Monday, June 17, 2013

Samantha Power: The Quintessential 'Blame America First'-er

Big Peace   "The United Nations has long been a cesspool of hostility towards the United States, Israel, and freedom more generally. It is dominated by those who promote and protect our enemies’ interests, while undermining ours. Worse yet, we pay much of the UN’s budget.

"Past presidents have responded to this travesty by sending ambassadors to the UN who unapologetically challenged that agenda.....

"It is, therefore, a particularly repugnant irony that President Obama wants to entrust Dr. Kirkpatrick’s former post to Samantha Power, a woman who epitomizes the left-wing partisans President Reagan’s ambassador famously characterized as the “Blame America First crowd.” "

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Springsteen writes for the wrong generation

I love Bruce Springsteen's music and can listen to it all day, many songs making me stop to just enjoy the experience of listening to them, their refrains bouncing around in my head for hours afterward.

But then I pay attention to what the man is saying.

One song such as this is "American Land", a real stem-winder of a song that stirs the emotions and pride in American history through each verse. Until this stanza:
They died building the railroads, worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're dyin' now
The hands that built the country we're always trying to keep down
It was just not in the man to give our nation untainted praise.

There was a video some time back of Springsteen doing solo acoustic on a British street and asking people to make requests. If only someone could have said to him, "Man I love anything you do as long as you aren't trashing our country!"

The man just sees a different America and I don't know where he gets his impressions. Perhaps it is when he leaves his mega-million dollar estate through its locked gates to rub elbows with Pete Seeger, Bill Ayres, Reverends Wright and Sharpton, along with other liberal and entertainment elites.

Whomever has influenced "The Boss", the Great Depression is the America Springsteen visualizes and writes about, making him the darling of the guilt-ridden limousine liberals:
 
It was a good career choice because he is the darling of the left, adored in Hollywood, university campuses, liberal millionaires and the entertainment industry around the world. A musical Howard Zinn, if I may.
 
It would be courageous but not a good career move for Springsteen to write about the America we have seen all too often today:
Tom Joad would be disgusted
 
Yet here is the real story; the decline of a great nation that has always confessed its sins and worked to make them right, yet all the while being the bulwark oppressed nations rush to for comfort and protection.
 
Sadly, I do feel our nation and it's principles have generally been superior to those of most of her inhabitants. That was true during slavery and Jim Crow and is so now in our present culture which calls  good evil and evil good  

This twenty-first century decline of America is the stuff of songs, but there seems to be nobody capable of writing them, including Bruce Springsteen.
Bill Hayden, the Tunnel Dweller
 

Hillary Clinton's Legacy of Scandal; If you read nothing else, be sure to read THIS


American Thinker  "For as long as Hillary Clinton has been on the national  scene, she has left a path of destruction and wreckage in her wake that is both impressive and terrible to behold.  She is a testament to the extent of damage that can be done by one person determined to conquer everything before her in the quest for unlimited power and self-gratification.  The only prize left to her in American politics is the presidency, which she has always felt is hers by right.  Indeed, she would have attained it were it not for the upstart community organizer, a fellow admirer of Saul Alinsky, who spoke in volumes but said nothing. 

"While such determination comes at a staggering cost, we should remind ourselves that the bill is never paid by Mrs. Clinton or her equally arrogant husband."   Read more:
....
We should be grateful as a nation for the gift of foresight.  May it finally enlighten those who so far have proved poor excuses for sensible American citizens. Via Lucianne

Just sayin'


Four Words to Watch in the Immigration Debate

The Senate Judiciary Committee works on the immigration bill.

Heritage  "The Senate will begin debate on the Gang of Eight’s immigration proposal next week. Here are four words to watch out for as the Senators make their case—and warnings about what they might mean."
....
"Beware the word “comprehensive.” As Meese notes above, the amnesty of 1986 was also called a “comprehensive” approach to immigration reform. It doesn’t work, and it’s not what we need. We need a separate, step-by-step approach to immigration reform. An approach that works—that the American people can trust—would start with reforming the legal immigration system and enforcing the security measures that are supposed to be in place."

Don't get the impression that we are discontented, but...

Hat tip to Larry Criteser, Eugene, Oregon

The US as illustrated by Jerusalem Post cartoonist

Klueless Kerry
Obama's Israel visit;
 "Okay, so the crowds weren't quite as thin as depicted here--but I couldn't help making a joke about the terrible timing. (Seriously, dropping by for a state visit and snarling all the road traffic outside and within the capital at the height of holiday shopping time? Not cool.)"
 
 
Syria And The American Orchestra
 
So much for the world respecting us since 2008
 

Evolution of the American Left

Pelosi On Obamacare: “I Don’t Remember Saying That Everybody Would Have A Lower Premium” – Pelosi In 2012: “Everybody Will Have Lower Rates”…

Weasel Zippers  If you can't defend a position, just talk it to death.

From the Weekly Standard:  "At a Thursday afternoon press conference, Nancy Pelosi responded to news that, contrary to earlier claims by Barack Obama and Pelosi herself, Obamacare will cause health insurance premiums to rise sharply for many people who purchase their own insurance in the individual market.

""I don't remember saying that everybody in the country would have a lower premium," Pelosi said in response to a question from THE WEEKLY STANDARD. But during last year's presidential campaign, Pelosi said that because of Obamacare "everybody will have lower rates." Pelosi, the House minority leader, made the comment during a July 1, 2012 appearance on Meet the Press:"....

Under Obamacare, only people under the age of 30 can participate in the slightly cheaper catastrophic plan. So if you’re 40, your cheapest option is the bronze plan. In California, the median price of a bronze plan for a 40-year-old male non-smoker will be $261.
But on eHealthInsurance, the median cost of the five cheapest plans was $121. That is, Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an average of 116 percent.


Pelosi did not remember saying this?

Source for this post was Nincompoopery, at Always On Watch

An Administration of Liars or Incompetents, Perhaps Both

Conservative Daily News  "It’s pretty pathetic how many in government service these days provide living proof of the validity of the Peter Principle, which asserts, “Everyone rises to the level of their incompetence.” Either that, or they’re liars."
....
Either the entire administration is clueless, incompetent, and refuses to accept responsibility for anything, or they’re all liars. Either way, we clearly have an out-of-control government, too large and unwieldy to manage, and a gaggle of politicians and bureaucrats too incompetent or dishonest to run it.

The Politics of Feeling

The Other McCain
“You can’t do that.”
   But it makes me feel good.
“It’s against the law.”
   Then we should change the law.
“Why?”
   Because it makes me feel good.
“Who cares about your feelings?”
   Hater.
 
...."You are a “hater” if you dispute the benefits of affirmative action — not because facts and logic contradict your argument, but because some people have convinced themselves that this policy is a reflection of their value as human beings. Thus, no matter how wrong-headed the policy or how harmful its results, your opposition is indicted as unfair because you’re making people feel bad — you hater!
"Beyond that, however, is the point that Thomas Sowell hammers home in The Vision of the Anointed, namely that liberalism is about making liberals feel good about themselves or, as the book’s subtitle explains, Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy."
....
"One might even imagine, to listen to the arguments of the Open Borders Lobby, that laws against racial discrimination actually mandate that every American must love Mexicans, or else be guilty of thought-crimes.

"After listening to these pious lectures a while, you can be forgiven if you feel the urge to scream at your television: “BUT THEY’RE FOREIGNERS WHO ARE BREAKING OUR LAWS!” "
Hat tip to Jackie Wellfonder at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook