Barack’s Barf Offensive & The Republican Red-Carpet Event

Barack Obama, Celebrity, Democracy, Media

The Big Dog’s lapdogs (media) tell us that Barack Obama has embarked on a charm offensives, defined as a “publicity campaign, usually by politicians, that attempts to attract supporters by emphasizing their charisma or trustworthiness.”

Yes, “American public life is full of prolix self-promoters.”

But why was this “offensive” necessary? Aren’t the lapdog media sufficiently charmed? I’d say they’re positively mesmerized by The POTUS and the FLOTUS.

Here is Mrs. Obama, beautifully accoutred and nicely airbrushed on the cover of Vogue Magazine, for the second time. (She looks lovely, if I say so myself.)

A week of fawning climaxed with a red-carpet event hosted by House Republicans, who gave the Celestial One “a standing ovation,” for visiting with them for a discussion.

The retarded U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has been regaling media with chummy inside stories about the presidential food taster. He was a no-show. So, although others around him were feasting, Obama fasted.

Are we Rome? Yeah we’re Rome.

In his weakened state, the president took only questions that had been screened in advance.

Food that is tasted, questions that are screened…

UPDATE III: Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel? (Opus Dei Smears)

Christianity, Conservatism, Democracy, Gender, Pop-Culture, Religion, Socialism

The following is from the current column, “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on LRC.COM:

“NO TO A ‘SUPERPOWER POPE.’ Mercifully, the new pope is not the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. Shortly after Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected as the 266th pope, Cardinal Dolan demonstrated why my prayers had been answered. The American had been bypassed.

Out of the papal conclave and into the limelight charged the vainglorious Dolan (who, it has to be said, harbored hopes of becoming pope). He then suctioned himself to the television cameras, American style. No other cardinal elector granted interviews on emerging from the Sistine Chapel; they were enjoined to secrecy.

Not the American cardinals. According to the Associated Press, these prolix self-promoters held daily press briefings near the Vatican to a room packed with reporters and television crews.

This was vulgarity, not transparency.

Not for nothing was the vow of silence once considered a test of character and spirituality in Christianity and in other faiths. This universal value has been inverted by American pop culture and pop religion. In the US, a deeply private person is considered defective; a blabbermouth who does and says anything on camera is canonized. …

… American public life is such that even our pick for pope (Dolan) struts his stuff like a “Jersey Shore” reality star.

MORE on why “THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS ON THE RACK,” in “Will The ‘Pussy Riot’ Sisterhood Storm The Sistine Chapel?”, now on WND.

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UPDATE I: “The Pope and the Injustice of Social Justice” by Jack Kerwick:

…some initial reports of his views on “social justice” most definitely do not sound fine and good. …Whether used by so-called secular “progressives” or Catholic clerics, the call for social justice is the call for a larger, more powerful, more intrusive government. That is, it is the demand for a government that is capable of and willing to confiscate the legally owned resources of some citizens so as to “redistribute” them to others. When social justice is the order of the day, anything other than a robust, activist government is not an option.
It is crucial for everyone, Catholic and non-Catholic alike, to grasp this: social justice and liberty are mutually antithetical.

UPDATE II (15/3): Father Bob Kind of Agrees.

UPDATE III (3/16): Via a LewRockwell reader of “Spared the Sins of a ‘Superpower Pope’” comes this link to a smear of Pope Ratzinger, for opposing the “Injustice of on Social Justice” (see Update I above, for Jack Kerwick’s critique).

The new pope Francis I, it would appear, champions the evils of social justice theory and liberation theology.

He and Barack Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

What the Obamas imbibed from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ for the past 20 years was Black Liberation Theology. “We are an African people, and remain ‘true to our native land,’ the mother continent, the cradle of civilization,” reads a statement of “doxology” on the Church’s site. The church is proud of its separatist “Black Value System.”
Only just retired, Pastor Wright is as central to the Church as is Africa. His “Talking Points” are prominently plastered on Trinity United’s website. There, Wright states that this diverse “doxology” is of a piece with “Hispanic theology, Native American theology, Asian theology and Womanist theology.” (Spot the blanked-out Americans.) A black person in America, moreover, is deemed outside his traditional homeland.

UPDATED: The Balanced Budget Deception (‘Debt? What’s That,’ Says The Ass With Ears)

Conservatism, Constitution, Debt, Economy, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Republicans, Rights, Taxation

At least those who tout the Republican budgetary version of a decrease in the increase in spending are no longer claiming to downsize the government.

So proud was Sean Hannity of Paul Ryan’s latest budget iteration that he boasted that, while it increases spending by trillions, it still manages to shave off $4.64 trillion in increases.

According to the Washington Examiner, the current spending trajectory will see “federal government outlays … rise from $3.61 trillion this year to $5.77 trillion in 2023, for a cumulative 10-year total of $46.1 trillion in federal spending.”

“Under Ryan’s new budget, federal spending would reach just $4.95 trillion in 2023, for a 10-year total of $41.46 trillion. That’s $4.64 trillion in deficit savings, which is a good start,” conclude the Examiner editors.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan has dusted off last year’s budget, tweaked it a bit and resubmitted it to Republican applause.

Lauding so-called “balanced budget” initiatives is laughable. The real problem is that the quest to “balance federal spending and taxes” is meaningless. It does nothing to stop the federal government from raising taxes as it increases spending and grows in scope and size, ad infinitum.

Ultimately, “A balanced-budget requirement implies is that government has the constitutional right to spend as much as it takes in; that government is permitted to waste however much revenue it can extract from wealth producers, and that the bums must merely bring into balance what was stolen (taxes) with what is squandered (spending).”

“The Powers Delegated to the Federal Government are Few and Defined.” A return to the 18 or so functions the Constitution delegates to the federal government would be a much better start. This requires that entire departments be shuttered.

UPDATE: Scrap everything I’ve just said (NOT). This just in from the president: “There is no debt crisis.”

Without reading what TAWE (“The Ass With Ears”) has said, you know that, to dismiss a $16.5 trillion debt, you have to think that “macroeconomics and microeconomic are two separate solitudes, governed by different laws.”

To say such a stupid thing as TAWE has said, “You have to to believe that the values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government; that the laws of economics are NOT natural, but political, laws.”

“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt,” President Obama told ABC News correspondent George Stephanopoulos this week.

In uttering such a fatuity, BHO showed that he has no regard for or knowledge of what Thomas Jefferson was warning about, when he said:

“The greatest danger came from the possibility of legislators plunging citizens into debt. We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude.”

‘Why Americans Should Know and Care About South Africa’ By Jack Kerwick

Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Media, Neoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Racism, South-Africa

“Why Americans Should Know and Care About South Africa,” by Jack Kerwick, was published by FrontPage Magazine. “Decent people everywhere should be aware of the suffering and death that are part of everyday life in South Africa,” warns Jack, as he honors the memory of the “flesh and blood human beings who have been victimized by the predators who have taken over “the Rainbow Nation.” Kudos to Dr. Kerwick.

Liars in the Comments Section, however, resurrect assorted libel that was first leveled at me by the con-men at Media Matters.

1) First up is the lie that I lionized Eugene Terre’Blanche, the murdered leader of South Africa’s Afrikaner Resistance Movement. In the “War on White South Africa,” I had reported on the manner in which the controversial 69-year-old Mr. Terre’Blanche was bludgeoned to a pulp with pangas and pipes by two black farmhands. At the time of his death, the old Afrikaner had not threatened anyone. But vampiric liberals (and, evidently, neocons) bayed for the blood of men like Terre’Blanche, and celebrated his death. That we libertarians defend the life of a non-aggressor offends them. Unlike the liars above, we are civilized that way.

2) Next is the bogus accusation that “Mercer’s family escaped South Africa”: yet more lies. While I indeed left South Africa as democracy dawned (at my husband’s wise insistence; we went straight to North America: Canada first, and then the US)—my father, Rabbi Ben Isaacson, still resides in South Africa. Ditto most other members of my family. They have not emigrated from the democratic South Africa!

3) Finally, there is the wrongheaded claim that I am racist because I acknowledge that crime and other variables have a racial dimension, which is what a perfectly conventional multiple regression analysis would reveal too. (Perhaps liberals should ban that statistical methodology because of the statistically significant correlations it reveals.)

I do discuss demographics vis-à-vis crime in South Africa and the US quite openly, as I believe this discussion is perfectly congruent with individualism—and with the methods of the social sciences.

“Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample.”

To repeat the complete Cannibal quote, I state the following, on page 41 of “Into the cannibal’s Pot”:

“In all, no color should be given to the claim that race is not a factor in the
incidence of crime in the US and in South Africa. The vulgar individualist will
contend that such broad statements about aggregate group characteristics are
collectivist, ergo false. He would be wrong. Generalizations, provided they are
substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies
on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a
representative sample. People make prudent decisions in their daily lives based
on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular
crime-riddled county or country in no way implies that one considers all
individual residents there to be criminals, only that a sensible determination
has been made, based on statistically significant data, as to where scarce and
precious resources—one’s life and property—are best invested.”

In all, “I cop to Western man’s individualist disdain—could it be his weakness?—for race as an organizing principle. For me, the road to freedom lies in beating back the state so that individuals regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will.”