July 27th, 2010
Old and Busted: Sarah Brady trying to take your guns.
The New Hotness: Sarah Brady participating in multi-level marketing fraud.
(Actually, she probably still wants to take your guns…)
Tags: fraud, Guns, Sarah Brady
Posted in Crime, Guns | 1 Comment »
July 23rd, 2010
Leading the most unpopular congress in history, Nancy Pelosi takes the only logical step: Having a custom handbag designed for her by German royalty.
After all, nothing says “I care about the little people” like a Diane von Furstenberg handbag…
Tags: Nancy Pelosi
Posted in Democrats | 1 Comment »
July 21st, 2010
This piece by John Hayward (AKA Doc Zero) over at Hot Air on the unfolding JournoList scandal is so chock-full of quotable goodness that I’m going to excerpt some here:
Taylor Marsh grins through the flop-sweat to assure us conspiracy to defraud the dwindling audience of the dinosaur media, and slander innocent people as racists, is no big deal when “avowed and openly progressive reporters” do it. I guess we’re supposed to take it as a given that all progressives are liars and smear artists, so we’ve got no right to complain when they’re caught lying and smearing people. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, progressives gotta try throwing a white sheet over Fred Barnes to save Obama from a scandal that should have finished off his campaign.
[snip]
Anyone who has studied the tao of Breitbart knows the first revelations are not the worst. The way to turn the Left’s control of media against itself is to save the really devastating material for later, and release it on a timetable that keeps the story sizzling. The Blatant Beast is defeated by feeding it a story it cannot help repeating. The dark cloud forming over the absurd defenses deployed by liberal reporters today is the shadow of incoming rounds from the second volley.
[snip]
For independents who don’t follow politics closely, the JournoList scandal provides a simple, blatantly obvious narrative about fraud and propaganda. A sizable segment of the “journalist” population stands revealed as sputtering extremists, who talk about killing stories and destroying people’s lives to protect their favored political candidate. Yes, these people are self-professed liberals – they’re not pretending to be “objective” reporters or news anchors – but the cross-pollination between “liberal” and “objective” journalists is a blindingly obvious matter of public knowledge, and the things they’re talking about doing are vile, underhanded, and conspiratorial.
The general public will be able to digest this story, and they won’t like the taste. They’ve already got a low opinion of journalists. It will plummet even further once they get a few bites of JournoList. No magazine, newspaper, or network that continues to employ any of the people quoted in the Daily Caller story can be trusted by any fair-minded person as a reliable news source. Period.
The discussion of false racism charges is an outrage. The American public is growing very tired of being pummeled with the racism club. The cynical plan to pick a random conservative – “who cares?” – and slander them as racists will mix with disgust at the NAACP for trying the same wretched tactic on the Tea Party movement. The once-feared Race Card is looking rather tattered around the edges. The Left has been putting a lot of effort into shuffling those cards into the deck for the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. The nitwits at JournoList just made them much more difficult to play.
Read the whole thing.
Tags: Andrew Breitbart, John Hayward, journalism, Journolist, Taylor Marsh, Tucker Carlson
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
July 21st, 2010
Journalists used to say things like “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say them.” In fact, they still do. The problem is that they no longer believe them.
Daily Caller has put up more JournoList posts, and they show that a significant number of liberal journalists would be happy to see the government shut down Fox News. Jonathan Zasloff asks “is their any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit when it expires?”
Who knew that, despite all their posturing, liberal journalists cared as little about the first amendment (or at least letting their ideological opponents exercise it) than the second? How dare anyone have a different view of consensus reality than them?
Free speech for me, but not for thee.
Tags: Daily Caller, Jonathan Zasloff, Journolist
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »
July 20th, 2010
As more of the JournoList archives come out, it becomes obvious that they’re a lot closer to Andrew Breitbart’s description of them as part of the “Democrat-Media Complex” than Jonathan Chait’s innocuous description of them as “too mundane” to be of interest.
Or, as Maimon Schwarzschild put it:
What we have is One-Party Media: newspapers, broadcast networks, newsmagazines which represent the views and preoccupations of the Democratic Party and the political left, and consistently denigrate or ignore the views and preoccupations of the political right or centre-right; and which very often systematically ignore any news or information which might reflect badly on the one party, or reflect well on the policies, proposals, or values of the other.
What continues to amaze is the stupid arrogance of it all. Did they actually believe that, here in the 21st century, anything in a digital format seen by more than a tiny handful of people wouldn’t come out sooner or later? “Three can keep a secret, if two or dead.” And somehow they expected more than 200 journalists to keep their mouths zipped?
This is what being in the liberal “reality bubble” 24/7 does to your judgment: It makes you stupid and complacent.
Look for more revelations from Ezra Klein’s liberal listserve in the coming days.
Tags: Andrew Breitbart, Ezra Klein, Jonathan Chait, Journolist, Maimon Schwarzschild
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | No Comments »
July 19th, 2010
A few random links to kick off your week:
- Wondering how congressional candidates are doing in the fundraising sweepstakes? This handy chart provides the lowdown.
- If you wanted to make conservatives and libertarians paranoid, how would you go about it? How about sneaking a provision into ObamaCare requiring dealers to report all gold and silver purchases? But what’s the big deal? It’s not like a Democratic President ever ordered the seizure of American’s gold before. Oh wait, yes he did.
- Europe is even more screwed than most of us think.
- For a look at where ObamaCare is leading us, take a look at Massachusetts.
- This story is about a guy’s horrible experience buying a used Saturn. I’m linking to it here because along the way it provides a pretty sobering look at the parts of the Hope and Change Economy that the usual media sources don’t cover:
I immediately began looking for work, but by this point the recession was in full swing and over half the yards on our street had ‘For Sale’ signs up. In fact, the town of Marion, SC has lost nearly 30% of its residential population since January, 2009. There were no jobs within two hours of the town and any jobs that were available were swamped with applications. The high school put up a notice that they were looking for two custodians. They had over 600 people show up for applications. The unemployment rate was over 50%, but people like myself, who didn’t qualify for unemployment benefits, and people on welfare, don’t go on the national unemployment statistic. It’s only for people receiving unemployment checks. Those who didn’t comprised such a huge chunk of that ratio, that the official statistic only stated a 19% unemployment rate for the PeeDee region of South Carolina. Yeah, MSNBC didn’t mention the fine points of that statistic, did they?
(Hat tips: Instapundit, Real Clear Politics, Fark)
Tags: campaign contributions, Europe, gold, ObamaCare
Posted in Democrats, Economics, ObamaCare, Republicans | No Comments »
July 16th, 2010
Thirteen mostly silly items your probably don’t need. However, is it wrong that I kind of want the Tactical Toiletries Bag? At $36.99 it’s not hideously expensive. On the other hand, none of the internal compartments seem suited for a Sonicare Toothbrush, so it probably wouldn’t work for me anyway…
(Hat Tip: Say Uncle, which has also been added to the Gun Blog Roll…)
Tags: Silly, tactical gear, Toiletries
Posted in Guns, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
July 15th, 2010
All across the country, Democrats running for office “are embracing gun owners’ rights [and] winning favor from the National Rifle Association.”
Overall this is a good development, as it shows how unpopular gun control is outside of a few extremely liberal urban enclaves. However, voters should not mistake a politician taking the popular side of an issue with deeply held belief. As long as Nancy Pelosi remains Speaker of the House of Representatives, no House Democrat can be considered Pro-Second Amendment, stated positions and NRA endorsements not withstanding.
Every one of those “pro-gun Democrats” is probably just as committed to Second Amendment issues as Bart Stupak was to Pro-Life issues. Remember him? He was a hero to Pro-Life forces and was even going to receive a “Defender of Life Award” for refusing to cave in on including taxpayer-funded abortions for ObamaCare.
That is, right up until he folded-up like a three-card-monte table when Pelosi put the pressure on him. He was bought off for an empty promise and a handful of magic beans. But it wasn’t just Stupak who caved. There were ten other “staunch Pro-Life Democrats” who folded with him:
- Rep. Jerry Costello of Illinois.
- Rep. Joseph Donnelly of Indiana
- Rep. Brad Ellsworth of Indiana
- Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota
- Rep. Steve Driehaus of Ohio
- Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio
- Rep. Charles Wilson of Ohio
- Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania
- Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania
- Rep. Solomon Ortiz of Texas
(And all of whom just happened to have raked in huge earmarks after their vote.)
Look at all those “Pro-Life Democrats” willing to fund abortions with taxpayer money when Nancy Pelosi snapped her fingers. Now ask yourself: Were any of these Democrats any less “Pro-Life” than your Democratic congressman is “Pro-Second Amendment?”
Moreover, many of those “Pro-Gun Democrats” are the same “Pro-Life Democrats” who flipped for Pelosi. Take a look at their NRA ratings from 2008 (the NRA hasn’t released all their 2010 rankings yet):
- Joseph Donnelly? A.
- Brad Ellsworth? A.
- Charles Wilson? A.
- Paul Kanjorski? A.
- Solomon Ortiz? A.
All of them betrayed their “deep beliefs” on abortion. There is absolutely no reason to believe they wouldn’t do the same thing on gun control.
The NRA can only rate votes and questionnaires, it can’t tell when someone is lying, or who will fold when enough pressure is applied. The Democratic nutroots, their funding sources, their staffers, and the entire media establishment is just as anti-gun as they are pro-abortion. That’s the “reality-based community” Democratic politicians live in. That’s the same community that will be lauding them for their “courage” when they betray voters’ trust to vote how Pelosi wants them to. It will also be the same community offering them cushy job opportunities should those same voters retire them in November. Democratic House members only have to face voters once every two years; they have to face liberal insiders every single working day.
If you don’t think Democrats would still love to ban guns, take a look at how Democratic Mayors like Richard Daley of Chicago and Michael Nutter of Philadelphia want to make an end-run around that whole pesky Constitution: “American gun manufacturers should be held responsible in the World Court, since American-made guns are used in violent crime elsewhere in the world.” I’m sure that a World Court ruling against gun ownership would provide Obama, Pelosi and Reid with just the political excuse they need to start “reluctantly” drafting gun control legislation. And Pelosi herself has made no secret of her own gun control agenda.
The only safe course of action is to assume that, should gun control make it back up to the top of the Democratic agenda, any “Pro-Gun Democrat” could flip their vote if that’s the one Pelosi needs to assure the bill’s passage. And they only way to prevent that from happening is to vote Pelosi’s Democrats out of power come November, no matter whether some of them have an “A” rating from the NRA or not.
Tags: Bart Stupak, Brad Ellsworth, Charles Wilson, Democrats, gun control, Joseph Donnelly, NRA, Paul Kanjorski, Solomon Ortiz
Posted in Democrats, Guns, ObamaCare | 2 Comments »
July 14th, 2010
From the Houston Chronicle comes word that some area developers are planning a huge ecology theme park off north I-59 in Montgomery County, just north of Houston. “Like Disney, the unique underpinning will be the story that we’re telling — the whole issue of how to sustain our planet.”
Yeah, because there’s nothing kids love more than spending their vacation getting the same propaganda lectures they get in school.
The article says the park, still in the planning stage, is two years behind schedule and having problems getting financing, and I can see why: the entire project has “money-losing rathole” written all over it. Still, if they could get it done entirely on private funding, more power to them. Nothing wrong with liberals suffering staggering financial losses from their own pockets while propping up the local economy.
However, it’s obvious they can’t, since they were able to wrangle special taxing powers from the state government. I’m sure the residents of Conroe and The Woodlands are thrilled at the prospects of their tax dollars being used to propagandize them.
The strange thing is, that it probably wouldn’t even be the weirdest (or least successful) theme park in the Greater Houston area, since that would be the the park featuring 1/20th scale replica of China’s Forbidden Kingdom.
Tags: Conroe, Houston, New Caney, The Woodlands, Theme Park
Posted in Global Warming, Texas | 2 Comments »
July 14th, 2010
Sorry for the sparse blogging as of late, but I’ve been dealing with two problems (fleas and a leaking window) that, while minor in the overall scheme of things, still needed fairly immediate and time-consuming remediation.
Expect more regular blogging to resume shortly.
Tags: Administrative, Miscellaneous
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »