Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Update II: Repeat Offender Mike Huckabee

Crime, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Politics

“Like Michael Dukakis, former presidential candidate and Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee waded into the moral miasma of penal abolition. Dukakis, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1988, fought to secure a prison furlough for convicted murderer Willie Horton. Horton went on to assault a Massachusetts man and rape his fiancée during his recreational weekend off.

Wayne Dumond, the recipient of Huckabee’s helping hand, raped and murdered a Missouri woman. When asked about his difficult-to-defend role ‘in an apparently illegal and unrecorded closed-door meeting with the parole board lobbying on behalf of a rapist,’ Huckabee has offered a thesaurus of excuses.” [From “Huck’s For Huck—Paul’s For America”]

It transpires that the darling of so many evangelicals may have had a hand in releasing another habitual offender suspected of gunning down 4 cops in Washington State. With the Huckster as its liberal lodestar, WA did its bit to ensure Clemmons remained a man-about-town.

Reports the AP:

A man with an extensive criminal past — including a lengthy prison sentence commuted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee nearly a decade ago — was being sought Sunday in a deadly ambush on four police officers who were gunned down inside a coffee shop.

…

Clemmons has an extensive violent criminal history from Arkansas, including aggravated robbery and theft, the sheriff’s office said. He also recently was arrested and charged in Washington state for assaulting a police officer, and second-degree rape of a child. Using a bail bondsman, he posted $150,000 and was released from jail last week.

Update I (Nov. 30): WND.COM:

“Mike Huckabee… granted 1,033 pardons and commutations, including 12 convicted murderers,’ … Huckabee granted more clemencies than the previous three governors combined.”

To repeat what I said above about Washington State’s excuse for law enforcement: “[I]t’s true that several authorities neglected to keep the repeat offender behind bars, recent headlines have been quick to point out that were it not for the clemency Huckabee granted in 2000, Clemmons would still be serving a 95-year sentence.”

Update II (Dec. 1): Michelle Malkin excerpts the Seattle Times, in addition to excoriating the Huckster and exposing his unforgivable record, something her conservative buddies can’t bring themselves to do:

Nine years ago, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee granted clemency to Clemmons, commuting his lengthy prison sentence over the protestations of prosecutors.

“This is the day I’ve been dreading for a long time,” Larry Jegley, prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’ Pulaski County said Sunday night when informed that Clemmons was being sought in connection to the killings.

Clemmons’ criminal history includes at least five felony convictions in Arkansas and at least eight felony charges in Washington. The record also stands out for the number of times he has been released from custody despite questions about the danger he posed.

Clemmons had been in jail in Pierce County for the past several months on a pending charge of second-degree rape of a child.

He was released from custody just six days ago, even though he was wanted on a fugitive warrant out of Arkansas and was staring at eight felony charges in all out of Washington state.

Clemmons posted $15,000 with a Chehalis company called Jail Sucks Bail Bonds. The bondsman, in turn, put up $150,000, securing Clemmons’ release on the pending child-rape charge.

Clemmons lives in Tacoma, where he has run a landscaping and power-washing business out of his house, according to a police interview with his wife earlier this year.

He was married, but the relationship was tumultuous, with accounts of his unpredictable behavior leading to at least two confrontations with police earlier this year.

During the confrontation in May, Clemmons punched a sheriff’s deputy in the face, according to court records. As part of that incident, he was charged with seven counts of assault and malicious mischief.

In another instance, Clemmons was accused of gathering his wife and young relatives around at 3 or 4 in the morning and having them all undress.

Read all the Huckster’s excuse making.

Stiglitz Stinks

Debt, Economy, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Economy, Republicans

“In 2002, Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economics prize winner and two co-authors (Jonathan Orszag and Peter Orszag), published an article (‘Implications of the New Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Risk-based Capital Standard’) in Fannie Mae Papers. They argued that Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s risk-based capital standard made it very unlikely that the two GSEs (government-sponsored enterprises) would ever require a government bailout. Their results suggested that ‘the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero,’ even in ‘the financial and economic conditions of the Great Depression.’ The authors apparently underestimated the possible credit losses from a deep recession, besides ignoring the possibility that the quasi-nationalized housing market and the GSEs could themselves generate a recession. Fannie Mae and presumably the learned authors are not especially proud of this paper, which has disappeared from the GSE’s site,” but our friend Pierre Lemieux, Canadian economist and libertarian extraordinaire, has reproduced it on his site.

So what if Stiglitz is wrong most of the time? Other than some libertarians and devotees of the school of Austrian economics, most pundits make a perfectly good living being mostly wrong.

Public goodwill runs eternal for these failed “experts.” Neoconservative talking twits had been wrong all along about the invasion of Iraq; They consistently dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage. Yet they’ve retained their status as philosopher-kings.

Why not left-liberals like the Keynesian Stiglitz? (Not to be outdone, Republicans are also Keynesians. Or Republikeynsians.)

Lou Has Left The Building

Free Speech, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Multiculturalism

I listened live to Lou Dobbs announce his departure from CNN after working there for 30 years. As Joseph Farah observed, this left “the network in a state of programming irrelevancy.”

For years there has been just one reason to tune in to CNN. His name was Lou Dobbs.

What makes Lou Dobbs so special is his independence and fearlessness. Dobbs clearly set his own agenda. He had no interest in the “conventional wisdom” of his industry. Dobbs thinks like a real American newsman – a throwback to an age when journalists actually believed they were watchdogs of government and asked tough questions in the interests of the people.

When virtually his entire profession and elites in all the other political and cultural institutions of our time were making excuses for allowing tens of millions of illegal aliens to occupy our country, Lou Dobbs was alone in his focus on the issue critical to America’s safety and security.

Here’s a bit more about the forces behind the purge:

Months ago, the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, spelled out two options for Lou Dobbs, the network’s most outspoken anchor. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN altogether.

On Wednesday, Dobbs made his decision: He chose opinion.

Dobbs told viewers that he was resigning from his CNN job immediately. Sitting before an image of an American flag on his studio set, he said “some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day.”

He remained vague about how he would contribute “to the national conversation,” saying that he was considering “a number of options and directions.”

The synophobia, the protectionism, the populism—there was a lot to disagree about with Dobbs. But Mr. Farah is right; CNN is not much without him.

To get an idea of the kind of malicious attacks the man faced, read this drivel on the huffing post.

The drive to get rid of Dobbs, I predict, will miscarry.

Updated: What? Southern Rubes Aren’t Racists After All?

Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Propaganda, Race, Racism

The excerpt is from my new, WND.COM column, “What? Southern Rubes Aren’t Racists After All?”:

“… It is one thing for a starlet like Janeane Garofalo to defame tea party attendees as ‘a bunch of teabagging rednecks,’ and accuse men and women she knows nothing about of ‘hating a black man in the White House,’ and harboring unadulterated racism. It’s quite another matter for cable-network anchors to parrot the loopy lady’s lines.

Nevertheless, ape they did.

So it was that thought-crime investigator Keith Olbermann broke news on his MSNBC nightly show. With his most solemn, commissar-like countenance, Keith informed his viewers, matter-of-fact, that the intensity of the animosity toward Barack Obama is based on his being a black man. …

No wonder, then, that the malign men and women of MSNBC pointedly failed to report conclusive findings to the contrary.

A progressive research group—among whose stars is Democratic political consultant and prominent clintonista (now Obamaniac) James Carville—discovered that when it comes to their assumptions about older, white, Southern Republicans, the cable quislings had been wrong all along. …”

The complete column is “What? Southern Rubes Aren’t Racists After All?” Miss the weekly column on WND.COM? Be sure to catch it on Taki’s Magazine on the weekend.

Update: (Nov. 6) HOLLYWOOD’S HATEFUL HOOEY ABOUT THE SOUTH is not limited to HOLLYWOOD’S. Many Southerners have internalized the stereotype.