“Like those annoying pop-up ads on the Internet do, a mental image matching the reading material kept intruding into my thoughts, as I slogged through the Peggy Noonan column everyone is discussing.
The image: An over-sized, acromegalic baby, jaws slapping, going, “Ga, ga, ga.”
The column is “Time for an Intervention.” To better jibe with Noonan’s infantile prose and purpose, the thing should have been titled, “Noonan To Mitt: ‘You Naughty Little Boy.'”
Its subject: Mitt Romney’s so-called mic malfunction. In a stream-of-consciousness ramble, Peggy registers her displeasure with Romney’s unvarnished assessment of a large portion of the Democratic Party’s constituency.
The operative word in Peggy’s baby-talk: Big. Baby wants lots of big things. And now.
While liberty requires a leader small and insignificant—one who lets the individual live free—Peggy wants a “big and wise” presence in her life. And in everyone else’s.
Subconsciously, no doubt, Peggy presses her points by galvanizing the style of the black southern preacher—except that the preacher, contra the courtesan to politicians, does not mistake the Republican anointed one with a Higher Power.
Romney’s realism is not how “big leaders talk” to “a big nation,” whimpers Peggy, who suggests that we discuss a “big issue”—one that has long since been settled, if I am not mistaken.
As proof that the matter in Big Government V. Small Government has been decided, I offer exhibit No. 1: 16 trillion gigabucks worth of debt. …”
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“Remember the ‘Vagina Monologues,’ a stage performance that premiered in 1996, in which an orifice took center stage?
The playwright responsible for these soliloquies from down under was Eve Ensler. Ms. Ensler had insisted that the survival of womanhood hung on encouraging a vulgar dialogue with and about “this much mumbled-about body part.”
The 2012 Democratic National Convention underway has the feel of a “Vagina Monologues” revival.
With exceptions.
The weepy women dominating the event prove that Democratic distaff has come a long way since Ensler’s troupe took to the stage to pan priapus. No longer content to converse with an orifice in the confines of the theatre, these women want to force the conversation on the entire country, in dissembling, devious ways. …
… Speaking of a sovereign disregard for the truth, Bill Clinton—the only white man at the Charlotte Convention Center—wowed the women (Y chromosome comment above obtains here too), in an address that sent chills up Chris Matthews’ rutting leg. …
… For pudding, there was Sandra Fluke (which explains why NBC chose to end the second day of the convention with NFL football). The vagina-centric activist is regarded as another arrow in the Democratic quiver.
Sandra demands that Sugar Daddy Sam compel Americans who toil in the insurance industry to provide her with contraceptives.
It would appear that Georgetown Law School had not read the lady her constitutional, natural rights. Fluke has every right to work to purchase her own Trojans (or is it Trivora?) She has no right to rope other Americans into supplying her with these prophylactics. …”
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Ron Paul: “You have to be like Santa Claus and give them something; I want to give them their freedom back.”
“Ron Paul changed the conversation. Ron Paul was right. If we had 435 Ron Pauls in Congress, we would not have a national debt of $16 trillion.”
These, above, are excerpts from the 2012, RNC tribute to Congressman Paul.
The ghoul McMussolini is speaking now. He is calling for perpetual war under the guise of nation building and democratization, and for war in the cause of democracy as the obligation and hallmark of American greatness and justness.
Turn the sound off and on, off and on. You won’tmiss a beat, as McCain beats the tom-tom for war, war, and more war.
What a crazed creep.
Rand Paul preceded McMussolini. Here is the text of his speech, courtesy of the Washington Post. Have at it on Facebook:
RNC 2012: Rand Paul delivers speech to GOP convention (Full Text)
Wednesday, August 29, 4:32 PM
Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) remarks to the Republican National Convention on Aug. 29 in Tampa, Fla. , as prepared for delivery.
“When the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were: I still think it is unconstitutional!
The leftwing blogs were merciless. Even my wife said — can’t you please count to ten before you speak?
So, I’ve had time now to count to ten and, you know what — I still think it’s unconstitutional!
Do you think Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas have changed their minds?
I think if James Madison, himself — the father of the Constitution — were here today he would agree with me: the whole damn thing is still unconstitutional!
This debate is not new and it’s not over. Hamilton and Madison fought from the beginning about how government would be limited by the enumerated powers.
Madison was unequivocal. The powers of the federal government are few and defined. The power to tax and spend is restricted by the enumerated powers.
So, how do we fix this travesty of justice? There’s only one option left.
We have to have — a new President!
When I heard the current President say, “You didn’t build that,” I was first insulted, then I was angered, then I was saddened that anyone in our country, much less the President of the United States, believes that roads create business success and not the other way around.
Anyone who so fundamentally misunderstands American greatness is uniquely unqualified to lead this great nation.
The great and abiding lesson of American history, particularly the Cold War, is that the engine of capitalism — the individual — is mightier than any collective.
American inventiveness and desire to build developed because we were guaranteed the right to own our success.
For most of our history no one dared tell Americans: “You didn’t build that.”
In Bowling Green, KY, the Taing family owns the Great American Donut shop. Their family fled war-torn Cambodia to come to this country. My kids and I love to eat donuts so we go there frequently.
The Taings work long hours. Mrs. Taing told us that the family works through the night to make donuts. The Taing children have become valedictorians and National Merit Scholars.
The Taings from Cambodia are an American success story, so Mr. President don’t you go telling the Taings: “You didn’t build that.”
When you say they didn’t build it, you insult each and every American who ever got up at the crack of dawn. You insult any American who ever put on overalls or a suit.
You insult any American who ever studied late into the night to become a doctor or a lawyer. You insult the dishwasher, the cook, the waitress.
You insult anyone who has ever dragged themselves out of bed to strive for something better for themselves or their children.
My great grandfather, like many, came to this country in search of the American Dream. No sooner had he stepped off the boat then [sic] his father died.
He arrived in Pittsburgh as a teenager with nothing, not a penny. He found the American Dream: not great wealth, but a bit of property in a new land that gave him hope for his children.
In America, as opposed to the old country, success was based on merit. Probably America’s greatest asset was that for the first time success was not based on who you were but on what you did.
My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors, ministers, accountants, and professors. He would even live to see one of his sons … a certain Congressman from Texas … run for President of the United States of America.
Immigrants have flocked to our shores seeking freedom. Our forbearers came full of hopes and dreams. So consistent and prevalent were these aspirations that they crystallized into a national yearning we call the American Dream.
No other country has a Dream so inextricably associated with the spirit of its people.
In 1982, an American sailor, John Mooney, wrote a letter to his parents that captures the essence of the American Dream:
‘Dear Mom and Dad, today we spotted a boat in the water, and we rendered assistance. We picked up 65 Vietnamese refugees. … As they approached the ship, they were all waving and trying as best they could to say, ‘Hello America sailor! Hello Freedom man!’ It’s hard to see a boat full of people like that and not get a lump somewhere between chin and bellybutton. And it really makes one proud and glad to be an American. … It reminds us all of what America has always been — a place a man or woman can come to for freedom.”
Hung and Thuan Tringh are brothers and friends of mine. They came to America on one of those leaky, over-crowded boats. They were attacked at sea by pirates. Their family’s wealth was stolen. Thuan spent a year on a South Pacific island existing on one cup of rice and water each day until he was allowed to come to America. Now both of these men and their families are proud Americans. Hung owns his own business and Thuan manages a large company. They are the American Dream.
So, Mr. President, don’t go telling the Tringh family: ‘You didn’t build that.’
When the President says, ‘You didn’t build that,’ he is flat out wrong. Businessmen and women did build that. Businessmen and women did earn their success. Without the success of American business we wouldn’t have any roads, or bridges, or schools.
Mr. President, you say the rich must pay their fair share. When you seek to punish the rich, the jobs that are lost are those of the poor and middle class.
When you seek to punish Mr. Exxon Mobil, you punish the secretary who owns Exxon Mobil stock.
When you block the Keystone Pipeline, you punish the welder who works on the pipeline.
Our nation faces a crisis. America waivers. Unfortunately, we are one of a select group of countries whose debt equals their gross domestic product.
The republic of Washington and Jefferson is now in danger of becoming the democracy of debt and despair. Our great nation is coming apart at the seams and the President seems to point fingers and blame others.
President Obama’s administration will add nearly $6 trillion dollars to our national debt in just one term.
This explosion of debt is unconscionable and unsustainable. Mr. President, we will not let you bankrupt this great nation!
Republicans and Democrats alike must slay their sacred cows. Republicans must acknowledge that not every dollar spent on the military is necessary or well-spent, and Democrats must admit that domestic welfare and entitlements must be reformed.
Republicans and Democrats must replace fear with confidence, confidence that no terrorist, and no country, will ever conquer us if we remain steadfast to the principles of our Founding documents.
We have nothing to fear except our own unwillingness to defend what is naturally ours, our God-given rights. We have nothing to fear that should cause us to forget or relinquish our rights as free men and women.
To thrive we must believe in ourselves again, and we must never — never — trade our liberty for any fleeting promise of security.
Author Paul Kengor writes of a brisk evening in small-town Illinois. Returning home from a basketball game at the YMCA, an 11 year old boy is stunned by the sight of his father sprawled out in the snow on the front porch. “He was drunk,” his son later remembered. “Dead to the world…crucified.” The dad’s hair was soaked with melted snow, matted unevenly against the side of his reddened face.
The boy stood over his father for a minute or two. He simply wanted to let himself in the door and pretend his dad wasn’t there. Instead, he grabbed a fistful of overcoat and heaved his dad to the bedroom, away from the weather’s harm and neighbors’ attention.
This young boy became the man – Ronald Reagan – whose sunny optimism and charisma shined so brightly that it cured the malaise of the late seventies, a confidence that beamed so broadly that it pulled us through a serious recession, and a faith that tugged so happily at all hearts that a generation of Democrats became Republicans.
The American Dream is that any among us could become the next Thomas Edison, the next Henry Ford, the next Ronald Reagan.
To lead us forward, away from the looming debt crisis, it will take someone who believes in America’s greatness, who believes in and can articulate the American dream, someone who has created jobs, someone who understands and appreciates what makes America great, someone who will lead our party and our nation forward.
I believe that someone is our nominee: Governor Mitt Romney.
As Reagan said, our freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction. If our freedom is taken, the American Dream will wither and die.
To lead, we must transform the coldness of austerity into the warm, vibrant embrace of prosperity.
To overcome the current crisis, we must appreciate and applaud American success. We must step forward, unabashedly and proclaim: You did build that. You earned that. You worked hard. You studied. You labored. You did build that. And you deserve America’s undying gratitude. For you, the individual, are the engine of America’s greatness.
Don’t be fooled by campaign foreplay, counsels Barely a Blog contributor Myron Pauli, Ph.D., the country is going to be screwed for the next 4 years regardless of who wins the November race.
Over $4 billion will be spent to influence 400,000 swing voters in 6 swing states who are undecided between the champion of the White Churchgoing Party, Mitt, and the champion of the Party of the Secular and the Minorities, Barack. Ten thousand dollars a person to influence mostly ignorant voters. Although both candidates support health care mandates and endless no-win wars, billions must be spent on the façade that it is important to vote for one of these big government parties. The money will be handled by spin doctors, which is a term that also refers to Atomic Physics.
In fact, Atomic Physics seems an apt way to view this whole election process. Romney and Obama are both electrons in outer orbits circling far away from a nucleus (the Constitution) and rarely do their wavefunctions actually overlap with the Constitution. They do, however, obey a political form of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. In the Uncertainty Principle, one can know where an electron is somewhat or where the electron is heading, but not both of them exactly.
With Romney, we basically know what sort of person he is – Mormon Venture Capitalist. However, there is hardly any idea what he stands for. His flip-flops are legendary. He can even change within the course of minutes. These rapid-phase oscillations are known in Atomic Physics by the term Zitterbewegung. Romney’s ideological twisting may be the first macroscopic sighting of Zitterbewegung. Perhaps this is part of a larger phenomena whereby supporting a party which claims that supporting the American Dream Downpayment Act, the Prescription Drug Plan, the Leave No Child Behind Act, and the Transportation Security Administration counts as being for small government.
On the other hand, Obama has been generally a consistent supporter of the Hollywood-Academia-Politically-Correct-Left but we have little idea who this Teleprompter-Zelig is as a person. Is he atheist or Christian or Muslim? Is he black or white or mulatto or Asian or post-racial? Is he American or Indonesian or Kenyan? Partisan or above political squabbling? Much of this ambiguity is part of Obama’s own making – in short, he is the primordial “Birther.” Nevertheless, if one votes for the “Party of Peace,” you are going to ensure more presidential undeclared wars
While it really takes a Large Hardon Collider to tell these two apart, the voters will instead be subjected to a great debate, where things hinge on important issues like sweaty unshaven Nixon, or Ford freeing Poland, or Reagan cracking jokes, or Dukakis’ apathy over his wife being violated. Instead of worrying about the impending financial collapse of the economy, Fox News can crown Romney the “winner” of the debate while MSNBC declares Obama the “winner” and the spin doctors search out every possible “gaffe” to magnify into cosmic significance.
The reality is that both candidates are identical particles, and choosing between them is as likely to change things as a Soviet citizen deciding between Brezhnev And Kosygin Regrettably, there is a correlation between having more people voting and the rise of government and the decline of economic freedom and growth as Ilana Mercer demonstrates in her excellent book.
Well, I know which side I stand on – mine. As a true swing voter, I will go for the first candidate who hands me my $10,000. No sense of my wasting a vote for free on Gary Johnson, when I can line up with a “mainstream” statist and pocket $10,000. Show me the money, and I am all yours – Barack or Mitt! Save 3 hours of your life and just watch the 10 minute debate summary here.
****** Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.
UPDATE (Aug. 19): Facebook Thread. Robbie makes a good point. These automatic intonations about Romney’s past, absent further analysis, run to lazy. My fear is not that MR will flip-flop. That’s such a trite angle. And Romney might have learned his lesson. (Also, Myron’s links are old.) What I do believe is that Romney lacks a good (Austrian, even Chicago) understanding of the economy. The fact that this comprehension is better than BHO’s means squat. MR, moreover, does not understand freedom, and will take us to war, for sure. As I put it, “Mitt’s Foreign Policy Is Obama’s With A Daisy Cutter On Top: Unbridled, Bellicose American Exceptionalism.”
