Category Archives: Journalism

Darn Right It’s ‘Dusk in Ron Paul’s America’

Journalism, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Ron Paul, Uncategorized

“Paul’s supporters say they appreciate the Texas congressman’s bleak stump speech, noting that he’s been proven right on the issues before and insisting that they welcome the refreshing candor of his Cassandra-like message. … The dark tone adopted by Paul represents a dramatic departure from the traditional presidential campaign speech,” complains POLITICO. “[I]t’s dusk in [Paul’s] America, not morning. His rhetoric is also distinctly different from what his rivals are saying, even as they criticize President Barack Obama’s stewardship. Where they see waste, fraud and ineptitude in federal government and Congress, Paul sees lying, scheming and conspiracy.”

“When you count the way they did during the Depression … unemployment is probably closer to 20 percent. That’s why there’s a disconnect. People feel worse than the government tells you you’re supposed to feel,” Paul said. “The unemployment rate is much bigger, the inflation rate is much worse.”
“That’s the harsh reality of it. It is a grim situation,” said Chris Fleming of Manchester, who attended a Nashua event last week. “The whole media blackout plays a role; they don’t like having that message put out. Why would we want to walk around like horses with blinders on?”

[SNIP]
“Remember that no matter their brand of political prostitution (Republican or Democrat), media talking heads are props to the politicos; they mirror the political class, reflecting and reinforcing the opinions—and the reality—among the elites they serve. More often than not, the chattering classes are as privileged and protected as their masters. These ‘Demopublican Monopolists’ sense that as long as they sustain their respective constituencies, they will retain their perches and their sizable salaries.

But things are a changing. The country is changing. These B-rate minds are paddling as hard as they can to save sinecure. Even if it means not facing reality. The statist men and women of the media are up the creek without a paddle. More than anything they fear losing their status.

Ron Paul makes these vainglorious individuals face reality when all they want is to save face.” (“Media Top-Dogs Kick Underdog Ron Paul”)

UPDATE II: Diane (Sawyer) in Disneyland (The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism)

Crime, Drug War, Family, Homosexuality, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Military, Paleoconservatism, Race, Racism, Religion, Republicans, Ron Paul

Watching Diane Sawyer struggle to come up with a remotely coherent question to the Republican presidential front-runners in Manchester, New Hampshire, was a reminder of the ABC “news” network’s close ties to the Walt Disney Company. What a gushing imbecile is Sawyer.

Here are some impressions off the top of my head, since, naturally, transcripts are not available from ABC:

Ron Paul was hardly approached on any matter. He ought to have certainly butted in on the proper perspective on marriage, gay or other. Leave it up to the churches and synagogues to decide who to marry. The state has no place solemnizing any marriage, gay or other.

Mitt Romney thinks that state infrastructure projects are different in their economic “stimulative” effects to other state spending. And he says he understands the economy? (He merely understands economics better than Barack.) The funds for both kinds of projects come from the same source: taxes, or deficit spending. I’d like to know how certain state spending generates plenty, and how these smart Republican statists can calibrate these finer points.

Mitt’s Synophobia certainly tracks with that of the atavistic idiot Donald Trump.

Sadly, Sinophobia is sanctioned among American opinion makers. The dislike for China falls within the realm of perfectly respectable economic theory. Accordingly, the Chinese have levered themselves out of poverty not through industry, frugality, and ambition, but by manipulating their money and stealing American intellectual property.

All these asses were apoplectic about Obama’s proposed tokenistic cuts to the sacred military-industrial-complex. By the CATO institute’s assessment, “the Pentagon’s new strategy justifies a minor defense budget cut. The Obama administration wants to grow military spending at a pace slightly less than projected inflation for a decade.”

The US’s military budget is six times that of China. Obama’s proposed “pared-down military” would still leave us with the largest military in the world (and some of the most porous national borders too).

The federalization of marriage and whether Ron Paul would make a third party run: In terms of the debate’s level of abstraction, these topics were all poor Diane could cope with. When matters constitutional were discussed for a little too long, Disney’s Diane protested the flight into abstraction.

This was possibly the worst debate so far.

UPDATE I: CTV ON PAUL’S “LEFTIST RANT.” You won’t find the Paul excerpt below on ABC, which moderated the New Hampshire debate, last night. After all, for ABC, a “leftist rant” is a righteous rant. Canada’s CTV, however, has both excerpted and editorialized about what, in my opinion, was Paul’s misguided, if not unusual, lurch to the Left in calling American cops racists:

Paul also praised civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. when asked about 20-year-old newsletters published under his name containing racist and homophobic themes.
“One of my heroes is Martin Luther King, because he practiced the libertarian policy of peaceful resistance,” Paul said.
He then went on a positively leftist rant about how drug laws are enforced in the United States, pointing out that black men are incarcerated at disproportionate rates.
“How many times have you seen the white rich person get the electric chair?” he asked. “If we really want to be concerned with racism…we ought to look at the drug laws.”

A rightist like myself abjures anti-drug laws on the grounds that they are wrong, not racist. The fact that these laws ensnare blacks is because blacks are more likely to violate them by dealing drugs or engaging in violence around commerce in drugs, not necessarily because all cops are racists.

Cops deal with the reality of crime. It is an error—and wrong—to accuse them all of targeting blacks when the latter actually commit more crimes in proportion to their numbers in the population. This is also a losing strategy with rightists. It is akin to aping Obama, who went hell-for-leather at Sgt. James Crowley, calling him a racist for mishandling his pal Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. That strategy helped BHO lose the midterms.

UPDATE II: The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism.

Myron, your list below is hardly an exhaustive list of why the arrest racial differential is what it is. List of priors, perhaps? As for Paul’s contention, last night, that blacks suffer most from wars waged. I was almost sick. More lefty nonsense. Try poor white kids from the South, who are also least likely to get into college even when they whip black applicants and rich whites with their test results.

There is nothing worse than a left liberal man—he’ll sell his mother for the little pat on the head from the lefty establishment. He’ll watch his son near death because of black racism, against which he never warned the poor soft boy, yet he will reach out to his son’s killer.

I am beginning to think that left-liberal men who keep scrutinizing themselves for signs of racism against their black accusers, and accuse others like themselves of the same—actually derive a homo-erotic kick of bowing and scraping to those accusers.

You guys have read my book, and yet you still believe in the myth of white privilege?! There really is no cure for obsequious left-liberalism. I recommend reading The Cannibal again, although that is not punishment, and one should be punished for lapping up left-liberal nonsense.

UPDATED: Famously Rear-Ended Reality Stars

Celebrity, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Pop-Culture, Sex, The Zeitgeist

In my journalism-school days one looked up to the brilliant and brave late Oriana Fallaci. Now, it’s mediocrities like colorectal crusader Katie Couric and Barbara Walters who’re considered cutting-edge clever. The last is such an idiot. But being a little compromised himself, conservatives like Bill O’Reilly actually engage Walters over picking the Kardashians for her “Most Fascinating People List.” Past prime picks for this List were Paris Hilton, Victoria and David Beckham, and Justin Timberlake.

So you have Billy arguing with batty Bawbawa that the women have no merit as they don’t act, don’t sing, do nothing but whine. Acting and singing would not necessarily make them fascinating.

The meaning of the word “fascinating” evades Barbara and her interlocutor: “Possessing the power to charm or allure; captivating.”

Go to the next room. Crank up the sound so that you can get an earful of the nasal, narcissistic monosyllables that tumble from each Kardashian’s mouth. How “fascinating” is that without the visuals?

Repulsive, freaky, morally rudderless, inappropriately sexual and depraved, so much so that I can’t stop staring: That is a precise description of the “Kardashians.” And it is not the same as “fascinating.”

The “family” is contemptuous of one another (and in general), licentious, libertine, promiscuous; a really nasty bunch of people that browbeats an effete and ineffectual father and bitches at one another. Each female adores and will do anything at all for … herself. I’ll grant her this: Kim is probably the least offensive as a human being. There is something in her eyes.

Another conservative, Sean Hannity, once touted that all-round vulgarian and one-time porn star Kim Kardashian as a role model for young girls because she does not imbibe. For the sake of good taste I will not post a hyperlink to Kim’s on-camera, bottoms-up gymnastics with a former boyfriend. But I hope Hannity’s daughter, if he has one, does not take her dad’s moral guidelines seriously. (More HERE about other Fox News porn pinups.)

Promoted by errant adults like Hannity and the moron Walters, reality show filth has seduced budding slut Montana Fishburne.

“According to TMZ.com, the 19-year-old daughter of Oscar-nominated actor Laurence Fishburne recently said that she was inspired to get into the porn industry because Kardashian found mainstream success after starting out as a sex tape star.”

Laurence Fishburne told his daughter, “I’m not going to speak with you till you turn your life around.” “You embarrassed me,” he said. “You used your last name. No one uses their real name in porn.”

For every plainspoken Fishburne, there are incoherent, meandering conservatives—this one from Pajama Media—aplenty.

UPDATE (Dec. 18): FB thread: A depraved culture supports a depraved politics and vise versa.

UPDATED: Christopher Hitchens, Great Rhetorician & Writer, Dies At 62

English, Human Accomplishment, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Literature, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist

I can’t say that Christopher Hitchens had a philosophical core—he did not. Thus the attempts in this BBC tribute to imbue the stands Hitchens took over the years with nobility fall flat. However, the late Mr. Hitchens possessed a formidable intellect and was both a great rhetorician and writer. One can agree with the somewhat prosaic Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, who once worked as an intern for Hitchens.” Clegg said: “Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious.”

BBC News doesn’t divulge who dubbed Hitchens “a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay.” BUT I can tell you it was MP George Galloway. The quaint “popinjay” coinage gives Galloway (what a character!) away. Besides, back in 2005, I had blogged about the delightful joust between Galloway and Hitchens, RIP. I am nothing if not consistent. Here is what I wrote at the time:

Now hold your horses, will you, because I also admire Christopher Hitchens as a stylist, conversationalist, and an extraordinary flyter. What is flyting, you ask? It’s an ancient Scottish form of invective, a true master of which is the MP George Galloway. I don’t care for his or Hitchens’ ever-shifting views, but I loved the flyting that flew between the two. Galloway called Hitchens a drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay. Hitchens responded over the pages of an august publication by likening the lickspittle praise Galloway once bestowed on him to spittle flung in place of argument. Later on, the two dueled deliciously on C-Span, where, I’m afraid, Hitchens proved his uncontested superiority in this spontaneous rhetorical art.