Get Buying: Maret 2012

Sabtu, 31 Maret 2012

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They’re Always Shocked When We’re Not Stupid

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 11:10 AM PDT

Anyway, this got me thinking, it sure would be intellectually honest if more people started framing their arguments in the terms, "I don't like freedom on this issue and here is why…" You pretty much never see that. I mean, gun control is an anti-freedom stance, but they never argue it that way. I think maybe that's why they don't understand how unpopular their stance is.
The same thing with the health care debate. The mandate is an anti-freedom stance, but they try to say they're for more freedom by ending worries about health care, which is BS. One thing is freedom and one thing isn't; it's not debatable. Putting a gun to someone's head and saying, "You must buy health insurance!" isn't freedom and no one should pretend it is. It's okay to take an anti-freedom stance, you just should frame it terms of why you think your ideas are better than liberty. And that will probably also help you understand why so many people don't like your views, as the left always seems to get caught off guard by that.

Or, as Justice Scalia asked, after the government’s lawyer finished reciting all the problems that Obamacare was created to allegedly solve, “Why aren't those problems that the Federal Government can address directly”.

The answer is: they are.

If the Democrats in Congress had been more honest, they could have built an alternate Obamacare that wouldn’t have run afoul of the Constitution. It would likely have set up a government system similar to Medicare, but for individuals and those with pre-existing conditions. The new system would by definition be very expensive so Democrats would have had to either 1) fudge the numbers so badly that not even the friendly MSM could obscure it, or 2) build a tax structure right away to dump a trillion dollars or so into it each year. In either case, everyone would have to pay more taxes — likely on the order of several thousand dollars. But once they were done, they’d have their government-run health insurance program that covered those relatively few Americans who want health insurance but can’t get it.

Of course, they would have had to sell America on the largest tax increase in the history of the planet to get it. Lots and lots of people would have asked them if there wasn’t some less expensive way to get the job done, perhaps a state-by-state option or a shift of tax incentives from employers to individuals. The questions would have been tough, fair, and in all likelihood hostile to a huge new bureaucracy and its attendant tax scheme, but the Democrats would have had to make a real argument and we could have have an honest discussion about our health insurance problems.

Obamacare was the Democratic attempt to avoid that discussion. The President hid behind a lie, almost completely unchallenged by the MSM, that if you like your health insurance plan, nothing in Obamacare would force you to change it. The Democrats promised us a fantasy world in which evil insurance companies deny care to sick children with glee could instantly become a bright and shining world where benevolent government officials granted nigh-unlimited care to anyone and everyone. They told us none of their plans would ultimately cost us money. In fact, they said Obamacare would actually save money.

They could have been honest with us. They could have come to us as men and women and talked with us, sought our counsel. They could have tried to convince us that the good of their ideas was worth all we would have to give up to get it. They did not. They lied and lied and lied some more. They called us ignorant and vicious and heartless and stupid. They pushed a bill none of them had read in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. They fudged numbers so badly they ended up counting whole piles of money twice. They accused anyone who disagreed with them of wanting to kill old people and innocent children. They built a law their own lawyers can not ably defend. They resorted to threats and intimidation to get compliance (seriously, folks. Here’s the letter).

And then they acted surprised when we resisted their dishonest bullying.

But, as Frank wrote, their surprise isn’t an act at all. They genuinely do not understand that there are principled and intellectual disagreements with their philosophy. John Podhoretz nailed the problem in this article, which I recommend to you highly.

My hope for this election is that voters will so utterly repudiate progressivism that Democrats find themselves forced to reconsider how they do politics. Perhaps then we will see a left-wing party willing to understand the arguments its opponents make even if it doesn’t agree with them. Like Podhoretz said, the arguments are out there in abundance. Learning them would not be difficult at all.

Selasa, 27 Maret 2012

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Let Us Transmit this Information to the Voting Booths

Posted: 26 Mar 2012 07:45 PM PDT

Let me recount to you the history of the Obama administration’s dealings with Russia.

He sent Hillary Clinton with a “reset” button to Russia to assure them that they would not deal with the russian government with nearly as firm a hand as previous administrations. Unfortunately, they misspelled “reset” and the gesture made them look puling and incompetent.
He broke an agreement with our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic to build a missile defense system in both countries. Russia doesn’t want such a system because, well, they have large missiles that such a system could render ineffective. The Poles and Czechs — and let me note again that these are our actual allies — were stunned and angered by the decision, which the administration sprang on them with little to no warning.
He confused Georgia with Russia in a meeting with the Georgian President. You might say the Georgians are a bit sensitive about their identity considering they had been invaded by Russia just four years ago.

And now this: in what the President believed was a private moment with Russian President Medvedev, he all but told the Russians that if he is re-elected, he will give the Russians a good deal on the missile shield, regardless of the will of the American people. Here is the exchange.

President Obama: On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it's important for him to give me space.
President Medvedev: Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you…
President Obama: This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.
President Medvedev: I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.

Lest you think my reaction a knee-jerk reflection of my desire to see Barack Obama retire from the White House in 2013, take a moment to consider what he said. Why would he have more flexibility after the election than before it? The various spokesweasels for the administration say that the President only meant that working out a complicated arrangement would take time and that the President would be better able to work out an arrangement after the “technical experts” worked on the matter quietly. But why should this take more time, considering it’s been an issue between the United States and Russia since the President has been in office. Has he not had the “technical experts” at work on the issue until now? If so, that is a damning statement of incompetence.

It is far more likely that the President meant exactly what it appears he meant. He can’t do what he wants most to do, capitulate on a missile shield in which he’s never believed and make peace with the brutal Putin government, so long as he knows that doing so will surely cost him a second term in office. Barack Obama knows full well that the American electorate would punish him in November if he gave away the farm to Putin and Medvedev before then, so he’s playing for time.

This is bad news, not just for us here in the United States, but for any of our allies in Europe. It is clear, and has been for a while, that Barack Obama considers Russia the real diplomatic prize. We can speculate about why he thinks that way (for my money, he’s beholden to the old-school Soviet Union-loving useful idiots who served as his political and career mentors and role models for his entire life) but the reason isn’t terribly important. It is evident by his actions that no ally we have is as important to him as the allies he wants, including Russia. That is why he alienated Poland and the Czech Republican. That is why he sticks his thumb in Israel’s eye at nearly every opportunity. That is why he’s been distancing himself from England. None of them matter. They are the Old Way that must be swept aside in favor of Fundamental Transformation.

When you consider the obsequious manner in which our President has courted a nation that has never shown anything more than the slightest inclination toward friendship with us, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that his statement today had an innocent explanation. It is far, far more likely that Barack Obama intended Vladimir Putin to know that as soon as he doesn’t have to care what we Americans think about what he does, he’ll do whatever he wants. And that, folks, ought to give you every reason you need to vote him out of office in November.

Sabtu, 24 Maret 2012

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The Delivery Presents – They’ve Painted the Brackets Red!

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 12:00 PM PDT

Does it bother you when people treat you like you are a drooling idiot, like you are Tim Curry right before he jumps out the hotel window in The Shadow? If so, Episode 139 should get you good and riled up. See, the Obama administration believes it’s packed full of the biggest brains in the Democratic Party (and for all we know, it is) and the accumulated genius gives them the unquestionable right to run your life. In the first half, I’ll give you some True Tales of Democratic Genius and introduce you to the only federal budget anyone has proposed in a year.

If you’ve not gotten in on FTR Radio’s Marx Madness, then you’re missing out on a ton of fun. It’s probably not good business to tell you all to listen to another podcast, but you do need to tune in to The Snark Factor (either live at FTR Radio weeknights at 10 PM or via iTunes). What they’re doing is a ton of fun, and you can get a taste of it (along with a little scoop!) in my second half interview with Fingers Malloy. Fingers is also one of the most entertaining guys I know and the segment was a ton of fun.

The Delivery - Episode 139

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – This is not about “The Hunger Games”, per se.

Posted: 23 Mar 2012 09:33 AM PDT

Thus far, I have not been sucked into the rapidly-growing cloud of The Hunger Games fans. From what I saw of the book not long after it was released, the author essentially did a young adult fiction mash-up of Stephen King’s “The Long Walk” and “The Running Man” and added a healthy dollop of Grrrl Powrrr. I’m sure it’s a good story and the movie looks like it might make for a pretty good action adventure flick in a time when such movies are thin on the ground, but I’ve too much on my plate now to pick it up. However, if you are a fan of the books and the newly-released movie, you might enjoy a few of these artsy little goodies.

In political news, President Obama has found a new and amazing way to dodge responsibility for his stupid progressive schemes. This one involves the use of the phrase “per se”, which is Latin for “everything I just said is pure weapons-grade horse doots but it sounds smart so you’ll buy it”. Conservatives on Twitter were not fooled, however, and hilarity ensued.

And now, links!

Good news, everyone! Mitt Romney really does think Obamacare is bad. Well, he doesn’t think the law itself is all that bad, though. He thinks it’s bad that Obamacare is a national law. He’d be quite okay with 50 Obamacares that look just like Romneycare. Because his motives are pure, or something like that.
The Democrats are not the only ones who use taxpayer money to cement a base of loyal voters. Jay Cost’s discovery of Post Office Republicans goes a long way to explain why it’s so difficult for conservatives to gain traction inside the Republican party.
All that “support” the Obama administration gave to the Arab Spring has certainly paid off, wouldn’t you say?
Why didn’t French law enforcement catch an anti-Semitic, Islamist killer before he went on his Jew-murdering rampage? Simple. They were more interested in being politically correct than they were in protecting the lives of little Jewish girls.
Stacy McCain is in Louisiana this week, being chased by the crazy.
Not only does Ed Driscoll write brilliant blog posts, he also writes brilliant headlines.
Man, that George Bush could do everything, couldn’t he?
Russell Brand vs. Christopher Hitchens? The only way Brand wins that matchup is if they’re…umm…you know, I can’t think of a single instance in which Brand could ever best Hitchens. He’s lucky he didn’t bring Katy Perry with him, else Hitchens would have taken his woman along with thatever crumbs remained of his dignity.
I love Lovecraftian art, and this rendition of The Dunwich Horror is one of the best I’ve ever seen.

Kamis, 22 Maret 2012

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – The Progressive Sooper Genius Squad Edition

Posted: 21 Mar 2012 10:15 PM PDT

A recurring theme of mine, here and on The Delivery, is that progressives think you’re dumb. That is, as I wrote Tuesday, at the very heart of progressive ideology. What makes this belief so very galling to me is that the very progressive leaders who believe themselves smart enough to run our lives for us are, to put it charitably, not exactly getting weekly invites from Mensa. I have three more examples from Wednesday to prove the point.

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) decided to lecture America on why Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapon and why we have nothing at all to fear from the hardline Islamist rulers of that nation. To bolster his point, which was more than a little bit nutty to begin with, he noted that: 1) we can find their underground nukes with our satellites, and 2) we went to war with Germany because they attacked Pearl Harbor.

Meanwhile, member of Congress and head of the Democratic National Committee Debbie Wasserman-Schultz was busy telling a reporter with the MRC that she didn’t say Republicans wanted to drag America to the bad old days of Jim Crow laws even though she said that very thing on national television less than a year ago.

Then there was Ezra Klein, ace blogging star with the Washington Post, who saw fit to bash the latest Republican budget proposal but somehow forgot to mention that the Democrats haven’t passed a budget, even though they control 2/3 of the means to do so, in almost 3 years.

And last, but not least, was this beautiful nugget from a book about the closed-door machinations of the Obama White House, wherein our Ivy League-educated President was stumped by basic free-market economics.

I’ll say it again. These are the people who want to run our lives. They’re all lucky they don’t concuss themselves by walking face-first into a door frame while chewing a stick of gum at the same time. And the progressive movement — the Democratic Party — is packed full of people just like them.

And now, links.

This, folks, is why Twitchy is going to be successful.
It’s possible I’d be more kindly disposed toward Mitt Romney if he didn’t attract such arrogant and condescending supporters.
What happens when you slap a punitive tax on “the rich”? They go on vacation elsewhere instead of working hard, creating jobs, and providing you with more taxable revenue. Kind of makes sense, doesn’t it?
Yes, Bob, it is very possible that Smitty is some sort of bespoke fisking machine.
Unfortunately, Moe Lane won’t get any of what he wants in a Presidential nominee.
If you think $4 gas is bad, just you wait. The President, you see, has a plan.
Happy Second Birthday, Obamacare! May you never turn three.
America really, really hates the Chevy Volt but that hasn’t stopped the President from trying with all his might to shove all of us into one, has it?
As it happened, Nero probably did fiddle while Rome burned. Well, not fiddled exactly. It’s more like he played a harp or recited epic poetry. Nero was so emo…

Selasa, 20 Maret 2012

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Joe Biden, the Sobering Reminder of Who Will Run Your Health Care

Posted: 19 Mar 2012 10:12 PM PDT

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. Joe Biden walks into a wealthy Wall Street donor’s fundraiser…

…what? You mean you already know the punch line? Oh, you can’t. Yes, I know Biden is the John Henry of gaffes, so skilled and tireless in his ignorance that he could out-gaffe the finest gaffe-making machine ever crafted, but tonight he outdid himself. Really, you could not have predicted that Joe Biden would say something this bad.

Biden on bin Laden raid: “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan.” (per pool report)

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 20, 2012

Take a moment to absorb the full measure of nonsense that Biden packed into those two sentences. Not only did he lay waste to 500 years of military history and besmirch the deaths of quite literally hundreds of thousands of heroic soldiers, he shifted all the credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden to the man who stood to lose the least if the mission went wrong. Those who planned the mission could have lost their jobs, be blackballed for being part of a huge public failure. The soldiers who took part in the mission could have been killed. Barack Obama? He could have lost the election in November and gone back to his career as a lavishly-paid “community organizer” and author. Sure, there was risk, but “one term President millionaire” is several orders of magnitude better than “dead”. Biden’s statement, not the mission, was audacious, in that it was “recklessly bold” and “contemptuous of…decorum”.

I want to make a larger point here, though*. The Democratic Party, of which Joe “Audacious” Biden is second-in-command, builds all of its policies on a very basic premise: we Democrats in government should be in charge of everything because we are smarter than you. How confident do you feel in that foundation — and let me remind you that Obamacare rests entire on the idea that politicians and bureaucrats can handle all of your health care decisions better than you can — after Biden’s statement tonight?

How do you feel about it knowing that the President’s speeches come right out of My First Big Pop-Up Book of Urban Legends? If a President can’t hire speechwriters who spend more than five minutes Googling up an accurate quote, how much care will his underlings take to decide whether you should get an expensive medical procedure? How is your confidence in the Obamacare team knowing that the Secretary of Health and Human Services told children to stop bullies from calling kids jerks by — wait for it — calling them jerks. This is the same Kathleen Sibelius in whom Obamacare invests so much power that it mentions her title 2,500 times and says she “shall” or “may” take action 900 times, She’s going to make scores of decisions to decide what care you can get, in what amount you can get it, and from whom you can get it.

That’s the Triumverate of Genius in charge of your health care if Obamacare isn’t repealed and if Barack Obama wins another term in office. If that’s not incentive to toss out this gang of chuckleheads and repeal Obamacare so hard that the mere thought of government-run health care causes members of Congress to curl up in the fetal position then I don’t know what is.

*I know. I could have made the easier point that this line would already be the screaming headline in countless MSM outlets had a Republican said it. Dan Quayle was forever consigned to blithering idiot status by the national press for something far less. But, this is the MSM we have. Birds gotta fly; cats gotta sing; the MSM gotta be a bunch of biased twits.

Sabtu, 17 Maret 2012

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – Barack Obama’s War on Rutherford B. Hayes

Posted: 16 Mar 2012 11:06 AM PDT

In the grim world of Barack Obama speeches, the only victims are history books and dead presidents. The President fired up the teleprompter again this week to launch another salvo of invective against those who don’t think his utopian cloud-cuckoo land will be such a wonderful place to live. Among those who earned his ire, former President Rutherford B. Hayes, who the President mistakenly believes scoffed at the telephone and the Flat Earth Society, who managed to frown upon Christopher Columbus from two hundred years in the future.

The President’s grasp of history has gotten so silly that it spawned a fun little hashtag game on Twitter yesterday, where folks helpfully provided the White House speech-writing team with a few more facts about our former Chief Executives.

Remember the days when a President’s speeches became fodder for comedy routines and scornful stories on the evening news? Good times. Good times.

And now, links!

ZOMG! RICK SANTORUM WANTS TO OUTLAW PORN!!! Or, you know, he doesn’t. See, this is how utterly crapulent, shamelessly biased reporting works. First, have an agenda. Second, write whatever the heck you want to push that agenda and don’t show your work.
You know what might be an interesting project? Take the number of birds allegedly killed by DDT and compare it to the number of birds actually killed by alternative energy.
Stephen Kruiser is an immensely talented guy and his Kruiser Control program would make one heck of a regular television program. Go take a look and see if you don’t agree.
Wow. So the Republican National Committee can be creative and punch back against the administration. Who knew?
My friend Sister Toldjah has taken the field in the War on Women and she is, as you might have guessed, on the side of women. You might be surprised, if you hear about the “war’ only from the MSM, who she’s fighting against.
I really liked this story of a meeting between Sarah Palin and Andrew Breitbart and the gathering that resulted.
This week, the CBO released a report that shows Obamacare will cost us twice as much as the President promised it would. In short, Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress lied through their teeth to get their Holy Grail of Progressivism passed. So far, the MSM had been very quiet about it. Expect the curious silence to continue until at least Election Day, if not longer.
Oh, and the President’s budget is a steaming pile of garbage, too. Don’t expect a hard-hitting NBC segment on that tonight either.
The love letters of…Richard Nixon?
Did you want an infrared map of the entire universe? Yes, you did.
I was on the TB-TV Podcast last night, talking about Twitchy (and its founder Michelle Malkin), Andrew Breitbart and social media. I had only intended on spending 30 minutes or so on the show, but it was so much fun that I stayed for 45! Check it out and leave the guys there some nice comments. They treated me very well and I’m grateful they had me on!

Kamis, 15 Maret 2012

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – The Democrats’ War on Women Claims More Casualties

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 12:06 PM PDT

Remember how the feckless buffoons in the MSM told us, over and over and over again, that the Tea Parties were little more than Astroturfed angry mobs that could break out into violence at any moment? None of their panicky false prophesies came to pass, as hundreds of Tea Party rallies came and went without incident. Meanwhile, the Occupy Whatever movement have been raping and pillaging their way through our cities like the whiniest most entitled barbarian horde in the history of the world to very little outrage at all from those same MSM outlets. This week, in New Haven, there was another Occupy rape this week in New Haven about which you will hear little. Instead, the news networks and major newspapers will run stories about the fictitious Republican War on Women rather than report critically about the the progressive War on Women that has already done far more damage to far more women than any health insurance plan issued by any Catholic university.

And the Democratic Party condones it all.

Here’s a test. Chris Rock, an outspoken progressive entertainer, attacked a woman who was filming him when Jason Mattera confronted him about his contention that the Tea Parties are racist. Rock attacked the woman, but retreated behind his bodyguards to talk smack to Jason. Clearly, this is worse than any use of the word “slut” by Rush Limbaugh, an outspoken conservative entertainer, but you won’t hear about it on CNN or MS-NBC tonight. It doesn’t fit the pre-written “Republicans hate women” narrative, and so they will ignore it.

That’s simply intolerable.

And now, links!

I don’t know how I missed this. Ed Driscoll celebrated the tenth anniversary of his blog on March 1st! He is one of the old guard but unlike so many, he still brings great stuff every single day. Good on you, Ed!
Hand off Bruce Wayne, you progressive ninnes! Batman is one of us!
Could Mad Mahmoud be impeached? Oddly enough, what’s getting him in trouble is not the wholesale slaughter of the Iranian people, but a bad economy.
Here are the four words that could sum up Barack Obama’s presidency perfectly.
What is it with Democrats and their love for anti-Democratic, Jew-hating tyrants?
I’d say a few people at Planned Parenthood need to go to jail, if this story of massive Medicare fraud is true. In the meantime, let’s just go ahead and pull all their federal funding.
Why do the Samoans not want a classy ambassador in Vanuatu?
How about a dust devil that’s half a mile tall and on Mars? Very cool.
Amazon just kicked its Prime Instant service up a few more notches with a deal that will bring its customers Discovery Channel programming. Mythbusters marathons away! (via Techmeme)
Men, if you truly want to woo a woman, learn to write like this. (via Neatorama)

The Delivery Presents – The Progressive Battle Plan

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 10:18 AM PDT

It is an act of rank journalistic malfeasance that most of America had not heard of Derrick Bell, the father of one of the most noxious racist philosophies ever created, before last week. I did the job in Episode 138 the MSM still refuses to do, but I did a bit more than that. Bell’s belief that America is irredeemably flawed and must be torn down and remade is the foundation of almost everything the Obama administration has done. It even explains why the President is hell-bent on high gas prices, even in an election year. The thing is, this isn’t magic. Any of the news networks could work this stuff out and put it in a 30 minute show. Any newspaper could write a mid-length article about it. They don’t because they want the same thing that Barack Obama and Derrick Bell want: a “fundamental change” of the America that is to Progressive American Paradise. This is war, and I’ll tell you the left-wing battle plan, in plan calm English. Take notes.

Most of you already know that I’ve signed on with Michelle Malkin’s newest project Twitchy.com. In the second half, I explain what it is, how I came to be involved in it, and why you should visit the site so often that all the site meters explode and the web masters run around tearing out their hair in apocalyptic despair. I also talk about one of my favorite subjects — social media — and add a codicil to my Two Rules of Social Media. You do remember the rules, right? Well, if you’ve forgotten, I’ll get you up to speed.

One last thing. Next week, I’ll have THE Fingers Malloy on the show. Fingers is a friend, a brilliant funny guy, and one of the best natural radio/podcast talents I’ve ever met. It’s going to be fun.

The Delivery - Episode 138

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Rabu, 14 Maret 2012

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Happy Pi Day, 2012

Posted: 14 Mar 2012 07:33 AM PDT

Yes, folks, the time has come to celebrate our favorite mathematical constant, a number that is both transcendental and irrational, the number that you can calculate by using only Fibonacci numbers (another mathematical constant!). Today is Pi Day!

If you are a math geek, you have probably passed out right now from the sheer joy of the day. If you aren’t, you might be wondering how close you are to becoming a math geek. It really can sneak up on you, as I have learned over the years. One day, you barely think about math at all; the next day, you calculate the amount of change you should get back for your Big Gulp and bag of chips and feel a rush of glee when you get the answer before the cashier. Even better, you find yourself playing with sports statistics for fun! Trust me, this can happen slowly over a number of years. Before you know it, you’ll find yourself drawing rectangles on a piece of paper to see if your eye is good enough to replicate the golden ratio or taking this Pi Day math challenge on your lunch break. It can happen.

Today is also the blog anniversary of my friend Obi’s Sister, so when you take a break from your mathematical amusements, go on over and wish her a great day!

Selasa, 13 Maret 2012

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – The “I Am Only One Man” Edition

Posted: 12 Mar 2012 11:53 AM PDT

If you haven’t seen a post at The Shack for a few days, you can be sure that another Clearing the Browser Tabs post is on its way. Trust me, the lack of output hasn’t been due to the dreaded Blogger Malaise, but a very busy schedule, a good change of attitude, and a case of my biting off just the tinest bit more than I can comfortably chew. Right now, on my plate are:

My new gig at Twitchy.com, which is presently part-time but which has consumed a good chunk of my time as we went from concept to actual launch.
My writing for Ending Spending, which I expect to become far more voluminous in the very near future.
Setting schemes and dreams about The Delivery into concrete action. I have some big plans for the show and they all started to hit paper over the past month.
At least one social media proposal that will, if the intended target goes for it, result in actual paying work.

Put that on top of my full-time job and time with my friends and family and, well, blogging doesn’t get a lot of time. The good news is that posts I might have simply dashed off in the past now get more time to simmer in my head, which has resulted in better posts. So there’s that.

And now, links!

BREAKING: Mill Maher is a profoundly uneducated tool. Okay, I guess that’s not exactly breaking news. It’s more like saying the sun rose again in the east this morning. Birds gotta fly; cats gotta sing; Bill Maher’s gotta beclown himself.
Remember what our government said when it launched the Social Security program? It sure as heck doesn’t.
I can’t remember a Mark Steyn column I enjoyed more than his latest, on the Fluked Up Slutroversy and the Democrats’ War on Faith.
Hurry up and spend hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t have on wasteful government boondoggles, says…the Republican leadership.
What is the real unemployment rate? It’s certainly not what the administration says, which is not exactly a surprise now is it?
Self publishing is kind of a nuisance, found Shamus Young (whose book you really should buy), but it still beats going the traditional route.

Jumat, 09 Maret 2012

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The Delivery Presents – Sluts, Shame, and Sharing

Posted: 08 Mar 2012 01:37 PM PST

If you don’t like it when I yell, you’ll probably want to skip past the first half of Episode 137. I waded into the Sandra Fluke Slutroversy and didn’t have a lot of fluffy-bunny-and-unicorns things to say about it. The entire controversy rests on a pile of falsehoods stacked up by Democrats who care a lot more about power than they do about women and the fecklessness of Republicans who curl up in the fetal position any time a Democrat glances at them in an aggressive fashion. In the middle is Rush Limbaugh, a man I respect greatly who has earned far more respect from conservatives than he’s gotten the past couple of weeks. As usual, I was — am — more disappointed by the ninnies on the right than I am the predictable dishonesty of the left.

In the second half, I talked about Andrew Breitbart and how he all but took conservative new media on his shoulders and carried up a great distance up the Mountain of Mainstream Respectability. I know it’d odd to see “respectability” in the same sentence as “Breitbart”, especially since he seemed to care so little about how the mainstream media, mainstream culture, or mainstream Republicans saw him, but it’s true. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of people in conservative new media today who would not be where they are if not for Andrew Breitbart’s ambition and generosity. Thanks to the work he did, and how he went about his work, we in new media have access to places and people we did not have before he hit the scene. For that, I can not thank him nearly enough.

The Delivery - Episode 137

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Kamis, 08 Maret 2012

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Introducing My New Hotness, Twitchy.com.

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 04:42 PM PST

For the past couple of months, I’ve been working with a bunch of exceptional people on a project I’ve not been able to talk about, even though I’ve really wanted to shout about it from the rooftops. Today, I can shout a bit.

Leading new media entrepreneur Michelle Malkin today announced the launch of TWITCHY.COM, a ground-breaking entrant in the Twitter curation/aggregation space. The founder of powerhouse blogs MichelleMalkin.com (established 2004) and HotAir.com (established 2006 and sold to Salem Communications in 2010) has recruited a savvy team of editors from across the country to staff the new must-read website.

"TWITCHY.COM is a ground-breaking Twitter curation site powered by a kinetic staff of social media junkies," Malkin said. "We're mining Twitter to bring you 'who said what' in U.S. politics, global news, sports, entertainment, media, and breaking news 24/7."

Malkin added: "If it's news, TWITCHY.COM is on it. If it should be news, TWITCHY.COM is ahead of it."

Here’s how it works. All day, every day, Twitchy has at least one editor scouring Twitter for the best tweets, the breaking news, the quirky wonderful stuff that makes Twitter such a great platform. Whatever they find, they post to Twitchy. You go there and enjoy it all. Simple, no?

I’m a contributor to the site, so I’ll be taking my turn behind the wheel and I promise you, I’ll find you the very best stuff I can. Michelle has assembled a crew very savvy in social media (and don’t you just like the phrase “kinetic staff of social media junkies”?) and we’ve already put up a ton of great posts for your perusal.

Go visit Twitchy. Bookmark it. Share it with your friends. It’s going to be a big deal, I think, and you’ll be glad you got in on it when it was brand new.

Rabu, 07 Maret 2012

Clipping blog

The Constitution According to Kos, or How Conservatives are Like Earworms

Posted: 07 Mar 2012 05:45 AM PST

What it is with progressives and the Constitution? I don’t mean the usual progressive problem with the supreme law of our land, namely that it doesn’t let them render Republicans into a bland but nutritious gruel with which to feed the unwashed masses who will live in their Shining Utopia. I mean the problem with those tricky little black marks on the page that we call words.

Remember this little bon mot from Washington Post super-columnist and MS-NBC hired gum-flapper Ezra Klein not a few months ago? He was positively flummoxed that people could actually understand the words of the Constitution because they were written over a hundred years ago. Seriously. Hit the link and see for yourself. Despite that, the WaPo actually gave him his own staff of writers over which he exercises some level of control, possibly a level that ensures they only use language invented after 1913. I’m not quite sure how he found such a full stable of writers fluent in Esperanto, but it sure is a relief that he gets their newfangled language translated into English.

Tonight, another progressive has met the Constitution and been found baffled. Markos Moulitsas, better known at Kos, is what you might call a kingmaker in Democratic circles. Well, you might call him that if he had any great success with winning candidates. He has, however, written a book or three and did start the largest progressive-leaning website in the universe. His Netroots Nation convention draws the cream of the Democratic crop every year and it’s pretty much routine for would-be Democratic officeholders to pay obeisance to him.

Last night, Kingmaker Markos bestrode Twitter like a colossus as he watched the Super Tuesday returns and speeches roll in — a horribly confused and angry colossus who just couldn’t restrain himself from jumping onto twitter and delivering a proper civics lesson to the world:

Santorum scoffs at notion that gov’t creates rights. In other words, he doesn’t believe in the US Constitution

about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@markos

Markos Moulitsas

Wha…? Why the gall of Rick Santorum to interpret the Constitution in that way! And if we didn’t quite understand his meaning, he extended and revised his remark.

Dear Cons, show me where in the Constitution is god mentioned. In fact, it states “We the people” as the source of the rights (Preamble)

about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@markos

Markos Moulitsas

Now, I know what you might be thinking. Wha? God? “We the people”? What the heck is he talking about? Why are you making me pay attention to this, Jimmie? I hate you! Let me see if I can help out. See, Markos is a progressive, and they believe that the government is the people and the people are the government. So when, for instance, the government rifles through a little girls lunchbox, confiscates her home-made nutritious lunch, and substitutes it with a processed cafeteria special, that’s a good thing because it’s really not the government doing it to us, it’s us doing it to us and we’d never do anything to us that’s wrong. The only exception to this rule is if Republicans run the government. In that case, the government is still us, but it’s a bad part of us, like cancer or that part of our brain that can’t help but sing along when Escape (The Piña Colada Song) comes on the radio. So we have to fight it, like white cells fight Rupert Holmes or something. It gets a bit hazy, but it boils down to this: the government is us, so whatever it does is good, unless it does something progressives don’t like, then it’s bad.

Of course, there’s the bit where Markos think he’s one of the brilliant few who should run the government because we the people aren’t quite bright enough to figure things out for ourselves, but never you worry your pretty head about that. He’ll take good care of us when he’s in charge.

The extension of this thought is that, as Moulitsas said, we don’t have any rights that the government doesn’t give us. This makes a weird bit of sense when you think about it (but, please, don’t think about it long. I can’t be held responsible for any lasting brain damage). The government has to give us our rights because if it doesn’t, who else will? Some strange Sky Being? A “Creator”. Don’t be silly! It only stands to reason that the government must give us rights, and since we’re the government, then what’s really happening is that we’re giving ourselves rights, which is quite nice, when you think of it.

Unfortunately for Moulitsas, though, that flies directly in the face of what our Founders actually believed when they wrote the Constitution. In order to get a view of Constitutional rights as exactly backwards as his, you’d have to believe the Declaration of Independence which, acting as the Preamble to the Preamble outlined exactly what power “we the people” had, was unconnected to the Constitution in any way. I won’t quote all the relevant parts of the Declaration of Independence that backstop “we the people”, but Sooper Mexican did a very nice job of finding the good parts so check out his post (or better yet, forward it to Moulitsas because he obviously hasn’t read it in a while). Really, what Moulitsas wants you to believe is “the governed” of the Declaration of Independence who give their consent so that governments may have just power to secure their rights are not at all the same as “the people” of the Constitution.

That’s simply a bizarre view of history that only a committed (and by that, I mean one who has been struck sharply on the head by a brick) progressive could hold. But never let it be said that ol’ Kos isn’t completely committed to his ideology, no matter how brainless it appears.

I know. That “brainless” bit seemed a bit unfair, didn’t it? Well, let me leave you with one more Kos tweet, this at the end of his little Constitutional lesson.

So what I have learned today — conservatives haven’t read the Constitution.

about 12 hours ago via TweetDeck ReplyRetweetFavorite

@markos

Markos Moulitsas

If anything, I went too light him. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a song in my head…something about getting caught in the rain.