Unforced Errors II

Hard to imagine a Republican prankster could come up with a more damning video than the one the Democrats showed to start their convention, with the tagline "Government Is The Only Thing We All Belong To":



I am not a slave to government. I don't "belong" to government. I do not think of myself as being part of the government. I am an American. Our government is not the same thing as our country. It is a function, not a creed, not a family, not even a nation. The nation "America" exists apart from our government and is composed of people and organic traditions, beliefs, history, and ideas.    Ronald Reagan said it best:  we are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.

But Democrats think differently. They think that we all "belong" to the government, which means that government can confiscate the fruits of our labor, and that our very existence is granted to us by our lords and masters in Washington.

We're All Racists Now

This is the way out of our current societal morass on "racism"... make fun of liberals' tendency to shout racism at any disagreement:

Girl of the Day - Michelle O

Have to give it to her:  she gave a good speech last night.   I increasingly have the feeling that she is the one driving the bus in that family.  

Unforced Errors

I've taken a look at the cliche-ridden festival of banality that is the Democratic Party's platform.   It's filled with what Orwell would have called "dying metaphors" and "meaningless words."   So what would it have mattered if they had included a few references to God?   But they chose to leave out all such references, presumably on purpose, and thus to offend the majority of Americans who are believers.    Are they brain dead?   Do they finally not care whether they win this election or not?

On the other hand, they also chose to leave out reference to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to insert language supporting government-funding of abortion.   So maybe they've figured that, if people are going to believe that they are hard-leftists (which they are), they might as well be true to themselves in their platform.  

God is dead.
Jews will be dead.
Babies ought to be dead.
The modern Democratic Party.  

Let the Hysteria Commence

"Hysteria" is the best noun to describe what will happen this week at the DNC, because it captures the hormonal, feminized, ovary-driven politics that will apparently be the Dems' mantra.   There will be plenty of "Get Your Government Off My Ovaries!" buttons on display.

Anyway, here's idiot Cory Booker today on Republicans' "war on women":

At a Planned Parenthood rally today, Newark mayor Cory Booker tore into the Republicans on abortion, delivering a harsh criticism of speakers at the GOP convention who had said they “love women.”

“Then I heard something that is one of the reflections, an echo of some of the most insulting things we’ve been hearing for a long time,” Booker said, referring to watching the convention. “I heard people stand up and say, ‘I love women.’ I heard people stand up: ‘I’ve got a sister. I’ve got a mother.’”

“That’s like saying you’re not a bigot ‘cause you have a black friend,” Booker retorted, drawing cheers and applause from the crowd. “That’s like saying I love Latinos, I go to Taco Bell every week. That is like saying that you are a person that is just and right because you know what, you like Jewish people.”

These people are nuts.

Incomplete!

This is a major gaffe, and I'm sure the GOP is readying ads as we speak to exploit it.   You can't be President and give yourself an "Incomplete" for your main task -- getting the economy moving again -- and expect to be reelected.




Beyond the main gaffe, consider the embedded gaffes.   He cites three positive "accomplishments" on the economy:  (1) the auto company bailout; (2) making college more affordable; and (3) investing in green energy companies.

IS HE SIMPLY OBLIVIOUS TO WHAT'S ACTUALLY HAPPENING?

I capitalize this because GM's stock price is in the toilet, which means that the federal government, holders of some 500 million shares of the company's stock, has lost something on the order of $25 billion on the GM bailout.   And the bubble in college education is so stretched that it's only a matter of time before it pops.   And his investments in "green energy" like Solyndra are either failures or felonies, depending on your perspective.   These are his accomplishments?

The Emperor Has No Clothes.   Say it out loud.   Rinse.   Repeat.   The Emperor Has No Clothes.

File This Under "It's Not 2008 Anymore..."

I'd call this political malpratice:

Democrats are poised to avoid the danger of President Barack Obama accepting his party’s nomination before a partially-empty stadium by shifting his speech to an indoor arena and citing ‘severe weather’.

The Obama campaign have been working desperately to ensure that the 74,000-seater Bank of America stadium in Charlotte would be filled.

Buses for students from across North Carolina and even members of black churches in neighboring South Carolina have been arranged.

Images of rows of empty seats at the stadium, home of the Carolina Panthers, as Obama speaks on Thursday night would be politically disastrous – an enduring image of the contrast between his campaign of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ in 2008 and his dour, negative struggle for re-election in 2012.

Now, it looks like the weather has come to the President's rescue.

As officials prepare to begin the convention this afternoon, there are strong indications that the speech will be moved to Time Warner Cable Arena, which has a capacity of just over 20,000.

Democratic convention sources have indicated that the ‘contingency plan’ is at an advanced stage and that a move to the stadium appears certain.

‘It looks like a done deal to me,’ said one convention worker. ‘The decision’s apparently been taken and it’s just a matter of spinning it as being forced on us by the weather.’

Girl of the Day - Mitzi Gaynor

This was an easy one:  the great Mitzi Gaynor, from one of the great movie musicals ever, South Pacific, turns 82 today.

  

Triple Whammy

Three datums should, in a just world, dominate this week's news.

First, sometime within the next day or so, the national debt will exceed $16 trillion.   It is at $15,999,488,000,000 as I write this.   No, wait, it's gone up a million since I typed that last sentence.   Oh, wait, it's now at... well, you get the picture.   Spin that, MSM!

Second, today it was also announced that we now have a record 46.7 million people on food stamps.   I'll be blunt.   I do not believe that more than 15% of Americans are starving.   And, absent starvation, I do not believe it is my responsibility to feed my fellow free citizens.   Does that sound harsh?   Too bad.   When there are more people on food stamps than people who don't have cell phones, or don't hae Internet access, or don't have cable TV, or don't have flat screens... well, something is very, very wrong.   We are becoming a nation of moochers, and the Democratic Party is the party of mooching.

Third, on Friday the latest unemployment figures will come out.   I do not believe that the August numbers are going to be very good, partly for unfair reasons... nothing much happens in August anyway.   But they'll come out on Friday morning, the Friday after the Democratic convention ends, and the number, if bad, will dominate the news over the weekend.  

Debt, food stamps, unemployment.   Are you better off?

The Empty Chair is Sticking

I told you it would:

Protein Wisdom

Jeff Goldstein at the blog Protein Wisdom provides a spot-on description of the modern Democratic Party:

There are no real undecideds left.  The economy is in the tank. The private sector is largely foundering.  The takers make up nearly 50% of the electorate. And the Left has institutionalized, through the media, academia, pop culture, and its political messaging, a grievance and entitlement society that is meant to Balkanize us.  This is their voter bloc, and they have decided to sit back, rail at the capitalist system, and justify their own enslavement to the state that provides for them.  People who view national politics through the lens of their own identity grievance group have already made up their minds.  The Left has cut loose the religious; they’ve embraced the secularists, be they in the various ethnic identity group movements, the gay community, the “feminists”, or the environmentalists.  These people, nasty sorts, make up the rhetorical and intellectual apparatus of the modern day Democratic Party.

Belated Bird Birthday

Charlie "Bird" Parker's birthday was Wednesday too.   Greatest jazz saxaphonist ever?   Maybe.   (You could get arguments from John Coltrane fans, Dexter Gordon fans, etc.)   But certainly the most iconic:

Girl of the Day - Ingrid Bergman

I was out of town this week in trial, so I missed out on an important birthday girl on Wednesday:

What could be better?

Oh, Mark, You Funny, Funny Man!

Mark Steyn might be the best aphorist working in journalism today.   Funny, funny stuff, as every Saturday:

Time’s Mark Halperin wrote this week that “Obama can’t win if he can’t swing the conversation away from the economy.” That’s a pretty amazing admission. The economy is the No. 1 issue on the minds of voters, and, beyond that, the central reality of Obama’s America. But to win the president has to steer clear. That doesn’t leave a lot else. Hence, the racism of golf, the war on women, the carcinogenic properties of Mitt Romney. Democrat strategy 1992: It’s the economy, stupid. Democrat strategy 2012: It’s the stupidity, economists.

Clint Eastwood's Speech

Always watch who the left-wing media attacks to find out who they fear.   The media attacked Sarah Palin in 2008.    They attacked Paul Ryan after his speech this year, saying he had "lied" about the closing of a Janesville GM plant.   (P.S.   He didn't.)   Now the media is attacking Clint Eastwood for his ten-minute "empty chair" speech.   That's how you know that they know it was very very effective.   Think of the points that he has now made memorable:

1.  The empty chair is now a metaphor for the President.   Empty chair makes you think of empty suit.  Makes me think of the famous line that "there's no there there."   Brilliant.

2.  People supposedly didn't like the "blue" material, where he has the imaginary President Obama telling Romney, and then Eastwood, to go f*** themselves.   (Eastwood says it more obliquely, and with more humor, but that's what he was talking about.)   I think it too was brilliant:   it makes you think that, in addition to being an empty suit, Obama's not a very nice guy, but instead is kind of angry.   He made the point again later when he noted that "maybe he's not so nice when you see some of his ads that are running."  

3.  He contrasted Romney the businessman with Obama as an "attorney" who's always arguing and "bifurcating" things.   Brilliant again.   What is it that the Obama campaign is always trying to pin on Romney?   That he's a heartless businessman.   But however heartless businessmen might be in the collective unconscious, people really really don't like lawyers.   Believe me, I know.

4.  He gave moderates and independents and Reagan Democrats who voted for Obama a rationale and a kind of permission to vote against Obama this time, saying we own the country, government works for us, and when an employee doesn't do the job, we have to let him go.   Again, brilliant.

5.  And he did so quickly, with humor, and with a kind of shambling Grandpa charm that I think most Americans who aren't pundits would have enjoyed and responded to.

As I said:  brilliant.   And the left knows it.   That's why the long knives are out.

Here's the whole thing, for your re-viewing pleasure:

Hiatus

The Regular Guy is in trial this week, so we'll be light on blogging. Keep the folks on the Gulf Coast in your prayers. Otherwise, go Romney-Ryan!

Fulling Mill, Hampshire, England

Latest and greatest from the Regular Son.   See below re the uniqueness of children.   The miraculous surprises of parenthood continue apace.

You Don't Have to Be a Birther To Know Which Way the Wind Blows

Jim Treacher makes this good point today:

At some point over the next few days, until the next Election 2012 outrage crops up, a lefty may start shrieking “BIRTHER!!!” at you because Romney made an attempt at humor. If that happens, all you have to do is show the shrieking lefty this:

Treacher goes on to make this important point:  "Obama used this bio for over 15 years, and it was revised a number of times. But he only changed it to indicate his true place of birth, Hawaii, once he decided to run for president. He has yet to explain why he lied in the first place, but he doesn’t have to. He lied because he’s Barack Obama, and that’s what Barack Obama does."

Girlies of the Day - Progeny Version!

Why not?  If you've got them, flaunt them!

Still More on Akin and "Rareness"

Jonah Goldberg, writing on NRO yesterday:

What’s Akin’s point then? We already knew that abortions stemming from rape are statistically rare. People have been talking about pro-life exceptions for the “rare instances of rape and incest” since Roe v. Wade was decided. But the rareness of such instances doesn’t change the moral questions one iota.


To bring up frequency makes it sound like it’s all a numbers game, which is wholly contrary to the principled pro-life argument. If the argument is that a fetus is an independent being deserving of life, rareness is a red herring. Conversely, if it’s cruel to force a woman to carry a rapist’s child to term, rareness is a red herring.

Agreed.   But let me put this point on "rareness" even more plainly, and perhaps from a different angle.   The reason why abortion is always wrong is precisely because of the quality of rareness.   But I'm not talking about statistical rareness.... that is a red herring, as Goldberg says.   I'm talking about the rareness of the individual person.   The child conceived is absolutely "rare" -- a unique individual human being.   It doesn't matter how that unique individual human being is conceived, whether in a marriage, or out of a marriage, or even in rape.   The innocent child himself or herself is absolutely, perfectly "rare."   And this is not a matter of religion, although this is certainly what my religion teaches.   If you like, it is a matter of science.   We know from the Human Genome Project and genetic science more generally that each person has an utterly specific code of genes that has never happened before and will never happen again.   That specific personhood is encoded in those genes and that personhood, to me anyway, has inherent dignity that must be respected.  If you have more than one child, ask yourself... which of those children could I live without, could I wish had never been born, could I wish read out of the universe?   None.   Frankly, I wish I had more of the little devils, precisely because they are each so rare and unique.

Not sure about this post.   It's either a minor point, or it's the only point that's worth making on this issue.

Child Fiscal Abuse

Mark Steyn's Saturday morning columns on NRO are a must-read.   Today he hits the nail on the head so hard he drives it through the board and into the flooring below.   It's hard to even figure out what to highlight, it's all good:

Obamacare is going to be expensive on a scale unknown to European health systems. Look around you. Americans are not Swedes. Obesity rate in the United States: 36 percent; Sweden: 9.7 percent; Japan: 3.2 percent; China: 2.9 percent; India: 0.7 percent. Ours is a country where 78 million people (or about the entire population of Germany) are classified by the Centers for Disease Control as “obese” — including over 40 million women. If 40 million women have it, isn’t that a “women’s health” issue? Perhaps even a bigger “women’s health” issue than the right of thirtysomething students to free contraception? It’s the first thing the average American of, say, 1950 would notice if you catapulted him forward from his mid-century Main Street to today: not how amazing all these computer gizmos are, but how large and sick today’s Americans look.

 

As George Will pointed out this week, nanny-state solutions (such as Michelle Obama’s current campaign to get us all nibbling organic endives) don’t work: Overweight kids in schools with high-calorie junk food, 35.5 percent; overweight kids in schools that banned all the bad stuff, 34.8 percent. Indeed, the bloating of government, of entitlements, of debt, and the increase in obesity track each other pretty closely over the last four decades. If all those debt graphs showing how we’ve looted our future to bribe the present are too complicated for you, look out the window: We are our own walking (or waddling) metaphor for consumption unmoored from production. And, to the Chinese and many others around the world pondering whether America has the self-discipline to get its house in order, a trip to the mall provides its own answer.


So we can’t fight a war in Afghanistan, but we can fight a “war on women” that only exists in upscale liberal feminists’ heads. We can’t do anything about exploding rates of childhood obesity, diabetes, and heart disease, but, if you define “health care” as forcing a Catholic institution to buy $8 contraception for the scions of wealth and privilege, we’re right on top of it. And above all, we’re doing it for the children, if by “doing it” you mean leaving them with a transgenerational bill unknown to human history — or engaging in what Boston University’s Larry Kotlikoff, speaking at the International Institute of Public Finance in Dresden last week, called “child fiscal abuse.”

If that sounds a trifle overheated, how about . . . hmm, “legitimate fiscal rape”? No? Then let’s call it a “war on children.” Unlike the “war on women,” it’s real.