The Confessions of a Confused Misfit

Hey, here's a good question: can an Egyptian in this country claim "African-American" status to get benefits? If not, why not?
Mr. Hanson ponders this along with other demographic conundrums, such as "the rich", taxes, and race in this column:
Victor Davis Hanson

But what we cannot stomach is all the sermonizing about “fair share” and “play by the rules” and “the one percent” from those who seek to be exempt from their own rhetoric. Can’t Warren Buffett keep quiet and just leave his $50 billion to his heirs — and let the wonderful federal government do what it must with a $30 billion estate tax on his earnings? Can Bill Gates’ people really manage the Buffett $50 billion better than HUD or HHS? And if so, why a HUD or HHS? His estate will dodge more tax liabilities than what millions of his proverbial overtaxed secretaries pay. Why isn’t George Soros one of the despised money speculators of the sort that Occupy Wall Street was enraged about? Isn’t trying to break the Bank of England a bit too much money-grubbing? So weird what constitutes good and bad riches!

Does ANYBODY in this country understand what is happening while Democrats are in charge?

Alan Caruba, at Warning Signs is concerned that the entire world is crashing down around this nation, economically and strategically. I agree and place the blame on the American voters who chose Obama and Democrats to govern us.
I also fear- with good reason- that had we elected Republicans, these same Obamites would have made America ungovernable by conservatives.
Caruba writes:

....I suspect many have not recovered from the jolt of the November elections that renewed President Obama’s hold on the Oval Office.

I surely have not. I spent the last four years devoting lots of thought to the damage Obama was inflicting on the economy and, by extension, the lives of Americans. So, on this Friday, the volume of chatter about the looming “fiscal cliff” is increasing with everyone, Washington insiders and observers, all fervently hoping for “a last minute deal” to somehow avoid “taxamegon”, the greatest increase in taxes ever.
At this point, I don’t see a deal in the works. Simply put, Obama has long since demonstrated he has no capacity for compromise....

He then goes on to discuss the UN and it's takeover of our sovereignty. The impression one comes away with is that Obama is incapable of compromise with American opponents, but will yield anything and everything to other nations. Then Caruba concludes:

This Friday ushers in a weekend filled with the usual activities we enjoy and it occurs in a nation whose leaders seem unable to resolve the greatest debt the nation has ever had with the Democrats calling for higher taxation and the Republicans calling for cuts to spending. We have been here before in the 1930s during what has since been called the Great Depression.

Pearl Harbor remembrance

24 Moving Photos From The 71st Anniversary of Pearl Harbor  "Veterans of the bombing gathered today in Hawaii to remember the 2,400 Americans who lost their lives in the attack 71 years ago. "

A Pearl Harbor survivor's incredible story   "For 70 years Glenn Lane eagerly shared his memories of the Japanese ambush on Pearl Harbor with friends, family, schoolchildren and anyone else who wanted to hear the tale of how he survived attacks on two battleships that fateful day.

" "He loved to share his story and he remembered every minute detail as if it happened yesterday," Lane's youngest daughter, Trish Anderson, recently recalled.
"Today's anniversary of the surprise attack that pushed the United States into World War II is the first since Lane died a few days after the 2011 remembrance. But Lane and his connection to the famed U.S.S. Arizona are permanently enshrined on the ship and the memorial that sits in the waters of Pearl Harbor.
" "He never called himself a hero," Anderson said. "People would always go, 'oh, you're such a hero.' And he said, 'no, the heroes are still down in the ship.'"
"Today, that ship also includes Lane, who in September was interred in the Arizona's number four gun turret. He is at rest with the sailors who died during the attack and 35 others survivors who like Lane asked to be reunited eternally with their shipmates. His name is now inscribed in the memorial’s white marble."

Krauthammer; It’s nothing but a power play

Charles Krauthammer  "Let’s understand President Obama’s strategy in the “fiscal cliff” negotiations. It has nothing to do with economics or real fiscal reform. This is entirely about politics. It’s Phase 2 of the 2012 campaign. The election returned him to office. The fiscal cliff negotiations are designed to break the Republican opposition and grant him political supremacy, something he thinks he earned with his landslide 2.8-point victory margin on Election Day.

"This is why he sent Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to the Republicans to convey not a negotiating offer but a demand for unconditional surrender. "
But wait! Obama wasn't finished with his humiliation of Boehner and the rest of us who voted against this administration:
"Alas, Boehner gave again, coming back a week later with spending-cut suggestions — as demanded by Geithner — only to have them dismissed with a wave of the hand."

Costas: The Worm Squirms

Russ Vaughn  "Bob Costas, is demonstrating more feints and jukes than the NFL's best running backs and probably wishing he could have a replay of his Sunday night miss-step. In commenting on the murder/suicide of Kansas City player, Jovan Belcher, Costas, who appeared to call for stricter gun control measures in his half-time editorial, got sacked in his own backfield last night by Bill O'Reilly. Costas, whose fearful demeanor in his appearance on O'Reilly's show, indicated that he was most likely on a corporate-called play of penance, dictated and demanded by his network masters, was far too easily trapped in his own end zone by former quarterback, O'Reilly, with a quite simple play."

Boehner vs. the Bully, um ...Pulpit

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Obama Takes it to the American People  ..."A Twitter mob, riled up by envy and inspired by misinformation, influencing lawmakers to take money from the pockets of others to put into theirs, might not fit the image of a bloodthirsty mob during the French Revolution, but it nevertheless subverts our Constitutional republic."

Let Obama Leap Off the Fiscal Cliff Alone  It ain't gonna happen, but I do like this idea of televising the debt negotiations.

 "While the TV cameras are humming, Boehner should recognize the President built his campaign around raising taxes and voters supported that agenda. Boehner should explain that although Republicans disagree and believe Obama’s policies will plunge the nation back into a recession, if not depression, the people have spoken and Republicans will not obstruct him in any way.
"Then — as Dante wrote about denizens of one level of the Inferno — we let Obama be himself with a vengeance. Republicans simply vote ‘present’ and, following the Obamacare precedent, the President’s socialistic, dangerous policy passes without a single Republican vote.
"We lose tactically in the short run, but we win strategically in the long run. Negotiating minor cuts at the margin now not only won’t be a victory, it will allow Obama — and his Hallelujah Chorus in the media — to blame the failure of his fiscal policy on Republicans. That is impossible if Obama gets his way."

Keith Olbermann tells World Champion/ESPY Winner/Iraq Veteran/Amputee JR Salzman he is “embarrassing the military”

This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here  This is a Twitter fight begun when J.R. Saltzman tweeted the first comment about Bob Costas. Olbermann saw it and - as you might expect - took offense loudly.  My thanks to the military blog Blackfive for passing this along.

Be sure to check out the comments to all this at the bottom of the link.

The media and the administration gang up on conservatives

'2016' Oscar Snub Has Filmmakers Claiming Political Bias "Gerald Molen, who produced the Academy Award-winning 'Schindler's List,' said the box-office success of the anti-Obama documentary proves the film was a hit: "The action confirms my opinion that the bias against anything from a conservative point of view is dead on arrival in Hollywood." "

Roger L. Simon: Reclaiming the Culture  "As the late — and increasingly lamented — Andrew Breitbart pointed out repeatedly, “Politics is downstream from culture.”
"Just how downstream we saw in this year’s election. Virtually every accusation made by the left toward Republicans and conservatives (sexism, racism, greed, etc.) was prepared and nurtured in the realm of culture. That was the earth in which the lies grew and prospered. And those lies, more than any facts or policies, were responsible for a liberal victory in a year — with unemployment at 8 percent and a deficit at 16 trillion — that should have been a Republican rout."
Emphasis added.
Mr. Simon also links us to the Ron Radosh column:  It’s the Culture, Stupid: Facing the Long Road Ahead, excerpted below:

Imagine how many television viewers, many of whom know virtually nothing about how we got to where we are, will learn from this expertly edited documentary how and why the United States is basically an evil nation, on the wrong course, and supported the wrong side in all foreign policy crises throughout its modern history. We cannot disregard the effect this kind of miseducation has on the knowledge of our fellow citizens. Do you wonder why the polls show that most Americans think Barack Obama’s foreign policy the past four years was successful? It is because they are a generation educated from “historians” like the late Howard Zinn, political theorists like the linguist Noam Chomsky, and now from filmmaker Stone and his historian co-author, Peter Kuznick.

Democrats’ “Stop or I’ll shoot myself” negotiating strategy working like a charm
"Yet the GOP actually has several aces in the hole – the only reason they are taking the submissive role in the Fifty Shades of the Fiscal Cliff playing out before us is that they chose to assume it. Maybe Obama has a mandate, but so do they. They should be exercising it.

"Their first step is to stop showing fear and to start counter-attacking. "...

MSNBC Host Alex Wagner: “Republicans Will Stand On Your Neck And Then Stab You In The Eye”…    "New tone."

Unhinged Van Jones: Obama’s “Treasonous” Opponents Want To “Let The Bodies Pile Up On The Beach”…

MSNBC's Scarborough: Can't Expect Obama to be 'Gracious' After Being Treated Like a 'Second Class Citizen'    Is this what came out of that MSNBC-Obama meeting?

Thomas Sowell writes: Obama Plays Chicken  "His priority is to increase government, and he’ll sacrifice the economy for it. ""One of the big advantages that President Obama has, as he plays “chicken” with congressional Republicans along the “fiscal cliff,” is that he is a master of the plausible lie, which will never be exposed by the mainstream media — nor, apparently, by the Republicans."

THE TRUE DISCIPLE OF SAUL ALINSKY  "Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s opening bid to Speaker John Boehner, a demand for $1.6 trillion in new taxes, was not meant as a serious offer. It was an ultimatum couched in an insult. Translation:

We won the election. We have the whip hand. Not only are you going to sign on to higher tax rates and higher tax revenues, we are going to rub your Tea Party noses in your coming capitulation.”

Famous Fox News faces 'get dumped off air'; 'Reality-denying predictions became a punch line'

WND  " If you’re used to watching Fox News, you may notice a lot less face time by political analysts Karl Rove and Dick Morris.

"New York Magazine is reporting the top-rated cable-news network is doing some “post-election soul searching,” and Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, is changing the characters who appear as talking heads on the air.

" “According to multiple Fox sources, Ailes has issued a new directive to his staff,” reports Gabriel Sherman of New York Magazine. “He wants the faces associated with the election off the air – for now. For Karl Rove and Dick Morris – a pair of pundits perhaps most closely aligned with Fox’s anti-Obama campaign – Ailes’s orders mean new rules.”

"Among the reported new rules is a mandate from Fox News programming chief Bill Shine that producers receive permission before booking Rove or Morris for an appearance."

....

"Dick Morris had famously, and wrongly, predicted that Romney would win the election in a landslide, and Ailes was said to be less than thrilled when Rove disputed his own network’s call that Obama won the state of Ohio, and thus, the presidential race."

This just in: Karl Rove returns to Fox News

It's that time of year once more: bells, tinsel, carols, stories about the suppression of Christmas

Seniors decry ban on Christmas tree in their complex in Newhall

"Residents in a Newhall senior apartment complex are protesting an order from management to remove their beloved Christmas tree from the community room because, they were told, it's a religious symbol. "
...."We could put out Easter baskets, have turkey for Thanksgiving but no tree for Christmas because it has Christ's name in the beginning of Christmas," Johnson said.

"Frances Schaeffer, who is Jewish, said she doesn't understand the property management company's stance.
"This tree is a symbol of reverence that we can all enjoy regardless of our religious beliefs," she said.

Gov. Lincoln Chafee: It's Not 'Tradition' to Call It a Christmas Tree "“Governor Chafee, his famous line, which he says about everything, is that ‘times are changing.’ He said times are changing and he wants to be politically correct. Well, with me political correctness doesn’t really work,” Costa told CNSNews.com.

"This is the second year that Chafee has called the Christmas tree in the Rhode Island State House a “holiday tree.” In 2011, protesters sang “O Christmas Tree" there during the ceremonial tree lighting."

Calif. Teachers Union Releases Cartoon Video Featuring ‘The Rich’ Urinating on the Poor

Heritage referred us to this post from The Blaze
"A new animated video released by the California Federation of Teachers shows the rich “1 percent” urinating on and stealing money from the less fortunate and middle class. The purpose of the video is to explain “economic inequality” and the need for wealthy people to pay their “fair share of taxes.”
"The video argues that the rich got richer by evading taxes and using loopholes to hold onto their money. The union claims this is why Congress needs to repeal Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.
''Narrated by actor Ed Asner, the full video is currently featured on the official California Federal Teachers website." (Video at this link)

"CFT Communications Director Fred Glass, who wrote and directed the video, told TheBlaze the cartoon is not intended for children.
"“I love animation and I believe it is an effective way of communicating ideas that is a little different,” he said, adding that there are no plans to show the video in California classrooms."

Professor Jacobson at Legal Insurrection made this statement that I cannot disagree with: When Soviet-style propaganda comes to America, it will be published by the California Federation of Teachers and narrated by Ed Asner
"The video is reminiscent of Soviet anti-capitalist propaganda cartoons, with gross caricatures of voracious rich people feeding off the poor:"

Prof Jacobson concludes with this ominous prediction:

As we sort through where and how this country lost its way, at least one of the roads leads to the California Federation of Teachers, and another road to Hollywood.

Founding Father Advice

Hat tip to OregonTeaParty