UPDATED: Paul In National Polls (Independents’ Vote Ripe for Ron Paul)

Barack Obama, Crime, Drug War, Homeland Security, Military, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

January 16th, 2012: If the November election were held today, a CNN/ORC International Poll released Monday shows Ron Paul is almost statistically tied with Obama, with the president at 48% and the longtime congressman at 46%.

The CNN/ORC International poll has Obama beating Paul by a slim 48%-46% margin, but add in the margin of error and it is basically tied. The same goes for Romney’s 48%-47% lead over the president. The poll shows Obama easily beating the other Republican candidates.

[OpposingViews.]

Here are all the Ron Paul South Carolina FOX Debate Highlights:

There is a difference between defense spending and “military spending,” and between what Eisenhower called the military-industrial-complex and national defense.

Let us not rehash the Paul drug-war racism comments, which I dissected in “Diane (Sawyer) in Disneyland (The Homo-eroticism of Left-Liberalism)”

UPDATE (Jan. 18): The New York Times concedes that “a majority of independent voters have soured on BHO’s presidency, disapprove of how he has dealt with the economy and do not have a clear idea of what he hopes to accomplish if re-elected. … Two-thirds of independent voters say he has not made real progress fixing the economy.”

What amazes me, and I can only presume that some statistical error has crept into the data (such as a bias toward giving a favorable answer for fear of being labeled You Know What), is that “38 percent of all voters BHO favorably.”

The independents vote is ripe for Ron Paul.

UPDATE II: Unfortunately, Paul repeated the leftist rant he delivered in New Hampshire about how drug laws are enforced in the United States, pointing out that black men are incarcerated at disproportionate rates. (“How many times have you seen the white rich person get the electric chair?” he asked. “If we really want to be concerned with racism…we ought to look at the drug laws.”)

I said on 01.07.12 that, as a rightist I abjure anti-drug laws on the grounds that they are wrong, not racist. The fact that these laws ensnare blacks is because blacks are more likely to violate them by dealing drugs or engaging in violence around commerce in drugs, not necessarily because all cops are racists.

Cops deal with the reality of crime. It is an error—and wrong—to accuse them all of targeting blacks when the latter actually commit more crimes in proportion to their numbers in the population. This is also a losing strategy with rightists. It is akin to aping Obama, who went hell-for-leather at Sgt. James Crowley, calling him a racist for mishandling his pal Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. That strategy helped BHO lose the midterms.

“Dennis Prager offers stats showing judicial system is biased against whites, not blacks”:

…it is clear that blacks are actually under-represented in executions.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death-penalty organization, between 1976 and January 2012, 441 blacks (35 percent of the total) and 717 whites (55 percent of the total) were executed. Given that blacks committed more than half the murders during that time (52 percent versus 46 percent by whites), if we are to assess racial bias based on proportionality of murderers executed, the system is biased against whites, not blacks.
Because this fact is both obvious and irrefutable, virtually none of the anti-death-penalty sites note it. Instead, they focus on the race of murder victims and even the race of prosecutors – in other words, the race of just about everyone except those convicted of murder.

Andy Sullivan’s Struggle

Barack Obama, Bush, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Middle East, Neoconservatism

Like the late Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan lacks a philosophical core. Unlike Hitchens, Sullivan is not a formidable intellect, rhetorician and writer. Hitchens didn’t have to struggle to stay interesting. Sullivan does. The fruits of Sullivan’s Struggle are splayed on the latest cover of Newsweek, provocatively subtitled, “Why are Obama’s Critic’s So Dumb?”

A caveat: I [Andy] write this as an unabashed supporter of Obama from early 2007 on. I did so not as a liberal, but as a conservative-minded independent appalled by the Bush administration’s record of war, debt, spending, and torture. … If I sound biased, that’s because I am. Biased toward the actual record, not the spin; biased toward a president who has conducted himself with grace and calm under incredible pressure, who has had to manage crises not seen since the Second World War and the Depression, and who as yet has not had a single significant scandal to his name. “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle,” George Orwell once wrote. What I see in front of my nose is a president whose character, record, and promise remain as grotesquely underappreciated now as they were absurdly hyped in 2008. And I feel confident that sooner rather than later, the American people will come to see his first term from the same calm, sane perspective. And decide to finish what they started.

Crunchy Con Andy would like his followers to forget what I documented last in “Confess, Clinton; Say You’re Sorry, Sullivan:

Senator Hillary Clinton and neoconservative blogger Andrew Sullivan share more than a belief that “Jesus, Mohamed, and Socrates are part of the same search for truth.” They’re both Christians who won’t confess to their sins.
Both were enthusiastic supporters of Bush’s invasion of Iraq, turned scathing and sanctimonious critics of the war. Neither has quite come clean. Both ought to prostrate themselves before those they’ve bamboozled, those they’ve helped indirectly kill, and whichever deity they worship. (The Jesus-Mohamed-and-Socrates profanity, incidentally, was imparted by Sullivan, during a remarkably rude interview he gave Hugh Hewitt. The gay activist-cum-philosopher king was insolent; Hewitt took it .)
I won’t bore you with the hackneyed war hoaxes Sullivan once spewed, only to say that there was not an occurrence he didn’t trace back to Iraq: anthrax, September 11, and too few gays in the military—you name it; Iraq was behind it. Without minimizing the role of politicians like Clinton, who signed the marching orders, pundits like Sullivan provided the intellectual edifice for the war, also inspiring impressionable young men and women to sacrifice their lives and limbs to the insatiable Iraq Moloch.

UPDATE III: Meryl Creep’s ‘Craft’ (Access Hollywood)

Art, Bush, Celebrity, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pop-Culture, Propaganda, Pseudo-intellectualism

“I gotta thank everybody in England that let me come and trample over their history,’ crowed the pretentious over-actor, Meryl Creep, during the Golden Globes Award ceremony, where Creep was rewarded for a role in trashing The Iron Lady.

The silly bitch, doyenne of American cinema, needed everybody to know that, noble character that she is, she, Meryl, still managed to play (the much-greater) Margaret Thatcher, despite hating the prime minister’s politics—and guts.

So has Hollywood been elevated in the zeitgeist that it can take time off from narrating, entertaining, and telling stories—as it once did—to “educate,” preach, propagandize, and rub our noses in this royal muck.

The deeply stupid inhabitants of Hollywood have been imbued with magical qualities, so much so that they can ditch their jobs as entertainers and devote their lives to trying to improve the plebs who lap their crap up.

But the evidence is in. Activism has now replaced acting, and sermons have supplanted stories. I don’t know about you, but given my own intelligence, I refuse to be lectured by “tards.” Unless these cerebrally compromised egotists can promise me a GOOD STORY sans politics—I do not patronize their “art.”

What will it take for clear-thinking people to quit enriching Hollywood “tards”?

The tarts and “tards” of Hollywood should be made to understand, through their pocketbooks, that they are nothing but public entertainers; glorified circus animals, show critters. Amuse us–if anything, make us think less about our daily political reality—or f-ck off.

Will YOU carry through?

UPDATE I: “… her philo–Semitism, always the mark of excellence in a Gentile,” writes Julie Burchill, in the essay, “Slimeballs always hate a strong woman.”

UPDATE II (July 17): Kids, kids, Hollywood was once great when its men and women reflected the multifaceted soul of America, RIP. Now Hollywood is simply a monolithic, left-liberal automaton, marching in thematic unison. Again and again we see the same theme, the same preachy worldview, the same giant digit wagging above at the captive audience. And the scripts: impoverished and ignorant.

Please, people, give credit where it was once due.

“A Christmas Story,”
Munich

And boy, could the joyless A. Jolie learn a thing or two about acting from the many great performances of her dad Jon Voight. The Odessa File, for one.

Don’t forget the few good TV series, such as Lights Out, Justified, Mad Men, etc.

UPDATE III: ACCESS HOLLYWOOD. Via Laura Ingraham:

Everyone knows President Barack Obama likes a celebrity fix – just ask Johnny Depp.
And today, just a day after pictures emerged of his extravagant 2009 Halloween party at the White House, the most powerful man in America was enjoying more VIP company.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie brought some Hollywood star power to Washington D.C. as they stopped by for a chat with the chief executive at the Oval Office.

Bush was no different.That war criminal was as tight as thieves with Bono.

T. Jefferson Day? Not Today

America, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, Racism

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson is unfit to have a holiday named for him. Instead, we celebrate a man whom America’s most engaging first lady deemed “terrible,” “tricky” and “a phony.” Jacqueline Kennedy, as revealed from audio recordings of Mrs. Kennedy’s historic 1964 conversations on life with John F. Kennedy, held a low opinion of MLK, the man America has since deified, and was unafraid to say as much.

There were many reasons not racist for which to dislike MLK, not least of them was the man’s dalliance with communists. “His associations with communists” is why Jacky’s husband, hero of Chris Matthews’ latest book, ordered the wiretaps on King. Mrs. Kennedy’s brother-in-law, Robert Kennedy—recounts Patrick J. Buchanan in “Suicide of a Superpower”—”saw to it that the FBI carried out the order.” Among his other endearing qualities, the not-so enchanting Martin Luther King had “declared that the Goldwater campaign bore ‘dangerous signs of Hitlerism.”

Indisputably, MLK set the tone for “assailing America as irredeemably racist” forever after. Other brothers have built on MLK’s work to sculpt careers as professional race hustlers.

Later this week, I will excerpt from Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life With John Kennedy. Jackie was a dazzling conversationalist, and a forceful, thoughtful person.