A Suggestion to Harry Reid about Taxes

Harry Reid demonstrated the typical "high road" tactics typical of Obama's "new tone in Washington" with his unfounded insinuation that Mitt Romney had cheated on his taxes.   He may well have known of an order by the Obama administration (I won't say "by Obama" since that man apparently has no idea what anyone in his administration is actually doing, that is, when anything bad is being done), so I won't say that Reid's suggestion had no connection to any reality, though any insinuations of wrongdoing by Romney remain unsubstantiated.  He may well have had an inside line from the IRS that there was something in Romney's tax statement which, though not illegal, would aid the Democrats in their all out feces-throwing campaign against capitalism.

Here's my suggestion to Reid:  Since you care so much about disclosure and, like your idol Obama, think that "sunlight is the best disinfectant," back a bill that makes it a requirement for all candidates for Congressional, Presidential, federal court, and Cabinet offices to make the last five years of their taxes a matter of public record.  I personally want to know how the 10 richest Congressmen (most of which are Democrats) made their money.  Do it, Reid.  You apparently have nothing to hide and neither do your fellow Democrats, so let's call a vote and see which Congressmen are willing to back this bill.

I'm very interested to see who does.

By the way, Reid still hasn't denied the rumors that he is a child molester.

Eric Holder and Nancy (Dis)Grace Crusading Against Zimmerman

Eric Holder, head of the Department of Social Justice, is apparently.  It is news to ultra-progressives everywhere that Trayvon is not Medgar Evers.  Ever since they missed the boat on civil rights, progressives and celebrities have been trying to make up for being johnnies-come-lately by pursuing policies that promote racial poverty traps and enabling bad behavior in order to create racial tensions that can be exploited to expand fascism.

Holder is nonetheless looking to add to a career that has been extraordinary in terms of both criminality and ideological perversity.  Using the long arm of the law in order to enable voter intimidation, enable voter fraud, enable the taking of this country's resources by illegal aliens, gun-running to make phony cases against our 2nd Amendment, undermining acts of the People via Congress, promotion of transsexuality, intimidation of the free press, et cetera, et cetera... all this has not been enough.  He is frightened, frightened that he will not go down in the history books as a radical crusader for liberal causes, so he is using all the privacy-compromising resources (for stopping terrorism?) to make an end-run around double-jeopardy for former Obama-supporter George Zimmerman.

I don't know if Zimmerman is still a fan of our Divider-in-Chief, but knowing that the Holder's Department of Social Justice has been involved in the anti-Zimmerman protests (your tax dollars hard at work) probably dims the glow on the pretend-idealist from Illinois.

And what's the deal with Nancy Grace's Taco Bell and "churra" [sic] comment?   Don't you worry though.  Nancy's a liberal, so her life isn't over after this.  She'll still be driving in to Creepy-ass Cracker Barrel as much as she likes.

Patrick the Jamaican and O.J. Simpson's Gloves of Joy

I was thinking back a few weeks about a caller on Mike Gallagher's radio show.  He called himself Patrick (near as I can remember), said he was from Jamaica, and his call was basically about how he thought conservatives were racist since they were defending Paula Dean and George Zimmerman.

Where the call got interesting was the point where Mike Gallagher asked Patrick what he thought of the O.J. trial and the overwhelming support for O.J. among the African American community.  Get this:  Patrick thought that most blacks in America knew that O.J. was guilty as sin, but rejoiced in his acquittal because it sent a message.

Social justice.  Critical race theory.  Stickin' it to The Man.

A popular celebrity gets away with murder because he can afford the best lawyers money can buy and this gives black people joy?  Despite Patrick's inside information, I can tell you that many African Americans were all too willing to accept the racial oppression narrative offered for the extremely popular sports hero.  Many were truly and genuinely impressed with the trouble O.J. apparently had putting on the gloves, indicating an obvious frame.  Perhaps the point was that the gloves fit the narrative, whether or not the gloves fit Simpson.

So I don't think Patrick can speak for the entire African American community, but it is still curious:  He was so convinced of O.J.'s guilt in spite of the gloves, and he was certain that most black people were equally convinced.  Did Patrick not have any black acquaintances that gave him any indication that they had a sincere belief in O.J.'s innocence, anything other than cynical joy in his not being accountable for cutting the throat of his children's mother?   Or to them, was Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman just "strange fruit" laying on the ground?

Christianity vs. Homosexuality?

An excellent resource here:  A Kingdom Response to the Complexities of Homosexuality, to which I'll return.

Dan Savage has been widely endorsed (by the Obama administration among others) as being representative of homosexual activism, even though not all homosexual activists delight in what R.O. Lopez calls the scorched earth approach.  This is sad, but is a sign of the times.  Savage revels in this, and he and others who do so pollute the genuine concern and effort to make schools into places that our kids don't dread going to.

In spite of these efforts to paint all socially conservative concern as religious concern (and therefore invalidate it under progressive readings of the "spirit" of the First Amendment), and to set up a false dichotomy between socially embracing homosexuality and creating a society of oppression, people of faith who are also socially conservative have obligations both to create a society that is healthy for their children and to express the compassion of God (assuming that your faith believes in "mercy that endures forever") for people.

Because of "scorched earth" activists like Dan Savage who point to Westboro as the example of faith, or rather for those who listen to those activists, it is important that people of faith not only be informed about their own arguments, but to have their hearts prepared to not be bitter or resentful against them, even though they are tyrannizing society through "civil rights" rulings.  When the future apostles told Jesus that they should call fire from Heaven down upon the towns that refused to listen to Jesus's message, they were told, "You don't know of what spirit you are."  Christians are admonished elsewhere to "try the spirits whether they are of God," shortly after being reminded that "God is love."  Those that don't know how to tell a spirit of fear or false righteousness from love might also not be able to tell a spirit of enabling and false compassion from genuine love.  As Jesus said, "You ought to have done these things, but not to have left important things undone."

For those who are interested in hearing a compassionate response articulated without compromising faith with progressivism, the link above is a great place to start.

In related news, "scorched earth" activists, who rebuke people of faith  for rejecting people's experiences, routinely refuse to acknowledge the experiences of these people:

Movies and Politics: What movies are your kids going to watch?

No review is a replacement for actually watching with your kids, but it's getting harder and harder for parents to avoid the trap that has all parents in the house working and the tv filling in as babysitter, so ...

Recent movies that seemed relatively indoctrination-free and were fun:

Despicable Me 2 (very funny)
Monsters U
Wreck-It Ralph
Hotel Transylvania
Rise of the Guardians

Recent movies that are heavily liberalized:

Escape From Earth
Para-Norman
Fun Size (not really appropriate for kids or pre-teens at all, but is marketed and billed as a kids' movie)

Beautiful Creatures (again, more for older teens, but marketed to the Twilight age-group)

A fun movie that I've had mixed feelings about is The Croods, not because it is overtly liberalized but because I think that the cautious conservatism of the namesake family is meant as a caricature of conservatism.  Your kids are more likely to get out of it a celebration of individual innovation, but the filmmakers seem to mean it as an allegory of "coming around," "evolving" views, and getting over conservative "phobias" and prejudices.

At the Movies: A Tale of Two Worlds

The Matrix sequels not only did nothing to further the meaning or appeal of the original, but they did nothing to hurt the claim that the Waichowski siblings completely ripped off the the idea for the first.  But there was an earlier indication that The Matrix was a one-off.  V for Vendetta seemed like it was phoned in.  The fight scenes and general style were like a parody of The Matrix, the writing/acting/direction was reminiscent of the Dick Tracy movie, and its defense of torture as a means of political education were among several problems that made the film a major disappointment.  And all that was aside from the hint-hint implications of "Oh, by the way, we're thinking of George Bush" innuendo.  I think they even flashed an image of George Bush at some point.  Where people of various political persuasions (but probably libertarians most of all) could relate to The Matrix, V for Vendetta adapted a graphic novel into an anti-Republican political commercial.

A blogger named SLavery writes at this message board:

V For Vendetta was liberal crap.  And that's coming from a liberal who loves the original story. They hijacked a story about anarchy and facism [sic] and made it about American politics.  I half-expected "IT'S BUSH!" and "HEY, CHENEY!" to flash on the screen during V's talk with the detectives.

Elysium: Universal salvation

Gee, was it really that obvious?  One blogger sees more than a bit of 9/11 Truthism in V for Vendetta.  (Echoes of trutherism as well in the Waichowski Cloud Atlas's blaming of terrorist attacks on evil corporations.) Some people are noticing that V for Vendetta does may have an ironic relevancy now.  For others, the idea of an administration that talks freedom and instead implements secret wars, foreign meddling, civilian casualties, cover-ups of botched foreign policy and increased domestic surveillance, etc. is no longer a relevant subject now that there is a liberal administration.

More recently, I've noticed a rash of liberal sci-fi propaganda of the Two Worlds variety.  The film In Time has a series of borders separating castes of people based on how much currency they have saved up.  The movie condones robbery on the premises that if you are wealthy, the money was, in some sense, stolen from the poor.  More recently Upside Down features worlds separated by two separate forces of gravity.  Here the separation of.   Somehow, the world with the wealth ("cheap oil"... as opposed to expensive oil) is exploited by the world without the wealth.  None of this is, of course, explained.  Soon the movie Elysium will tell a tale of a world made fat by sucking the life out of another.  All the wealth of the world is somehow consolidated on a remote space station.  It all comes from the Earth though.  Notorious gun-hater Matt Damon is going to get mad and lead a revolution by turning himself into the ultimate weapon.

Noteworthy is the new wind of anti-colonialism breathed into the recent Total Recall reboot.  The otherworldliness of the Martian outback is replaced by:  Australia.  It all takes place on planet Earth.  The image of Britain sending troops to wipe out Australian colonists would be enough to get Obama to send back our bust of Winston Churchill.  Oh, too late, he already did.

I realized recently that a smart and funny children's movie fits this world-exploiting-world pattern.  Monsters, Inc. tells the tale of a world with a morally corrupt energy policy.  The monster world's energy needs are met by emotional torture of children.  No political undertones there.  The sequel, I hear, will tell the story about how Mike and Sully revolutionize the business of tormenting children by making childhood terror an even more advanced art.  It's a heartwarming story.  Many is the fiend who can tell you that two heads are better at tormenting a child than one.  Monsters Inc. though, didn't stand out to me as a movie with a lot of overt messaging (as in Escape From Earth), in spite of the apparent political inspiration for the story.

There is the world of the victims and the world of the predators, the world of the 99% and the world of the 1%.  That is the narrative.  Look for it.  You are imbibing it.

Movie Review: Field of Dreams From My Father

Field of Dreams seems to be a movie about regrets, second chances, and vague notions of long lost goodness.    It's a movie made of sentiment, by sentiment, for sentiment.  The more vague and general the sentiments are kept, the more we can relate to them.  It borders on the Christian in its theme of second chances.  As Michael Moriarty says.

Field of Dreams is a beautifully made film of forgiveness and reconciliation … for everyone.  It is ultimately everyone’s field of dreams in everyone’s most childlike reveries.

Michael Moriarty goes on to criticize what he sees as the philosophy of the film in his thought-provoking article on Field of Dreams, made all the more interesting by his own link to baseball in his family history.  I don't necessarily agree with all that he reads into the film, but I want to mention some things that made me question where this movie is coming from.  I agree with Moriarty that

Field of Dreams is not only more palatably radical than any other American baseball film but more heart-warmingly revolutionary than any other American film in recent history.

However, I don't think that it is nearly as philosophically deep as what Moriarty attributes to it.

Something that has always bothered me about the movie, something that seemed at first like it didn't even belong, a distraction from the story, is the PTA scene where Ray realizes that he should go see his childhood hero, the reclusive writer Mann, an epiphany that hits him as parents bicker over whether to allow Mann's infamous book in the school curriculum.

When I first saw the movie as a teenager, I wondered why the filmmakers seemed to think the exchange was so meaningful, why trying to get this wonderful book was included at the school library--and putting down the ignorant yokels that don't want it--was such a blow for freedom.  Ray's wife is all charged up for freedom after calling a local townswoman a "Nazi cow," and revels in re-living her 1960s revolt against "fascism."  This is all the more a triumph because she also got all the other parents in the room to fall for her false dichotomy between eliminating Mann's book from the curriculum and upholding the Constitution.

Perhaps even more important is how obvious Daisy Jo Bookburner is supposed to convey the Left's caricature of conservatism to the audience:

What I Did on the Fourth of July

This year, as we do every year, my family and I attended a local fireworks show.  To avoid the crowds we mount lights to our mountain bikes and off-road to a spot across the river from the show.  I hadn't really planned it but as we were pulling the bikes off the hitch rack I started telling my kids about all the freedoms we had when I was a kid that have vanished.

I started off with Freedom of Speech.  Did you know that Texas teen Justin R. Carter has been jailed since February for "trash talking" on Facebook?  Read about it here. 

Next up is Freedom of Religion.  It's common knowledge that valedictorians at their high school commencement speech are not allowed to utter the word God.  Here's an example of what I'm talking about.  They do have freedom of speech to come out as gay during their valedictory speech and probably are allowed to even describe their latest homosexual encounter.  But certainly not mention God.  That would be obscene.

These two points can be summed up in one t-shirt:

Next up is the Second Amendment; I'm allowed to own a gun as long as it's kept safely locked up, but not living in a "Right to Carry" state means I'm certainly not allowed to bear one.

Fourth amendment, Protection From Search and Seizure?  My kids know the reason we haven't been to Hawaii is because I would end up in prison after punching out the TSA perv who felt them up. We only vacation in places to which we can drive.

Fifth Amendment, Due Process.  Now that Obama can murder Americans without trial via drone strike that one's gone.  Eminent Domain?  Check out this.  And then Google "Eminent Domain Abuse" for 1.1 million pages on the topic.

But, in general, I pointed out a recent statement someone made that "people are more unhappy with our current government than Americans were with the British Crown before the Revolution."  I can believe it.

Happy Fourth of July.  A memorial to the America that was.  That the liberals have taken from us.

Obama: Greatest President in the History of Everything

From Amazon.com:

It's hard to remember the dark days before 2008. It was a time of hatred, racism, violence, obese children, war, untaxed rich people, and incandescent light bulbs -- perhaps the worst days we had ever seen. And at the heart of it all was a thuggish, thoughtless man, George W. Bush, who lashed out angrily at whatever he didn't understand -- and he understood so very little. Then there was that laugh of his -- that horrible snicker that mocked everything intelligent and nuanced. Also, he looked like a chimp. 

Available here

It seemed like the end for the United States of America. We would crumble in the hands of vicious, superstitious dimwits determined to hunt "ter'ists" or other figments of Bush's rotten mind. There was nothing left to do but head to Whole Foods to prepare our organic, sustainable, fair-trade last meal as the country ended around us. Despair had overtaken us, and we wondered aloud whether we could ever feel hope again. 

And then a man emerged who firmly answered, "Yes we can!" 

Oh, but Barack Obama was no mere man. He was a paragon of intelligence and civilized society. A savior to the world's depressed. A lightbringer. A genius thinking thoughts the common man could never hope to comprehend. And his words -- his beautiful words read from crystal panes -- reached down to our souls and told us all would be well. With the simple act of casting a ballot for Barack Obama, we could make the world an immeasurably better place -- a world of peace, of love, of understanding, of unicorns, of rainbows, of expanded entitlements. This was his promise. And now, having had him as president for more than two years, we can say without reservation that he has delivered all his promises and more and is the best president this country -- or any country -- has ever had or could even imagine to have.

Thanks to TalkaboutPopMayhem for these recent quotes from Jay Leno:

"I was going to start off tonight with an Obama joke, but I don't want to get audited by the IRS." 

On NSA surveillance: "We wanted a president who listens to all Americans – now we have one." 

On a new IRS commissioner: "He's called 'acting commissioner' because he has to act like the scandal doesn't involve the White House." 

On closing the Guantanamo prison for terrorists: "If he really wants to close it, turn it into a government-funded solar power company. The doors will be shut in a month." 

Concerning the Benghazi, Associated Press, and IRS scandals: "Remember in the old days when President Obama's biggest embarrassment was Joe Biden?" 

On Obama saying he didn't know about the IRS scandal: "He was too busy not knowing anything about Benghazi to not know anything about the IRS." 

"The White House has a new slogan about Benghazi: Hope and change the subject." 

"It's casual Friday, which means that at the White House, they're casually going through everybody's phone calls and records." 

"It is not looking good for President Obama. Today his teleprompter took the Fifth." 

"FOX News has changed its slogan from 'Fair and Balanced' to 'See, I told you so!'" 

"These White House scandals are not going away anytime soon. People in Kenya are now saying he's 100 percent American. That's how bad it's gotten." 

On Obama's commencement address: "He told the young graduates their future is bright – unless, of course, they want jobs." 

On a Chicago man who set a record for riding a Ferris wheel: "The only way to go around and around in a circle that many times is to read the official report on Benghazi." 

On White House claims of ignorance on the scandals: "They took 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' out of the Pentagon and moved it into the White House."

Facts Not Empathy

Obama has said that a Supreme Court Judge cannot simply act as an umpire in matters of law.  That's all right for sports, he says.  In sports, you can have rules that everyone plays by and then

But we have a problem here in America.  Our laws don't favor who they are supposed to favor a lot of the time.  And since we can't depend on representational democracy in our Constitutional government to correct our terribly unjust laws--IT SURELY CAN'T BE ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH MAKING BETTER LAWS--it must be corrected through creative interpretation by the Justices.  I'm not embellishing here; in context of Obama's infamous "empathy statement":

I think the Constitution can be interpreted in so many ways. And one way is a cramped and narrow way in which the Constitution and the courts essentially become the rubber stamps of the powerful in society.

If you simply let the law mean what it really means, it will be unfair. So someone with empathy gets to take  advantage of perceived vagueries and technicalities and creative interpretations to correct things through other means when legislation cannot be relied on when the law "should" be something other than what the people's representatives made it to be.

Sonya Sotomayor, the "wise Latina" who represented Obama's purpose of a judge who would use the Court to legislate for the poor and downtrodden (that is, make far-reaching decisions based on progressive victimhood politics), herself

disavowed the notion of empathy during hearings before her confirmation, saying that “judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart.” *

Wow.  Now that's the exact opposite of what Obama said he intended for Sotomayor. He said that the important question for the 5% of cases that matter (the 5% in which judges can turn their preferences into public policy without representation) is "What is in the justice's heart?"  It's too bad for him that he didn't realize that Sotomayor was not on the same page as him.  But Muslims aren't the only people of faith that consider it their duty to lie to further their religion.

The [Sotomayor] decision will probably be a pillar of Obama's legacy: The choice of Supreme Court justices, with their lifetime tenure and vast sway over American law, gives presidents one of their most powerful tools to shape the country beyond their own White House years.* [emphasis mine]

If you read the recent Prop 8 decision by the Court (Hollingsworth vs. Perry) it sounds like SCOTUS is saying that they need to respect separation of powers.  But how does limiting the Court fit in with protecting the little guy, as Obama sees their primary role.  Sotomayor spoke the language of "umpire," the language of judicial restraint, the language of rule of law, to Congress.  After Obama promised that this was exactly what he was trying to avoid.  Sotomayor promised judicial restraint; Obama promised judicial activism.  in fact, he pretty much explained what judicial activism is.