UPDATE IV: Tim Pawlenty is a Weasel (Bravo LA Times)

Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Government, IMMIGRATION, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul

Do I really have to debate The Debate? What can I add about the Republican spat in Des Moines, Iowa, that has not been rehashed already?

I’ll set aside my ideological loyalties (which are with Ron Paul), and comment some on style and character. (Readers already know that I’m fuming because, given the status of the written word in news reports, there are no online transcripts. Just YouTube.)

Tim Pawlenty revealed himself to be a weasel. But no one in the media is making a call on character. Pawlenty is terrified of Michele Bachmann, and for good reason. She’s the man he is not. However, his tactics are underhanded.

Via FoxNews:

Pawlenty responded “to Bachmann’s relentless repetition of her claim to leadership in Washington, pointing out that Democrats had rolled up legislative victories for most of her time in Congress and passed multiple bills over her objections, sometimes using her as a foil.”

This Pawlenty argument is plain wrong, maybe even devious; it’s the argument a consummate politico will make. What do I mean? Take Ron Paul. He celebrates victories in the arena of ideas. As he has pointed out, more and more of his rivals are moving in his direction, and adopting the truth where they once dubbed this truth kooky. On the Federal Reserve banking system, for example.

So the fact that Bachmann has not gotten her way with a cowardly Congress says nothing much at all about her “leadership.” After all, most of her Tea Party colleagues in the House voted to raise the debt ceiling for a mess of pottage, a meager cut in the rate of government metastasization.

“If that’s your view of effective leadership with results, please stop, because you’re killing us,” Pawlenty snarled Bachmann.

In other words, what Pawlenty has implied is this: if cleaving to the right ideas doesn’t penetrate the wrong heads, a real leader should “stop” agitating for the truth as he or she sees it. By the Pawlenty logic, Paul ought to have given up ages ago on talking sound money and foreign policy.

Pawlenty stuck out as particularly statist.

More later.

UPDATE I: MY Straw Poll Prediction. The 2011 Iowa Straw Poll: My sense is that R. Paul and M. Bachmann will win out. This win will highlight even more my long-standing contention that, to take the country back, these two have to collaborate.

UPDATE II: VALIDATED. I called the straw poll (above) 36 minutes ago, as the Talkers pontificated on the TV. Isn’t it time to stop reading and listening to television’s political whores, who never call anything as it is? I describe these Big Mouths’ shtick in the post, “Talkers fear Losing Top-Dog Status.”

Not one (as far as I can tell) of the paid pundits on TV predicted that Bachmann and Paul would win. Yet I’ve been saying the same since “September of 2009, when this column had already picked the GOP’s winning ticket: Ron Paul for commander-in-chief; Michele Bachmann as second-in-command.”

But I’m afraid that the voting public is probably right. For a winning ticket, the order of the ticket needs to be reversed. Bachmann is just that talented. It’s not my choice, but it’s reality.

The Ames Straw Poll results:

Bachmann secured 4,823 votes, narrowly besting Texas Rep. Ron Paul who had 4,671 votes. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was chosen on 2,293 ballots, placing him third. … Part country fair and entirely political, the Ames Straw Poll has helped take the pulse of a campaign’s strength since 1979. It’s also the first opportunity for the tens of thousands of voters who weighed in Saturday on which GOP president candidate they support.

UPDATE (Aug 14): Clearly the candidates know very little about immigration policy and the labyrinth of visas the bureaucracy peddles. Most American know nothing about the topic. Herman Cain had a good line about there being a path to American citizenship: legal immigration. Back to Mitt, who complained that here in the US, we qualify PhDs in physics and then send them back “home.” Nonsense. The US has “unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program … that is if the US really wanted it.”

Read about the O-1 visa (awarded to my spouse).

Gary Johnson on immigration? He’s just insane.

UPDATE IV: BRAVO LA TIMES. A transcript of the Iowa debate at last. I was looking for the Newt Gingrich segments, because the man did make a few vital points, but of course, reporting being what it is, I could not locate his words verbatim.

“… repeal Dodd-Frank, repeal Sarbanes-Oxley, repeal Obamacare.”

Very good practical points. “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, courtesy of the Republican Party, cost American companies upwards of $1.2 trillion. The capital flight it initiated caused the London Stock Exchange to become the new hub for capital markets. Given America’s habit of forcing its habits on others, SOX struck fear into quite a few Liberal Democratic hearts in the House of Lords. Lord Teverson worried about the ‘increasing danger of regulatory creep from American regulators that threatens [Britain’s] own light-touch approach to financial regulation.’”

Cannibal Kindle Copy

Ilana Mercer, South-Africa, Technology

To all the Kindle customers of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot,”

Amazon assures me that the newly formatted, splendid Kindle copy that I worked to upload is now available. The errors of the previous copy have been corrected.

Kindle Direct Publishing informs me that, “Any customer who purchases [“Into The Cannibal’s Pot”] for the first time will get the revised edition.” And that their “technical team is working towards automating the process,” whereby “customers who have already purchased a Kindle book can automatically download the revised content.”

Amazon will also attempt to notifying customers who previously purchased a less-than-optimal Kindle copy of my book that a well-formatted copy is now online.

The “Search Inside the Book” feature for both The Cannibal’s ebook (Kindle) and hardcopy should be activated shortly.

Best to all,

ilana

Where Magic Wins Out Over Reason

Africa, Colonialism, Economy, Ethics, Foreign Aid, Free Markets, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Racism, Socialism, The West

The following is from “Where Magic Wins Out Over Reason,” now on WND.COM:

“The images coming at us from Somalia are too horrible for words. And I don’t mean the sight of celebrity journo Anderson cooper and his CNN sidekicks standing in the neighboring Kenya, and blaming, against all evidence, the ‘worst drought in 60 years’ for mass starvation in Somalia. As BBC tells it, the drought ‘has gripped only parts of Somalia,’ and then only ‘since June.’

You have flint for a heart if the images of children starving slowly do not reduce you to tears. Aidan Hartley of the London Spectator describes these distended-bellied, dying innocents as ‘martian-headed skeletons,’ whose emaciated little bodies have begun to eat up their fat reserves and muscle proteins. Many, if not most, will succumb to slow and agonizing organ failure.

In conjunction with ‘the drought’—isn’t Texas experiencing one of those—Cooper and company (joined by other cretins on Cable) have mentioned the menace of the Islamist group al-Shabab, which ‘rules over the population in a style reminiscent of Pol Pot’s Cambodia crossed with the Taleban.’

However, Hartley imparts what Cooper is incapable of imparting—and what any vaguely knowledgeable journalist writing about Africa knows: ‘war caused this famine.’ In this case, internecine warfare was compounded by foreign, military intervention courtesy of the duopoly I dub the ‘Anglo-American Axis of Evil,’ in my new book.

Washington and Westminster (and their special forces) galvanized a neighboring Ethiopian gang to invade southern Somalia and occupy Mogadishu. ‘The objective,’ explains Hartley, ‘was to expel Islamists alleged to have been linked to al-Qaeda.’ And never mind that, ‘Under the Islamists, the city was enjoying its first period of relative peace since Somalia collapsed into civil war in 1991.’

Hunger in the Horn of Africa is not something Cooper is capable of understanding, let alone explaining to his fans on twitter. Contra Cooper, Hartley has not pruned the evidence. As jaundiced a journalist as he is, however, Hartley has failed to look deeper into the heart of darkness that is Africa.

“Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” fills this gap…”

“Into the Cannibal’s Pot” is available from Amazon.

The complete column is “Where Magic Wins Out Over Reason,” now on WND.COM.

If you’re interested in syndicating my weekly, WND column, kindly email me for details at ilana@ilanamercer.com. “Return to Reason“ is WorldNetDaily’s longest standing, exclusive libertarian column.

Talkers Fear Losing Top-Dog Status

Celebrity, Debt, Democrats, Education, Journalism, Media, Regulation, Republicans

Louis Story of the New York Times is as good as any female fixture on your typical FoxNews panel. Louis loves Uncle Sam and speaks with a sibilance. Like GOP devotee Ann Coulter, Story thinks that investigating and further regulating Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch—credit rating agencies all—is a good idea, as if that act would alter the reality of America’s debt, public and private. (The first amounts to $15 trillion, the last to $50 trillion or thereabout, I believe.)

Isn’t it interesting that so many sinecured commentators, no matter their brand of political whoring (Republican or Democrat), are furious about the downgrading of America from its status as best, AAA borrower? Is it patriotism that powers the fuming pundits? Not at all; Rand and Ron Paul are true patriots.

SAVING FACE VS. FACING REALITY. Here’s what’s a foot: The media talking heads are props to the politicos. They are all paddling as hard as they can to save face, even if it means not facing reality.

The talkers are a mirror image of the political class, reflecting and reinforcing the opinions—and the reality—of the elites. More often than not, the chattering classes are as privileged and protected as their masters. As long as they play to the “Demopublican Monopolists,” and sustain the respective parties’ constituencies, media “mavens” will retain their perches, their pensions, and their sizable salaries.

But what if they lose top-dog status? The Talkers are upset that as the dop-dog country loses its economic prestige and power in the world, so too will they be degraded in the world. Perhaps they fear, instinctively, a world in which we switch on RT or Al Jazeera to hear what their babes are saying? They should.

Considering the US’s economic vital signs, our professional gabbers are up the creek without a paddle.