The Fall Guy

The unutterable thoughts began to roll around in my head a few weeks ago, and they have continued to do so, gaining momentum slowly but steadily until I can no longer deny their existence.  But because they are unutterable, I dared not utter them…until I spoke with my brother the other night and learned that he too has felt their tug…which helped me conclude that untold others must be feeling the same.

 

The initial, superficial thought was this:  I feel a measure of sympathy for Rod Blagojevich.  The deeper, more consequential thought, manifested via the superficial one, is this:  I believe that Blago is being railroaded and his prosecution is a farce.

 

Like a living effigy, he has been strung up and set afire to take the fall for corrupt politicians everywhere.  And his lynching will benefit many, because while everybody is distracted by the media circus surrounding this man nobody heard of until recently, the big fish are able to swim away without being seen.

 

The big fish are all those nationally known politicians who have never been depicted as crooked even though they are as crooked as the day is long.  I am willing to bet that at least 90% of them are Democrats and most of them are widely thought of as "leaders." 

 

Just think:  It is unheard of for the MSM to openly criticize a Democrat, yet as soon as the Blago story broke, the entire MSM immediately fell into lockstep and began depicting him as a sleazebag.  Many MSM’ers even went so far as to claim that he is literally insane, on top of being a sleazebag.  This should cause every conservative and every media watcher to be very, very suspicious.

 

After all, we’re talking about the same MSM that 1) ignored Juanita Broaddrick’s wholly credible allegations that Democrat President Bill Clinton raped her; 2) granted automatic, unquestioning acceptance to Democrat Congressman Barney Frank’s claim that he had no idea his boyfriend was running a prostitution ring out of their home; and 3) granted acceptance that was even more automatic and unquestioning when it came to Democrat Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s incoherent explanations about his alliances with the racist Jeremiah Wright and the terrorist Bill Ayers.

 

Is Blago a saint?  Absolutely not.  Is he ethical?  Doubtful, based on what we’ve heard from those tapes.  But how is it that he differs from all the other powerful Chicago Democrats through the years?  Why is it that the MSM loudly condemns Blago but was always subdued when it came to Richard J. Daley and Dan Rostenkowski?  Shouldn’t the uniform abnormality of the MSM’s reaction to Blago cause eyebrows to raise, at the very least?

 

The “big fish” thought – that the media is playing the matador, getting people to gaze at a flapping red cape while wrongdoers escape in another direction – will not leave my mind.  Who are the big fish?  I don’t know, but I do suspect that one of them is our president.  After all, Obama sprang from the same state, in fact the same city, whose politicians have always been known for corruption on a legendary scale.

 

To put it nicely, it is implausible to think that anyone can come from Chicago politics and rise high while being clean.  And Obama rose from Chicago politics all the way to the top.  And nobody can deny that the MSM has been protecting his reputation as if it is their own.  I do not know if Obama is one of the people the Blagojevich crucifixion is designed to save, but when you think about it, everything adds up that way.

Get Ready for Invective

I have followed politics most of my life, and even though I’ve always leaned right, in my younger years I did experience flirtations with a few parts of the left’s creed.  So I am more than comfortable saying my observations are unbiased, and based on my observations I am certain of this:  Many liberals actually hate – rather than simply disagree with – people whose opinions are different than theirs. 

And now that Obama’s election has given them reason to believe their views are shared by the general public, we can expect those liberals to become even more spiteful in the way they comport themselves.  During last Tuesday’s inauguration, America got a glimpse of their temperament when the president and first lady got out of their limousine.  As they started walking down the street, some of the cheering spectators raised a large sign that said “Arrest Bush.”

 

Mark this down as a guarantee:  In no event celebrating a conservative victory would conservatives agitate for, or even fantasize about, the imprisonment of their intellectual opponents – because conservatives don’t do that in the first place.  Furthermore, in every event celebrating a conservative victory, conservatives would respect the event’s dignity and behave with grace. 

 

Liberals, on the other hand, respond to their intellectual opponents by comparing them to Hitler, calling them stupid and uneducated, and accusing them of being racists and misogynists and homophobes.  Some of them openly express regret that their opponents’ mothers opted for birth over abortion (I’ve heard this thought voiced about George W. Bush several times, but one specific incident is recounted in this column by Kathryn Jean Lopez).

In the coming years, people on the left will be spitting venom like cobras.  Contrary to what they say about themselves, they have no interest in debating issues or compromising with anyone.  Their sole intent is to destroy their opponents, and to achieve that goal, their first tactic will be to try to cow them into silence.  If that fails, they will not hesitate to ignore the law and deny opponents their Constitutional rights.  Make no mistake:  In the minds of liberals, freedom of speech applies only to themselves.

The Exalted One

Even on those occasions when I voted for the person becoming president, I have never been fond of presidential inaugurations. With their pomposity and their theatrical bestowing of hero worship on a single human being who has yet to do one thing as president, these affairs strike me as being dressed in the trappings of monarchy. They revel in everything the American presidency is not supposed to be.

Since my problems with inaugurations apply to all of them, I will refrain from criticizing yesterday’s brown-nosing of a Democrat and instead focus strictly on President Barack Obama’s speech. It was good, but far from great -- and in the ways it fell short, it fell markedly short.

Rather than staking his own positions and annunciating his own ideals, Obama was clearly trying to mimic both the theme and tone of JFK’s 1961 inaugural address. Admittedly, there’s no shame in that because JFK’s address was one of the finest in our history and who’s to say Obama did not mean every word he said? But on the important issues that will impact the country and determine Obama’s place in history, he came across as an unconvincing lightweight who has taken little time to think things through.

A perfect case in point was the following statement: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West -- know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Of course it sounds good, but if you spend more than a half-second thinking about it, you realize it’s a pile of ridiculousness topped with naivety.

No figurehead on the planet who identifies himself as a leader of “the Muslim world” has ever expressed the slightest interest in “mutual interest and mutual respect.” To the contrary, those leaders have long expressed a belief that God has called upon them to kill any non-Muslims who fail to convert to Islam. It is obvious that Obama’s brief comments, made while accepting the presidency of a nation those leaders routinely call “The Great Satan,” will make not a bit of difference to them…and thus, his comments don't even stand a chance of doing us any good.

As for his pronouncement that “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” where is it that history provides even the slightest evidence that tyrants will lay down their swords in order to recieve financial assistance or humanitarian TLC? Tyrants lay down their swords only when they know their adversary will kill them before compromising with them.

By constantly mentioning himself in the same breath as Abraham Lincoln -- and wanting to take the oath of office using the very same Bible than was used in Lincoln’s inauguration 148 years ago -- and traveling to the inauguration by train just as Lincoln did -- Barack Obama has given us many reasons to think he is a self-absorbed man with delusions of grandeur. These are not the first instances in which he has given us reasons to view him that way, but, dutiful to the end, the MSM has not and will not point this out.

Obama's personality is the kind that often leads men to rise spectacularly...only to blind them to their imperfections and lure them into a fall that is more spectacular and consequential than the rise. The problem is, if Obama's pride proves to be his undoing, it will not be just him who bears the consequences. It will be us and our children.

Still Finer in Carolina

As hard as it is given the Blagojevich affair, the Geithner affair, the MSM's Obasmic Love Fest, and the way the MSM scolds Israel for defending itself while ignoring Hamas terrorism, I am keeping my pledge to not comment on politics until after next week's coronati...er, inauguration.

So this post touches on one of my biggest passions:  traveling. After all, my focus on politics is not because I like politics, but because I know we have to be focused on government if we are going to keep it under control, and we have to keep it under control to stay free, and we have to stay free in order to pursue our dreams.

But back to traveling. I recently published a post that talked up my family's cabin in North Carolina. What it didn't mention is that the road to the cabin calls for four-wheel drive even in perfect weather. Since we became parents, this detail has caused Erika and I to forgo the cabin when we're traveling with Sarah in the winter, but this has been good in the sense that it has led us to an ideal vacation rental called Cataloochee Mountain Cabin. I highly recommend it if you're looking for a place to spend some down time and recharge your batteries. The owners are wonderful, and considering what you get for the price, it is a bargain. Its website is here and you can read my January 2008 review on its testimonials page.

 

We recently took our second trip to Cataloochee Mountain Cabin, staying from December 27th through January 3rd to ring in the New Year.  It wasn't as snowy as last January, but Sarah still got to see snow at the nearby ski lodge...

And lick icicles along the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway...

And on a day trip from the cabin to Asheville, barely more than a half-hour away, she got to go ice skating for the first time...

Plus, she got to feed donkeys...

Whether you are a family or a couple or a single person looking for an escape, I recommend you go there. 

Props

Happy New Year everybody.  Late last night we got back from a week-long vacation.  Today we are staring at the mountainous jobs of unpacking from the trip and taking down the Christmas decorations. Tomorrow I'll be trudging back to the office to tackle what is sure to be a dizzying backlog of work.

So it will be a few days before I get a chance to write, but I still wanted to take some time this morning to encourage anyone who reads my blog to link over to my sister-in-law's, if you haven't done so before.  It's called The Hungry Housewife, it's budding into an American success story, and even though it's a food blog you don't have to be a food freak to appreciate it.  

My eyes roll back into my head with boredom at the thought of watching cooking shows, discussing recipes, etc., but I still get a kick out of The Hungry Housewife and I'm not saying that just because I'm married to the blogger's sister.  Leslie mixes in some humor and puts on some entertaining video posts -- and even if a recipe is the only thing she has posted on a given day, you can still tell whether it's a recipe for a dish you'd like to taste (in which case you can at least try to get somebody to prepare it for you, if you are like me and are not up to the task).

As for being a "success story," Leslie started The Hungry Housewife about nine months ago and has managed to attract some significant followers. She was solicited by The Food Network to apply to be a candidate on their show "The Food Network's Next Big Star," and a weekly paper here in Tampa asked her to be a contributor on their food page.  Then, to top it off, the St. Petersburg Times recently named her one of their top nine people to watch in 2009.

Check her out, and I'm sure you will find that she deserves to have the good vibes keep on comin'.