Bobby Jindal Throws Hat Into The Ring for VP

The one time darling of the GOP, former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who failed miserably in his bid for president has announced that he’s standing in support of Donald Trump.  Jindal, who was at one time extremely critical of Trump as "Bombastic" and "Off Kilter' as a presidential candidate, has now had an epiphany, so to speak, and has hitched his tarnish wagon of political hopes to the stallion D.J.Trump who seems to be running away with the race.

Our popular Governor was re-elected to a second term in a landslide, but immediately began running for president soon thereafter, increasing state spending and bloating a state budget with things like creative hiring practices of state consultants and increasing state employee roles to make Louisiana employment numbers look better then the national average. Jindal left the state with a swollen 29 Billion dollar budget, and $1.8 billion in the Red. (just as comparison to a  state with similar population numbers, Oklahoma's state budget is 6 Billion).  After turning his attention solely to bolstering his resume as a stanch conservative to impress the primary voter base, and not with the business of the betterment of his state in mind, he left office two months ago as the least popular governor in the country.

But Bobby Jindal is no fool. A Rhodes Scholar and son of Indian immigrants, he sees himself a well versed and softer spoken compliment to Donald Trumps brashness, to be used as a deflection of the media and the left's mantra of Trump being anti-immigrant and racist. Jindal says now he believes Trump’s success is a “death knell” for the Republican establishment, the one he himself rode to victory twice. 

"The reality is, you can do the math. He has done very, very well. It is exactly what is wrong with the GOP establishment and it ignoring the will of the voters."

Believe me when I say, Bobby Jindal has just actively thrown into the ring his hat for VP.  

Heavy Hand of Government Poised to Strike Again

To comply with the 2005 Real ID Act, citizens in a number of U.S. states will now be forced to obtain a passport if they want to board an airplane....Even for domestic flights.

Starting in 2016, travelers from five U.S. states - Louisiana, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, and Wisconsin will not be able to use their driver’s licenses as ID to board domestic flights.

The website of Department of Homeland Security explains fives states are “noncompliant jurisdictions” meaning that to board an aircraft, you will need a passport.  That's a pretty major development considering a majority of Americans don’t have passports.

"Secure driver’s licenses and identification documents are a vital component of our national security framework. The REAL ID Act, passed by Congress in 2005, enacted the 9/11 Commission’s recommendation that the Federal Government ‘set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver’s licenses. The purposes covered by the Act are: accessing Federal facilities, entering nuclear power plants, and, no sooner than 2016, boarding federally regulated commercial aircraft." 

The Real ID act has been controversial since its initial proposal over ten years ago and is seen by many as a massive violation of privacy. One of the primary reasons it has taken the government so long to roll this program out is that the program is wildly unpopular and creates heavy backlash every time it appears in the news.

Let's put this in perspective: take a hypothetical traveler from Louisiana who is....let's say 78, and has difficulty getting around (we'll call him Mr. Boudreau ). Let’s suppose that Mr. Boudreau wants to fly to South Carolina to visit relatives. The government has no compunction what so ever about requiring him first to make a trip to a federal facility that accepts passport applications and, to add insult to injury cough up the $110 processing fee to obtain a U.S. passport.

And I might remind you these same government types object strenuously to the law in Louisiana that requires Mr. Boudreau to have a photo ID to vote, which the state is more than happy to provide at no charge.

h/t  AntiMedia

Latest Study Indicated Reducing Length of Unemployment Benefits Lead to Greater Levels of Employment in 2014.

by Robert Janicki

Something happened in 2014 that conservatives understood and pushed for, but liberals decried as draconian.  I'm talking about cutting off long term unemployment benefits in order to actually stimulate employment.  Long term unemployment benefits were reduced at the end of 2013.  2014 subsequently saw greater employment numbers.  Coincidence?  Not in my book or that of many conservatives.

Liberals decried such Republican action of reducing long term unemployment benefit periods as uncaring and typically characterized Republicans, and especially conservatives, as Neanderthals willing to see men, women and children starve to death as a result of cutting off long term unemployment benefits.  Of course that didn't happen.  

Conservatives have long said that long term unemployment benefits only contribute to long term unemployment, as the unemployed become much more comfortable in picking and choosing employment possibilities, knowing that they have a long term security blanket to fall back on.  

Now comes this latest study that appears to reinforce the conservative belief that cutting the length of long term unemployment benefits actually contributes to reduced unemployment, or, conversely to increasing employment, as more people move to get serious about gaining employment.

This shouldn't come as a surprise, since human nature is to go along with the path of least resistance.  It's difficult to resist unemployment benefits, when more than half the states provide unemployment benefits equal to or greater than what the private sector pays employees on average.

It's interesting to note that the red states that had better rates of employment, concurrently had lower unemployment benefits for a shorter period of time.  There is more than a correlation here.

"A new study attributes the 2014 jobs boom to the expiration of long-term unemployment benefits in late December 2013, a controversial event that Democrats and President Obama warned would hurt workers suffering in the wake of the recession.

Roughly 1.8 million additional jobs were created in 2014 because Congress allowed benefits for workers unemployed 27 weeks to expire, according to the paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research Monday..." Read More

My take away is that people in general will be much more willing to take advantage of unemployment benefits that are closer to what they might earn when employed.  Why work when benefits are at or above what a person could earn in the local labor market?  Of course liberals will decry this latest study as some perverse conservative plan to crush the poor and destroy the middle class.  This is a given response from liberals.  Conservatives are evil, liberals are world class philanthropists (with other people's money) and really do care about people.  That thought, along with a five dollar bill, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. 

This latest study may not be the most definitive study to date on the negative effects of long term unemployment benefits, but conservative economists believe that subsequent studies will validate this latest finding.  Smaller studies have indicated that those dropping off long term unemployment benefits had a greater rate of reemployment than any other group of unemployed job hunters. 

California Suffering from a Self Inflicted Crisis by its Very Own Liberal Progressive Politicians.

 

Y'all join me in welcoming to DMF Mr. Robert Janicki, formerly of 'Capitalist Preservation'. I have been an admirer of Rob's writing for a long while and am happy to announce Rob will be dropping by to class the joint up a little now and then. Rob is Owner Operator and HMFIC of the website Wired Right  

by Rob Janicki:

In the land of fruits and nuts, conservatives, and anyone with a sense of reason and logic, find themselves in an Alice in Wonderland scenario with the current statewide drought, which has now become a crisis and a political paradox or sorts.   

It should be noted at this point that the state of California is a virtual impregnatable bastion of liberal progressive politicians.  Every statewide elected office is held by a Democrat and not your daddy's Democrat either.  They are hard core liberal progressives in charge of every aspect of the political bureaucracy from appropriating expenditures in the legislature to actually spending the largess by a bureaucracy of entrenched Democrats holding sway in every state agency.

With that in mind, let's look at the most recent crisis at hand in California.  It's all about the water.  Only a fool and a liberal progressive would believe that this drought was not foreseen and thus state Democrats are not really responsible in their incompetent response.

California has been up against the "water wall", so to speak, since time immemorial.  Enlarging populations and expanding agricultural operations have always put California in a position of scrambling to find more water to satisfy the increasing needs of its constituent user groups.  The margin between having just enough water and having to ration water has always been paper thin.

Several elements caused by Democrats have mitigated against increasing California's water supply and any possible reserve.

In recent years the liberal progressive majority in the California legislature has voted down two Republican attempts to enact legislation to build two new reservoirs in central and southern California, the two areas most affected by drought, since they are inherently arid desert environments.

Meanwhile, the California legislature, lead by the erstwhile liberal progressive political Messiah, Governor Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, continues to push for a "high speed rail project" to connect northern and southern California.  The project is underway and with each passing month the cost estimate of the project increases.  It is now estimated to cost over $100 billion dollars from a beginning estimate of under $50 billion dollars.  The project is known by its detractors as the railroad from nowhere to nowhere, a boondoggle worthy of 19th century thinking.  Imagine what a portion of this boondoggle expenditure could do to alleviate California's drought scenario going forward?

But, back to the future.  The liberal progressive political solution of sorts for the current drought is to tax and fine consumers for "excessive use" of water as determined by the very politicians that created the water shortage disaster. California's agricultural industry has already suffered immensely with over regulation of water usage, thus throwing over 25% of California's prime agricultural land use into non use.  Only a liberal progressive politician would come up with this brainstorm.  Penalize the consumer for the failure of liberal progressive politicians at the state and local level to address California's inherent and perrenial water shortage problem.  

Pure political genius.  Blame the victim.  A tactic right out of the liberal progressive political handbook.

Not Quite What They Expected.....From Us Or Them

Duck Dynasty is not the show that A&E wanted,
it is the show that got away from them.

In a sense Duck Dynasty is a modern day Beverly Hillbillies. Those Hillbillies had lots of money too, a love of family, and exotic tastes in food – eating possum and gizzards and all sorts of things that we regularly see the Ducks cooking – such as squirrel and frogs. The Hillbillies series started out mocking the family that called their luxury swimming pool a “cement pond” and outsmarted by simple technologies such as phones. America however wound up falling in love with the Beverly Hillbillies and especially with the tough and zany Granny. Soon enough the joke backfired as the series converted the mockers into fans and the jokes increasingly came at the expense of the city slickers.

Duck Dynasty has Beverly Hillbillies backfire written all over it:

"It seems what the producers intended and what A&E envisioned with the show is much different than the show that they ended up with, but they didn't do anything about it because it was so wildly popular and so wildly profitable. But even with all the money, they have never really been comfortable with what happened.

 The whole idea of the show was to parade these nouveau riche Christian hillbillies around so that we could laugh at them. "Look at them," we were supposed to say. "Look how backward they are! Look what they believe! Can you believe they really live this way and believe this stuff? See how they don't fit in? HAHAHA"  

 When the producers saw the way the show was shaping up, different than they envisioned it, they tried to change course. They tried to get the Robertson's to tone down their Christianity, but to their eternal credit they refused. They tried to add fake cussin' to the show by inserting bleeps where no cussword was uttered. At best, they wanted to make the Robertson's look like crass buffoons. At worst they wanted them to look like hypocrites.

 They desperately wanted us to laugh at the Robertsons. Instead, we loved them."

Watching Phil Robertson shoot, disembowel and skin  various animals then watch Mrs. Kay cook clearly discernible squirrels and ducks and otherwise engage in a cuisine that is foreign to us is part of the Ducks “charm”. You don’t have to enjoy the cooking to appreciate the lifestyle and love the Robertsons enjoy. You don’t have to agree with the religious opinions or even like all the cast members to enjoy the company of the Duck Dynasty crew and family.

As with the Beverly Hillbillies the Duck Dynasty is all about family. This family has had trial by fire. The patriarch Phil was a drunk and all around nogoodnik who abandoned his family and caused all sorts of trouble for himself and those that loved him. Eventually Phil, because of the love and persistence of his wife, corrected course. Today, it is clear that the family not only loves but respects Phil.

When a lizard escapes in the company warehouse, it is Phil that is called. When business pressures build up after a large order that cannot be fulfilled due to lack of workers it is Kay that comes though by organizing family and friends to the rescue. At every turn, in every situation, the parents are looked up to and respected. It is something shocking to see because that is a long gone narrative on American TV.

American TV today tells only one story when it comes to family: the kids are smart and the parents are idiots. That story is told in every entertainment show, movies (ever see Home Alone?), and commercials. The parents are dopes unable to function without the wise guiding hands of the children.

And that notion even reached into 2008 presidential politics, as Barack Obama’s campaign organized the young to lecture their elders on the wisdom of electing Barack Obama.

A Suspicious Federal Employee

by Brian Watt

Dear Mr. President,

I've come to understand from the Drudge Report and the  McClatchy News Service that as part of an Insider Threat Program you have encouraged federal employees to monitor other federal employees for any suspicious behavior, specifically:

Federal employees and contractors are asked to pay particular attention to the lifestyles, attitudes and behaviors – like financial troubles, odd working hours or unexplained travel – of co-workers as a way to predict whether they might do “harm to the United States.”

Although I'm not a federal employee, I did want to take this time to report some very suspicious behavior by a high-ranking government official whom I and many others have been observing for some time. This person's work schedule seems to be quite erratic. To say that he has "odd working hours" would be an understatement. He repeatedly claims to be working on the "people's business" but has been known to spend an inordinate amount of time (at taxpayers' expense, mind you) on the golf course, taking his family on numerous vacations, traveling all over the country to get money from people or to raise money for some of his pet projects, and throwing lavish parties with celebrities. Given many of the responsibilities of his office, it seems quite clear that this person is ignoring his work.

If this person's responsibilities were fairly benign, this probably wouldn't be so alarming. He is, however, a very highly-placed official, and on his watch an ambassador in Libya and three other Americans were brutally killed. Yet this person can't even account for his whereabouts during the hours when this horrific event was taking place. Can you believe that? Isn't that deplorable?

I'm pretty sure that this person has the highest of security clearances, which even you would have to admit is quite astonishing since he has admitted to using illegal drugs as a youth, having made a close friendship with a member of the Communist Party USA, and later becoming friends with two unrepentant domestic terrorists from the late 1960s (former members of the Weather Underground, actually). I mean, how does that happen?

In his present role, he or perhaps someone who reports to him, invited an Islamic scholar to his residence who in 2004 issued a "fatwa saying that resisting US troops in Iraq was a 'duty' for Muslims - effectively allowing the killing of Americans." Word has it that he is also sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood, an association that also has a sketchy history of unsavory activity and, in fact, is considered by the Russian government to be a terrorist organization.

And speaking of the Russians, for what that's worth, this person has also been captured on video, when he believed his microphone was off, whispering to the former Russian president, Medvedev, about...well, here's what he said:

"On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it's important for him to give me space."

It's believed that the "him" referred to is Vladimir Putin. Many of us watching and listening to this unguarded moment felt that he was willing to make some type of concession to Putin in the event he was granted an extension of his term in office. What was promised wasn't exactly clear, but we wondered why this seemed to be such a secretive comment; if a concession was eventually made; and if it harmed America's security posture or weakened the security posture of our European allies. We don't think this individual has ever given a reasonable explanation for this incident.

I and others also have reason to believe that this person, while serving in one of the two houses of the Legislative Branch, helped to orchestrate a fraudulent scheme to payout taxpayer money to people throughout the country who he knew were not farmers discriminated against by the USDA. We believe this may have been a vote-buying scheme or a way for him to endear himself to potential voters when he was seeking a higher position in the federal government. This has never been adequately investigated by the Department of Justice. Perhaps you could speak to Attorney General Holder about it. Just a helpful suggestion.

Other numerous scandalous affairs seem to be constantly swirling around this individual, who never claims any knowledge or involvement in them, which many of us find quite incredible. I believe I'm doing the right thing by bringing this person to your attention.

All the best,

Brian

PS – I've included a photo (above) of the individual in question but have taken the effort to obscure his identity until his behavior can be thoroughly investigated.

Ricochet .com

The Political Cost of Senator Marco Rubio's Immigration Flip-Flop:

"Back in February, not long after Rubio announced the Gang of Eight immigration proposal, 73 percent of Republicans surveyed by pollster Scott Rasmussen had a favorable impression of the Florida senator. In a new Rasmussen survey released Monday, that number had fallen to 58 percent -- a 15-point drop.

Moreover, the intensity of support among Republicans who still view Rubio favorably has also dropped. In February, 44 percent of Republicans had a very favorable opinion of Rubio. Today the number is less than half that -- 21 percent. ...

Back in 2008, and again in 2012, Romney's opponents never let him forget the flip-flop that marked his move to the national political stage. In coming years, the same might become true for Marco Rubio."- Byron York, The Washington Examiner Chief Political Correspondent

On America Adrift

"We must stop waving our extended arms in an effort to balance ourselves as we tiptoe along the edges of the Constitution in an effort not to upset weak-kneed appeasers with our unflinching belief in the ideas that made our country different and, yes, great. Are we losing America to the inevitable onrushing tide of history? No. But we’re in a storm, the mast is broken, the compass is off , and there’s a damn big hole in the boat. We have allowed ourselves to be manipulated by others, many of whom want to impose their culture and laws under the manufactured utopian idea that all all cultures are equal and most of them are better than America.

America is a culture, it has a culture, and it must be recognized….We must not allow our collective memory to fade or morph into trendy revisionist versions of political correctness, which become a substitute for the truth.” - Roger Ailes, Chairman Fox News

On Striking a Balance Between Security and Freedom:

"Obama asks us to trust that he's using power judiciously. Under President Bush, liberals were never given reason to fear that government power was being used to persecute them. Enough said.

"The president assures us that 'no one is listening to our phone calls,' and that may be true. But this administration also assured us that no sweeping data collection on American citizens was going on, that the IRS was not unfairly singling out conservatives, that the Justice Department had not attempted to prosecute journalists, and that the Benghazi attack was the response to a video.

"It would be nice to trust the president, but it wouldn't be wise."

— Mona Charen, Nationally Syndicated Columnist

On the Decline of the Obama Presidency:

"The Obama administration is in an unexpected and sharp state of decline. Mr. Obama has little influence on Congress. His presidency has no theme. He pivots nervously from issue to issue. What there is of an Obama agenda consists, at the moment, of leftovers from his first term or proposals that he failed to emphasize in his re-election campaign and thus have practically no chance of passage.

"Congressional Republicans neither trust nor fear the president. And Democrats on Capitol Hill, to whom Mr. Obama has never been close, have grown leery of him. ...

"The Obama breakdown was not caused by the trio of scandals -- IRS, Justice Department, Benghazi -- now confronting the president. The decline preceded them. It's the result of what Mr. Obama did in his first term, during the campaign and in the two months following his re-election. But the scandals have worsened his plight and made recovery next to impossible." - Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard Executive Editor

The New Yorker Raises an Eyebrow

Judith Levy

A bit of surprise. Even the elitist highbrow 'New Yorker' Magazine is coming around to the possibility that the Benghazi coverup might be more than a Republican fantasy:

"It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it."

"On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack, including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush."

"...Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in Benghazi fell on the other guy."

But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue.

"...In his regular press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its spin in order, but also so that it could hold a secretive pre-briefing briefing with select members of the White House press corps), [White House Press Secretary Jay Carney] said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate. 

This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either."  

Running Headlong Down the Road to Perdition

"The western world continues on a totally unnecessary suicidal path. What was once common sense is no more. Everywhere one looks, the insanity is evident: The refusal to deal with real issues and the insistence on taking up marginal or even totally extraneous issues instead is stunning. Here in America, our economy remains stagnated for no logical reason. Instead, for example, of freeing up the exploitation of our vast fossil fuel resources, we continue to push money at phony green industries, throw road blocks in the way of our private sector's ability to get those fuels, block importation of fuel from our friends in Canada, and blather on and on about discredited, voodoo science global warming. Our leaders rulers take lavish vacations on our dime, push ruinous tax and spend policies, including the criminally destructive Obamacare, and avoid cutting even a bit of our bloated spending. A hypothetical "threat" to reduce ever so slightly the rate of growth in spending is declared disastrous and the equivalent of a nuclear attack. We get wrapped up debating gay "marriage," and "control" of mythical "assault" weapons when neither of those topics has any bearing on real issues facing the vast majority of real Americans, as opposed to Hollywood's fake Americans."

 "And Europe? Ah, yes, Europe. What can we say about the "cradle" of our civilization? Not much positive. For at least the past 250 years or so, the Europeans have seen their collective insanity grow at an exponential rate. They seem determined, even more so than we, particularly in the past fifty years, to erase all vestiges of western civilization and principles from their quaint, colorful and increasingly irrelevant little countries. This motley collection of has-been, never-were, and never-will-be states goes from one lunacy to another. Some of the latest, of course, being the combination of anti-natalist policies and open immigration policies. This lethal cocktail has changed the nature of Europe's society, and turned parts of European cities into "no go" zones resembling the urban nightmares of some third world countries--and Detroit, but then I repeat myself. The phrase Old World is now a literal description of Europe--if, that is, one leaves aside the booming Muslim population. The self-destructive continent that brought us Communism, Fascism, Nazism, two world wars, the Holocaust, the cold war, and a colonial legacy that continues to create problems throughout the world, also has brought us the ultimate "social-democrat," supra-national nanny state, the EU. This weird Marxist-Fascist attempt to destroy what was left of Europe with bureaucracy, taxation, and "homogenization" has been wildly successful. Europe likely will never recover from the ravages of the EU and its obsession with replacing the dollar with the euro."

"And thank goodness that in the USA, we are not trying to emulate Europe. We would never come up with some crazy socialized medicine scheme that would completely bankrupt our public sector. Nah, that could never happen here."

*Excerpt from the essay "The Pillage People" by DiploMad 2.0 

My Favorite Liberal has a Warning....

Although I have to look past her sickening admission she once dated former NY congressman Anthony Wiener, Kirsten Powers’ op-ed exemplifies why she’s my favorite liberal: 

"In a recent interview with The New Republic, President Obama was back to his grousing about the one television news outlet in America that won’t fall in line and treat him as emperor. Discussing breaking Washington’s partisan gridlock, the president told TNR, "If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News…for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

Alas, the president loves to whine about the media meanies at Fox News. To him, these are not people trying to do their jobs. No, they are out to get him. What other motive could a journalist have in holding a president accountable? Why oh why do Ed Henry and Chris Wallace insist on asking hard questions? Make them stop!"

President Obama has gotten adulation from the Agenda Media since before he’d been elected to the Senate. Books have been written about the media’s slobbering love affair with President Obama. Still, that isn’t enough for the messiah.

Anything less than constant adoration isn’t acceptable with this administration. Here’s a warning from Ms. Powers that liberals should pay attention to:

"Whether you are liberal or conservative, libertarian, moderate or politically agnostic, everyone should be concerned when leaders of our government believe they can intentionally try to delegitimize a news organization they don’t like.

In fact, if you are a liberal, as I am, you should be the most offended, as liberalism is founded on the idea of cherishing dissent and an inviolable right to freedom of expression.

That more liberals aren’t calling out the White House for this outrageous behavior tells you something about the state of liberalism in America today."

Whether it’s fascists implementing ‘speech codes’ on college campuses or whether it’s the fascist staff in the White House, the result is the same: censorship.

There’s no such thing as acceptable censorship.

This is particularly appalling information: 

"What the Obama administration is doing, and what liberals are funding at MMFA is beyond chilling – it’s a deep freeze.

On the heels of Dunn’s attack on Fox, Brock wrote a letter to progressive organizations bragging about the U.S. government trashing a news organization: “In recent days, a new level of scrutiny has been directed toward Fox News, in no small part due to statements from the White House, and from Media Matters, challenging its standing as a news organization.”Point of order: who put Media Matters in charge of determining what is and isn’t a news operation?

A Media Matters memo found its way into the public domain and if you care at all about decency and freedom of the press, it will make you throw up. If you like McCarthyism, it’s right up your alley. It details to liberal donors how they have plans to assemble opposition research on Fox News employees.

It complains of the “pervasive unwillingness among members of the media to officially kick Fox News to the curb of the press club” and outlines how they are going to change that through targeting elite media figures and turning them against Fox. They say they want to set up a legal fund to sue (harass) conservatives for any “slanderous” comments they make about progressives on air. They actually cite one of the best journalists around, Jake Tapper, as a problem because he questioned the White House about calling a news outlet “illegitimate.” Tapper can see the obvious: if the White House can call one news outlet illegitimate for asking tough questions, then guess who is next? Anyone."

________________________________________________________________ 

Do not blame Caesar.......

.....blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious."— Marcus Tullius Cicero 

via Talk Straight  

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A Brief History of Useful Idiots

Diogenes - 7/5

The phenomenon of intelligent people saying stupid things about tyrants is a constant of 20th century history and continues unabated into the 21st.

Take Mussolini for instance. You might think he was just a blustering fool in a fez, but once upon a time many people took him very seriously. I learned once from my history teacher that Churchill had spoken approvingly of the black shirts in the 1920s. This week I was reading a biography of the first Fascist and learned that Winston was not alone. Franklin Roosevelt praised the Italian dictator as a gentleman; Chiang Kai-shek asked for a signed photograph; and even Gandhi (yes lovely, non-violent, vegetable-munching Gandhi) described him as the “Savior of Italy.” Hmmmm. That’ll be the guy who let his soldiers use live Ethiopians for target practice and ended his political career shipping Jews to Hitler for extermination? All right then!

The USSR under Stalin is a Klondike of intellectual embarrassment and/or mendacity, ranging from the reporting of Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize Winner who defended Stalin’s show trials and denied the Ukrainian famine, to the bumptious witterings of George Bernard Shaw who in 1932 declared (as millions were starving) that reports of a famine in the USSR were “nonsense.” How did he know? “I have never eaten as well as during my trip to the Soviet Union.”

It was Lenin who first identified the genus of Western intellectual known as “the useful idiot,” but it was Stalin who showed how incredibly easy it was to seduce them: a free holiday, dinner, a little flattery and wa-hey- the knickers are off! But then Stalin died, the USSR became much less violent and the useful idiots lost interest.

Searching for a new utopia, many pinned their hopes on revolutionary Cuba, where a bearded mega-bore named Fidel Castro was in the process of transforming a corrupt satellite of America into a corrupt satellite of the USSR, even poorer and less free than before. Like Papa Joe, Fidel knew how to flatter and soon he had the likes of Picasso, Norman Mailer and Susan Sontag (“the Cuban revolution is astonishingly free of repression”) eating out of his palm. My favorite Castro quote comes from Abbie Hoffman, a justly forgotten 60s radical bed-wetter who compared Castro to… well, read for yourself:

“Fidel sits on the side of a tank rumbling into Havana on New Year’s Day… girls throw flowers at the tank and rush to tug playfully at this black beard. He laughs joyously and pinches a few rumps. .. He is like a mighty penis coming to life, and when he is tall and straight, the crowd immediately is transformed.”

Then there was Castro’s pal, Wee Ernie Guevara, a totalitarian loon who praised Mao, invaded the Congo and died in Bolivia after attempting to inspire revolution among people he knew nothing about. Jean-Paul Sartre declared him “the most complete human being of our age.”

Speaking of Mao, he had his celebrity admirers, too. In 1973, Shirley MacLaine, who was very good in The Apartment with Jack Lemmon, went on a tour of some Potemkin villages in China and wrote a glowing report afterwards. She was especially approving of the absence of advertising billboards, and the general atmosphere of calm which left her feeling “serene.” She never thought that perhaps China was quiet because 60 million people had just been murdered and everyone was very, very scared. Mao was a big hit among 60s students and one of his erstwhile fanboys, Jose Manuel Barroso, is today president of the European Commission.

But Mao and Castro weren’t the only totalitarian despots considered groovy in the 60s and 70s. Eldridge Cleaver, a prominent Black Panther leader, declared that while America was a hell-hole of oppression, North Korea under Kim Il-sung was the best place in the world. In the run up to the Iranian revolution, Michel Foucault, a Frenchman, paid several visits to Iran and later praised the “political spirituality” of the Ayatollah Khomeini who, given the chance, would have had him executed for his homosexuality.

And so on, and so on. These days, it’s not quite as bad though I hear Hitler has his fans in the Middle East and Hollywood morons, inspired by 60s nostalgia, still show up in Cuba from time to time. But it’s hard to find the pure strain of tyrant admiration, though for a while I was fascinated by a blog entitled Reflections on the Ruhnama, written by “Steve from Wisconsin” who apparently took at face value all the gibberish the deceased Turkmen tyrant Saparmurat Niyazov had scrawled with a colored crayon in his notorious book.

Maybe it has something to do with the loss of religious faith. You know, these intellectuals no longer believe in paradise, so they project their yearning for redemption onto some exotic place, then climb through the wardrobe of their imaginations and emerge in magical lands governed by wise talking lions. Yes, I like that, though surely vanity also comes into it. It pleases certain intellectuals to adopt counter-intuitive positions, believing it gives them “depth” and “sophistication.” And thus clever people are often the easiest to fool.

And what about today.....Just look around.

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Fast & Furious vs. Wide Receiver

Diogenes - Saturday 6/23

Click on image to enlarge

h/t  Straight Talk

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After 70 Years Mein Kampf to Reappear in Germany

 April 25 - 2:13pm

With the rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe, this is not good news. 

The German state of Bavaria is preparing to publish Hitler's memoir, Mein Kampf, in 2015, before the book's copyright expires.

The book is not banned by law in Germany, but Bavaria has used ownership of the copyright to prevent publication of German editions since 1945. Copyright restrictions stop at the end of 2015, 70 years after Hitler's death. 

The Bavarian government says it is preparing an edition for students which will include a critical commentary. Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in 1924, while serving a prison sentence for attempting to stage a coup. Part biography, part political and racist rant, the book outlines the core of Nazi ideology. 

It has not appeared in German since the end of World War II but until 1945 around 10 million copies were sold.  After Hitler came to power in 1933 couples were given the book at their wedding, as a present from the Nazi state. 

The decision to publish was taken after talks with advocates and opponents of publication, and explained that it was aimed at "demystifying" the book. 

By publishing in 2015 before the expiry of the copyright, Bavaria hopes to make future German editions as "commercially unattractive" as possible. From 2016 there will be no restrictions at all on the book's publication, unless it is used to incite racial hatred. 

While the book is widely available on the Internet in translation, poor immigrants without  Internet connects will be able to absorb the hatred for themselves.   

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A Note to Diogenes' Readers.....

Posted By Diogenes Sarcastica
October, 11th 2011

pla·gia·rize:
v.tr.
To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own.
To appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another).
v.intr.
To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another.

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Recently, while exploring Google blog links , I happened upon an interesting page of glorious rantings. Culture, Politics, Current Affairs, Islam. But as I read through the post, I immediately noticed familiar wording and phrases, and on closer inspection, entire post similar to those I had edited myself. I checked the post against my own and found plagiarism, pure and simple!  After checking the post dates I found I was right. Just one problem; my post were of a later date. 

I found myself guilty of posting, through second party submissions, 

and edited by me, others original material. 

As a result, I contacted the Blog owner and made him aware of the situation, and apology given. I expected the worst. But through a series of Gentlemanly email discussions, post were identified and, at his request, I am in the process of giving proper links and credit.  

Copyright and Intellectual Property rights are serious business, and violations are bad berries in anyone's bowl. Such things must not be tolerated by any of us. The offending submitter of the plagiarized material, which was edited by me without knowledge of the situation, has been dealt with swiftly, and no longer welcome here. I, and only I are responsible for the content of DMF, and take full responsibility.

The owner of the plagiarized blog, Matthew, and I now consider the matter closed, but I feel a public apology is in order to Matthew and also thank him for his understanding and cooperation in settling this in a civil manner. To his credit, he didn't have to, especial after also once having his stuff pilfered by a national television personality and columnist awhile back.

'Diogenes Middle Finger' strives to offer our best possible Satire, Humor and Bitting articles with a heavy dose of Snark, for the purpose of helping verbally kneecap the idiots of our society and what I believe is a inept, corrupt and incompetent administration doing irreparable damage to this country, and shall continue to do so honestly. 

As a result of all this and our series of emails, Matthew and I have come to a tentative agreement to contribute to, and possible crosspoint at each other's blogs. 

So, without further ado, I'm proud to welcome

 Matthew and his readers at

  The Lunatic's  Asylum and The Insane Asylum 

I encourage my readers to visit both regularly and support, as you have me in the past, some of the most colorful collections of rantings and off beat stories to be found anywhere (just bring your helmet with you) . It's also possible to find your way over there with the links provided to the latest posts on the 'Awesome Linkage' blogroll to the right of this page.

And once again, Thank You Matthew!

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Obama's Insidious Approach to America

Excerpts From: The The Lunatic's Asylum

If it seems to you that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing, detached when billions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico,  more concerned with saving the jobs of unionist who are net tax eaters rather than generators,  and obsessed with rebuilding roads and bridges after all-but-promising $7-a-gallon gasoline. If he seems overly preoccupied with the technicalities of rule and legislation rather than with the nuts-and-bolts of it all, or to give an empty speech in front of a hand-picked audience of rabid supporters rather than elaborate on meaningful subject and issues, then here, perhaps, is your answer: Barack Obama knows exactly what he's doing.
  
I once thought Barack Obama was just unqualified and ill-suited by experience and viewpoint from holding the highest office in the land,  simply yet another in a long line of democrat party cardboard cutouts who have repeated the same Socialist boilerplate for fifty years, only in a better suit and with better speech writers. The stuff about turning back the rising tides, and bringing peace, brotherhood, and a chicken in every pot was just the sort of thing you'd expect a liberal politician to say. His mantra of Hope and Change was simply a recycling of every political bromide ever uttered since the days of Julius Caesar. Barack Obama, I thought, was always a creation of the Media; just someone with an interesting biography (that someone else wrote for him), or who gave a good speech (written by someone else) who would either grow into the job, by being constrained by cooler heads in Congress or the realities of the Constitutional System.

I was wrong.  
Barack Obama, a recipient of Affirmative Action, educated in the Elite schools, politically-connected, who made his previous livings either sucking off the teat of the taxpayer or being paid to do work of no real economic value or benefit to others (Harvard Law Review), and paid for by the fruits of Capitalism, is doing irreparable harm to America. Obama is not a Socialist as we would generally understand the term. It's much more insidious than that.

There is no other way to explain Obama and his policies other than to conclude that it's all been deliberate, and that the deliberation has some ultimate purpose that goes beyond the shallow argument of Capitalism vs. Socialism.

It explains Healthcare over Economy, the bombast of "Pass the Bill" when there is, in fact, no such Bill -- in any written form -- to pass.  It goes a long way to identifying the two Obamas; the one who can appear to be so caring and concerned,  a man who claims to be above petty, partisan politics, but then goes out and creates a vast and complex political theater around his morning dump; accusing, pointing fingers, sneering, dismissive and condescending. It explains how a man can, with a straight face decry crony capitalism as destructive to a fair and equitable society one day and then the next get his cronies (allegedly) a $535 million government-backed loan guarantee which leaves them whole in the event of a bankruptcy your own advisers said was coming.
 
It explains why he keeps a tax cheat as your Secretary of the Treasury, an Attorney General who cares not about voter intimidation, the appointments of  a plethora of 'Czars' who operate extra-Constitutionally to oversee and reorder the economic system, plays golf during an earthquake or bask in the summer sun as citizens are flooded out of their homes. Why he bails out GM and Chrysler to keep the union money and votes coming at the same time as he attaches the string that they pay back the loan while creating Federally-mandated products for which there is no market. It's how you get an Economic Competitiveness Council in which the Chief Appointee is someone infamous for maximizing his company's profit by offshoring everything in sight, avoiding taxes on it all legally, and then appealing to the Treasury for a bailout of his own. It explains the dictatorial approach to American's right to privacy and free speech.
 
You have to assume that these things can only happen if Obama is anything but stupid or insane, which  means the impetus must go much deeper than just money or electoral advantage.

Edited for content by Diogenes Sarcastica  

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* Thank You Larwyn for the Linkage *

Why He can, and Should Be Defeated

 

Time for Some Serious Stuff: 

My Reasons why Obama can Be Defeated 

I believe the worm is turning. The cracks are obvious in the O'Presidency, and gone far beyond the satirical criticisms regularly seen here and other places. They are to the point where highly respected democrat strategists like James Carville have taken to their soap boxes. The growing disillusionment with the Obama administration's handling of the economy, health care and immigration reform has fueled this prairie fire of  unhappiness. The President's continual bad optics, his aloof and imperialistic style of leadership are beginning to resonate badly with the average Joe - especially at a time of significant joblessness and economic pain. Barack Obama’s striking absence of natural leadership ability (and blatant lack of experience) has played a big part in undermining his credibility with the American electorate.
 
On national security and foreign policy, Obama has not fared any better. His leadership on the war in Afghanistan has been muddled and lacked conviction, dictated by domestic political priorities rather than military and strategic goals. His overall foreign policy has been an appalling mess, his limp-wristed rules of engagement with hostile regimes spectacularly backfiring. And as for the War on Terror, outside of the  killing of Bin Laden, his administration has not even acknowledged it is fighting one.

Here are my reasons why I consider Obama a weak leader and doesn't deserve to be re-elected......... 

He is out of touch with the American people:

As much as the media turn a blind eye to stories like this, the First Lady's ill-conceived trip to Spain at a time of widespread economic hardship was symbolic of a White House that barely gives a second thought to public opinion on many issues, and frequently projects a distinctly elitist image. The “let them eat cake” approach didn't play well over two centuries ago, and it won't succeed today.

Americans don't have confidence 
in the O's leadership:

This deficit of trust in Obama’s leadership is central to his unpopularity. According to a recent polling, nearly six in ten voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and two thirds say they are disillusioned with or angry about the way the federal government is working. The polls showed that a staggering 58 per cent of Americans say they do not have confidence in the president's vision, with just 42 per cent saying they do. With his recent B.S. jobs speeches, the polls are likely to get worse.

He fails to inspire the country:

After the soaring rhetoric of his 2004 Convention speech which succeeded in impressing millions of television viewers at the time, America is no longer inspired by Barack Obama’s flat, monotonous and often dull presidential speeches and statements delivered via teleprompter. From his extraordinarily uninspiring Afghanistan speech at West Point to his flat State of the Union address, President Obama has failed to touch the heart of America. Even Jimmy Carter was more moving. 

He is drowning us in Debt:

The Congressional Budget Office Long-Term Budget Outlook offers a frightening picture of the scale of America's national debt. Under its fiscal scenario, the CBO projects that US debt could rise to 87 percent of GDP by 2020, 109 percent by 2025, and 185 percent in 2035. While much of Europe, led by Britain and Germany, are aggressively cutting their deficits, the Obama administration is actively growing federal debt, and has no plan in place to avert a looming Greek-style financial crisis.

His Big Government message is falling flat:

His relentless emphasis on bailouts and stimulus spending has done little to spur economic growth or create jobs, but has greatly advanced the power of the federal government. This is not an approach that is proving popular with the voting public, and even most European governments have long ditched this tax and spend approach to saving their own economies. 

His support for socialized health care 

is a huge political mistake:

In an extraordinary act of political Hara-kiri, President Obama  unilaterally focused on the hugely controversial , unpopular and divisive health care reform bill, with a monstrous price tag of $940 billion, whose repeal is now supported by 60 per cent of likely voters. The legislation is a leap forward  toward a European-style vision of universal health care, which will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape for small businesses. This reckless legislation dramatically expands the power of the state over the lives of individuals, and could not be further from the vision of the founding fathers. 

US foreign policy is an Hot mess 

under O's administration:

It is hard to think of a single foreign policy success of the Obama administration, but there have been plenty of missteps which have weakened American power as well as its global stature.   The surrender to Moscow on Third Site missile defense, the failure to aggressively stand up to Iran’s nuclear program, and failure to stand by and strengthen our Israeli allies have all contributed to the image of an Obama administration completely out of its depth in international affairs. Obama's high risk strategy of appeasing our enemies while kicking traditional allies has only succeeded in weakening the United States while strengthening our adversaries. 

He is muddled and confused 

on national security:

From the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the War on Terror, President Obama’s leadership has often been muddled and confused.  He sent tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan while bizarrely announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of combat forces beginning in July 2011. In Iraq he announced an end to combat operations and the withdrawal of all but 50,000 troops despite a recent upsurge in terrorist violence and political instability. This decision came despite the inability of Iraqi military, nor the police, ready to take control. In addition he has ditched the concept of a War on Terror, replacing it with an Overseas Contingency Operation, hardly the right message to send in the midst of a long-war against Al-Qaeda. 

There is a distinctly Titanic-like feel to the O's presidency and it's not hard to see why. The most left-wing president in modern American history has tried to force a highly interventionist, government-driven agenda that runs counter to the principles of free enterprise, individual freedom, and limited government that have made America the greatest power in the world, and the freest nation on earth. Combining weak leadership both at home and abroad against the backdrop of tremendous economic uncertainty in an increasingly dangerous world have contributed to a spectacular political collapse for a president once thought to be invincible. We, at our core, remain a deeply conservative nation, which cherishes its traditions and founding principles. Obama is increasingly out of step with the American people, by advancing policies that undermine the United States as a global power, while undercutting America's deep-seated love for freedom.

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