Archive for the ‘history’ Category

What A Useful Idiot Looks Like

Jul 25th, 10 / 0 Comments

I’m pretty sure the entire GIN has turned off the radio when it comes to “nationally-syndicated host” Michael Smerconish.  We’ve discussed him before- he played a conservative host on the radio and then began to reevaluate his views (or maybe evaluate for the first time) a few years ago.  He did some good work on keeping Mumia in jail and does write some books for little personal profit (donating to causes).  We had it figured out long before the 2008 election that he was going to dump the GOP candidate.  And he did so for Obama, and then has gotten some access to administration officials and was nationally syndicated shortly after the ’08 election by a Capital group filled with lefties.

To take the “morning drive” segment out of play for the GOP in the Philly ‘burbs on the big AM talkradio channel was a huge thing.  To tell “moderates” that Obama’s not such a bad guy, to minimize his associations, c’mon, it’s old Mikey here telling you how it is.  How many listeners each day went to work after being told “he’s a good guy…” What if a Hannity was on the radio then?  How many listeners would’ve gone into their offices and had that watercooler conversation about “can you believe what Obama’s minister said?”  These things ripple, and someone knew that.  I’d almost bet for every listener that hears it, ten more people hear of it.

Now I’m not one to say Smerconish “sold out”. But he’s definitely profited from sticking to his embargo on criticizing Obama.  I don’t know if it’s written into his contract, but he knows who’s supporting his shows (and I’m guessing it’s not listenership).

I do read Smerconish’s columns on Philly.com (he’s kind of a token GOP guy that works for Democrats), mainly to see if he’ll ever criticize the President.  Inevitably, his columns target new media (bloggers and talk radio), conservatives in the GOP, or talk about something completely inane (using the “Seinfeld”-esque “it’s about nothing at all” template).

Today Smerconish weighs in on Andrew Breitbart, bringing nothing new to the table but taking the opportunity to lambast his standard targets. Rather than just commenting online, I figured I’d put my comments parenthetically in with the column (link):

By Michael Smerconish – Inquirer

Inquirer Currents Columnist

Last week, blogger Andrew Breitbart released a mischievously edited video. It showed a black Department of Agriculture official, Shirley Sherrod, recalling her seemingly racist reluctance to assist a white farmer more than two decades earlier. Some in the audience of NAACP members are heard engaging in a sort of call-and-response approval of Sherrod’s sentiments. Reacting to the edited video, Sherrod’s boss, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, demanded her resignation.

Now imagine if it had gone a little differently – if, before Sherrod could resign, the White House had intervened and saved her job. Imagine the reaction of those now trying to put President Obama at the center of this debacle by blaming him for Sherrod’s unnecessary resignation (like leftist Daily News Senior Writer and alleged-”Journolister” Will Bunch of Attytood, who called it “A Political Lynching- By the Obama Administration”). They would have been outraged if he had backed her up in the face of the initial information (Nope, they would’ve blindly supported him).

Should Vilsack have investigated further? Yes. (So sue him) Ditto for the NAACP. (The NAACP President was mentioned being in the audience of the f-ing video, unless he was used to sitting in for white-bashing sessions, don’t you think he would’ve said “no way I was there for that”?) But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs should not have been the first to offer Sherrod an apology. It should have been Breitbart, the man who started the controversy. What he did was tantamount to releasing the Zapruder film minus the moment of impact. (great analogy?)

Breitbart’s explanation – that he didn’t realize the video had been so maliciously manipulated – only amplifies his irresponsibility. Of the “source” who gave him the video, he told the Daily Beast: “I don’t know this person. I can’t divine what that person’s motivation was. I don’t know.”

A little less trust and a little more verify next time, Mr. Breitbart. (He contacted the NAACP for comment/verification, and they denounced her)

Even shallower was Breitbart’s description of his own motivation: “The video shows racism, and when the NAACP is going to charge the tea party with racism . . . I’m going to show you it happens on the other side.” (I agree.  This attack on Shirley Sherrod is no different than Ben Jealous slandering TEA parties)

Even if you take that bogus explanation at face value, Breitbart at least should have highlighted the fact that the NAACP audience also expressed approval when Sherrod brought her story full circle and said poor people of every race need help. But he didn’t.

Such are the pitfalls of a media world in which everyone plays whisper-down-the-lane, but nobody fact-checks the message. (Whisper down the lane sounds a lot like a listserv of journalists and democrat operatives…)

The reality is that the audience’s reaction was not a tacit approval of Sherrod’s momentary reluctance to help a poor white farmer. Rather, it was the kind of response you might hear when any engaging story is told in an African American church (Smerconish has accepted Obama’s premise that Obama’s church was just any church). Any remotely honest observer who watches Sherrod’s full speech must acknowledge that the audience was rooting for her ultimate redemption – not applauding her outdated shortcomings.

Too bad everyone – including Breitbart, his loyal readers, the media, the NAACP, and the Department of Agriculture – was willing to accept the video at face value. To fully understand why they did, a little context is in order.

First, in the polarized media world we live in, Breitbart enjoys credibility he does not deserve. (If only he’d gone to Penn for law school) The only credential required to cast oneself as a media player today is a partisan one. (Again, the elephant in the room is Journolist) If you are willing to conform to the artificial extremes of left/right, liberal/conservative, and blue/red, you get a keyboard or a microphone and, voilà, you are in business!

Some of those bearing such credentials have conditioned their audiences to believe that Obama is a racist. (Conditioned is a little condescending tone for a guy who depends on the same demo’s of listeners for his own ratings. What are we, little Pavlovian bitches?) Glenn Beck has said the president has “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.” Rush Limbaugh called the commander in chief “the greatest living example of a reverse racist” after his Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, herself an alleged “reverse racist” and “hack.” Newt Gingrich, who also called Sotomayor the R-word before walking the comment back, charged that Sherrod showed a “viciously racist” attitude. ( “racist” might not be the best term, it’s more that he believes the leftist slams against “White” western civilization, of which the nation he leads has traditionally played a large role).

All the false charges (proven false how?) of racism condition these talking heads’ followers to readily accept that a minority woman speaking any ill of white farmers must be racist, without even pausing to wonder if there could be more to the story. (The words were pretty clear, and played in the context they were didn’t require any more thought to whether she had an axe to grind with white farmers)

Which is not to say there isn’t plenty of blame to go around. Vilsack and the NAACP should have reserved judgment, especially if Sherrod was telling them that Breitbart’s clip was part of a longer speech with a different message (which, presumably, she was). The news outlets that ran with the clip also should have done more to determine whether it was authentic.

The only mistake the White House made was in failing to tune out Breitbart, the same “journalist” who lent his heft to a guy later charged in a plot to tamper with phones in the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.). (Isn’t “guilt by association” a PC thought-crime? Didn’t Smerconish criticize  Bill Ayers as an attempt to sink Obama by Guilt By Association? (link) What about smearing Breitbart with the “charge” of another person, not the conviction?  James O’Keefe wasn’t trying to tamper with the phones, he was trying to prove that the Senators’ offices were ignoring the calls of their constituents, something that a “journalist” might want to report on.)

The administration would have been better off remembering the words then-Sen. Obama spoke in the midst of another racial kerfuffle: “The profound mistake of Rev. Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society,” Obama said at the National Constitution Center. “It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made. . . . But what we know – what we have seen – is that America can change. That is [the] true genius of this nation.”

We should have known right away that Shirley Sherrod was making the same point. For missing it, Tom Vilsack owed her the apology he offered. For obscuring it, Andrew Breitbart owes the rest of us one as well. (For accepting the role of public gadfly and doing nothing to stop what is happening to this nation, Smerconish owes us one too.)

We’re beginning to see the impacts of the insidiously horrendous legislation that’s been passed here on the ground, and with the passage of the “Financial Reform” bill we’ll see even more.  Smerconish is building the case to take over as the “reasonable” guy when the Fairness Doctrine is unveiled, and advance himself by way of government intrusion.  In the grand scheme of things, someone whowillfully  joined with the destroyers, profited by them, and became a passive enabler is far worse than an Andrew Breitbart who (provided he didn’t know what he was doing) posted something without being sure it wasn’t edited.

Remember, Smerconish and the left are attacking Breitbart for posting the video (which generated the conversation leading to the truth). Breitbart sought confirmation from the NAACP, as it was an NAACP event, and they publicly condemned Sherrod.  What are we to take away from that?

G.I.N. discussions, history, news tilt

Obama Fourth Of July BBQ: Skewering Our Nation’s Founders…

Jul 6th, 10 / 0 Comments

Jeanne DeAngelis at American Thinker reminds us who we elected President* (by we, I mean American voters, misled or not) (link):

July 06, 2010

He can’t resist: Obama bashes Founders on the 4th of July

Jeannie DeAngelis

It appears the President of the United States can’t contain his disdain for America’s historical roots. On Independence Day, instead of stressing the awesome concepts of the Declaration of Independence, Obama managed to turn a BBQ into an opportunity to disparage our founders, foster class warfare and further division.

On July 4th the Commander-in-Chief invited the military to a White House cookout and then used the occasion to skewer the Founding Fathers. Rather than depicting America as “one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all,” once again Barack-the-great-divider separated America into factions and brought up a time in our history where, in his view, America lacked, “civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights.”

A casually dressed Obama, who couldn’t make Memorial Day at Arlington Cemetery, appeared on the balcony high above the active-duty military and their families who were waving flags and wearing red, white and blue face paint. The President, with Michelle at his side, spoke to the group, saying that today may be Independence Day, but “Today we also celebrate all of you, the men and women of our armed forces, who defend this country we love.”

While America focused on Cedric the Entertainer, the U.S. Marine band, Sabrett® hot dogs, Obama’s short-sleeved polo shirt, and the outstanding potato salad, the thing that was the most telling about the event were Obama’s sentiments when he said the following:

We celebrate the principles that are timeless, tenets first declared by men of property and wealth but which gave rise to what Lincoln called a new birth of freedom in America-civil rights and voting rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, and the rights of every American. And on this day that is uniquely American we are reminded that our Declaration, our example, made us a beacon to the world.

Eerily comfortable on a balcony delivering a speech to the crowd below, Obama surreptitiously served up the founding fathers of this nation like shish kabob, disparaging them as merely “men of property and wealth.” Then Obama, who identifies himself with a great president who freed slaves rather than made new ones, in an underhanded way elevated Abraham Lincoln above the evil white men who dared to own property and accumulate personal wealth with a simple qualifying “but.”

Emphasis added on the part about being “eerily comfortable on a balcony delivering a speech to the crowd below”. This is one thing that really bothers me, is that a lot of things were done in the past that were not acceptable by today’s standards. Of course, this leftist stream of thought never applies the same threshold of modern ethics to any of their heroes, even ones in this century or last century.

Look at the screencap when he’s speaking. There’s even a little sneer to his appearance talking about the founders if you look closely, as if to say “I know, I’m supposed to say nice things about them, but if I had to choose between saving a drowning British soldier and a drowing American founder, I’d eat some arugula”:

PBO, Past Crimes and Grievances, history

Celebrating Independence Day

Jul 4th, 10 / 0 Comments

I’ve found it really enjoyable for the last few years calling today “Independence Day”.  The looks people give you are pretty funny, like you’re some kind of freak for going outside the nomenclature.  I’m not celebrating it because it’s the 4th of July, I’m celebrating it because it’s the day that some guys (old White guys to some) wrote a very defiant letter to King George III of England declaring the American colonies’ independence from England. The signatories knew they were putting a bounty on their own heads and essentially declaring war, but it needed to be done.

It might as well be “fireworks day” to some, where (unless disallowed by environmental regulations) fireworks spontaneously occur on this day!  Here’s the text of the Declaration of Independence.  Read it carefully, my notes on it are parenthetical. Much of it applies to our current government as it’s grown into an independent organism rather than a representative government:

(Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776)

The Unanimous Declaration

of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (not Gubbamint?) with certain unalienable rights (that means rights that can’t be revoked, not rights for illegal aliens), that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights (not infringe upon them), governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed (“deem” it so). That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes (like “hope”?); and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. (Suing Arizona?  Not enforcing borders, not enforcing existing immigration laws.)

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. (remember the “community organizer” address to Congress?)

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. (czars?)

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. (how’s that civilian national security force coming?)

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

history, leviathan

A Memorial Day Dedication

May 31st, 10 / 1 Comment

I’ve always thought of Memorial Day as a day to honor fallen American military in contemporary wars.  As a child, I had a picture of older folks with the VFW “boat” hats (sorry, the name escapes me) at memorial services but I never really understood.  Having not been part of it, there’s a large part that I’ll never understand the way that those who’ve served and seen others killed do.

I don’t ever want to let the stories of my uncles who fought in WWII go away without telling my kids. Most of them have passed away, some I didn’t even get to meet.  The family stories from WWI and the Civil War are gone, and there’s scant documentation other than my great(x2) grandfather’s discharge papers from after Gettysburg.  We can’t forget the people we’ve sent to faraway places and places within this nation that were foreign to them and been killed.  Abandoning them and their sacrifice is to abandon our nation.

It’s up to all of us to stop with our kids and tell friends and coworkers the compelling stories of this nation.  Stop and read the blue markers on the highway, read the books, get to know the veterans in our neighborhoods and towns.  Honor them, and the fallen.

There’s no Constitutional duty for our Commander-in-Chief to go to Arlington to lay a wreath at the Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier (may God bless and keep their souls), or the Vice President for that matter.  But to not go, why buck the tradition?  Is sending the buffoonish Vice President a message to the fallen, or those who might wind up missing or unidentified?  During wartime?  What message does that send?

I believe it is a crude strike at our military, also known as the only government program this administration sees worthy of cost-cutting.  This administration is full of people with a highly-selective memory of US history, remembering the grievances and suffering of selected, politically expedient few, and forgetting most of the good of the nation.  It is truly dangerous the way that they fail to see all the justice that’s come in America through their Marxist lens.

Today I dedicate myself and this blog to keeping the Republic and its history alive, hopefully in a manner that God sees fit, to honor those who’ve fought for, and those who died fighting under our flag.  God Bless America.

G.I.N. discussions, history