Tag Archives: political class

Breathed There a Tyrant Who Did Not Claim Democracy?

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Hi there!

Hi there!

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your mind it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

Step out of line, the man come and take you away.

If the threat is accurately assessed, can it be considered paranoia?

Bookworm has a solid rant about how the IRS Scandal is the worst Scandal in US Political history. The argument is thus:

Because you, the People, became the targets of a comprehensive federal government effort to stifle dissent, one made using the government’s overwhelming and disproportionate policing and taxing powers.

All of the other scandals, going back to Andrew Johnson’s post-Civil War scandals, Warren G. Harding’s 1920s Teapot Dome scandal, Nixon’s Watergate, Reagan’s Iran-Contra, and Clinton’s Oval Office sexcapades have actually been narrowly focused acts of cronyism, garden-variety political chicanery, or personal failings. It’s been insider stuff.

The IRS scandal, by contrast, is a direct attack on the American people.

And that’s why the left’s spin is functionally irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if this is just a few rogue agents in Ohio (which it isn’t); it doesn’t matter if Obama personally gave the order or not (although I’d still like to know). Regardless, it means that hostile, tyrannical elements exist within what is arguably the most powerful agency in the federal government. Or, as James Taranto puts it:

As we wrote Friday, this will be a scandal like Watergate if it turns out that the IRS was acting under orders from Barack Obama or Valerie Jarrett. If the White House’s conduct turns out to be unimpeachable, then it is something far worse: a sign that the government itself has become a threat to the Constitution.

Let’s put the shoe on the other foot for a moment, for once not so that we can point out the hypocrisy of the Left (because, duh). Let’s imagine the IRS, at the behest of a Republican Administration, singling out progressive groups for extra scrutiny, denying their applications, demanding to pick through their activities with a fine-toothed comb. Is this a plus for democracy? Is this what the common citizen, left or right, wants to see happen?

Of course not. This is not democracy as anyone in this country understands it. This is a depraved, decadent political class, having long ago convinced itself that winning justified everything, reasonably concluding that its current dominance justifies itself. Democracy will be whatever our masters in Washington tell us it is, and when they offer us a jug-eared, self-besotted  nincompoop and say “Behold the Superman!” we damn well better clamor him most clamoringly.

Or else.

Russell Taylor – In praise of UKIP

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I don’t know anything about the UK Independence party, but Russel Taylor casts it in very Tea Partyish terms.

The Tories have responded by insisting UKIP has no real policies, to which I would say that this hasn’t held them back. Their ragtag combination of Keynesianism and liberal dogma doesn’t represent a coherent response to the mess we’re in. Then there’s the accusation that UKIP is merely a protest party that will dilute the conservative vote and let Labour back in. Well maybe they are a protest party, but the point of protest is to force change. If the threat of a Labour victory persuades the Tories to go back to their roots and adopt some of the ideas advanced by UKIP, that protest will have done its job. I would gladly vote for a Conservative Party that thinks like Nigel Farage.

Is there an election coming up? I really have no idea.

Chicago: Where “Alderman” means the Same as “Godfather” means the same as “Baron”

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Our Ruling Class is So Eminently Deserving Of Their Powers.

Two police sources—a former gang investigator and a veteran detective—bluntly acknowledge that even if the police know of dubious dealings between an alderman and a gang leader or drug dealer, there is little, if anything, they can do, thanks to what they say is the department’s unofficial rule: Stay away from public officials. “We can’t arrest aldermen,” says the gang investigator, “unless they’re doing something obvious to endanger someone. We’re told to stand down.” The detective concurs: “It’s the unwritten rule. There’s a two-tier justice system here.”

Beyond providing protection from police—the gangs’ number one request—public officials can help in other ways. Gang leaders, particularly the most powerful, are usually looking to build on the riches they already have. Knowing an alderman or a state legislator—or even a congressman—can help. Traditionally, aldermen have almost total say over what gets built and what sorts of businesses open in their wards. They also have considerable sway over city contracts, which can mean tens of thousands to millions of dollars for gang-owned businesses.

The whole thing. Read it.

A Bunch of People Violently Died, Which Means It’s Time for Chris Matthews to Beclown Himself.

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And Outrage becomes cliche.

At different points during the day, I had the TV on three different cable channels: Fox News, CNN and MSNBC. None of them have covered themselves in glory — Allah has video of CNN’s Wolf Blitzer yammering pointlessly – but Chris Matthews was atrocious beyond description.

The worst part of ideological cocooning lies in how you lose sight of the ability to attribute good or evil outside of your epistemic shell. If violence happens in America, the Tea Party must be to blame, because the Tea Party is the representation of everything I think evil, so every evil act belongs to them somehow.

At present, the “authorities” (not sure if Boston PD or FBI or some combination thereof) are questioning a Saudi national in connection with the bombing. That doesn’t mean anything. They may determine he had nothing to do with it. But I don’t think there are very many Saudis in the Tea Party movement. Call it a hunch.

It’s boring to have to point these things out. It wearies the soul that such folly should stand, naked and unashamed, in front of us all. It’s infuriating that while we are burying our dead, that we have to blame it on each other’s politics. But the Left will have it so. They never let a good crisis go to waste.

Should Mitt Romney Rescue Detroit?

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It’s an interesting question, but the short answer is: No. Because Detroit doesn’t want to be rescued.

Which is to say, Detroit’s political class doesn’t want anything to change. The people might hope for an economic dictator to cull the mess in city hall, but everyone else has a vested or an ideological interest in the “emergency city manager” failing.

By the same token, Stewart, Colbert, et al will jump all over this with both clown feet. The memegasms of Romney in Fuhrer-wear will tumble out of Facebook. The persistent disaster that has been progressive governance of Detroit these past fifty years will be shunted aside in favor of interviews of somebody’s grandmother being laid off from her clerk’s job.

And when the 18 months are over? Everything will go right back to where it was.

Not even Detroit is too big to fail. Let’s have that lesson learned.

“My Bias is Objective, Because I’m Right”

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The Wall Street Journal finds the essence of progressive thought very conveniently spelled out.

The anonymous reporter, however, goes far beyond bias, and even beyond bad faith–that is, beyond abusing his credibility as an “objective” reporter to further his cause. To judge by his emails to the reader, he has achieved a perfect Orwellian inversion. He has convinced himself that objectivity and bias (or at least his bias) are one and the same thing.

Exactly. So the press doesn’t need to be fair to conservatives, because we’re wrong. They don’t need to consider our concerns or arguments in an honest manner, because everything we say, no matter how reasonable-sounding, is in service of Wrong, because We’re Wrong. Arguments that we are not wrong cannot seriously be discussed, because they are in service of Wrong, because We’re Wrong. Accusations that this line of reasoning involves the logical fallacy of Begging the Question  is also, regrettably, in service of WRONG, because WE’RE WRONG.

Repeat as necessary.

Let’s All Get Pissed About the Oscars!

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Or, you know, not…

Salon has decided that there’s nothing more important going on than taking apart the yearly market display of that Factory of Fabulous on the West Coast. First, the Onion tweeted something about a nine-year-old girl that, even if you get the joke, is absolutely dreadful. Then, Willa Paskin had that epiphany that progressives occasionally have: the realization that Seth McFarlane is kind of a dick.

The lady-dissing jokes didn’t stop with the ode to breasts: MacFarlane cracked that Jennifer Aniston was a stripper. He sexualized the young Quvenzhané Wallis: “It’ll be 16 years before she’s too old for Clooney,” which is, somehow, only the second most offensive thing someone said about the adorable 9-year-old last night. He also described Jessica Chastain’s character in “Zero Dark Thirty,” the ultra-driven women who through sheer force of will made the raid on Osama bin Laden possible, as “a celebration of every woman’s innate ability to never ever let anything go.”

All of which was fine when it was aimed at conservatives (Nazi Uniforms with “McCain/Palin” buttons, lazy insinuations of anti-semitism aimed at Rush Limbaugh) and conservative women (cheap shots at Sarah Palin’s mentally handicapped kid), but never mind, welcome to the party, Willa. Now you can freely observe that Family Guy Sucks at Political Humor. But then things get odd:

But even while Adele and Michelle Obama and Jennifer “Cinderella” Lawrence were creating the show’s highlights, Twitter was doing something even more unsettling than MacFarlane — it was going absolutely HAM on Anne Hathaway and Kristen Stewart, the one for appearing to care what we think too much, the other for caring way too little. Even people who hated MacFarlane’s performance could find fault with Hathaway and her trembling theater girl thing or with KStew and her refusal to find a comb or look like she gives a shit. (People even made fun of her for walking funny, until they realized she’s been using crutches after seriously slicing her foot. A perfect little encapsulation of what drives folks so wild about Hathaway: Last night she told Stewart to “break a leg … oops.”)

Yeah, people sure seem to care about celebrities, I guess. And when people care, they find themselves driven to all sorts of unpleasant emotions. Personally, Kristen Stewart’s semi-punk, “I refuse to pretty myself up for your amusement” persona is the only thing about her that registers on my radar screen. I was going to say “the only thing about her that I like,” but that implies that there are other things about her that I dislike. And I don’t. Because I don’t care. Yes, she doesn’t quite have a terribly broad acting range. So? I’m sure she’s got a career-bending Role You Won’t Beleive in her somewhere along the way.

As for Hathaway…yeah. Don’t care. Nothing against her, enjoy her work, cannot be bothered to comment on whether she’s too eager-to-please at the Oscars. Because I don’t watch the Oscars. Because the Oscars are a dreary display of semi-interesting people doing uninteresting things. Or, as Thomas Fitz put it after the Emmys:

As near as I can figure, award shows exist to fan the rapidly dwindling notion that our entertainment industry is able to distinguish quality from crap, that there’s just something magical about such a dense mass of Fabulous. Meh. Identical dorks in identical tuxes paired with rail-thin formerly-cute divas competing for the most artful way to nearly show off their pudenda, all waiting around to walk across the stage and introduce each other. It’s like the DMV with better lighting.

Alec Baldwin Denies Everything, NYPD Investigates

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He can’t be racist! He gives Money to black people!

“I find it ironic that my foundation’s last grant was $50,000 to the Arthur Ashe Learning Center,” Baldwin tweeted.

Which is to say, his foundation gave money to a charity named after a black person! So there!

TMZ says they can’t hear the racial slur on the audio recording, for whatever that’s worth.

The NYPost also wonders about the meaning of “Ralston,” referring to Miller (the black photographer in question), on one of Baldwin’s now-deleted tweets.

“Moments after I tweet about the Post, Ralston, the ex-crackhead ‘photographer’ shows up at my door w 1 of Murdoch’s nieces in tow.”

He also tweeted, “Ralston claims he’s ex NYPD!! That can’t be!!! Ex NYPD don’t become crackhead, ex jailhouse paparazzi!”

He removed the posts from his Twitter feed soon after.

It is unclear why Baldwin called the photographer “Ralston.”

I assumed that it was some kine of angered bastardization of “Rastus” the somewhat archaic anti-black slur referring to the guy on the Cream of Wheat box (“Ralston” being a different cereal company). A couple of commenters on DListed came to the same conclusion (scroll down). It may be a stretch but it fits the facts.

The actor has since made a hyper-anticlimactic exit from Twitter.

See Also: Holy Crap, is Alec Baldwin Racist.

Holy Crap, is Alec Baldwin Racist

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I tweeted about this earlier today, but it bears shouting from the rooftops. How heinous do you have to be before someone besides Breitbart notices the assured ease with which you throw racial slurs at people?

A credentialed reporter for one of the oldest American newspapers asks a public figure a question on a public street. The person grabs the reporter (a young woman) by the arm and tells her he wants her to “choke to death.” He then turns to the credentialed photographer for the same newspaper (who happens to be black) and calls him a “coon” and a “crackhead.”
Later, on Twitter, Baldwin continued the racially charged verbal attack on the photographer, erroneously calling him “Ralston”: (Tweets have since been deleted)

“Ralston claims he’s ex NYPD!! That can’t be!!! Ex NYPD don’t become crackhead, ex jailhouse paparazzi!”

It goes without saying that Baldwin gets a pass for all of this.

Baldwin is one of the Left’s biggest stars, a celebrity who gleefully trashed Andrew Breitbart as a “festering boil on the anus of public discourse” and publicly mulls elected office every few months to the oohs and ahhs of his liberal fan base. He’s done enough in the public space to warrant plenty of shame, from that leaked voice message to his then-preteen daughter to his violent outburst aboard an American Airlines plane.

UPDATE: Alec Fillmore?