Draw your own conclusions from the fact that kingmaker Karl Rove, the man behind much of the Bush presidency, has never stopped being star and guru to conservatives and establishment Republicans.
As the grand dame of the conservative movement, Phyllis Schlafly, said: “Karl Rove has made himself toxic to Republicans by his incredibly offensive and dangerous statement suggesting the murder of Congressman Todd Akin of Missouri. Any candidate or network who hires Rove will now be tarnished with this most malicious remark ever made in Republican politics. … Rove has been calling on Todd Akin to resign, but the one who should resign because he made an embarrassing, malicious and downright stupid remark is Karl Rove.” [Joseph Farah]
The disparate artistic sensibility is expressed in the rendition of the national anthem, the words to which were written, as few Americans probably know, in the aftermath of the Battle against the British, at Fort McHenry. “The Defence of Fort McHenry” ended in American victory on September 14, 1814.
The opera group “Seven” sang the National Anthem during the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., Aug. 30, 2012.
Appreciation of musicianship being what it is, these days, I could not locate online a rendition by “Seven” sans the ceremonial clap trap. So, to listen to their glorious sound, please fast froward 2:00 minutes into the proceedings:
Contrast Seven’s harmonization and controlled use of the human voice (only 778 YouTube views, so far) with the popular, brutal-sounding primal screams of one Jessica Sanchez, who is scheduled to ululate at the Democratic National Convention, tonight.
So discordant and jarring are the Sanchez yelps. How has such crass screaming come to be considered musical?
UPDATE: From Facebook thread. This post was meant as cultural critique. Tough concept, I know, as some insist on reducing all commentary on things cultural to the libertarian law. So sooner does this paleo-libertarian address the matter of cultural standards—in this case, what goes for singing these days—and another will step in Soviet style and command her to stick to her mandate: whittling it all down to the non-aggression axiom. Don’t you find that boring? A tad lazy?
The same transpired when I commented on the “Bump ‘N Grind Britannia” of the Olympics. Such cultural commentary was, apparently, verboten, because the Olympics were a display of statism. illogical. Lazy. Bad reasoning, as the one does not flow from the other.
Over the years, I’ve commented a great deal on cultural standards, or lack thereof. If you can’t address the topic, don’t prevent me from so doing; don’t limit the discussion.
That’s a redundancy. The debt, in general, has been going up continuously for decades, not up and down, although it might have dipped at some point in the past.
“…overall, there are still fewer people working now than when Obama took office at the height of the recession,” concede the ObamaHeads at CNN.
Anyone watching the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night heard the number 4.5 million several times.
“Despite incredible odds and united Republican opposition, our president took action, and now we’ve seen 4.5 million new jobs,” San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, the party’s keynote speaker, said.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who followed Obama’s November rival Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts, both cited the same number.
It’s a big-sounding number, given the still-sputtering job market. So we’re giving it a close eyeballing. The facts:
The number Castro cites is an accurate description of the growth of private-sector jobs since January 2010, when the long, steep slide in employment finally hit bottom. But while a total of 4.5 million jobs sounds great, it’s not the whole picture.
…the Republican National Convention did provide Americans with extraordinarily important information about Mitt Romney and the sort of leader he is likely to be …he is also a rules lawyer who is more than willing to smash the spirit of the game while rewriting its rules any time it appears to suit his interests. From keeping important party figures such as Ron Paul and Sarah Palin off the podium to refusing to recognize the duly-elected delegates from Maine, from changing the party rules on the fly to indulging in a Soviet-style vote count in which only votes for Romney were reported, it is clear that Mitt Romney is even more inclined toward authoritarian rule than Barack Obama has ever shown himself to be.
The problem with assertions made above in “Romney’s Fair Warning,” by Vox Day, my WND colleague, is that they are … assertions, in which Day skips a crucial step. This step would involve showing that Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee are one and the same thing, and that the candidate is involved in the bureaucratic machinations of the party executive.
This is quite possible, but unproven in the column; Day has been too quick to collapse the distinction, at least in so far as administrative matters go, between the purview of the Republican Party politburo and that of the candidate.
I mean, did the candidates running at the time have a hand in what the National Republican Senatorial Committee did to Christine O’Donnell?
Again, it is quite possible that Mitt Romney agreed with party leadership’sdecision to bar the most controversial speakers from the 2012 RNC. But it is unclear that Romney was behind it. Assertions absent proof don’t cut it in journalism.
