We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
What the Dems have begun to master over recent cycles is to run as Conservative-sounding centrists. When they get to DC, however, they end up, willingly or unwillingly, under the thumb of the Pelosi leadership. That's how our system tends to work.
So whether they run with more conservative local themes or not, in the end it doesn't matter. In the House, it is Party that matters, 99% of the time. That's why voting Party instead of Person makes sense most of the time, and why, for federal elections, being an Independent, even though it sounds nice, just means you don't care.
As we noted in our amicus brief supporting Citizens United, the FEC now has regulations for 33 types of contributions and speech and 71 different types of speakers. Regardless of the abstract merit of the various arguments for and against limits on political contributions and spending, this very complexity raises serious concerns about whether the law can be enforced consistent with the First Amendment.
The wrecking of Venezuela - Venezuelans are starting to fall out of love with their president. Will they be allowed to vote him out of power? h/t, Fausta
With the latest crisis that can’t go to waste, the Obama Administration is now using the Arizona immigration law to codify the Latino vote against Republicans in an attempt to save the Democrat majority. I guess one could say it’s ironic that the same party that excused its own segregationist past by revising the intent of the ‘Southern Strategy’, has now implemented its own.
...this year the U.S. government declined to lay out any plan to balance its budget ever again.
and
The feds assume a relationship between the economy and tax revenue that is divorced from reality. Six decades of history have established one far-reaching fact that needs to be built into fiscal calculations: Increases in federal tax rates, particularly if targeted at the higher brackets, produce no additional revenue. For politicians this is truly an inconvenient truth.
As he sometimes does and has done, usually with humor, Woody captures a certain arrogant, elitist, Upper-West-side Manhattan world view of the world. I, for one, at this point, find it despicable, hateful, and anti-American. Furthermore, it shows a condescending contempt for relatively decent and ordinary people like me.
With the history of western Socialist dictator-types - Robespierre, Bismarck, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, etc, it is remarkable to me that somebody like Woody would long for another.
Heck, maybe we could have a utopia if I were dictator for just a few years. I am fairly intelligent, Ivy-League educated, and knowledgeable, and have lots of experience about how things work in the real world (far more than most career politicians), and I have informed opinions on almost everything too.
Problem is, I have no interest in having power over anybody else. I hate power, except over my own life. I have studiously avoided power during my entire fairly-successful career, and have refused a number of offers of power, large and small. Power over others is revolting to me. That's why I post on Maggie's Farm.
Woody's attitude is just freaking amazing to me, and says a lot. As much as I enjoyed Sleeper, I am done with the guy. He had no morals anyway but I tend to give "artists" a little leeway. Why? Because I am stupid and like to be entertained.
Authoritarian Leftism is a sickness, and as evil as sociopathy. Maybe it is a form of sociopathy. I don't know. These people need to learn a little humility...and a few other things too.
MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) brings us an exceptional debate in Kuwait over whether a performance in Kuwait of the internationally enjoyed song Hava Nagilah, performed by all races and nationalities, should be forbidden as legitimizing Israel.
What makes the debate exceptional is that, for a change, more than one side is heard in an Arab country.Highlights of the debate are below the fold. Worth reading. (Or, be doomed to endlessly dance to the Macarena.)
Meanwhile, here’s Harry Belafonte sharing the song’s joy with an audience in Italy in 1988.
Translation of the objectionable lyrics:
Let's rejoice Let's rejoice Let's rejoice and be happy.
Let's sing Let's sing Let's sing and be happy.
Awake, awake brothers! Awake brothers with a happy heart.
One of the songs mocking the old daily, then weekly, then merged, then gone, Worker, “Our Line’s Been Changed Again”, referred to the slavish contortions of its adherents as the approved line from Moscow veered and twisted to fit whatever was deemed its current self-preservation.
Such genuflective transmutive party line writing today is steered from Washington where its anointed leader is in the White House, its main apologist is Ezra Klein at the Washington Post – and its disappearing irrelevant Newsweek, and its dissemination is via his network of quick parroters assembled at Klein’s secretive JournoList of Left writers at blogs and major media.
Their God -- that is failing, again -- is that the Democrat Party and its President is the most progressive force to alter mankind and its institutions, and that this end justifies the means of increased central power over the economy and individuals’ lives.
Five years after graduating college with a political science degree, with no work experience except for writing, Ezra Klein churns out advocacy that excuses the latest line or attacks uncomfortable facts, and his disciples echo his sleights of hand.
In rebuttal one might hear that other writers are slavish to the Republican Party or have a following.That smacks of old attacks on the fractious Trotskyists, Republicans actually containing disparate and battling interests, political figures, and writers, inherently unable to cohere around any line except vague restraints on central power.
Neither socialists nor Trotskyists brought down communism or Moscow.Rather, communism and Moscow were unable to maintain their spin in the face of their flailing failures recognized and rejected by the true masses living in the real world when coupled with firm resistance from those with power.
Today’s Tea Partiers lack a manifesto except for crying out “BS” to the transparent excuses of any – Democrat or Republican -- who go along with Washington’s self-serving funny business as usual. Those – either Democrat or Republican – who are seen to pay lip service but not consistency and will to actually reversing statism’s growth are not trusted.
As with any revolution from below, the big question remains of whether anyone will emerge to lead and be followed who will not waver, accommodate or sell out.
As with the Worker and their "God That Failed", there is no question that those who align themselves with state power will find new “progressive” rallying points for their same-old, same-old.
Ezra Klein will become an obscure footnote in the tedious history of the Left. So may the Tea Partiers as a temporary insurrection join the Trotskyists in the dustbin of history.
But, the real masses never will submit, and stand ready – armed by the vote in a democracy -- to emerge in strength when their primary interest in personal freedoms is trampled. The powerful or monied who are wise enough to see their fate as tied to the masses need to step up to the podium and to contribute heavily to the pot of clarifying insurrection before their narrow self-interests are eliminated.Their feeding at the trough in Washington will not save them, but transform them into lackeys.
(There are too many allusions and references above to weigh down with links, footnotes, and detailed explanations.Enjoy the learning experience, unless repeating the past is preferred.)
San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in panic, and some politicians too,as some Arizonans cancel their summer trips due to the San Diego City Council and School Board condemning Arizona’s illegal immigrant enforcement law.
The summertime influx of Arizonans to San Diego’s balmier weather is a major source of tourism revenue. Tourism is one of San Diego’s main industries, off during this recession.
Tourism officials are advertising in Arizona an open letter urging Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have to escape Arizona's summer heat.
The San Diego Union-Tribune report remarks:
In some cases, it appears that Arizona residents misconstrued the votes taken by San Diego’s elected leaders as calls for an actual boycott of Arizona as opposed to statements of opposition.
The reporter should look back a few days to her paper's own reporting:
At the urging of board Vice President John Lee Evans, the board eliminated an Arizona travel warning that President Richard Barrera had proposed for students and their families out of concern they may be subject to harassment or racial profiling. However, the San Diego Unified School District will develop a policy restricting travel and participation in conferences in Arizona.
The San Diego School Board is in the hands of union tools.It schools, mostly poorly, a high percentage of immigrants, 44% of its students are Hispanic, 75% ethnic minorities.The School Board President says, “Certainly, we know how important tourism is to San Diego, and it wasn’t my intent to impact the tourism trade.” The tourism industry employs many immigrants.
Seems the School Board voted to place the parents of some of its students in the unemployment line.The School Board should have stuck to the Three “Rs” and not the “I” that tourism officials call “political posturing.”Similar for the City Council, not paying attention to the City’s severe budget deficits, largely the result of pensions for unionized workers. One hotelier comments:
“I understand the City Council was being passionate about their politics, but I don’t think they thought it through,” Holladay said. “If it negatively impacts hotel revenue, it impacts the transient occupancy tax, and that goes right into the general fund, so they’ll have less money for their programs.”
P.S.: So far, 93% of those voting in the LA Times online poll oppose similar "posturing" by the LA City Council.
The left wishes to use the illegals as a battering ram against the American polity, the same as they used labor, and blacks, and every other group they ever encountered. Illegals will become a new protected class, with privileges and entitlements denied the rest of the populace (including, ironically, current members of previous such classes). They will be discouraged from learning English, as occurs today under the doctrine of "bilingualism", to assure that they remain a separate presence. A vast bureaucracy will arise to "assist" the new citizenry, funded with billions -- oh hell, make that trillions, this is the Obama era -- and staffed with sociologists, ethnographers, psychologists, and other disciplines unimagined today. All will be of the same political persuasion. A permanent crisis atmosphere will be generated around the new class. The "Amnestee" question will lead to endless problems and ramifications and act as a permanent indictment of the country and its policies. The native population (not to mention legal immigrants) will grow increasingly embittered and angered. The former illegals will be rendered even more miserable than they are today.
From what I have read, Kagan seems a bit wishy-washy on the First and Second Amendments. Not sure what she thinks about the rest of the Constitution, but I think she is of the "I know better than those dead guys" school of thought.
Now I see Redstate has located her Princeton thesis on Socialism. Of course, she was just a kid then. People grow and learn and evolve...with real world experience.
Rush Limbaugh has said for years that opinion polls by news organizations are nothing more than efforts to measure how effectively their reporting has impacted the public's perception of current events. Looks like he was right once again.
A JOB, A DRIVERS LICENSE, SOCIAL SECURITY CARD, WELFARE, FOOD STAMPS, CREDIT CARDS, SUBSIDIZED RENT OR A LOAN TO BUY A HOUSE, FREE EDUCATION, FREE HEALTH CARE, A LOBBYIST IN WASHINGTON BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF PUBLIC DOCUMENTS PRINTED IN YOUR LANGUAGE THE RIGHT TO CARRY YOUR COUNTRY’S FLAG WHILE YOU PROTEST THAT YOU DON’T GET ENOUGH RESPECT * AND, IN MANY INSTANCES, YOU CAN VOTE.
An “epidemic”. A “national health crisis“. Got it?
We have a climate crisis. Solution: Big government. We have a financial crisis. Solution: Big government. We have a health care crisis. Solution: Big government. We have an childhood obesity crisis.
Create a “crisis” and then create the solution. Any guess what the solution might be? If you’ve been paying attention lately, you do...
I missed this one, re the now almost-forgotten Times Square bomber, from Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, professor, Washington and Lee University
I think the politics of this incident will turn heavily on who is found to be responsible. If, as seems unlikely, the bomb is linked to South Asian or Middle Eastern terrorists, questions will again arise as to whether the Department of Homeland Security is doing all it can do to keep us safe. If, as I believe is much more likely, the bomb was placed by a right-wing lunatic, it seems to me that questions need to be raised as to whether the right-wing media bear some responsibility for stoking the delusions of such people through their relentless and often unfounded attacks on the Obama administration and the federal government.
We need to consider whether it isn’t time to return to responsible, ethical journalism.
No, we need to consider whether it isn't time for absurd, ideology-blinded profs to shut the heck up, and administer themselves a bit of needed self-criticism. As I recall, Mao always used to send the Profs out to the fields for a while...or a long while, presumably to refresh their minds.
Department of the Obvious, for guys anyway. Quote via Riehl:
Playboy founder Hugh Hefner admits he's not much of a 3-D enthusiast. But he says if there's something people would most like to see in 3-D, it's "probably a naked lady."
Chinese Snap to Attention for 
They lent us the money, so it's their fault: 
How QVC sells stuff. 
Today is Armed Forces Day
San Diego’s tourism industry leaders are in 
Leaving late tonight for a long weekend, putting the boat in the water, etc. Leaving these links. Y'all fill in for me, heah?
Marketing a mutt: