Category Archives: Republicans

Move On. Nothing More To See @ The Site Of The Rand Paul Crash (Ron, Rand: Politicians Both)

English, Iran, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

Libertarians seem fascinated with tracking Rand Paul’s every move, waiting for some critical-mass of evidence to show that Rand is no libertarian. How often can one relive the same eureka moment? Move on. There’s nothing more to see at the site of the Rand Paul crash.

“Rand Paul: Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” was penned in 3/1/2013, when Rand was first presenting himself to the public in a big way. Back then, there were still questions to be asked. Matters were inconclusive on the Rand Paul front.

Like most Americans, I like an action hero. I am just incapable of telling whether Rand Paul is such a hero, or whether he is no more than a political performance artist.

One thing should always be a certainty for libertarians:

“It is a smart libertarian who retains a healthy contempt for politicians, even the libertarian ones. Ultimately, they’re all empire builders, who see nothing wrong in using fame and the public dime to peddle their influence and their products.
The people—at least those who’ve never fed at the “public” trough, unlike every single politician and his aide—are always morally superior to the politicians.
In all, some politicians are less sickening than others, but all fit somewhere along a sick-making scale.”

The Daily Beast’s “Why Real Libertarians Hate Rand Paul” is yet more hoo-ha about Rand Paul’s latest un-libertarian mistep—Paul signied Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-AR) open letter to “the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The letter stated, rather condescendingly, that Iranian leaders ‘do not fully understand our constitutional system.’ Soon a new president would be in office, Cotton wrote, and that president could (if Republican, would) ‘revoke’ any executive agreement President Obama signs.”

While the Beast pardons Justin Raimondo for his prolonged Rand Paul crush; I cannot forgive the Beastly writer for a usage such as “cyber-bullying” and “… it feels like.”

UPDATED (3/22): Ron, Rand: Politicians Both.

Ron and Rand Paul are just … politicians. A few years back, in the midst of the Ron Paul orgy, Karen De Coster pointed this out rather gruffly. She must have gotten flack of the order even she didn’t feel like handling, because she did not repeat the observation. It bears repetition. Here: Rand and Ron Paul are politicians. Senior is way better than junior, but he too showed all the trappings of a politician. We just turned a blind eye, b/c he was ours.

Kerry’s Hypocrisy; Clinton’s Stupidity

Ann Coulter, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Republicans

Libertarians take issue with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for his many transgressions, but stupidity should not be considered one of them. Whatever he did in office, Kissinger never displayed the unadulterated dumbness of a Hillary Clinton and her even dumber replacement, John Kerry.

As to the former’s dumb credentials, a jocular Ann Coulter relayed that one of the Clintons’ professors at Yale said the following about the couple and Clarence Thomas, all of whom he taught: “I had them all. One was smart. One was really smart. And one was dumb.” “I think we know who the dumb one was,” grinned Ms. Coulter.

Alas, there is nobody of Henry Kissinger’s caliber in office to put the likes of Kerry in his place (Marie Barf’s stupidity would have caused Kissinger to keel over). About the secretary’s admonitions to the Republicans for writing their “Dear Ayatollah” letter, let me say this: Pot. Kettle. Black. A principle that applies in reverse, of course: Every single thing the Republicans accuse Obama and his minions of can be said about their head honchos as well.

According to Newsmax, “Kerry [huffed to ] the Senate Armed Services that he was in ‘utter disbelief’ about the GOP letter to the Iranian leaders.

“During my 29 years here in the Senate I never heard of nor even heard of it being proposed anything comparable to this. If I had, I can tell you, no matter what the issue and no matter who was president, I would’ve certainly rejected it.”
“No one is questioning anybody’s right to dissent,” he added, according to the Caller.
“Any senator can go to the floor any day and raise any of the questions that were raised. You write to the leaders in the middle of a negotiation — particularly the leaders that they have criticized other people for even engaging with or writing to — to write then and suggest they were going to give a constitutional lesson, which by the way was absolutely incorrect, is quite stunning.

But back in 1985, “Kerry and then-Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin had visited Nicaragua … to make a deal with the Sandinista government even though President Ronald Reagan at the time was determined to overthrow the government with the help of the Nicaraguan rebels, the contras.”

Kerry supported a deal that would see the Sandinista government agree to a cease-fire and restore civil liberties in exchange for the United States ceasing to support the contras.
“If the United States is serious about peace, this is a great opportunity,” Kerry said at the time …

“But Kissinger,” recounts Newsmax, “blasted Kerry on ‘Face the Nation,’ saying: ‘He’s not secretary of state, and if the Nicaraguans want to make an offer, they ought to make it in diplomatic channels. We can’t be negotiating with our own country and the Nicaraguans simultaneously. My own view is that what we want from the Nicaraguans is the removal of foreign military and intelligence advisers.'”

Incidentally, Kerry’s 1985 initiative seems more agreeable to the libertarian than President Ronald Reagan’s. I thanked Nancy Pelosi for pursuing the same diplomacy with Syrian President Bashar Assad, in 2007:

The White House is furious that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has traveled to meet with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Assad is not the only Middle-East leader Pelosi is speaking to. Nor was she the first American politician to pop in on Assad. Speaker Pelosi was preceded by a Republican posse.
That diplomacy can be presented as dangerous is a credit to the Bush administration’s success in inoculating the American public against civilized, rational conduct in international affairs. The Constitution is the other spot of bother the administration has helped obliterate from the American collective conscience.
As the Independent Institute’s Ivan Eland, points out, “The framers wanted the Congress to be the dominant branch in foreign policy, as with most other aspects of governance.” “The Congress was given the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations, declare war, raise and support armies, provide and maintain a navy, regulate the armed forces, organize, arm, and discipline the militia, and call them forth to resist invasions.”

It is not Kerry’s 1985 initiative that disgusts, but his present-day hypocrisy and indignation that are repugnant.

Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots

Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Media, Republicans

“Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

Big media are all about the angle, the spin. Look to the overarching theme that runs through each and every news story. Be hip to the meta-narrative peddled.

Recent examples:

A perfectly logical statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in February, was framed by CNN anchorette Brooke Baldwin as “controversial.” In view of rife, Islamic anti-Semitism in Europe, Mr. Netanyahu told “all of the European Jews, and all Jews wherever [they] are [that] Israel is the home of every Jew.”

To the rational individual, unburdened by the obtuse thinking of a teletart, Netanyahu’s statement was utterly uncontroversial. It follows from an irremediable reality: The subordinate satellite states of the European Union refuse—and no longer have the power—to properly and vigorously defend their innocent, Jewish and Christian citizens from an identifiable threat.

Another example of the meta-shaping of news came courtesy of Fredricka Witless (whose intellectual prowess I chronicled in “Joan Rivers: Antidote to PC Totalitarianism”).

Ms. Witless used leading questions in an interview with a man she introduced as the “controversial Swedish artist Lars Vilks.” In a free society, a painter—impressionist, realist, muralist, cubist, cartoonist—would never be considered controversial. He harms no one in the fulfillment of the requirements of his benign profession.

However, with her leading question, wittingly or unwittingly, Fredricka Whitfield was essentially asking an innocent cartoonist, who ekes out a life hiding from Muhammadans, whether he felt responsible for crimes perpetrated by his assailants. After all, the criminals were spurred by his drawings of their prophet.

Leading questions suggest a certain reality. They force defensive replies. They shift blame. They invert morality and reality.

Likewise has the logic of the debate been lost in the hyperventilating over Mrs. Clinton’s unorthodox email account. The dynamic at play: Hound Hillary Rodham Clinton for lesser, technocratic offenses, thus allowing her to gracefully evade responsibility for serious war crimes: the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, for one. Benghazi, for another. …

… Read the rest. “Hillary And Her Bipartisan Village Idiots” is now on WND.

Media’s Hillary Straw-Argument Strategy

Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Republicans

Not for nothing are they called the Stupid Party. Republicans (at least someone is now copy-editing S. E. Cupp’s piss-poor prose, which has improved slightly) have fallen for what I suspect is not so much a deliberate tactic on the part of the liberal media, but a reflexive strategy:

Hound Hillary Rodham Clinton for lesser, technocratic offenses, allowing her to evade responsibility for serious crimes: the crime that was the war on Libya, Hillary’s special project, for one. Benghazi is another.

Hillary Clinton, the woman who cracked the whip at Foggy Bottom at the time, had clearly resolved to run the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, as one would an open community center. This was meant to signal that her war on Libya had been a success, when in fact Hillary’s adventure there had as much “host-nation support” as George Bush’s faith-based forays into Iraq and Afghanistan.

The hyperventilating over Hillary Clinton’s unorthodox email account is probably overblown and certainly suspect. Hint: Look at the many left-liberals leading the “charge” against the former secretary of state for conducting the affairs of state via a non-governmental e-mail address.

The New York Times, President Obama’s first press secretary, Robert Gibbs, CNN groupies Brianna Keilar and DANA BASH, who huffed:

I think concern is an understatement. There is a lot of fretting going on right now. I’ve been talking on the phone, I’ve been e- mailing with Democratic lawmakers, with other Democratic sources because, you know, she’s their horse. She’s it. And, obviously, a concern among Democrats has been about her, her baggage. There’s no other way to put it. And as Jake was just talking about with Chris, what this exposes isn’t just some troubles about these e-mails, but it took, maybe not unlike Mitt Romney and his 47 percent problem, that was a problem because it fed a narrative. And this feeds a narrative that the Clintons feel like they are above everything else. They can get around the laws, fair or not. Perhaps in this case it is unfair if we get all the information. That’s what Democrats are very, very concerned about.

And Ron Fournier of National Journal. He calls this email “scandal” “seedy, sanctimonious, self-important, slick.” Fournier is careful, however, to offer disclaimers.

I admire their intelligence and passion and empathy. They’ve [the Clintons] been good to my family. I’ve actually long thought that she has the potential to be a better president than he was.

Yes, major media are all part of one big “circle jerk.”

In any event, this line of attack on Hillary is not worth a straw. It lets her go scot-free for war crimes.