Briefly...

Will any of those leftist lunatics who hyperventilated about Trump not turning over power apologize for their stupidity, admit they were morons, and acknowledge that no one should take them seriously again? Fat chance! We never got those concessions from the folks on the right who did the same shit with Obama.  Many of those same leftists whined in like fashion about Bush43 as rightist douches whined about Clinton back in the day. Etc, etc, etc.

And yet not a few wonder why I do not take much of politics seriously but instead view it as less authentic than pro wrestling!

Miscellaneous Musings:

(On Political Kayfabe) 

We are almost to that changing season where the days get longer, a new Congress is sworn in, and Republicans start once again tut tutting about being guardians against all ye deficits with a Democrat in the White House. Of course they gave as much of a shit about it in 2017-2019 as they did during 2001-2007 when Bush 43 was president which was none. 

Meanwhile, the Democrats who nitpicked a few billion dollars for the silly wall and pretended to care about things like PayGo and all that under Trump will suddenly want to spend trillions with no shame whatsoever under Biden much as they did under Obama but whined incessantly about when it happened under Bush.

In wrestling parlance, this is called a double turn and it happens when the parties out of executive power change just like clockwork. And that many of those who would claim that wrestling is "fake" actually think any of this government posturing is real? It is as predetermined as any wrestling event and frankly far less real.

Briefly...

Whatever else one thinks about him, President Donald Trump has now had more success by far in Middle East peace than Barack Obama or George W. Bush ever did. Israel has signed peace treaties with the United Arab Emirates (August) and now Bahrain (September). Oman is apparently next up. If that deal is inked say in October, that would be three Middle East peace treaties in three months. It would make not giving him a Nobel Peace Prize look pretty damn foolish since they gave one to Obama just for winning a presidential election and before he basically did to the Middle East what Antifa has been doing to Portland in recent months.

Miscellaneous Musings on Defining "Normalcy":

This was posted to social media yesterday and reposted here except for some material that was moved to footnotes. Without further ado...

So Clarence Oveur...err...Joe Biden is going to run on a campaign of "returning to normalcy." It is not an original idea as Warren G. Harding ran a "return to normalcy" campaign in 1920 after eight years of Woodrow Wilson and the drama and fatigue of The Great War. Harding won big that year actually. But what is "normalcy" in the modern environment?

For example, oil prices are falling big, gas prices continue to fall as a result, Trump's policies{1} played a definite role in that, and the US is more energy independent than at any time since the mid twentieth century. Is "normalcy" a return to Obamas policies here and once again due to overregulation, a returning of the US to being under the thumb of OPEC and the other Middle East cartels?

Also, for all the talk about Trump being a dangerous trigger happy and unstable warmonger, he has turned out to be the most anti-interventionist president since Coolidge militarily. Is a "return to normalcy" a return to regular military interventions around the globe?

Consider as well that the economy is overall doing the best it has been in about twenty years and wages on the lower end are rising for the first time since Monica was under Bill's desk. Is a "return to normalcy" a return to a sinking or tepid at best economy which flattens those trying to rise from the bottom?

For a variety of reasons, the problems with unchecked or lax enforcement of immigration laws in this country have declined and we have other countries{2} policing our mutual borders better which has fixed some of the prior problems of recent decades in this area. It would be foolish to pretend that no Trump policies has a role in this. So, is a "return to normalcy" a reversal of Trump's policies here and a return to the Obama/Bush 43/Clinton failures in this area?

Finally, there is as a result of Trump's tremendous originalist judicial appointments a greater judicial restraint at all levels of the legal system than we have seen in decades. Is a "return to normalcy" a return to the days of judicial activism and the appointment of activist justices who invent rather than apply the law?

Joe Biden plans to campaign on "a return to normalcy." It therefore is only appropriate that he be pressed on this point to explain what he means by that and if the supposed "national nightmare" we are supposedly living through right now includes any of the examples noted above.

Notes:

{1} Including reversing a number of Obama's executive actions that hampered exploration, drilling, and development, etc.

{2} Such as Mexico.

Briefly...

Apparently Barbara Streisand is threatening to move to Canada again if she does not get what she wants on Tuesday.

These sorts of threats were made prior to 2004 with lots of folks from the left on Bush, with not a few from the right on Obama in 2012, now with folks like Streisand again in 2018. Lots of threats, no one ever moves.

Just once I would like to see all those threatening a move if they do not get their desired result politically (be they of the left or the right) actually follow through and do it!

Points to Ponder:

"If you’re fine with the U.S. government using paid-for opposition research to justify spying on persons connected to presidential campaign staff, then nothing I can say will help you understand how worrisome this disclosure is. Except maybe this: switch the candidate’s name you hate with the one you like. That means President Trump surveilling staff from the Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders 2020 campaign after a dossier commissioned by the Republican Party links them to China. You’d trust Trump, and every future president, with that, right?

The involvement of the intelligence community in the 2016 presidential campaign, clumsy and disorganized as it appears to have been, will be part of the next election, and the ones after that. If you’re in search of a constitutional crisis, here it is. After all, when we let George W. Bush create, and Barack Obama greatly expand, the surveillance state, didn’t we think it would eventually come to this?" [Peter Van Buren]

Miscellaneous Musings:

I remember back when Bush was president. Specifically, there was a point where Republicans controlled congress, nothing was getting done, and lots of party loyalist sorts and/or conservatives spent a lot of time whining about the nothing burger of flag burning and trying to outdo one another in trumped up "outrage" and pseudo-"patriotism."

Now we have Trump as president with a Republican controlled congress, nothing is getting done, and probably a lot of the same folks along with others are now whining about the nothing burger of anthem kneeling and trying to outdo one another in trumped up "outrage" and pseudo-"patriotism."

PT Barnum was right as was the author of Ecclesiastes.


#DeJaVuAllOverAgain

All Falling Down (Victor Davis Hanson)

One problem with knowing history when most people do not is you can see when it is repeating itself and many people do not listen. VDH goes over recent and more ancient history and points to parallels that more people should be aware of. And of course his indictment of Obama's governing is one I would love to see an O-bot respond to but I am not holding my breath!!!

On the White Hizzouse Targeting Fox News:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

[Prefatory Note: This material was originally written to expand further on something written in another publishing medium by a good friend on the subjects noted in the title of this posting. It is posted here slightly revised and sans the original material of interaction but those who want to know the context can review this speech by Senator Lamar Alexander delivered on the Senate floor today to understand the magnitude of the subject at hand. -ISM]

While I watch Fox less than most others of my general outlook who watch it, those who would find nothing wrong with Fox being attacked by a sitting president and his administration in many cases would have crapped their pants if President George W. Bush and his administration had tried similar things with the alphabet channels, CNN, or MSNBC. Apologists of various views often do not follow a simple but important principle that what is right or wrong is right or wrong period, not determined by who does a particular action. The government trying to intimidate or silence the press outside of rare circumstances{1} is wrong PERIOD. It is what happens in police states and banana republics, NOT a society purporting to be a free Republic such as ours which talks about the importance of free speech and democratic rights.

There is a reason that while the mainstream media is dying and the lions share of their papers and publications are dwindling in subscriptions and it is not because of the internet. I say this because similar declines are not only avoided by Fox News but also The Wall Street Journal and Investors Business Daily all of which are increasing in subscribers. The Washington Times saw a decline but roughly less than half a percent which is probably too small to consider any kind of trend. The pattern is that periodicals and networks that do not actually do investigative journalism and do not report the news are losing viewers and readers while those that do these things are increasing.

If anyone needs a case in point to substantiate this assertion, I will go one better and provide you with two:

1) CNN purports to "fact check" the SNL comedy skit mocking President Obama for his two presidential accomplishments (namely "jack" and "squat").

2) The biggest story of corruption in decades was uncovered by Hannah Giles and James O'Keefe in busting ACORN:{2} those two did more investigative journalism on that matter than every news network. And only Fox was willing to give them airtime. The others avoided it as long as they could and when they did report it, they tried to make excuses for ACORN and find ways of shooting the messengers.

Those two alone outline the reason why while I get most of my news from the web when I do turn on a television to watch the news, 95% of the time I turn to Fox News. And the actions by the Obama administration only make me more determined in that choice. Any liberal who would claim to want "free speech" who would NOT defend Fox News from government intrusion and intimidation is a hypocrite and deserves to be exposed as such. (Conversely, any liberal who would go to bat for Fox News against government intrusion and intimidation deserves to be commended for their principled stand.)

Notes:

{1} There are very few of these areas and I am not about to go over them now except to state that the general rule I refer to here does have a few exceptions.

{2} I went over this subject in an expository musing on ACORN and corruption written mostly in mid September but completed and finally posted with last minute updates on October 1, 2009.

What if George W. Bush had done that? (Politico)

I ask this question all the time whenever I see the msm let Obama slide on something they would have crucified Bush for.

Liberals Lay Off Obama

For those who wonder who could be claiming in lieu of the fact that President Obama has done NOTHING that he is "doing a great job" or has "done something", here is an example from The Daily Beast. Try to not be drinking anything when you read it though.

And yes folks, being "on your way" to doing something is now considered actually doing something by this crowd. The 10,000 point Dow level is considered significant to these same people who did not blink when the Dow under President Bush topped 14,000 in late 2007.

Furthermore, he is actually claiming the stimulus has been "slowing the nation's descent", and considering it an accomplishment that "a universal health care bill’s passage through Senate Committee." Celebrating a bill making it out of committee??? Boy these folks do not realize how they wear their desperation on their sleeves.

On ACORN and Corruption:
(Musings of your humble servant at Rerum Novarum)

I originally was going to post this as a minor posting back around September tenth but was not able to get around to it until now and since the original draft, a lot has developed on this subject so I want to go over it all here. Let us start with the original material of this posting which was to be led off with this link:

Exposed! ACORN Gets Its Nuts Cracked: Teenage Prostitutes, Money Laundering and Tax Fraud (Doug Giles)

Originally I was going to say that the mainstream media would not cover this of course any more than they covered the 11 ACORN persons arrested for voter registration fraud in Florida earlier in the month{1} (one of whom registered "Paul Newman" to vote incidentally enough) or the fact that ACORN is under investigation in twelve states for voter fraud. But bear this in mind: if ACORN was in any way connected with a prominent Republican, the msm would be all over this. Once again though, President Obama's connections with this organization from his community organizing days will likely be ignored.

To get the gist of the story, read the link above because what Hannah Giles (posing as a prostitute) and James O'Keefe (a film maker posing as a pimp) did in the Baltimore branch of ACORN was duplicated in a variety of other ACORN offices. ACORN fired the two employees involved in the sting in Baltimore and also two more who were involved in a similar sting in the ACORN Washington DC office. You can read more on the DC matter here.

Now the rest of the media other than Fox they were as silent as a whore in church initially. But then there was a sting in Brooklyn, New York upon which employees from ACORN there were fired and the Brooklyn DA will pursue investigating ACORN perhaps even under RICO statutes. Then we have the Census Bureau stripping ACORN of participation in the 2010 census, another video emerging out of San Diego, California and another one in San Bernadino where a woman is on camera talking about killing her husband along with the usual prostitution stuff.

ACORN kept trying to play it down and has threatened to go after the film makers but they also fired all their employees involved in the various offices where Giles and O'Keefe caught them on camera giving advice on various ways of breaking the law from advice on opening a house of prostitution to tax evasion to smuggling underage illegal immigrants from El Salvador to work in the house of prostitution, etc. Yet despite all of this (and this is not all there is), ACORN has the aucadity to accuse Giles and O'Keefe of immoral conduct when all they did was trap ACORN's employees on camera endorsing some of the worst kind of filth imaginable!!!

Meanwhile, the Senate voted 83-7 to defund ACORN on September 15th with the House following suit on Thursday with a 345-78 vote.{2} All of this happened not because of the mainstream media but instead in spite of them because other than Fox News, they were all very late to this story and it is not as if they were ignorant of ACORN being a corrupt organization.

There is a reason why your host has for years sought as much as possible to get news from sources other than the mainstream media which is frankly little different (at all) than a state-run media. If anything has made this irreversibly clear, it is the media's woeful performance in the past week in covering stories from the Van Jones resignation to the 912 march to the ACORN scandals: all of which put the Obama administration in bad light. And this means the depths of disgrace to which the mainstream media sunk last year are depths to which they remain.

Notes:

{1} And over 40 since July of this year.

{2} ACORN's Enablers

What Happened to the Anti-War Movement? (Byron York)

Whatever one might say about Cindy Sheehan, she is at least consistent. For that reason, though I disagree with her on her views, I do respect that she has shown principle in her anti-war stance unlike so many others who were louder than Fourth of July fireworks when President George W. Bush was in office but who are now as silent as a whore in church with President Barack H. Obama in the White House.

George W. Bush-by-Proxy Syndrome

It is interesting to think of the apparently "leaderless GOP" possibly being a tactic the GOP is using to combat Obama's and Rahm Emmanuel's Alinsky approach{1} to politics by denying them a figure to freeze and polarize as the textbook dictates.{2} If they have planned it this way than it is a clever ploy but I am suspecting it is more dumb luck than anything{3} unless and until the contrary is reasonably demonstrated to me.

Notes:

{1} On President Barack Obama's Political Mentor (circa February 28, 2009)

{2} President Barack Obama's Mentor on Mass Organizing Tactics (circa March 14, 2009)

{3} Lets just say the Republicans do not have a track record in recent years of being the sharpest tools in the shed when it comes to political strategery.

I am finally scared of a White House administration (Nat Hentoff)

Nat Hentoff is someone whose work I have enjoyed over the years. I disagree with him oftentimes but he is a liberal with integrity. So when Hentoff writes "I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover's FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration", to me that is newsworthy!!!

Should Conspiracy Theories Be Indulged? (Laurance Caromba)

For those who may wonder why I have virtually never said a thing or cared a whit about what Andrew Sullivan says about anything, here is a good reason why: he is an unethical hypocrite.

In the example outlined by Mr. Caromba, Sullivan claims that President Barack Obama does not have the very right to privacy on releasing certain kinds of sensitive information that in 1998 he claimed Clinton had -presumably to prop up his idiotic statements about Trig Palin and demanding the latter's birth certificate. First of all, the two are not apples and apples -as much of a non-winning issue as I view the Obama birth certificate issue to be, it still stands to note that he is an elected official and Trig last time I checked was not. But this is not the first time he has done this.

For example, Sullivan started claiming around 2004-2006 things about the Iraq war that were different from stuff he said in 2002-2004.{1} Thankfully, someone fact checked him using the internet archive. The ottom line: Sullivan is an unethical hypocrite who engages in historical revisionism. For those reasons, he is not worth the time of day in my humble opinion on any subject whatsoever.

Note:

{1} He was an unabashed supporter of the war going so far as to bully those who were not. (This is something your host who supported the use of the military option in Iraq never condoned.) That was his position until President Bush spoke of strengthening via possible constitutional amendment the Defense of Marriage Act. That event set Sullivan -who puts gay issues over and above anything else- dead set against all things George W. Bush overnight: proof that he is not a principled man at all but an unethical and ideological shill.

Ultra Briefly on President Obama's Latest Town Hall on Health Care "Reform":

To quote my own words from about an hour ago in another publishing medium:

[I] will now summarize Obama's town hall...so you do not have to watch it: (1) Its Bush's fault (2) We will expand coverage and not cut benefits while cutting costs basically suspending the laws of economics and logic: yes we can!!! (3) You will not lose your doctor and this is a good plan but do not expect me or congress to want it for ourselves (4) Your taxes will not go up, see point 2...

There, I just saved you an hour of your life and at least ten IQ points!!!

Cornyn accuses White House of compiling 'enemies list'

Longtime readers of this weblog know that my assessment of President George W. Bush was a mixed one. I am not going to revisit the layers of agreement/disagreement I had with him and various administration policies and/or individuals. I will however say that if President George W. Bush had tried to do with ideological or policy foes what President Barack H. Obama has sought to do with this "send emails of people who disagree with us to the White House" and supplied an address to do so, I would have resolutely stood in opposition to him on that matter.{1} Furthermore, anyone who whined and bitched about the Bush Administration and real or perceived "loss of freedoms"{2} who either stands by silently or in any way approves of the Obama administration acting this way is (and I will not mince words) a hypocritical piece of shit.

Again, a situation or principle is in its truth or falsity right or wrong period. This assessment is not okay or defensible when "your guys" do it and not okay or to be condemned when "others" do it. And however many pundits, agenda provocateurs, or apologists of various and sundry issues{3} may violate the law of non-contradiction to their own deserved discredit, your humble servant at Rerum Novarum does not do such things at any time and indeed no person of ethics and principle would do such things.

Notes:

{1} To use one subject that comes to mind, consider for those who know very well of my solid and unshakeable support for the military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the White House had dared to ask me or anyone else to send emails or materials I knew of concerning people who wrote or spoke against the wars, I would not only not have done so but I would have written to them and denounced such things. I hope readers of this weblog who are ideologically not aligned with me would have the ethics to do likewise.

{2} I say "real or perceived" because this area is not as clean cut as many people may have presumed.

{3} Or members of congress, presidents, etc.

Has Barack been taking lessons from Berlusconi? - World News, Frontpage - Herald.ie

You be the judge folks:

Of COURSE President Obama did not ogle that girl. He also did not bow to the Saudi king, flip flop on closing military tribunals, or promise (i) to have all troops out of Iraq by May 20, 2010, (ii) an open and transparent government, or (iii) unemployment topping out at 8% and "shovel-ready jobs" if the "stimulus" was to be passed. All of that was Bush's fault!!!

Incidentally, French President Nicolas Sarkozy{1} appears quite amused by the spectacle. My guess is Michelle Obama will not be so amused but I digress.

Note:

{1} Married to the very easy on the eyes Carla Bruni.

Revisiting the Subject of Indefinite Detainment:

Since there are going to be those who are angered at President Barack Obama for backpedaling on the issue of indefinite detainment, it seems appropriate for me to defend this practice much the way I did when it was practiced under President George Bush. So with that in mind and accounting for the principle that what is right or wrong is determined by objective standards and not by subjective whims{1}, I will in a footnote to this posting{2} reiterate my position on this matter despite not liking the particular president under whom this practice will now be carried out.

Notes:

{1} On the Difference Between Objective Manifestation and Subjective Intention (circa February 27, 2007)

{2} On the Indefinite Detainment Complaint (circa April 17. 2007)