Posts Tagged ‘reality’

The sign that the battle in Wisconsin is practically won

Posted: March 8, 2011 by datechguy in internet/free speech, opinion/news
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One thing I’ve noticed in covering protests is that you get a lot of hangers-on.

For example at almost every Boston protest you will get one guy who carries his US flag with corporate symbols replacing stripes, you will get a guy with a Palestinian flag. And if the tea party is anywhere nearby I guarantee you that the LaRouche democrats will be around, usually with their Obama Hitler posters, and of course there are the truthers.

Generally these guys are the crazy uncles of any movement they find themselves a parade and try to get noticed within it.

Which brings us to Michael Moore getting in FRONT of the crowd:

Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore urged Wisconsin residents Saturday to fight against Republican efforts to strip most public workers of their collective bargaining rights, telling thousands of protesters that “Madison is only the beginning.”

There has been story after story about Moore’s appearance, I submit it shows that the left is losing this fight.

Moore’s biggest fans are on the far left, not in the mainstream. If Moore is the story, if he is the man in front. That tells you the message isn’t working or playing, polls or no.

As I was writing this I noticed this at Althouse who apparently agrees:

I wonder if the teachers and other Wisconsin union members who got the protest started 3 weeks ago appreciate having Michael Moore absorb their issue — maintaining the quality of professional public employment in Wisconsin — into his larger anti-capitalist agenda for America.

This is a problem with extending the protests. The crowd changes, new infusions of energy come from outsiders who see a ready-made platform to climb up on. These old-school, left-wing attacks on corporations have little to do with the distinct problems of jobs in the public sector — where, management is the government of the state and its citzens.

If their big draw is Michael Moore that tells you something about what is going on.

Ride right through them, they’re demoralized as hell.

Unclear on the concept…

Posted: March 7, 2011 by datechguy in economy, internet/free speech
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of Fascism and terrorism:

Make no mistake about it; this is a political attack on teachers for supporting democratic leaders who have stood up for education in our state. If passed, these fascist measures will silence the voice of teachers working to improve our schools, communities and our state.

and this:

“He has the power to stop this madness now,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville said to loud shouts of approval at the teachers rally. “Governor Haslam, if you’re listening, please stop this terrorism against our teachers.”

Terrorism! (You know that a certain section of this crowd was, about three years ago, in the streets, marching and protesting that the Bush administration was over-hyping the threat of terrorism and complaining that the term “war on terror” was too broad and was an imprecise definition.)

One of the things I’ve noticed in interviewing people is that those who have actually lived under communism or fascism tend not to make these kind of statements, but leftism has as I’ve said before morphed into a quasi-religion where if you have the right beliefs are you counted among the righteous no matter how much money you take from murderous dictators.

All of this self-righteous posturing is all about being part of the suffering masses in the mind and has no relationship with actual reality:

The characteristic of Pains and Pleasures is that they are unmistakably real, and therefore, as far as they go, give the man who feels them a touchstone of reality. Thus if you had been trying to damn your man by the Romantic method—by making him a kind of Childe Harold or Werther submerged in self-pity for imaginary distresses—you would try to protect him at all costs from any real pain; because, of course, five minutes’ genuine toothache would reveal the romantic sorrows for the nonsense they were and unmask your whole stratagem.

I really thing that the left started to believe its own rhetoric during the Bush years and has never gotten over it. It’s going to take a really nasty piece of reality to shock them out of it.

“Cultural Imperalism” and Sati (Suttee)

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in culture, internet/free speech, opinion/news
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At Piece of work in progress Dan Collins talks about the “consequences of the Multicult”

The liberals who comprise the MSM majority have in essence adopted the stance that insistence on religious tolerance in Muslim majority nations is an undue imposition of Western standards of human rights on foreign states and cultures, which is an expression of lingering imperialism, and thus bad, while millions of Muslims and non-Muslims suffer under the yoke of Islamist fundamentalism in all of its forms. One of the most egregious examples is the media’s treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there are many more.

In consequence, the United States stands by as ethnic cleansing is accomplished versus Copts and other Christian minorities in Muslim majority nations.

Not two minutes ago on Morning Joe (I’m writing this at 8:37 a.m.) Mika mentioned the killing of two soldiers at the Frankfurt airport. They stressed “Germany” and the “last time there was a shooting in Germany” but they were unwilling to talk about what was brought up on MSNBC Europe’s own web page:

Family members in Kosovo described the suspect as a devout Muslim, who was born and raised in Germany and worked at the airport.

Nope, nothing to see here, not a thing going on. The Catholic minister in Pakistan murdered? No comment, nothing to see here. Copts killed in Egypt, none of our business.

Our unwillingness to defend our cultural values is dooming millions to oppression. Consider this story from history:

General Charles Napier held the offices of Governor of Bombay and Commander-in-Chief of India for the British Empire,was confronted with the tradition of Sati (or Suttee) where the new widow of a deceased man would be thrown alive on his funeral pyre. Napier forbade it, and when leaders of the community objected saying it was their custom. Napier with all the confidence of an 1850’s Brit with this classic answer (via Mark Steyn’s book America Alone)

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”

Sati or Suttee has been gone from India for 160 years. How many widows did not die in excruciating pain because of this example of “cultural imperialism”?

And what is the situation now? Now we’ve reached the point that the same British who stopped Suttee in India now have unofficial “gay free zones” in their capital imposed by unassimilated Muslims who are imposing their own “cultural imperialism” right back at em.

I think Steyn nailed it with this sentence:

Multiculturalism was conceived by the Western elites not to celebrate all cultures but to deny their own.

Until we look this straight in the eye we will be seeing more headlines like this:

German prosecutors said on Thursday that Islamic radicalism may have motivated a Kosovar to open fire on an American military bus at the Frankfurt airport, killing two United States airmen and wounding two others.

And it will be our own fault.

Am I actually seeing Morning Joe reporting on the media difference?

Posted: March 3, 2011 by datechguy in blogs, media, opinion/news
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The difference in Wisconsin coverage that is, why yes, Politico wrote about the double standard concerning “signs”:

“The mainstream media’s professed concern with uncivil engages only when it is practiced by conservatives,” asserted the Washington Post’s conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin.

And conservative blogger Michelle Malkin, who has made her blog something of a clearinghouse of alleged union misdeeds, boasts she is doing “the reporting the tea party-bashing national media won’t do on the rabid outbreak of progressive incivility and violence at Big Labor protests across the country.”

and Morning Joe is talking about the double standard in the Wisconsin coverage.

They are not touching on the PHYSICAL stuff, nor did they show any extended clip with the union folks actually saying what they are saying but they did do a whole segment on the double standard and objected loudly to it.

It’s interesting to note they Politico didn’t embed any of the actual video, and Morning Joe didn’t play any of the audio.

This is very revealing, this means that the video and audio can’t be hidden, it means that it has spread on social networking sites and blog and getting out there. It means that Politico, forced to cover the story has decided to make it one about the media double standard. (a very valid story) instead of what the Unions and their supports are actually doing.

Even funnier is their defense of the media pointing to a single blog post at the NYT online:

In fact, the New York Times’ Michael Shear did write a blog post about the Wisconsin GOP’s slickly produced video, calling it “striking” for its juxtaposition of incendiary rhetoric from union protestors with liberal accusations about angry conservative rhetoric.

As I mentioned before, look at the actions to see what is happening, this story and Morning Joe’s coverage of it tells you an awful lot about who is actually winning this debate.

Update: It’s worth noting that they only touched on this in the 6 a.m. hour then dropped it like a hot potato.

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