Category Archives: Media

Update IX: Massachusetts Musical Chairs (Brown WINS; Dems Blame…)

Conservatism, Democrats, Elections, Feminism, Gender, libertarianism, Media, Politics, Republicans, War

Finding a conservative instinct in a “conservative” female writer is near impossible. Kathleen Parker, the yin to neoconservative David Brooks’ yang, zeros in on the essence of State Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican vying with Attorney General Martha Coakley to fill Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts.

The second most important thing to Parker, as noted in her column about the candidate who is fast gaining on the Coakley character, is that, “He’s a Mr. Mom to his busy wife, a Boston TV news reporter.” Like most “conservative” women, Parker makes the candidate’s feminist and family bona fides front-and-center.

But we’re not here discussing the mediocrity of Parker’s saccharine sweet, gender-specific, unremarkable prose, but the banality of the “JFK Republican,” Scott Brown. Basically Brown likes senseless war more than futile welfare.

Brown’s wishy-washy platform notwithstanding, you don’t need CNN to tell you that, “A GOP victory in overwhelmingly Democratic Massachusetts could give Senate Republicans enough votes to block Obama’s health care plan. It also could shatter assumptions about the competitiveness of politics in the progressive Northeast.”

Brown has opened up a lead of 4 percentage points.

According to the Suffolk/7 News survey, Brown is grabbing 65 percent of independent voters, with three in 10 pulling for Coakley. And 17 percent of Democrats questioned said they’re supporting Brown.
If Brown pulls an upset and defeats Coakley, the Democrats will lose their 60-seat filibuster-proof coalition in the Senate. The shift could threaten the party’s priorities on health care and a range of other issues.

Brown’s election could mean the defeat of Obama’s healthcare bill, and that’s a good thing.

Otherwise, it’s all more musical chairs between the mamzers.

Update I (Jan. 18): If he wins, and it looks like he will, Brown will be on the next flight to DC to cast a vote in the Senate to kill the bill. As I understand it, Brown does not need to await confirmation to vote. His vote will be perfectly legal. If Democrats pull any procedural mischief, there will be riots.

The most liberal, Democrat-favoring state in the country—I believe Massachusetts has not elected a Republican to the Senate since the late 1970s—is rejecting Obama’s policies, or at least some of them.

This is a turning point in current Democrat-Republican dispensation. It’s a serious blow to blowhard Barack and a kick in the pants to Ted Kennedy, his “legacy” and possy. Some overall gains for liberty may result, although homeostasis within the duopoly will ultimately be restored.

Remember, “The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one entity to the other.”

Update II (Jan. 19): Not a peep from the media about this gentleman. Thanks to Myron for introducing Joe Kennedy, an independent candidate.

I skimmed his short platform. Kennedy’s a patriot. A tad weak on immigration, as he dares to speak only of the illegal kind, and cleaves to the, “We are a nation of immigrants” mantra. Still, Kennedy is better than most any establishment Republican.

Update III: Michelle Malkin clobbers David Frum in a post on Brown: “Brown has run on the core Tea Party issues of fiscal responsibility, limited government, and a strong national defense, while appealing to a broader swath of voters by emphasizing integrity, independence, and willingness to stand up to machine politics.” Read the complete post for the Frum bits.

Update IV: From Salon’s Joan Walsh, who has the aura of a wound-up, puritanical Martha Coakley, to Brother Eugene Robinson of the WaPo; to MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and the pretty, empty-headed Norah O’Donnell—the malpracticing media seems intractably unwilling to apply analytical acid to what’s unfolding in Massachusetts.

In Obama’s election, the Left saw a heavenly celestial alignment of the political stars. The media had been blessed at last with a son. “For Unto Us A Son is Born,” blah, blah. In the near dethroning of a Democrat in the liberal miasma that is Massachusetts, the ponces above see only logistical and tactical missteps.

The latest from Fox News: “Republican Scott Brown has taken the early lead in the Massachusetts special election, an unexpectedly competitive contest that could have significant implications for President Obama’s agenda in Washington.”

Update V: BROWN HAS WON. Associated Press:

In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office.

Coakley has conceded.

Update VI: Want proof that Olby is bonkers? Here is what the MSNBC host said of the center-right, senator elect from Massachusetts:

“In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.’
— Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC’s Countdown, in a virulent rant against the Massachusetts candidate”

Michele Malkin: “… there are more long faces at MSNBC than at an aardvark convention.”

Here’s an image courtesy of Chris Matthews PR:

Update VII: Joan Walsh pleads, under the guise of an impartial postmortem: “this is a referendum on Coakley’s campaign, not on President Obama (thought I’ll get to him later.) She blew it … Coakley didn’t lose because of doubts about the health care reform bill…”

That’s settled, then. If Dems run good campaigns, they should be alright.

Walsh’s woman’s wiles tell her that this Republican victory in Massachusetts, achieved because the candidate rode a populist, tea-bag wave, has nothing to do with Democratic overreach. “In fact,” she assures her readers, “the problem has been under-reaching, and failing to deliver on campaign promises. But it’s going to take a lot of work on Obama’s part to bring those two poles within his party together. Exactly a year after his inauguration, it’s time for Obama to lead.”

Blessed be the boobs for they have inherited the earth.

Note Walsh’s dark demands that “agendas” be delivered on by hook or by crook.

The winner, Brown, disagrees. Campaigning “from the Berkshires to Boston, from Springfield to Cape Cod,” the voters of the Commonwealth told him they did “not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people.”

Odd that. (Even odder was Brown’s smarmy allusions, in his victory speech, to playing basketball with the president. Did you get the impression that the Republicans’ golden boy was looking forward to hobnobbing in high places? That disturbed me. The liberals, on the other hand, didn’t appreciate his crass peddling of his daughters as “available.” Cheap and inappropriate, that’s for sure.)

Update VIII: A good summery of the diabolical options Dems have been weighing, vis-a-vis the health care bill, soon to be laid to rest (we hope).

Update IX (Jan. 20): I’m hanging at Salon for a bit. Sometimes one just has to experience, or endure, a full frontal of the stuff. You tend to forget how repulsive the beltway liberal really is. Another insight into the seismic dethroning of Dems in Massachusetts courtesy of the Salon scribblers: “Massachusetts is filled with sexist voters.”

Update III: Olby Sweats Haiti (Robertson Vs. The Devil)

America, Christianity, Colonialism, Foreign Aid, History, Media, Military, Race, Racism, The West

I almost felt sorry for MSNBC’s old Olby, so desperate was he to scoop at least one news story detailing Haitian agency, initiative, creativity, and, yes, altruism, in the face of the desperate realities of the quake. Alas, Olby had very little to work with. He was certainly not a happy camper when one of his houseboy reporters told of happening upon a group of Haitians desperately digging in the rubble. Olby’s enormous face softened. But not for long. It transpired that the site used to be a bank. Oh, there were people buried under the bank, but Olby’s touching scene of nobility and self-sacrifice was really a gold-digging expedition.

Goodness is glorious, and the glory belonged, mainly, to Western charitable organizations, with America in the lead.

America is clearly coordinating an awesome mission of mercy to Haiti. The US has practically taken over rescue operations. From the churches—who have storage warehouses in that blighted place; have had them for decades, just in case—to the military, the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, forced to control air traffic sans an “airport control tower or radar,” to the many private charities (Billy Graham’s Rapid Response Team commandeered at least three chartered planes)—how fabulous are the individuals involved in the rescue, recovery, and rehabilitation of Haitians, and how thankless their task.

The heartbreaking images of victims demanding help, complaining about its slow delivery (due to Haiti’s infrastructure or lack thereof), or, in the case of some young, fit, machete-wielding men, helping themselves to what little there was—all made our Olby edgy.

He did extract some comforting platitudes from one Sir John Holmes, Undersecretary of the UN. Holmes promised the pompous Olby that, considering how slow the West is moving to alleviate the suffering, some testiness among the victims is, well, understandable.

Holmes also alluded to the need to avoid being too dramatic in saying that people are going to start dying in large numbers tomorrow. Olby is very melodramatic and super sanctimonious.

Aside: What do you think of NICHOLAS KRISTOF’s new idea for Haiti? The New York Times’ columnist says “the best hope for Haiti was to encourage manufacturing (of garments, for example) aimed at the US market. How is Nic, the aid aficionado, going to get around the fact that scarce resources flow to where they are utilized most efficiently? I can just imagine.

Update I (Jan. 17): “Informed U.S. State Department sources tell WND that Washington has taken de-facto control of earthquake-ravaged Haiti.”

“USAID has now taken control [of Haiti],” said one source. “We [the U.S.] are the only ones who can get things done.”
Vice President Joe Biden told reporters at Homestead Air Force Base, Fla., where relief efforts are underway, that Haiti is a nation “that has totally collapsed.”

I was floored. After providing his viewers with a succinct and useful history of Haitian failures—and following a debate pivoting on the themes of Western culpability and the “road forward”—Zombie Zakaria ended a “FAREED ZAKARIA GPS” segment by posing this question:

“Do you think the United States ought to expend large amounts of money and resources to rebuild Haiti? How much can or should the United States do to save a country with problems as deep as Haiti’s? Will it do anything?”

To ask is to answer. Still, this is progress.

Let me end this update with the following excerpt from the Articles Archive, written about Africa, but adapted to “Hispaniola”:

Irrational superstitions, unfathomable brutality, atavistic attitudes, and self-defeating values—[Haiti’s] plight is not the West’s fault, although, Western governments have compounded its problems through foreign aid. “The Heart of Darkness” that is Haiti is a culmination of the failure of the people ‘to develop the faculties, attitudes and institutions’ (in the words of the brilliant Peter Bauer) favorable to peace and progress.

Update II (Jan. 18): A great deal of huffing and puffing has gone on in the media, lib and con, because of
Pat Robertson’s predictable take on why Haiti was struck. I say “predictable” unpredictably—not because of Robertson’s penchant for controversy, but because of his Christianity. Robertson’s “theological beliefs include the idea that one will reap God’s wrath if one defies His wishes, as Robertson construes them. So what?” Accordingly, the reverend said this on the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “700 Club”:

“Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal.”

While conceding that “Robertson’s comments were embarrassing and offensive,” an evangelical missionary by the name of Aaron D. Taylor elaborates on their internal logic:

“When I was a student at Christ for the Nations School of Missions, I learned about the so-called ‘pact with the devil’ that the African slaves of Haiti made to free themselves from the French. Later I learned about the so-called ‘renewal of the covenant’ presumably made by Aristide in 2003 where he officially recognized Voodoo as a state religion. When the earthquake struck Haiti, I knew that it was only a matter of time before a televangelist would say something that the media would pick up and allow themselves yet another opportunity to paint evangelicals in a negative light.

… many African social systems are structured around fear of evil spirits. Unlike in the West, where the predominant salvation model centers around guilt/forgiveness, in African societies people often place their faith in Christ because they view the message of the Resurrection as a cosmic defeat over the power of demonic forces. This is why when Africans (and/ or people of African descent) read their Bibles, most don’t read through the prism of Western liberalism. They take what the Bible says about the supernatural at face value.

Witchcraft is a poor moral base to build a prosperous society. When people are afraid to succeed in their jobs or businesses because they fear their neighbor will place a deadly curse on them, that’s bad news for the economy. Most African Christian leaders recognize this.” …

I cover some of this in my forthcoming book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post Apartheid South Africa. In the New South Africa, “traditional” belief systems (or superstitions) are seeping like sewage into what were once western systems of law and medicine. The results are predictably horrible.

Update III: Are you wondering why I lumped what passes for conservative, these days, in the liberal camp as far as the hysteria over Pat Robertson’s predictably Christian take on Haiti?

Check out the thread on the neoconservative Breitbart site.

A Palin Third Party?

Constitution, Democrats, Glenn Beck, John McCain, Liberty, Media, Military, Politics, Republicans, Sarah Palin

DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP. In this week’s WND.COM column I write:

“… Palin was clucking over the merits of the two-party cartel. We are a two-party system, she told Glenn Beck. ‘The Republican Party, the planks in our platform are, are the best, strongest planks upon which to build a great state, Alaska, a great country.’ And while Palin confessed to being tempted to flee the duopoly, she vowed to remain a Republican.

BECK: Does that rule out third party for you — not saying a run — would you support a third party?
PALIN: I don’t think that there is that need for a third party if Republicans get back to what the planks say

Palin’s assertion is pie-in-the-sky; not pragmatism but falsehood. The Democratic and Republican parties—each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one entity to the other.

The standstill state-of-affairs hinges on bamboozling party supporters. As my WND colleague Vox Day has observed, no sooner do the Republicans come to power, than they move to the left. When they get their turn, Democrats shuffle to the right.

At some point, McCain reaches across the aisle and the creeps converge.

The Constitution the colluding quislings only ever conjure as a weapon against the opposing, fleetingly dethroned faction.

If only Sarah Palin recognized and acted on this intractable reality.

Read the complete column, “A Palin Third-Party?”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Updated: Skanks Unite (Heave Ho)

Media, Morality, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

Reality Shows May Be Setting Unrealistic Standards of Skankiness For Our Nation’s Skanks. “Hanging off stripper poles, vomiting into hot tubs. The average skank can’t keep up with that. One of the most damaging aspect of these shows it that they teach skanks to talk shit about other skans.” The Onion debates a pressing problem in fin de siècle America. Onion satire beats SNL any day.

Update (Jan. 2, 2010): HEAVE HO. It’s hard out there for a ho.