Category Archives: Politics

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.”

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!

Crashing A Trashy House

Ethics, Etiquette, Government, Justice, Politics, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

What’s another couple of malfeasants at the Obama home?

The excerpt is from my new WND.COM column, “Crashing A Trashy House”:

“It took a little over a week. In no time at all, Congress convened to hold hearings into an event that has left Americans – or the few remaining souls not cyber stalking Tiger Woods – deeply shaken.

And no, the ‘dreadfuf’ event I am talking about is not the massacre perpetrated by the jihadi, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, at Fort Hood, where 43 military personnel paid a cruel price for the criminal negligence of their superiors.

No one will be convening on Capitol Hill to hear who was culpable for that savagery. Not any time soon.

The investigation into the killing of 13 soldiers and the wounding of 30 by the Muslim serviceman who was coddled by the military and intelligence establishments has been consigned to a commission of inquiry that will, indubitably, exercise great political dexterity in killing accountability. For now, Hasan has been airbrushed out of the story.

The hearings ongoing at the time of writing will probe a far more urgent matter than mass murder on a military base by a fifth columnist.

As I write, The House Homeland Security Committee is investigating the infiltration of the White House by Tareq and Michaele Salahi. The two reality TV ‘stars’ had crashed – or livened up – President Obama’s first White House state dinner on Tuesday, Nov. 24. By Thursday, Dec. 3, our generally dysfunctional representatives and their proxies had summonsed the players in that farce to an inquisition on The Hill. …

The complete column is “Crashing A Trashy House.”

By popular demand, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is back in print. The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy or copies now!

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.