Posts Tagged ‘history’

A Bad day for the White House

Posted: May 23, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , , ,

You might recall something I wrote a post about a month ago called Is the worm Turning where I listed a series of items that indicated that things might be changing. In a follow up post I gave this advice:

When the president says he wants a dialog take him up on the offer. And when he ignores it ask: why? Remember how many months has it been since Rush offered him time on his show to debate the issues with him and the White house still has its tail between its legs? Note the dismissive comments at the Tea Party Site by the brave acolytes of this White House. They know their leader’s strength is image not reality so his followers make excuses and insults. This is called fear.

Remember these guys over reach. Don’t forget the feared John Stewart was given a spanking by Bill Whittle and he apologizes publicly.

The worm continues to turn. We just have to keep fighting.

The results of fighting back continue to come:

Item: Dick Cheney proves that more Conan and less Captain America causes fear in Democrats that leads to bad decisions:

White House officials deny that they felt any pressure from Cheney’s prior attacks to give a speech like the one he delivered on Thursday, but they did concede that Obama’s stance has been distorted in the debate over terrorism.

Congressional Democrats, however, tell a different story. Aides to top Senate and House Democrats say congressional leaders dragged the White House into delivering a speech Obama was reluctant to give, pleading directly with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. They warned of the revolt that finally materialized Wednesday when a solid Democratic majority in the Senate was stampeded into a landslide 90-6 vote against the president on funding the closure of Gitmo.

This was supposed to be a mismatch, It was.

Item: The neverending saga of Nancy Pelosi. The republicans have the Democrats on their heels on this issue. It’s so bad even the Boston Globe editorial page can’t defend her.

Item: California, land of liberalism rejects tax increases emphatically and one newspaper is so stung by the the reception of their voter bashing editorial that they back off claiming error as the most popular comment on the page says:

Hi … we’re the SacBee Editorial Board and we’re going to tell you how to vote. When you decide to ignore us and vote against what we’ve told you to do we’re going to lecture you and tell you how stupid you all are. Then, when you have the unmitigated gaul to defend your actions and hold us accountable, we’re going to change our message and hope that you don’t notice. See … now we’re not agreeing with you, you’re agreeing with us. We’re the SacBee Editorial Board and we suck.

Good thing that MSM is on the liberal side isn’t it?

Item: Not only do new polls show pro-life gaining a majority among Americans, but In New Hampshire “Gay Marriage” lost a vote the left thought was a fait accompli. I guess social conservatism can win in New England after all.The media obsession with Carrie Prejean naked tits really galvanizes support for “Gay Marriage” doesn’t it?

Item: Even when we don’t fight the White house is capable of self inflicted wounds as the Kindergarten fiasco manages to not only makes them look heartless but they blow the chance for an incredible photo opt of kindergarten students and the Pittsburgh Steelers making care packages for the troops together.

These people are vulnerable as hell. We need to keep up the pressure. More Conan, less Captain America.

Update: In case you’ve forgotten things have looked much worse before:

In 1977, as in 2009, the future seemed dark for the country’s conservatives, shut out of all of the conduits to power, with nary a bright spot in sight. “The result of the 1976 election was Democrats in power as far as the eye could see,” wrote Michael Barone in Our Country (1992). “It was almost universally expected that the Democrats would hold on to the executive branch for eight years; it was considered unthinkable that they could lose either house of Congress.” “Once again, the death knell of the Republican Party was being sounded,” added Steven F. Hayward, in his two volume study of Reagan. Notes historian John J. Pitney Jr., “The hot bet of the moment was not whether the Republican Party could reshape politics, but whether it could survive at all.”

Gee I wonder what happened next?

5 years vs two generations

Posted: May 20, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: ,

I mentioned last week that it would take two generations before the damage from changes such as “Gay Marriage” shows up. (The two generations rule often works with positive things too btw) but Maggie Gallagher finds some effects that show up after only 5 years:

A further 36 percent of voters who oppose gay marriage agreed with the statement, “If you speak out against gay marriage in Massachusetts you really have to watch your back because some people may try to hurt you.” (Twenty-six percent agreed strongly.) Fifteen percent of voters who oppose gay marriage say they personally know someone who experienced harassment or intimidation because of their belief that marriage involves a man and a woman. (emphasis mine)

This can’t be, supporters of Gay Marriage are supporters of tolerance right?

The NOM/MFI Massachusetts Marriage Poll thus documents a fairly significant level of apprehension among voters who oppose gay marriage about the consequences of speaking openly or acting on their belief that marriage means a husband and wife.

Nothing like a little fear, particularly in a bad economy. Believing Catholics need not apply I guess.

What difference has gay marriage made five years later? Support for the idea that children need a mom and dad has dropped, and a substantial minority of people believe it is risky to oppose gay marriage openly.

Yet another reason for my boys to go.

A nice problem

Posted: May 19, 2009 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: ,

Picking up on the post yesterday concerning the supreme court something hit me this morning.

As you might have gathered I have a beef against the 60’s. I think the cultural changes have produced a lot of problems but there have been some changes of a very positive nature and one of the results of those changes is before us.

Professor Hutchinson and I have a chicken and egg argument in that would like to see “diversity” highlighted as a reason for a choice while noting that there are many qualified candidates who meet that test. I wish to see qualifications highlighted and diversity de-emphasized but note that there are plenty of “diversity” candidates that meet the qualifications standard that I have and if that standard is achieved I’m satisfied.

The amazing and wonderful thing is the increase of the pool of “diverse” candidates that are without a doubt qualified for the position.

Think 1968, there is no question that Thurgood Marshall would be a on short list for the supreme court in terms of qualifications but how large would be the pool of “diverse” candidates with his qualifications existed? Or at least were known by the general public?

Fast forward two generations we are having the debate over a new opening on the court. If the president wants to make a choice based on color or race it is actually much harder, not because of the breaking of a barrier but because of the number of qualified candidates to choose from, in fact it would take real effort for the president to choose an unqualified “person of color”.

This is an incredible thing, and the country should celebrate this fact. This is the ultimate success of the civil rights movement and the reason why at the time affirmative action was not a bad idea. The moves made two generations ago produced the pool of qualified candidates and assures us of that pool from this point on.

President Johnson had the problem of getting the country to accept a supremely qualified candidate for the high court who happened to be black. President Obama has the opposite problem, choosing one candidate from a large pool of supremely qualified candidates.

The fact that nobody notices how wonderful this is , shows how far we’ve come. Life is pretty good and we don’t even realize it.

The Anchoress misses the point…

Posted: May 18, 2009 by datechguy in catholic, war
Tags: , , ,

…and that doesn’t happen all that often:

Yeah, that’s the ticket. Because only Obama, who did very little before taking on the Oval Office, has the wisdom and the gravitas to bring Netanyahu to such a position. You can’t expect the 83 year-old professor who lived through Nazism and Statism and understands that the greatest evils of the 20th century began with people disrespecting the personhood of the guy standing next to them, to have had any impact on Israel’s thinking.

You can’t expect an old intellectual who has been talking about the battle between truth and relativism from his teenage years in a POW camp, through his elevation to the papacy, to have contributed anything of value to the decades-long acrimonies of the Middle Eastern Nations can you?

It’s the Bookworm who nails it:

What the loopy-loo wackos on the Left (and, increasingly, in the middle) don’t understand, is that the Arabs have never wanted and will never want a two state solution. They want a Judenrein world, and they’re patient.

It is this desire for a one state (all Arab) solution, that explains why, as Rick Richman points out, no Middle East solutions have worked thus far.

Until the Arabs want a “two state” solution it doesn’t matter what Israel thinks. One of three things will happen. Either the Arabs will manage to slaughter the Jews, the Jews will finally decide they have enough and decide to slaughter the Arabs (which they’ve had the ability to do for decades, for all the cries of Jewish genocide of Arabs they are sure doing a lousy job of it aren’t they), or the Arabs will decide to live in peace.

Unless choice three comes about, choice one or two is inevitable. It’s just a question of when.

Oh and if you are of the mind that God will not permit the destruction of Israel (choice 1) that’s just not true. He has allowed the Kingdoms of Israel to fall over and over again, but he has never allowed the Jewish People to be eliminated. The history of the people of Israel is a sine wave; they rise and fall just as Moses predicted. In fact it pre-figures the cycle of confession and repentance in the church: man sins, man repents, God forgives, man is tempted and repeat until death or man escapes sin state.

Older Entries
Newer Entries