Right Wing Nut House

Maybe she phrased it wrong. Maybe liberal blogger Melissa Lafsky writing in Huffpo this morning had a brain cramp and wrote something she didn’t want to.

Maybe aliens made her do it.

Somehow, some explanation must be given for this kind of incredible, tone deaf, idiocy:

We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history. What we don’t know, as always, could fill a Metrodome.

Still, ignorance doesn’t preclude a right to wonder. So it doesn’t automatically make someone (aka, me) a Limbaugh-loving, aerial-wolf-hunting NRA troll for asking what Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded.

Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.

I’m sure the 29 year old woman was comforted by the fact as she was gasping out her last breaths in that air pocket that formed when the drunken sot of a senator steered his car into the tidal pool and left her to die a terrifying death, that her passing would launch “the most successful senate career in history.” Kopechne was, after all, a good liberal - civil rights worker, RFK volunteer, and the kind of dedicated young person who would gladly sacrifice their life for the cause.

Except that liberals (despite what some of my righty colleagues may think) are people too. I’m going to take a wild guess here and say that Mary Jo Kopechne, when she realized that no help would arrive in time to save her, was, if she was thinking about anything except the dwindling supply of oxygen and screaming and shaking and crying as her lungs began to burn from the excess CO2 in that tiny space, may have cursed the living daylights out of Kennedy for being responsible for her impending death.

And if, by some miracle granted by God, she had been able to see the future, what would have been her reaction to Kennedy’s story of what happened that night? The attempts to get his cousin Joe Gargan to lie for him and back his bogus claim that Kopechne was alone in the car? What would she have thought about the fact that after extricating himself, he went back to the party he had just left? What would she have thought of Kennedy going back to his hotel, complaining to the manager that he couldn’t sleep because of a noisy party, and then having the balls to say at the inquest, “I almost tossed and turned and walked around that room…?”

Almost describes everything Kennedy did that night - except he was mostly drunk and tried to concoct a plan that would have absolved him of any responsibility for Kopechne’s death.

I think it much more appropriate to ask what Mary Jo Kopechne would have thought about that, rather than her views on Senator Kennedy’s glorious senate career.

I don’t know about you, but I sure would rather be alive and kicking than being the “catalyst” for the notion that Kennedy could never be president because of my death and this was somehow a good thing because of all the good my killer did during the rest of his life, being forced to abandon his presidential aspirations and serve in the senate.

Mary Jo Kopechne - Martyr to Kennedy’s failed ambition.

Of all the millions of words, tens of thousands of articles, blog posts, and other scribblings by liberals over the death of Ted Kennedy, this may be the most amazingly shallow, myopic, and ultimately self centered sentence that has been written. To write, to hint that Kopechne would have somehow preferred to be dead rather than alive in any circumstance, for any cause, or for any person in her life at that time is ghoulish, and bespeaks an extraordinary callousness toward life that calls to mind the absolute worst that ideologues of either the left or right are capable.

I do not wish to generalize, and indeed, I know there are many liberals who are shocked by this as well.   But it does highlight the mindset of some liberals quite well, don’t you think? To left wing fanatics like Lafsky, human life does not belong to the individual, but to the higher cause of the collective good. For Lafsky, of course Kopechne would, if she had a crystal ball and been able to see the future, have sacrificed herself on the altar of social “progress” rather than live a full life filled with friends, family, kids, and a fulfilling career.

What a despicable thing to write.

Liberals are licking their chops at the prospect of using the death of Ted Kennedy to unite the party and get a health care reform bill passed.

Is exploiting the death of Kennedy a rotten, shameless, despicable thing to do? In politics, nothing is rotten or shameless - unless you’re on the other side taking advantage of an obvious political gambit. The only consideration is if something works or not. And baby, the Dems are going to milk the death of Kennedy until they wring every last ounce of political capital they can manage from his rotund carcass.

They are going to bend every effort to tie the emotional attachment with the late senator sincerely felt by the vast majority of Democrats directly to the health care bill with the hope that it will give some of the Blue Dogs, and liberals the cover they need to come to an agreement. In short, using the memory of Kennedy and good feelings elicited when appealing to his ghost, the Democratic leadership hopes it makes party members more willing to compromise to achieve the goal of creating KennedyKare.

I would fully expect the Republicans to do the exact same thing in similar circumstances. Of course, that would be an impossibility at the moment since no Republican living, dead, or in between has that kind of pull with the party, nor is there an issue that Republicans could rally around even if such a mythical beast existed. The appeals to Reagan’s memory may engender fond feelings of nostalgia, but the wellspring of actual political power that the Ghost of the Gipper can wield is just about dry.

So the question isn’t should the Democrats exploit Kennedy’s death, but rather what is the best way to go about doing it to achieve success?

Renaming the bill in honor of Kennedy won’t do much. Nice symbolism but hardly enough to break, what most media reports have said, is a titanic log jam of proposals on reform where several committees and individuals are working at cross purposes. Getting a bill out of this mish mash is going to take a lot more than simply calling the monstrosity something else.

In order to rally the Congress, more substantive and public demonstrations of both real and manufactured emotionalism will have to be employed for the gambit to work. Kennedy is going to have to first be beautified, and then named as a civic saint - a party icon that can be invoked with such reverence that “What would Teddy want?” becomes a rallying cry for reform leaders.

It starts today with a “carefully orchestrated” procession from the Kennedy’s beloved Hyannis Port, through the streets of Boston where the political and emotional symbolism will fairly drip from old imitation gas streetlights in the city’s historic North End:

A procession will leave Hyannis Port at 1 p.m. today, accompanying Kennedy’s body to Boston for a final journey through a city indelibly marked by his family.

At about 2:15, the procession is expected to wind its way through downtown, first passing through the North End, where his mother was born, then crossing the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway on its way to the State House, and ultimately passing the Bowdoin Street residence of President Kennedy when he first ran for Congress and the federal building that bears his name.

Crowds are encouraged to gather on Hanover Street along the Greenway, on City Hall Plaza, and on the Boston Common in front of the State House.

The procession will end at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, where Kennedy will lie in repose and visitors will be invited to pay their respects today and tomorrow.

There will be a massive outpouring of people who will want to view the remains, reminding members of Kennedy’s enormous popularity not only in the party, but with the average working American as well. TV images of the procession passing these Democratic touchstones will also serve to connect Ted to his martyred brothers thus making a direct appeal to generations of Democrats.

This is powerful stuff, and the news nets will milk coverage was well, seeing that events such as these will bring millions of eyeballs to their broadcasts who might not normally be watching.

Same thing happened when Reagan died, and for the same reasons. National tragedy is the honey that attracts millions of extra viewers and there’s no reason to complain about it.

There will apparently be no less than 3 memorial services; an invitation only event tomorrow night at the library (no word on whether it will be televised, although I can’t imagine it not). Then, the actual funeral mass at a Basilica on Mission Hill. Here, there will be “limited press access” which is probably short hand for pool reporting.

From there, more symbolism will be used as another procession will form, taking the casket to Logan Airport for the trip to Washington and a late afternoon burial at Arlington Cemetery.

President Obama is scheduled to give the eulogy on Saturday and will no doubt give it his usual best effort. How hard will he hit the meme of passing health care reform in Kennedy’s name? Hopefully, the guy isn’t completely tone deaf and will refrain from hammering the world wide audience over the head with references to it. However, it would be perfectly legitimate for Obama to specifically tout reform since Kennedy himself is quoted as saying the issue was central to his public life. Republicans will complain no matter what but the president must still strike a solemn balance between honoring Kennedy and taking care of politics.

A couple of interesting side notes. First, why no lying in state in the rotunda of the Capitol? It could be because they would then have to move the funeral mass to Washington, D.C. as protocol would dictate that any lying in state be conducted before the funeral rites. Plus, the funeral would have to be moved to a Sunday which, while permissible, is atypical in the Catholic church.

Secondly, there has been no announced Wellstone-style Congressional memorial service. It may not have been planned yet. Or, Democrats might be a little hesitant considering the grief they got following the tribute to Wellstone after his death from a plane crash in 2002.

Surely Al Franken is being disingenuous at best when he writes in HuffPo about that Wellstone tribute:

A pained Limbaugh asked his audience the day after the memorial: “Where was the grief? Where were the tears? Where was the memorial service? There wasn’t any of this!”

This was a lie. I was there. Along with everyone else, I cried, I laughed, I cheered. It was, to my mind, a beautiful four-hour memorial.

I didn’t boo. Neither did 22,800 of the some 23,000 people there. This has been a much discussed, much lied about aspect of the memorial. A number of Republicans, like Peggy Noonan and Weekly Standard writer Chris Caldwell claimed that 20,000 people had booed Trent Lott. (Caldwell claimed that 20,000 people booed a whole litany of people who weren’t booed at all.) We’ll never get an actual count - but I’d say about two hundred people booed Trent Lott when his face came on the Jumbotron. This was about a minute after 23,000 people cheered for Bill Clinton when his face appeared on the Jumbotron.

How does that square with an account from someone a little less partisan, William Saletan of Slate?

But the solemnity of death and the grace of Midwestern humor are overshadowed tonight by the angry piety of populism. Most of the event feels like a rally. The touching recollections are followed by sharply political speeches urging Wellstone’s supporters to channel their grief into electoral victory. The crowd repeatedly stands, stomps, and whoops. The roars escalate each time Walter Mondale, the former vice president who will replace Wellstone on the ballot, appears on the giant screens suspended above the stage. “Fritz! Fritz!” the assembly chants.

“Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning,” Wellstone declares in a videotaped speech shown on the overhead screens. “Politics is about improving people’s lives.” But as the evening’s speakers proceed, it becomes clear that to them, honoring Wellstone’s legacy is all about winning the election. Repeating the words of Wellstone’s son, the assembly shouts, “We will win! We will win!” Rick Kahn, a friend of Wellstone’s, urges everyone to “set aside the partisan bickering,” but in the next breath he challenges several Republican senators in attendance to “honor your friend” by helping to “win this election for Paul Wellstone.” What can he be thinking?

Franken is right. I watched the entire memorial service (I admired and liked Paul Wellstone even though I vehemently disagreed with him on almost everything he stood for.) It is true that 20,000 people did not boo Trent Lott. But unless those 200 phantom booers mentioned by Franken were right next to a microphone and had their numbers seem inflated, my guess would be more like 5,000 booed Lott, with even louder boos for Jesse Ventura, then governor. I seem to recall Denny Hastert also receiving a healthy round of boos but am not sure he was even there.

At any rate, Saletan’s description of the “Memorial Service” is spot on. Numerous speakers trashed Republicans - not just the two he mentioned. It could very well be that Franken - as rabid a partisan who has ever served in the senate - has an entirely different idea what partisan speechmaking is all about than normal people like you and me.

Whether it was planned to be a pep rally is not the point. That’s what it became and Democrats would do well to recall the reaction to press reports - including those bastions of right wing lying, the New York Times, and Time Magazine that led to at least a mini-backlash that could have cost Mondale the election.

But such an event might be a topper to what Democrats obviously hope will be an emotional outpouring in memory of Senator Kennedy which might translate into the political muscle necessary to ram through KennedyKare. In fact, one might expect the Democrats to try and stampede the issue into passing once Congress is back from their recess after Labor Day.

Would it work? The stampede, probably not. But I don’t see how the death of Ted Kennedy and the Democrat’s exploiting the emotional context of remembrance and history that will be on display, can do anything except help President Obama and the Congressional leadership realize some kind of health care bill before Thanksgiving.

We will let the New York Times and liberal blogs lionize the man. I assure you there will be enough of that for anyone’s tastes.

Here, I will try to give the unvarnished truth about a person who was indeed, the “liberal lion of the Senate” (take from that what you will), as well as representing the absolute worst of wealth and privilege in the United States.

Ted Kennedy, the rogue son of a rogue family has died of brain cancer at age 77. Oftentimes, liberals like to compare the Kennedy family to that other famous political family that featured presidents, and legislators of note; the Adams family.

Pardon me if my outrage can’t quite be held in check. The man who fought longer and harder for American independence than anyone of his time - John Adams - had it all over Teddy as far as personal moral behavior and principled, pragmatic leadership. His son, John Quincy Adams, took stands against slavery that made any “political courage” shown by Kennedy to be minuscule by comparison.

Suffice it to say, that the difference between the two families couldn’t be more pronounced and referring to the Kennedy’s in the same breath as the Adams’s is a travesty.

No doubt Kennedy the man was a despicable cad, a notorious roue, and, until late in life, a certified drunk. As most conservative blogs are reporting this morning, “Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment.” ‘Nuff said about Kennedy the man.

But history is a relentless bitch of a mistress, holding us to standards of truth and accuracy so that even one so vile as Kennedy must be examined not only in the context of his personal peccadilloes but also for his contributions to his times.

And those contributions were awesome.

There is no doubt that the average Joe working American lives a better life today because of Teddy Kennedy. He is safer on the job, his wages are higher (even non-union workers), his children have more educational opportunities, he is healthier, and wealthier than any working American of any other generation in history. We can certainly criticize liberal excesses in much of the legislation that this master parliamentarian guided through the labyrinthine maze of Congress. But no honest appraisal of Kennedy’s career would be complete without referring to the gigantic impact he had on ordinary, blue collar America.

He was at the center of every major legislative initiative that created much of the welfare state, as well as shepherding through Congress important legislation regarding voting rights, health care, labor law, and education. Conservatives like Barry Goldwater and Orrin Hatch found him not only to be a tough enemy but also someone with whom they could negotiate their concerns. He earned the respect of his opponents by having the issues associated with any legislation he was pushing down absolutely stone cold. And his mastery of Roberts Rules of Order made him a formidable presence in any senate debate.

Even historians not enamored of his far left liberalism — a liberalism that seemed to get farther left the older he got — compare him to Henry Clay or John C. Calhoun as far as his impact on the senate. That may be unfair to Clay who sacrificed his chance at the presidency to bring about compromises on the slavery issue. I did not sense such self abnegation in Teddy Kennedy, who viewed his senate seat as something of a patrimony from God. The wealth and privilege he enjoyed that allowed him to escape justice in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and his family to get out of scrape after scrape with the law highlighted the fact that this was a family not above the law but beyond it. Their money, power, and influence had far too much impact on our national life than is healthy in a republic. And perhaps that’s the key to Kennedy’s psyche.

I believe the guilt of possessing great wealth drove him to compensate for his privileged position by pushing legislation that he believed exonerated him of his family sins. This is not unusual in American history, with industry titans from Astor to Rockefeller giving away much of their fortune prior to their death. But what drove Kennedy was also perhaps the nagging belief that he really wasn’t up to the Kennedy mystique, that he was a fraud compared to his martyred brothers.

The truth is, John Kennedy was no liberal at all (just ask Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), and Robert Kennedy’s liberalism was far more muscular and more out of the classic school of left wing thought than the New Left activists who tried to adopt him in 1968. Robert’s liberalism was informed by both his Catholicism, and his own personal demons of trying to live up to the heroic image he carried of his brother John.

It took Ted a few years after Robert’s death to be convinced that “carrying on the legacy” of RFK actually meant going beyond his brother’s concerns that welfare was creating a permanent underclass to embracing the welfare state and the left wing agenda that went with it. Perhaps he saw this as the quickest way to the White House, not even able to fathom the damage done to his presidential aspirations by being responsible for Mary Jo Kopechne’s death. Or perhaps, it was indeed guilt that drove him on. Historians will have a field day with his motivations, that’s for sure.

The last of the “original” Kennedy brothers is dead. An age has now passed into history where for “one, brief, shining moment” one American family stood at the apex of power, largely bought for them by their immensely wealthy father. His two brothers who preceded him in death were known for what “might have been,” having been cut down before they could make any lasting impact on the country.

Not so the third Kennedy brother. His legacy will live on in the lives he made better, the lives he made worse - and the life he was responsible for ending.

You won’t want to miss tonight’s Rick Moran Show, one of the most popular conservative talk shows on Blog Talk Radio.

Tonight, my special guests are Dr. Melissa Clouthier and Andrew Ian Dodge. We’ll look at the war that has broken out between the CIA and the White House as well as the latest on health care reform.

The show will air from 7:00 - 8:00 PM Central time. You can access the live stream here. A podcast will be available for streaming or download shortly after the end of the broadcast.

Click on the stream below and join in on what one wag called a “Wayne’s World for adults.”

The Chat Room will open around 15 minutes before the show opens,

Also, if you’d like to call in and put your two cents in, you can dial (718) 664-9764.

I haven’t been screamed at by conservatives in a while so I thought I’d put that headline out there to see if any of them will take the bait.

The trap set, I would urge those of you inclined to be hip shooters to read the following in its entirety before you ride me out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, drummed out of what’s left of the conservative movement for being such a jackass.

Frankly, I don’t need an excuse to be a jackass. Just ask my Zsu-Zsu whose legendary patience has been tried many times during the course of our 6 year relationship. It is a constant wonder to me that one so beautiful, generous, and smart would hook up with jackass like me.

It’s a physical thing, really.

It has been a constant refrain on blogs, at tea party protests, at health care town halls, and everywhere conservatives gather that Obamacare (and, by extension, the Obama presidency) means “The End of America as We Know It.”

Yes, but how well do you really “know” America? I say that because it isn’t the first time this refrain has been heard in American history and I daresay - hopefully - it won’t be the last.

Part of what makes America special is this fantastic ability we possess to re-invent ourselves to meet the challenges of a changing world. From Thomas Jefferson warning during the election of 1800 that re-electing Adams and the Federalists would result in the institution of a monarchy (”changing America as we know it”) through Andy Jackson’s populist revolution that “changed America as we know it,” through the the southerner’s warning that electing Abe Lincoln would “change America as we know it…”

I could go on and on. Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Johnson, Reagan - all of them “changed America as we knew it” at that time. The question, then, isn’t whether or not Obama is “changing America as we know it,” but rather what kind of America is likely to emerge after those changes have been made.

Each of those presidents mentioned above were responsible for great changes in the America they found when they entered office. But I would argue that every one of them were cognizant of, and adhered to, America’s First Principles (some to a greater degree than others) when re-inventing their America.

Even radical changes like those initiated by Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, made in reaction to the times in which they lived - made reluctantly as they were pulled and pushed by history’s tidal forces that were beyond their control - were tied to tradition, and America’s past. Can anyone doubt Lincoln’s belief in the Declaration of Independence when he redefined freedom in America with the Gettysburg Address? Or FDR’s devotion to the founding principles of America being a shared community where individual rights are respected?

America stands still for no one. We are a nation that wears size 20 boots, striding purposefully into the future with a cocky arrogance that steamrolls the past, stomping on those who stand in the way as we blithely and deliberately proceed to our date with destiny. For conservatives, it has always been a rearguard action to preserve tradition and fight for change that is based on those traditions and our First Principles rather than accept change that destroys the connection to our cherished past.

We lose some of these battles - but we win many more. Big changes may mean the “end of America as we know it,” but they also mean that essential truths gleaned through the centuries of American progress are nurtured and kept safe by those of us who value liberty, and the individual rights granted by the Constitution. There may have been an erosion of some of those rights in recent decades. But the core values that make us who we are and define the American experiment are intact, if not now constantly under attack by an overweening, overreaching, gargantuan government.

No one except some addle brained liberals believe that big government is not a threat to individual liberty, not to mention being at odds with the very first principle espoused by the Founders; that America should be a land of free men who govern themselves under a Constitution that clearly defines and limits the role of the federal government.

I don’t necessarily begrudge President Obama his efforts to “remake America” - if those efforts were carried out with a respect for that first principle uppermost in his mind. I would probably still oppose most of what he would do, but after all, elections have consequences and the president has a perfect right to try and change America if he finds it wanting in some respects.

But President Obama has no right to fundamentally alter the relationship between the governed and the government as defined in the Constitution. If he feels so strongly about having the federal government gradually taking over 1/6 of the American economy by being able to dictate to free men what kind of health care they will receive and their families will receive, then he should do it in the Constitutionally approved manner of amending our founding document to reflect that change.

The same can be said about takeovers of the auto industry, the financial services sector, and any other buy out by the government of private companies. The Constitution is a very supple document in that while changing it is difficult (as it is meant to be), just about anything can be amended that was unforeseen at the time it was written. If the temperance movement could get an amendment passed to ban liquor, just about anything can be shoehorned into our Basic Law that the people genuinely want.

Barack Obama is not playing by the rules. Whether through ignorance, or more likely a lack of interest, he has proposed changes to government that are in direct conflict with the basic principles by which we have governed ourselves for 221 years. He has replaced those size 20 boots with an industrial sized scythe and is imprudently mowing down fields that were planted with the seeds of self-governance, the primacy of the individual, and the notion of limited government - seeds that took root and have flourished through war and peace, economic calamity and prosperity.

What was done in painfully small increments before, is now being rushed to fruition in one, great, gigantic gulp of activism before we can digest and manage the change he is seeking to make. That may be his greatest transgression of all in that he refuses to acknowledge that America’s past is prologue, that the path to the future must be trod on the well worn trails and byways of history that his predecessors respected and revered.

It is not that he is seeking to “end America as we know it.” It is that he is trying to do it by breaking the ties that bind us to a past where our ancestors worked, sweated, fought, and bled to create a nation like no other. It is the president’s failure to contextualize his actions, giving them a frame of reference that the American people can grasp and claim as part of their patrimony of freedom and individual liberty where he has failed utterly.

And for that, he is finding his plans to “remake America” coming a cropper.

I have used this blog for most of the last 5 years to berate liberals for what I view as stupidity, myopia, hysteria, hypocrisy, and for advocating ideas that are an anathema to America’s founding principles.

But I have also vigorously defended their idea of patriotism. I have sincerely tried to show my fellow conservatives that liberals love America as much as we do, except that they have a different, but equally valid way of expressing that devotion. To limit one’s definition of love of country to one’s own narrow perspective does a disservice to America which, after all, was created specifically so that those who dissent need not fear retribution.

But I don’t know what to make of this:

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year’s election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it’s not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

Run that by me again?

The plan is to turn a “day of fear” that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

“They think it needs to be taken back from the right,” said the source. “They’re taking that day and they’re breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day.”

I am all for allowing 9/11 to be placed in historical perspective, simplifying our remembrance of that tragic day, giving dignity to the dead and reminding the living of what is at stake. Like Memorial Day or Veterans Day, 9/11 (Patriot’s Day) should be marked with solemnity, but not the kind of overwrought oratory or ranting against Muslims that has marked previous incarnations of that day.

But this?

Of this National Day of Service, Jones says little except that it will be a great opportunity “for people to connect, to find other people in your peer group who are also passionate about repowering America but also greening up America and cleaning up America.”

On the same day, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Department of Energy Under Secretary Kristina Johnson and activists held a low-key press conference. At it, Yearwood said the National Day of Service will be “the first milestone” of a larger effort called Green the Block that is attempting to convince Americans that the utopian fantasy of a so-called green economy is possible without turning the U.S. into a Third World country.

“From policy creation to community implementation, the Green the Block campaign wants to see access and opportunity created for all Americans, to build prosperity and a healthier planet for future generations,” Yearwood said.

First of all, the political parameters of this attempt to demote the nationalistic significance of 9/11 is truly one of the most insidious ideas that has come from this administration. It leaves me speechless with anger that turning 9/11 into a day to celebrate Democratic interest groups would have its origins in the White House. If this is true - and given who is involved in this effort, one can easily believe it - it would be worse than anything the Bush administration ever tried to do to use 9/11 in order to advance their own political fortunes.

The left went crazy in 2004 when Bush held the Republican convention in New York City , gave Rudy Giuliani the keynote address, trotted out the “good” 9/11 widows who supported him, and did everything to remind people of that date except re-enact the attack on stage. It was shameless exploitation of the tragedy, but…

But there was no denying that there was also another dimension to the remembrance, one that all Americans could touch and be comforted. United in our grief and efforts to heal the gaping wound that 9/11 represented at that time (it being just 3 years removed from the tragedy), the GOP show may have had political overtones but also served the purpose of acting as a national catharsis for the still rank emotions that 9/11 brought to the surface.

No such dual objective appears to be present in this effort by the White House to essentially toss 9/11 down the memory hole, burying its true significance, in the name of advancing a political agenda.

And why put the radicals in charge of that day?

The administration’s plans were outlined in an Aug. 11 White House-sponsored teleconference call run by Obama ally Lennox Yearwood, president of the Hip Hop Caucus, and Liv Havstad, the group’s senior vice president of strategic partnerships and programs.

Yearwood, who uses the honorific “Reverend” before his name, has been in the news in recent years, usually for getting arrested. After Democrats took back Congress, the rowdy activist was handcuffed outside a congressional hearing in September 2007 when Gen. David Petraeus was to testify. Yearwood told the “Democracy Now” radio program that he wanted to attend the hearing to hear Petraeus give his report. “I knew that when officers lie, soldiers die,” he said.

The Hip Hop Caucus? What the hell is going on here? If Bush had used the Michigan Militia to plan 9/11 events, don’t you think that would have elicited a few raised eyebrows somewhere?

Is 9/11 seen as a “Republican” day? Only if you’re an idiot liberal, paranoid about the political opposition to the point that you equate expressions by citizens of love for America with love of the Republican party. In the end, maybe that’s the problem in a nutshell. The kind of nationalistic outpouring on 9/11 is rejected on the left because they see nationalism as a form of fascism. And that kind of simple patriotism felt by the overwhelming majority of Americans is seen as dangerous, backwards, and not cynical enough to pass muster with “smart” people. Hence, any celebration of pride or love of country must, by definition, be evil.

What do you think these Bozos have in mind for the 4th of July?

LAST WORD

Many of you have chosen to ignore the thrust of this post - that even though Bush and the GOP hijacked 9/11 for their own political purposes, why should the Democrats ape that? It takes a special kind of stupidity to copy the absolute worst antics of your political foe.

Obviously, I don’t object to a day of National Service (although I believe it absolutely legitimate to question why it has to be on 9/11). I object to Obama and the liberals seeking to denude that date of meaning as far as the very real war we are fighting with radical Islam.

It makes no differrence whatsoever whether you believe we are at war. The point is that THEY BELIEVE IT, and taking away the significance - as the liberals are desperately trying to do by radically altering the parameters of how we remember the date itself - of the fact that this date should be the one day all year that reminds us of who the enemy is and why we are fighting, smacks of myopia.

The political reasons to alter the meaning of the date are despicable. And I would write the same post tomorrow whether I’m on my “meds” or not.

I have written previously that I believed the biggest contribution Ronald Reagan made to American conservatism was that he almost singlehandedly altered the civic conversation about government spending on social programs.

Prior to Reagan’s reasoned, and impassioned dialectic against big government, the debate over government programs began and ended with the question “How much more” should we be spending,” or “How big should this government program be” to accomplish its intended objective.

Democrats monetized this debate by increasing the number of zeroes in these program’s appropriations. Granted, this is something of an oversimplification but essentially, the center of gravity in Washington tilted toward more, more, and still more in the belief that “solving” the problem being addressed, and showing “compassion” for the poor was a matter of growing the size of government to meet the challenge.

Enter Ronald Reagan who championed the idea that “throwing money” at a problem wasn’t solving anything, and was making things worse. (There were other conservatives who gave Reagan his arguments - Buckley, Hayek, Mises, etc. But none had as big a bullhorn.) Over time, the civic conversation was altered to question not only the huge appropriations, but the necessity and the viability of these programs.

At bottom, of course, was Reagan’s contention that government was mis-spending tax dollars and threatening individual liberty by growing the size and scope of the federal government. It was an argument that plowed already fertile fields because from it’s founding, Americans have fiercely resisted centrally exercised power from Washington. From Andrew Jackson’s destruction of the Bank of America to the cheers of the common man, through Abe Lincoln’s draft, which set off riots in the north, through FDR’s overreach, and Bill Clinton’s attempt at nationalized health care, Americans have been more than suspicious of big government. There seems to be a genetic predisposition for Americans to resist government that they perceive as overstepping its limits.

Granted, those limits have expanded since Andy Jackson’s time. Most Americans have accepted a government that can feed them when they’re hungry, house them when they’re homeless, and generally be there with a “safety net” if misfortune befalls them. Social Security, Medicare, and other entitlements are sacred cows because they enjoy almost universal support by voters. This may be the death of us yet unless we can find a way to get their gargantuan costs under control.

But, as President Obama is finding, there are still lines in the sand that Americans are refusing to allow their government in Washington to cross. And Matt Welch of Reason Magazine, writing in the NY Post, nails why:

While the commentariat’s condescension is almost comical, the whole evil-or-stupid explanation misses the elephant in Obama’s room: Americans of all stripes, it turns out, aren’t very keen about the government barging into their lives.

An ABC/Washington Post poll from June showed people preferred “smaller government with fewer services” over “larger government with more services” by 54% to 41%, up from 50%-45% a year earlier (independents were even more pronounced, at 61%-35%). A Rasmussen poll from April showed that 77% of Americans preferred a “free market” economy over a “government managed” economy, up seven percentage points from just last December. A July CBS poll found that 52% of Americans think that Obama is trying to do “too much.”

After 11 months of federal bailouts and freakouts, Americans have become bone tired of panicky power grabs from Washington. It’s the big government, stupid.

The message of the various Tea Party protests, which predated this summer’s ahistorical media panic over town hall “lynch mobs,” has been pretty simple, says Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, the nonprofit that has helped organize the protests, told Reason magazine this spring. “It was: stop spending so much money, stop borrowing so much money, and stop bailing out people who were irresponsible.”

I applaud the attempt by Mr. Welch to alter the narrative that begins and ends with protestors being “racist,” fascist mobs,” “un-American,” or “retarded.” It won’t matter anyway. Polls also show that a majority of Americans support the protestors which means that the Krugman’s, Rich’s, Pelosi’s, Garafolo’s, and the rest of the left aren’t getting any traction with their “evil-or-stupid” incantations.

Regardless, it’s the resistance to government overstepping what Americans sense is a proper exercise of its power that has so many, so angry. While there is much more tolerance for big government today - even government that helps the middle class with programs like S-Chip, and home mortgage bailouts - there are still boundaries (sensed more than specifically spelled out) that a majority of Americans refuse to stand for.

This is the essence of American exceptionalism. We are a different people than Europeans, and any other society in the world. We were deliberately made so at our founding and continue to be to this day. What should be self evident, is lost on many liberals who equate American exceptionalism with a rude form of nationalism. Not so - demonstrably not so. There is no other society in the world that looks upon government with such a jaundiced eye when they perceive that government to be crossing a comfort barrier relating to how much power the central authority should wield.

At heart, America is a profoundly conservative country in that First Principles, a respect for our past, and supporting change only when that change can be folded into tradition, is believed and supported by a large majority. This doesn’t mean that the out of bounds hasn’t been moving left the last 100 years. We are also, at bottom, a practical people, and see real benefit to growing government when the occasion calls for it. This too, makes us an exceptional people in that despite all, the people still have a big say in how big a government they will accept.

Perhaps one day, Americans will accept a growth in government that will result in Washington running health care. But it is not today, nor do I see such a day arriving in my lifetime. Each generation of Americans defines the parameters of their liberty differently. It is our particular genius as we constantly re-invent ourselves to meet the challenges of a changing world.

Obama and the Democrats ignore this reality at their political peril.

It takes anywhere from 11 to 13 years of schooling - including 3-5 years residency - to be able to call yourself a doctor. But as many physicians have pointed out, the process of learning is an on-going effort. Classes, seminars, and fellowships are required over the years so that a doctor can keep current with the breathtaking pace of innovation and increased knowledge.

This is one big reason I never even thought of being a doctor. I have an aversion to book learning, and the prospect of having to go to school until I was in my thirties lit my hair on fire. I find the human body eternally fascinating. But there are limits to curiosity and I have satisfied myself over the years with reading about the incredible breakthroughs and mind bending discoveries that makes the human machine so extraordinary.

Another reason I could never be a doctor is tied up with the debate we are having over health care reform; specifically, the discussion of end of life issues involving treatment and care, and most importantly, who should be involved in those decisions.

The doctors, hospitals, medical ethicists, and review boards that struggle with impossibly complex matters involving morality, religion, and the most intimate and personal desires of the patient, coupled with the pace of scientific progress in medicine that hold out the promise to prolong life, combine to present uniquely painful and wrenching decisions for all of us.

That’s really the bottom line, isn’t it? This is the matter we dance around when talking about “death panels” or “end of life consultation.” I think what we fear most about this isn’t so much that government will force euthanasia down our throats but that “efficiencies” that are forced on government by rising costs will result in a “one size fits all” solutions to problems that are best solved on a case by case basis.

To relieve suffering is the goal of palliative care. Should government - or insurance companies for that matter - force people to accept the end by paying for such end of life care rather than paying for a treatment or procedure that could prolong life but not cure the condition? Let’s imagine the procedure costs $100,000. Should government pay for these treatments when insurance companies won’t?

Sticky, yes? Let’s throw a few other ethical bombs on this scenario. Suppose the patient is 10 years old? Suppose the patient’s age increases the chances for survival but not enough to rationally justify the cost of the treatment? Suppose the treatment will only prolong life for a year or two?

While we’re creating moral problems, let’s try another nightmare scenario. An 60 year old cancer patient with a heart condition has a recurrence of the disease. The cancer can be treated with surgery and chemotherapy. But because of the patient’s heart condition, he won’t live more than a year or so anyway. Without treatment, he will die in six months.

Should Obamacare spend the money to cure the cancer?

These are matters faced by patients, their families, doctors, and hospitals every day. Guidelines in such matters drawn up by government or insurance companies are worse than useless. But in the absence of any good choices, shouldn’t someone be able to make the hard decision and deny payment for experimental, or unproven procedures - or life saving treatment when death from another condition is right around the corner?

Each case is different. Each situation has a human being attached to it, not a slide rule. And I believe this is the fear of old and young alike regarding Obamacare; that in the name of acting for the benefit of the many, government will lose sight of the fact that ultimately, the personal cannot be political in this instance, that there are some things that no government should be able to have a hand in deciding.

The same question can be asked of private insurance companies who would also be inclined to deny the kind of care outlined in both scenarios above. Do we really want those kinds of decisions made based on bottom line medicine?

If I’m confusing you, it’s because there are no good answers. And to my mind, this gives the lie to people who claim that health care is a “right.” Health care is a commodity, bought and sold like any commodity, valued like a commodity, and treated like a commodity by government, insurance companies, and patients alike. True, it is vital to life. But so is food. And I doubt even the most rabid proponent of Obamacare would want to see a government takeover of the food industry.

Every single one of us has already faced these choices or will have to do so someday, whether it affects us, or a close family member. Part of the problem is certainly linked to the miraculous state of medicine today. Our knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds, outpacing our capacity to develop a moral framework to make ethical decisions on life, death and “quality of life.”

Our pitiful attempts to quantify quality of life fall short because in the end, we’re talking about someone else’s life being evaluated based on invented criteria. Even Solomon would have a tough time judging something so intimate and personal. But again, is the current state of our health delivery system so bad that we must empower someone - government or insurance companies - to make these decisions for us? This is the philosophy behind Obamacare and it makes most of us uncomfortable.

I don’t have the answers. I think bringing costs down intelligently should be a priority simply because it’s logical, and because fewer dollars expended per patient would mean more potential dollars to spend on others. There are ways to do this without rationing, or simply paying doctors and hospitals less.

As for the rest, the issues are so complex and fraught with ethical and moral landmines, it would be prudent to make a greater effort to examine what is currently being railroaded through Congress without much thought given to the consequences, so that we can avoid engendering the kind of fear I mentioned above.

It’s been said before by others but bears repeating; Obama is trying to do too much, too fast, and without enough thought given to the real world consequences of what he is trying to accomplish. To claim otherwise is silly. And those fascist, astroturfed mobs of 70-something seniors at health care town halls know it - and fear it.

It’s late August in the Heartland. Soon, surrounding my little town of Streator, Illinois, the farmers will begin the near frantic job of harvesting their crops, racing their giant combines down row upon row of impossibly bountiful fields of corn, soybeans, and other foodstuffs that will feed the nation, the world. This miracle is brought to us courtesy of science, mother nature, and the careful, patient husbandry of the American farmer. It takes equal parts hard work and an intimate knowledge of the land to make a living as a farmer in modern America. And these days, it also takes a keen business mind and an almost supernatural ability to judge the market to maximize the farmer’s razor thin margin of profit.

And it takes a little luck. We’ve had a farmer’s summer for growing that’s for sure. Rain has been plentiful. The weather has been mild, thus sparing those whose life is synced up with the rhythms of the seasons the burden of having to toil in the usual life draining heat and humidity that afflicts these parts during the summer months. No crop destroying floods. No plagues of locusts. Just the sun, the wind, the gentle rains, and nature’s mysterious magic that turns a tiny seed placed in the rich, loamy, middle American earth into the eye-popping bounty that is the envy of the modern world.

Indeed, in the entire history of civilization, dating back to the first attempts to cultivate wheat 10,000 years ago (probably in what is now Turkey), the world has never seen anything to compare to the productivity of the American farmer. Thanks to a happy marriage of science and experience, we grow more food, using less acreage, and in a wider variety of climates, soils, and landscape than any society that has trod earth.

And it all starts here, not 2 miles from where I’m sitting. We don’t think about it much, this wondrous process of bringing food to our tables. We walk into the grocery store and don’t think about the aisles and aisles of products that has as its origins someone’s hard labor. It rarely crosses our mind that each box of cereal, or head of lettuce, or tomato, or T-Bone steak has many hours of planning, feeding, growing, reaping, and processing being performed by real people before the fruit of that labor drops effortlessly into our carts.

Next time you’re in a supermarket, think about it. I daresay you will be filled with awe and gratitude that the few have worked so diligently to feed the many, and that appreciating what they accomplish year in and year out to literally keep us from starving is the least we can do to thank them.

Yes, it’s late summer and already, a cold dread is beginning to grip my heart as I realize that in a few short weeks, the lush verdancy of the growing season will be replaced by the slate grays and burnt umbers of Autumn. And where the fall has its own distinctive charm and beauty, I have begun to truly hate the winters here in the Midwest, which seem to be getting longer, colder, and darker the older I get.

I feel a kinship with my Celtic ancestors who also hated the winters. Unlike them, I know that spring will eventually get here. They, however, weren’t entirely sure and, just to be on the safe side, would sacrifice a cow during the festival of Samhain (November 1) to one or another of their deities so that the Gods would take pity on them and bring the spring back after a spell. I’m sure they were relieved as I am the first day that temps climb above 60 degrees.

Perhaps My Beloveds - the Chicago Bears - should make a sacrifice before the season gets underway. Just so they don’t mistake one of their defensive lineman for a cow.

And, of course, we are now officially in the stretch run of the baseball season. My White Sox have been so gloriously inconsistent this year that I haven’t even bothered to write about them. But here we are, 5 weeks from the end of the season and the Pale Hose find themselves just a couple of games out of first. Thankfully, other teams in their division have proven to be equally horrible so that the race for the Central Division crown will probably be decided that last week of the season when one team screws up less than the others and backs in to the title.

By then, I will be looking back on this moment with envy. By the time the season concludes, the night air will carry a sharp twitch of cold, you will probably be able to see your breath, a sweater will no longer be enough to keep you warm, and I will be bitching even more about the fact that winter is on the way. This is a prerogative of age, by the way, so I would appreciate it if you kept off my case about it.

After all, you might jinx the whole thing and spring might never make an appearance.

This outrageous dishonesty from MSNBC should have produced an outpouring of criticism from responsible media. Instead, the deliberate cropping of a picture of a man carrying a rifle and pistol outside of an Obama town hall just so the anchor and guests could rail against “white racism” in opposing health care reform — even though the uncropped photo shows the gun carrier to be a Black man — got me to thinking about how it would be possible to quantify the level of hatred directed against President Obama because of his race.

Unlike many of my liberal friends, the Good Lord has not vouchsafed me the ability to peer into the souls of my fellow man to discern the truth or purity of his motives. And it is devilishly difficult to make assumptions in this matter based on polling, or other less politically motivated criteria because invariably, people are ashamed (as well they should be) of harboring racist attitudes toward our chief executive. They will lie to pollsters, to their friends, even to themselves, I suppose. It makes gleaning the truth that much more difficult.

Then there is the problem with separating real anger and fear about health care reform from the very real feelings of fear and anger that a black man is president. Can a racist sincerely be against health care reform because of their political or ideological beliefs? Does it matter? What legitimacy, if any, should be granted that individual’s views?

Obama supporters aren’t helping matters by tarring and feathering anyone who looks sideways at the president as a racist. And those who deliberately employ the word as a smear to score political points are as bereft of character and despicably dishonest as any real racist who opposes them. Casually dropping the word “racist” in critiques of Obama opponents is getting quite tiresome, and those who thoughtlessly do so are contributing to the dilution of the word’s impact - an unintended consequence of the word’s overuse.

All of this is lost on many, if not most purveyors of the “Obama opponents are really closet Kluxers” narrative. There appears to be as much mindless caricature of the president’s adversaries as there is of the president himself. But if many on the left are too willing to see the absolute down and dirty worst in their opponents, it is equally true that we on the right are at a loss about how to police our own ranks in order to rid ourselves of those who express outrageous opinions that specifically refer to Obama’s skin color or cultural heritage.

No penalty accrues to those who will correct me in the comments by stating that the president is “only half black” or that he’s looking out for his “home boys” or any one of a dozen other racially charged memes that can be found in the comments on many conservative blogs. Most bloggers try and police their comment sections and remove the most objectionable attitudes.

But deleting the comments doesn’t delete the problem, and aside from talking and writing about it, I am at a loss as to how to separate the scum from those who legitimately, and for reasons of party or ideology, oppose what the president is trying to do.

Sniffing out obvious racism is one thing. Discerning it otherwise is well nigh impossible. In the end, referring to one’s political opponents as being motivated by race hatred is being applied far too broadly, and in too many cases, is done knowing full well that it simply isn’t true. This too, breeds no consequences and is, in fact, cheered on by many liberals who delight in piously wrapping themselves in the mantle of authority on matters relating to who is and who is not a racist. Of course, they’d never let politics intrude in making such weighty decisions now, would they?

While there is no objective way to count racists, we might extrapolate that racist attitudes are held by many of those who, despite all evidence, logic, reason, and facts to the contrary, believe that Barack Obama is not the legitimate president of the United States.

There have been a few polls that have tried to measure the birther phenomenon, none with an eye toward discerning racial attitudes. The Pew Poll measured attitudes toward media coverage of the birther story. While 39% of Republicans say they had not heard enough about the birther issue, I fail to see how it necessarily follows that 39% of the GOP believes Obama is illegitimate for racist reasons - especially since 30% of independents say the same thing. There can’t be that many racists in America. If there were, Obama would never have been elected.

More to the point, this Daily-Kos-Research 2000 poll asks simply if Barack Obama was born in the United States. The fact that 58% of Republicans answered either “no” or “not sure” is more reflective of racist attitudes. And while it is impossible to be specific, I don’t see how one can escape concluding that a potentially large subset of that 58% refuse to acknowledge Obama as president because he is a black man.

How large is found in a regional breakdown of that number. Fully 53% of southerners doubt (23% “no”, 30% “not sure”) Obama’s citizenship. That includes both parties, by the way, although the number of Democrats who do not believe or are not sure Obama is a citizen nationally is only 7%. It is logical, considering the small level of doubt in other regions of the country (upwards of 90% of all respondents in the rest of the country believe Obama is a citizen), it’s a good bet that most of the Democratic doubters are found in the south too.

(How reliable is a poll conducted by one of the most partisan liberal sites on the web? Research 2000 is a respected outfit and those professionals who have examined their methodology find little to complain about.)

Is it reasonable to apply historical attitudes toward race and logic to believe a good portion of those southerners harbor racist attitudes toward the president? I believe the very nature of the birther argument supports that theory.

No, not all birthers are racists. Probably not even a majority. But the level of fear and hatred directed against the president based on absolutely nothing except a wild conspiracy theory would have to point to some other element at work besides the belief that Obama was not born here or is not a “natural born citizen.” Again, reason would dictate that a sizable but unknown segment of these Obama opponents are indeed, motivated by their inability to accept a black man as president.

(To my southern friends, I would say that you cannot deny history - ancient or recent - and say it is a statistical fluke of some kind that so many of your fellow southerners disbelieve the president’s citizenship, while refusing to ascribe such thinking to racial reasons.)

Scattershot charges of racism against most, if not all Obama opponents is therefore demonstrably untrue. But there is also no denying that a significant portion of the southern GOP opposes the president based at least partly on his race.

Where does this leave us as far as my original question? Is there any way to determine what percentage of opposition to the president is based on the fact that he’s African American?

Broadly speaking, I think we can, although it will be to nobody’s satisfaction. Racism as a factor in opposing the president is certainly far less prevalent than Obama supporters would have us believe. And from what I’ve tried to show, it is more prevalent than what many in the Republican party are claiming or wish to believe.

Yes, I’ve made a hash of the issue. What do you expect when the subject is racism in America? Ultimately, those with the courage to examine their own motives in opposing or supporting the president, must come to their own conclusions. But being aware of the issue as it affects our politics, weighing the methods by which we fight for what we believe, and discerning our personal attitudes toward our first Black president, will at least make us conscious of the dynamite with which we play when injecting race into any argument we have with each other.