baldilocks

Love and Gosnell (UPDATED)

Biblically described, there are three types of love: agape, phileo, and eros; aka godly love, friendship, and sexual desire, respectively. Somewhere along the way, a new definition of love was added to the language, one which has a single outward feature: giving a person what s/he wants. With this type of "love," one must give a person anything s/he wants or approve of the gift.  Anything less becomes the opposite of love: hatred. And when a group wants a thing for the sake of some characteristic of that group, opposition to the giving becomes hatred of that group.

Thus, when a white person won't give a black person what he wants or disagrees with him, it's racism on the white person's part. When a man won't give a woman what she wants or disagrees with her, it's sexism on his part. When a heterosexual won't give a homosexual what she wants or disagrees with her, it's homophobia on the heterosexual's part.

And when a black person, woman, homosexual, etc. disapproves of this gift, that person is ousted from the group by the group’s recipients. After all, a few naysayers have the potential to cut off the giving, so any other potential naysayers must be discouraged. Ostracism has potential to keep the others silent.

The bestowal of this new type of love is required from those who are perceived to be in a position of worldly power, but reciprocity is not required of the perceived powerless recipients of that "love." Additionally, and of the most importance, the new type of love has pride as its foundation. The "powerful" giver is proud to have given the gift and the "powerless" receiver is proud merely on the basis of group membership to have received that gift. No gratitude is required on the part of the latter. That group is only getting its just due.

It matters not if the giving will hurt the giver or the recipient. It doesn't matter if the giving of said gift will hurt any aspect of society. It doesn't even matter if the gift will wipe out the lineage of the recipient.  All that matters is that the recipient gets what s/he wants. (It's interesting to note that the German word for the noun 'poison' is das Gift; the verb 'to poison' is vergiften. The last also means 'to pollute.')

So it is that actor Ken Wahl--a white man-- is called a racist by a black man. Wahl's alleged crime: hoping that the abortionist Kermit Gosnell gets the book thrown at him for being a small but egregious part of the self-genocide of a people.

Black guy called me racist due to my stance on #Gosnell.I said,"Don't u care that the babies he killed were black!? U should,G! I do!" #tcot

— Ken Wahl (@KenWahl1) May 2, 2013

But the discerning know what Wahl’s real “crime” is: not wanting to give a designated black person what that person wants, and, thus, refusing to show his “love” for the black race.  Gosnell wants freedom, but Wahl wants him to be imprisoned. Therefore, Wahl is "racist."

You know, it’s almost as if most of the world has become populated by billions of narcissists.

For certain, Kermit Gosnell does not consider the babies he murdered to be human beings, much less fellow black Americans. Here's a little secret that not too many non-blacks know:  there is a certain segment of the black population--an elite--that looks down on the majority of blacks and believe that the world would be better off without them. This elite has existed for a long time and what they think about the vast majority of blacks would make a Klansman blush. (One white person who does know: Anne Rice. She outlined the culture in her excellent, non-vampire novel, The Feast of All Saints.) From his courtroom and jailhouse demeanor, I suspect that Gosnell is one of these self-styled elites.

It's said that many of his clientele were young black drug addicts and prostitutes. Someone like Gosnell would believe that he was doing the black race a favor by "culling the herd," that is, getting rid of the inferior members of his race. That he didn't even allow his victims the dignity of proper sanitary conditions and that he kept trophies of his youngest victims are just symptoms of his singular psychopathology...and actually, the former makes sense given what I suspect about Gosnell. Puncturing uteri, over-drugging and passing along diseases through dirty instruments would--and did--cause many of the women to become sterile.

But he had accomplices! No, I'm not talking about the creatures who worked in his office; I'm referring to the Pennsylvania authorities who knew since 1993 what kind of charnel house Gosnell was running and did nothing about it. The only reason that we know about Gosnell is that he happened to over-drug one of his patients, the patient died, her husband alerted the authorities and, as a result, the DEA--a federal agency--swooped down on Gosnell's clinic. And, here's something pertinent: neither that patient nor her husband are black. One wonders how many black people complained to the state authorities about this man over the past twenty years.

Now, most of you know I'm not wont to play the race card, and, in a way, I'm not doing it now.  You see, I think that the Pennsylvania authorities thought they were "loving" Gosnell and his mostly black patients. How? By giving them what they wanted--in spite of the complaints from some black people about Gosnell, black women kept going to him to have him murder their babies.

This is where the new type of love has brought us: all taking, all appetite—and easy disposal of an inconvenience like children because children require adults to do more than just take, be more than just appetite. (And, remember, just because most women who have abortions do so early enough within the legal limit doesn't make their children any less murdered. I know.) 

Margaret Sanger's ideology has succeeded beyond her wildest dreams: the “human weeds” have been conned into weeding themselves.  Sanger would be smiling right now were it not for the uncomfortable environment of her permanent home. 

[Re-edited]

(Thanks to Twitchy)

UPDATE (May 15, 2013): In the comments, uptownsteve--the infamous troll of black conservative sites and pages--unwittingly demonstrates the truth of the premise of this essay. Thanks, Steve!

The Difference

In the very recent past, the two YouTube videos below have become popular in conservative circles. Other than the obvious fact that both videos feature black people, the videos have nothing in common--or so it seems. Specifically, the videos demonstrate something interesting in their contrast.

If you haven't already done so, please watch both of them before continuing with my commentary. The second one comes with a language and violence warning.

 

And, just in case you missed it the first time, the following video comes with a language and violence warning.

 

 The first video features Dr. Benjamin Carson speaking before President and Mrs. Obama at the annual National Prayer Breakfast.The second features a woman being stunned by a taser-wielding security guard. The woman and her friend became belligerent with the security guard after he presumes to correct their wayward children and one of them physically attacks him after he corrects the children a second time. (And what wayward children these are! During the verbal part of the confrontation between the women and the guard, the children--none of them any more than five years old--begin to repeatedly call the guard 'gay.' Leaving aside the implications of whether such a thing is an epithet or not--and, to people like these, it is--when I was that age, I didn't have any concept of heterosexual sex, much less anything else.)

With regard to the first video, many commentators have noted the unabashedly conservative content of Dr. Carson's speech. It was, indeed, well-done and one might contrast the two videos in terms of how to and how not to disagree. But that isn't my purpose here.

By now, Dr. Carson's origins and background are well-known. Like all too many Americans, black and otherwise, he grew up without his biological father. But then so did President Obama. And so did I.

And so did Former President Bill Clinton, actor Pierce Brosnan and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas--whose excellent autobiography, My Grandfather's Son: A Memoir, I'm reading right now. And so did singer/musician Eric Clapton, economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams, the late Apple founder Steve Jobs, media titan Oprah Winfrey, NBA great Shaquille O'Neal and many, many other successful, responsible and law-abiding Americans of various races, famous and unknown.

As I began to reflect on the two videos and what I know from personal experience and observation, I realized that it has never been all that unusual for children in America to grow up without their biological fathers or even their biological mothers. Many times, such children are without one or both of their parents because of divorce or death and, in the case of growing up without the father due to divorce, the fathers often exit the lives of the children entirely, as was so with me. But just as often, the father is not in the child's life because he and the mother were never married. Such was the case with Jobs (who was adopted by the couple who gave him his last name).

But what makes a Jobs, Thomas, O'Neal, etc. different from the many children we see in this day and age-- who grow up the same way but who are disobedient and disrespectful like the ones we see in the second video?

Could you imagine behaving toward any adult in the manner of those children? That beautiful lady in the post before this one would have beaten me down had I acted like that. But of course, she trained me early not to run wild in public in the first place.

I suspect that none of the children in the second video were born in wedlock. Oh sure there's a man at the end of the video who appears and threatens the guard in the name of his woman and his alleged children. But, I suspect that, at minimum, only one of the children is his biological child and that he and tasered woman are not married. Call it a hunch.

On the other hand, consider the upbringing of Dr. Carson. He and his older brother were raised by his divorced and then illiterate mother. Growing up, the Carson brothers never saw their father. But their hard-working, and, frankly, brilliant mother wanted more for her offspring than she had. From Biography.com:

Both Ben and his brother experienced difficulty in school. Ben fell to the bottom of his class, and became the object of ridicule by his classmates. He developed a violent and uncontrollable temper, and was known to attack other children at the slightest provocation.

(...)

Determined to turn her sons around, Sonya [Carson] limited their TV time to just a few select programs and refused to let them go outside to play until they'd finished their homework. She was criticized for this by her friends, who said her boys would grow up to hate her. But she was determined that her sons would have greater opportunities than she did. She required them to read two library books a week and give her written reports, even though with her poor education she could barely read them. She would take the papers and review them, scanning over the words and turning pages. Then she would place a checkmark at the top of the page showing her approval.

At first, Ben resented the strict regimen. While his friends were playing outside, he was stuck in the house, forced to read a book or do his homework. But after several weeks of his mother's unrelenting position, he began to find enjoyment in reading. Being poor, there wasn't much opportunity to go anywhere. But between the covers of a book he could go anyplace, be anybody, and do anything. Ben began to learn how to use his imagination and found it more enjoyable than watching television. This attraction to reading soon led to a strong desire to learn more.

It's the type of upbringing I recognize.

But what made a Ben Carson or a Steve Jobs different from the children in the second video? What makes the children who grew up in the early 60s and prior without one or more parents different from the menaces to society we've seen all too often in the past four decades?

It's this: individuals--individuals who step into the breach that mother and/or father vacate voluntarily or involuntarily. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, stepparents, adoptive parents. And the individual biological parents, like Sonya Carson, who step up to the task appointed to them. People like her shape a Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon and leader of the surgical team who first successfully separated conjoined twins. People like the tasered woman--and the man--shape drug-dealers, gang members, welfare mothers and prisoners.

Such people like the latter know nothing of hard work, true education, order, responsibility. The reason this is so? Because neither they nor the other parent(s) of their offspring care about their children being better than they are. They don't have to care about this because they know that the government will subsidize all of their "needs" and the "needs" of their offspring.

When individuals are the parents, the child will most likely do well. When government is the parent, the child will most likely do poorly and become dependent on government as well--either taking on government as one parent (illegitimate children) or both parents (going to prison). This isn't rocket science or neurosurgery. From time immemorial, children, with some exceptions, follow in the footsteps of their parents.

This is becoming a problem in America as a whole, but it is primarily a problem among black Americans, a huge one. Since the beginning of the Great Society, black illegitimacy has skyrocketed and hovered in the seventy percent area for some time. Though many black women who have been having children illegitimately are self-sufficient, all too many rely on government to feed, clothe and house themselves and their progeny and the result is demonstrated in not only the second video, but many of the other videos that the security guard, Darien Long, has posted on You Tube. And I see the result nearly every time I step outside my South Central LA home...

The progeny of human mothers and government fathers are doing what chattel slavery did not...ruining a people.

UPDATED: Correct video codes now inserted.

 

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Alma L. Simpkins

My great-aunt Alma passed away on December 30th of last year at the age of 91. Born on the Fourth of July, she was the seventh of eight children, the last of her seven brothers and sister (her lone younger sibling, my grandmother, died in 2008), the longest lived, and the last of that generation in my mother’s and biological father’s families. I've written about her before.

I’ve been planning to post about it since then, but I felt that there would never be enough to say about it. (Plus, my general lack of motivation to post was a factor, along with the fact that, until this past Friday, I was typing almost one-handed due to a fractured left wrist.) However, Aunt Alma’s role in my life deserves whatever meager public tribute I am able to give it. She, along with my great-uncle, John W. Simpkins, Jr. (1920-2000), shaped nearly everything I am and gave me everything they had. You can read about Uncle John here.

Aunt Alma and Uncle John were the first real parents I had. This is no disrespect to my mother; as a very young divorcee, she determined that it would be better for me to be raised by two parents. So it was that my aunt and uncle raised me from ages one to nine. When my mother remarried, she and my new dad took custody of me, but my aunt and uncle always held a special place in my heart—more than any of my grandparents.

Aunt Alma had been pretty healthy into her eighties, but began to feel and show the effects of advanced age—and, as we discovered later, a slow-growing brain tumor--around 2007. In 2010, she took a bad fall and during the treatment for that fall, the tumor was diagnosed. The doctors thought she would die not long after that, but Aunt Alma was always the toughest of cookies. I took care of her at home for nine months, but that became unworkable, so she spent over a year in a nursing home. However, she made me promise to bring her home before Christmas of last year and I did. She was gone a little over a month after she came home.

We had the memorial service on January 10, 2013 and the interment on the 17th.

I feel as if there is a huge part of me missing, but I know where she is; she had long accepted Jesus the Christ as her Lord and Savior.

As one can see from the photo, Aunt Alma was drop-dead gorgeous in her youth and—before her two marriages--she was the toast of the old black club scene in both LA and Harlem back in the day. There are many photographs around the house of her classily dolled-up, with her straight, black hair elegantly coiffed and, sometimes, containing a flower. In her last years, she would often say that she could never complain to God about not having had fun in her life.

Yes, I know we don’t look alike. She had two white grandfathers; her white exterior and our distinct lack of resemblance made for some fun encounters over the years—and some not-so-fun. At the nursing home, some of the black CNAs would speak to her brusquely until some of them saw me come to visit her. Racist heifers. (PSA: if you have a relative in a nursing home, make it a point to keep them on their toes. Whenever I saw that “here comes that bald-headed b*tch again” look in their eyes, I knew I was doing my job.)

Auntie would occasionally remind me that, when I was about three or four years old, I informed her, in my logical toddler wisdom, that I was black and she was white. Not long ago, when she again reminded me of this, I thought about it for a second, and came to the conclusion that I was correct in the first place. She was white—and she was black. And a quarter American Indian for good measure.

Aunt Alma was in a bit of denial about her declining health, but she could be very sensible about it, too. One of the reasons that I moved in with her back in 2003 was that, after a few fender-benders, she voluntarily gave up her driver’s license.

When I sit in what is now my house, I am surrounded by a memorial to her and I’m grateful to God for it. More than that, I'm grateful to God for her.

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New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez (DEMOCRAT) Being Investigated By The FBI [KingShamus]

For what, you ask? 

 Oh, it's a big one.
 

The feds are investigating accusations that New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez had sex with underage hookers on trips to the Dominican Republic, The Post has learned.

“Clearly, they [FBI agents] were pursuing it,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who reported Menendez to the feds last year.

Menendez and his Dominican junkets have come under intense scrutiny in the past 24 hours after the feds raided the Florida office of Dr. Salomon Melgen, a Menendez friend.

Tipsters told Sloan’s group that Melgen repeatedly flew Menendez on a private jet to the Dominican Republic, where the doctor allegedly supplied prostitutes to the senator.

Melgen did not respond to requests for comment.

Menendez’s office said, “Any allegations of engaging with prostitutes are manufactured . . . and are false.”

   

I quoted the entire article, from the supposedly Republican-leaning New York Post, for a reason.  Do you see what you're not noticing?  If you didn't already know Bob Menendez was a member of the Democrat Party, you certainly weren't going to get that piece of information from Post writer Josh Margolin. 

I wonder why the NYPost would neglect to mention that Mr. Menendez is a Democrat.  Party affiliation is a fairly easy way for people to identify political figures.  For the news consumer, understanding where an elected representative sits on the partisan spectrum is a great help when trying to get a grasp on current events.  Yet we never get to know Bob Menendez very well from this article, especially as it relates to his profession.  He must be from the very popular Generic Party.  Tra-la-la, ho-hum, move it along folks.

Isn't it also strange how this investigation didn't come out until after Boisterous Bobby was safely re-elected?  I know Joseph Kyrillos, Menendez's GOP opponent last November, tried to make some hay out this but that tactic was largely seen as a dying campaign's last gasp.  Most the of the media blew it all off: "These are baseless allegations against this divorced senator from an unknown region of the United States.  Also hookers are notorious liars. Besides prostitution is legal in the DR, so yeah."

We can all see how Garden State voters were rightfully protected from this unseemly intrusive information.  Nobody thinks it's important that their Senator is being investigated by the FBI for improperly using a campaign contributor's private jet to hook up with underage hookers at the same campaign contributor's private club located in a foreign country with notably lax prostitution statutes.  Citizens would not be at all interested in learning about a situation like this, especially during an election where the Democrat Party was shamelessly moralizing  dutifully explaining to America all the many ways that Republicans want to exploit women.

Media observers, including some conservatives, think that press bias is just a matter of how a news organization presents stories.  Giving a story a left wing spin is a time-honored tactic for the Democrat Party shill working at an MSM outlet.  The media still does this all the time.  But it's more than just putting a progressive-friendly sheen on stuff.  It's about guarding  the good guys--ie Bill Clinton, Barney Frank and Bob Menendez--and punishing the evil retrograde Republicans and conservatives.

Here is more:  RS McCain makes this pungent observation.

...you want to tell me that’s not newsworthy? Turn in your press credentials, clean out your desk and find another line of work, because you clearly have no aptitude for the news business.

See, that's just it.  The media loves a good political sex scandal, when it's a Republican at the center of it.  When a GOPer does something awful, the press loves to spin it into their favorite narrative--"This latest sex scandal indicts the entire hypocritical Republican party."

When it's a Democrat that's accused of using people like a box of kleenex, suddenly it's not newsworthy.  

Protecting the progressive brand is more important than, you know, actually reporting the news.

Back to the story:  It just keeps getting uglier.

The main source in the Bob Menendez underage hooker scandal sent the FBI the names offour hookers who confirmed they had attended sex parties with Salmon Melgen and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) in the Dominican Republic. On Tuesday, FBI agents raided the West Palm Beach business of Dr. Melgen who is suspected of providing free trips and even underage Dominican Republic prostitutes to U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J.

I'll say this.  We live in a country where a person is innocent until proven guilty.  None of this has been found to be true yet.  Menendez might not have done any of it.

At the same time, I don't see the FBI investigating something like this if there isn't something to it.  I mean, do they like wasting time and resources on complete dead-ends?  I don't think that happens too often, especially since the target of the investigation is such a high-profile public figure.

The Sexxxiest Pro-Abortion Ad You'll See This Month (KingShamus)

I mean, who isn't turned on by a dude grunting weird sexual innuendos about a Supreme Court case that allows people to terminate their pregnancies?

 

 

 

So it's weird when Clint Eastwood talks to an empty chair, but it's totally rad when a man breaks the fourth wall and moans at an empty cradle. Got it.

For those of you without a program to refer to, the actor playing the randiest abortion provider ever is Mechad Brooks.  He's some really famous guy in that show that's on one of those channels you watch when you're fighting off a hangover and an eight hour Law & Order-Criminals With SUV And Trials marathons is running or whatever.  As you can imagine, filming a pro-abortion propaganda video is a big step up for Mr. Brooks' career.  If this Roe v Wade anniversary tribute thingy takes off, he'll get a fifteen second cameo in the next Lady Gaga video and a free season pass to Knott's Berry Farm.

It's also funny how they got a guy to celebrate legalized baby killing.  Consequence-free sex has been a leftist dream ever since Margaret Sanger was invited to her first KKK rally, but it's men that have the most to gain from ready access to abortion.  They get all the fun and none of the messy medical complications or the increased risk of suicide  Just don't accuse them of not caring for women's health.

After the creepiness has worn off, the ad is refreshing in it's morbid honesty.  Like the Lena Dunham/First Time campaign spot, the horny nihilists at the Center For Reproductive Rights are gleefully pandering to the lowest common denominator: "Let's have sex then get rid of the inconvenient kid that results."

We get no sob stories about women denied access to 'vital' 'health care'.  The pro-abortionists don't gin up some statistically negligible scenarios to tug at our heart strings.  Nope.  Instead we get the inhuman bump-and-grind brutality at the core of the state-sanctioned baby killer movement delivered to us straight.

The pro-lifers are disappointed that Roe v Wade is still operational.  It's ugly that such an unconstitutional and immoral ruling still stands.  But there is one thing the anti-abortion activists can take solace in.  Never before has the febrile murderous heart of the abortion rights mob been so visible.  This means those who value human life will no longer have to fight against the shadowy obfuscations formerly used by the pro-'choice' movement.

UPDATE:  Matt over at Conservative Hideout did a post on this clip too.  Check it out.

The video is made by a joint called Draw the Line.  They apparently think that $9.00 a month birth control is a “luxury item” that only the wealthy can afford.

The weirdest thing about the last year's War on Women dance craze was the idea that spending the same money as two McDonald's meal deals was a serious financial burden.  But Obama won on that bullshit, so I guess it was all just the opening gambit.  Since our government is now breaking the Catholic Church over it's knee and making them pay for everybody's rubbers, it's only a matter of time before the country gets inured to taxpayer-sponsored abortion.

David Gregory Gets To Skate, Ben Shapiro Makes Piers Morgan Irate (KingShamus)

 

Not surprising.

District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin Nathan issued a lengthy letter today explaining the decision not to prosecute David Gregory “despite the clarity of the violation of this important law,” despite rejecting NBC’s claims of a subjective misunderstanding of the law, and despite vowing vigorous enforcement of gun laws.

But it's not like this Important Sophisticated Celebrity Journalist got any special favors.  Gregory's wife is totally not BFF's with the DC attorney general or anything.

Oh, wait... 

For a reporter, David "Laws For Thee Not Me" Gregory is a great dancer.

Now that's how you do "Gangam Style", kids.

Meanwhile, Piers Morgan continued to make the case for a highly restrictive immigration policy for disgraced British tabloid editors by having a patronizing sneer-fest with Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro.  Watch for yourself.  Seeing an English know-it-all shoot himself in the foot (see what I did there?) is must-see TV.

 

Go to 10:10 to catch the real magic.  Everybody is talking about Beerz Morguecrotch calling the US Constitution "your little book", but that's just the obvious self-pwnage.  No, the really cool bit is when CNN dude holds up the Ronald Reagan letter and tries to club Shapiro over the head with it.

What is it with the liberal fetish for self-defeating interview props?  First David Gregory waves an illegal 30 round magazine in Wayne LaPierre's face, then Pierce Organ throws a Gipper quote at Shapiro that promptly does nothing but make the  reasonable host gun control fanatic look stupid.  It's like media leftists have to have some kind of comforting woobby to soothe themselves when going up against evil reich-wing thugs.

Prop reporting is sorta like prop comedy.  The Amazing Jonathan is often brilliant.  Gallagher can be funny as hell.  Carrot Top will stumble onto a decent bit every year or so.  People pay good money to see these guys do their thing.  Yet even with all that, there is a stigma against comedians who work with props.  Other stand-up guys look down on them.  Comedy nerds use prop comics as a punchline.

I think people hate on these guys because the prop is seen--rightly or wrongly--as a crutch.  It's like if they didn't have the sledgehammer or the treasure box full of crap or whatever, they wouldn't be able to make a joke.  Again, your mileage may vary when it comes to prop comics, but that seems to be the critique against them.

When a reporter uses a prop to make his point, especially when using it against a guest, it's sorta the same thing.  Couldn't homeboy use his j-school big boy words to make the same point?  Does he have to have the prop to make the segment work?

During the David Gregory/Wayne LaPierre dust-up, the Meet The Press host wanted to put the NRA veep in his place--'You love these death instruments more than you care about kids.'  Too bad for Gregory that LaPierre didn't take the bait.  Instead, Gregory made himself look stupid.  And broke the laws that he wants everyone else to follow.

Morgan's use of the Reagan letter was a little different.  There, he tried to use the 40th president's position on assault weapons as a wedge to separate Shapiro from a conservative icon.  Unfortunately for Morgan, admiring Reagan doesn't mean blind obeisance to every one of his positions.  That made it tough for him to beat up on Shapiro, so Morgan's snippy moral outrage skit fell apart.

Far be it from me to tell the genius liberal media how to run their shows.  If they wanna keep using prop reportage, go ahead.  After all, how could anybody quibble with Piers Morgan's sky-high ratings?

#WhyIsMyPaycheckLessThisWeek--Helping Soothe Liberal Hurt Feelings (KingShamus)

Turns out lefties are freaked out about paying their fair share.

I mean, PAYING THEIR FAIR SHARE!!!!111111!!!111!!!!

Earlier this week, many Americans realized the “fair share” fiscal cliff deal didn’t seem so fair. One Democratic Underground commenter was a little behind yesterday and was shocked — shocked! — to learn that the fiscal cliff crapwich didn’t extend the payroll tax holiday. (They don’t call ‘em DUmmies for nothing.)

“What happened?” he asked. “My paycheck just went down by an amount that I don’t feel comfortable with. I guarantee this decrease will hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over $400,000.”

Forgive me gentle readers, but let me address this emotionally distraught person directly.

Dear Mister Why Is My Paycheck Less This Week,

I see that you are surprised to note that your paycheck is less than it was back in 2012.  Let me first say that I too mourn for your lost revenue.  It is money that you will most likely never see again, what with the annual trillion dollar deficits our government--completely dominated as it is by the US House Republicans I must add--just keeps running up.  

But do not worry.  There is a bulwark against the GOP's destructive maddening destructiveness.  President Obama, with his bountiful business experience as a community organizer, adjunct part-time college lecturer, lawyer and Chicago politician, knows best how to use your cash better than you ever could.  In the glorious future ahead of us, we can all look forward to more great job-creating wage-raising successes like Solyndra, Abound Solar and A123 Systems.  

As a good Democrat, you'll be happy to know your President is using your money for many other important investments.  Such as the Guantanamo Bay detention center.  And drone strikes.  And giving guns to Mexican freedom fighters or something.  So feel comfortable knowing that while revenues have been raised from you and many other kind-hearted liberals like you, these funds are being well spent on things that you truly agree with.

Now, there will be those outside of the totally mainstream Democratic Underground message board who will disagree with this obvious wisdom.  They will tell you that by voting for President Obama, you have in fact chosen to pay higher taxes and thus you should not be surprised to see a lighter paycheck.  They'll assert, while smoking a cigar and kicking a puppy no doubt, that our President actually wants higher taxes.  The fascist wreckers in our society believe Obama sought out a higher payroll tax as part of the fiscal cliff deal.  

This is obviously not true, as I have succinctly pointed out to you.

Now rest your head, friend.  I'm sure this is a lot of information for you to process.  I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself.  Just know that smarter, savvier people than you have it all taken care of.  

2012--Obama's Ascendancy or Conservative Reform? (KingShamus)

Let's face facts, people.  Conservatism really took it on the chin in 2012.  After all, Republican Mitt Romney got his ass beat by left-wing ideologue Barack Obama.  The Supreme Court, led by John "No Seriously, Dubya Nominated Me!" Roberts, upheld ObamaCare.  The US Senate remained in the hands of Democrat Majority Leader embarrassment Harry Reid.

Look at some of the dire metrics going against conservatives. The fiscal cliff deal is all tax hikes, no spending cuts and a whole lot of kabuki theater nonsense.  The media remains a statist bullhorn and progressive piggy bank all in one.  The education establishment is committed to indoctrinating America's youth in the ways of Karl Marx while failing to teach them how to read.  According to conventional wisdom, the Right should spare themselves the embarrassment of a messy end, get into a dark corner, curl up in a ball and quietly die.

Again.

Just like it croaked in 2009, right?

Seems as if once more, conservatism didn't listen to it's sworn enemies or it's fair-weather friends.

Consider the following sequence of events.  On Election Night, Barack Obama's hottest sexual fantasy was fulfilled when Mitt Romney delivered a submissive beta-male concession speech.  Just over a month later, Governor Rick Snyder made right-to-work the law of the land in union-dominated Michigan.

That certainly wasn't supposed to happen.  Just like after Obama won in 2008, the left was stoked to see America morph into a slightly bigger less ouzo-fueled Greece.  Socialist values were destined to sweep away all the bitter-clingers and their retrograde obsessions with the US Constitution, free market socialism and keeping some of the money they earned through the sweat of their labors.  All that hackneyed 18th century Enlightenment jive was going out the door, replaced by Barack Obama's brand of shiny happy grievance-group buy-offs.

The Mitten State, of all places, was thought to be one of the strongholds of Barack Obama's national progressive realignment.  Big aggressive labor groups pumping piles of money into Democrat campaign coffers has been the great idea in the Donkey-Puncher playbook since the Paleolithic Era.  Now that beloved Donkey-Puncher strategy is in serious jeopardy.

Lest you think this is an isolated right-wing victory in a sea of conservative defeats, ponder the fact that during what was supposed to be the new Progressive Golden Age, no Republican has lost a governorship since 2007.  Thirty states have a GOP chief executive.  Twenty-one states have both a Republican governor and a GOP-controlled legislature.  Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker not only survived a nasty recall race, he annihilated the competition and looks poised to win a second term.

Seen this way, it's clear many states welcome right-of-center politics.  They're comfortable letting conservatives--or 'Republicans' at least--run their governments.  Why didn't all that translate into a win for Mitt Romney?

Maybe because Romney just didn't offer enough of a contrast to Barack Obama's galloping socialism.  Forget for a moment that the former Taxachussetts governor got less votes in '12 than that famous arch rightwing stalwart John McCain did in 2008.  Instead, look at how well the Libertarian Party candidate did.  Gary Johnson scored 44,000 votes in Florida.  Ohio gave 47,000 votes to the former New Mexico governor.  He snagged 48,000 votes in the Keystone State.

To be fair, with the exception of Florida, none of these vote counts could've put Romney ahead of Obama.  But you can look at these Gary Johnson voters, along with Mitt's overall lack of support, as indicative of a general conservative dismay with the Republican nominee.  If the GOP presidential candidate isn't going to stand up forcefully to the President, why should anybody else?  Many voters made the entirely reasonable conclusion that Romney was a weak specimen, and they looked at other options.  This in turn created a min-Perot effect, where the traditionalist/conservative vote was split in several states and was depressed across the country.

The Romney campaign seemed to take an awful lot of voters for granted.  Social issues like abortion were never really addressed, except in the quietest most defensive way possible.  Gun enthusiasts got a few perfunctory interviews in various National Rifle Association publications, but that was pretty much it.  It seemed as if Team Mitt felt these voters--who make a large chunk of the Republican base--were just going to fall in line.  Those Republicans were not swayed by Romney's sotto voce strategy, and it ended up costing Romney dearly.

Worse, by not going out and arguing against Obama's anti-life positions or his thinly-veiled hatred of the Second Amendment, the GOP nominee allowed David Axelrod and Co. to define him as an out of touch racist gay-bashing plutocrat who wanted to chain women to an ironing board while simultaneously giving them cancer.  In retrospect, the Romney campaign ran an absurd race.  While Mitt wanted the election to be about jobs and the economy, Obama and the media (sorry for the repetition) made it about what an unlikable piece of shit Romney is.

Sadly the Democrat's plan worked, because the Republican nominee was unable to defend himself from a barrage of attacks. Nor could he articulate strong positions that excited important parts of the GOP base. Worse, he couldn't effectively pivot any of his policy positions into personal or political slams against Barack Obama.

In short, conservatism's problems in 2012 were much the same as they were in 2008.  Nationally, their standard-bearer was n astoundingly poor choice to represent the vast center-right coalition that should be natural Republican Party supporters.  In contrast, state level conservatives are enacting serious reforms.  Once you look beyond Washington DC's poisonous liberal assumptions, there is a muscular conservatism to be found in the rest of the nation that is making progress against the utterly unsustainable blue state model.

Maybe the Right should do what Rush Limbaugh says.

Let's try conservatism, just for a second, just to see how it feels.

Now in the short term, conservatives will certainly take some licks.  Their nominal party just lost an election.  That tends to have painful consequences.  More ominously, the Republican's caving in to the fiscal cliff deal might just be the final nail in the Party's coffin.  That means precious time will be lost as conservatives coalesce behind a new opposition party.  If that process is done quickly a regenerated Tea Party, flush with new supporters, could become a more effective bulwark against the Democrat's hateful statism than the feckless GOP.

Looking at the situation in total, 2012 gave conservatives plenty of heartburn.  But in some ways, the failure of the Republican Party's presidential campaign and the success of the state-level GOP gives the Right options it did not have in 2011.  We have principled leaders in positions of power who have started tearing down liberalism's failed policies.  The Right can tout their successes and compare them to Obama's catastrophes.

Even better, conservatives no longer just have to accept what the Republican Party tries to spoon-feed them.  The Right has gotten very little out of it's coalition with the Beltway GOP besides a pair of busted presidential campaigns and a very strained frenemy-esque relationship.  Perhaps it's time to remind the Republican Party who really is the junior partner in the firm.

Guns Crime Facts, Gun Crime Feelings (KingShamus)

Some loosely connected facts.

Item One:  A look at mass shootings, courtesy of John Fund over at National Review.

Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

But why let the truth interrupt a Democrat/Media Party narrative?

We must do-----something.  What?  Who knows?  But something has to be changed, even if the change is pointless and counter-productive.

Item Two:  What is the worst school massacre in US history?

On May 18, 1927, a part-time caretaker at a school in Bath, Michigan, killed 45 people, including 38 children, when he blew up a school and then killed himself, along with two first responders at the scene. Another 58 people were wounded.

The 38 children were in grades three through six.

Forty five people dead by the hand of a mad bomber.  An evil person motivated to commit murder will often find a way without firearms.

Item Three:  Gun crime in the United States has gotten worse over the last ten years, right?

Nope.

Note--just as gun crime rates started going down, the national assault weapons ban had been lifted the year before.

I mean, if all the statists can do is emote and demagogue the Newtown atrocity, I can engage in a shameless 'correlation equals causation' argument.

Item Four:  Chicago, run by former Obama Administration chief-of-staff Rahm Emmanuel, has some of the toughest gun laws in America.  How is life in a gun-free paradise working out?

The City of Chicago just saw its 436th murder of 2012, surpassing 435 murders from 2011.

That figure was as of October of this year.  Sadly, the Windy City's murder statistics are probably much higher than 436 by now.

Item Five:  What is the violent crime rate per 100,000 people in the United States?

USA 2011:  386.3

Item Six:  What is the violent crime rate per 100,000 in the very gun-unfriendly United Kingdom?

 

Gun crime in America is becoming less frequent.  

The United States doesn't have a violent crime problem, at least when compared to other countries.

America is safer than almost every other Western industrialized nation on the planet.

The facts are on the side of self-defense.  The facts are on the side of empowering law-abiding citizens to protect themselves.  The facts are on the side of judicious reasoning and measured responses.  The facts are on the side of the Second Amendment and its integral place in the US Constitution.

The trouble is, we are being asked by our enlightened betters to disregard these truths.  We are being told, in ways ranging from slightly vulgar to mostly idiotic to completely ham-handed, that the country must throw away the hard-won civil rights gains made in the last several decades.  We must relinquish the tools that have made both ourselves and our property more secure then they've been in half a century.  

Why?  Because a vile deranged man cannot be trusted with firearms.

Never has the Left's sneering contempt for ordinary citizens been more blatant:  'A psychologically-troubled lunatic cannot be trusted with guns, therefore neither can the rest of you slack-jawed bitter clingers.  Now hand over your weapons.  It's for your own good.'

Make no mistake.  The Left is not calling on gun control because it's proven to be effective.  There simply isn't an overwhelming amount scientific data to suggest that an assault weapons ban would've prevented a shooting like the Newtown tragedy.  They are simply reflexively reacting to a gut-wrenching crime.

Many liberals assign a malevolent nature to an inanimate object.  Some find guns to be too rural to ever align with the self-congratulatory cosmopolitanism so many on the Left identify with.  Some just fear firearms because they look scary and dangerous.  For these basically anti-intellectual instinctive reasons, libs dislike guns.      

Alas, the progressive caucus' collective instincts are terribly wrong.

Conservatives are going to try to reason Obama and the Democrats out of their anti-gun position.  Under normal circumstances, that might work.  The problem here is that, even more than usual, liberals never actually reasoned themselves into their current pro-gun control stance.  The stupid ugly retrograde Second Amendment needs some serious progressive remodeling and that's good enough for them.

Great News--Lovable Fresh Faced Moppet Set To Become US Ambassador To England (KingShamus)

The least diplomatic person in the fashion world is about to become an American diplomat. Makes perfect sense.

Two years late, give a warm hug to a million brain cells short.

In 2010, we set up an interview with the Syrian leader's wife, Asma al-Assad, a Western-educated former banker and a woman with a reputation as a force for reform in the Middle East. Like many at that time, we were hopeful that the Assad regime would be open to a more progressive society. Subsequent to our interview, as the terrible events of the past year and a half unfolded in Syria, it became clear that its priorities and values were completely at odds with those of Vogue. The escalating atrocities in Syria are unconscionable, and we deplore the actions of the Assad regime in the strongest possible terms.

Shorter Nuclear Wintour: Sorry I believed the Assad Regime's bullshit and then published it verbatim in my bubble-headed fashion magazine.

I know Anna Banana put out this little half-assed apology back in June, but it's become a tad more interesting given that the Vogue Meanie-In-Chief may be getting a new job.

There’s a rumor in Washington that the United Kingdom may soon be welcoming a very stylish emissary. According to a report by Bloomberg News, Anna Wintour, the powerful editor of Vogue magazine, is being considered by President Obama for the prestigious post of U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

I know a lot of us wanna tee off on this Ambassador Wintour idea like it's a huge outrage.  It's understandable; I kinda wanna go ballistic too.  But the more I think about it, the more I think this more annoying than anything else. 

After all, what is an ambassador, really?  I know we'd like to think of them as thoughtful diplomats who understand all the foreign-type gobbledeegook that the rest of us forgot in World Cultures class. Unfortunately, a person usually gets the job because she donated the biggest chunk of cash to the winning presidential candidate.  The late Christopher Stevens seems to have been one of the few ambassadors who actually understood the language, customs and culture of the country he was assigned.

More importantly, an ambassador's job involves kissing ass.  This isn't a quality one would normally associate with Anna Wintour.  But think about it this way:  If Vogue and Wintour can figure out a way to grovel in front of Dictatorette Asma Al-Assad, surely striking an obsequious pose for England shouldn't be too difficult.

So yeah, floating the Wintour ambassadorship trial balloon is indicative of the Obama Administration's habitual unseriousness.  It's governance by D-List niche celebrity, of the type President SolidGold Wonderful seems particularly fond of.  Oh well.  It's Barry's presidency and I guess he's allowed to run it like an America's Next Top Model episode.  

Besides, if we're going to get annoyed over something here, how about the injustice of poor mistreated Sarah Jessica Parker not getting her own ambassadorship?     

More, Slightly Related Kinda:  Here's a picture of Anna Wintour's favorite power-couple taking in the Parthenon, in Athens Greece.