What It's Like to be a Conservative Professor

Robert Oscar Lopez  "You may ask, where are they? I can't tell you. The academic right simply doesn't exist. Conservative professors are frightened, invisible, and often embarrassed. Ideological exile is scary. It gets tiring when colleagues ask you to defend birthers, the Westboro Baptist Church, Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, George Zimmerman, and David Horowitz before you've even had your morning coffee, especially when they are going to vote on your tenure.  The ignorant asides about Fox News are usually thrown in during department meetings, somewhere between announcements of the latest conference about homosexuality and elections to the personnel review committee.  Hold your tongue and count to ten, then scream as you jog at dawn the next day.
...."The response from a right-wing Army wife: "Your thanks for being a teacher is your paycheck and your pension. Shut up and be grateful."

"Elsewhere, a retired Air Force officer wrote, "I detest people like you."

"That's what it's like to be a conservative professor."

Robert Oscar Lopez teaches American literature and Classics at CSU Northridge. His book, Colorful Conservative: American Conversations with the Ancients from Wheatley to Whitman, came out in 2011.



Prof Lopez wrote this follow-up a few days later: A gigantic thank you from a conservative professor  "In reality, the shopkeepers and petty bourgeois tradesmen who put Margaret Thatcher in power in the UK exist in a parallel form in the US, and they are not going to Harvard or even Berkeley. They are at state schools where teaching is more important than research. Conservatives must not overlook universities like mine - CSU Northridge - where there are veterans, home-schooled evangelicals, recent immigrants from socially conservative countries like South Korea and the Philippines. These will be the lifeblood of the next right that rises."

http://www.funnytimes.com/playground/cartoon.php?id=9241#.T7RHhUV5GSo

Sacrificial scams

Ann Coulter "When government employees mobbed the state capitol in Wisconsin last year, the upside was: They got to bully people. The downside: Voters finally found out what these public servants were being paid. 
"Their compensation included not only straight salary, but also lavish overtime benefits, pensions, health care plans, sick days and vacation time (most of which they spent protesting)." 

http://commonsenselogic.blogspot.com/2009/09/cartoon-of-day-find-government-worker.html

...."Former representative and amateur home pornographer Anthony Weiner was a member of Congress until he resigned last June in order to spend more time with his hard drive. He will probably end up collecting about a million dollars from his 80 percent taxpayer-funded government pension. 

"These are the "1 percent" deserving of the public's wrath: We're paying their salaries. We weren't taxed to pay Mitt Romney's salary at Bain Capital. We aren't taxed to pay the salaries of Jamie Dimon or Alex Rodriguez. Anthony Weiner? Him, we pay for. 

"Government employees expect to live like something out of the czar's court -- and then have us admire them as if they're Rosa Parks." 

President Me

Morning Bell  "Reflecting on his two terms in office, President George W. Bush said in 2010, “You realize you’re not it. You’re a part of something bigger than yourself.”

"This is a sentiment President Barack Obama did not inherit from his predecessor. Over the past month we have witnessed several displays of arrogant power emanating from our White House, emphasizing fealty to a person over the integrity of an American institution. Some are more serious than others. 

"First, this week it was discovered that White House staff had edited the biographies of many past presidents on whitehouse.gov to include a bullet point or two inserting President Obama into each historical narrative.

"For example, while President Calvin Coolidge had been the first president to make a public radio address, President Obama is on LinkedIn; and while Social Security was introduced by President Roosevelt, under President Obama it still exists. But in a far more egregious example, they incorrectly added to President Ronald Reagan’s biography:

“In a June 28, 1985 speech Reagan called for a fairer tax code, one where a multi-millionaire did not have a lower tax rate than his secretary. Today, President Obama is calling for the same with the Buffett Rule.”

 http://terrellaftermath.com/

"Finally, President Obama insinuated yesterday that if you don’t support his policies, it’s not due to philosophical differences, but because of his name. Answering a question on The View about tight polls, he said: “When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always going to be tight. Barack 
Hussein Obama.”

"Any person selected to the highest office in the land is bound to indulge a small degree of narcissism. But when it permeates the entire attitude and culture of the executive branch, it begins to become a problem. No president is larger than the presidency."

 Thomas Lifson: Team Obama's latest exploding cigar

Imagine the emotional insecurities of a grown man who would have henchman find and gratuitously insert even the faintest link between this 44th president and almost every president back to Calvin Coolidge --"On Feb. 22, 1924 Calvin Coolidge became the first president to make a public radio address to the American people.....President Obama became the first president to hold virtual gatherings and town halls."

Naturally Neal Boortz has an opinion on all this: Our narcissist in chief  "Do you remember the sound bite I’ve played on the air many time?  “I directed, I made the decision, I instructed, I, I, I …”  He’s a man who named his own dog after himself: BO!  He coined the latest youth generation that thrust him into the White House as Gen 44, as in the 44^th president.  The list goes on and on. 

"But the latest news takes this love of self from the ridiculous to the asinine."

Back and to the Left: The L.A. Times Analyzes a Police Shooting

JACK DUNPHY    "Imagine working in an occupation in which your most important decisions were evaluated by people who have never performed your job.  Imagine further that your very life depended on those decisions and that you had to make them in the blink of an eye.  And finally imagine that others could take months to come to a conclusion about what you had done, mulling it over with the aid of reports, photographs, and a 3-D animation of what had occurred.

CafePress; shame on them

"Such is the situation facing officers in the Los Angeles Police Department today."

...."And Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa makes appointments to his commissions, most especially such a high-profile one as the police commission, not with an eye toward expertise but rather with an emphasis on “diversity” as the word is currently understood.  In the case of Detective Gamboa, the commission voted 3-2 to rule the shooting out of policy."

...."Gamboa will likely receive some minor punishment for the tactical deficiencies that led up to the shooting, but he is alive today and the man who tried to kill him is not.  I would ask the three commissioners who ruled the shooting out of policy this question: Would you have preferred to see the outcome reversed?"

“Jack Dunphy” is the pseudonym of an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.

Obama, Clinton, Carter: A Tradition of Appeasement

Lt. Gen Ion Mihai Pacepa -  I was there when Carter appeased Ceausescu; Chen Guangcheng is the latest Democratic pawn 

"Three months later, I was granted political asylum in the United States, and I informed President Carter that he was praising the wrong man. In fact, Ceausescu was an international terrorist and arms smuggler who was also selling off Romanian Jews and Germans for Western currency. The result?

"Carter alleged that the KGB had staged my defection in order to destroy his excellent relations with Ceausescu, and he ordered that I be deported back to Romania."

"If only…we could sit down at a table with the Germans and run through all their complaints and claims with a pencil, this would greatly relieve all tension."Chamberlain, speaking unoffficially to Anthony Eden in 1937. No, wait; wasn't that Ron Paul speaking of the Iranians?

...."When Ronald Reagan became president, the U.S. was being treated with contempt by most petty tyrants around the world. The Soviet Union was on the march in Angola, Cuba, Ethiopia, Syria, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Peru, and, of course, Afghanistan. Reagan reversed all these trends, and his successor, George H. W. Bush, was credited with winning the Cold War and demolishing the Soviet empire."
...."The same thing seems to be true of the current leaders of the Democratic Party. Let’s hope that next November the United States will get a White House and a Congress able to tell the difference between wild rabbits and dangerous foreign despots."
Lt. Gen (r) Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. He is currently writing a book on disinformation together with Prof. Ronald Rychlak.

MSNBC panel agrees media will be in the bag for Obama at the debates

Hot Air:  "Consider this balance for MSNBC.  After the Morning Joe panel openly scoffed at the Barack Obama campaign’s attack ad on Bain Capital yesterday, Hardball came to Obama’s rescue in the evening.  Chris Matthews chatted with David Corn and Time’s Mark Halperin about how difficult it will be for Mitt Romney to defend his years at Bain … all the while with a strange little graphic in the lower left corner that shows Romney with the phrase, “You’re so Bain.”  Mark Halperin then issued this moment of honesty about what we can expect from the media during the final weeks of the general election:"

 "According to Halperin, the press will be just fine if Obama “bumper-sticker[s] it,” but Romney will have to present an overwhelmingly compelling argument in order to get the media to acknowledge it.  As it happens, I agree with Halperin on this point, because Obama’s been “bumper-stickering it” for the last five years, and the media still hasn’t called him on it.  But shouldn’t that be, y’know, a little embarrassing for Halperin to admit?  Essentially, Halperin predicts that the media will fawn all over Obama at the debates regardless of whether he says anything intelligent or not, perhaps particularly if he doesn’t say anything intelligent … and that seems to be OK with Halperin." 

Late, but we just found this and liked the cartoon too much not to use it

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/walt-handelsman-1.812005?offset=3

How words can manipulate us

Wikipedia; Manual of Style/Words to watch:
(Though I have not used quotation marks, all text in this post has been cut and pasted from the Wikipedia article linked.) 
Words that may introduce bias

Puffery

... legendary, great, eminent, visionary, outstanding, leading, celebrated, cutting-edge, extraordinary, brilliant, famous, renowned, remarkable, prestigious, world-class, respected, notable, virtuoso ...

• Peacock example:

• Bob Dylan is the defining figure of the 1960s counterculture and a brilliant songwriter.

• Just the facts:

• Dylan was included in Time's 100: The Most Important People of the Century, where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation".^[2] By the mid-1970s, his songs had been covered by hundreds of other artists.^[3]

Contentious labels

... cult, racist, perverted, sect, fundamentalist, heretic, extremist, denialist, terrorist, freedom fighter, myth, pseudo-, -gate, controversial ...

Unsupported attributions 

... some people say, many scholars state, it is believed, many are of the opinion, most feel, experts declare, it is often reported, it is widely thought, research has shown, science says ...

Phrases such as these present the appearance of support for statements but can deny the reader the opportunity to assess the source of the viewpoint. They are referred to as "weasel words" by Wikipedia contributors. They can pad out sentences without adding any useful information and may disguise a biased view. Claims about what people say, think, feel, or believe, and what has been shown, demonstrated, or proved should be clearly attributed.^[5]

The examples given above are not automatically weasel words, as they may also be used in the lead section of an article or in a topic sentenceof a paragraph, where the article body or the rest of the paragraph supplies attribution.

Expressions of doubt  

... supposed, purported, alleged, accused, so-called ...

Editorializing  

... notably, interestingly, it should be noted, clearly, certainly, without a doubt, of course, fortunately, happily, unfortunately, tragically, untimely ...

Bullies in the news

Townhall on bullies

It Was the Power, Stupid!

Victor Davis Hanson  "But, of course, the Obama (who attacked each and every element of the war on terror as a legislator and senator) Left never had any principled objection at all. Instead, whatever Bush was for, they were in Pavlovian fashion against. I can say that without a charge of cynicism, because after January 2009, Obama embraced or expanded every Bush-Cheney protocol that he inherited. In response, the anti-war Left simply kept silent, or indeed vanished, or went to work extending the anti-terrorism agenda. Guantanamo Bay, in other words, was a national sin until the mid-morning of January 20, 2009."

In the same article, Mr. Hanson weaves in the Martin-Zimmerman case:
"Perhaps before the second-degree-murder charge is thrown out, the prosecution can so entangle Zimmerman in testimony that they can recharge him with perjury or conspiracy and then plea bargain him down to a year or two. The case is now not concerned with justice, but with politics, defusing threats of violence, and salvaging the careers of so many who so foolishly rushed to judgment."

Carney Struggles After Being Hammered On Hypocrisy of Obama Attacking Romney’s Private Equity Work Then Attending Fundraiser At Top Private Equity Exec’s Home…

Weasel Zippers  "I almost (key word being almost) feel bad for Carney, he’s being put in an unwinnable situation by the Obama campaign attacking and embracing private equity on the same day."

Rick Moran: Dear Barry: About that Bain Capital attack ad...  

Lavine, according to the Los Angeles Times, is a top Obama bundler and a managing director at . Lavine, who has raised over $100,000 for the president, was at the firm when GST Steel declared bankruptcy. So according to the Obama team's logic, Romney, who had left Bain, is responsible for GST Steel's demise, but Lavine, who was there, is not? Expect to hear more about this connection.

"We've got to elect Romney president. If he can affect the fortunes of a company two years after his departure from the helm, just think of what he can do remotely to terrorists."
More on this subject here: Former steel worker Joe Soptic, who was prominently featured in President Obama's new anti-Romney ad, is actually a familiar face on the anti-Bain beat.

Along these same lines: White House Says Obama Worth As Much As $10 Million…

"He has a hefty stake in JP Morgan Chase, the megabank that just made a bad $2 billion bet. Obama has an account worth between $500,000 and $1 million.

"Despite the nation’s $15.6 trillion debt, he is a believer in government paper. More than half his assets are in Treasury bills and notes.

"The disclosure statement lists assets and liabilities in dollar ranges, so pinpointing the president’s net worth is difficult. His assets appear to tally between $2.6 million and $9.9 million. He holds a mortgage on his Chicago home of $500,000 to $1 million." Weasel Zippers

A Censored Race War

Thomas Sowell  "...Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug."....
"A wave of such attacks in Chicago were reported, but not the race of the attackers or victims. Media outlets that do not report the race of people committing crimes nevertheless report racial disparities in imprisonment and write heated editorials blaming the criminal-justice system."
...."These latter would include not only race hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson but also lesser-known people in the media, in educational institutions, and elsewhere who hype grievances and make all the problems of blacks the fault of whites. Some of these people may think that they are doing blacks a favor. But it is no favor to anyone who lags behind to turn their energies from the task of improving and advancing themselves to the task of lashing out at others.

"These others extend beyond whites. Asian-American schoolchildren in New York and Philadelphia have for years been beaten up by their black classmates. But people in the mainstream media who go ballistic if some kid says something unkind on the Internet about a homosexual classmate nevertheless hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil when Asian-American youngsters are victims of violence.

"Those who automatically say that the social pathology of the ghetto is due to poverty, discrimination, and the like cannot explain why such pathology was far less prevalent in the 1950s, when poverty and discrimination were worse. But there were not nearly as many grievance mongers and race hustlers then."

U.S. Army soldier brutally beaten in South Tampa "The victim was not able to tell police much more: they're all in their late teens to early 20's. Two were black men with an average build, police said. One attacker was possibly Hispanic, also with an average build. The fourth man was also black, but with a heavier build."

conservativeblackchick: The recent killing of Trayvon Martin needs more investigation. But where's the outrage over the daily scourge of black-on-black crime?

"The Martin case is very different from the Emmett Till case, in which a white segregationist Mississippi society approved of the murder of a black child. Black America needs to get out of the rut of replaying racial injustices of the past. 

"All minority parents fear that children who embrace "gangsta" fashion, tattoos and a thug attitude will be prejudged as criminal."  Juan Williams is a political analyst for Fox News and a columnist for the Hill.

Oct 14, 2011 http://www.conservativedailynews.com/2011/10/race-cards-3/

Why Democrats must have African-Americans feel they are the victims of white oppresson: House Dems trained to make race the issue  "Wiley urged Democrats to appeal to "white swing voters while building support among voters of color." She explained that Democratic outreach to white voters needs to communicate that "people of color are in pain and it's the same pain I, as a White person, would or do feel. It's [about] humanizing people of color." "