Before doing the right thing and endorsing Rep. Ron Paul, Andrew Sullivan gives us a glimpse as to why he’s been so misguided over the years (he’d never admit to learning by following those of us who’ve gotten it right). Sullivan first slobbers over McCain:
“I admire McCain in so many ways. He is the adult in the field, he is attuned to the issue of climate change in a way no other Republican is, he is a genuine war hero and a patriot, and he bravely and rightly opposed the disastrous occupation policies of the Bush administration in Iraq. The surge is no panacea for Iraq; but it has enabled the United States to lose the war without losing face. And that, in the end, is why I admire McCain but nonetheless have to favor Paul over McCain. Because on the critical issue of our time – the great question of the last six years – Paul has been proven right and McCain wrong. And I say that as someone who once passionately supported McCain’s position on the war but who cannot pretend any longer that it makes sense.”
Andrew has always done proud to Greenpeace and the Sierra Club combined. And since when has the mummified McCain’s opposition to Iraq been anything but tactical? At least Sullivan doesn’t pretend he wasn’t once firmly in the McCain camp with respect to Iraq. Why would he need to pretend? When the American punditocracy is wrong, which is almost always, it doesn’t incur adverse effects. Being a party to the neoconservative-Centre-Left coalition means never having to say you’re sorry (or being dismissed).
Another indictment of McCain came today in the form of an endorsement from Joe Lieberman. Ideologically, very little distinguishes neoconservatives such as McCain, or other big government, open-borders Republicans from the center-Left.
Sullivan doesn’t make much more sense when he gets to Dr. Paul, although the overall endorsement is a good thing:
“The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration,” he salivates.
The current Republican Party is based in freedom and toleration? It has not stood for these principles in many decades, and, as some argue, never, since this is the party of Lincoln.
Andrew improves when he praises “Paul’s federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government…”
Category Archives: Media
Update # II: ‘Redacted’: De Palma Tells The Truth
“There’s one pesky problem with all the indignant huffing and puffing” over the film “Redacted”; it’s “based on a true story. It’s a docudrama. Moral grandstanding notwithstanding, our mighty mediacrats have failed to mention that minor detail.”
“De Palma has, at least, bothered to commemorate the vanquished young victim at the center of ‘Redacted.’ To Rupert Murdoch’s protégés in Mainstream Media, Abeer Qasim Hamza al-Janabi is redundant, a castaway. The same broadcasters who won’t quit braying when an American youngster is harmed pan De Palma for widening his lens to include an Iraqi girl’s ghastly demise at the hands of American soldiers…”
The complete column is “Redacted: De Palma Tells The Truth,” now on WorldNetDaily.com.
Update #I: I’m pro-truth, not anti-troops. For those who can’t Google–or rely on Michelle Malkin to verify facts for them–this case is well-documented. The culprits are sitting in jail, one for 90 years. The idea that individuals should shut up to serve what the mediacrats and their masters in Washington declare to be best for the fictitious collective is … fascistic.
Update #II: Americans don’t want to see a miserable film about a war most don’t support and aren’t able to bring to an end, thanks in no part to the lapdogs that lap up the propaganda perpetrated by what I’ve dubbed the Media-Military-Congressional-Industrial-Complex.
Said offenders have surmised Americans won’t see the film because they want the army to continue mucking about in Iraq. Who’s to say Americans are not simply avoiding a miserable film, about a miserable reality they can do nothing about? Wake up lapdogs! The likes of Ann Coulter are getting rich off the war; you ordinary suckers are paying for it—some with their lives, and all with a devalued dollar and depreciated assets.
As for those who would like to decide what narrative will power a De Palma film: Why can’t De Palma tell any sorry story he likes? Why must he do what these collectivists think he should do? Since when must a director be directed in the choice of his subject matter? So much for our dwindling freedoms. Live and let live.
Asking “what is De Palma’s motive or justification” for producing his film is like asking me why I inveigh against injustices as I see them. I’m a political and cultural commentator. If you want to read non-controversial nonsense, then read Cosmopolitan. Similarly, filmmakers are like novelists; the one writes about things he thinks are important and have touched him; the other depicts them on celluloid. (Personally, I like films like “Dressed to Kill”—thrillers. As I say in the column, Hollywood no longer entertains me.) This reminds me of the foul attacks I got when, starting in 2002, I protested the unjust, illegal, unconstitutional Iraq war. It’s no different.
Updated: The Accursed CNN/YouTube Debates: What to Expect
Elections 2008, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Republicans
You surely recall the kind of questions asked by the liberal media’s brain trust, Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper, during the last Democratic debate. Refresh your memory with “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys.”
Darling Anderson is an intellectual pigmy. Affirmative appointments—the dumbing down and feminization of the media—has meant that we are not only subjected, day-in-and-day-out, to soft news stories about pets and pestilence (flu, food poisoning, childcare, the nation’s ballooning bigotry and weight); but also that competent, critical, hard-nosed, older reporters (Jack Cafferty, for example) are stashed behind the scenes.
You can detect the difference when one of the androgynous front-people is replaced for a session—things look up somewhat when poor Miles O’Brien, for example, is allowed occasionally into the studio to interview a challenging subject. Suddenly real questions are asked, then, rather than, “How hopeful are you, Mr. ambassador, about the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations?” To be sealed with a, “Thanks for your insights.” I’m sure O’Brien’s a pinko, but he has a brain, unlike girls such as Don Lemon, Cooper, and Kyra Phillips.
In any event, with the YouTube questions for the St. Petersburg, Florida debate to be selected by the CNN “V” Brigade (“V” is not for victory), rest assured that the Republican candidates will be honing their Democratic bona fides. I predict whiny demands such as, “What are you going to do about making taxpayers pay for my health care?” Or, “When will you join Gore in admitting there’s a global-warming crisis?” Economic nonsense about energy independence and renewability will also abound.
Update: The debate was excellent. Cooper did a 180 degree about-face from the previous YouTube debate he hosted, and I described in “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys.” Compared to the cretins Cooper picked to pose questions to the Democrats, the questions selected this time were conservative and clever. The demographic was different, sure, but so were Cooper and his cohorts at CNN. Perhaps they got the message that quirky would not cut it. Hey, perhaps he read “Jackass Cooper & The 1-Trick Donkeys
Update # II (Nov. 29): Further impressions about the debates: Dr. Paul, of course, was given the least amount of time. Also, I wish he had remembered to count the IRS among the departments he’d abolish, before the phony saccharine Huckabee muscled in.
Huckabee’s Fair-Tax scheme will not see the demise of the IRS—it may change its name, but not its function. The Fair Tax—a contradiction in terms—will not necessarily see a reduction in taxation. Bruce Bartlett has demolished that myth in “Fair Tax, Flawed Tax.” If anything, and as I wrote in the “Flat Tax Limits State Theft”:
“In a free enterprise system, people do not pay for goods and services in proportion to their income (or else Bill Gates would be paying a million dollars or so for a loaf of bread). Rather, they all pay the same amount. The fairest method of taxation then would be a poll or head tax, where we are all taxed equally. That the poor would not afford much would limit government spending like nothing else.”
Choke those chickens! Huckabee is such a spender; out of one side of his mouth he disavows the national; out of the other, he vows to fund the space program, which can be done best privately.
On a more intuitive level: There were two honest-to-goodness, plainspoken non-politicos on stage last night: Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo. Very shortly after George Bush was elected, I told you he was not a good man. I was vindicated. You can trust me to make sound character judgments. You’re used to the analytical me; today you got gut instinct. (In rational individuals there is no bifurcation.)
Next: Did you notice how sour and superior John McCain behaved? It was as though he came down from the heavens to grace the rest with his presence. Give me a break! It goes without saying that he was one of two pinko candidates who eschewed carrying a gun. The other was gunless, gun regulator, Benito Giuliani. BOOOOO! Mitt Romney supports farm subsidies, which hurt third-world farmers immensely. Doing away with those would be infinitely more productive than sending more money down the African foreign aid rathole.
Update # II:Erasing The Afrikaner Nation
Classical Liberalism, Communism, Crime, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, South-Africa
“CNN’s Kyra Phillips has led her viewers to believe that dangling a noose—an impolite and impolitic form of expression—is a hate crime; a black man beating a white man to a pulp—not so much. Being maimed or murdered, evidently, doesn’t compare to being maligned. Phillips and the feminized establishment media have difficulties differentiating a felony from an affront to feelings. No wonder these wonder men and women are mum about who’s killing whom in the democratic South Africa, the pride of the liberal press…”
I’m aware that in “Erasing the Afrikaner Nation” I’m reminding readers, on the happy occasion of the Thanksgiving, of brutal injustices. But, as I give thanks for the safety and security I enjoy in my American home, and for the love of my beloved husband and daughter, I think too of the innocents—members of my extended family included—imperiled in my former homeland.
Happy Thanksgiving,
ILANA
Update # I: Some of the letters received and promptly discarded were the ones with The Expected Epithet. As one wise scholar once said to me, “If you are not called a racist, then, it seems to me, you are in intellectual trouble and it is high time to reconsider your own thinking.”
The other less expected avenue of attack was a defense of Marxism, coupled to a claim, thrown into the ignorant mix, that the South African Communist Party is a spent force in that political landscape. On display here is an ignorance of the ANC, its history and philosophy.
The South African Communist Party, the African National Congress, and the ANC’s terrorist arm, the Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), were overlapping, intricately intertwined entities, historically and ideologically.
The Communist Party is a rib from the ANC’s rib cage. There is an overlap in membership, confirms the government’s own website, with “a number of SACP members occupying seats in the General Assembly by virtue of their dual ANC membership—The party’s membership overlaps with those of the ANC and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), its partners in what is known as the tripartite alliance. It has significant representation in the ANC and government, from the executive down to local government structures.”
“The party believes in the establishment of a socialist society, which it says should be characterized by democracy, equality, freedom, and the socialization of the predominant part of the economy.”
“Socialization,” to those who still don’t know, is antithetical to freedom. This is the embodiment of Orwellian speech.
The ANC-orchestrated “racial socialism” that is contributing to the destruction of South Africa would do any modern, media-savvy Marxist proud. This is not merely affirmative action—which is bad enough—but rather, legislation that does away with property rights, with the aim of transferring wealth, by stealth, from white owners to black non-owners. ANC position papers hint at its ideological direction/intentions. The leopard has not changed its spots; it’s just a very cunning leopard.
Update # II (Nov. 27): A number of “Christian” souls have written in to gloat: Afrikaners are getting their comeuppance because of the sins of apartheid. The more hateful of these letters were not published.
These collectivists conflate the actions and legislation enacted by the state with the wishes and will of all European people—Boer and British alike. Such is the collectivist mindset.
However, even if we concede the collectivist’s argument, the destruction wrought by the criminal class (that includes the ANC government) to South Africa’s economy and productive workers dwarfs compared to the sins of apartheid. What you have in the offing is the looming demise of a civilization. As for the numbers, I quote from an essay familiar by now to readers of BAB and IlanaMercer.com:
“Few know that during the decades of the repressive apartheid regime, only a few hundred Africans perished as a direct result of police brutality. A horrible injustice, indubitably, but nothing approximating the carnage under ‘free’ South Africa, where thousands of Africans perish every few months. (Let us not beat about the bush; crime in South Africa is black on black and black on white.)”
But then, collectivists love what they’d call “creative destruction.”