Why I Truly Feel the Right is in the Right

Every now and then I'll hear a friend, or an online commenter, say something along the lines of "There's no difference between liberals and conservatives; they're both corrupt." This may be true if you're speaking of the general idea that there are corrupt politicians on both the Left and the Right, but the generalization misses the point.

To say they're both the same just because there are bad apples in both bunches is unfair to both sides. What you need to do is look at both sides' corruption and decide for which one the corruption is the exception, rather than the rule.

I won't deny that every now and then a right-wing politician is caught in a scandal, be it sexual, criminal or otherwise. I will, however, state that the frequency of this occurance on the Right is far, far less than what you see on the Left. The higher a left-wing politician rises, the more corrupt you can be sure he or she is. Just look at the initially proposed Presidential Cabinet. Nearly all of them turned out to be tax cheats. Look at Rod Blagojevich. Look at Al Gore or John Edwards. Look at Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters. Look at Van Jones.

And that's just recent!

But to really cut to the heart of the matter, you've got to look at what morality they're willing, in daily business practice, to view as acceptable.

On the Right, any politician caught in any sort of wrong-doing is out of a job. Anyone caught conspiring with them is similarly out of a job. Uusually it's a resignation in disgrace, but sometimes they are fired. Either way, right-wingers don't take kindly to their fellow conservatives not living up to expectations.

We certainly do not encourage each other to tell blatant lies about the other side in an effort to bolster our cause. We don't accuse those on the Left of behavior or views they are not guilty of. Our politicians can't even say "you're lying" when they tell bald-faced falsehoods about us. Well, some can, but not all politicians are as gutsy as Joe Wilson.

See, that's the thing about the Left; they don't really believe what they're saying. Oh, they have the courage of their convictions (to a point, anyway; see James Cameron). But they certainly don't actually believe the things they say in their own defense. They stick to their guns, but their positions are built on lies and half-truths that they need in order to arrive at the conclusions they want.

A Rightist takes all the facts he can gather into consideration, listens to arguments made by all sides, and then makes up his mind what he believes. You can tell this because among right-wingers there is no clear consensus on issues like God, abortion or gay marriage.

On the other hand, a Leftist takes a position, and then clamors for any support he can to retain that position. You can tell this because if there's one thing that's strong about the Left, it's their uniformity of opinion.

If the Leftist cannot find any facts to support his case, he either pretends that doesn't matter or makes those facts up. For proof of this, you need look no further than the JournoList, a listserv of left-wing journalists created by Ezra Klein for the purpose of keeping the left-wing narrative in the old media alive. Among some of the choicest comments made on the JournoList was one made by Spencer Ackerman in response to the question of what to do about Jeremiah Wright. This comment was made during the 2008 Presidential campaign, when it began to look like the racist, anti-America, pro-Farrakhan minister that Obama called his "spiritual mentor" might hurt Obama's campaign. The matter was hushed up right away, and hardly spoken of in the old media, and those on the Right who kept the issue alive were, surprise! Labeled racists.

Here's what Ackerman had to say about how to deal with the Jeremiah Wright problem:

It’s not necessary to jump to Wright-qua-Wright’s defense. What is necessary is to raise the cost on the right of going after the left. In other words, find a rightwinger’s [sic] and smash it through a plate-glass window. Take a snapshot of the bleeding mess and send it out in a Christmas card to let the right know that it needs to live in a state of constant fear. Obviously I mean this rhetorically.

If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. Ask: why do they have such a deep-seated problem with a black politician who unites the country? What lurks behind those problems? This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.

Wow. Just...wow. In essence, Ackerman has said "Our position is indefensable, so let's do our best to put the other side on the defensive instead."

There's a reason you have never heard of a right-wing "JournoList" secretly saying this kind of thing to each other. Because it doesn't happen. I'm not saying nobody on our side lies, or tries to deflect criticism. I'm saying that when this does happen, this is the exception, not the rule.

If Ackerman had been a right-winger, and had been on a pro-McCain board posting this kind of horseshit, he would have been kicked off. He would have been told "Listen, we're not going to lie. We're going to do this clean or we don't do it at all."

I hear all the time people accusing the Right of lying. "Bush lied, people died." "Fox News is nothing but a bunch of liars." "Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar."

But it seems like, when pressed, left-wingers can't really point to a time when we've been caught actually lying. Oh, we've gotten our facts wrong. One or two journalists or politicians may have overlooked stuff in the past, but as I've been saying, these are the exceptions, not the rule. But I keep hearing that the Right is nothing but a pack of liars. It's as if they're liars by virtue of being right-wingers. Of course Fox News lies! I mean...they're Fox News! Of course Limbaugh is lying! He's Rush Limbaugh! That's their only defense.

A while back, an author whose work I admire was discussing the healthcare bill on his blog. He was gung-ho for it and felt that anyone against it was against humanity, more or less. He then responded to a few commenters who were against it with another post, in which he concluded:

I also found it striking that so many of the objections to the health bill (NOT all, please note, some of the arguments against the bill were polite, cogent, and well reasoned, so please note that I am saying SO MANY and not ALL) seemed rootly firmly in misunderstanding as to the actual provisions of the bill. They were based on Republican talking points and the biased accounts of Fox news and hysterical right wing talk radio. Guys, really. These people have lied to you. Change the channel. I won't ask you to watch MSNBC, which has its own slant, but go at least to one of the centrist channels like CNN or the old line networks, or better still, read a good newspaper.

As [Partner]'s Uncle Pat -- known to most of the rest of you as the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- once said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Needless to say I was somewhat irritated by his blanket statement that Republican talking points or anything spoken by Fox News or "hysterical" right-wing talk radio was automatically a lie. He didn't say what proof he had that these people have "lied to you"; as far as he was concerned, if a right-winger said it, it's a lie. (As an aside, I gotta wonder what right-wing talk radio personalities he doesn't consider "hysterical".)

I decided to challenge him, so I sent him a letter asking what proof he had that the lying came from the Right, and only facts came from the Left. I reminded him that CNN, which he says is "centrist" and therefore supposedly more truthful, had run a story about some racist quotes attributed to Rush Limbaugh that turned out to be totally fake. I stated that they had quoted a website that offered no sources, and that it seriously called their journalistic integrity into question. I was not asking him to list his credentials or by what grounds he declares himself an expert, but he felt compelled to do so anyway in his response to me:

I have a master's degree in journalism, from one of the leading journalism schools in the country (Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism, to be exact). I've worked as a journalist from time to time during my life, I have dealt with many journalists during my career, and I know quite a few working journalists. So please accept that I have considerable expertise on this subject.

Sure, you have knowledge. Doesn't mean you're not biased. He also goes on at length about how he states that it is the goal of the journalist to be objective. No one's arguing that, but he still offers no proof that CNN is objective, merely that he doesn't think Fox News is:

A couple points about that. Being objective is NOT the same thing as being "balanced," which Fox likes to tout. (Actually, Fox is wildly unbalanced, but that's another matter). The objective reporter strives for truth, not for balance. A "balanced" reporter when writing about the solar system will give equal time to the Copernican and Ptolemiac theories, and claim he was being fair by presenting "both sides." An objective reporter will report that Copernicus was right (more or less) and that Ptolemy's ideas have all been disproven. Sure, the cliche says that "there are two sides to every story," and a good reporter is aware of that... but that does not mean each side has an equal portion of the truth.

He then goes on to criticize Fox News by blaming them for the Tea Parties:

But Fox News has changed that equation. From the first Fox has been slanted heavily to the right -- not only in their commentary, which is perfectly respectable (newspapers have always had editorial pages, where opinions were expressed, but those same opinions were always kept OUT of the news columns)... but also in its NEWS reporting, which was and is a shock to anyone who takes the tenet of the professional seriously. Consider, if you will, the way Fox reports on these "Tea Parties," events which the network itself was instrumental in starting and promoting. That violates every canon of journalistic ethics that I was ever taught. You report news, you don't create it.

The F--K???!!! The Tea Parties were not started by Fox News, and to say they are is to create your own facts. Notice he offers no proof of this statement, either.

After that, he talks about MSNBC and admits that it's not objective, either, but then concludes this way:

In between you have CNN and the three traditional networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, which are still striving to hold to the old standards of objectivity. If you want to get your news from television, those are the places to get it. (Admittedly, even those stalwarts are not what they were. The days of Walter Cronkite, David Brinkley, Eric Sevareid, and Edward R. Murrow are sadly gone).

Where in any of that do you see an answer to the question I put to him? I was not asking which stations are more objective; he could not have been more clear about which stations he felt were the most objective. What I was asking was why. When did he objectively decide that CNN (and the alphabet networks) was more objective than Fox News? How did he decide that there was no left-wing slant to CNN? He's able to recognize that about MSNBC due to how overt it is, but thinks that CNN is "centrist" and therefore not lying to us. How does he know this?

Oh, and he had nothing, literally nothing, to say about CNN's lying about Rush Limbaugh (or, to be fair, repeating lies as if they were true).

I asked him to defend his side and point to the proof of lies from the other side. He did neither.

Then there's the Congressional Black Caucus. Back near the end of the debate, the CBC walked through a crowd of Tea Partiers, flip-phones held high, clearly waiting for a racially-charged incident of violence to take place. None happened. Undeterred, Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver claimed one man spit on him. Video of the incident shows him walking close to a man who is chanting "Kill the Bill" and it's possible that some spittle flying from the man's mouth might have struck Cleaver, but this hardly constitutes being spat upon. Rep. Lewis claims he heard the n-word fifteen times. To this day, no one can produce video of this occurring, despite the fact that, as I said, flip-phones were in abundance. There's been a $100,000 reward offered by conservative online media mogul Andrew Breitbart, that remains unclaimed. The Left would rather accuse Breitbart of lying (about what? He didn't make any claims.) than offer any proof that they aren't.

I don't see this on the Right. Right-wingers don't evade the questions they're asked. We don't claim things and then refuse to give proof of our claims. We don't skip out on debates we started when the going gets tough. We don't rely on data from institutions caught falsifying their research. We don't make up conspiracy theories and then act like the mere fact that we made them up is proof of their veracity. We're not perfect, but we're trying to be honest and lawful, while the Left is trying to win. At any cost. It's probably why in the court of public debate, we appear to be losing.

I Am a Liberal

I am a modern American liberal.

I am liberal because I believe in tolerance. I'm so tolerant that I hate hearing intolerance coming from anyone, and I refuse to tolerate anyone who does not conform to my standard of tolerance. My standard of tolerance is me. If you disagree with anything that I, a picture of tolerance, have to say, then by definition you are intolerant, and I cannot tolerate you.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of speech. I believe that anyone who agrees with me on every issue should be free to speak as much as they want, wherever they want, and use as much inflamatory language as they want. After all, it's a free country. If you don't agree with me about everything, however, you are intolerant, and should not be free to speak a word.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of expression. I believe that any attempt to censor freedom of expression is inherently evil, and those who side with it should not be free to express themselves. That includes anyone who believes in traditional ideas like Christianity, capitalism, marriage, or family.

I am a liberal because I believe the word "marriage" has no true meaning. Marriage is about love, and nothing else, and any people who love each other should be able to express that love by getting married. Be it a man and a woman, two men, two women, a brother and sister, etc., I say, let's give them all equal marriage rights! I'm so committed to dulling the meaning of the word "marriage" that I don't even care that across the country gay men and women have all the same rights and benefits extended to all common-law couples, or that most people in this country don't want to legalize gay marriage. I just want to make it illegal for anyone who disagrees with gay marriage to be able to say so in public.

I am a liberal because I believe in freedom of choice. That means that I want all women across America to be free to choose to kill their babies, and I want those who choose otherwise to just shut up about it. I believe that choice to kill is so important, that I think it's perfectly acceptable for a doctor to pierce the neck of a partially-born baby and stick a tube in the hole to suck out its brain. After all, a baby isn't a baby until it can vote.

I am a liberal because I want more government presense in my daily life. After all, when I get in trouble, the people I turn to to get me out of it is the government, so why shouldn't they run my life? Besides, they're much better at deciding how to spend my money, raise my kids and decide what kind of products I am or am not allowed to buy or eat than I am. I'm very much in favor of making the government an omnipresent entity that watches my every move, and I don't even think I should be allowed to own a gun to defend myself if they get too power-hungry! All hail Big Brother! (Note: This is only true if the Government in question is Liberal. Despite the fact that I spent eight years complaining that Bush was turning the country into the very thing I just described, I'm all for handing Obama as much power as he wants.)

I am a liberal because I care about the environment. I care so much, in fact, that I am willing to sacrifice humans in order to bring about a better environment. I believe it is paramount that we stop questioning the fact of global warming and start actively fighting against it. And if that means higher taxes and sacrificing some of our freedoms, well, heck, it's worth it to fight global warming, which unquestionably exists. Don't even talk to me about those stupid emails that were uncovered that showed leading climatologists freely discussing the falsification of their research; these guys know what they're doing and I will swallow anything they say. It's a much bigger issue that their lies were exposed by that evil, criminal hacker. We shouldn't focus on what was in the emails; we should instead find that hacker and put him to death. Those scientists are brilliant men, and a few lies from them doesn't change the fact of global warming!

I am a liberal because I truly believe that Hollywood actors and comedians are the smartest people in the world. If Sean Penn, Matt Damon, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart say something, then gosh-darn it, they must be right. I mean...they're on television.

I am a liberal because I hate George W. Bush. I'm not sure why, exactly. He...uh...took away our freedom! Like...he wiretapped people and stuff. No, I never heard of anybody being wiretapped, arrested or detained who wasn't a terrorist, but that doesn't mean he didn't have the power to do that if he wanted! And...uh...he was pro-life! Okay, so he didn't overturn Roe vs. Wade, but he wanted to! And...and...ah...he was against gay marriage! Okay, so's Obama. And Bush stumbled over his words! Only an idiot does that! All I know is that Bush was bad, Obama is good, and we've got a good president now. I mean, my sociology professor told me that Bush was evil, and he wanted to, like, take over the middle-east to get its oil. And he wouldn't lie.

I am a liberal...because I prefer to let other people do my thinking for me.

Liberals are Masters of Dishing it Out, but Can't Take It

I once compared liberals to that annoying kid in grade school who sits behind you in class and does things to provoke you, like slapping the back of your neck with a ruler or poking you in the ribs with a pencil. At first, you ignore him, hoping he'll get bored and stop, but after a while he really starts to piss you off, so you turn around and pop him one, whereupon the kid immediately yells "Teacher! Teacher, he hit me!"

But recently, I think that's being generous. Now, I think the following comparison is more apt:

Liberals are like the bully who beat the shit out of you all through junior high. Then, once you get into high school together, and he is no longer the large fish in the pond but one of the smallest, he starts acting like he now wants to be your friend and can't understand why you might not want that. He may even react like you're the jerk if you tell him off.

What's funny about this comparison is that the Liberals won. Twice. Quite recently. Their guy got to be president, and now they control both houses of Congress. So, what gives? Why are they still on the defensive? Why is it one cannot read the news without more charges of racism and "lies" being shot at the Right by the angry Left? They got what they were bitching about for eight years under Bush. So shouldn't they be happy?

The reason they're not happy is plainly easy to see, and it has nothing to do with racism, no matter what they'd have you believe. The reason is simply: They thought all they had to do was win, and everything would be okay after that.

Shortly after Obama's inauguration, I can't count how often I heard the phrase "Conservativism is dead" or words to that effect. One youtube poster that I had the displeasure of reading claimed on several channel message boards that Conservatives were "out of touch" with the mainstream of American thought, which was going to lead them to major defeats in 2010 and 2012. It's pretty clear from the punkish, boorish behavior of the current administration that they never expected to meet with any opposition, and are totally clueless as to how to proceed when they do encounter it.

In some "man on the street" interviews I've seen with Liberals, who don't realize that they are talking to average Americans and not members of their own elite, they have claimed that they speak for the majority, but a quick look at polls for (pick one; Obama's approval rating, public opinions on Obamacare, you name it) shows that Americans by and large do not want what Obama is trying to force feed them. The Left clearly wasn't expecting that. They thought that now that they were in power, the rest of the country would simply fall in line.

It's easy to understand how they might feel that way. After all, Bush's approval ratings fell steadily throughout his terms. Television programs that showed a Leftist skew were drawing wide audiences. The GOP seemed weak and leaderless (and still do) in the face of the impending conclusion of Bush's term in the White House. The best ticket they could come up with for the 2008 race was an elderly man who wasn't even liked by most of his party, and a dumb hick from a podunk state who barely qualified as American (at least, that's how the Left viewed her). Congress had recently been taken over by the Democrats. As far as they were concerned, the country had revealed its true heart, and it was blue.

But that just wasn't the case. Oh, it's true that the GOP is weak and leaderless, mostly because those willing and able to stand up and lead are being told to sit down and follow, but also because the current "leaders" of the GOP seem to think that the key to success is to try and make liberals like us. But that's not because America is rejecting the Right. It's because the Republicans, who have always stood for the Right, don't know what to do with themselves anymore, or who they want to be. It seems that at every turn, the Republicans want to do the thing that will most guarantee its destruction. The liberals don't like Rush Limbaugh? Let's tell them he doesn't speak for us. The liberals are trying to destroy Sarah Palin? Let's help them. The liberals are trying to force through a bill in Congress that we haven't read and don't want to support? Let's just sign it anyway, it shows that we want to get along. The liberals are calling Joe Wilson out for his "you lie" comment? Let's make sure they understand we don't like what he did.

But I digress. While the GOP may have painted themselves into a corner with their own bureaucracy, Americans have stood up for themselves and told the Left, we won't pick up what you're lying down. In the face of this, liberals don't know what to think. They won, so shouldn't all of America be throwing palm leaves under Obama's feet wherever he goes? After all, the only people who didn't vote for Obama in the last election were racists, and...hey, wait! That's it! That's brilliant! We'll just call all dissenters racists!

Problem with that is, if all dissenters are racist, that now includes more than half the country. And that, of course, is the big problem with the Left's one and only tactic to counteract dissent of the Obama administration; throw the race card in the ring. That might work if you're attacking a person, or even a political party. In cases like that, people might even be tempted to try and fight the allegation, which is foolish because once a public figure has been called a racist in a public forum, any attempt to fight back is of course just more proof that they are indeed a racist. But now that they have started throwing that at average citizens, it's backfiring big time. After all, those tens of thousands who stormed Washington this past weekend can't all be racist, and what's more, I don't think for a minute that anybody believes they are. It's just easier for the Left to call them all racists than to actually address the fact that Americans actually might not agree with their agenda.

For those Liberals who still don't know, let me break it down for you exactly why Obama won.

First, let's not forget that he won with only 53% of the vote. That by itself is, or should be, a large indication that a large chunk of Americans did not want the Obama presidency. So right there, we are whittling down the country to less than 53% of its population, because we have to count votes that went to third parties, or citizens of voting age who did not vote at all.

(BTW, when Bush won in 2004 with 52% of the vote, the media reported it as a near miss. But Obama wins with only a slightly increased margin, and suddenly he has "creamed" McCain. How does that work?)

Now on to the actual campaign:

Most conservatives did not want John McCain as the nominee. It's a mystery how he got it, but most blame open primaries. I'd suggest that's the most likely answer. After McCain's nomination, large numbers of conservatives stated that they simply would not vote this year, or vote for a third party.

The media got behind Obama like they've never gotten behind any presidential candidate before. The message blasted at Americans night and day was that if you didn't vote for Obama, you were a hopeless, stick-in-the-mud, change-opposing loser, and most likely racist to boot. Nobody likes thinking of themselves as racist.

Obama ran on the platform of being a centrist. Well, actually he ran on a platform of the meaningless words "Hope" and "Change", but essentially, he sold himself as a centrist, and urged the public not to worry too much about his voting record, his past associations, and whatnot. And with the media floating along on a lovestruck cloud, they passed that message on. Most Americans do not identify with the Democratic or Republican parties lately. They mainly continue to vote for one or the other because they've been told voting for a third party is throwing your vote away. And for all intents and purposes, it is, because which of the umpteen third parties stands a chance of dominating the votes? So, centrists by and large voted Democrat.

Upon the nomination of Sarah Palin, the Left could not wait to take her down. Now, I still wonder why your average citizen has never asked themselves "Wait a minute. If Sarah Palin is so stupid and so inconsequential, why are the Democrats so determined to shut her up?" But of course, most people are willing to assume that if the media doesn't like someone, there's a good reason, and they clearly hated Sarah Palin. It's true that Sarah Palin brought out the true conservatives to vote, who otherwise might have sat this one out, or voted third party, but the media's repeated message of hate for her swayed away centrists, libertarians, moderates and even some Republicans who honestly believe what they see on CNN to be the unadulterated truth.

Obama seemed like such a nice guy, and he was such a good public speaker. After the last president, a guy who could speak without stumbling over or mispronouncing every third word seemed like enough. He was also young (the third youngest president of all time) and when deciding between him and the potential oldest first-term president ever, it seemed like a no-brainer.

Enough centrists, libertarians and moderates who were tired of the limpness of the GOP changed horses, thinking that there was a chance this one might actually succeed (after all, like I said, they thought Obama was one of them).

Voter intimidation by hate groups like the Black Panthers kept voters who might have voted Republican away from the voting booths.

And, it has to be said, a lot of people voted for Barack Obama based on skin color. Yes, in this world of "radical racism", I'm positive that a good majority of people who voted for Obama did so because they were enthralled with the idea of a black US president. The time had come to break down that last barrier. After all, if either party had run a junior senator with less than a full term in his concurrent position who had a virtually empty voting record and not one accomplishment to his name, and the guy had been white, there's simply no way he would have won.

But liberals don't want to hear that. They don't want to face the fact that as of the last poll, only 35% of the country identify themselves as "liberal". They want to believe that Obama's win means the rise of liberalism, and get so angry at those rubes who come out and protest because can't they see that they've lost!!!!????

And here we come back to my title statement. For eight years, liberals whined, bitched and protested about the Bush administration. Forget the fact that he won two terms, and that from 2002 to 2008 Republicans controlled Congress. All that mattered is they didn't like him, so that must mean America didn't, either. I've never seen so many grown men and women acting more like children than witnessing the behavior of the Democratic party during the Bush administration. They boo'd his speeches, greeted his departure speech with cat-calls and raspberries. In short, they behaved like the schoolyard bully who beats the crap out of you every day. Not to mention that the whole time they were doing this, they hid behind the "dissent is patriotic" mantra and encouraged all protesters who showed up wherever the president went, pelting the presidential motorcade with stones and carrying signs saying things like "Bush: Wanted Dead or Alive" with a cross-out over the word "alive". Mainstream media rags like LA Weekly ran cover stories with Bush painted up like the Joker, or with a Hitler mustache. It's impossible, in fact, to round up every instance of Bush being lambasted with as much hate and ire as it was possible for a person, or group of people to hold. The hatred against Bush wasn't just strong, it was spiteful. He wasn't just attacked, he was attacked with no class.

Now, it's Obama's turn in the spotlight, and like Bush, he's turning a lot of people against him. Some of it's for what he's done, some of it's for what people believe he's going to do, and some of it's for what people are sure he is, no matter how strenuously he denies it. The fact is, dissent is here. It has touched the Golden One. It is not some dunce cap reserved only for Republicans. And what's funny is, the Left can't even see that this behavior, which has yet to reach the level of crassness that the anti-Bush fervor reached, is exactly the kind of behavior that they encouraged during Bush's presidency. They can dish it out, but they can't take it. They gave it to Bush with both barrels for eight years, but now they're in power, and they're the ones receiving the backlash. For eight years they were convinced they spoke for the majority, and are just now getting their wake-up call.

And they can't handle it.

Who lied? You lied!

My first reaction to Sen. Joe Wilson (R) yelling "You lie!" during the president's speech on health care is a solid "good for him." Somebody had to have the guts to say it, and to the president's face. It's about time some GOP officials started calling the president's administration on all the BS it's been handing America for the last eight months.

Now, at this point there's been a lot of fist-shaking and hem-hawing of Wilson's behavior, from both sides, which I find both hilarious and sad. It's hilarious because this administration has been more bullying than any US Presidential administration in living memory. Barack Obama has been the most arrogant and divisive president we've ever had, and I have no qualms in saying that. No other president has worked so hard to alienate a large percentage of the country he claims to represent. No other president has spent so much time bad-mouthing, and apologizing on behalf of, the country that elected him to lead it. No other president has encouraged Americans to feel ashamed of who and what they are. No other president has so openly demonized his opposition. And no other president has tried so hard to force upon the American people bills and plans we reject vehemently, because he "knows best."

In the past year we have seen the House Speaker openly lie to the press about her knowledge of what went on at Gitmo, and then accuse private citizens of being "astroturfers" and "carrying swastika's" and "being unamerican" because they dared to organize in protest against the president. Let's not forget this is the same lady who called dissent "the highest form of patriotism" while Bush was in office.

We've seen this administration gang up on a talk show host who dared to suggest that he's against President Obama.

We've seen this administration force an economy-killing "stimulus" bill through Congress, with no time for congresspersons to read it, which so far seems to have done nothing but give money to Obama-supporters like ACORN.

We've seen this administration set up an email address encouraging private citizens to send in "fishy" statements they hear in private conversation, or read in emails they're sent, etc., the most blatant attack on free speech yet seen in America.

And nobody's called them on it because to do so would be "racist."

I've been ashamed at the limpness of the GOP in response to this administration's steamroll over the American people on its way to total socialism. I've watched John McCain and Michael Steele try to get along with our new president by essentially folding whenever Obama tells them to shut up. The GOP, as a party, has fallen far and fast not because their ideals are wrong but because we no longer have leaders and the one person on our side who seems to be fighting back (until last night) is the same person that most of the GOP is trying to distance themselves from at all costs. I refer, of course, to Sarah Palin.

What the Democrats, and by proxy, the mainstream media, did to Sarah Palin was the most shameful smear campaign I've ever seen. I've seen attempts to bring down politicians before, but mostly it was the politicians who were attacked, and for their views, but it seems that with Sarah Palin it was personal. Not only was she an uneducated hick who deserved mockery and derision, but her family was fair game, as well.

But she didn't back down, and I'm grateful that she didn't. And now, finally, another voice in the GOP is speaking up, and loudly. Senator Wilson, I applaud what you did last night, and I don't think you have anything to apologize for. The Left has, for years now, employed the same tactics on a grand scale and I don't think we have anything to win by continuing to make nice with them. We need more men and women like you and Ms. Palin to stand up and say "You're lying, and we're not going to take it anymore."

9/11 Truthers: We've Sheen it All

In the wake of Charlie Sheen's masturbatory fake interview with Barack Obama, and the "resignation" (read: firing before he makes the administration look bad) of Van Jones, the "Green Czar" who signed a 9/11 Truther petition, I'd like to say a few words to the Truthers, and address their concerns as follows.

Just how f--king stupid are you people?

Let's see, what's your little theory again? Oh yeah...somehow, the Bush Administration, within less than a year of taking office, manage to plant dozens of explosive devices within the World Trade Center. Then they manage to hire Al Qaeda, give them CIA training, have them take over four commercial flights (or, according to some theorists, stage these flights with empty planes), and plow them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon (why no explosive devices there? The plane hit, it just didn't do as much damage) and the White House (this plane managed to be brought down by the fake passengers).

The explosives went off as the planes hit, just to ensure that the buildings really would fall, because, as everyone knows, a giant motherf--ker of an airplane wouldn't be able to do the job by itself.

The goal of the administration was to blame Iraq, or the middle-east in general, and use this as a means to secure the country's approval of going to war. The war, essentially, was for oil. But then, even the oil was a means to an end. Apparently they would use the oil to effectively take over the world.

Now, I know a Truther would probably say, after reading what I just wrote, "Well, when you put it that way, it sounds stupid."

To that, I would respond, paraphrasing Red Foreman of That 70's Show, "Okay. Say it so it doesn't sound stupid."

Every time I hear these idiots spouting these insane conspiracy theories, I just have to shake my head. Apparently these people have no idea that they sound just like the tin-foil-hat-wearing, aliens-are-coming-for-us crowd.

They say things like "All you have to do is connect the dots of who profits the most from this..." without realizing that they're not just connecting the dots but inventing them.

They say that 9/11 was concocted in order to free up the Bush administration to begin dismantling our constitutional rights. How many rights were taken away during Bush's administration again? Oh, that's right; NONE. It always makes me laugh when people freely talk about the "criminal" Bush administration "taking our rights away" and "trying to silence us" and never see the irony that nobody has come to lead these people away in handcuffs. They're still free to speak their slander, and never seem to understand that if it wasn't actually slander, they wouldn't be free to speak it!

Now, the thing is, all one really has to do is sit down and think about things for a moment, after first removing their Bush-hatred goggles, to realize that there's no way 9/11 could have been a massive conspiracy. But that's the problem. These people start with open hatred of Bush. How on earth can we be expected to believe that they're bi-partisan, open-minded intellectuals who are just smart enough to see the big picture, when they clearly are bringing their presuppositions to the table with them?

See, to them, Bush, Cheney and the rest represent the ultimate in Evil White Men. They are the rich elitists (of course, all Republicans are rich money-grubbers, while all Democrats are hard-working wage slaves), and they are consumed by the need to make themselves richer. That's all they want; money and power. Once you assume that it's impossible for them to have pure intent; that they never do anything unless it profits them directly and allows them to take more control, it becomes entirely believable that they could stage an event like 9/11.

Gee, and people say the Obama Birthers movement is crazy. Obama could shut the birthers up in two seconds. So why hasn't he?

Now, once you remove the idea that Bush is automatically to blame for all that's wrong with the world, you start to notice several gaping holes in the 9/11 Truth idea. And what's funny is, not believing in the Truther movement doesn't mean you have to like Bush! You can still hate him for all the other reasons you hate him; why the need to manufacture a conspiracy as shoddy as this one is?

Here are the key problems:

1. Bush is either an idiot, or an evil genius, but he can't be both. The same people who claim that Bush is too dumb to read, or tie his shoes, apparently want you to believe that he can come up with this foolproof plan, and actually convince some people of its veracity!

2. "Okay, so Bush is an idiot, but he didn't plan 9/11! He was just the puppet; the fall guy. The men behind 9/11 are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Karl Rove." Using that logic, we have three men who apparently were able to destroy two very tall buildings, set up terrorists as the fall guys, decide to invade Iraq on the principle that they have weapons of mass destruction, and in all that planning never think to themselves "You know, we'd better go plant some WMD's over there, just in case he really doesn't have any." I find it impossible to believe that men capable of planning and successfully executing 9/11 were totally unable to plant evidence. That would have been child's play to men like that.

3. However smart they might be, their plan didn't work. The country did not unite in a single voice declaring for war. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are no closer to controlling the world than they were in 2000. And, despite the fact that they supposedly concocted this scheme on their own, you know they couldn't have acted alone because there's no way they could have rigged up those fake planes and explosives all by themselves. They would have had hundreds of lackeys, lackeys that for eight years watched as their plan was revealed by the Truthers, and watched as the families of their victims eulogized them tearfully...and not a one of them blew the whistle. Folks, a cover-up this size cannot possible have gone on this long without a whistle-blower. You think everyone who worked on this scheme was so completely devoid of conscience that they would cling to this lie eight years later despite the fact that A) their plan didn't work and B) the Truthers have seen through them and exposed their plan for what it is.

Now let's talk about the supposed explosives that were used. According to some Truthers, there was nano-thermite dust found in the rubble from the collapsed buildings, which is an explosive device. This despite the fact that no official source has ever confirmed that this was indeed thermite residue. In fact, all the discussion about thermite has come from pictures of the scene during cleanup. This site illustrates the idiocy of the entire thermite theory, but I'll boil it down for you to the most common-sense deduction:

Thermite is an explosive device, but a four-pound blob isn't enough to explode a car battery. Therefore, you would need tons of the stuff, nearly as much as the building itself weighs, to destroy the WTC with it.

Then there's the problem of: how did it get there? And how did it sit there for weeks on end (as claimed by the Truthers) and fail to be discovered by maintenance workers? Apparently, the maintenance workers in the WTC are unobservant enough to not only not notice several strange maintenance workers who were never there before suddenly lurking everywhere, but to not notice tons and tons of strange chemical wrapped all around the support columns once these mysterious workers had disappeared.

All in all, I'd say that there are only two reasons to ever believe the 9/11 "Truth"; you're certifiable, or you hate Bush so much that you'll believe anything as long as he's the villain of the piece.

If you belong in the former category...well, then frankly there's no point in talking to you further.

But if you belong in the second category, I find it really sad that you cannot disagree, even disagree vehemently, with a politician without turning him into the embodiment of evil. You remind me of a poster I saw of Stalin, with a caption underneath saying "I killed 20 million of my own people, but ask an American college student who the worst leader in the world is, and all I hear about is this Bush guy."

Your Astroturfing, My Grassroots

Does anyone else feel that our current administration has been conducting itself in a manner that shows it never expected to meet with any resistance?

I mean, even during the campaign Obama balked at even the attempt to make fun of his ears. Is it childish and stupid to make fun of him for a physical defect? Sure, but no more so than to constantly riff on his predecessor's tendency to mispronounce words.

After getting elected, Obama has begun pushing through his agendas like there's no tomorrow--literally. He pressed the Stimulus bill through Congress like it was on fire, demanding it be signed immediately with no time to read it.

When the Tea Party protests began, the administration poo-pooed them as "tea-bagging" racist rednecks, with Janeane Garofalo as the mouth-piece for that smear campaign. The official word was that these protests were racially motivated and concerned entirely with the idea that a black man was now President. Reporters who covered the scene talked over or cut off the people they interviewed, alleged that they were paid to be there by Fox News, and refused to show interviews with the articulate, erudite protesters, choosing only to show men like the guy who drew up a likeness of Obama dressed as Hitler (Of course, Bush-Hitler posters, effigies, etc. were all perfectly acceptable).

This shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. After all, demonizing the opposition was the Obama Administration's primary tactic during the election. First attack John McCain, then go after Sarah Palin with both barrels. Now the problem is Rush Limbaugh. Libtards in the media learned that tactic as well (hell, they taught it) and used it against Carrie Prejean.

This tactic works pretty well when you use it against a single person. Now, people who would probably agree with Sarah Palin on most issues, were they to actually bother to figure out what she was all about, call her an idiot and laugh at the idea that she ever thought she could be Vice-President. They actually believe that she said she could see Russia from her house, or that she refused to answer Katie Couric's question about news sources because she doesn't read the news. It couldn't have been that the question was an obvious attack question. Let's say Palin had answered it. If it had been primarily right-wing news sources, such as Fox News, Couric could have used that to show that Palin didn't have an open mind. If they were left-wing news sources (ie: mainstream media), Couric could have used that to show that even she doesn't believe her own message.

But the tactic starts to break down when you apply it to a whole group of people. For example, the Tea-Party rallies. What you probably don't know is that most of the people who showed up don't call themselves Republicans. I base that on the numerous interviews conducted by various right-leaning journalists who did cover the events and actually let the interviewees talk. Most of them thought of themselves as independent, centrist or libertarian. In other words, the very people Obama says he's a part of! Obama ran on a platform of being a centrist, and won quite a few votes from people who assumed he meant it. Now, here are his people, his centrists, attending a rally to protest the burden of debt he's leaving for our children, and the media, with full approval of this administration, dismisses them as racists.

This is all not even to mention that a large number of Tea-Party protesters were black as well as centrist. Shouldn't Obama have been in their midst, considering he ran on a platform of speaking up for these very people?

Now that Obama's healthcare plan is sparking the same sorts of revolt, Obama's administration is at it again, only this time they're not relying on washed-up comediennes to spread their slander. The House Speaker herself has gotten in on the act, suggesting that town hall protesters are showing up with swastika's on their signs, and that they are not actually protesters at all, but "astroturfers" who were paid by insurance companies to be there.

Let's first of all talk about the supposed swastika's at these rallies. To hear Pelosi, and the Left-parroting mainstream media, tell it, these swastika-carrying loonies are right-wing nutjobs who don't really give a flying fig about healthcare; they just can't stand it that a black man is President.

What Pelosi and her posse won't tell you is that the only confirmed swastika's showing up at these meetings are being carried by supporters of far-left weirdo Lyndon H. LaRouche. That's a far cry from the "right-wing" conspiracy that Pelosi is trying to warn us of.

Now let's look at her term "astroturf." What is astroturf? It's fake grass. As such, it's also become a term for when a lobbyist group pretends to be a grass-roots movement of concerned citizens when it's actually a hired group, well-funded by an industry that stands to lose (or gain) something in the concurrent debate.

The argument that the town hall protesters must be astroturfers stems from Pelosi's statement that the protesters showing up were far too well-dressed to not be on some insurance company's payroll somewhere. According to her, if someone shows up to protest anything the Obama administration is for, then they'd better be unwashed bums or that's a sure sign that they're just in it for the money.

Well, Nancy, let's examine the two sides and see which one looks more like a grass-roots movement and which looks more like the astroturf.

On the one side, we have ACORN, SEIU, MoveOn.org, HCAN, and numerous other special-interest groups, all of whom either helped Obama get elected (ACORN, MoveOn.org) or who have openly thrown themselves into the tank with Obama during and after the election. To try and claim that these groups are bi-partisan is to show yourself to be blantantly blind to reality. These groups don't even claim to be bi-partisan themselves, but they don't mind if you believe it. It just makes their message more sellable.

When these groups show up at protests, they arrive in style in four or five sleek buses, and they file out with their matching, professionally printed signs. They have sound systems and organized chants. Infiltrators into their organizations have proven that these supposedly grass-roots groups are well-funded by charitable contributions from various government officials. Many of them will admit that they are on staff with these organizations, and are therefore being paid to show up.

Is there anything wrong with getting paid to spread your party's message? Not at all. That's capitalism. But the problem comes in when they, and the party they represent, claim that they're just a concerned citizens group who have no official connection to the Democratic party. When they say that these protests are just spontaneous uprisings against the deliberate "misinformation" being spread by the right, they prove themselves liars when the amount of money, organization and professionalism that goes into these rallies is evident upon casual observation.

And of course, it goes without saying that every member of these groups is a card-carrying Democrat, and they all voted for Obama in the election.

Now let's look at the town hall protesters (see, already they're less professional; they don't even have a name). They seem to show up at these protests, but they're not bused in. They have to drive themselves. They might be organized, but more in the manner of a church picnic than a political rally. The signs they carry are all hand-made. They may have bull-horns, but they don't typically have the kind of sound-system you'd usually associate with expensive DJ's. Ask any of them if they are being paid; they'll all say no. They're there because they're concerned about the kind of healthcare the Obama Administration is forcing on them. They're concerned that while the bill may not expressly state that the old, or those with pre-existing conditions, will not be covered under the new plan, the wording of the bill suggests that if the government decided these people were too much of a burden (and you know they would) they could immediately cut funding, or refuse to provide it. If you talk to these protesters, rather than talk over them or cut them off mid-sentence (Take note, MSNBC and CNN) then you figure that out rather quickly. Not only are they not claiming to be paid by anyone to be there, but the only evidence offered to say that they are is Nancy Pelosi's banal claim that "they're too well-dressed" to be a legitimate grass-roots organization.

And let's not forget that relatively few of them were McCain-voting Republicans. Most, like the Tea-Party rallies, call themselves independent, centrist, or libertarian. Many even say they voted for Obama, believing him to be centrist.

When you examine all that evidence, it's pretty clear that the Obama Administration's definition of "astroturf" and "grass-roots" needs to be tweaked slightly. Or swapped.

But that's what an administration does when it expected to encounter no resistance, when it fully believed that a huge majority of Americans had fallen in love with President Obama, and would never question him about anything, but instead meets with resistance almost immediately from the very people they claimed to be speaking for.

Let's examine just for a moment how scared Obama and his cronies must really be by this "astroturfing" movement. They've planted people at their town-hall meetings with questions pre-approved by the administration. They've endorsed "doctors" who supported this plan, who turned out not to be doctors at all. They've pre-screened which private citizens get to come into the building and actually speak with their congresspersons, and when those who manage to pass the screening get in, and actually ask a question challenging the health-care bill, they are either ignored, shouted down, or told to shut up or they'll be escorted out.

The media has, no surprise, gotten in on the act. On MSNBC, Contessa Brewer shows us a clip of a man at a town hall meeting with a gun, and drones on in this "tsk tsk" voice about "white people" showing up at town hall meetings with guns now that a "man of color" is in the White House. The video clip she runs suspiciously doesn't show the man's face, and it's no wonder why when you see the full clip. The "white" man with a gun who surely must be a racist angry at the "man of color" in office turns out to be...a black man. A black man who, by the way, did not identify himself with the Republican Party.

Now, when it comes to showing up to these town hall meetings with guns, I have to say that's foolish at best. First of all, the meetings are about health-care, not second amendment rights. Second of all, the gun-hating left needs no more ammunition to paint us all as gun-toting rednecks out for violence, or ready to lynch the new President, so why give it to them? Thirdly, it distracts from our message and allows the media to focus on the one or two aberrations rather than focusing on what our message really is. They don't listen to us anyway; why give them more reason to pull the focus away from what we are actually saying?

Despite that, it is criminal dishonesty to attempt to incite a race-riot by editing footage to match your preferred narrative. It is all the more revolting when you consider the absence of cameras when a group of SEIU thugs surrounded and attacked an unarmed black man, called him "nigger", and put him in the hospital, for the "crime" of handing out yellow flags saying "don't tread on me".

These are the actions of administration that is afraid and will stop at nothing to silence any opposition rather than risk their message getting out. It is clear that Obama and his cronies don't want you to know what's really in this health-care bill. They themselves haven't read it and claim that there is "no need to". They offer vague niceties when questioned directly, but nothing substantive. They try, vainly, to demonize the opposition, not realizing it's the folks they're trying to court who are the opposition now. It's how they've been running their campaign from the beginning.

And now the sheep they so thorough fed on "hope and change" are starting to wake up and realize that this is not the change they hoped for. And this administration is totally unprepared for that.

Government Informers, on the next Episode of the Obama-pranos

I thought informants or street-snitches were only good for dirty cops and Batman. But as it turns out, the government thinks they'd be useful, too.

Now, were this a communist country, or a third-world pisspot, I'd probably expect this. I'd be watching my tongue every time I spoke because I'd never be totally sure that government stool pigeons weren't around the corner. But this is America.

In times past, America has elected some leaders it regretted giving any power to, or at the very least thought were handling things wrong. They were free to speak out. This was AMERICA, where the government served at the will of the people, rather than tried to force its will upon the people. Be it Roosevelt, Truman, Johnson, Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton or Bush Jr. (some might say especially him), all those presidents had their naysayers. They all had to put up with some things they said or did being unpopular with the people.

But President Obama apparently holds himself to a higher standard.

You see, since taking office, Obama has done almost none of the things he said he would do that caused people to vote for him. Despite his claim of having the troops home by March of this year, they're still out there, and no closer to home, despite it being almost September. The Patriot Act, which the left villified Bush for, is still in effect, and Obama hasn't even talked about rescinding it. Gay people still can't get married, but I had to laugh at all the gay people who voted for Obama on the hopes that he would legalize gay marriage, because that, at least, is one promise Obama never made.

But that's just what Obama has not done. Now what about what he has?

Well, he rushed through a bill that raised the level of government spending to unprecedented levels, trying to claim that it was to stimulate the economy. Not only hasn't it, but many who were promised stimulus money haven't gotten it, even though ACORN and other special-interest groups already firmly in Obama's pocket have gotten theirs. He managed to slip this bill through Congress without even giving anyone the time to read it, claiming that it was time sensitive and needed to be done now! And then he took his sweet time signing it himself.

Then he appointed numerous cabinet members, each of whom turned out to be a tax cheat.

Then he tried the same rush job through Congress on a cap-and-tax energy plan that would cause the cost of energy to skyrocket. Americans, even those who voted for Obama, stood up and took notice. Some of them may have thought the stimulus bill was an abberation. Turns out that it's BO's modus operandi.

Now he's trying to rush through a "public option" healthcare bill, which is supposed to bring costs down and make healthcare available for everyone. Folks, I've lived under a system like the one Obama's proposing. It's not cheap, it doesn't make healthcare available for everyone, and it doesn't even cover most stuff you'd really need.

This article expresses perfectly what's wrong with Obamacare, as the right-wing media has dubbed it. These reasons are the reasons most Americans do not want this bill. You heard me: most Americans. That Obama has to stoop to name-calling and derision to try and claim that all these dissenters to the bill are being paid by insurance companies or that it's all just a race issue is deplorable.

But now he's gone too far. He has removed free speech from the people. I'm frankly shocked that there hasn't been a march on Washington about this. Perhaps there will be.

For those of you who haven't heard about this, the White House is afraid of anyone talking about Obamacare in anything less than glowing tones. One would think that if their claim of "misinformation" being spread were true, that they would encourage public debate, that they would show up at Town Hall meetings and assuage fears. That they would invite people to read the bill, or read the relevant sections of it themselves in an attempt to show private citizens what the plan really entails.

But instead, they've offered vague, happy-sounding answers that don't really say anything. They tell you that they have all the facts, and you don't need to read the bill to know that. They tell you that the president himself has not read the bill, but it doesn't matter because you should just trust that he knows what's in it. And then they tell you this:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Wow. Just...wow.

Now, here's the thing. Whether you trust Obama or not, whether you think the American people need to lighten up or not, this should scare the daylights out of you. The White House, the home and office of the President of the United States, is asking private citizens to inform upon each other.

The thing is, this cannot merely be a way to fight the spread of misinformation. This is hardly the first time a sitting President has had to fight misinformation. The response is usually something like "If you have any questions or anything you are not sure of, please contact your congressperson."

But that's the problem. The congresspersons are more or less in hiding from their constituents, and when they show their faces, they refuse to take questions, talk on their cell phones while questions are being asked, tell dissenters that if they don't pipe down they'll be escorted out, etc.

So, while the government tries to pretend we don't exist, they're trying to get us in on the act. We are now to "flag" anyone we see spreading "misinformation", which can loosely be defined as "Information that the White House has not given you, not that the White House has been a fount of information on this topic, or is ever likely to become such."

This is suppression of our right to free speech, any way you want to look at it. For Obama, or anyone in his cabinet, to encourage us to report private conversations or emails is the height of despotic dictatorship. What's next? Re-education camps for those that refuse to be silenced? Public trials and executions so that "examples" can be made of those who dare to question the Golden One?

I hope the American people make their voices heard loud and clear on this. So far, the opinion polls are plummeting, but it's not enough. Obama is trying to convince you that the movement against his plan does not exist. If you are against it, and you're not on some insurance company's payroll, then you have been duped, and had better cross over to his side immediately.

Don't buy it. It's time for America to show Obama that we're not frightened of him, and if he wants to play mafia boss and have us report on one another, then we will stand up proudly and say "I'm a dissenter, and you work for us, not the other way around."

This is not the kind of hope and change America voted for. Let's wake up before Obama has altered all the rules and truly has turned into a dictator.