Archive for the ‘America’ Category
Barack Obama, Birther — UPDATED
Thursday, May 17th, 2012
Barack Obama’s promotional materials, as late as 2007, said he was born in Kenya. Read about it here and then, come back.
Why would he do this? It seems crazy.
Imagine you’re a hippie kid. Your dad is some Kenyan big wig. Your mom is a self-important sociologist doing such important work that you, Barack Obama, must be left home with grandma and grandpa.
You are boring.
You are a mixed race kid on Hawaii in the sixties which is not a big deal because everyone has Hawaiian blood and has mocha skin. You are relatively wealthy and end up at a prep school with other wealthy kids.
You have to justify your existence.
No mom. No dad. Rather provincial, if privileged, Hawaiian life, but lots of questions from peers.
What do you do?
Well, nothing, other than smoke dope, do cocaine (expensive – but no big deal for rich kids), and hang out acting like a badass.
And then, there’s privileged college which you navigate by being mundane and calculated.
You don’t find yourself there. You just find out how you don’t want to self-identify.
Like Elizabeth Warren, it’s really not enough to be a white, privileged kid. Or even a mixed-raced privileged kid.
It takes some resume juicing to be legit in the diversity crowd.
So, you lie.
You pretend you’re a man of the world. You tell people you were born in Kenya. You brag about your time in Indonesia.
You don’t talk about Hawaii.
You don’t talk about your white mother.
You don’t talk about your white grandparents who raised you and gave you a conventional, privileged upbringing.
You pretend you’re part of the victim class.
You pretend you’re worldly wise.
You pretend your dad is a good man.
You idealize your Kenyan roots and lie about having tight ones.
You create a whole tapestry of falsehoods about yourself — not only does it make you feel better about being abandoned, it gives you credibility with those who judge not on the content of your character but the color of your skin, the exotic nature of your past, the superficialities of diversity.
Hippie lefties, it turns out, are kinda biased against people with conventional upper middle class American backgrounds.
Barack Obama wasn’t born in Kenya.
Barack Obama didn’t have some tortured, hard-scrabble youth.
Barack Obama was a materially indulged, emotionally deprived typical American child of divorce.
It’s his conventionality that embarrasses him.
And that’s why he lied.
UPDATED:
MORE QUESTIONS. Bookworm says:
Normally, in the years since the Civil Rights movement, the answer would be “Yes, being half-black (not half-white, but half-black) should have given Obama the leg-up he needed to parlay mediocre grades and a drug habit into a shiny diploma from one of America’s best institutions of higher education.” Obama’s problem, though, was that he came of age at a very specific time in the annals of affirmative action. To appreciate this, you have to know that Obama, who graduated from high school in 1979, must have started looking at colleges in 1978.
When it comes to college admissions, 1978 isn’t just any year. It’s a very special year. It was the year that the Supreme Court decided Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) 438 U.S. 265.
Allan Bakke was a young man with an excellent academic record, who nevertheless got turned down by 12 medical schools. When he applied to the medical school at UC Davis, and was again rejected, he learned that he had almost certainly lost out on the opportunity to attend that medical school because UC had set a quota for admitting non-white people in order to meet the University’s “diversity” requirements. Bakke sued. In a deeply fragmented decision, the Supreme Court held that this race-based admission process was unconstitutional.
The Hunger Games: The Wrong Conclusion [Part 1]
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012
Nothing written about The Hunger Games movie is right. Why? The movie isn’t right. Is it worth seeing? Absolutely.
It didn’t occur to me while watching the movie, but when I read Ed Morrissey’s review (meh, derivative) and then this Socialist’s site (best movie ever), I knew something was wrong with the movie. And when I read this Psychology Today review, I knew something was wrong with the psychologist and our culture [More about that in another post].
People who saw The Hunger Games saw a different movie depending on whether they read the books or not. On the optimistic side: most teens read the books. On the pessimistic side: most parents had not. This lead to two very divergent perspectives on the movie.
The Hunger Games trilogy books describe a dystopian, post-Civil War future where the central government is rich off the backs of twelve districts of slaves. The central government uses technology, coercion, and laws restricting any form of self defense (no guns..no bow and arrows, even–thus Katniss’ hidden, handmade bow and arrows).
The central government controls by dividing commerce. There are agrarian, fishing, and in Katniss’ case, energy producing districts. Katniss’ father died as a slave in a coal mine to produce energy not for his business or his employer but for the government who would then redistribute the commodity in just enough measure to keep work going to meet the needs of the other districts and to keep the central district in the luxury they were used to.
The oppression, lack of ownership, lack of right to bear arms, lack of free speech, lack of freedom of association, and the central-command misery induced by this situation were never clearly spelled out in the movie. Those who read the books, filled in the blanks. Those who didn’t, took home an entirely different message.
As one liberal reviewer said it, “This is a movie about the 99% and the 1%.”
Uh no. This book was about the oppression of communism and the failure of redistributionism. It was also a book about self-determination and freedom. These are all very American concepts.
The personal despair caused by the oppression really wasn’t fairly portrayed, either. Peeta fed a starving Katniss (a little CGI work to show her emaciated would have been helpful) at great risk to his own life due to reducing his ability to trade on the black market. His mother would beat him.
After Katniss’ father died, the family was starving. Her mother had completely lost her mind. Collectivism creates individual misery.
Meanwhile, the central government was indulgent: a combination of Elizabethan England, coked out models, and crass material excess. Their entertainment was Roman gladiator meets reality show spectacle where children fought to the death as tributes to “peace”. All the districts, including the central one, offered up one boy and one girl between the ages of 12 and 18 as tribute and penance for their warlike past.
The premise of the book was so horrifying to me, I had to put the book down. My daughter, in contrast, seemed strangely unbothered–until she saw the movie.
And the horror of it all would is compounded by no context. If it isn’t made clear what the characters will be fighting against, it’s difficult to grasp their desire for freedom. That is, if they’re free and just down on their luck, that’s a different story line. If rich business owners in each district controlled all commerce, that would tell another story.
That would be the storyline the left wants to promote–thus, the 99 and 1% reference.
Critics and fans of the movie must read the books. Without the story, what is a pretty good movie already, becomes an excellent, and scarier, movie. They’re not tough reads and they’ll give the needed context.
Whether it was intentional or just lost on the cutting room floor because of film length, more attention to the foundational why of the story would have helped.
In the next post, I’ll talk about whether children should attend the movie and how to talk about your kids who do go to the movie.
Bill Maher’s Selective Outrage Over Outrage
Thursday, March 22nd, 2012
Bill Maher, liberal, pretend libertarian and over all, failed comic, decides, finally, that the outrage over, well, everything, has finally all become too much. From his editorial in today’s New York Times:
When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up?
This week, President Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, described Mitt Romney’s constant advertising barrage in Illinois as a “Mittzkrieg,” and instantly the Republican Jewish Coalition was outraged and called out Mr. Axelrod’s “Holocaust and Nazi imagery” as “disturbing.” Because the message of “Mittzkrieg” was clear: Kill all the Jews. Then the coalition demanded not only that Mr. Axelrod apologize immediately but also that Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz “publicly rebuke” him. For a pun! For punning against humanity!
The right side of America is mad at President Obama because he hugged the late Derrick Bell, a law professor who believed we live in a racist country, 22 years ago; the left side of America is mad at Rush Limbaugh for seemingly proving him right.
If it weren’t for throwing conniption fits, we wouldn’t get any exercise at all.
Please stop apologizing, Maher implores.
Here’s how the right’s outrage machine got started Mr. Maher–just for your edification. (I will admit, I worried about this tactic for fear it would stop being ironic and become the New Right’s political correctness.)
See, for years, decades even, the Left’s number one weapon in its arsenal has been outrage over nothing. Let me make a list:
Silent Spring (Environmentalism outrage)
The new Ice Age (Environmentalism outrage)
Sensitivity training (racism, sexism, minority outrage)
Poisoned apples (Environmentalism outrage)
DDT (Environmentalism outrage)
Any kind of cultural joke…ever. (See isms above)
Words, and worse, ideas, started to be censured. Like the prohibitionist knitting circle of yore, leftists have cluck clucked their way into power by being the church ladies aggrieved at every blond joke, straying eye, proper use of word (niggardly!!!), scientific disagreement, and on and on.
In response, the right of center side decided to throw the selective outrage back at them.
There’s a lot of pent up fury. How would you feel about being hectored over every meaningless and stupid aside (MACACA!!!!).
So, conservatives through New Media, are holding the left to their own race-baiting, sexist, offensive-language standards.
Big surprise! The left turns out to be more racist, sexist, degrading, closed-minded, and ugly than the right–something that minorities who have defected from the left know all too well.
And now, when Bill Maher is finally taking some heat for being the sexist jackass that he is, he’s crying foul.
In the years before New Media, everyone just wink-winked and chortled at how edgy and clever and brave Maher was while castigating conservatives who said far less offensive things.
Restricting speech on one side was such a great tool. Everyone hated conservatives and laughed at liberals. And then they realized they were the butt of the joke.
Now, liberals are hated too.
You’re welcome.
Liberals have themselves to thank for this fine politically correct mess.
See, I’m a free speech absolutist. Do I think it’s despicable to make fun of Sarah Palin’s kid and calling him a “retard”? Yes. Do I want to be able to use the word “retard”? Yes.
As in, Bill Maher is a retard.
To have any credibility whatsoever, he should have been decrying the politically correct war on words from the left years ago, but of course, that didn’t serve his political ends.
My concern on the right is that we’re becoming as bad as the left–that is, we’re actually starting to believe the outrage we’re pouring at the left.
My concern is that rather than being outraged at the leftists phony outrage and throwing it back at them, we’re becoming as politically correct and insufferable as them.
As long as Sandra Flukes exist and screech about inequality over nothing, the right has every reason to thrown their hypocrisy back at them.
The minute, though, we buy into political correctness and start being just like the lefty church ladies we loathe, the whole battle has been lost.
Humor, art, science, technology can only thrive where new, outrageous and edgy words and ideas thrive.
Conformity of language is conformity of culture. Stasis.
Free speech. Cherish it.
It would be nice if Bill Maher could have found his outrage at outrage when the leftist outrage machine has survived on outrage fuel. But then, Bill Maher’s not a great mind or comedian. The irony is lost on him.
Updated:
Bruce of The Conservatory notes what Maher really wants:
In essence, Maher wants to be able to say anything he wants and not have to apologize for it.
I agree.
Please, do so. And don’t apologize. That is fine with me.
But … and you knew there had to be one … that doesn’t mean what you say is consequence free. You still get to pay the price for what you say.
That’s really what Maher wants to see go by the boards, make no mistake about it. He really wants no-penalty “free speech”.
Sorry, no such thing. Never has been, never will be.
Updated again:
Great piece from Dorian Davis: Get a sense of humor.
The Psychology Of The Disaffected Obama Voter
Tuesday, March 20th, 2012
Lots of people hate Obama. Most of them hated him and his moronic ideology before he got elected the first time.
Many more people loved Obama; they were enthralled and captivated by him. They thought he was different. He was special.
Back in the day, I had a photoshopped picture with Britney Spears screaming girl fans except I exchanged the picture of Britney on their pink T-shirts for a picture of Obama.
The Obama fangirls didn’t like this picture.
Everyone loved Obama and the ones who weren’t totally sure thought something like this, “well, everybody is doing it, so he must be okay. He’s gotta be better than the boring old boyfriend.”
He turned out to not be better. Depending on one’s point of view, he turned out to be much worse and for a variety of reasons.
Jim Geraghty has a very insightful piece explaining the mind of an Obama voter that is must-read. Here’s an excerpt:
Monday I spoke to a smart political mind who had been watching focus groups of wavering Obama voters in swing states, and he said that one word that those voters kept coming back to, again and again, was “naïve.” (The term was to describe the president, not themselves.) Those who voted for Obama won’t call him stupid, and certainly don’t accept that he’s evil. But they have seen grandiose promises on the stimulus fail to materialize, Obamacare touted as the answer to all their health care needs and turn out to be nothing of the sort, pledges of amazing imminent advances in alternative energy, and so on. He seemed to think that reaching out to the Iranians would lead to a change in the regime’s behavior and attitudes. He was surprised to learn that shovel-ready projects were not, in fact, shovel-ready. He was surprised to learn that large-scale investment in infrastructure and clean energy projects wouldn’t great enormous numbers of new jobs. He’s surprised that his past housing policies haven’t helped struggling homeowners like he promised. He’ssurprised that his signature health care policy has become as controversial as it has. The “recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized.” When a woman says her semiconductor engineer husband can’t find a job, Obama says he’s surprised to hear it, because “he often hears business leaders in that field talk of a scarcity of skilled workers.”
Naive. The screaming girls weren’t naive. Oh no. The new boyfriend was naive.
The part that bothers me about this mentality is that people who externally project their stupidity tend to not learn from their mistakes.
Still, it’s wise to think of all the divorced people you know. Few admit they screwed up. Most, to their dying day, will call their ex evil or wrong and that they, the innocent victim, was horribly deceived. Conned, even.
One Twitter acquaintance says this: RT @heatpacker: The #GOP must speak #truth about the 2008 Obama Con. Voters must not be insulted for credulity, but portrayed as victims.
A nation of gooey-eyed victims.
Well, for Republicans to win, I don’t think that blaming Obama voters for their vapidity will go a long ways to convincing them to vote for someone else. How many beaten wives stay with their abusive mates out of sheer stubbornness? He is too good! You just don’t understand.
America can’t afford that nonsense. So, those voters who saw the Obama fraud for what he was would do well to use great restraint and reinforce the (hopefully) better decision of the deceived masses this time around.
The best thing to do for conned Obama voters? Feel sorry for them. They know not what they did.
Why Are There Still Obama Surprises? Breitbart Video Cometh
Wednesday, March 7th, 2012
There shouldn’t be any surprise videos about Obama, should there be? Do you find it stunning that there’s more out there about Obama?
The press no longer functions independently. It is wholly co-opted by the Democrats. Americans don’t really want to believe this yet, but Breitbart bringing out videos four years after Obama is president demonstrates how corrosive and complete is the press-Democrat collusion.
Just. Wow.
See Jim Hoft for the whole story.
Raping The Younger Generation, Fiscally
Tuesday, March 6th, 2012
The older are getting richer on the backs of the poor. How? Rich people who don’t need government services get them whether they need them or not. Medicare and Social Security isn’t a safety net for the poor, it’s a cash cow for many people who already have money.
Where does this money come from? Younger workers who don’t have the money to pay off student loans, buy a house, or save for their retirement.
From Anna Tergenson of Smart Money:
In documenting a rising age gap with regard to economic well-being, the authors compare households headed by adults over age 65 to households headed by adults younger than 35. They examine data over time–particularly from 1967, 1984, 2005, and 2009-2010. (The comparison between 2005 and 2009-2010 illustrates the impact of the Great Recession.)
Here are some of their conclusions:
• From 1984 to 2009, the median net worth of older households rose 42%. For younger households, it declined by 68%.
The author of the post ends on a high note, saying that more young people have college education and says that the education translates into higher income potential.
My thought is that college education is worth less now, too. Basically, college education is what a high school education used to be. I see the very intelligent and innovative foregoing college and working right out of high school–often in the tech industry. Some professions will still benefit from education, but I see an impending burst bubble there, too.
Bottom line, the way things currently are, the Baby Boomers will hoover up all the revenue and incur tremendous debt that will cause the younger generation to transfer their wealth to pay the tab.
The Culture War IS The Fiscal War: Feminism And The Big Slutty Lie
Monday, March 5th, 2012
People like to separate fiscal conservatives from social conservatives. It’s impossible to do.
The nut of Sandra Fluke’s argument is this: pay for my contraception. If it doesn’t work, pay for my abortion. If I decide to have the kid, but not work and do something like “community organizing” or “reproductive rights activism”, pay for my lifestyle choice. [More on Sandra Fluke here.]
And herein lies the problem with a purely libertine argument: Someone has to pay for all this freedom.
True personal liberty comes with a lot of personal responsibility.
The way it stands now, though, feminists are pushing for the state to take care of everything.
At the least, a man should pony up a condom to have sex, but no. A woman is too afraid to have this discussion, evidently, and refuses to force the man to buy and wear a condom. Were she mature enough to have this conversation, her sex life would be “free” so long as the condom wasn’t defective or broke.
Then, of course, whether the woman is on the pill or using condoms, there’s always contraception failure. The woman will have to live with the STD or baby consequences. And again, she’ll want the taxpayer to pay for that, too. Antibiotics and prenatal care aren’t free, after all. Worst, she wants people of conscience to pay for her abortion. They, in turn, feel forced to pay a hitman to kill an innocent person.
A truly “free” woman would pay for her choices, but the fact is, that these choices can all be very expensive.
In the past, when sex was more the provenance of two monogamous and committed people, the man and woman would negotiate these things. And if a “mistake” did happen, the man would “do the right thing” and marry the woman.
Old fashioned? Maybe. Cost effective for the taxpayer? Absolutely. Good for the fabric of society and for that child? No question.
Barack Obama and his merry band of slutty misfits want to have all the fun and none of the responsibility of the consequences should things not go just the way they’re supposed to in the sexual arena (and when do they ever?).
So, in the last year of a horribly failed presidency, President Obama wants the focus to be on “contraceptive rights” when there are no such thing. It’s a great way to distract from the statist policies he’s employing: He wants to diminish the role of faith in the public space, and in the place of men/husbands/fathers, he wants an all-powerful state to pay for, mold, and control the next generation. Or kill them.
If this fight feels primal and visceral, it is because it is. The cultural war that the left has started has had dire public policy consequences. The welfare state has failed.
We have a nation of fatherless children living in poverty because their mothers bought the feminist lie that having sex like a hound-dog man, outside of marriage is “empowering”.
Single mothers are faced with the bitterness of powerlessness.
Defend that, liberals. Explain how living in poverty, alone, with multiple children, no education, an STD and no father is better than a two-parent family, feminists.
Answer: It isn’t.
There will be no apologizing from me. The feminist movement as symbolized by the useful idiot Sandra Fluke has lied to and cursed a generation of women. Meanwhile, putting future generations of responsible tax paying men and women on the hook. [Update: Dana Loesch on faux rage.]
The culture war is a fiscal war. And America’s children are the losers both ways.
Teri Cristoph of Smart Girl Politics to Women: You’re Being Used. Teri says:
Knowing that women voters are leaving Obama, the left has deliberately waged a war designed to scare them into thinking their birth control will be taken from them. EMILY’s List calls these disenchanted women voters “defectors” and they’ll stop at nothing to get them back.
The use of the word “defector” by the left is supremely insulting. A defector is someone who switches allegiances, usually in a manner deemed to be traitorous. Got that? If you are a woman who voted for Obama in ’08 but don’t like what he’s done as president and don’t plan to vote for him again, you are considered a traitor by the left. Newsflash: Women are not born with a genetic allegiance to the Democrat party and its liberal causes. Plenty of us prefer to think for ourselves.
Democrats are running scared knowing that a significant number of women are wise to the fact that the economy has tanked, true unemployment is around 25 percent, and our president is wholly unequipped to deal with any of it. They also know that women voice their discontent at the ballot box. So they are waging this war against women. They use people like Sandra Fluke to distract from the real issues at stake this election season. They use women as pawns in their political game.
Yes, there is a war against women in 2012 and it’s certainly no fluke.
UPDATE & ASIDE:
What Rush Limbaugh should have done in the face of the attack by Mean Girls (emphasis on girls–women don’t act irresponsibly and then want to be personally bailed out):
There are many conservatives who unfortunately allow the left to take their morality and use it to stifle their dissent. Limbaugh should have gone on the attack. He should have said “no apology” and exposed her for the partisan hack that she is. Do I care if Fluke fucks 50 guys? No, but I do care if she uses her position to gang up with other mean girls (and guys) to ram a political mandate down the throats of companies who do not believe in what she is peddling.
Standing up to mean girls is hard. I am in the process of writing a book on men’s attitudes towards marriage and society and it is damn hard to get individual men to be interviewed. If I ask questions on the internet or in an anonymous setting, I am flooded with comments from men. I recently had over 3200 men answer a poll about paternity fraud, but try to get just a few men to talk in person? That’s tough. And most are very concerned that their name will not be published. I don’t blame them. The mean girls are out in society in full force.
If Rush Limbaugh can’t stand up to the mean girls, who can?
Via Instapundit
More on Fatherhood from LaShawn Barber.
The New Hollywood Blacklist: What You Can Do To Help Conservative Hollywood Fight Back
Monday, March 5th, 2012
Imagine being afraid you’ll lose your job because you believe the people to blame for 9/11 are the Islamofascists who plotted it. That’s what one Hollywood writer, Daniel Knauf endured. Here’s what he said:
Toadies in the MSM assert that there is no Blacklist in Hollywood.
And they’re right.
It’s not necessary because Hollywood is a very, very small, very, very ruthless town, where a few key words spoken in the right ears can absolutely wreck a career–code-words like “difficult,” “high-maintenance” and “uneven.” When you can obliterate a fellow professional with a few well-chosen phrases, why maintain something as crude and inelegant as a Blacklist?
How dare anyone even suggest that there’s a Blacklist against conservative artists and performers?
Blacklists are for mouth-breathers.
Blacklists are for knuckle-draggers.
Blacklists are so… so… Republican.
And so I kept my mouth shut. And a funny thing happened: The longer I was forced to withhold my opinions and beliefs, the brighter they burned in me. Funny. Oppression has a way of doing that to the oppressed.
Ask any Soviet defector…
For years, I bit my tongue, nodding and making non-committal sounds while listening to the most virulently noxious Leftist spew imaginable: Explicit rape-murder fantasies directed toward Palin, Coulter, Malkin and Ingraham; blithely expressed wishes of cancer, assassination and mutilation of Bush, Cheney and Limbaugh; the snide denigration of “civilians” (i.e. anyone not in the entertainment business) in the “flyover states” (i.e. everywhere except New York and east of the Golden State Freeway–Pasadena, for instance is a “flyover state”); and, of course, the endless venomous, profanity-laced screes against the Tea Party.
Even more shocking was the rampant hypocrisy, the endemic corruption, the casual thievery–from producers ordering custom built doors and windows for their homes from the construction department, to having their Beemers and Benzos topped daily with gas by Transpo. All on the studio dime.
Meanwhile, any actress or female writer can tell you that the Casting Couch is alive and well in contemporary Hollywood. And it’s absolutely fascinating just how many male producers and execs time their set-visits to coincide with nude-scenes…
And forget about “diversity.”
Please, go read the whole thing.
Hollywood and the Left use their political correctness–sexism, racism, environmentalism–as a sword and a shield. They would skewer Rush Limbaugh, destroy him, and happily do it while their own side commits grievous insults of the worst, most virulent kind. More here.
They do it so people will be afraid and so people will shut up.
And many in Hollywood are afraid and have stayed quiet. Who wouldn’t be afraid of being Black Listed? Andrew Breitbart gave them courage and a voice.
Across this fruited plain, there are all sorts of folks either too cowed or too weary to take on the liberals.
The folks in Hollywood have to endure the leftist mentality in the surreal insanity of an utterly narcissistic culture. They need help. They need an army of Breitbarts.
So what are conservatives doing to help the Hollywood types?
Are we buying Robert Davi’s music CD’s and watching his movies? I interviewed him. Get to know him here. See what he said about Andrew Breitbart here.
Are we supporting Gary Sinise’s charities?
Are we signing up for Daniel Knaup’s new production? Sign up here. (Just need an email.)
Are we listening and buying Five for Fighting’s music? See what John Ondrasik says here.
Are we watching Chuck to support Adam Baldwin? Buying Firefly (something you should do no matter what, anyway, because it’s perfect.)
Are we supporting Patricia Heaton, off of Twitter right now, as she bravely stands for what’s right?
Are we standing for Kirk Cameron while he stands for traditional values? Do we stand for his free speech even if we disagree with him?
Are we downloading the Children’s app [full disclosure: I am helping promote the app -- business sent to me via Andrew Breitbart, by the way]: CherryTree? It’s for children. It’s safe. It’s free. And it’s being developed by Hollywood conservatives Dan Kessler and Allen Covert. These men, by the way, are wonderful. I had the joy and honor of walking around CPAC as these two Hollywood men, locked in liberal land, received hugs from adoring conservative fans.
If Andrew showed us anything, he demonstrated an absolute faith in the conservative movement–from conservative moms doing Tea Parties fearing for friendships to Hollywood actors fearing for livelihoods.
We need to do better helping each other, building each other’s businesses, hiring each other, buying each other’s products and promoting the work of dedicated conservatives–some risking everything.
Andrew Breitbart: R.I.P. Happy Warrior
Thursday, March 1st, 2012
Andrew Breitbart is dead. I still cannot believe it. [Details here.] [Updated: Father In Law says it was probably a heart attack.]
Andrew Breitbart lit up a room. Out at Western CPAC in Southern California a couple years ago, his star was rising, and he gave an interview. I asked him what he was doing; as in, how do you see your role?
He told us that he saw himself as a “merry mischief maker”. He wanted to turn the media upside down. He wanted to destroy them.
Andrew succeeded. He created the most surreal media moment ever: He ended up speaking at Anthony Weiner’s late and ill-fated press conference. He was at once the press and the news. It was a seminal moment. It was the moment I felt that Andrew had achieved his ends.
Everything had changed. The New Media was rising.
The grief-making part of it? He’d just really started. So much work to do. So much vitality.
In the spring of last year, Andrew called me and asked if I’d help him promote his book Righteous Indignation
If you haven’t read Andrew’s book, you really must. Not only is he a great story teller and beautiful writer, and he is, he also gives great hope through his own story. His biography shows a man, who like most Americans, didn’t pay attention and how he “woke up”.
And boy, did he wake up. He was the righteous, pointed finger in the chest of the empty and sanctimonious left. He had their number and they knew it.
As I sit here crying, I fear looking at Twitter for seeing all the nastiness and venom that will spill forth about Andrew from the left. He was hated because he was effective. They hated his persona. They hated his gumption. They hated him. [Updated: Do they ever.]
Knowing Andrew–knowing his sweet nature, knowing his kindness, knowing his generosity–I would just marvel at the contrast between what the left caricatured him as being with who he really was.
You know that carousing guy? That guy who skates on the edge or goes over it? The guy who cheats on his wife while out of town or likes to give the impression of being a player?
That wasn’t Andrew. Ever.
Andrew was devoted. He was a true family man. He chortled about people implying that he was gay as his domestic life with his wife and four kids was so tranquil and happy. He liked that someone viewed him as edgy.
At one small gathering, I found Andrew walking aimlessly around the hotel lobby with his iPad. I asked him what he was doing. Well, he couldn’t find anyone and was waiting for people to show up–for three hours. When it was suggested that he could have called one of us, he responded, “I’m not very good without my wife or Larry.”
Scattered, brimming with ideas, mulish, and hell-bent, Andrew could be a handful. His best friend Larry Solov is as sweet, calm, and circumspect as Andrew is bombastic, frenetic and bold. Larry helped Andrew succeed in so many ways. When it came to the business of Andrew Breitbart, Andrew and Larry were two parts of a whole.
Andrew was so full of life, it is almost impossible to fathom the emptiness that will be felt by those close to him. I feel it and I didn’t interact with Andrew every day.
I worried for Andrew. Before CPAC this year, there had been threats made on his life. Andrew was symbolic for the left and his death would be a triumph. And yet Andrew didn’t seem concerned at all. He just plowed on and engaged.
He gave his phone number to anyone. He would talk to anyone. He was not a respecter of persons.
I wish he was still here. There’s too much work to do. Who will do it? Who will do it like Andrew?
Someone will have to do the work, but no one will do it like Andrew.
Andrew Breitbart. Happy Warrior. Devoted husband and father. Generous friend and co-worker. Merry mischief maker.
I miss him already.
More:
Andrew’s best friend Larry Solov.
Matt LaBash: By way of greeting, I used to ask Breitbart what kind of evil he was up to. “Most kinds,” he’d say, gamely.
Andrew’s speech at CPAC:
Andrew’s last tweet:
I called you a putz cause I thought you werebeing intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize. @CenLamar @dust92
— AndrewBreitbart (@AndrewBreitbart) March 1, 2012
Jonah Goldberg and Jonah says this here:
I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.I’ve never known someone, perhaps with the exception of Drudge himself, who had more of a savant’s sense of media, old and new — but especially new. In the early days of the Drudge Report there was a lot of talk about how Drudge made the news, and that was often true. But he could only do that by understanding the news and how it worked at a visceral instinctive level. Matt saw this same gift in Andrew, which is why he hired him. The two of them changed the course of the massive river of news for literally billions of people. That’s no exaggeration, even venerable enterprises and institutions that despised the Drudge Report and pretended it didn’t exist had to change course because of it.
Matt Drudge says this:
“DEAR READER: In the first decade of the DRUDGEREPORT Andrew Breitbart was a constant source of energy, passion and commitment. We shared a love of headlines, a love of the news, an excitement about what’s happening. I don’t think there was a single day during that time when we did not flash each other or laugh with each other, or challenge each other. I still see him in my mind’s eye in Venice Beach, the sunny day I met him. He was in his mid 20′s. It was all there. He had a wonderful, loving family and we all feel great sadness for them today… MDRUDGE”
Roger Simon: “When a whirlwind dies, there is a sudden quiet.”
William Jacobson: “Andrew is irreplaceable, but we would serve his memory well to aspire to more freedom of thought and more freedom of action.”
Uncut podcast at Liberty Pundits with Clyde Middleton and Andrew Breitbart.
Andrew gives birth with his mouth
Ace who drubs David Frum aka The Rat.
Felicia Craven: Andrew Breitbart was our William Wallace.
Andrew Malcolm: So?
Mitt Romney Supporters To Rick Santorum Supporters: Submit Fools
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012
Mitt’s followers are really sick of the competition. The stakes are so high, time to come together on the inspiring Mitt banner. He’s nearly flawless. Better than that, he’s awesome. Also, he’s all that we have.
All the remaining candidates, including Romney, are flawed and would be nearly fatally so if they weren’t running against such a weak president.
Times have changed. A big government Republican is not what most of the GOP, or country, want, but that’s what is before them.
None of these guys are much likable. None are trustworthy in the ways of trimming the fat of the government.
Barack Obama isn’t trustworthy about cutting government but he is likable. We may not like him, but most of America still does or really wants to.
So.
The argument that Mitt Romney is the only guy, the smartest guy, the electable guy gets wearying in the face of clear evidence that he’s imperfect and runs a kinda nasty campaign all while expecting kid-glove treatment by others. In addition, his core is so middle of the road, people don’t trust that he will do anything he says he will.
An independent, fiscally conservative friend in Michigan shared this with me after I asked who got their vote:
I did not vote. I was contemplating it on the way home and decided against it.
I had determined I would have to vote for Romney since Santorum still elicits no confidence from me. The thought of it disgusted me so much that I chose to not vote.
Primary voting has been rather suppressed everywhere. If it weren’t for the Democrats in Michigan, would turnout have been lower?
In a disastrous Obama administration, it’s difficult to fathom that people on the right are so completely disheartened.
Still, they feel about Mitt Romney the way they felt about Health Care Reform: He’s being rammed down their throats.
It makes people a little less forgiving when the Super McAwesome Candidate flubs a stupid question by a stupid reporter. Like Josh Trevino says, “The real problem with this Blunt/Romney thing is that it was eminently plausible as first reported.”
Also, Britt Hulme gets to the heart of it:
@ByronYork I thought Romney skipped past the question, to seize a chance to stick it to Santorum on contraception. Not a considered answer.
— Brit Hume (@Kimsfirst) March 1, 2012
It’s that eagerness to jam Santorum and the absolute insistence by Mitt’s followers that he’s the nicest and smartest and most electable guy in the field, left that makes folks dig in their heels. If Mitt were such a stellar candidate and seemed so nice and electable, people would forgive the foibles. The problem is that he doesn’t.
Obama is so awful that a GOP turnip would get most of the bases’ vote but it’s naive to believe that folks like my independent friend will make the effort to do so. They’ll just stay home because “they all suck”.
Will the not-Mitt crowd submit? Some might. I’m afraid this acrimonious primary will make it difficult for everyone to fall in line this time.
