Dr. Peggy

Speaking of drivel, it has been over 18 months since I have been able to read a full Peggy Noonan piece right through to the end. Week after week she seems to be trying to plumb the depths of Obama's soul...assuming that he's got one...to enlighten us all as to the deep, existential meaning of it all. Or something. What the heck did I just say? It is as if she has appointed heself Psychotherapist-in-Chief not just to Obama, but to the entire freaking nation and I find it incredibly irritating. Her piece today may be full of amazing political insights, but I could not get past the first two breathless, cloying pretentious paragraphs. When does her contract run out?
I daren't suggest that they get rid of her (on the grounds of general incompetence and nit-wittery) because I said something like that recently about a local radio talk-show host and lo and behold the healthy, 43-year old woman dropped dead from an aneurysm.
Whenever I read the once-great Miss Noonan's pieces now, I am reminded of that WW2 poster of a smiling GI offering a nice, fresh cup of STFU. I wish Miss N would accept it.

Rush-hating Media get Punked Again

This was written in reply to some anti-Rush drivel in my local rag.

Dear Editor of Kentuckiana Fish-Wrapper

Rush Limbaugh has punked you again. [ Fans Should Say 'enough' to Rush, Robertson-Pam Platt -17 Jan 2010]. His show is a three-hour mixture of satire and hard news He insists that the media are in the tank for the Left, so he “illustrates absurdity by being absurd”. He's even courteous enough to announce his “Media Tweak of the Day” and you still fall for it.

It works this way: Rush makes a carefully crafted “outrageous” statement, (often an actual un-denounced quote of a prominent liberal ). This utterance touches off a storm of media indignation , thus demonstrating to the Limbaugh audience, who are in on the con, that journalists are every bit as biased, unprofessional and dense as Rush says they are. Days later, the other shoe drops, as Rush proves, by re-playing his remarks in context , that he neither said nor meant that which has been reported. Finally, he rolls out a series of audio clips of liberals saying the very things they have denounced him for. Result: they lose credibility with their audience and he gains credibility with his. Game, set, match. In this recent case, he was able to induce a bunch of liberals to decry the politicization of natural disasters and then air sound-bites of them doing just that in the immediate aftermath of Katrina.

A few media members have figured this out and are more careful about fact-checking , but obviously there are still a few of you who just don’t learn.

Pat Robertson, meanwhile, is simply a dolt. Like Danny Glover.

Red Dawn Arising

Iowahawk is asking for ideas for attack ads against Republican Scott Brown to benefit Democrat Martha Coakley..; )

Here's mine:

[Musical background: Theme from Deliverance:]

Footage of Scott Brown, strangely toothless, driving a General-Lee paint-jobbed pickup down a red-dirt road.

He pulls into the parking lot of a huge glass mega church. Every vehicle is festooned with “It’s a Child, Not a Choice.” bumper stickers and gun-racks.

[Music changes to the Darth Vader/Empire Theme from Star Wars]

Cut to inside where thousands of beefy-faced white people with over-sprayed hair wave their arms in the air and sway back and forth while images of aborted fetuses and gay weddings flash onto two giant screens. The singing turns to chanting;;Scott Brown….Scott-Brown. Intensity grows until a huge set of double doors bursts open and Scott Brown, now attired in a gleaming blue suit, his intact teeth sparkling, appears as if a vision, with haloes of klieg-lights behind him. The crowd roars, Cameras cut to faces in the crowd: a military man in uniform, his congenital inability to qualify for a real job evident in his vacant, brutal face. A hugely pregnant woman with big hair in a calico dress, her 9 disturbingly immaculate children lined up at her side. A fat old man with an NRA ball-cap on his head. The chants swell in volume and ferocity as Scott Brown runs down the aisle.

Cut to Massachusetts. A mob of unwashed and unlettered southerners and Midwesterners tosses books onto a bonfire outside the Harvard Coop. Men in “Tea Bagger” shirts roll oil drums labeled “Toxic Waste” to the shore and disgorge their contents into Boston Harbor and the Charles. Big-haired women wearing cross necklaces and matching polyester separates drag women off the sidewalks of Wellesley for forced leg and underarm shaving. Bible-brandishing goons storm the bar at The Country Club and snatch the martinis out of the flaccid fingers of sobbing RINOs. Andrew Sullivan wanders, half-clothed and weeping in the smoldering ruins of P-town.

Images fade to Leni Riefenstahl black-and-white.

Graphic: Vote for Martha Coakley: Before it is TOO LATE. Drumroll. Silence. Gun shots. A scream.

End.

"Don't Shut Up"

Most conservatives can probably remember the first time they were called a Fascist by a tolerant, open-minded liberal. For me, it was Election Day 1980. I was in senior English class at Brookline High School, Brookline Massachusetts. At the end of the period, our teacher asked for a show of hands as to which candidate we would all support if we could vote. Out of a group of 20-plus students, most voted for John Anderson; the second biggest group opted for Jimmuh Carter and 3 of us, including me, preferred Ronald Reagan. (Of the other 2 Reaganites, one was a recent Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union and the other was the son of Lithuanian immigrants.) The bell rang and the fascist epithet was hissed at me as I made my way out the door. ....

Andrew Klavan explains on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWHgUE9AD4s

Scrappleface Predicts Specter

Five weeks ago, Scott Ott at Scrappleface wrote a piece that proves how difficult it is to satirize the behavior of liberals...like Arlen Specter....who are walking exemplars of self-parody.


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/scottott/Arlen-Specter-to-cross-aisle-for-2010-Senate-run--41598382.html
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Olympia Snowe-Blithering Idiot

Good Lord, it is true. Olympia Snowe is blaming the GOP electorate's alleged hostility to "moderates" for Specter's defection. If that hostility actually existed, Snowe, Collins and Specter would not have been in the Senate for the past few decades.  

In the New York Times,  Snowe defends her thesis with this quote: 

"It is for this reason that we should heed the words of President Ronald Reagan, who urged, "We should emphasize the things that unite us and make these the only 'litmus test' of what constitutes a Republican: our belief in restraining government spending, pro-growth policies, tax reduction, sound national defense, and maximum individual liberty." He continued, "As to the other issues that draw on the deep springs of morality and emotion, let us decide that we can disagree among ourselves as Republicans and tolerate the disagreement."

 

WHAAAT??!!? Specter's and Snowe's votes for Obama's porkulus bill and other liberal agenda items over the years further the expansion of gov't spending, increases in taxes, a decimation of the national defense and lessened individual liberty. Is this woman a blithering idiot or is she so blinded by her single-issue abortion fixation that she is incapable of logic? Snowe, Specter and Collins clearly FAIL Reagan's litmus-test. They have been propped up by the despised (by them)conservative voters for decades on the supposition that a fiscal conservative/social liberal Republican is preferable to a lib/lib Democrat. Now that the actions of Snowe et al have proven that there is no difference, ALL Republicans are exercising their own right to choose by opposing them.

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Menacing Britain

Theodore Dalrymple has an excellent piece on the decline of the British character.


http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0294.htm

I took my husband, mother and two daughters back to the ancestral homeland last summer. We had a lovely time overall, but the changes were alarming. We spent a week in York and a week in the Yorkshire Dales. York is lovely, but the demeanor and behavior of "young" people there was very alarming to the kids. My 10 year old would stare out her window in the wee hours, awakened by rowdy, screaming drunks. She was truly frightened, and I couldn't blame her. I was rather worried myself. Even in broad daylight, we had to witness some pretty freakish activity and garb.

We all had a much nicer time in the Dales, but we all felt far less safe in England than in the U.S. The feeling of the place, in a word: menacing.

(And don't get me started about the Friday afternoon when we took a wrong turn near Burnley, Lancashire and were driving down the street just as hordes of men were pouring out of the local mosque...)

Here's an excerpt:

"Certainly, many Britons under the age of 30 or even 40 now embrace a kind of sub-psychotherapeutic theory that desires, if not unleashed, will fester within and eventually manifest themselves in dangerous ways. To control oneself for the sake of the social order, let alone for dignity or decorum (a word that would either mean nothing to the British these days, or provoke peals of laughter), is thus both personally and socially harmful.

I have spoken with young British people who regularly drink themselves into oblivion, passing first through a prolonged phase of public nuisance. To a man (and woman), they believe that by doing so, they are getting rid of inhibitions that might otherwise do them psychological and even physical harm. The same belief seems universal among those who spend hours at soccer games screaming abuse and making threatening gestures (whose meaning many would put into practice, were those events not policed in military fashion). "



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Gov. Blago's Looking Sharp!

http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/advice-time.html#trackback

  In commemoration of the indictment and arrest of Governor Rod Blagojevich, D-Illinois, I hereby post this classic Iowahawk advice column. Scroll down to read Gov. Blago's excellent personal grooming advice.

Calling in Christian?

This is just precious. If we pro-traditional-marriage folks called in sane/straight/christian/whatever, this country would grind to a screeching halt. Meanwhile, this looks like it will be a good day to avoid the malls, parks and public restrooms.

It's a Chick Thing

 

   Well, I now think I know why Louisiana Governess Kathleen Blanco was so dilatory in requesting federal aid for her citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was a chick thing. Specifically, she was concerned that the guard troops might be of the wrong gender composition.

 

   The following is a true story, as reported to my dh "Joe" while in the war zone by a member of the Louisiana Guard unit in question.

 

   It seems that when Madame Governess Blanco was elected, this gentleman's guard unit offered to perform an F-15 flyover at her inaugural celebration. The officer in charge of this unit met with Governess-elect Blanco and the following conversation ensued. :

 

Guard Pilot: Ma'am. We are planning a four-plane formation flyover at your inaugural celebration.

 

Governess-elect Blanco:  That's wonderful. Thank you. I just have one question. Is a female pilot going to be flying the lead airplane?

 

Guard Pilot.: Er..no, Governor-elect Blanco.

 

Governess-elect: Well, you'd better fix that little problem if you want to fly over my inaugural celebration.

 

Guard Pilot: Er, Ma'am. I'm afraid we can't do that.

 

Governess-elect: Why not??

 

Guard Pilot: Ma'am. I'm afraid we don't have any female F-15 pilots in this unit.

 

Governess-elect: Well, you're just going to have to fix THAT little problem if you want to fly in my inaugural, aren't you?

 

   Well, I don't know what they eventually did, but Miz Blanco is remarkably ignorant of military culture and procedure ( well, we knew that didn't we? ) if she thinks a state guard unit can just borrow or press-gang a female F-15 pilot from another state or from the active duty forces for a flyover for a state politician. They'd have to find one first, get her CO's permission, overcome her own possible objections if she's a Republican ( which is more than likely) and justify the extra expenditure. etc. etc.

 

    OK. It sounds like an idiotic reason to delay requesting military aid for hurricane victims, but then, I think we are dealing with an idiot here.