Wednesday, March 18, 2015

et ceteras

Though I am not the world's most active blogger, the month-long span since I last published something is unprecedented. Chalk it up to life being hectic. But here I am today, offering some "random thoughts on the passing scene," if you don't mind me borrowing that phrase from the great Thomas Sowell.

Netanyahu
When I saw the headline on Drudge -- the one that read "Bibi Stays" -- I smiled and said Yes!

I reacted that way because Benjamin Netanyahu is truly the Churchill of our age, manfully standing up for what is right and unapologetically identifying Islamist ideology as evil. Back in the day, Churchill had to stand against fascism until Pearl Harbor forced FDR to find his spine. Now, Netanyahu is having to stand against Islamism while knowing full well that BHO doesn't even have a spine. It's nice to know someone good is filling the void that was left when America's president chose to abandon his responsibilities as leader of the free world.

Also, I reacted as I did because Netanyahu's victory was a clear thumb in Obama's eye, a thumb Obama deserves after trying to meddle in Israel's elections, but more on that later.


Clinton
Hillary's email scandal has so many layers and angles that it's hard to write about it in a single post, much less in a mere part of a single post. Eventually I'll get around to it, but for now I offer this:

Both Bill and Hillary have such a long record of operating in secrecy and responding with pure contempt to the slightest of questions, that some people are tempted to view Emailgate as just one more swallow joining the flock en route to Capistrano. The problem with that view is it overlooks the size and significance of the flock.

Where the Clintons are concerned, power is Capistrano and Machiavellian maneuvers are the flock that flies them there. We've seen this movie before. It wasn't pretty the first time around, and it's sure to get uglier the second time. Do Democrat voters really want to hold Hillary up as their standard-bearer?

The Clinton habit of word-parsed lies begat the Obama habit of outright whoppers. The Clinton disdain for ethics begat the Obama disdain for any limits on government force. If the Clintons had not greased the road by defining public deviancy down and getting the media to play along, Obama never could have gotten elected. Do Democrat voters really want posterity to look back and see that they allowed scheming and power-grasping to become their party's defining traits?

If Democrat voters choose Hillary to be their nominee, history will judge the voters even more harshly than it will the politicians. Thomas Jefferson is rolling in his grave over what's become of the party he founded.


Cotton
The Left's reaction to Senator Tom Cotton's open letter to the Iranian regime has been risible at best, inhuman at worst.

Appalled that Barack Obama is making love to Iran's murderous theocracy while backstabbing our own citizens and allies, Cotton penned a letter explaining that the U.S. Constitution separates powers among the three equal branches of the federal government, and that the president has no authority to make enforceable and binding deals without the consent of Congress. Even the White House admits the letter is accurate.

Anyway, it was signed by Cotton and 46 other senators, then it was scanned and posted on Cotton's website without ever being sent to anyone. Then, a large number of American liberals leftists, including some from the media and political class, accused Cotton of committing treason by posting this truth-telling letter -- and in case you weren't aware, under U.S. federal law, people found guilty of treason "shall suffer death."

So, members of the Left claim Cotton is guilty of a crime that carries the death penalty -- but they found it hunky dory for Nancy Pelosi to travel to Syria and embrace Bashar al-Assad at a critical juncture in the War on Terror when Bush was in office.

They wail about the Logan Act, oblivious to the fact that not a single person has been convicted under it since it was written in 1799. Or as Jonah Goldberg more eloquently stated, "if the Logan Act were taken seriously, many of the lions of the Democratic Party, including Edward M. Kennedy, Patrick J. Leahy, Nancy Pelosi and Robert Byrd would have ended their careers behind bars. Why John F. Kerry -- who recently denounced the 'Cotton letter' as 'unconstitutional' -- could show Cotton around the federal penitentiary, given Kerry's egregious meddling in Nicaragua during the Reagan administration."

Yet, alarming numbers of RINO's and "moderates" some naive Republicans believe we should play nice and act cordial to leftists who traffic in this slander and lunacy? Uh-uh.


I was going to...
...use this segment to opine about Obama & Co. meddling in Israel's election, and to get into the overall Barack-vs.-Bibi tiff. But I'll save it for another time because the night is getting long. Instead I'll leave you with the following...


Links
Speaking of Obama & Co.'s election-meddling, go here to read about it in the Jerusalem Post.

Here is one of the finest things ever written about the rigid histrionics that give political activism a bad name.

It's a truism that when politicians write laws, they give them lofty-sounding names to keep people from noticing how dastardly the laws really are. It's also a truism that politicians, and especially liberal politicians, will stop at nothing to deprive you of your Constitutional rights. Go here to learn about a current example of these truisms coalescing to threaten the Second Amendment.

This letter was written to President Obama by an Iranian citizen being held prisoner by the Iranian regime. And here is an article about Iranian citizens who are disturbed by Obama's failure to stand up to that regime. (I don't recall dissidents in the USSR or Czechoslovakia being unhappy with Ronald Reagan, do you?)

Last month produced one of the greatest tag-team Internet smackdowns in history, when Kevin Williamson and the aforementioned Jonah Goldberg ripped a new sphincter into the backside of Politifact. Go here to read Williamson's smackdown and here to read Goldberg's.

Finally, if an Oregonian ever lectures you about how inclusive and open-minded their lily-white liberal state is (it's happened to me) you should stifle the urge to point out the lily-whiteness of Oregon's demographics. Instead, punch him even harder in the gut by informing him that Oregon was founded specifically to be a white supremacist wonderland. Then, educate him even more by informing him that black people were banned from his state until 56 years after Mississippi elected the first black U.S. Senator. If the Oregonian you're talking to says you are lying (which he will) simply refer him to this article, take a swig from a craft beer brewed in Asheville rather than Portland, and chuckle inside as his worldview collapses around him.

(By the way, I think I will love Oregon if I ever get there, because it has Mount Hood, Crater Lake, Multnomah Falls, great beer, great wine, and a beautiful coast. However, like all redoubts of modern liberalism, it produces droves of know-nothing, self-righteous prigs who need to shut their yaps.)

And with that undiplomatic tone ringing in my ears, I am finally calling it a night.


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