The Air We Breathe

There can be no doubt that the finest news blogger around is Robert Stacy McCain, who leads a great team at The Other McCain.  Stacy gets it.  Mostly.  He's still playing by the old rules, but he knows the rules have changed, and he does an outstanding job of documenting the fact:

McCain's "Rule 5" is the reason
for all the pretty girls on this blog.
(H/T:  Stormbringer)

In advance of Paul Ryan’s speech — as demonstrated by the fundraising e-mail from DNC executive director Patrick Gaspard decrying “false attack after false attack” — it was decided to call Ryan a liar. This was the pre-determined theme, and when the DNC issued its message memo, their obliging stooges in the press corps repeated the contents without bothering to verify the facts for themselves.

Democrat drum majorette Joan Walsh rushed to the head of the parade to accuse Ryan of “brazen lies,” and the Washington Post ‘s Glenn Kessler took dictation from David Axelrod:

In his acceptance speech, GOP Vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan appeared to suggest that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, Wisc.
That’s not true. The plant was closed in December, 2008, before Obama was sworn in.

This was not independent reporting, but rather stenography for the Obama campaign, as demonstrated by Twitchy, which provides the Twitter talking points from both the DNC and Axelrod himself. And their supposed “facts” are flatly wrong, as Stephen Gutowski shows.

The plant in Janesville, which was GM’s oldest active factory, “was idled in 2009 after it completed production of medium-duty trucks,” according to
Karl Rovethe Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. That is to say, five months into the Obama administration — three months after passage of the $800 billion “stimulus” bill, stuffed full of phony-baloney “green jobs” subsidies for politically connected firms like Solyndra — and not, as the “objective fact-checking journalists” claimed, during the Bush administration.

What is so profoundly offensive about the unethical and dishonest behavior of Chris Matthews, Joan Walsh and other such Democrat sockpuppets is that they won’t admit who they are and what they’re doing. They are not independent journalists, they’re partisan publicists, yet they expect to be taken seriously as reporters when they can’t even be bothered to do a Google search and find out when a factory closed.

They are a disgrace to the profession to which they claim to belong. Truth matters. Truth is precious and powerful. Liars are a dime a dozen.

This is why so many liberals keep screaming that FoxNews tells lies.  From every news source they hear the same story, over and over again, so when they hear someone say something different, and more importantly, something they don't like, they're sure it must be a lie.  As William F. Buckley said, "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."  This is why they're shocked and offended.  Liberal media bias, and not just in news but in entertainment media as well, is the environment we live in, the air we breathe.

Romney and the GOP: Playing by the Old Rules

I was chatting a week or two ago with a friend of mine, a Congressman, who's in a tough re-election battle.  I expressed my confidence to my friend that he would win re-election, but I also shared my pessimism about Romney's prospects to defeat the president.

"I sure wish Romney would hit Obama harder," he told me.  "He's barely done it at all."

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh sounded the same note:

"Clearly what we've known for years is true. The Republican hierarchy, from its consultants on down, truly believes that mentioning Obama by name and then criticizing will cause these swing voters ... to run straight back to the Democrats. It is clear they believe it. 

"Naturally, I profoundly disagree... I want to know why these independents don't get turned off when Obama calls Romney a murderer and a felon. Why is it that independents only get turned off? Why is it that our guys are agreeing with a Democrat consultant? Why is it that the independents only get turned off when we're critical?"

This is a clear-cut example of what I'm talking about.  Romney is still trying to fight according to the Marquis de Queensbury rules, while Obama and his supporters are in a gutter street fight, and any stick is good enough to beat Romney with.  Or brass knuckles.  Or knives.  Or guns.

Romney's supporters...

vs. Obama's supporters.

In a situation like this, it's foolish to stand on honor and not hit back with the same sort of weapons and tactics our opponents are bringing to bear.  We need to be out there making our case for our policies, yes, but we also need to show how Obama's policies, contrary to the lies that his people are telling up street and down alley from sea to shining sea have brought this country to the brink of ruin, and he promises nothing other than four more years of the same!

I'd rather have an opponent who looks
like Melinda “La Maravilla” Cooper!
(H/T:  Wombat Sports)

There's only two months left until the election, and I'm skeptical that there are very many people paying attention yet.  Well, it's not even Labor Day.

And we still have the Democratic National Convention, with its celebrations of Islam, abortion, rape and sodomy, and Obama, the president of Islam, abortion, rape and sodomy, and four days of fawning media coverage of speaker after speaker telling us how wonderful Obama is, and what demons Romney and Ryan are.  What do we have to counter that with?

The rules have changed.  I hope we haven't nominated a fool who's still playing by the old rules.

The Question

George Weigel is beginning to get it:

What's coming won't be this pretty.

If everything in the human condition is plastic and malleable—if there are no givens—then claims to “my truth” on which you cannot legitimately impose “your truth” make sense. If, on the other hand, some things simply are—such as the human dignity of the unborn child or the nature of marriage—then we can learn what is right and wrong, what is true and false, what is conducive to human happiness or conducive to human misery, by pondering those givens and trying to discern the deep truths they teach us about ourselves and how we should live: truths that have been illuminated for centuries by biblical religion.

America began with the assertion of deep truths written into the human condition by “Nature, and Nature’s God” (as the Declaration of Independence put it). In an election season likely to be dominated by very practical (and important) questions about the economy, it will be well to keep a deeper, more searching set of questions in mind: Are we still a nation dedicated to certain moral truths? If so, how do we recover an ability to talk about those truths together?

And if not, what have we become?

Weigel doesn't offer an answer.  I would argue that to ask the question is to answer it.  No, we're not still such a nation, and what we've become is something that will quickly devolve into something horrible.  Orwell's character Winston Smith wrote in his diary that "freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two is five.  Once that is granted, all else follows."  That freedom is fundamentally at risk.  

(Pretty girl H/T: Stormbringer)

Why the Republican Party will Deserve what it Gets

Make no mistake:  The Republican Party has a chance to win the 2012 election.  It has this chance for one reason, and one reason only:  the Tea Party movement.  That terrifies liberals.  Not just liberal Democrats, it also terrifies liberal Republicans, and by that I mean the people who run the Republican Party at the national level, and in many states.  From Morton Blackwell:

Dear Fellow Delegate,

On Tuesday of this week, as Republican National Convention delegates, you and I will be voting on rules changes that could fundamentally change our Republican Party — and not for the better...

These rule changes are the most awful I’ve ever seen come before any National Convention.

I’m writing you today to urge you to join the growing effort to stop the worst-ever changes in this Rules Committee’s Report and to vote in favor of amendments to Rules 12 and 15. The Minority Reports will restore important rights and protections which state parties and grassroots Republicans would lose under the Rules Committee Report as written.

These amendments to Rules 12 and 15 are contained in Minority Reports supported by at least 25% of the members of this convention’s Committee on Rules and Order of Business...

I must tell you there is tremendous arm-twisting now to peel signers off of the Minority Reports.

Finally, whether on Minority Reports or on voting down the Rules, it will require at least six states’ delegations to insist upon a roll call vote.

I will not pretend that the deck is not stacked against us.

But many state leaders, liberty-minded activists, and grass-roots conservatives are up-in-arms as word of this power grab spreads.

Our convention will make this important decision Tuesday as some of our first work. Many folks skip these procedural sessions thinking nothing of importance occurs.
This year, that is far from the truth.

If the Rules Committee Report were to pass without adoption of the Minority Reports, it would amount to a power grab by Washington, D.C. party insiders and consultants designed to silence the voice of state party activists and Republican grassroots by:

Political power grabs: not pretty.

*** Handing national party officials the power to change national party rules adopted by state and grassroots leaders at the Republican National Convention. For generations, the prohibition of manipulated changes in the national Rules of the Republican Party between national conventions has served as one of the crown jewels of our party. It’s a power grab which opens the door to many future power grabs.

*** Stripping state parties in all states with binding primaries of the power of choosing who will represent their states as national delegates and alternate delegates.
This outrageous change would empower presidential campaigns to disapprove and remove delegates and alternate delegates selected by rules adopted by state Republican parties. Rather than grassroots activists who won delegate and alternate delegate slots by following state party rules, a large majority of positions would be handed to top donors of the winning campaign.

*** Gutting the great and successful reform adopted in the current election cycle to stop the dangerous trend to front-load the selection of national convention delegates. Our party would move again toward a national primary which would deny grassroots Republicans the opportunity to vet presidential candidates in a nomination contest of reasonable length. This reform must not be abandoned.

Michelle Malkin has more. 

What evidently happened has been spun as a victory for the grassroots, but it isn't.  A "compromise" was approved, whereby the National Committee has been given the authority to make changes independent of the Convention.  It's expected that the RNC will make the changes that they couldn't get through the Convention.

This is a slap in the face to conservative activists of every stripe who have worked so hard to bring the GOP the success it had in 2010, and that it has within reach in 2012.  This will certainly have -- is already having -- the effect of discouraging activists from working for the national ticket this year.  They'll still vote for Romney, but like one local Tea Party leader I know, they won't lift a finger to work for Romney.  Their efforts will be directed towards local races.

I am not surprised by this.  No one who has been paying attention the past five or more years should be surprised.  Much more than losing, the national GOP leadership hates most of all the idea that they should owe their electoral successes to the great unwashed of Tea Party and pro-life rallies, to the neanderthals of the defense of marriage and immigration-enforcement crowds, and to the unenlightened supporters of the gun rights lobby.  The question only remains how these groups will react to their snub by the official party apparatus.  It won't be a good thing.

The rules have changed.  It's fools who are still playing by the old rules.  What are you going to do about it?

(Pretty girl H/T: Stormbringer)

UPDATE:  Former Illinois Repubican Party general counsel Doug Ibendahl has more:

Yesterday, the Republican National Committee in Tampa adopted some rules changes that shift power from the state parties and the grassroots to the RNC and the GOP presidential nominee. Former Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire touted the new rules as providing “a strong governing framework” for the party over the next four years. But in fact the the new rules should be very troubling and disappointing to conservative grassroots activists, because they move the national Republican Party away from being a decentralized, bottom-up party toward becoming a centralized, top-down party.

The Romney rules effectively disenfranchise grassroots delegates, and will thus tend to weaken and splinter the party over time. They specifically represent a blow to the Tea Party and the Ron Paul movement, and force grassroots conservatives of all stripes to contemplate their future within the GOP...

Yesterday’s fight offers a sobering glimpse of what life will be like for conservatives in a Romney Administration. It proves once again that sometimes we have to beat the Republicans before we can beat the Democrats.

Still More on Why The Catholic Church will Deserve what it Gets

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which forced Real Catholic TV to drop the "Catholic" from its name, still tolerates the use of "Catholic" by the pro-aborts at Catholic Relief Services:

Yvonne Craig as Batgirl

One CRS employee lists the pro-abortion Pro-Choice Resources and Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies as former employers on her LinkedIn resume, while another was hired by the Catholic aid organization directly from the pro-abortion Population Services International.

Another former employee was convicted of assault last fall after ramming her car into a crowd at the DC March for Life in January 2011 as the pro-lifers traversed a crosswalk.

The latter employee, Charisse Espy Glassman, was a Democrat candidate for the DC school board as well as a legislative assistant with CRS-Haiti. Despite assault charges, she remained at CRS until August 4th, 2011. In a statement on Facebook responding to queries, CRS said they had “operated on the principle that people are innocent until proven guilty.” A victim of the assault, who suffered two herniated disks, reported that Glassman had seemed to laugh as she drove into the crowd.

These people still get to raise money in Catholic Churches.  The U.S. Catholic hierarchy has made a deal with the devil, and until they get their own house in order, they will have no credibility to teach, exhort, or sue anyone else.  There are no heroes on the horizon who seem likely to accomplish this feat.

You Can't Deny Science

And the science says, liberals dominate the social sciences...

In news that could only surprise a liberal, the social sciences are not hotbeds of intellectual diversity, and don't want to be (H/T:  Cold Fury):

Psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, surveyed a roughly representative sample of academics and scholars in social psychology and found that “In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.”

This finding surprised the researchers. The survey questions “were so blatant that I thought we’d get a much lower rate of agreement,” Mr. Inbar said. “Usually you have to be pretty tricky to get people to say they’d discriminate against minorities.”

One question, according to the researchers, “asked whether, in choosing between two equally qualified job candidates for one job opening, they would be inclined to vote for the more liberal candidate (i.e., over the conservative).”

More than a third of the respondents said they would discriminate against the conservative candidate. One respondent wrote in that if department members “could figure out who was a conservative, they would be sure not to hire them.”

This is nothing other than typical liberal contempt for dissenting views.  It's a clear illustration of the fact that liberals will suppress dissent by any means at their disposal whenever they have the power to do so.

In 2011, Mr. Haidt addressed this very issue at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology — the same group that Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammer surveyed. Mr. Haidt’s talk, “The Bright Future of Post-Partisan Social Psychology,” caused a stir. The professor, whose new book “The Righteous Mind” examines the moral roots of our political positions, asked the nearly 1,000 academics and students in the room to raise their hands if they were liberals. Nearly 80 percent of the hands went up. When he asked whether there were any conservatives in the house, just three hands — 0.3 percent — went up.

This is “a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Mr. Haidt said.

"Statistically impossible" -- that means it couldn't have happened by accident.

Helen Slater as Supergirl

Beyond their findings on discrimination, the pair determined that while conservatives are minorities in their field, they are not statistically negligible: About 40 percent of respondents identified themselves as moderate or conservative on economic issues, while 30 percent did so on foreign policy issues. The widest divide occurs on social issues, the contested terrain in the culture wars shaking the academy. On these contentious issues, 90 percent identified as liberal and only 4 percent as conservative.

“As offensive as it may seem to many social psychologists,” Mr. Inbar and Mr. Lammers write, “believing that abortion is murder does not mean that one cannot do excellent research.” To think otherwise, they argue, damages the scientific credibility of psychology — a field that has been criticized in the press for being a pseudo-science.

Remember this when you hear about what psychologists say about any, and I mean any, subject.  You'd heard of media bias.  Now you know know about academic bias.

How Hatred Became a Liberal Value

Paul Rahe explains (H/T:  Dyspepsia Generation):

Alicia Silverstone as Batgirl in "Batman & Robin"

I remember when liberals sported on their automobiles bumper stickers reading, “Hatred is not a Family Value.” Then, back in 2003, in The New Republic, Jonathan Chait wrote an essay explaining why it was legitimate to hate George W. Bush, and the dam burst. Civility is no longer a liberal ideal. And now – as yesterday’s armed attack on the Family Research Council in Washington, the five-hour delay in President Obama’s condemnation of the act as he calculated whether it was in his interest to comment or not, and the mainstream media’s initial reluctance to report on the event, much less highlight the activist LGBT connections of the shooter suggest – left liberals are willing to wink at violence. It may be regrettable, they think, but, like stealing elections, it is all in a good cause – and before figuring out how to respond to an outbreak of violence on the part of their allies, they pause to calculate the political consequences. You will not hear liberals arguing for a crackdown on the use of force by animal-rights activists, environmental activists, union thugs, and the Occupy movement.  [Emphasis added.]

Read it all.   Liberals have been about hating what is good for a very, very long time.  They hate babies and children, they hate authentic religious faith, they hate traditional marriage, they hate economic prosperity.  And they hate, they hate, they hate the people who stand in their way as they try to destroy these things.

Why We Can't Communicate

Found on Facebook, re-posted with permission:

A number of my friends have been posting of late to decry the poor quality of political discourse in the 2012 election season.

It's understandable.  The slanders are going back and forth pretty heavily, and though it seems to me that the problem is far more on one side than the other, others will have different perceptions.

But what they may not be aware of is that little, very little, of political speech is actually intended as "discourse":  the two sides are doing such a poor job of talking to each other because they aren't trying to talk to each other.  Mostly, they're talking to their own supporters, trying to keep them in camp, trying keep their spirits up, their enthusiasm at pitch, and keep them excited.  But also, they're talking to the dwindling number of undecided voters.  A little of this is of the "see how good I am?" sort of message, but much more of it is of the color of "how can you vote for that devil!?"  Finally, a bit of political speech is actually aimed at the opponent's supporters.  Now, you might think that there would be an effort to persuade here, but there isn't.  Instead, almost all of this speech is intended to suppress the turnout of the opponent's supporters; thus the message is entirely negative, intended specifically to turn people away from the political process altogether, to create a "they're all bums anyway" sort of despair.

In America today, we are divided.  We are divided about basic questions like what is a person or what is a family?  We don't agree on what constitutes a marriage, whether there's a God, what God expects of us, what constitutes Good and Evil or how to achieve them.  We disagree on whether a man is entitled to the fruits of his labors, or whether he owes them to the state.  We disagree on what is our duty to each other, and on who should define that duty.  We disagree about the proper size and role of government, and on how best to educate our children.  We disagree about whether there should be one set of laws for all, or freedom to do things differently.  We disagree about what are rights, and about what rights are.

Increasingly, we don't even speak the same language, using the same words to mean very different things.  And, increasingly, we abandon media that facilitate consequential communication, and turn to media that trivialize communication (yes, like Facebook).  We've abandoned our brief, failed experiment in "objective journalism" (which at least had as its ideal the notion of serving the entire public) in favor of agenda-driven reporting and commentary serving a diverse market of information consumers.  Information consumers, who, by the by, are consuming (mostly) for free a very expensive to produce product -- but it's paid for by someone who wants you to consume it.  Who?  and why?

We disagree about history, about divinity, about humanity, about sexuality, about liberty.  We lack respect for those who hold differing values and opinions.  Only this last is understandable to me; few of us ever experience being respected by those who hold differing values and opinions.

I don't know the solution.  I'm highly skeptical there is one.  I'm completely certain that there is no short-term solution.  My best hope is that we won't tear ourselves to pieces before a solution can be found.

But it's hardly surprising that the people who are vying for our votes present such a poor image.  It's our own reflection.

Dina Meyers as Batgirl in "Birds of Prey"

 Not only are we divided, but one side is determined to wipe out the other, and in order to achieve that has taken over academia, the news and entertainment media, most of the judiciary and most of the government.  They use our virtues, institutions and traditions as weapons against us, and they are on the verge of rendering our values not only obsolete, but illegal.  The process will be completed during the next presidential term, if Barack Obama is re-elected.  In such a situation, there can only be victory or defeat.  You may wish to compromise, but true compromise is not possible with an opponent who uses compromise itself as a weapon against you.

There will be no heroes to save us.  Which will it be?  Victory or defeat?

Name-Calling

It's very much as though, following halftime in a basketball game, the opposing team has come out wearing football pads and helmets, 11 men instead of 5, formed a line of scrimmage, and is now busily tackling our center, guards and forwards, and carrying the ball instead of dribbling.  And our team is haughtily declaring our superiority in following the correct rules, while the score is run up against us, and our best players are sidelined and crippled.

The rules have changed.  Only fools are still playing by the old rules.  We will have to win according to the new rules even to have a chance of reinstating the old rules.

It's time for us to play by the rules our opponents are playing by.  Name-calling is a good example.  Even the mainstream press, even the president himself, has called Tea Party activists by the degoratory name of "tea-baggers".  "Tea-bagging", as what we used to call decent people have been forced to come to understand, is the playful name given by homosexuals to the practice of taking one's partner's testicles into one's mouth.  When they call you a "tea-bagger", they don't mean something nice.  Nor even neutral.

Much less do they mean anything nice when they react with name-calling to the slightest hint of opposition.  You can barely chat five minutes with most liberals before they'll ask if your opposition to President Obama isn't really because he's black.  That's the nicest way they have of calling you a racist, but they'll often just come out and say it.

Few homosexuals, or their supporters, can last as long as two minutes without calling you a bigot for opposing gay "marriage".

None of this is new.  Communists used to call capitalists, "running dogs."  Slave-owners had some pretty bad names for abolitionists, too, of which "religious extremist" was the mildest.

Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

When he calls you a tea-bagger, call him a cocksucker.  Not just once.  Keep doing it and don't stop.

When he calls you a racist for opposing President Obama, call him a fascist.  Over and over again.

When they call you a bigot for opposing the gay agenda, call them fagots, or fudge-packers,  or limp-wristed.

Use your imagination.  Unleash the anger that their name-calling inspires in you.  Don't hold back.  Keep calling them names over and over, like cruel children in a schoolyard.  That's the level of discourse that they have chosen, that's the game that they asked for.  It's laughably simple to beat them at it.  Because most liberals in today's political discourse have the mentality of schoolyard bullies.  And schoolyard bullies, famously, cannot themselves stand being served a helping of what they dish out.

Of course it's distasteful.  It's a virtue in you that you would find name-calling distasteful.  Do not let your virtues be their weapons.  Your hospitality doesn't force you to open your home to robbers.  Your distaste at such childish tactics shouldn't require you to accept their insults without hitting back.  Don't disdain to tackle their quarterback.

Fight fire with fire.  When they call you names, call them names.  And just watch how fast they back down!

a few words about this blog

It's not important who I am.  Suffice to say, I'm somebody who thinks that the re-election of the president would be a disaster to America of historic proportions.

What I say here probably isn't important either.  But the main point, not original to me, is that the re-election of President Obama will render impossible the rolling back of the big government juggernaut that threatens to consume our entire society.  The fundamental relationship of the government to the people has been changed -- they are no longer accountable to us, we are accountable to them.  If Obama is reelected, we will have lost our last opportunity to change it back.

If you agree with what I say, don't bother to comment, just post a link to the blog you like to Facebook or Twitter and share it.  Help get the word out.

If you don't agree, feel free to fisk me on your blog.  That'll get the word out, too.

I expect to have a few things to say here over the course of the next few months.  If I am right, and Obama is re-elected, I'll have advice and opinions about how we should conduct ourselves according to the new rules of society.

If Gov. Romney wins, we will still need to stay engaged and involved, and so I'll something to say about that as well.

Thanks for stopping by.  Feel free to come back.

The Main Reason Obama will be Reelected

The obvious bias of the news and entertainment media is so pervasive that for the vast majority of voters, it's simply the air they breathe.  Obama is smart, his critics are dumb (or racist), and his opponent is a wimp because he won't stand up to the great evil that threatens America: conservatives.

In spite of the hard work by many in talk radio, the Tea Party, and the new on-line media, most people simply won't get the opposing viewpoint, and most people will still be outraged that there even is an opposing viewpoint.

Rule 5 Action

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, and all text, all politics, all the time makes for a dull blog.

So, in slavish obedience to the Great McCain's Rule 5, I offer these lovelies from Lost Pinup:

First, the wonderful Betty Page.

The immortal Marilyn Monroe.

A rare comparison, showing that photography isn't always better.

Thanks for dropping by!  Be sure to check out the rest of the blog!  We're new here, and you might like what we have to say.

Cardinal George on How the Culture is Changed

But will he figure out how to do it himself?

Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George revisits the Chick-fil-A issue, and observes how the left has moved the culture by excluding entire vistas of context (H/T:  BackyardConservative):

An argument is always made in a context that determines what can be considered sensible, and it seems to me that some of us are arguing out of different contexts. 

There are three contexts for discussing “gay marriage”: 1) the arena of individual rights and their protection in civil law, 2) the field of activities defined by nature and its laws, and 3) the realm of faith as a response to God’s self-revelation in history.  Unfortunately, when the only permissible context for discussing public values is that of individual rights protected by civil law, then it is the government alone that determines how it is acceptable to act.  Every public actor (including faith communities) then becomes the government’s agent.  This is a formula for tyranny.

We can see how appeals to pluralism and toleration gradually become tyrannical in the development of how we are now expected to regard the killing of unborn children.  When the individual civil right to abort a living child was discovered in the Constitution, its justification began as a “necessary evil” for the sake of a woman’s health; it was then applauded in nobler terms as a positive symbol of a woman’s freedom; it is now part of the value system of our society and everyone must be involved in paying for it, either through taxes or insurance.  It is mainstream medicine and settled social policy.  Its opponents are relegated to a quirky fringe, outside of the American consensus not only on what it is legal to do but also on what it is good to support.  When the government, the media and the entertainment industries agree to agree on how to use words and shape the argument, society itself is deliberately transformed in ways that bring academics, judges, legislators, lawyers, law enforcement officers, newspaper editors, actors, psychiatrists, doctors and every other public professional into public agreement, all portraying themselves as original thinkers.  Anyone opposed to the new consensus, no matter the reason, is dismissed as a throwback to an earlier age, to be tolerated, perhaps, but removed from public life and, eventually, punished.  It’s a very old story.

The Cardinal is exactly right.  But he's been standing on the sidelines watching it happen his entire life.  Now what's he going to do about it?  People on the wrong side of these issues go to communion every Sunday, every day, some of them, in the Chicago Archdiocese.  Evidently, it's OK with Cardinal George for someone to stand up in his territory and say "I'm Catholic and gay is OK!  Abortion is OK!"  There are no consequences for this, even for the most famous and power Catholics.  Until the Church starts flexing its muscle, and getting into the game, it's going to be relegated to a seat on the 50-yard line to watch as western culture completes its slide into the gutter, taking the economy with it.

Obama Slanders Romney as Murderer

That headline was a bit strong perhaps.  But maybe not.  The Other McCain had trouble with his headline on this story, too.

Here it is from Obama's SuperPAC:

The short version:  Mitt Romney is responsible for this guy's wife dying of cancer.  What's worse than having your wife die of cancer?  Politicizing your wife's death from cancer.  Especially when Romney left Bain two years before this guy, Coptic, was laid off, and when Coptic's wife continued to have health insurance from her own employer until her death five years later.

McCain covers the facts better than I could, so check it out there.

My take is simple.  We live in a country where the ends justify the means.  That's no longer a saying meant to be an insult, it's an official strategy.  Anything goes.  Liberals and Democrats should be ashamed of this, but liberals and Democrats are incapable of shame.  Instead, they take Pride -- with a capital P -- in their sins.  Look for the "Slander Pride Parade" coming to a Main Street near you soon.

And somebody will believe and remember this ad.

Polish President: Trusting Obama a "Mistake"

The Telegraph reports:

Reflecting Warsaw's long-standing anger over the 2009 cancellation of a controversial Bush-era anti-ballistic missile system President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland should build its own missile shield to ensure national defence.

"Our mistake was that by accepting the American offer of a shield we failed to take into account the political risk associated with a change of president," said Mr Komorowski in a magazine interview. "We paid a high political price. We do not want to make the same mistake again. We must have a missile system as an element of our defences."

We were told in 2008 that President Obama would cure all the ills of American foreign policy, and salve the wounds inflicted on the world by George W. Bush.

Instead, have world leaders opening reflecting on the utter folly of trusting Americans.  Our opportunity in 2012:  to lock in a string of Democratic presidents, starting with another four years of Barack Obama, who will continue to undermine freedom and security not only for Americans, but for our friends abroad as well.

Planning for the Revolution -- by the U.S. Army

The Army is making plans on how to operate with the U.S. against U.S. citizens:

A key and understudied aspect of full spectrum operations is how to conduct these operations within American borders. If we face a period of persistent global conflict as outlined in successive National Security Strategy documents, then Army officers are professionally obligated to consider the conduct of operations on U.S. soil. Army capstone and operating concepts must provide guidance concerning how the Army will conduct the range of operations required to defend the republic at home. In this paper, we posit a scenario in which a group of political reactionaries take over a strategically positioned town and have the tacit support of not only local law enforcement but also state government officials, right up to the governor. Under present law, which initially stemmed from bad feelings about Reconstruction, the military’s domestic role is highly circumscribed. In the situation we lay out below, even though the governor refuses to seek federal help to quell the uprising (the usual channel for military assistance), the Constitution allows the president broad leeway in times of insurrection. Citing the precedents of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War and Dwight D. Eisenhower sending troops to Little Rock in 1957, the president mobilizes the military and the Department of Homeland Security, to regain control of the city. This scenario requires us to consider how domestic intelligence is gathered and shared, the role of local law enforcement (to the extent that it supports the operation), the scope and limits of the Insurrection Act--for example maintaining a military chain of command but in support of the Attorney General as the Department of Justice is the Lead Federal Agency (LFA) under the conditions of the Act--and the roles of the local, national, and international media.

The Scenario (2016)

The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated. After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief. The United States economy has flatlined, much like Japan’s in the 1990s, for the better part of a decade. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises. Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high. A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants. After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.

In May 2016 an extremist militia motivated by the goals of the “tea party” movement takes over the government of Darlington, South Carolina, occupying City Hall, disbanding the city council, and placing the mayor under house arrest. Activists remove the chief of police and either disarm local police and county sheriff departments or discourage them from interfering. In truth, this is hardly necessary. Many law enforcement officials already are sympathetic to the tea party’s agenda, know many of the people involved, and have made clear they will not challenge the takeover. The militia members are organized and have a relatively well thought-out plan of action.

With Darlington under their control, militia members quickly move beyond the city limits to establish “check points” – in reality, something more like choke points -- on major transportation lines. Traffic on I-95, the East Coast’s main north-south artery; I-20; and commercial and passenger rail lines are stopped and searched, allegedly for “illegal aliens.” Citizens who complain are immediately detained. Activists also collect “tolls” from drivers, ostensibly to maintain public schools and various city and county programs, but evidence suggests the money is actually going toward quickly increasing stores of heavy weapons and ammunition. They also take over the town web site and use social media sites to get their message out unrestricted.

When the leaders of the group hold a press conference to announce their goals, they invoke the Declaration of Independence and argue that the current form of the federal government is not deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” but is actually “destructive to these ends.” Therefore, they say, the people can alter or abolish the existing government and replace it with another that, in the words of the Declaration, “shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.” While mainstream politicians and citizens react with alarm, the “tea party” insurrectionists in South Carolina enjoy a groundswell of support from other tea party groups, militias, racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, anti-immigrant associations such as the Minutemen, and other right-wing groups. At the press conference the masked militia members’ uniforms sport a unit seal with a man wearing a tricorn hat and carrying a musket over the motto “Today’s Minutemen.” When a reporter asked the leaders who are the “red coats” the spokesman answered, “I don’t know who the redcoats are…it could be federal troops.” Experts warn that while these groups heretofore have been considered weak and marginal, the rapid coalescence among them poses a genuine national threat.

The mayor of Darlington calls the governor and his congressman. He cannot act to counter the efforts of the local tea party because he is confined to his home and under guard. The governor, who ran on a platform that professed sympathy with tea party goals, is reluctant to confront the militia directly. He refuses to call out the National Guard. He has the State Police monitor the roadblocks and checkpoints on the interstate and state roads but does not order the authorities to take further action. In public the governor calls for calm and proposes talks with the local tea party to resolve issues. Privately, he sends word through aides asking the federal government to act to restore order. Due to his previous stance and the appearance of being “pro” tea party goals the governor has little political room to maneuver.

The Department of Homeland Security responds to the governor’s request by asking for defense support to civil law enforcement. After the Department of Justice states that the conditions in Darlington and surrounding areas meet the conditions necessary to invoke the Insurrection Act, the President invokes it.

Chilling.  Contrary to what you may think, the Army is under the control of liberals, and they are making their plans to deal with what they expect from conservatives.

Read the rest here.

Health Care Under the New Rules

Under the new rules, what's called "healthcare" will be different.

There Must be a Winner, and a Loser

In the contest between traditional Christian morality, and the new homosexual morality that seeks to supplant it, there will be no detente, no truce, no tolerance.  Either Christianity in America will win, or it will be destroyed. 

Lest you doubt this, here is an example.  There are countless more such, both subtle and obvious, to be found:

More on Why The Catholic Church will Deserve what it Gets

Regarding the invitation from New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan to President Obama to speak at the annual Al Smith Dinner, Matthew at Creative Minority Report writes:

Why is this invitation different than Notre Dame or Georgetown's invitations? You can say that it has nothing to do with politics and that it's a fundraiser for children but didn't Georgetown and Notre Dame say that it wasn't about politics and that it was all about the students?

I've been to two religious freedom rallies with my kids in Philadelphia. I traveled down to Baltimore for the kickoff Mass of The Fortnight for Freedom with Archbishop Lori. And yeah, this ticks me off.

When millions of Catholics who prayed and protested for religious freedom see the pictures that will surely surface from the event with Cardinal Dolan and Obama how will they feel? Pray tell what will that do to the morale of millions of Catholics? What will that do to the pit of their stomachs?

It's just unserious. We can say it's all for a good cause. But its just unserious. Either those 50 million babies count as human beings or they don't. Either marriage is worth fighting for or it's not. Either religious freedom must be preserved or not. To say we're taking a "time out" from politics a few weeks before election day is just unserious. And it says to millions of Catholics that we can take a time out from those important issues to yuck it up.

 President Obama is the enemy of orthodox Christianity.  And, to the extent that the Catholic Church represents orthodox Christianity, President Obama is the enemy of the Catholic Church.  I had thought that Cardinal Dolan had a clue about what was at stake.  Evidently, he hasn't.

Retirement Rules are Changing, too!

The rules on retirement are also changing (H/T: Dyspepsia Generation):

People retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

Previous generations got a much better bargain, mainly because payroll taxes were very low when Social Security was enacted in the 1930s and remained so for decades.

"For the early generations, it was an incredibly good deal," said Andrew Biggs, a former deputy Social Security commissioner who is now a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "The government gave you free money and getting free money is popular."

If you retired in 1960, you could expect to get back seven times more in benefits than you paid in Social Security taxes, and more if you were a low-income worker, as long you made it to age 78 for men and 81 for women.

As recently as 1985, workers at every income level could retire and expect to get more in benefits than they paid in Social Security taxes, though they didn't do quite as well as their parents and grandparents.

Not anymore.

 Read the rest here...

Why the Catholic Church Will Deserve What It Gets

Robert Klein Engler writes at American Thinker:

If you want to know what the Catholic bishops are going to do about the contraceptive mandate in Obamacare that went into effect August 1st, then you may first have to know what they are going to do about illegal immigration to the United States from Mexico.This is so because the same theology and Bible that teaches the Catholic Church to oppose contraception also teaches the Church to oppose illegal immigration. In short, the US Bishops can't oppose one without opposing the other.

Nevertheless, reality and politics in the United States have put Church leaders in a situation where they must confront a contradiction: How can they oppose ObamaCare while at the same time filling aging US parishes with illegal Mexicans?

A Fool's Game

a manifesto

Western culture has all but fallen.  Only a few dominos are left, and little stands in the way to prevent their fall.

Our culture has been nearly been defeated not by people who exploited its weaknesses, but by those who abused its strengths:  its generosity, its liberty, its sense of order and justice, its courtesy, its idealism, but most of all its tolerance.  In balance, these things made for the richest, most free, most virtuous society in history.  We fought wars for good causes, we went to the moon in peace, we elevated the highest moral values, we treated each other with respect and goodwill -- not perfectly, never perfectly, but better than any human society had ever done in history.

The America of the future has three classes:  A ruling class, a productive class, and a dependent class.  The ruling class will tax and regulate the productive class in order to give largesse to the dependent class, who will then continue to vote to keep the ruling class in power.  One class is to be hosed for the benefit of the other two.  The election of 2012 is our last chance to forestall this from coming about, and our only hope, God help us, is Mitt Romney and the Republican Party. 

It's really not fair.  If President Obama is re-elected, and particularly if the Republicans fail to decisively take control of Congress, America will be locked into course for at least a generation that no future president will be able to substantially alter.  The relationship between the government and the governed will have been altered.  Government will no longer exist for the people, but the people for the government.  People will no longer be self-reliant, they will be reliant upon the government.  The exceptions will be despised, reviled, and eventually hunted down and eliminated.

But if Obama is not re-elected, or if the GOP takes Congress to such an extreme extent as no one is today predicting, it won't mean that we are saved from that outcome.  It will only mean the the outcome will be, temporarily, less certain.

Our choice is not between good and evil, but between mediocrity and evil.  The good work of the Tea Party remains incomplete.  It must now unseat a president if it hopes to gain time to complete its reform work.  This is a completion that is by no means certain.  In the last 70 years, only three incumbent presidents have been defeated for re-election.

The rules of the game of life in America have changed fundamentally.  Increasingly, those who have tried to play by the rules find that the game is rigged against them.  Advancement, at least by honorable means, is less easy, and much less common, than it used to be.  Advancement by dishonorable means, on the other hand, has been easier and more common.  Costs have risen faster than wages.  Government growth has outstripped population growth.  Interlocking directorships, crony capitalism, liberal redistributionism, conservative apathy, and greed at every level have combined to place the middle class everyman in the sights of a cannon that will blow him away entirely.  His slavery is nearly complete, the last of his shackles has only to be locked.

The re-election of Barack Obama will put the seal on a time of public dependence and government oppression unheard-of in the history of the North American continent.  Government will choose whether a man will be born, when he will die, how he will be educated, and what will be his work.  Government will dictate what he is to believe, how he is to be entertained, and how he will live.  It will be done in the name of "fairness" and "equality", but the result will be neither.

This prediction may seem extreme.  But things in America are far worse under Barack Obama than anyone predicted in 2008.  Did anyone in 2008 predict the outrages, the enormities, the privations we have in fact experienced?  No.  As it is, things in most sectors are worse than most people realize.  Our economy is depressed, our culture degraded, our freedom denigrated, and our military decimated.  Morality has been turned upside down.  Virtue has become a weapon used by the immoral against the virtuous.  Courts, once the guardians of justice, have become our black-robed masters, who ride roughshod over law, and precedent, and justice itself, to rule like feudal lords over legislatures and their constituents alike.  Judges in America now order legislatures to pass laws, wielding power that executives can only dream of.

Our borders are porous, and, lured by tales of streets lined in gold, uncounted millions illegally cross them, a silent invasion that depresses wages, and creates a sullen, exploited underclass beyond the protection of law, at once both perpetrators and victims of crime.

A million or more of our children die each year by abortion, and those who disapprove are sued or legislated into silence, and forced to pay for the procedure through both their taxes and their insurance premiums..  The federal government has declared open war on traditional religious morality, and with the approval of huge swaths of the populace, notably those influenced by the mainstream news and entertainment media, academia, and those seeking benefits from government cronyism.

The much pleaded-for (by liberals, gays, and other minority groups) age of tolerance has been brought to an end as these groups have gained ascendance, and turned upon authentic Christians with a level of bile and vitriol never before seen in modern America, nor, indeed (outside of communist nations) since the days of ancient Rome.  The sole societal institution oriented towards the care of children has been weakened to the point of collapse, and the wrecking ball is poised to destroy it utterly.

The rules of the game have changed, the playing field altered, the goalposts have been moved.  If you are still playing by the old rules, you are playing a fool's game.

With this blog, I will discuss these trends, and how you can address them.