Barack, The Fourth Stone Cutter

The Parable of the Three Stone Cutters has been used to teach many fatuous lessons about motivation and management. I have come to assume that the great majority of the fools who write high-minded lessons around the story of the stonecutters have never done anything nearly as brutal as cutting stone in their lives. They are mainly clueless, soft-handed romantics. If they had ever had to put their lily hands on cold stone on a winter’s morning themselves, they would know that it takes something much more intrinsic- like a workman’s pride- or desperate- like a father’s urge to feed his family to keep a man chipping cold rock, breathing stone dust and splitting his raw hands to shape the stone. For those of you unfamiliar with the tale (or who have succeeded in erasing it from your memory) here is a pretty good version of it you can read without being unduly distressed by the moralizing that usually accompanies it.

Now, most of the re-tellers of this story seem to find the third stonecutter to be the very model employee. Personally, if I were make the choice to let one of these three people go, I would have fired that starry-eyed dreamer. People like that are too easily disillusioned and embittered by a real struggle. But that’s just me…

At any rate, I think there should have been a fourth stonecutter. Here is my addition to the parable:
The fourth stonecutter was the busiest of all. While he worked he talked loudly and confidently to nobody in particular about his stone and the cathedral it would some day be a part of. But the stone he was working on was very small and so jagged that it seemed suited only to be a minor detail piece or architectural bauble. When asked why he was chipping so energetically at such a small block he looked up with a smug grin and said:

I cut this stone to bring hope and change. Oh, make no mistake; before it came under my control this stone was once the largest, squarest and most durable stone ever found in the quarry! Amidst this quarry, whose stone has always been of the highest quality and repute, this one was originally hewn out of the bedrock by a group of craftsmen who came together and labored with skill and endurance to fulfill their keep safe their homes and possessions, feed their children and build an edifice made of the efforts and dreams of workers, soldiers and adventurers- each one his own master. This stone was the paragon. It was obviously a superb candidate to become the cornerstone for a great cathedral.

But I was elected foreman of this quarry last year and I have made it my business to make sure that this wonderful stone is used to the highest purpose- that it serve the greatest good for the most people. This is the reason I was elected. I have made it my life’s work to make sure that all people share equally in the benefits of the stones we quarry here.

Of course, it is true that I had never actually cut a stone before I was elected but I brought the people something more important than that. I promised them hope and change. My only real expertise and experience is in training others to demand that all our stones be used to benefit everyone, regardless of the amount or quality of stone cutting work that they do. By the shear force of my eloquence, the universality of my appeal and stalwart insistence on hope and change above achievement and labor I won the opportunity to see that the great stones of this quarry are rearranged and reconfigured for the good of everyone.

So, you see, the first thing I had to do was make this great stone into an expression of the highest ideals of equality and inclusion. That is why I am working so hard at chipping this stone up. So much beautiful stone, all in one lump, is an insult to those ideals.

As for my quarry mates:

The second stonecutter will do whatever we tell him to do because his only concern is to feed his family. He will work hard for them no matter what we do.

My friend; the third stonecutter will suffer the most, of course. Dreams, cathedrals and grandeur will have no place in my world of hope and change. We don’t need a cathedral for broken secular dreams. There is no need of big block walls for a fortress. Who would believe that we would fight to to defend a dream for which we go abroad and apologize so willingly? We certainly to not need stout stones to build strong banks when they have done their best to disburse their monies into home mortgages and other loans to people without the means to pay on them.

Hope without knowing what to hope for and change with no goal in mind become pretty stark and small after a while. The only romanticism here in my quarry is the utopia of equality and there is nothing dazzling about half the ppopulation getting things they do not work for and the other half slaving to buy them those things.

It will not be easy for him. He will have to change the reason that he cuts stone. Perhaps little, personal monuments- like polished gravestones will make him feel better. We will always need them.

But it is the first stonecutter that I worry about the most. This plain spoken man has pride and he knows who he is. He will keep on cutting true stone. He sees himself as a stonecutter and will cut on no matter what. He has the strength and the independence to know when his cutting is being ill-used. He will not adjust well to making crooked, jagged little stones and he will insist on being rewarded for his effort. Mark my words, We must keep an eye on that first stonecutter.

Political Realism- Kill the Jews

Hagyan, a reader of this blog has written me an email that has some very disquieting implications. He referenced a Palestine Post article from 1933 that mentions the thoughts of a prominent British Jew of the time. Hagyan is right, the article is redolent of the the Breath of the Beast. His message reads, in part:

What shocked me was the last sentence of the 2nd paragraph: "It was his [Lord Melchett's] impression that anti-semitism in Germany was on
the wane, as Hitler was beginning to realize that it was his anti-semitism that was keeping him from power."

I found Hagyan's message very interesting and all too apropos to our current situation. Lord Melchett's circular formulation that anti-semitism in Germany was decreasing because Hitler was moderating his Jew Hatred because it was (somehow) political liability succeeds only in dancing around the hard fact that anti-semitism was at the very core of the National Socialist movement and the even more disheartening evidence that he would eventually have his way with the enthusiastically compliant Germans.

Notwithstanding that their variety of antisemitism (or is it Jew Hatred) is smoother, less vociferously murderous and not so scabrous, Obama and his progressive elitists never could have risen to power without taking advantage of the willingness of the preponderance of Jewish Americans (along with other intellectuals and liberals) to participate in a similar soothing delusion. They sedate their consciences with the idea that Obama is a "political realist" and a reliable friend.

So many liberals, Jews and intellectuals, after all, have made a self-conscious show of their contempt for the mountains of evidence, offered on my blog and in many other places, that the Progressive elitists, Black Liberation theologians, former terrorists and assorted social activists with whom he consorts viscerally despise the middle class ideals, Judeo-Christian morals and self-reliant entrepreneurial American spirit. They practice an intentional and fatuous ignorance of the fact that it is that very set of ideals,morals and spirit that have protected and enabled Jews to become successful and even powerful members of American society in a way we have never achieved in any other country. They turn their backs on the obvious signs because, like Melchette they believe that political success depends on political correctness and it is incorrect to identify the flaws and contradictions in a coalition of ignorance once you have signed on as a member.

So, here we are, Israel is facing a perfect storm of bloody-minded terror from her neighbors while her natural supporters- Jews and political liberals are numbed to inaction by the pathetic idea that Obama is really a subtle and nuanced friend who, while he is hard on Israel to prove to the world that he is an "honest broker", would never allow Israel's destruction. We need, they think, only let him wield his subtle "soft power" unhindered by our own attempts to support or protect Israel. It is in this vein that Dershowitz can write that "Israel's Actions Were Entirely Lawful Though Probably Unwise"

Dershowitz appears to be an effective defender of Israel because he makes his legal case brilliantly. Morally and strategically, though, the wistful longing for Obama to be the benevolent but covert protector of his liberal imagination conceals from him and his readers the truth that Obama cares nothing for Dershowitz, Israel or "The Jews".

For Obama we are, at best, an irascible and untrustworthy member of the coalition of dupes and fellow travelers that got him elected and are now abandoning him in droves as he has begun to show his true colors. At worst he recognizes us better than we do ourselves as a stubborn (if still slumbering) reservoir of bourgeois dedication to the traditional values of enterprise, intellectual skepticism and sound investment that are the bedrock of America's past achievements and the single most hopeful obstacle to the progressive one-world socialism that he calls "Hope and Change". This is the hard fact that is at the core of the Progressive movement. Jews (as well as conservatives, classical liberals, religious people and small business people) are "in the way". The correctness is so bad now that in Dershowitz's circle one may not even use the word socialism as a description. In this sense Dershowitz and other liberal supporters of Obama are complicit with the Progressive agenda and, by extension, a dupe for Israel's (and all Jew's) enemies.

Since when is it not wise for a sovereign country to stop bon fide supporters of terrorists on the high seas? Since when is it not permissible for soldiers of that country to defend their own lives? Only since they are Jewish. The Jewish blood spilt by the "protesters" on the boat ( who are on record singing songs about killing Jews) as they attacked the soldiers carrying paintball guns, like the blood of the children of Sderot killed and maimed by the very "freedom fighters" the protesters are supporting must no longer be considered barter for a corrupt system of political dealing- it cheapens Jewish life and makes it expendable. Or, rather, it agrees with Obama and the rest of the world that it is expendable.

It is time for Jews everywhere to recognize and speak the truth: political realism, like political correctness cuts both ways and we are as vulnerable as we have ever been. If you do not pay attention now, if you make the mistake of Melchette in 1933, there is hell to pay down the road. Jews do not have the luxury anymore to ignore (let alone support!) the Obama administration and its Progressive agenda.

Note: My friend Robert Avrech at Seraphic Secret has another similar take on this in a very important post.

The Earliest Lame Duck in History

President Obama is an avian mixed metaphor. He has tried to be the early bird, pushing very hard on his radical agenda in the face of economic hardships. But he has only suceeded in making himself the earliest lame duck in history. Case in point is here:

The man is either living in a fool's paradise or he is just trying to do as much damage as he can before he is deprived of his minions next year and swept out of office in three years. The election is NOT over- in America the election is every day. He looks around him grasping at straws and ends up only finding Harry Reid and Chris Dodd as his examples! Hold on there, Mr. President. Chris has already acknowledged that he cannot possibly get reelected by his constituents and Harry, by all acconts, is headed for electoral elimination next year!

That is the beauty of American Democracy- the election is never over- we the people will always have our say.

Let's mix the metaphore even more, Obama's presidency has turned into an empty suit leading an army of dead-men-walking.

The Biggest Freudian Slip in the History of Propaganda

On one of my regular visits to Seraphic Secret (one of the finest, most interesting blogs on the internet) I was reminded that Feb. 11th is Revolution Day in Iran. Robert posted this picture which I think should get more attention so I am borrowing it and putting up here as well. I left a comment at Seraphic Secret about it and will expand on it here...

Correct me if I am mistaken, it looks to me that Obama has just beheaded Lady Liberty in that picture. If so, this must be in the running for the title of "The Biggest Freudian Slip in the History of Propaganda".

Think about it! What exactly are they saying here? Do they agree with many of our own American conservatives that President Obama's agenda is a deadly threat (intentional or not) to Liberty? Are they suddenly concerned for the preservation of American ideals? What is the meaning of an obviously verdi-copper colored statue bleeding red blood?

No, they care nothing for and know less about Liberty. The rage and pain in the Islamist soul renders them inchoate. There is nothing deeper here than hatred pure, mockery vile and fury unbounded. Poor un-manned Obama with an odd sort of orgasmic look on his face holding the desecrated female symbol of Liberty (name me one brave, important and powerful female symbol in all of Islam!) expresses their impotence more perfectly than any essay or analysis ever could. They are powerless to express the overwhelming rage. Their inability to see the real cause of the rage turns their every attempt at expression turgid and recursive.

This is why they call it Revolution Day. They celebrate their revolution with shows of irrational cascades of bloody symbolism and threats of death.

We call The Fourth of July Independence Day because something was born that day. The day that shooting started on started in our revolution, has been relegated to a second class state holiday in Massachusetts and we instead celebrate as a nation the publication of the document that proclaimed a new and unique way of organizing a government in these words:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. "

Nothing was born on Revolution Day, it was just the latest in a series of bloody events that stretch back to the origin of the species, events that promise nothing but more and bigger of the same.

It was, after all my family's intimate encounter with a distant but deadly ripple from the utter insanity of Iran's streets that gave me my first inkling of the beast that is stalking us. But this picture is really a crystal window into what a squalid dead-end Iran and the dream of the Caliphate really is. These people haven't a clear thought in their heads. They are twisted and knotted so thoroughly around the Islamist armature of collectivism, misogyny and ignorance that they are truly "beside themselves" and they just HATE the neighborhood.

As for President Obama, believe what you will about his intentions and the bankruptcy of his agenda, his apparent acquiescence in the nuclear ambitions of these people put him in danger of becoming the chief enabler of the next holocaust- the most avoidable and horrifying one ever...

Corpseman- It's No Mere Gaffe

Gaffes are one thing, ignorance and dereliction of responsibility are another thing altogether. Everyone is missing the point about the President’s latest gaffe. It is more telling than Dan Quayle misspelling a food item and it is much more chilling than any of the famous malapropisms of former president Bush.

Here is why. President Obama is not just our political leader, he is the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces. He is the one we have given the ultimate responsibility to keep us safe. He has the power to send our young people into harm’s way. He can, likewise, withhold military action when Americans are in peril. Protecting and defending us is supposed to be the first priority of the President. Compelling the healthcare system to wipe more noses even if it is with rougher tissue paper, changing our national culture by weaning us away from our “bitter” clinging to God and guns and keeping industry from creating jobs by producing more than a certain quota of fossil fuel smoke are supposed to be somewhere down the list.

There is a common legend that Eskimos have a variety of words to describe snow. It makes sense for people to whom snow is important and whose lives often depend on a clear understanding of snow’s condition and appearance would have evolved sophisticated was of classifying and communicating about it. If Barack Obama were an Eskimo, he and all he leads would die in the ice.

We know that he has never served in the armed forces himself but, for God’s sake, Mr Obama walks past the Marines who guard his life every day. He flies in the helicopter Marine One to Camp David and other places constantly. The unofficial name for The Marine Band is “The Presidents Own”. He daily makes decisions in which he calls upon members of the various Corps of the armed forces to risk their own lives and take the lives of others. Do you think he might at some point have taken the time to listen to the military men and women talk about themselves?

Does he call “his own” band the Marine Corpse Band?

Is he really THAT disinterested in one of the most powerful instruments of policy available to him? Has he such a small appreciation for one of the key guarantors of his own personal safety? If so, what does that say about the priority he gives to the protection and preservation of the rest of us- our lives and livelihoods?

Calling a service member a corpseman is no mere gaffe it is one more proof that Mr. Obama does not understand his job, overestimates his own importance and has no idea what is truly important.

If you owned a cabinet making business would you hire a guy who, in the course of a job interview, called the big planer that you use to mill wood down to a smooth and even thickness a planner- confusing it with a calendar book day-timer?

Would you let a surgeon who says car-toid instead of carotid for the artery that carries all of the blood to your brain operate on your neck?

If not, then why would you want this guy to be your Commander-in-Chief?

UPDATES:

1. This was not the first time Obama has made this mistake one of my commenters on Free Republic has sent me this:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxORB49KtsE

2. My friend Professor Barry Rubin writes of the Eskimo analogy:

Actually, they would develop a stiumulus package that bought trillions of dollars of refrigerators. Professor Barry Rubin, Director, Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloria-center.org The Rubin Report blog http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/ Editor, Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://www.gloria-center.org Editor Turkish Studies, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=t713636933%22

An Horrific Outbreak of Stupidity

When it happened yesterday, we all thought the same thing. Many of us could not (or would not) speak it. Some could not even admit it to themselves that they thought it.

Hello, world, his name is Nidal Malik Hasan.

Today, in the aftermath, the news media is avoiding saying it with affected contortions of logic, pompous intentional ignorance of recent history and a bland stupidity that make “Sir Arthur” in this classic Beyond the Fringe sketch look like a forensic genius.

(There is a better, full motion version of this at YouTube that does not allow embedding)

How stupid do the media and our leaders think we are? If you are not simultaneously laughing at them and choking in outrage, you are pretty damned stupid…

Well, here, compare and contrast:

Today’s Boston Globe Headlines about the Fort Hood Sudden Jihad (FHSJ)

“Soldier kills 12, hurts 31 in Fort Hood rampage -

Military psychiatrist facing deployment abroad is accused”

Sir Arthur about the Great Train Robbery

“We believe this to be the work of thieves”

Barak Hussein Obama’s take on FHSJ,

“A horrific outbreak of violence"

Sir Arthur,

“There is the telltale disappearance of property, the snatching away of money substances. It all points to thieves.”

And why don’t they talk about Jihad and Islam and the fact that we all had, whether we admit it or not, the same thought when we heard about Fort Hood? Well no one talks about what they will not talk about but sir Arthur is not so constrained, when asked what a mindermast is, he admits,

"We don’t like to use the word Mastermind- it depresses the men."

We don’t want to think about the fact that the billions of Muslims all over the world belong to a religion and a culture that harbors and in many cases nurtures the seeds of blind hatred and coldblooded murder. We can't contemplate the implications of a guy that is described by his cousin as "a good American", a mental health professional, a physician who has taken the Hippocratic Oath could end up shouting Allah Akbar with guns blazing at unarmed by-standers. It might dishearten us. Think then, of Israel, who only wants to live in peace and is faced on all sides with the Muslim world that only wants to annihilate her.

Sir Arthur has one last caution for us, when asked by his interviewer

"Who do you think is behind the criminals?"

He answers:

"We are - considerably."

At least he knows he is losing and perhaps doomed by his ignorance. If we do not wake up and stop pretending that we are not facing a threat that we refuse to understand, we will be just as lost and possibly even more doomed.

Barack Hits the Nail on the Head

Barack Obama said it. He didn’t mean it the way I do but all the same…
“I have to say, I am surprised by the controversy…”

What did America expect?
When your only tool is a hammer everything in the world looks like a nail-
So, if a white policeman, in the course of making sure lives and property are protected, happens to have to ask a man who has made a very good living and a personal vendetta out of blaming America and white people, would you expect him not to make the most of an opportunity to prove himself right and secure days, weeks, maybe even months of media attention?

And if you elect a “community organizer” President of the United States he will use every trick in the book to divert the attention from facts (of which there were not many) and logic (if wind were logic this news conference would have been the general theory of relativity- but alas…) including using a media stooge to creat a diversion. After using a great many words and a tremendous amount of time to say very little about the great white elephant of a Health Reform Bill that he is trying to shove down our throats, He made sure that the last question came from a friendly face from a Chicago paper. The following clip shows him completing the final maneuver to get his media toady the microphone.

Right out of the Savage Compassion handbook. Take an emotionally stinky topic put it in a paper bag, light it on fire, throw it onto the porch, ring the doorbell then hide in the bushes and watch the fun. Who cares if you admit that you know nothing about what happened you can still blacken America’s name and accuse a police officer because “everybody knows” that this is the way it is.

So, yeah, Barak I am surprised by the controversy too. I have been expecting it. The only surprise on my part is that it is happening so soon, before the end of your year in office. I thought it might have taken longer for you to squander all that marvelous political capital that swept you into office. I surely expected that you would be politically savvy enough not to say a thing like that or to defend it a day later. But, then, when you are used to hammering the police as a community organizer they must all get to look like nails after a while…

O(blah-blah)bama in the Balance

It is true that your great triumph to this point, the thing that has gotten you the presidency, is your ability to stand up and orate in a dignified and reassuring way. It is also true that this is a very important thing for a politician to be able to do. But you must be aware that this is not all that is going to be required from you.

That’s too bad because it is beginning to look like its the only thing you are good at.

Your promises of transparency disappeared in the pork-filled, un-read, pages of the first stimulus package that was cobbled together by people unnamed and railroaded through the legislature in the throes of trumped-up panic.
Your dedication to integrity has been exposed as a sham as you fill your administration with tax cheats and self-promoting ideologues.

You bow down to Saudi royalty as they smile in smug approval at your subservience, live under our protection and continue to make war on our values and undermine our civilization.

You hide behind a feckless Judenrat (Emmanuel, Boxer, et al) of compliant “warranting Jews” as you make flirtatious overtures to Iranian Mullahs. Then you just smile knowingly when their nasty little poppet-despot Achmadinejad insults you and America by throwing your words back at you. All the while he funds and fosters surrogate terror armies and continues to prepare to destroy our only real ally in the Middle East with a Nuclear Holocaust.

You cluck your tongue and issue empty cautions (they are not even strong enough to be called threats) as the lunatic despot of North Korea fires a ballistic missile over the very heads of our faithful ally Japan and in our general direction.
Even before you left the G20 meeting, the Europeans were getting tired of you. As you headed for the door you were already being called a windbag and a bore.

By the way, that sound you heard as you left Europe was the last few intelligent people in France and Germany letting out a gasp of recognition that they have gotten the ineffectual and self-deprecating America they thought they have wanted and are now more alone than they have been since 1941- with a more insidious and persistent enemy knocking at the gates.

You, my president, are looking less like The One and a great deal more like The Wizard of Oz. But here’s the catch, no one is going to kill the wicked witch for you. You are they guy we are all looking to. You are going to have to drop the Mr. McCawber routine and actually do something.

Sooner would be better than later, because one or two terror attacks in the US or a nuclear bomb blast over Tel Aviv will reverse the historical importance of your presidency- instead of the name of the first African American leader of the Free World O(blah-blah)bama will be forever known as the epitome of empty, impotent bloviation.

Hail to the New Chief

God Bless our President Elect.

Well, now we get to find out whether he is a socialist ideologue who has been plotting to “change” the best most productive country in the world to something less or just a canny politician who was, as an ambitious young man, able to grab the greasy rope net of affirmative action, clamber aboard the radical socialist pirate ship, rise to prominence among the America-haters and demagogues of the welfare state and, from there swing himself onto the deck of our ship of state ready to change into the uniform of and abide by the constitution of The United States of America. Count me as one of the ones who was, and still is, skeptical. I was certainly against giving him the opportunity to prove himself in this way; but if he turns out to be the latter, I confess I will be sorely tempted to forgive him his methods and wink at his pluck.

This is a particularly bad time for us to be taking this risk but he has the presidential seal now and he is my president. I take whatever cheer I can from the hope that he is not the ideologue but the ambitious politician and will, as others have in the past, be transformed by the grandeur of the office and the vitality of the constitution, which defines its powers and responsibilities.

As an American, I honor that constitution and the office. I wish Barack Obama well in assuming it. Americans are also called upon by our system to be vigilant and vocal and I intend to fulfill that duty too.

There are some things that are unalloyed good about this. Chief among them is that we have proven once again that, without question, this is the greatest land of opportunity on earth. As much as I regret what I perceive to be the character of the man and dislike his policies and despise so many of his friends and supporters, I can’t help but have a deep pride that he has been able to become the most powerful man in the world as a black man in America.

The other really good thing is that, if he is just a canny politician, the leftist radicals he used on his way up are in a no-win situation. If he lives up to the demands of the office, they will have lost what might be their only opportunity to have their kind of “change” in this century. If he doesn’t, I have faith that our system will flush him out the way it did Jimmy Carter and it will be a very long time before the American public trusts another candidate with those kinds of friends and associates again.

I pray for his safety and for ours. I pray that he will prove to have statecraft equal to the political drive he has shown and that he will govern with humility, wisdom, strength, compassion and, most important of all, understanding of and respect for the constitution, system and people that have given him this opportunity.

Here's Hoping Nice Guys Finish Last This Time Too!

Not that it doesn't sound interesting...

Mr Obama, I have nothing against you. In fact you seem like a pretty nice man. Maybe a little too nice. I think your intentions are good but, honestly I think you are a babe in the woods. You remind me of other goofy and untested Democrats of the past. In some ways you remind me of Mike Dukakis.


Governor Mike Dukakis’ was a soothing, cool intellectual just like you. Unlike you though, the press felt free to ask him hard questions. When he was asked about his failed proson furlough program here in Massachusetts his naïveté lead him to a fatal mistake. In reference to the poster boy for liberals allowing evil to eat the innocent, Willie Horton, he was asked how he would feel about “rehabilitating” someone who raped and murdered his wife. His cool, bloodless answer scared a lot of people, and rightly so.

I know you don’t understand it so I will make it explicit: that is what people didn’t like about your conversation with Joe the plumber. You, like all the other liberals who want to take care of the rest of us, are cool and bloodless when it comes even to those closest to you when they don’t fit in with your intellectual ideas about how the world should be run.

And let's face it, the lengths that you, your media worshipers and your campaign people went to to assasinate Joe's character was just plain ugly. Not at all what we would expect from someone who works so hard at "nice". Yes but is it a socialist, totalitarian kind of nice isn't it. Ask a hard question or stand up for your private property and nice turns nasty in a hurry...

You talk about Change.

The question is, “Change what, Mr. Obama?”

I’m not so sure that I want you “spreading the wealth” right now. You keep saying that in a country as wealthy as ours we ought to be able to just provide health care for everyone. That’s a very nice thing to say but I sure don’t feel so wealthy at the moment and most of the people I know don’t either. I was watching when you talked with “Joe the Plumber too”. See, I really think that this spreading the wealth deal is dangerous. It can’t help but weaken our economic power by taking money from entrepreneurs like Joe who earned it and will most likely make it work My question on that would be why take the money from him, crank it through a bigger and less efficient bureaucracy who will then dole it out in chunks to someone who may or may not do anything other than to buy extra lottery tickets and cigarettes with it.

That’s not the kind of change I believe in…

We should not be thinking about weakening our economy- especially right now. If we do, we will no longer be able to take our usual role of supplying much of the creative power to pull the world’s economies out of the recession. What country do you think would take our place in that role? China, where the economy is so dependant on selling goods designed and specified here into our market that even in the less drastic conditions before the current increase in the slow-down, analysts were predicting the possibility of social unrest?

Do you mean the America hating, oil-rich despots and potentates of Arabia and Persia, with whom you say you will confer without preconditions, perhaps? No, their only role in the world’s economy is to make sure to exert the maximum drag on the worlds economy by ratcheting our energy costs up whenever possible. Here’s a suggestion: Why don’t you make it a precondition that they at least stop promising to use the proceeds of their blackmail to try to bring about our downfall as a civilization? Is that too restrictive?

Or maybe you hope that the once strong economies of Europe, you know, the ones that have been stultified by socialistic policies similar to the ones you want to implement here, will do the job?

Anyway, the whole mortgage mess seems to have been caused by the kinds of socialistic “redistribution of wealth” you have specifically advocated and your friends at ACORN have directly lobbied for. You have even been one of the greatest beneficiaries personally – in the form of donations from Fannie Mae. So we need to back off on the “4 more years”warnings because, frankly, John McCain looks more to me like the guy who can clean this up than you do. For one thing, you don't seem to hang around with a very nice crowd...


No, I don’t think that you are the guy to bring the needed change any more than I think any of those socialist countries are up to the job of pulling up the worlds economic socks- and if you become president, maybe we won’t be anymore.

Look, most of the rest of the world is Socialist or worse, every society has its ups and downs but there is only one that has fueled all of the ups for the past couple of centuries. There is no good time to change that.

The Media's Last Chance to Give Us All the Coverage We Need

Amidst rumors of financial ruin and dark Intimations of racial and social unrest pending the results of the election next week, here are are some timely questions for the media...

If you found it easier for the past few months to get cabs and places at the bar in any of the big media center cities, it’s only partly because of the financial crisis. The other reason is that there has been an exodus of “journalists, reporters and correspondents” to the wild north. While the leaping, wriggling schools of big city media types were making the streets of Wasilla and Juneau looked more like crowded Alaskan Salmon spawning streams at the height of the run, Crickets must have been chirping in New York, Los Angeles and (especially) Chicago.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has published a pretty good study of press coverage up to the last presidential debate. The finding that has been most talked about (and misunderstood) is that in looking at the number of articles about each presidential candidate, the number of positive article about Obama outnumbers the positive articles about McCain by a margin of 3 to 1. This is dramatic and damning but is softened in the report by analysis that shows it is almost always the case that the frontrunner gets more coverage than the other candidate and that much of the positive content was about the lead in the polls. More interesting but still somewhat off the mark was the analytics on the “tone” of coverage. The tone issue is hard to measure but taken together, the study does find that the media has take a different tone with Obama than they have with McCain.

Far more important and much harder to measure is the importance of the things that do not get coverage. On this issue there is no discussion in this study and very little evidence that can be culled. It is important to try to look at what has not been covered, though, because the Media has a responsibility, not just to give accurate and complete coverage within a story, but to cover all stories that pertain to the action.

The journalistic spawning run in Alaska, the corresponding sound of chirping crickets in Obama’s Chicago precincts and the absence of any follow-through on his “lost” time at Columbia are aspects that are hard to quantify and even harder to evaluate for impact.

One indication that can be tracked however is the fact that The Second Presidential Debate offers a laboratory for the effect of one of the issues that the Media has missed on.

The Media has consistently minimized the importance of William Ayers as a negative factor for Obama. They stayed away from talking about the relationship and its meaning throughout the campaign. Then, in the second debate, John McCain, in utter frustration took on the job of informing the public about this association.

Much was made about the tactic backfiring on McCain because it pushed up his negatives noticeably. The media has given a big chuckle of amused vindication and gone back to saying “We were right not to report on it because it is not a factor- people are not interested.” But they are wrong. One look at the chart below shows how wrong they are. The Pew report identifies a clear effect, “…the McCain camp linked Obama with ‘60’s radical William Ayers, 45% of the stories studied about Obama were negative, while 25% were positive and another 30% were mixed. The McCain attacks worked, in other words, in changing the dialogue in the media, as well as the tone of that dialogue.”



The soaring negatives that the attacks brought to the McCain campaign were scalding and the campaign felt they had to be stopped immediately to cut the losses. The question remains, “What has the absence of coverage on key issues done to channel the course of the campaign?

Again, this can only be answered indirectly but the next chart offers a very important clue. The chart clearly shows that almost three quarter of the coverage of this campaign were on the two categories of subject matter (“The Political Horse Race” and “Advertising and Fundraising”) that have nothing to do with the Personal Character, Background, Record of Achievement or Ability to be President of the candidates.



What if the McCain camp were not forced to bring the negatives of Barak Obama to the public’s attention at a severe price in public opinion? What if the press spent more time looking at character, love for this country and leadership experience? How would that change their Horse Race Stories?

As we head into the final week of this election cycle we need to ask our media this question:
In the years to come, everyone will be looking at you and your role in this election. What will you say to them about it? Will you take responsibility?

You, the mainstream media, are not telling the American public what it needs to know. You are not giving us all the information we need.

The information is out there, you are not using it, not looking for it and sometimes even suppressing it .

We will be waiting.

The Obama Crash?

I never do this on my blog but I am about to put up a snip and a link to someone else's post. My friend Judith Apter Klinghoffer has just put up a very important post that I think everyone should read. It is something I have been wondering about for some time- especially because it ties in so well with the Alinsky/Cloward-Piven connections that are surfacing. Please keep in mind that Judith is a fine scholar and not at all a conspiracy theory type-

MARKETS VOTE NO CONFIDENCE IN OBAMA
An Obama Panic?
...Credit markets have started to thaw, yet stocks and the larger economy keep sliding. What's going on? Among the problems are the reality of recession and the uncertainty over Barack Obama's policies.
US News and World Report blogger muses that The Barack Obama Discount May Be Real READ IT

Picking Up Hats- Waiting for Chico

Seventy-five years ago in 1933, The world was three years into The Great Depression. Hitler became the dictator of Germany in 1933. FDR was inaugurated as President of the U.S.. Also in 1933, in the Soviet Union, the famine created by the collectivization of farms was into its second year. The Soviet famine, actually a political atrocity of genocidal proportions, is thought to have claimed as many as five million lives. 1933 was also the year that the new president Roosevelt broke the sixteen-year long impasse and granted U.S. diplomatic recognition for the Communist regime in the USSR.

I’m going to forgo the obvious observations. Those who have eyes to see the parallels and implications for today will surely have seen them already and those who don’t will only become agitated. Anyway I have something startling to show you from 1933
Take a look at this short video clip:


Its from the Marx Brother’s movie Duck Soup. This is one of the great classic scenes in entertainment history and I believe that it is so memorable because it says something universal and scathing about mirrors, human behavior and illusion. The pas de deux between Groucho and Harpo starts out looking like an earnest attempt by Chico to imitate Groucho’s actions exactly- as if to fool him into thinking that he is really looking into a mirror instead of at a spy who is on a mission against him. Now, this scenario has been imitated by other pairs of actors and lesser comedic talents always play it straight. That is to say that the one playing the “Groucho” role will assume an attitude of ominous suspicion or innocent credulity.

Groucho here is playing it coy and amused through the whole exercise. We see in his attitude and our acceptance of it that the autonomic mirror is not just an urge to mirror but a reciprocal urge to be mirrored as well. He feigns trick after trick to trip Harpo up and ignores every slip.

As the scene progresses, the gap between Groucho’s actions and Harpo’s imitations widens. They even circle each other and briefly switch sides without breaking the spell. When Harpo drops his hat Groucho even surprises us by picking it up and handing it back to him. All the while, Groucho remains no more than bemused while he plays along. The peculiar brilliance here is that even while we wonder why he does not just pull the plug on the charade, we also feel the elemental pleasure/pain of the dissonance created by the elemental power of the autonomic mirroring urge as it interacts with the mounting accumulation of evidence. Finally the appearance of Chico in the scene- dressed identically- breaks the tension and Groucho is compelled to break the illusion of “mirror” he has so willingly preserved.

What we witnessed in the video clip is theater but it its greatness derives from a deep resonance in human nature. It incorporates the mirror (in this case a purely fictional one) as a central character.

As humans we are mirrors for each other throughout our lives. Mirroring each other is the way in which we learn about life, form opinion and conceive desires. We learn about our place in the larger world by reading, listening and viewing the media which are the larger mirror on which we depend for news and point of view. Intellectual, cultural and social life is really mirrors within mirrors.

There is a an elemental conflict in this scene, as one man sets out to convince the other that he is merely the mirror image of the other. This is an eternal human dilemma. If everything we do, say and think is a kind of mirroring how do we know know what is real and what is reflection and, if it is reflection is it distorted? If our behavior, thoughts and desires are reflections of those of other people, how do we establish authenticity in our own behavior? How can we be sure we are not being manipulated? These are very disquieting thoughts and in order to maintain confidence in our own actions and reactions we need to keep the reflecting relationship secret from ourselves- or at least under control to the degree that we do not see our self as unoriginal – as a mere façade.

Is it possible, you ask, if this allegory, this uncritical acceptance of an obviously flawed mirror image, has an analog in reality?

Yes, in fact, our media study under the banner of Second Draft has turned this kind of thing up in many unexpected places. The one being played out in the presidential elections in the US at this moment is one of the most obvious, though, and it is also one of the very most dangerous. In this instance the part of Groucho is played by the Main Stream Media and Harpo is Barack Obama and his campaign.

The action between Groucho and Harpo evolves as a kind of pantomime of the way in which the media, having begun to mirror a character or story it has begun to “carry” will go to fantastic lengths, even to the equivalent of Groucho (in the mirror that is not there) picking up the “dropped hat” and handing it back to a public figure when he drops it.

Picking up the dropped hat can take many forms, these include:

• Ignoring or refusing to investigate important stories that contradict the theme being “carried”.
• “Reframing” information and “putting it in context” to minimize its impact.
• Making up rationalizations and excuses for behavior and situations.
• Refusing to identify connections between obvious gaps in information

I believe that time will show that the media’s participation in the pandemic infatuation of millions of people all over the world with Barack Obama is a very dramatic example of this kind of active distortion of the mirroring relationship. Obama intentionally presents us with an image of ourselves in that is calculated to make us feel is a reflection of the kind of world we desperately long to see. Because of that image, many people have made the commitment to ignore any thing negative that may come up about him and threaten the coherence of the image. This, as in the strange little mirror dance of Groucho and Harpoo ceases to be gullibility and becomes credulity. Even in the face of mounting evidence that he is not a man of good character, experience or, even, good will.

The enticement of the “change” he offers, begins with the image of a black man who behaves like a white man ascending to the presidency “proving” that we are not a racist country and that we put equality before reason and self-reliance and ends with a bland and rational-sounding but nebulous approach to bringing about a socialist “change” in America. He leads many to believe that racism will just disappear from people’s heart and minds and seems to imply that his policies are less socialist than they are benevolent- that they will take away all the “inequalities” and suffering of normal life.

A world without racism, inequality and suffering is called Utopia. Utopia always sounds nice but go try to implement one- entirely unrealistic- we know that from thousands of failed attempts. We know it too because an honest look around the world will tell us that the countries in which the socialist engineers of equality and benevolence have had their way are the greatest sources of new immigrants into the United States. But that does not stop his mirroring minions from cheerfully ignoring both the evidence and the surreal assumptions behind their cult. It does not stop them because they don't necessarily have to believe it is possible- they just want that narcissistic mirror image of themselves trying to do it. When an outsider to the cult offers even the most reasoned argument and clear evidence, it is met with some combination of taunting, insolence, blind denial, disproportionate rage, obfuscation or sneering- none of which actually address the arguments and evidence.

I will, at least for this post, keep my word and not make all of the obvious observations. Allow me, though, one more chilling bit of information about the movie from which the mirror clip came:
Here is part of the plot summary offered by the New York Times for the movie Duck Soup

“In this 1933 Marx Brothers film, the mythical country of Freedonia is broke and on the verge of revolution. Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), Freedonia's principal benefactress, will lend the country 20 million dollars if the president withdraws and places the government in the hands of the "fearless, progressive" Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx). At his inauguration, Firefly shows up late, insults everyone in sight, and sings a song about how he intends to abuse his power. Naturally, the crowd cheers wildly.”

Next time you see film of an Obama rally or see video of chubby middle class children being coached in the singing of hymns to the wondrousness of The One. Like this:

Keep in mind that Soros and piles of illegal foreign money has funded him, he has lived off government grants and distributed millions to radicalized haters of our values and government. He has insulted “common” people- albeit not to their faces. His friends and associates have always intended on getting power for him so they can abuse it. Even now they are registering legions of dead people, incarcerated felons and illegal immigrants to put him in power. Every time the hat drops, the media dutifully pick it up.

They refuse to follow up on the money trails, ignore his associations, soft-peddle his connection with those who are committing the voter fraud, and draw the attention away from all of these things by virtually unfolding every crumpled piece of Kleenex in Sarah Palins trash barrels in search of manufactured scandal. And still, the crowd cheers wildly. Clearly, they will keep on doing it until the "mirror" is shattered. In the video it took the arrival of Chico.

If it seems to you that everything is backwards, well that’s probably just because that’s the way things look in a mirror. My question is "Where is Chico?"

In the Celestial Mirror- Obama Messes With the Vertical

There is a story I remember from somewhere of a dog that was trotting through his suburban neighborhood one sunny day. It was moving day at a house along his accustomed route. The movers happened to lay down a large mirror on the grass to prepare it for packing just before he came by. Momentarily distracted by the activity of the movers, the dog continued trotting - right onto the mirror. He instantly noticed the cool, hard surface stopped and looked down. Seeing nothing but sky below him, feeling that he was suddenly standing on nothing, overcome with a sense of disorientation, the dog yelped in panic and confusion and leapt straight up in the air.

I’ve always been fascinated by mirrors and reflections- and the peculiar but subtle effect they have on our perception. I can remember as a child of 6 trying to work out how my newly acquired knowledge of right and left applied to my image in the mirror. I recall touching my right hand to the glass and seeing what I knew to be the left hand of my reflection reach out in return. Having recently taken apart a telescope, I was aware that there are optical lenses that would turn your image upside down as well reverse handed.

Mirrors are a good metaphor for human perception. Like a mirror, I can only reflect what I see. My senses are the limit of my world. The things that are too small for me to see, to large to behold at one time, too soft to hear, or too chaotic to recognize do not get reflected in my view of reality. The things that I choose not to see or that are not shown to me are blind spots- holes in reality.

I particularly like the story about the dog because it says something very important about our perceptions and our emotions. The visceral fear of having one’s world suddenly turned upside down, or of being in a state of free-fall it seems, is not just a human one. There is, undoubtedly, an instinctive element to it which is reinforced and entrained in the physical and mental being from the first time an infant has something fall on him from above, or raises his head only to have gravity pull it down with a thud, or he struggles to his wobbly feet only to jar his spine and upset his composure with an unceremonious “plop” back down to the ground. Up and down is the critical dimension. You can get disoriented or even lost in the horizontal plane and most of the time it works out all right but do not mess with the vertical!

There are two visions of the future in competition with each other in America today. They are mutually exclusive.
One vision believes that we must take responsibility (or at least make it our mission) to prevent suffering and to create peace. This vision is based (often unconsciously) on idealism and the belief called “humanism” which assumes the essential goodness and purity of human nature. In this vision, the utopian dream is not just possible- it is obligatory. If human nature is blameless, the reasoning goes, then the blame for war, poverty, suffering, starvation and disease must lie with things that are “other” than the individual. Thus, government, capitalism, religion and social convention become suspect as the cause of war, famine and all manner of suffering.

This vision is the one that, since the beginning of time had people praying for a “good king” to supplant their cruel one, following conquering emperors or throwing their lives into the bottomless pit of totalitarian regimes that promised utopia.

The other vision starts with proposition that suffering, poverty and conflict can not be prevented, that the best way to minimize them is to give individuals the liberty, responsibility and the protection they need to provide for their own wellbeing. This proposition stems from the understanding that human beings have imperfect natures. Do not confuse it with nihilism- it just recognizes the reality that in the human heart, spiritual grandeur and venal greed embrace each other in an intimate struggle. Like Jacob and Esau in Rebecca’s womb they are confined, tethered to the same placental blood supply. This vision grants that all people have the potential for honesty and courage but are also subject to temptation and craven greed. The image of the future that arises from this starting point looks at the evidence and finds no reason to believe that humanity will change it nature. It posits that keeping people honest and inspiring cooperation, prosperity and progress requires balance, fairness, openness and, above all, transparency. Those who share this vision believe that the positive aspects of humanity must be given space and resources to grow and flourish, but they also see that there must be forceful controls and stern consequences for the evil aspects of humanity.

This last is the founding vision of the framers of our republic- it is the reason they made three branches of government with checks and balances in the relationships among them. It is a vision of clarity and justice.

Each of these visions is a mirror of reality but it strikes me that the utopian one is much like the mirror laid down on the grass. When you step on it, you get a view of yourself either as a kind of deity- standing among the blue sky and the clouds with nothing above you but the limitless cosmos. If you look around you from that vantage, you could be forgiven for feeling that the strictures and limits others around you are acting within are somehow meaningless and arbitrary. In fact the less you actually do in the horizontal realm of reality the more convincing you are as a deity. But beware! You have just messed with the vertical!

As you might have guessed the current standard bearer for the mirror-on-the-ground vision is Barack Hussein Obama. His unspoken, unformulated call for change is perfect- perfectly above all things terrestrial. He, who has never done anything in reality, has no fear or respect for it. His lofty aspirations are above reproach. The multitudes who in past ages would pray and clamor for a benevolent king to arise, seize on his promise of change and proclaim him The One.

And the mainstream media, faithful but supine mirror, is also lying on the ground at his feet. They do not see (or at least notice) Bill Ayers the terrorist or Jeremiah Wright the demagogue or Rezko the fraud or Michelle the ingrate or his associations with socialist and subversive organizations, all they see are the clouds and blue sky!

The Hidden Radical Shows Himself

Last night, Obama tried to distance himself from the haughtily idealistic and much too trusting of others guy who once said that upon being elected, he would run right out and sit right on down face to face with any tin-pot dictator or genocidal mass murderer who would care to use him for the propaganda value of the meeting without preconditions. He did a lot of word games and qualifying (preparation as opposed to preconditions etc…) but it only reminded me of the ultimate language parser Bill Clinton who once retreated behind the smoke screen of “what the meaning of “is” is”.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer has a nice article about her initial reaction to Obama’s personal style in this debate. Her observations are very astute especially, I think, the fact that he cannot seem to find the moral fiber to admit a mistake. I would amplify that observation a little. A debate like this is something like a boxing match. You try to land clean punches on your opponent and parry his blows. It is a sign of tactical and personal weakness if you cannot move on after your opponent stings you. Admitting a mistake is one thing. Obama is obviously not secure enough to do that and it is, arguably, a mistake in the debate format. The unforgivable debating mistake is to try to convince yourself and everyone else that the punch did not land by continuing to parry it over and over again. Your supporters will take your first explanation and everyone else will see that you are hurt and flailing take the advice of the lunatic fringe group that you said the stupid thing for in the first place and Move On- it happened, get over it and keep punching.

And that points up another problem for Obama. That remark got him a lot of points over Hillary when he said it. It ingratiated him with the “War is Not the Answer” types. In return they helped him get the nomination over the more realistic talking Hillary. Last night, he did a lot of tough talking- he even darkly implied that he wanted to kick Osama’s butt so badly that he would invade Pakistan to do it.

So who is he? What does he want us to believe so that he can be elected and what will he really do when he is? In her article Klinghoffer admits freely that she wrote nothing about the substance of Obama’s performance and neither will I- because there wasn’t any that you could depend on. He leaves us trying to read the vapors of his style.

To me the single most interesting statement to come out of last night’s debate, and it was easy to overlook it because it was a little subtle, showed us a titillating glimpse of the true-believing, Progressive, pink underwear that he still has under his new Alpha Male suit. It shows that he is still the elitist, socialist Alinskyite organizer for which the far left forsook Hillary. It was really just a passing turn of phrase, but I think it a very telling one. You may recall, he referred to Putin as a real “twentieth century” tyrant (or was it dictator?). He went on to say something (if any one knows where I can find a transcript of these exact words, I would be very grateful!) about how he had to be made to become a twenty-first century leader.

Aside from the ridiculous image that it brings to mind of Obama calling up Putin on the red telephone and saying, “Whoa, Dude, hold the invasion up! That was, like, sooo last century!” - it was also a great throbbing tip-off that betrayed the intentional ignorance of human nature that is so characteristic of the socialist left.

It shows that he somehow believes that there is some magical process by which “the modern world” of the twenty-first century will somehow change and evolve human nature away from susceptibility to dictatorship, totalitarianism and conquest is a dead give away that he is one of those people who has little regard or respect for the achievement of the American system of government which by acknowledging human nature and building a system of checks and balances to channel the energy and grandeur of the human spirit while protecting against the venal aspects of it.

Obama’s faith in the new century is not naïveté it is something much worse than that. The naïve are educable. In the early years of the twentieth century it was, perhaps forgivable to have that kind of delusional faith in the possibilities of the new century, modernity and the paradise of the workers. People who can still believe in socialism and the possibilities of yet another century have simply refused to see and understand what it led too in Nazi Germany, Russia, China and every failed commune community that has ever tried to implement it.

Sadly, it is not Putin whose behavior and thinking is somehow so out of vogue and déclassé that that he will fail. No Mr. Putin is all too wired-in, capable and on top of his game. It is Barak Hussein Obama who, even though he is twisting every which way but straight, is out of touch, tone-deaf, shopworn and (I hope) just transparent enough for the sharp-eyed American people to see through him.

Rage, Sex Roles, Elections and the Media

My friend JHM sent me a short, schematic note the other day. He may be on to something, He wrote:

“Liberals are female and conservatives are male.
Males do war and business/the economy.
BHO wants to talk, not fight and his economics are really a redistribution of income. Plus another feminine issue is the environmental stuff [See "Mother Earth]
This speaks to why the liberals go bullshit with Sarah Palin.“

I think JHM is right in that there is something about the traditional sex-roles and gender determined behavior that is driving the absolute frenzy on the part of Obama’s supporters and much of the Mainstream Media.

This is really a mess to think about so let’s take it a piece at a time. My first Google on the idea turned up an interesting article, Hillary is From Mars, Obama is From Venus By Michael Scherer, on salon.com. It compared Obama to Hillary and found her to be more of a man than he.

Scherer sets the tone of his analysis by quoting Clara Oleson who he describes as an Iowa Democrat and former labor lawyer:

"Obama is the female candidate. Obama is the woman," she said, after admitting that she was one of his supporters. "He is the warm candidate, self-deprecating, soft, tender, sad eyes, great smile."

The article continues:

“So what does that make Hillary Clinton? "She is the male candidate -- in your face, authoritative, know-it-all." To be clear, Oleson was not doubting the symbolic power that Clinton retains as a woman. But she was calling it as she saw it, using the language of Iowa City, a university town. "It's what the academes would call the difference between sex and gender," Oleson explained."

This is interesting, nobody but a Democratic functionary could have opened this discussion using these highly charged terms without suffering a fusillade of accusations ranging from sexism to genocide. Since the suite has been opened by one of them, though, I would like to see how it plays out.

Neither Obama nor Clinton can avoid their obvious racial and gender “identities” as either white female or black male but they can and have taken on meta-gender personae in order to embody the required Democratic constellation of compulsory ideologies. Hillary Clinton is what I will call a DemWoman. Since the bygone days of real originals like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm the ideal Democratic woman has evolved into a serious, masculinized icon. They dress in pointedly characterless clothes (not unlike designer Mao suites) and do their best not to show any authentic emotion or spontaneity of any kind. Obama mimics what I will call a DemFemMan- Doe-eyed, talkative, lip biting, smiley, warm and not-too-assertive.

Democrats are usually very conscientious and defensive about identities; they are, after-all, the party of Identity Politics. Still, they don’t usually talk about it as honestly as Oleson did. An even rarer example of a Democrat talking directly to the assumed identities of Democrat politicians was Geraldine Ferraro back in March when she said to The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Ferraro, is somewhat of an authority on this. Her sex, after all, was the very first entry on the “pro” side of the pro/con list when she was vetted for VP all those years ago. I find it fascinating, though, that she says, “If he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position”. I wondered if this is just victim talk- that kind of throw-in that people who make a fetish of blaming every slight and failing (imagined or real) on what they imagine to be the thing (that is not their fault) that is keeping them from the wonderful life and public adoration that they know they deserve (because they are who they are)? Or is it something more complicated?

Well, here’s a video clip that offers some clues:

This, of course, is a clip from last week, after Palin was nominated. It is interesting, not just because here Ferraro does not seem to be participating in the media and liberal elite’s desire to discredit and “un-nominate” Palin, she seems, in fact, almost to be ignoring Palin, she digresses about how Hillary was “treated badly” not just by the press but by the Democratic National Committee and the party apparatus in general. She pointedly adds that Howard Dean did not speak up “when sexism reared its ugly head”.

We should, at least commend her that she does not go after Palin but we need to try to figure out why she responds with that rant.

Victor Davis Hanson could well have included Ferraro’s name in his recent article about “Palin Derangement” where he writes:

“When we consider, in contrast (to Palin), the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished, given where she began, is nothing short of remarkable.

In short, Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.”

Note that the political women he mentions are all Democrats. So, how does Hanson’s article fit with Ferraro’s point?

I have to say that I believe that the whole thing about gender roles is a very acute observation but goes deeper than the observation that Obama acts like a woman and Hillary acts like a man. It is true that Hillary acts like a white man it’s a simple enough pose for her. But Obama has a harder task. If you read about his high school years, it would appear that he (raised by white people) taught himself how to act like a black man back then. If this is true, then today he would be what we used to call an oreo (black on the outside/white on the inside) a retro-fitted black man who acts like white woman who is trying to act like a white man.

As convolute and fascinating as the sexual personae of the denizens of the Democrat political establishment is, it is a distraction from the most important thing that can be learned here. That is, that journalism in the form of our current elite band of mass media practitioners are the “hand that rocks the cradle” in the way we view our politicians. They are the ones who present the candidates and their ideas to us in ways that subtly highlight these behavioral traits and lead the public perception to points of view. Point of view, in fact, is the journalist’s stock in trade. And journalism’s point of view is essentially aligned with the feminine persona- Story telling, social consciousness, caring for the weak, preventing conflict…,

Just as Hillary covers her female identity and becomes the “male candidate”, through being, in Oleson’s words, “in your face, authoritative, know-it-all” journalists usually layer those behaviors over the female persona of their profession in order to compete with each other for authority and “professionalism” .

Knowing everything and maintaining the initiative to be in everybody’s face all the time makes you brittle, defensive and inflexible it forces you to keep the world at a distance and to be guarded and combative.
It’s the lack of warmth and humor that is the tip-off. There’s no warmth because the layers of insulating role-play isolate the human core of the personality and keep it under pressure and molten with stifled rage, even while the outside facade is iced over with a brittle shell of outward calm that the merest hint of humor would shatter. When the keen edge of humor touches that icy shell, that slick veneer of smugness fractures and the rage bursts forth like volcanic eruptions.

It is counterintuitive in a way. They want to be loved so they put up barriers. They want to be respected so they never give anyone permission to see who they really are. They want to be egalitarian so they seek power. They want to be right about everything so much that they will not engage in debate and reasonable discussion without denial, labeling and hysteria. Most of all they want everyone to agree with them; so they believe in ineffectual, “consensus” policies and useless platitudes that are easy to rationalize and then build fortifications of emotion, identity and empathy so that anyone who dares to try to breach it with reason becomes an identity abuser (racist, sexist, fascist, etc…), an emotion crusher and an inhumane monster without empathy.

Look at all the Democrat women that Hanson mentioned above. They all have some variant of that layered-on masculine stiffness and control. They are all “professional women”. Which, as near as I can tell, requires them to comport themselves as a superannuated, over intellectual college sophomore playing a lesbian in a community theater performance. I’ve know a few real lesbians in my day and they have most are a hell of a lot more interesting and natural than those creepy Madame Tussaudes versions that Pelosi and Clinton Play on television.
And yet, as Hanson pointed out, they have advanced their careers to this stage- by means that are specifically feminine (what Tennessee Williams might have called “depending on the kindness of strangers”).

With all this gender bending and manipulative affectation going on, it should be no surprise that when a vivacious, unaffected, and un-androgynous woman like Sarah Palin comes along, and with a straightforward appeal, cuts through all the posturing and playacting with which Dem Women and Dem Fem Men trick out their lives, they don’t just resent it, they fear and loath. It doesn’t just threaten their ideological house of cards; it exposes the silly, debilitating game they play with their public images.

Palin reminds me of no one so much as a female Ronald Reagan- The Happy Warrior, The Great Communicator never had to pretend to be anything that he wasn’t to attract attention. His emotional security and self-possession made him an almost irresistible charmer. Secure in her identity, Palin is natural, direct and just as charming in he was.

Sarah Palin has not been untrue to herself. That is why she comes across as a real person to us. Absent the tension of the personality layering and façade maintenance she, as Reagan did presents a strikingly open and affable face to the world. This makes her charming and persuasive in a way that Hillary, Pelosi, all the political crones and media furies that Hanson mentions and many more, could only dream of. No wonder they (and their frustrated supporters) are furious.

And if you think the Dem Women and DemFemMen have knotted themselves up, wait till you take a look at those journalists who have made an career out of the same, very intimate sacrifices in order to be accepted by their editors and peers as well as have to access to their news sources.

They write news stories with semi-subliminal emotional and empathic slant that attempt to lead the reader into their interpretation of the events and evidence being covered. Under the banner of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” they blindly support insurgencies that promise change even if it is obvious to most observers that the change they advocate will bring disastrous consequences. They fail to report on pertinent events that might “embarrass” anyone they consider sensitive or an underdog. Worst of all, they allow evil to go unchallenged by resorting to the sickening moral relativism of “evenhanded” reporting in place of accurate and honest reporting.

The pain and rage with which much of the media have reacted to Sarah Palin’s nomination for Vice President is an instructive example. It forces them to admit that their professional ethics are negotiable. They claim that They are journalists to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted; Even as they feverishly search her past for reasons to declare her unworthy and ineligible- to find some flaw or misdeed that might forced John McCain to ask this talented, hard working, successful woman of the people to resign from the ticket. They must be aware at some level that in rushing to the defense of the elite, independently wealthy, powerfully connected (yes, connected to the despised white patriarchy!) DemFem Man Obama, that they are actually comforting the comfortable. He is comfortable, they are comfortable and they expect to get us comfortable with him too. That awareness that their pretense is being exposed inflames their rage even more.

They are all so busy building, elaborating and justifying their careers and their personality composites that they seem to have forgotten why they are there. They are so occupied with keeping the whole creaking, smoking, wobbling Rube Goldberg system working (and paying them) that they often forget to care whether anyone in the real world even wants to read, hear or watch The News as they are constrained to present it. This is one reason why the Internet has sucked away so much of the Mass media’s audience.

This shapes up as a battle between “Professionalism” (shackled by ideological group-think and prejudice) and Authenticity (freedom of thought and expression) and I do believe that the people instinctively know which one they favor. I also believe they are right.