violence that grabs headlines, journalists scramble desperately for a scapegoat, some person or social force to crusade against and extend the story’s expiration date (and thus ratings).  While it appears that Jared Lee Loughner’s motivation for shooting Gabrielle Giffords was nonpartisan (aka mental illness), there have already been reports from CBS, CNN, and the Associated Press attempting to pin Loughner’s motivations to Sarah Palin’s gun-target map, Giffords’ opponent Jesse Kelly using an M16 at a campaign event, and a general atmosphere of fear and animosity created solely by Republicans in Arizona.

As long as they’re bringing this subject up, I believe it’s a good time to discuss what the media could do if they really wanted to prevent future violence.  The answer is not to force conservative speakers to be “more careful” with their rhetoric.  In fact, I believe that the greater responsibility to prevent violence lies on the shoulders of journalists themselves; the media must stop suppressing conservative voices and increasing the ire of the nation.

This is not what makes us angry.

Only a literalistic idiot could find Palin’s “target” map something that would inspire violence, and only a partisan idiot could think that Loughner, a fan of flag-burning, would be a big enough Palin fan to have ever seen that map.  I find it extremely unlikely that someone can be inspired to violence through the words of a political leader unless it’s a direct order, which neither Palin nor Beck nor Rush have come anywhere close to saying.  The people who claim that these three use “coded language” to incite violence are as paranoid as Loughner; only crazy people see calls to violence in innocuous speech, such as John Lennon’s shooter claiming The Catcher in the Rye as his inspiration.

Indeed, when these conservative media personalities talk about removing politicians through the power of one’s vote, that is actually a deterrent to violence.  For Palin fans, her political speech gives them joy and hope, a cathartic reminder that someone out there is speaking for them.  Her defining political contribution has been giving hope to all the flyover country-dwellers deemed subhuman and unworthy by the elites in the media — hope that their votes mattered and that they could change things through their speech and political involvement. (more…)

When can you call the most powerful person in the world a victim of those conniving right-wing radicals in the US Senate? When you’re Chris Matthews and you have your own little silly Sunday show, you can.

Watch the video, it’s at the end and it’s almost lost in the debate over who should be Time Magazine’s “Person of the Year.” Matthews goes with Mitch McConnell. Why? Because he is the person who made Barack Obama become the Cold Hearted Social Engineer that he is and thus helped the Republican sweep the November mid-terms.

“It’s Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader who forced the president to the left on every issue from health care to the stimulus. He made him into a left wing president because of Republican policy. It was brilliant. It allowed the Republicans to have a brilliant political year, I’m not sure it’s was in the country’s interest, but he made the big difference this year.”

Where to go on this one here? There are loads of fascinating peeks into the mind of Matthews in this one paragraph.

First, Matthews thinks it’s McConnell who “forced” Obama to the left. He must have never really been there to begin with, like an innocent child who is made to eat his broccoli; Obama was forced to take that radical leftist medicine that he never really wanted in the first place.

Bill Ayers, Reverend Wright, and Saul Alinskiy had nothing to do with who Obama is today, he never heard any of their speeches, read any of their books, nor believed any of their radical leftist ideals. Obama made more left turns than a NASCAR weekend at Bristol only after McConnell forced him there a few short months ago.

Who is this little weakling in the White House? What does it say about Dear Leader that he is being pushed around so easily by the guy whose claim to fame is that he runs the minority?

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Earlier this month, the National Organization For Women (N.O.W.) endorsed Jerry Brown for Governor of CA a mere 24 hours after an audio tape surfaced wherein Jerry Brown was heard agreeing with an aide that Meg Whitman should be called a “whore.” What’s a little sexism if it is aimed at a Republican woman! I mean, Jerry Brown is totally For The (Real) Women ™ , right? And The Children, of course. Only, not so much.

The above linked screen shot of a newspaper article, via RedState, is back from when Jerry Brown was previously Governor of California. It refers to women “pestering” Jerry Brown, who was himself quoted as saying, “Can’t you get the women off my back on child care?” So, the N.O.W. endorsed Jerry Brown thinks that pester-y Meg Whitman, daring to run against him, is a “whore,” mammograms are a luxury that need not be covered by insurance and child care issues are oh-so-tiresome. Get off his back, man! More accurately, get off his back, kids and broads!

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The Left nauseatingly pays lip service to the terms “tolerance” and “diversity.” In reality, they are highly intolerant and they hate diversity, particularly diversity of thought. They hate free markets and really loathe free marketplaces of ideas. As such, the stompy foot temper tantrums were in full force when it was announced that Andrew Breitbart and Dana Loesch, would be participating in ABC’s election night coverage. A coordinated effort between the usual suspects immediately, and predictably, sprung up. How dare ABC include people who won’t merely spout the Left’s talking points and somehow blame George W. Bush and people too stupid to understand the “nuance” of Democrats and their policies?  Oh, and racists, natch.

The first usual suspect to start shrieking in typical intolerant lefty fashion was the ever-inane Media Matters. Media Matters, an organization filled with tools so sanctimonious that they give themselves titles like “Senior Fellow.” Dude. You are a blogger. They, of course, offered only ad hominem attacks on Breitbart, like calling him a “propagandist.” Hello, pot! Meet kettle.  Cowardly ABC  immediately started to spin, by offering Media Matters this wuss statement:

ABC News’ David Ford told Media Matters: “He will be one of many voices on our air, including Bill Adair of Politifact. If Andrew Breitbart says something that is incorrect, we have other voices to call him on it.”

Because, of course, the liberally biased Politifact would be the one to go to if Andrew Breitbart did something pesky like, you know, tell the truth. The ever buffoonish Keith Olbermann weighed in as well and, having no actual argument, resorted to fart jokes. No, really. The Huffington Post joined the fray and soon thereafter ABC spinelessly caved and issued a statement walking back Andrew Breitbart’s participation on election night; a statement full of lies, even going so far as to claim that Andrew Breitbart was never meant to be part of that night’s broadcast coverage. Alas, email is a funny thing. The emails sent from ABC to Andrew Breitbart expose the truth. ABC executives, in an attempt to cover their own hides out of fear of the Left not only caved to the Left’s intimidation attempts, but also lied when they did so. A snippet: (more…)

Gawker, that pit of disgusting, published an anonymous hit piece on Christine O’Donnell today. I refuse to link to it; y’all can google and find it yourself. I’m a mean girl like that. The ‘exclusive’ – exclusive in this case meaning only Gawker was vile enough to publish, and pay for, such a thing – was a tale told by an idiot. A piggish, pitiful idiot who exposed himself for the total tool that he is; an alleged man, lacking an ounce of  chivalry or even human decency. Plus, according to him, he couldn’t even score with a drunk,  feisty-feeling broad!  Even though the gross hit piece was titled “My One Night Stand With Christine O’Donnell” there was no actual, um, “stand”. You see, apparently Christine O’Donnell is a total slut. Who is also a prude. Or something.

I won’t go into the particulars alleged by “anonymous”, who we now know is Dustin Dominiak. Particulars that sunk so low as to discuss “feminine upkeep”; apparently Dominiak prefers pre-pubescent girls. The disgusting smears aren’t even the point, really. I mean, it’s Gawker. They are, and always have been, abhorrent. There is nothing redeeming about that site at all and they should not be given any credence whatsoever.

Gawker, or as I shall now refer to them, “the site with microscopic boy bits that shall not be named”  has a record of misogyny, including the latest trend – a kind of Pornification of Conservative women.  Michelle Malkin has further chronicled their smear machine against conservative women. The larger issue is that this is symptomatic of how the left sexualizes, demeans and dehumanizes Conservative women, always. It is a perfect example of how the Left tries to paint all conservative women as either a) not real women (Pat Buchanan in drag, for example, as Palin was called) to try to take away their gender completely or b) whores (in this case a “virginal” whore, which is even more absurd)  as a way to reduce them to sexual use only.

The reaction of the Left to this latest atrocity proves it further.

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“Allah honored wives by instating the punishment of beatings.” So said Cleric Sa’d Arafat earlier this year. Last month, a Wellesley, Massachusetts public school took a trip to a mosque, where the school children were taught to pray to that same Allah.

The result is stunning: an unabashed exercise in Islamic dawa, the “call to Islam” and the manner by which the Brotherhood’s spiritual guide, Yusuf Qaradawi, promises that Islam will “conquer America” and “conquer Europe.” Qaradawi — wonder of wonders — is a trustee of the Roxbury mosque (although he is banned from the U.S. for sanctioning terrorism). As the video relates, “Dawa Net,” one Islamic organization that instructs on how to use the schools to inculcate the young, explains that public schools in America are “fertile grounds where the seeds of Islam can be sowed inside the hearts of non-Muslim students.”

Well, except for the icky girls. Cooties, and all. They were not allowed to take part in the “tolerance” indoctrination. Have to teach these girls how to show respect! And teach them a little about  the benefits of misogynistic subjugation in the Muslim world, right? See, they were shockingly told – as they were shuttled off to an area away from males – that Islam is “pro-women” and “Islam was actually very advanced in terms of recognizing women’s rights.” They were also told this:

At the time of the Prophet Muhammad, women were allowed to express their opinions and vote. In this country, women didn’t gain that right until less than a hundred years ago.

Of course. Blame America and try to make some sort of sick moral relativism argument. What’s the matter with you rube Islamophobes? Muhammad let women vote and express their opinions. Of course, they were then beaten for them, but still. In Islam, it is an honor to be beaten by your husband! There is even etiquette and stuff. We honor women by beating the crap out of them. Sheesh!

I mean, just let the cleric S’ad Arafat explain further:

Home foreclosures are up, unemployment is up, food stamp usage is up, and bankruptcy filings – well, they’re up, too.

So what does The Oklahoman, the Sooner State’s largest daily newspaper (which recently had to lay off nearly sixty employees) choose to fixate upon: “Self-funded political races often turn out poorly.”

No kidding – as do races that PACs and lobbyists heavily finance.

In a house editorial, brimming with a grumpy attitude, The Oklahoman scornfully wrote that self-funding is all the rage, with candidates loaning their campaigns their own bucks to “jump start” the process, and that the end goal of such investments is winning (duh!) coupled with the hope that donors will “cover the loans.”

The paper especially singled out Grand Old Party members who are running for statewide office in Oklahoma and are heavy donors to their own campaigns, namely Mark Costello (commissioner for labor candidate who is a businessman) and Dr. Janet Barresi (state superintendent of public instruction candidate who is a dentist). (more…)

Q. The name of your new book is To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine. Are things really that dire?

Yes. America is not merely a genetic or geographic identity. Our country was founded upon a set of principles clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence and ensconced in the Constitution. These include: God given rights; the importance of the work ethic; elected representation; local control limited government. All these uniquely American values are under assault from the modern Left, what I describe in To Save America as “Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine.” The President’s ideology is clearly more European than historic American and his policies are clearly going to centralize power in Washington. His economics are going to keep American unemployed while his total lack of reality in foreign policy makes America vulnerable. Collectively, this assault on our core identity and the danger to our economy and safety makes our situation pretty dire.

Q. If so, why did John McCain and the Republicans take so many issues off the table in the 2008 election, especially any meaningful discussion of Obama’s radical background and associates?

It was a mistake. Too many Republican politicians and consultants are anti-intellectual, don’t do their homework, and aren’t prepared to engage in a lengthy, intellectual debate with the editor of the Harvard Law review who taught at the University of Chicago. In order to convince the American people we should govern, we have to be willing to stand on the same stage as our opponents and debate. To quote Margaret Thatcher, “First you win the argument then you win the vote.” If you are not prepared to do your homework and learn the argument, you are not going to win it.

Q. In the introduction to your book, you refer to the legislative program of Obama and the Democrats as “alien ideology,” and quote your daughter as saying that “we were told to vote for change we could believe in and found we had elected people who wanted to change what we believe.” Why did this come as a shock to so many people? Did the media not do its job? (more…)

For those suffering from the embarrassment of having voted for Barack Obama, Andrew Klavan offers a few words of help, advice and comfort:

How can President Obama know when the thrill is gone? When the kindest of responses from his fiercest apologists, the mainstream media, was a long, collective, disappointed sigh to his speech concerning the BP oil spill. CNN has a rather harsh montage of “pundit response” from the speech on their website.

Joan Walsh called the speech “Just Words” saying that Obama was not “playing to win” politically. Rachel Maddow physically dropped her head in disappointment when asked by Keith Olbermann for her reaction to the speech. She then added that America wanted a little more “adult talk from the President on this.”

Maddow continued to call the speech a “sobering spectacle”, hardly a rave review. Ezra Klein, when asked by Rachel Maddow if the president made the “best possible case for energy reform” (which is what Klein earlier that day said that Obama had to do in his speech), Klein responded with “No, I don’t.” He then went on to clarify today that the speech wasn’t “that bad of a speech. It was more of a bad situation.”
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Call me a hater.  Accuse me of racism and playing party politics, but this is inexcusable and might even have risen to the level of “high crimes and misdemeanors” warranting immediate impeachment.  For this President Obama must go – for lying to the American people about baseball.

I’m not talking about the horrific treatment our good friend Israel received at the White House last week, or the non-stop attacks on the free speech of his enemies, or even the breakneck pace of Obama’s drive to redistribute the wealth and make America a socialist nation. This is worse than all of that combined and the MSM has buried it.

Yesterday in Washington DC, the President did what so many before him have done; he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ home opener.  And no, this is not an attack on his obvious lack of baseball skills seen when he tossed a ball that no doubt gave George W Bush a reason to smile again.  Neither does this concern the clever stunt he pulled by hiding a Chicago White Sox baseball cap in his glove and donning it as he stepped on the rubber.  This is about lying to the American people… and President Obama has lied to us for God knows how long, it is time to put down our collective foot and say enough.

Born on the south side of Chicago, I was genetically and geographically predisposed White Sox fandom.  I have suffered and followed this team when they were the laughingstock of the American League. The old Comiskey Park at 35th and Shields in Chicago was where I spent precious moments with my dad – just being guys, hanging out watching a game.  It was also where I was taught some of life’s great lessons… including the one about never allowing your team forget that they actually played professional baseball in shorts!  (Thankfully it was only one game in 1976 and most people have forgiven them for that. Not me.) (more…)

There are only two choices: either Attorney General Eric Holder has nothing to hide, or he is trying to hide something. If the former is true, why does Holder refuse to put names to the seven anonymous Department of Justice attorneys whom he admits once represented terrorist detainees before joining the Obama administration? If the latter is the case, why is the old media ignoring the story?

Responding to an inquiry from Senator Charles Grassley, Holder admitted that nine DOJ attorneys had previously been involved defending detainees:

“To the best of our knowledge, during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees in those components represented detainees,” Holder said in a letter dated Feb. 18. “Four others contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.”

Who are these attorneys? How deeply were they committed to protecting the “rights” of irregular troops bent on destruction of western civilization? (more…)

Two years ago today, William F. Buckley moved on to the great Firing Line in the Sky where he is, no doubt, still debating the wisdom of turning over the Panama Canal with the Gipper. Buckley’s legacy lives on, not only in the remarkable generation of writers that he spawned after he first dared to stand athwart history and yell stop but, in an odd sort of way, in the manner in which some of the liberals he defied over the course of five decades seem to pine for the great man’s genteel ways.

On a personal note, Buckley was one of the two great influences in the creative life of this particular – not particularly humble – correspondent. The other was that irascible Chicago newspaperman/Everyman: Mike Royko. It’s difficult to imagine an odder couple, but Buckley and Royko shared at least a couple of common characteristics. One took them on at one’s peril (and very few ever successfully did so) and neither could be neatly constrained within an ideological box. Royko was classically liberal, but he openly scorned the liberal elite. Buckley became the symbol of the conservative movement, but he refused to let the movement define him, cutting his own path through the ideological jungle when necessary, most famously when he argued for the legalization of many illegal drugs. Agree or disagree, both Royko and Buckley were thinkers, and honest thinkers to boot, who had a knack for expressing their thoughts with the kind of panache that left their readers breathless in awe. (more…)

Think the Chicago Way political machine is all about corrupt Democrat politicians and their cronies? Think again. It’s bipartisan. While Democrats have run the Machine out of Chicago for decades, a supporting cast of Republicans has long participated in Machine enterprises.

Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass uses the term, “the Combine” to refer to the combination of Illinois Republicans working with Democrats to make hay for themselves regardless of who’s driving the tractor. As Republican power-broker Bill Cellini once said,

When we’re in [Republicans], we’re in. And when you’re in [Democrats], we’re in.

This month, the University of Illinois released a study entitled “Curing Corruption in Illinois: Anti-Corruption Report Number 3.”  Here are some of its findings:

Since 1972 there have been three governors before Governor Blagojevich, state legislators, two congressmen, 19 Cook County judges, 30 aldermen, and other statewide officials convicted of corruption. Altogether there have been 1,000 public officials and businessmen convicted of public corruption since 1970…Corruption in Illinois seems endemic in both political parties. (p.3)

Here’s now corruption in both political parties, the Combine, works. (more…)

We finally have proof that life exists beyond the confines of planet earth, although not necessarily intelligent life. How else can one explain Joe Biden other than to postulate that he comes from another planet, if not an alternate universe? The Vice President’s stunning observation about Iraq last certainly defied any form of earthly logic:

“I am very optimistic about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.”

Of which administration? Of the administration led by the fellow who, as the junior Senator from Illinois, opposed the surge that turned the war around? That administration? Let us time travel back to 2007, when then-Senator Barack Obama offered his sage opinion about the surge:

We can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops – I don’t know any expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to privately that believes that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.

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