February 19, 2009
A Few Things…
…one being about a country and its leader, specifically the leader, upon whom so many of our misguided, stupid, lefty toilet cake Hollywood buffoons fawn with the leg trembling worship of the garden variety MSM “reporter” drooling on the feet of an Obama.
I have a few personal reasons I won’t get into just now for despising that G-d forsaken country, one that would allow a Hugo Chavez and his commie goons to come to power to begin with, but what goes on there is a pure insult to all of humanity.
Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chavez, rebuffed by voters in his previous attempt to become president for life, has now taken a giant step closer to his goal. A reported 54.4 percent of voters approved a referendum on Feb. 15 that would permit Chavez to run for re-election indefinitely. It was the sort of “election” we remember from the communist days — or see today in Zimbabwe. According to the Economist: “Public buildings and vehicles were plastered with pro-Chavez propaganda. State television and radio channels turned over almost their entire resources to promoting the campaign. And even the Caracas metro obliged passengers to listen to campaign jingles.” In 2007, opposition to Chavez’s power grab was led by students. But this time, Chavez ordered that demonstrations against the referendum were to be broken up “with a good dose of gas.”
Now, a triumphant Chavez declares, the way is clear to lead Venezuela to “21st century socialism.” We know what Chavez means by this. He has been implementing his socialism, which is barely distinguishable from Castro’s, since 1999. Freedom of the press is a memory in Venezuela. Newspapers and electronic media that opposed Chavez have been harassed. The 2004 “Law on the Social Responsibility of Radio and Television” requires all outlets to carry Chavez’s speeches in full, contains penalties for a variety of offenses and insults, and permits licenses to be revoked for a second offense. Globovision, a private 24-hour cable news channel, was recently accused of insulting Chavez. Pro-Chavez legislators have urged the attorney general to investigate. Meanwhile, thugs linked to the government lobbed tear gas canisters into the newsroom. RCTV, the second largest television channel in the country, was closed down altogether in 2007.
Read Mona Charen’s entire column here.
Another item is the latest column by Ann Coulter, of whom I can never get enough.
Six months after America’s all-time greatest president left office in 1989, historians ranked him as only a middling president. (I would rank George Washington as America’s greatest president, but he only had to defeat what was then the world’s greatest military power with a ragtag group of irregulars and some squirrel guns, whereas Ronald Reagan had to defeat liberals.)
At the time, historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. dismissed Reagan as “a nice, old uncle, who comes in and all the kids are glad to see him. He sits around telling stories, and they’re all fond of him, but they don’t take him too seriously” — and then Schlesinger fell asleep in his soup.
Even liberal historian Richard Reeves blanched at Reagan’s low ranking in 1989, saying, “I was no fan of Reagan, but I think I know a leader when I see one.”
Reagan changed the country, Reeves said, and some would say “he changed the world, making communism irrelevant and the globe safe for the new imperialism of free-market capitalism.” In Reeves’ most inspiring line, he says Reagan “was a man of conservative principle and he damned near destroyed American liberalism.”
Truncating a bit…
Soon after he took office, President Reagan famously hung a portrait of President Calvin Coolidge in the Cabinet Room — another (Republican) president considered a failure by historians.
Coolidge cut taxes, didn’t get the country in any wars, cut the national debt almost in half, and presided over a calm, scandal-free administration, a period of peace, 17.5 percent growth in the gross national product, low inflation (.4 percent) and low unemployment (3.6 percent).
Unlike some recent presidents with Islamic middle names, he didn’t run around comparing himself to Lincoln constantly.
I know I promised not to throw any rocks at the “recent president with the Islamic middle name”, but — wait, it’s not me who’s throwing the rocks, it’s… it’s… one of my favorite author/ columnists.
Anyway, the entire piece is a good read, so it would behoove any and all to take the time to read it.
And finally, I know this issue has been receiving its share of flogging in recent weeks and months (and years, though one would think, by the way the linked article puts it, that it has only been of concern for the last couple of weeks). Howsomever…it’s actually been an issue ever since liberal talk radio began to realize that no one wanted to hear their blathering, commie malarkey while Americans had and have their ears glued to conservative talk radio. According to the rules of a free market, the liberal dudes and dudettes had to be dropped because no sponsor wants to waste money running ads during a program that no one is listening to.
An Obama senior adviser has indicated that the administration is mulling whether the controversial Fairness Doctrine will get a new lease on life, according to a report in Broadcasting and Cable.
The now defunct Fairness Doctrine, if revived, could be used by a liberal administration to silence Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and other radio talk show hosts, as well as much of the new alternative media. The doctrine required broadcasters to report both sides of controversial issues. The Federal Communications Commission dropped it in 1987.
And now…
“Senator Obama does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters,” press secretary Michael Ortiz said in an e-mail to Broadcasting and Cable at that time.
“He considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible,” Ortiz said.
Hmmmm, opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible sounds to me like a somewhat left-handed method of saying one doesn’t support the fairness doctrine but supports the fairness doctrine just the same. It would certainly be a pleasant change if these people would just come out and speak their minds, but heaven knows, telling the American people the truth about their actual intentions might receive a largely negative response.
Yeah, better to mince a few words than just say what you mean, you “progressives”, you…
Of course, Bubba weighs in:
Last week on a radio show, former President Bill Clinton announced that in his opinion something needed to be done to balance broadcasting.
How about broadcasting some patriotic programming, instead of left wing garbage put forth for the sole purpose of tearing our great nation down?
“Well, you either ought to have the fairness doctrine or you ought to have more balance on the other side,” Clinton said, “because essentially there has always been a lot of big money to support the right wing talk shows.”
Big money tends to support winners, Mr. Bill, at least smart big money does. This ain’t Utopia. In the competitive game of the free market, the losers have to work a little harder to run with the winners, and do so without a Mom & Dad government interfering on their behalf.
If you want the kind of government you left wing folks are trying to force on us, I suggest you abandon your plans and, instead, move here, where you’ll get exactly what you’re asking for, because the rest of us just won’t be having any of what you’re peddling.
To the rest of you, have a wonderful day, breathing the freedom laced air of America.
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=924
February 19th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
IMO, there is a great deal of confusion over what constitutes ‘news’ and what constitutes ‘opinion’. If it is news you want, you have to suck up everything, all networks, newspapers, blogs, neighbors. If you have a need (as his 68% his conservative white mail audience does) to have your personal opinion amplified and stroked, by all means tune in Limbaugh. Speaking of news, have you noticed some of the GOP expressing interest in nationalising US banks? er..huh?
February 20th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
BB –
As I’ve said in the past, I’m anything but enamored of the Republican Party as it has stood for the last several years. They simply haven’t been supportive enough of those who elected them and have kept them (those that remain since the 2006 midterms, anyway) in office.
Now they are fighting on behalf of their base, but I fear it’s only to try to get back the confidence and therefiore the vote of conservatives, so they can return to the cushy environs of the majority and become as complacent as they were prior to November, 2006.
The fact that they, along with George Bush before he left office, were so willing to pour money into the bailouts (yeah, buying up bank stock = nationalizing the banks) left a singularly bad taste in my mouth. Basically, it’s a supreme cop-out, taking an easy (though not for the taxpayer) shortcut rather than forcing these institutions to fix their own problems.
Our private sector, through tenacity, ingenuity and the willingness to take risks, once turned a fledgling country into the richest and most powerful of nations. If they were able to do that, then they obviously have the wherewithal to take what they now have and fix it on their own. Instead, they will now languish lazily on hand-outs from the taxpayer and, lacking the incentive to correct their own problems, they will only continue to do so until the government has bought their way to majority shareholdership.
In the words of some folks I knew back in the 1960s, “Bummer”.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
I agree. Explains why the bigBanks took billions and used them for bonuses….and may explain the general proclivity to nationalise ‘em. Ya know, economy has gotten much more complex since my day…when you traded your nice arrowheads for a side of mammoth..:)
February 21st, 2009 at 3:10 pm
BB –
Those were the days, LOL!
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:56 am
Well, I myself am throwing rocks at our new President (See my recent post about Otis Moss, Jr.).
I think that BHO and this Congress are doing irreparable damage to the United States, both domestically and on the foreign-policy front.
The so-called stimulus bill has pissed me off beyond belief. Absolutely nothing there to help me, never mind BHO’s promises of help with health insurance and COBRA. We have missed the window because Mr. AOW got laid off so early on, in January 2008.
Then, on this morning’s news, I heard that another porkulous bill will be floated in 2010. Ye, gods!
Now, that 2010 proposal could be defeated — if the 2010 elections go in a different direction.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:59 am
Seth,
You might be interesting in checking this out. I know several Jewish bloggers who have been decrying BHO’s apparent position on the matter.
February 23rd, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Who needs to throw rocks at the Obama? He’s throwing them up in the air and standing beneath them. His numbers, while still to high, have declined noticeably and a few rational libs have noticed and are voicing concern.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:56 pm
AOW –
Y’know, the farther we get into these still profoundly early days of the Obama Mis-administration, the more difficult it is for me to adhere to my resolution to avoid the rock throwing of which we speak.
I have not seen a single thing he’s done yet that could possibly make me feel proud to say, “That’s my President”. I see only hundreds of billions of dollars being spent to advance the agendas of the Democrats with a focus on destroying the GOP altogether — portside lobbies that support the Democrats will be so well-heeled with payback money to contribute top future Democratic campaigns [money essentially robbed from the American taxpayer, (D), (Rep), or (I)] — by the time a conservative voice again carries any weight on the Hill, we might well be so deeply mired in socialist programs that we would have to dismantle the entire government and rebuild it from the ground up, as though we were back in the 1770s and starting from scratch.
Otis Moss’ presence is, indeed, a good indicator that Obama is still fully within the belief patterns of Irreverend Wright.
Obama won’t be good for Israel, that’s for sure, him being a Hamas fan.
I’m glad Bi Bi Netaniahu is coming back into power, he’s got the spine to do what needs to be done to preserve and defend Israel and its citizens and tell Obama where he’ll draw the line.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
Shoprat –
I’ve been reading about that, and am not too surprised. Too bad, when Obama has finally gotten enough Americans worried about the country’s future and his approval rating has plunged enough, we can’t just send him a pink slip.
February 25th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Netanyahu retired from politics after being beaten in 1999. Big comeback..shades of Richard Nixon!
February 25th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Took GW eight years to achieve 22%…and he started with a fairly decent economy.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
BB –
shades of Richard Nixon!
Nope, shades of a country’s voters realizing the man was right the first time around and grateful that he’s still available to lead them.
Bubba’s “prosperous” economy, residual from the Reagan/ Bush Sr. years, was in its last throes of giving up the ghost when G.W. Bush took over.
Like the Obama victory, G.W. Bush’s low approval rating was a product of biased and not altogether truthful “reporting” by the far left mainstream media — they shaped public opinion through the simple expedient of propagandizing everything the Bush Administration said, did and thought from a less than truthful, purely politically motivated, left wing perspective.
February 26th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Ya know, “they shaped public opinion through the simple expedient of propagandizing everything the Bush Administration said, did and thought from a less than truthful, purely politically motivated, left wing perspective.” is something of a conservative mantra.
BTW, Wolf mentioned you trimmed a lot of weight. So, cuisine and fine liquor is now taboo?
Kind of like our liberal one..”.. everything the Bush Administration said, did and thought was from a less than truthful, purely politically motivated, right wing perspective.” ..at least, IMO, whither the 22%
February 27th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
BB –
The media is, unfortunately, given their profound political bias vs their duty to report news in an objective manner, the only source of information for the vast majority of Americans.
When the public is bombarded repeatedly by implications that Bush cut taxes for the rich while taxing the poor to death, brought us into Iraq based on a calculated lie (his ulterior motive being, of course,”for the oil”), was responsible, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, out of sheer racism, for wiping out half the black population of Nawlins, when they blame Bush for a mortgage disaster that was the longterm product of irresponsible policies of a Democrat in a previous Administration, etc, etc, yes, they are employing propaganda to achieve their political ends.
********
I still like to indulge myself culinarily, though slightly in moderation, but I’ve pretty much given up imbibing (that doesn’t rule out an occasional — but rare — cognac after an exceptional meal, but otherwise it stands), as I found that the only thing keeping me overweight was what Rush calls, “adult beverages”.
I went from over 225 down to what is now a pretty stable 165 and , other than the hassle of going from XL and 38 to M and 32 clotheswise, it feels pretty good in terms of what I can now do, physically, once again.
February 27th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Seth, I’m starting to think you were a precocious child. Like this little guy
February 28th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
BB –
That lad is obviously very intelligent and extremely well adjusted, and would be a credit to any parent.
If only there were more like him in this era of leftist political educational bias. {yay, kid!!!!}
I didn’t realize what that guy knows at 13, not until I’d hit my mid twenties, just in time to vote for Reagan.