Under the Fedora: Nightmares, Fast and Furious and then some

After 9 years and $92,543,413 LeBron James has finally won an NBA title. Our long national nightmare is over.

One of my favorite writers Jay Nordlinger is in Taiwan. His Taiwan Journal is on part 10^th You should read them all but all the 10 parts there was one bit that jumped out at me:

When I reflect on the development of Taiwan since 1945, or 1949, I can’t help thinking, “This is what China — all of China — could have had. This is what China could be, and even greater. Sure, they have something like mercantilism now. But they are still a one-party dictatorship with a gulag. And there are still countless people living in caves. It didn’t need to be, it didn’t need to be.”

How many years and lives has Communism gobbled and wasted, for almost a century now, throughout the globe!

And that’s true of every communist state. It’s not just the evil, it’s the waste. Where would Mainland China be if it was free and hadn’t slaughtered tens of millions. How far would the Russians have been if the USSR had not done the same? All of that was done in the interest of the few yet the same people who decry the 1% in America supported those who did the slaughter.

Campbell Brown in the New York Times does something that almost never happens in the paper, she hits Planned Parenthood. Not of course for their slaughter of children (that she supports but minimizes) but because of ideological purity to the point where they are a one party operation:

Once again, Planned Parenthood is potentially making an enemy of someone who has failed to pass its purity test. It’s gotten to the point where, in this election cycle, the group’s political arm (while proudly claiming to be nonpartisan) has not endorsed or directly given money to a single Republican. As a person who believes abortions should be safe, legal and rare, I support many of Planned Parenthood’s goals. But the militancy must go. Demanding a perfect record from candidates it supports has already left Planned Parenthood marginalized.

It’s the rare part that I continue to not understand from our pro-abortion side. If Abortion is not the killing of an innocent person who cares if it is rare or not?

Of course those killed are mostly of poor and of color, that seems to happen a lot when the right people are trying to look good, remember the ban on DDT:

Malaria rates began soaring worldwide, not only in Africa but in areas which a few years earlier had been malaria-free. Only a small number of nations with the financial ability to fund their own programs, such as Ecuador, Mexico, and South Africa, continued DDT use. In all cases, these countries remained healthy. (The Clinton administration demanded that Mexico give up DDT as a condition for NAFTA being put into effect. This was done, and malaria rates shot sky-high.)

Despite clear evidence as to the effects, international aid groups such as the World Health Organization and USAid ceased supporting DDT operations. By the mid-80s, malaria had reached and surpassed previous levels. Up to 500 million people were suffering attacks each year. Two to three million of them died as a result. Up to nine-tenths of the dead were children under five.

But why would one have outrage over lives of a bunch of African children compared to the feelings of a bunch of environmentalists who will never be in danger of this disease feeling good about themselves?

Speaking of outrage If you only read or see one piece about Operation fast and furious make sure it is this one by Bill Whittle:

To those liberals who say this is a tempest in a teapot, it’s just gottch ya politics just political posturing or simple racism. Let me just say this, we know who the real racists are here. You don’t give a damn about these dead people because they’re only Mexicans to you they’re certainly not worth politically hurting your messiah over. If these had been 300 graphic designers in San Francisco and a university president instead of friendless peasants and a law enforcement officer you would have dragged a Republican president out of the White House with torches and pitchforks and you would have been right to do so.

He tells the media: This is Watergate with 300 dead people on the ground.

He’s almost right, it’s actually Watergate as it would have been if the media of the time spent a year covering up for the president, with three hundred 300 dead people on the ground for good measure.

–

Incidentally did you hear the latest about Mayor Cory Booker? Just a couple of months after saving a neighbor from a burning building he turns up at the scene of an accident to help out. He’s building quite a reputation and that not even counting what he’s done for his city as mayor of Newark.

Sometimes I think to myself how things would have been different If the media had vetted Obama and the public had rejected him instead of the left being swept away in 2008. Can you imagine the difference if say in 2020 Cory Booker had been the first Black President instead?

As I’ve said before there is a reason why Jackie Robinson and not Pumpsie Green broke the color line in baseball but what’s done is done and everyone, even a country deserves a mulligan.

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Speaking of mulligans I wonder if the person who had the idea of the Obama Wedding Registry will be given one? It was so improbable that people were writing to Snoops.com to see if it was a hoax. I was at Tang Dynasty Restaurant a place that features not only excellent curry but free wi-fi when I saw it, my next stop was a Bakery where a couple getting married didn’t believe me when I told them this until I actually showed them the site.

The numbers of potential jokes from this are incalculable. Are we going to be seeing panhandlers who will produce IPADS asking you to donate to Obama instead of asking for a buck for coffee? Lemonade stands where kids give their money to Obama? Will they run Ads with poor starving children on the screen with people asking you to give generously to the president re-election campaign?

How do you parody this kind of thing?

Remember when Jon Huntsman was MSNBC’s first choice for the GOP nomination, well Dave Weigel reports he has now been made a distinguished fellow at the liberal Brookings Institute.

As Captain Renault once said, I’m shocked SHOCKED!

A little Kimberiln? Yesterday a judge in MD granted a temporary stay to the gag order on Aaron Worthing/Walker allowing him to write/blog about Brett Kimberlin. Less that 24 hours later he was swatted. He had interesting words for the police who showed up:

“I actually said, “let me guess, someone claimed I shot my wife…?” One officer confirmed it, and I said, “this is a hoax.” I think I even said the word “swatting.”

Congratulations Kimberlin dopes you now have given people an excuse to contact every congressman and woman who signed Saxby Chambliss’ letter for comment, AND every congressman who Didn’t sign the letter for comment and to ask if they want to sign it.

And that’s not even talking Stacy McCain’s latest revelations

I’m the owner of a very old IPOD that I bought used 2 years or so ago. I use it exclusively for Dr. Who audios (and about 27 TV episodes) I’m down to my last 2 gigs or so out of my 80 gigsa few odd TV episodes. Back in my younger days I used to wonder how people had so much need for a 80 gig or a 200 gig iPod, I don’t any more.

Rockets are still falling on Israel regularly, it’s reached a point where it is only news to the MSM if the Israeli’ s shoot back and sometimes not even then.

I suspect once a Muslim Brotherhood ruled Egypt is aiding them it will become more interesting to the world.

As far as the media is concerned it will STILL be Israel’s fault then.

I’d like to close with a line I heard from a young lady that I was meeting with concerning doing sales for the radio show/blog. As anyone in sales knows for every “Yes” get comes at the cost of dozens to hundreds of “No”s. She was asked if she could deal with that. Her answer perfectly encapsulates where the Economy is today.

“I’m not a person whose discouraged by rejection I graduated in 2010 .“

I suspect that attitude is going to pay off for this generation in the long run

See you next week.

Under the Fedora: Gotta Love that Media

Have you read anywhere in the MSM about the two French Police Women shot and killed this week or the Pakistani pop singer who defied the Taliban shot dead?

If you haven’t odds are you are getting all your news from the MSM.

We have passed the one month mark for the Kimberlin stuff,  and the story continues to progress, as Stacy McCain continues to break news

Since the last time we visited Stacy has written the following posts on the subject:

• June 14: Patterico: ‘Certain Big Media Reporters Are Scared to Write About Kimberlin’
• June 14: ‘Real Reporter’ @NYT_JenPreston vs. Blogger @Prepostericity (Seth Allen)
• June 14: Neal Rauhauser’s Online Slander Factory
• June 15: Neal Rauhauser’s Game Plan Involving Velvet Revolution and Anonymous
• June 16: Team Kimberlin’s Busted Hustle Now Beginning to Unravel Rapidly UPDATE: Perhaps Not a Coincidence
• June 17: ‘Scrubbed’ Writings Show Kimberlin Associate Neal Rauhauser’s Obsessions
• June 18:  The Kimberlin Files: Ali Akbar, the Fight for Liberty and … a Disturbing Silence
• June 19:  Neal Rauhauser’s Criminal Complaint Against Blogger Greg W. Howard
• June 19:  Neal Rauhauser: Internet Super-Spy!

They say sunlight is the best disinfectant, by that standard Stacy is a twin sun and his latest post on the subject raises an important point:

 Of course, Rauhauser scrubbed all the other stuff — including his “as yet unfiled civil action” against @Zapem — which is one of his remarkably consistent habits: Every time people start taking an interest in whatever madness Neal has been doing lately, he begins deleting files, closing accounts, etc.

The guy’s deleted more Web content than most people have ever created, and why? Consciousness of guilt. Rauhauser’s obsession with secrecy is consistent with his habit of deleting anything that anyone might employ as evidence that he’s up to no good.

There are now, thousands to tens of thousands of people who had no idea who Brett Kimberlin & Neal Rauhauser et/al were 60 days ago. They do today due to the now nomadic Robert Stacy McCain.

As Glenn Reynolds put it:

REALLY, IT WAS A BIG MISTAKE TO screw with Stacy McCain. Which should have been obvious to anyone with a brain, ya know?

Now the MSM has done it’s best to ignore these posts and developments but slowly but surely they continue to creep into the mainstream.  A little bit of that creeping took place on Monday at the Nashua (NH) Federated Republican Women’s Club as Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Answered a question  on the Subject of Swatting

And Charlie Bass (R-NH) also commented on the subject

Oh and at Right Online Some woman named Sarah Palin spoke out on the same subject.

The New media will continue to inform the people while the old media remain in its plastic bubble. In an internet age that simply isn’t going to work.

BTW take a closer look at the base post about that Republican’s women’s club, it might seem a very small local affair but it is those ladies and the grass roots work they do that every successful political campaign is based on.

If they didn’t do it, who would?

BTW on the lighter side there were some wonderful young ladies, to whom I would like to introduce my sons, who sang the national anthem. Unlike most such events they sang the first AND last verse

of course according to our democrat friends they are victims of the GOP war on women.  Yeah right.

Meanwhile while the new media continue to break the Kimberlin story the old media are acting like…The old media:

Today it’s being widely reported that Romney had a moment were he was amazed at the existence of WAWAs, a convenience/gas store, and the electronic touchtone ordering of sandwiches. They have spun this to make it seem like he’s out of touch – BUT THE VIDEO IS EDITED DECEPTIVELY:

In actuality, Mitt was contrasting the ridiculous over-regulation of the public sector, with the efficiency of the private sector, and used the electronic ordering system at WAWAs as an example – here’s the FULL video from a Ron Paulestinian in the crowd:

The blogger in question Sooper Mexican is backed up by that well known bastion of conservatism Politico.  And how did MSNBC react to this, lets say it was underwhelming:

She failed to acknowledge what the “criticism” entailed; she neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered; and she offered nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.

I’m tired.  Truly.  I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable.  For years, people have stomped their feet and pounded their fists and snorted “Liberal media bias!” and I’ve always tut-tutted and shooshed them and said, “No, no.  Calm down.  They meant well.  It was just a misunderstanding.  A mistake.  These things happen.”  I spent over 25 years working in the oft-reviled Mainstream Media and I saw up close and personal how the sausage was made.   I knew the people who wielded the knives and wore the aprons, and could vouch (most of the time, anyway) for their good intentions.

But now?

Forget it. I’m done.  You deserve what they’re saying about you.  It’s earned.

Gee after that performance is it any wonder that Senator Scott Brown isn’t all that anxious to do an MSNBC debate?

Brown accepted an invitation to debate Warren at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute yesterday, but said he had two conditions. He wanted the event to be sponsored by local media instead of MSNBC, and he wanted Vicki Kennedy to refrain from endorsing a candidate.

Gee a debate at the Edward Kennedy Institute hosted by MSNBC, I can’t see why any Republican might suspect it of bias.

While the left is jumping all over this as a sign of weakness I see just the opposite.  If you’ve got a sitting GOP senator unfazed by incurring the inevitable media wrath of the MSM in Massachusetts that tells you where this election is going almost as much as Former Obama Administration Official Elizabeth Warren getting spooked by conservative bloggers.

Or Senator Joe Manchen ducking the National Democratic Convention.

Suppose you own a trucking company in Massachusetts. Or you employ a fleet of salespeople who spend the week driving from one appointment to the next. If you have to expand, do you think you’d be more inclined to look in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, where the Vehicle Miles Traveled Fee is “only” zero?

This doesn’t speak well of our legislature, (or as it’s known, the general court) but it speaks even more ill of our voters.

Think about it, how little do the entrenched democrats in Boston fear the electorate if they are willing to push this during an election year?

If we continue to elect these guys we deserve everything we get from them.

Yesterday there was an interesting move at the pathos site.  Leah Libresco has moved from the Athiest section of the site to the Catholic section.  There is a very interesting moment that brought this to a head.

I’ve heard some explanations that try to bake morality into the natural world by reaching for evolutionary psychology.  They argue that moral dispositions are evolutionarily triumphant over selfishness, or they talk about group selection, or something else.  Usually, these proposed solutions radically misunderstand a) evolution b) moral philosophy or c) both.  I didn’t think the answer was there.  My friend pressed me to stop beating up on other people’s explanations and offer one of my own.

“I don’t know,” I said.  ”I’ve got bupkis.”

“Your best guess.”

“I haven’t got one.”

“You must have some idea.”

“I don’t know.  I’ve got nothing.  I guess Morality just loves me or something.”

“…”

“Ok, ok, yes, I heard what I just said.  Give me a second and let me decide if I believe it.”

It turns out I did.

On father’s day I had a big debate with an agnostic and a Lutheran concerning the Catholic Church.  In terms of the existence of Christ as God my agnostic friend is mulling over this argument that I first heard from my Pastor

We see Jesus killed. We have a group of followers of Jesus scattered. It’s apparently all over. The established power of Rome and the elders of Israel have finished him. He would be rejected by both the established religious and civil authorities.

Now lets look at what happens within a period of time these followers of Christ are not only back but are standing up to established authority even to the point of death. We see all but one of the disciples of Christ killed violently.

Again remember the time and place. Something has convinced a group of early 1st century Jews in a society that rejects non-conformity that they will not only challenge the established religious law but the power and majesty of the Roman empire.

Logically something pretty damn impressive had to turn a bunch of guys fleeing to people unafraid of death and disgrace.

I noticed my friend in the Lutheran Church’s argument against Catholicism was almost wholly based on the scandal of the last decade and a bad experience an uncle had with the church.  I see a lot of that, however I rarely see an argument based on study, but for all of those who say:  The Church did this or the church did that let me leave you with a quote from Fr. Z’s blog that was just spectacular.

Among the apostles one out of twelve betrayed, and today among the successors of the apostles the average is certainly no better.

This has been a pretty heavy under the fedora, so lets close with Ice Cream

That cup is from Cherry Hill Ice Cream in Lunenburg Mass.  I suggest at least one dose weekly, just like Under the Fedora.

Under the Fedora: Obama’s Bad Week

To say last week has been a bad for the Obama administration sounds a lot like Noah’s wife complaining about what the rain is doing to her herb garden.

But of all the news the campaign has seen nothing compares with the results of the PPP poll out of North Carolina where 20% of the Black community has declared they will be voting for Mitt Romney.

It can not be overstated how important this is, not so much in terms of the raw vote, but in terms of the symbolism.  It’s one thing for Black America to say something like this in private (al la Barbershop) it’s quite another thing for people to say it in a public poll.

If this spreads beyond North Carolina the results for the Democrat party will be cataclysmic.

At National review Maggie Gallagher believes she knows the reason:

few Republicans have ever won that share of the black vote even when times were tough. A lot of black pastors are pretty upset with President Obama for endorsing gay marriage (see the Coalition for African American Pastors new petition), and it looks like some of their flocks are as well.

I suspect there are a lot of Black Americans who would have liked to walk away from the Democrat party and Barack Obama but did not want to risk the backlash from their community.  Gay Marriage is apparently enough of a deal breaker to change the equation.  And the Latest from Gallup suggests this is not isolated to North Carolina:

Obama’s support among registered voters today is 46%, five points below what it was nearly four years ago. Whites’ support is down slightly more, six points, from 44% to 38%.

Obama’s support among blacks, while still overwhelming, has also dipped four points from 91% to 87%.

If you give someone an excuse to do what they really want to they’ll take it.

One more thought on this subject, even with these numbers 4 out of 5 black voters in NC and almost 9 out of 10 nationwide are currently sticking with Barack Obama.

If four out of five white voters declared they were voting for Mitt Romney the media would be awash with stories of racism in America.  Yet on a regular basis Black voters have supported black candidates by margins far beyond 80% in majority black districts with nary a peep.

Via Israel Matzav & Legal Insurrection we see the President’s numbers  are apparently dropping in more than just the Black community:

The poll, conducted by Siena College, finds that currently President Obama has the support of 51 percent of Jewish voters, while 43 percent are opposed to him. Five percent are undecided. That means, Obama’s lead among Jewish voters is at 8 percentage points.

Previously, in Siena’s May poll, Obama had the support 62 percent of Jewish New Yorkers, while 32 percent opposed him. That means, last month, Obama’s lead among this group of voters was at a strong 30 percentage points.

As each day passes it appears Michael Graham’s statement from September 2010 at a GOP function in plymouth was prophetic

“ The greatest maker of Republican voters since Ronald Regan is Barack Obama”

Ronald Reagan has been in the news again lately, Jeb Bush has suggested that the Reagan would not be welcome in today’s Republican party.  He seems to forget that he belongs to the same faction of the Republican party that didn’t welcome Reagan when he ran in the first place as SE Cupp reminds us:

Some of Reagan’s strongest opponents were, in fact, establishment Republicans — guys like Jeb Bush’s dad, who called Reagan’s fiscal policies “voodoo economics.”

A bit back I talked about Robert Caro’s 4^th Book in his Lyndon Johnson series, The Passage of Power.  When Joe Scarborough of MSNBC’s Morning Joe remarked on Governor Bush’s statements and excoriated the GOP for not compromising with Democrats it reminded me of something I read in Caro’s First book in the series:  The Path to Power concerning Sam Rayburn:

He would never ask a man to do anything against his own interests. “A Congressman’s first duty is to get re-elected” he would say and he would advice young Congressmen: “Always vote your district.”

Joe Scarborough is a smart guy but these freshmen GOP congressmen and women know who elected them and they aren’t about to take the advice of an MSNBC host over Sam Rayburn’s on how to function in congress, at least not if they have any sense.

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One of those Freshmen members of congress is Ann Marie Buerkle this week she has coe under attack by her old friends at the Syracuse Post Standard are after her again devoting over 40 paragraphs to play with her words concerning Obamacare.

Now any paper that had the winning candidate 11 points down 10 days before an election isn’t all that reliable, but their use of politifact to attack her brought to mind something I said back I this space last year when the left was excoriating them for their choice of the “Lie of the Year”

 Politfact might be shocked to discover that only radical islam is tougher on religious apostates than Liberalism but they should not fear, as the election gets closer and the left decides they need them they will forgive just as long as they provide fodder for their blogs.

Ann Marie was also among the list of 80+ members of congress that signed a letter to the Attorney General concerning SWATTING.  Strangely enough there is not a single Democrat on the list of names even though Brett Kimberlin now claims to have been Swatted himself and the Velvet Underground is now offering a $10k reward for information leading to the conviction of the Swatter.  Lee Stranaham almost immediately debunked Kimberlin’s claim by checking with the Montgomomery County Maryland public information office but my reaction to this nonsense was more along the lines of the comedy it is advice is superior to Sam Rayburn’s

Velvet Revolution posting $10k reward for #swattings in other news OJ still looking for the real killers .@twitchyteam twitchy.com/2012/06/11/blo…

— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) June 11, 2012

Robert Stacy McCain however who is nearing his 40^th story on the subject is not but asking questions:

• Why have the operators of the “Not Brett Kimberlin” site taken extraordinary steps to conceal their own identities?
• What would we discover about the operators of this site, if their identities were known?
• Most importantly, who is paying for this elaborate ongoing effort to smear and defame Britt Kimberlin’s critics?

On June 9^th I attended one of the 160 Stand up for Religious freedom rallies that took place all over the nation.  Mine took place at a location known as Carter Park where Leominster’s Minutemen marched from.

Of the speakers the most moving was the person hardest to understand.  Fr. Thien Nguyen of St. Leo’s Parish just across the street from the park

He talked about his home country of Vietnam and how religious freedom was repressed there. Any religious expression confined to the churches itself, with priests not even allowed to wear their collars in public. What really struck me was how sees the same thing happening here. It reminded me of Claira Csiong

Have you noticed that unlike people in the MSM folks who have actually lived under socialism have no problem seeing Obama as a socialist? Finally this week is a week of events for my family and friends. My wife and I met a friend of mine that I haven’t seen for a year for a pleasant dinner. I have a son who is having his high school graduation party Sunday and after this week’s show I’ll be attending the wedding of my wife’s best friend’s daughter. There are times when we get so wrapped up with the political side of life that we forget to actually live it. All of those things we talk about are important, but never let yourself get so wrapped up into things or so angry about stuff that you forget to enjoy the small things that life has to offer. After you send out that angry letter to the editor and tweet out the link to this post, do what I did this week. Take your spouse to a little ice cream stand in the country (or something similar wherever you are) and simply sit and enjoy each other’s company. Or if you are alone find something beautiful and green like the first hint of the new grapes on the vine:

Life is short, remember to enjoy it.