Category Archives: Democrats

Updated: Hand-Out Hussein

Barack Obama, Democrats, Economy, Political Philosophy, Taxation

Obama is right; the Bush administration has been one of the most fiscally reckless administrations in American history. Obama pointed today, in particular, to the never-ending spending on the occupation of Iraq.

What is Obama’s antidote to these wrack and ruin policies that have given us deficits and an upward of $9 trillion in national debt, causing prices of all commodities, gas included, to soar?

Hussein’s solution is not to stop spending, but to spend that money AT HOME. What money? Didn’t you just say, Sir, that there is no money to spend?

Of course, “A debased dollar, price inflation, dwindling availability of seed capital, malinvestment and speculation (bubbles)—these are some of the consequences of the government’s promiscuous spending and inflationary practices.”

“The first stage on the road to recovery is to pinpoint the problem and take responsibility for it. You’ve spent more than you’ve produced and have switched to living on credit. Having exhausted your creditor’s good will, but not your insatiable appetites, you turn to counterfeiting cash in the basement—that’s where the U.S. finds itself today.”

“The second stage in getting solvent is to quit spending and borrowing, live within your means, and start paying down what you owe.”

Yet deficit spending is the centerpiece of Obama’s domestic policies.

And the band of fools plays on…

Update (June 11): On who ought to have the vote:

“A sizeable majority of the people ‘receives in disbursements more than it pays in taxes.’ The minority funding the orgy ‘pays in taxes more than it receives back in disbursements.’ The latter, not the former, should have the vote.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

“Taxpayers ought to have the vote, not so tax consumers. And that goes for politicians, who pay taxes out of what they loot from the taxpayer.”—ILANA (April 24, 2007)

Update II: Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media

“I suspect most media cheered for Obama reflexively, rather than consciously—too stupid to ask themselves whether what they were doing was journalism or advocacy. A couple of older news guys, ABC’s Charles Gibson comes to mind, failed to take sides. Consequently, the pack pounced on him and on George Stephanopoulos for asking the senator some pointed questions. But good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, the brilliant and brave Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters of the ‘cutting edge’ anti-aging reportage and colonic crusader Katie Couric.”

“So how did a mindless monolith’s hunger for Hussein help the Obama momentum?”

Find out by reading “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama.” The column leads the WND Commentary Page today.

Update I: A friend, who’s no fan of Katie Couric, thought my description of her as a “colonic crusader” should be patented. Fun aside, to be a “good” newsman today means taking up a disease and fighting against it. The triumph of sentimentality over reason. Couric’s thing is colon cancer, an awful illness, indubitably, but, consider Fallaci who’d been blown-up covering many a revolution–she never so much as discussed the breast cancer that killed her. I suspect that given the kind of mind she had, it didn’t much interest her. I too switch off most newscasts when they start on the kiddies, cures, and critters crap. Part of the takeover by women.

Update II (June 7): In reply to the reader from Lewrocwell.com, who asserts that I have singled out “comrade” Obama for criticism for some reason he simply cannot fathom:

I too cannot quite understand why readers assert baselessly, rather than argue based on facts. The reader has clearly not read “Ilana’s” scathing commentary on the other candidates. It’s on this site, for those willing to do a wee search—two mouse clicks away really.

Of course, it’s also a no-brainer that the most prominent candidate—the frontrunner—would garner more commentary than the rest. Is it not? Perhaps not to all. Genghis Bush got my undivided attention in years past.

Here’s some of the commentary Mr. Allen “missed”:

“The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil”

“Mitt’s Gone; Bill’s Back”

“Axis of Economic Idiocy”

“Lexicon Of Lies”

“Busybody Hillary’s Bhutto Blather”

And more; practically every column of mine, here’s another example, is peppered with derogatory comments about the candidates and their positions, or lack thereof, as applied to the issues discussed in the column. I guess people see what they want to see.

A different perspective on my rather matter-of-fact narration of the media’s crowning of Obama comes from a rather independent-minded gentlemen I’ve come to know—he happens to be Sean Hannity’s producer, although as much as he often likes what I have to say has not succeeded in getting me on the program:

“This is your typical iconoclastic clarity – some people fight PC, you remind me more of some Buffy who stakes it through the heart and then cuts its head off on the backslash.”

Update II: History Or More Obama Hysteria?

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Media, Racism

I don’t know how much more of the elections coverage I can take.

With Obama on the verge of clinching the Democratic Party nomination, the accursed Cable Anchors are poised to cement their role in history by declaring this event an historical one. Chris Matthews and Wolf Blitzer, a disgrace to their profession, have dissolved in soggy sentimentality. (The MSNBC network has posted this quotidian demonstration of what I mean.)

Every American, vaporized Matthews, will remember where he was on this historical day, when a black man became the nominee of a major American political party.

All this because Barack Obama is African American (or sort of).

However, the American people have given Obama such support not because of his ancestry, but because they like him better than the other White House hopefuls. Moreover, the reason Americans haven’t elected a man or woman of color beforehand is that no decent candidate presented himself.

Are the media suggesting that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton’s bids for the office failed because of their color? I venture that their color was the least of their problems. Their characters: now that’s another matter entirely.

In Obama the American people see a viable candidate. The idea that Obama’s impending nomination is historical is an insult to Americans—it suggests that the barrier to the nomination of a Barack in years past was purely racial, rather than the absence of a strong black (or blackish) candidate.

Update I: Here is the text of Obama’s victory speech.

Update II (June 4): Sen. Clinton is the democratic choice; Obama the delegate’s choice. Democrats the country over elected Hillary; party delegates ratified Obama. Is Hillary angry that petty party rules trumped her popular appeal and stymied her bid for president? She should be. Clinton stopped short of conceding last night.

Crappy Kennedy Reminder

Democrats, Family, Justice, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Morality

Yesterday, on the phone to my father in South Africa, he reminded me of who Ted Kennedy REALLY was:

“A man who left a young girl to drown”:

“On the evening of July 19, 1969, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts drove his Oldsmobile off a wooden bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, drowning his passenger, a young campaign worker named Mary Jo Kopechne. The senator left the scene of the accident, did not report it to the police for many hours, and according to some accounts considered concocting an alibi for himself in the interim. … At the time, Kennedy managed to escape severe legal and political consequences for his actions thanks to his family’s connections…”

Amidst the latest genuflection to TK, Americans and the mindless media would do well to reflect on this man’s defining act. Dad thinks the Kennedy clan is rotten to the core.

My father has been a big influence; he’d always remind that justice was the most frequently occurring word in the Hebrew Bible. When Waco happened, dad was outraged. “They—the government—murdered those people in cold blood,” he fumed. It’s an immutably true insight that has eludes too many Americans. Needless to say that we did not debate, but only touched on, the kidnapping by Texas authorities of 450 FLDS kids—it was implicit and obvious dad would be appalled by that act of tyranny. And he was.

What’s more remarkable is that dad has always been left-leaning. Although I would not call him a left-liberal, he’s certainly not quite the classical liberal, as he seems to believe state interventions outside the remits of classical liberalism can be a good thing.

Still, my father’s sense of justice is really quite extraordinary, always has been. It doesn’t matter who commits injustice, he will speak truth to power, a trait that has been as helpful to his career as it has to mine.

Always an original thinker, Dad had this to say about the banal Obama: “He reminds me of a community organizer.”

Another of his funny lines that stuck with me from last night’s call: In the wake of these assaults, “a few thousand people had fled South Africa to the safe haven of Zimbabwe.”