RepublicRats™

Dirty hands in both the Democratic and Republican Parties brought about the current financial crisis. I feel this cartoon demonstrates what happens when leaders in both parties agree so well that any lesser voices are simply ignored.

"Bipartisan" agreement is too often another way of announcing that differing interests have been silenced.

Madness of the Political Class -- E.G. 1

In my prior post, Invasion of the Sanity Snatchers, I observed that you are not insane for concluding the political parties and MSM are all behaving madly.

However accurate my observation and conclusion may be, I intentionally left out examples. I simply wanted to state what I think many of us relatively quiet observers are all taking for granted.

Today I begin a series of posts wherein I give examples of the madness.

Democratic Party activists and pundits started questioning the experience of Sarah Palin from the start. In another time it would have been thought the height of madness to question the experience of the opposition party's VeePee when the experience of your own Presidential candidate was so open to question. And, in fact, the Dems daring to bring it up actually highlights how many ways Barack Obama not only has less experience than that of the opposition Veepee, he has less experience than a very large number of ordinary Americans. All Dems who decided it was a good idea to make an issue of experience were mad.

In fact I'd like to nominate whatever Democrats chose not to do so as eligible to form the core of a New Democrat Party right after the elections when the current nuts can be properly eased into long term treatment.

And as for the Republicans. How is it possible, given the opportunity Barack Obama has given them, that they do not pummel Senator Obama with the same questions he raises about Governor Palin? Using his own words and that of his closest allies. Daily. In ads. On TV. And in panel discussions everywhere.

Each time the Dems prove they're nuts and the GOP then chooses not to make an issue of it simply amplifies the fact the Pubbies are in their own way every bit as mad as the Dems.

***Update***09/29/08

Well, I am delighted to say that the following video responds well to my concerns about the GOP's sanity for failing to take advantage of the opening provided when the Obamaniacs made an issue of experience. (h/t Macsmind by way of Ace.)

Invasion of the Sanity Snatchers

If all seems mad to you, rest assured you are not. You'd only be mad were you to think the current political news is normal election cycle inanity. It's well past that.

It's not just that the Left becomes more unhinged on a daily basis. It's apparent to me that the Right believes their best chances for winning is to keep the Left looking like the raving mad threat they really are. For only in contrast to the Democrats do the Republicans appear comparatively sane. That's not saying much.

I keep getting requests for money, two or three a day, from the RNC and the McCain/Palin campaign. But I know I cannot countenance sending them a dime. Why?

Because they'll take the major portion of any money they have and give it to blatantly Leftist MSM -- what I fondly call by its Orwellian cognomen: The Ministry of Information. Thus, with help from the money of the unwitting Republican faithful, the Republican hating misinformation media survives another day.

And need I remind you that the MSM is the only "independent" that McCain-Feingold gives a free hand in the last days of an election to say what it wishes about any candidates?

Oh, by the way: what's the name of the Right-most candidate again?

In the old Soviet Union, those who questioned the sanity of the leaders wound up being treated for insanity. Damn. Kinda.

Looking at the denizens atop our major parties, insanity is neither red nor blue alone. They're the In crowd, and they're mates, and they ARE controlling the institution.

I will follow up this commentary with examples. Please feel free to offer up examples of your own.

Who's the Stuck Pig?

Tarnsman, in this thread at Belmont Club, joked:

I have to say give it a rest as far as the Lipstick on a Pig comment goes. That is a old saying with a well defined meaning. Obambi is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. Oh wait, he is clueless, so I take it back.

I responded to the clueless portion with a skeptical "As demonstrated [between .40 and .43 seconds] in the video by how most of his audience laughed when he said lipstick, and he didn’t bat an eye."



Well, an Obama supporter, "Watchman," complained next.

“and he didn’t bat an eye.”

What a bunch of hypocrites! You bitch about Obama smearing Palin then go on to tie him to Jeremiah Wright all over again.

Here is what I replied.

“and he didn’t bat an eye.”

For crying out loud! That’s an ages old metaphor for one who takes no notice or feels no pain.

What a bunch of hypocrites!

First of all you can’t legitimately blame the rest of the Belmont Clubbers for what you imagined *I* intended. Certainly none of them cheered and hooted and applauded as did Barry’s friends. I’d say I’m safe in saying that you saw the speck in the eyes of most clubbers but not the beam in your own.

Secondly, were Barry as smart and diplomatic as he wants you to believe, he’d have heard the crowd’s response, made an uneasy chuckle and said “I’m sorry, that’s not what I meant” and then finished the line. He didn’t. So he was either clueless (as Tarnsman said) or he bathed in the joy of his crowd after he fed it raw meat.

Thirdly. Obama clearly paused for the applause. The normal line has no long pause in it.

You bitch about Obama smearing Palin then go on to tie him to Jeremiah Wright all over again.

Fourthly. Had I wanted to make the connection to Rev. Wright I would have written my comment a bit differently. Here is what you should look for:

“You can put lipstick on a pig [pauses for applause] but it’s still a pig.” and he Never batteddd an ayyyye.

And fifthly. Were Obama as clever as he was in the primaries, and not unwinding so badly now, his campaign would have replied to the McCain campaign’s complaints with “We took the lady at her word that she was tough as a pit bull. Sorry to have upset the vision of herself that she has been selling.”

PDS

So you think that Bush Derangement Syndrome has been bad?

I think Palin Derangement Syndrome is gonna top it.

(This is not my promised expounding upon the reactions to Sarah Palin. Stay tuned.)

---------------updated with related posts:

• A Palin' Reactions
• The Emmanuel Goldsteining of Sarah P

A Palin' Reactions

I know there are those who want to know what I think about the most recent political developments. Well, I'm still biden' my time about what pascal fervor has to say about the reactions.

On a human note: I worry for Sarah almost as much as I worry for our republic. Both should be able to take care of themselves except, well, except for the imminent presence of those who are not as they appear. Come back soon and I'll expound.

Balking Horse

The performance of Barack Obama of late has become bizarrely lame. Early on in the primaries there was talk of him being a far-left stalking horse for Hillary so as to make her look moderate by comparison. But new-left Democrats such as backed Bill and openly dreamed of a 3rd Bill Clinton term found themselves outflanked by the radical left-wing. The nutters' candidate locked in enough votes to clinch the Dem ticket months before the June date when Obama actually accumulated the requisite delegates.

Politics is about gaining power; even losers maneuver after losses and even before impending losses to hold onto advantages so that their minority is still a force that must be reckoned with.

Hillary has not ended her campaign. The Dem convention has not ended. The fat-legged lady has not swan-songed.

That Barack Obama is one balky politician is more evident every day. Many in the GOP can hardly wait to broadcast with the help of talk radio to tell us all of the next false-step or tone-deaf comment even before the noise from the last incident has died down.

In baseball, where when the pitcher makes a motion that is against the rules, the pitcher is charged with a balk. The penalty is that opposition base runners advance a base.

Given how many delegates Hillary has accumulated and not relinquished yet, she is clearly still on the third base of the Democratic party. She awaits some inevitable errant move by Obama — some faux pas that will penalize Obama some number of delegates or other obscure party rule — that will advance Hillary to home plate. It may already have been committed and she is simply biding her time.

Such a late advance by her would put her at a distinct advantage against McCain. In part because so many voters are so put off by the unprecedentedly long campaign that they've tired of the two current faces. But more importantly, it will be because of some yet unrecognized comments that McCain politically uttered to advance himself against Obama but would hurt him against Hillary.

That is what the term stalking horse has always implied politically — some one to be the focal point, the target, to take the hits. But never the real one the party intends to put up. In that way the real candidate can take advantage of the opposition's revealed strategy and especially the political mistakes. The real candidate is then fresher and not as fatigued nor battle scarred as his opposition when election day arrives.

However, is it likely that all that Obama has done up to now was just so he could be a stalking horse for Hillary? Is he blowing it deliberately?

No! That is too bizarre a possibility. People who are this close to garnering power are not inclined to throw it away intentionally. That may be especially true of someone who has good reason to suspect he had been encouraged to run precisely to be a stalking horse. Such a man would find the position he'd achieved in June — one that was against the odds in December — to be particularly sweet.

No, I'm recognizing that he's in danger of fumbling it all away simply because he's a much smoother reader of prepared scripts than he is a man of wider strengths. If he blows his nomination, he will effectively have been a stalking horse of a different variety.

Should Obama screw himself by stumbling, fumbling, bumbling once too much in the short time between now and the end of the convention, he will achieve an American first.

He will be America's first balking horse.

Justification

There is a wide variety of information available. It ranges from the purely factual to quite moving conscience raising opinions to the stress alleviating faiths.

The upshot is that I shouldn't be able to mislead anyone.

My followers earn their fate by how willing they are to follow me. The simplest of "libertarians" and the PC crowd have my blessings. --Ms Ann Thrope in private correspondence.

Postmodernism's Paradigm

My comment at Belmont Club to:

Konyok @ 10:53AM

It’s a new paradigm…. Now, we have a perverse inversion in which the heirs of humanism seek to sacrifice the human being to a faceless god of nature.

Yes. However it is not new except to those who have only begun to notice. About those who remain silent after they notice — well — I ribbed Wretchard after he posted Meeting Engagement with Awakening to Fight Oblivion.

Human sacrifice:
“Sustainability” is now the most common code word for battling human populations, though it is voiced quietly. It seems far too many are resignedly welcoming this “meeting engagement.”

Sustainability is newspeak for a pessimism at least as old as paganism with its ritual deaths.

I think the disease is clear. Traditional conservatives have let their loathing to fight what has slowly become common practice trump their fundamental (now ancient) moral view that the sole reason for government is its legal authority to protect the weak.

It is THAT paradigm which has shifted. I’ve stated this new world paradigm as “The strong must protect the useful from the _____.” What's in the blank? You know as assuredly as Winston Smith knew what was in Room 101.

I’d say you are a moral man reflexively rebelling from the effects of Malthusianism blended with Utilitarianism to create the replacement, Godless morality of a “humanist” elite.

Aug 15, 2008 - 12:46 pm

I followed the above comment with this one. (It was published promptly).

Konyok; I’m not sure what else to tell you.

Here is what one dame whispered to me about my concerns: “You are not alone Pascal; but you may as well be.”

Aug 15, 2008 - 12:51 pm

Confidence

Perhaps you and I have lived with this miracle too long to be properly appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation. — R. W. Reagan

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you cannot fool all of the people all the time. — A. Lincoln

I've convinced quite enough of your neighbors that you're the bad guy. They are now my eyes and ears. A handful more are so convinced that, with a clear conscience, they pack in extra votes so that you can't rid yourself of my guys at the polls. Lodge any complaints about the voter fraud: my guys laugh and dismiss the charges and spin the issue against you. Remember? You are the bad guy.

You are not alone Pascal; but you may as well be. You have neither the strength nor the nerve to really challenge me on your own; and I see to it on a daily basis that you distrust any new leader far more than you dread me. There are times when I fool none of the people and you are in such a state of disarray that there is not a damn thing you can do about it.

Thus, you will die watching your children wearing the shackles you forged for them because you were too blind in your youth to notice me at my work. — Ms Ann Thrope boasting privately.

Placing Demands On Others

"Why isn't the world perfectible?" whined the social engineer.

"Ask The Perfectionist when you arrive where I cast him," replied The King of the universe.

Determination

You Boomers who wouldn't abort your babies as I suggested will be forced to watch as I seduce your grown babies into aborting themselves.-- Ms Ann Thrope in private boast.

When more offense is taken over what is said than what is done.

When more offense is taken over what is said than what is done, we are witnessing Political Correctness. We have been forced to endure this despite the First Amendment prohibition on silencing free speech.

Why? Why must we endure PC? Why must we "tolerate" it? Someone please convince me.

Otherwise, I recommend a mantra along these lines to be shouted in unison the next time you hear some PC:

Stop silencing watchdogs; start punishing criminals.

Resolved: Conservatives Are Useless As Defenders of Liberty

The title of this post strikes me as a good premise for a debate. Spinelessness is not a good trait for those claiming to defend what is Right.

Let me lay out some arguments that might be useful in this debate that I feel is long overdue.

First of all. the very word conservative implies someone who is not apt to budge much. The run-of-the-mill liberal, on his more docile days, might limit his definition of a conservative to that.

Of course "stick in the mud" might be the thought they have refrained from expressing on that day of benevolence. But that is the liberals' impression of a conservative on the libs' less outrageous days.

Ultimately the conservative individual has no desire to mess with politics. Politics is for busybodies. This is where the basic meaning of conservative – one who conserves – comes into play. "I've got mine. Gotta protect it. Best not to do anything that may endanger it; that wouldn't be prudent." These are hardly the same type of individuals who wrested colonial America from King George. On what pipe dream do you imagine they'll come through now, in the clinches?

The words "leave things as they are" is a front for another thought that just about every individual has uttered one time or another: "LEAVE ME ALONE." Yes sir. That is truly conservative.

• I look at John McCain. I hear the Left SCREAMING that he is an extreme right winger. This is the man who fathered a bill that scrapped the first amendment to ultimately aid professional politicians, labels border defenders as racist, and thinks Americans cause global warming.


• I hear radio host Hugh Hewitt promote his show with a Keith Olbermann spot calling Hugh a "fringe talker." A RINO like Hugh gratefully uses such "gifts" from lunatic-lefties to bolster his flaccid bono fides as a Rightist. [ugh!] It is a fact that Hewitt used his influence in California to aid the phony-right Schwarzenkennedy in the Davis recall election by blocking-out the legitimate-right McClintock with stupid-liberal tricks. His most effective ploy was in softening whatever backbone conservatives might have had with his relentless inflating of a Bustamonte Boogeyman. The latter pol really had not-an-icicle's-chance-in-hell because he was even more inclined to the policies that got Davis in trouble to begin with. The Lefty outrages of Davis gave the Right the first real chance to win on principle in decades, and Hewitt constantly fear-mongered against going that route. From envirofascism to illegals, Arnold is demonstrably more Left than Davis ever was.

Come on liberty loving Americans. With the Left labeling either of these gentleman as extreme Right and MSM echoing the labels, just where does that put the vast majority of Americans?

Do you know what MARGINALIZED means America?

Where are the true leaders of the Right? Real leaders of the Right will ride roughshod over of this "official" political spectrum foisted by establishment media and make a mockery of it. They will break out of the Ideological Corral once and for all.

MSM Easily Forgives You For Not Loving It

Borrowing from Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, book iii, chapter iv

The mass media easily forgives you for not loving it provided that you don't love each other.

This is a very short warning for the Right:

Should you think that all members of mainstream media are stupid, you will never appreciate how well they dissemble facts and mislead the public by disingenuously composing stories that serve its biases, agendas and hatreds.

The precautionary principle demands that the adage "Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity" be reversed whenever the MSM is involved. The Left is not stupid: just ask them.

This can be summarized in a single line that I hope helps reunify the Right and stave off further efforts to divide it.

Where you find MSM, never attribute to stupidity what is easily driven by malice.

I would also add, given the propensity of the GOP to abandon its Right, "Watch your back."

So, I'm Human

"Dear Mr. Fervor,

Some months ago you wrote an editorial about me entitled She Thinks Her **** Doesn't Stink. Could you not have disparaged my, er, priggishness with words that are readable on radio?

Well anyway, I'm writing today to inform you that you were wrong Mr. Fervor.

I must admit that my story about the tensions I endured while in Bosnia was a real stinker. Peee-Hew! Seeeee! </fantasy>

I made a mistake. I have a different memory. That happens. I'm human. For some people that's a revelation."

Hillary Clinton

They Who Refused To Pay the Piper...

...Today Have No Children.

Most of the most bitter women I have ever met (Cal State Sen. Jackie Goldberg, call your office) were my sisters of the baby boom generation who are now long past their time to bear children. My brothers are merely sad, though some of them are still too adolescent to realize it.

Go read the Brothers Grimm (Hah! Irony!) tale again, and this time with the perspective of what the cost of ridding ones personal life of "rats" -- rugrats being particularly vulnerable to such a mien -- really has been.

Metamorphosis

In Weapons Turned Inward, Wretchard observed how some left-leaning partisans see insanity in the internecine warfare that has erupted in the Democratic Party because of rock star Obama's "new" front moving in from the Left and threatening the Clintonista leadership as nobody has before.

Wretchard opined that it was not truly insanity "but the rational application of the demented rules of left-wing politics."
Well, what are the demented rules to which Wretchard is referring? He mostly alluded to them in much the same manner that the Democratic front-runners avoid admitting what rules they are following.

But in the comments others flushed it out. It is of the politics of division that Democratic Party has nurtured for, it seems, forever. And it has become brittle as its subdivisions jockey for position, in a hierarchy that is now viewed up for grabs. "Me first! No me!"

Wretchard finally gave us an inkling as to how he viewed where the application of those rules were leading with this:

"The problem with the politics of infinite subdivision is that it inevitably fractures the party which manufactures the categories itself. Eventually the Party itself becomes a pile of sticks that can't be shifted without everything falling to the ground."

And that is where he inspired me to comment. I saw that Wretchard's pile of sticks were symbolically what happens when a fasces has lost its binding chord.

I asked Wretchard of what he thought the binding chord was made. He responded: "Hate" and a bit more. Go read it.

Alright, now here's the point of the title of this piece as inspired by Wretchard's invoking the symbol of the fasces.

The fasces was originally a symbol among those with a common interest to provide for their defense. It originated with the Etruscan League.

After the Etruscan King was kicked out of Rome, it was adopted by the Romans to represent their republic: A state formed to provide a common defense among more or less equals; who were bound together in a ways similar to how the sticks bound to the ax handle protects it from attacks to it flank, its weakest point; and who elected its leaders to wield the weapons of the state.

These United States also adopted the fasces. It symbolized the words of Benjamin Franklin:

“We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”

However, the fasces had also carried over into the Roman Empire as a symbol. The difference was that the dictator then decided who it was that he represented; who it was that protected his flank; and who was not to be included because they were a threat to his power -- and, of course, by extension, a threat to the state. This was the meaning of the symbol that Mussolini has come to represent. It is the meaning most associated with the fasces today.

Wretchard's post clearly shows that in the Democratic Party at least, the common interests that it represented once, working folk, the less privileged members of society, who banded together to elect its leader, have morphed from a republican form into a fascist form of organization. Wherein its leaders decided WHO best represents the special interests for whom it claims to speak. In other words, the leadership decides who are allowed to be the sticks that protect its flank rather than "the sticks" deciding who its leadership should be.

Wretchard laid the groundwork for today's observation a few years ago with this line:

"One of the sources of the inhuman 'strength' of the Left is its refusal to acknowledge the existence of anything smaller than a mass noun. Rhetorical service to the people, masses, workers, peasants; the poor and the downtrodden are objects worthy of the Left; but love, pity and sorrow for individuals is sentiment beneath contempt."

The reason the Left can ignore individuals is because it is not individual's voices that are heard. Individuals from each of the interests groups the Left claims to represent are MARGINALIZED whenever they disagree with the Left's leadership. How could it be made much more clearer than suffering from or even witnessing such behavior? The Left's leadership clearly cares less for members of any of its groups than it does about being able to claim without contradiction to be doing what it wants "in the interest" of its groups. (And largely succeeds since both it and the MSM it inhabits block or discredit complainants from its groups.)

Examples abound. The left calls women who reject feminist ideology female impersonators. It loves Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, men who make demands that provide government an excuse to grow and to steal via taxation, but it hates brilliant economists like Sowell and Williams because they recommend the opposite. Duh. And homosexuals who merely want to be left alone, and are appalled by the radicals' agenda, are dismissed or threatened. In fact they have nasty names and exclusionary labels for members of every group who dare say "Now wait, not so fast..." even before they can finish stating their complaints.

That behavior is simply more obvious in the Left, because it has been going on there much longer. But ask most any conservative today if the GOP hears his complaints. You will hear that his words have been shucked to the side with a sneering "what can you do about it other than elect people who are worse than me? Shut up, you bother me."

In short, what we are seeing here has been metamorphosing in these United States in both main parties, and in the central government as well, but quite a bit more obviously in the Democratic party. The fasces today stands less for the republican form and more for the dictatorial form of the state.

Metamorphosis is how the fasces went from representing the defense of common interests who choose their leader, to one where the leader replaces, one by one, those who represent the individual interests with men of his liking.

Can what is left of free men still form a strong defense for the common interest of all and elect real leaders to defend them? Can the republican form symbolized by the fasces be brought back to save the day? That remains to be seen.

**UPDATE**

I received an email from "Carry_okie" in which he stated something with which I agree in large part because I know how violations of the tenth commandment easily lead to personal unhappiness.

In it Carryokie is indirectly referring to Wretchard's comment that what binds the fasces of the Democratic Party is hate. Carryokie qualified that a bit more:

"Not quite.

Its leaders decide WHO gets protected, who takes the whack, and who gets to define the covetousness with which it is bound.

Covetousness is a better binder than hate because it is entirely subjective and need not be sated. Indeed, it is the insatiable nature of covetousness and the fact that any attempt to sate it leaves the "benefactor" less capable of delivering that makes it such a powerful binder. One need only offer the hope that you'll deliver the goodies, because you can always blame the bad guy if you don't.

Certainly one hates those they envy, but it is the unrequited desire to take that drives that hate." [emphasis added]

Thank you Carryokie.

Something Eternally Undeniable

There are many believers in God: the theist.

There are many believers that God does not exist: the atheist.

But one thing this agnostic does know for a certainty:

The Concept of God exists.

And that irritates all the rulers and demigods and their nefarious aides that ever existed.

Whether or not God exists, the Concept of God stands between the individual and those who would treat him as less than human. All the anti-theistic efforts in the world can never put an end to the Concept.

Where there are human beings -- or, indeed, any thinking beings -- there will be the Concept of God.

Ades to Corruption

aide

–noun
1. nurse's aide.
2. an aide-de-camp.
3. an assistant or helper, esp. a confidential one.

-- from Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)

I've long wanted to have a short word that I and others could use that would be an apt label for one who helps forestall or prevent reforms to decadent institutions.

The closest historical word, antidisestablishmentarian, is way too unwieldy to use for reformers to make any headway with.

I initially thought about using the near acronym ADET. This is comprised by taking the first letters of antidisestablishmentarian's two prefixes (Anti and Dis), the the first letter in Establishment and the first letter of the suffix (Tarian). While it has the advantage of a unique appearance, it sounds way too diminutive in speech. Hence I think it sounds far too benign to convey the nastiness to which protectors of bad bureaucracies have been known to resort.

However, the word aide already exists, and the word antidisestablishmentarian is clearly a subset of aide definitions 2 and 3. So, I think I've found my answer.

I propose the semi-acronymic word ade be adopted. It is far less cumbersome a word than antidisestablishmentarian, and so lends itself well to public speaking, and better, to public acceptance. Good public speakers should be able, with proper inflections, to make it clear that they are speaking of ades and not the wider aides. And ade also separates such people from the true aids for our woes, the reformers who we so desperately need to stop the growth of Leviathan.

I intend to speak out in print using the word ade, so I just wanted to prepare the way.

**Update**

A reader has suggested this following line helps drive home the point about how much damage antidisestablishmentarians (ades) make inevitable because ades stymie society's natural defenses. Ades hinder society from reforming needed institutions and thwart her from eliminating unneeded and bad ones.

What AIDS does to the body, ades do to society.

------
Update 2  observation:

The Church of England is still.  Nineteenth Century Antidisestablishmentarianism succeeded. And now, today, given the Archbishop of Canterbury's  willingness to allow shariah law,  what in postmodern politics will keep the C of E from converting to Muslim? Knowing what we know of the cushy relationship between the Left and radical Islam, that is a frighteningly real prospect.

**Update 3**[12/16/10]

TrueblueNZ reader Kris K has suggested that ADE need not be simply a quasi-acronym.  Antidiestablishmentarians may be viewed functionally as "Appeasers, Dunces, and Enablers." ADE can stand as a true acronym.

I think that is a good idea. What remains missing in Kris' suggestion is any reference to the heavy handed thugs who assault reformers. Now since Appeaser and Enabler are much the same thing, I think the following set of three words carry the weight much better:

Appeasers, Dunces and Enforcers (ADEs)