The fix is in

During the 2008 presidential election cycle, I wrote over 60 posts — including extensive analysis of the primaries and conventions — at my personal blog, The Vulture Lurks (recommended by 4 out of 5 curmudgeons). So far this election cycle I’ve written a handful of minor posts. Why the drop-off? That’s easy. This isn’t an election we’re witnessing. It’s a coronation, at least on the Team Elephant side of the ledger.

Why would I call it a coronation? How could I call it a coronation when there is no clear front-runner and the first primary hasn’t even occurred yet? Follow along as I read the tea leaves.

---

Conservative media: Fox News (“fair” and “balanced”) is in the tank for Romney. Big time. Some of Fox’s so-called analysts are so far up Romney’s butt that they taste his lunch mere seconds after he does.

Fox has proclaimed Romney winner of nearly all of the debates. Yet after one of the debates, Michele Bachmann surged into the lead in the polls. After another, it was Herman Cain. After yet another, it was Newt Gingrich. You should be getting the idea by now. No matter Romney’s showing, he’s the winner.

Every time Fox gets on the subject of the “Primary front runners”, Romney’s name is first on their lips. No matter where he is in the latest polling, first, second, even FOURTH, he is always “a front runner”. Meanwhile, if he is first or second, NO ONE beyond second place gets a mention. Hell, when he was in fourth place in an Iowa poll recently, the candidate ahead of him, Ron Paul, was omitted from mention in the front runners discussion. But not Mitt.

Talk radio isn’t quite as blatant; in fact, many talk show hosts are reluctant to be seen as endorsing anyone, such is the general distaste for Romney among the listening public. But almost without fail, all talk show hosts assert that no matter who the Republican nominee is, no matter how much they might deviate from conservative principles, we HAVE TO vote for them – ANYONE but Obama. Never mind that a vote for Romney is a vote for “Obama-lite”. You gotta do it!

Columnists of various stripes have wandered hither and yon regarding Romney. But two powerhouse conservative pundits have lined up foursquare behind him: Ann Coulter and Charles Krauthammer. Both of these two alleged conservatives have shelved principle and gone with “electable” as be-all/end-all for their candidate. Never mind that it was said of Ronald Reagan in 1980 that he was unelectable. This is different.

Bang the war drums: Every candidate still in the race, with the exception of Ron Paul, is obsessed with proving their warrior bona fides. “I would go to war with Iran NOW!”, one after another will thunder. The audience (God help us!) eats that shit up. It would appear that so-called conservatives have bought into the propaganda that never-ending pre-emptive war is “defense”. Again, God help us!

One is left in amazement that a candidate can spew vitriol with regards to all of the wasteful spending in Washington, and yet opine that the military, estimated to hit around $1.4 TRILLION in spending in 2012, needs to be beefed up. We’re drowning in debt, but without war-without-end and the trillions of dollars it requires, we’re going to be overrun by cave-dwelling terrorists, and conquered.

The military-industrial complex lives and thrives.

The Team Elephant elite: They’ve made it clear for over a year – Romney is their guy. I suppose they’d settle for Gingrich in a pinch (much as they settled for McCommie last cycle, when Rudy Giuliani was their preference). But they’re adamant. It WILL be Romney or an equally conviction-free statist. Period.

Do you really think the attacks on Governor Perry Gardacil, Herman Cain, and Michele Bachmann happened because Big Media (the BM for short) hates “real” conservatives and wanted to destroy them? Those attacks were friendly fire. Those attacks were orchestrated. Don’t be surprised if Newt succumbs to something similar to what happened to Cain between now and mid-January.

---

“Okay, Vulture. You believe there’s a coronation afoot. What do you say we do about it, smart guy?”

What CAN we do? Truthfully, we in the West have gone so far down the slippery slope to ruin that I don’t think it matters any more who we elect.We might crash and burn and start to recover sooner with one candidate over another.

But crash and burn we shall.

Huge win for freedom

There are some, among them a certain troll who likes to hijack my blog’s comments for his small-minded rants, who are of the opinion that journalists must be accredited and licensed in order to hold that “lofty” title. I disagree wholeheartedly; had that sort of constraint been in place 250 years ago, individuals such as Patrick Henry would have been proscribed from publishing their treatises against the King of England, and we might still be no more than ragtag pommy colonies.

Apologies in advance to any Brits offended by the preceding paragraph. I was just being cheeky.

No, the tradition of the citizen-journalist is at the very bedrock of rights the founding fathers held most dear. Troll-boy’s protestations to the contrary, the reporting of news and spouting of opinion by mere commoners is of vital importance to the health of a republic.

And now a federal judge agrees.

Boston lawyer Simon Glik was arrested on October 1, 2007 when he used his cell phone to record officers making a drug arrest, and later sued the city and the officers for violating his rights. After the officers tried to having the lawsuit dismissed on the basis of qualified immunity, a Federal Appeals Court denied the motion last week and ruled that filming and photographing police is in fact protected by the First Amendment. They also note that the rights extend not just to professional news gatherers, but ordinary citizens as well:

“[…] changes in technology and society have made the lines between private citizen and journalist exceedingly difficult to draw. The proliferation of electronic devices with video-recording capability means that many of our images of current events come from bystanders with a ready cell phone or digital camera rather than a traditional film crew, and news stories are now just as likely to be broken by a blogger at her computer as a reporter at a major newspaper. Such developments make clear why the news-gathering protections of the First Amendment cannot turn on professional credentials or status”.

How big is this news? Beyond big.

As I reported well over a year ago, it is a felony crime in the State of Maryland People’s Republic of Maryland to take video of the Maryland State Police Schutzstaffel in the course of executing their duties (such as shooting pet dogs, for example). Or, should I say, it was.

Now that we can confidently record the jackbooted jagoffs in action, I’m willing to bet that their behavior toward we mere commoners might just be a little less strident. We can only hope.

Sense Spoken

I don’t agree with everything the man in this video clip says, but he says it well and makes his points clear. It’s worth a watch.

Does anyone know who he is?

This video, focusing mostly on abortion, is also worth watching. Excellent points are made.

I’m not sure who he is either.

The Vice-Presidential Debate: My Wrap Up (Updated)

The line that spoke to me most came from Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin:

“I think we need more of Main Street Wasilla in Washington, so that these people, these middle-class, hard-working people are heard in Washington.”

Contrast this to the line that almost made me cry with laughter:

“I go down Union Street, and speak to folks in Home Depot…”

On to the serious stuff, I think Palin nailed this debate. She spoke in a way that showed that she’s far outside Washington circles, using some very homely expressions such as “doggone it”, “ya”, “Say it ain’t so Joe”, and she sounded nowhere near as rehearsed as Joe Biden, plus Governor Palin didn’t rely on her notes almost every sentence. Certainly, she looked at notes (although hers were clearly in dot point form, whereas Biden’s can’t possibly have been) yet she spent the majority of her time making eye contact with the camera.

John McCain – Too Old? An Entirely Subjective Post

Frankly, I don’t think so.  Much has been made about John McCain’s age (which is just the adjunct to “not conservative enough, too tempermental, unhinged by his POW years, etc., blah de blah blah blah”).  I am turning  62 this year, and I’m discovering (as people my age inevitably do) that all my youth-oriented biases were just so much ignorance and misunderstanding.  Not that I claim to be all-wise and stateshiplike at this point, but just that I’m finding out, as my parents and grandparents did, that I really didn’t know shit when I was young.  Kind of like when you leave your college years and get a job and find out you didn’t know everything after all.  It’s a humiliating process, and unfortunately for the ego, it doesn’t stop when you move into middle age and after.

Whatever you think about McCain’s political philosophy (and I certaintly don’t agree with all that either), let’s put to rest his age.  At 72, in this day and age, he’s unlikely to die in office.  My mother-in-law, bless her heart, is 80, and still spry and self-sufficient, and not at all stupid.  But, if our worst fears are realized, McCain will still be surrounded by the advisers and government functionaries whose job it is to keep the Office Of The Presidency operating at maximum, and if he has chosen wisely, a responsible second who will step in to take over.  Let us all remember Ronald Reagan, who even in his presidential heyday was no doubt showing the initial signs of Alzheimers, and yet the Republic did not fall and did not falter.

The fiction is that we elect a man we think will save us all.  The truth is, he will set in motion processes that will, if nor guarantee, at least lend momentum, to the political direction we, the American people, desire. The man is not important.  The office, and its guiding principle, is.

My mother in law turned 80 this year.  She’s still sharp as a tack when it comes to what matters.  She doesn’t like McCain.  She likes Obama even less.  She lived through the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, Vietnam, and now the Great Middle East Mess.  She is the daughter and granddaughter of German immigrants.  She’s never lost sight of American values.  So what makes her irrelevant because of her age?

Same deal when you’re choosing a president.  Crusty old warrior, or clueless metrosexual?

Green Awards Poll: Vote Now

Vote below for the candidate who should win News Ltd’s Green Award for the “Could Do Better” category.

Do it Chicago style!

Sarah Palin: Not Truly A Small Town Girl

Click over to the Telegraph and have a read of an insightful and informative article written on the subject of Sarah Palin and her rise as a political figure. It’s quite a good read.

The Kael Syndrome Returns

But how could this be?

Why the Left is scared of Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin’s pending nomination for Vice President is exposing the depth of the cultural divide between Middle America and the leftists who have taken over the education, media, and cultural establishment of our country. – Thomas Lifson.

A nasty surprise indeed if OB pulls this off.

Decision Made: Jaspan Gone

The Editor-In-Chief of Melbourne’s most socialist/green/left/moronic/but-I-repeat-myself newsrag, The Age has been fired. This is a promising sign, because it means that the falling circulation figures of The Age are sending a signal to the upper management about the declining quality of the rag. Even though they frequently lie about their figures.

The former Editor-In-Chief Andrew Jaspan has a pretty decent resume, but I think it’s fair to say that he has a very skewed view of the world.

When Australian man Douglas Wood was abducted in Iraq, where he was working towards rebuilding the nation, The Age went to an especial effort to make it clear that they believed he deserved to be abducted because “we took away these people’s lives and we didn’t have the right to.”

Archbishop of Washington Chides Pelosi; Denver Archbishop Warns Biden to Skip Communion

Fox News

“As an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time,” Pelosi told NBC’s Tom Brokaw, who had asked her when life begins. “And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition. And St. Augustine said at three months. We don’t know.”

Personally, when a religion involves itself in politics, it should lose the corporation sole tax exemption. Then again, this is the U.S. and they should be able to voice their opinions, but as we know, taxes are completely different from “freedom of speech”. Just ask the IRS.

On the other hand…I like who the church targets 🙂

Just the Facts!

FactCheck.Org

Peep at all the links and see who seems to be distorting more facts. Hint, his name starts with B.O.

Tony Abbott MP: Top Bloke

I have subscriptions to a whole bunch of varied and different email lists, and one of those is the email list of Tony Abbott MP, the former Australian Health Minister. And through reading much of what he writes, I’ve formulated the opinion “Tony Abbott is a top bloke, one I’d sit and have a drink with”.

Mr Abbott is a practising Catholic, and this often resulted in him getting loads of crap from the media, particularly in the debate over abortion drug RU486, and even more so in the weeks it was thought that he’d fathered a son out of wedlock, although later revelations found that the man wasn’t Mr. Abbott’s son. But now I’m getting sidetracked.

Tony Abbott, while still a member of Parliament, is actually out there doing something that will make a difference. Something pretty major. And now, I’ll copy the information from his email for you to read.

The Year Ahead

Ever since the birth of the United States of America, there has been political discord between the major parties, each believing that they knew the best way to lead the nation and prepare it for the challenges of the future. The values of the two major parties have always differed, and always will.

The Republican party was originally founded by “anti-slavery activists and individuals who believed that government should grant western lands to settlers free of charge”, and gradually built up a profile as a party known for promoting diversity and equality. The Republican Party worked to free the workers from slavery, guaranteed the workers equal rights under the law, and gave African-Americans and women the right to vote. The basic values of the Republican Party have shifted over time to encompass the belief that: “Individuals, not government, can make the best decisions; all people are entitled to equal rights; and decisions are best made close to home.”

The Dark Lord Writeth

Karl Rove has put his blood and parchment (does he look like a Microsoft Word kind of guy?!) to an excellent piece on John McCain. He’s quite accurate on much of it.

Quote That Made My Day

From Richard Sharpe at Tim Blair‘s:

If you need a 30 round magazine to nail a porcine beastie then quite frankly, you don’t deserve a rifle.

This is why I’m feeling more optimistic today

WASHINGTON, March 30 (UPI) — Young Americans have a reverence for national institutions, traditions and family values, a U.S. survey indicates.

A survey of so-called “millennials” — those between 21 and 29 — revealed the group overwhelmingly said they support monogamy, marriage, the U.S. Constitution and the military, The Washington Times reported Sunday.

“We were completely surprised. There has been a faulty portrayal of millennials by the media — television, films, news, blogs, everything. These people are not the self-entitled, coddled slackers they’re made out to be. Misnomers and myths about them are all over the place,” said Ann Mack, who directed the survey and is the official “director of trend-spotting” at J. Walter Thompson, the nation’s largest advertising agency.

In addition to indicating 94 percent of millennials respect monogamy and parenthood and 84 percent revere marriage, the survey found 88 percent said they respect the U.S. Constitution, 84 percent respect the military and more than three-quarters believe in the “American dream.”

I have actually had a feeling for a while, through my contact with younger family members and friends, that young adults were actually a lot more ‘conservative’ than they were being made out to be in the popular press. This poll, conducted by an ad agency with no obvious agenda (except the bottom line), would seem to bear that feeling out.

And here’s a thought: Wouldn’t it be a most delicious irony if part of this re-born conservative movement turned out to be in backlash (‘youthful rebellion’, as it were) to the heavy propagandising dished out by hard-left-leaning teachers and professors?

Chavez

Every now and then, the media graces me with an article that I first think is spoof, so I laugh because it’s funny, then I find out it’s actually a real article, and I feel mildly ill. This is one such article.

Highlights:

• The US Government is genocidal.
• President George W Bush is completely crazy.
• The most stylish world leader is Fidel Castro.
• Naomi Campbell thinks Chavez would be a successful Latin singer if he wasn’t the President of Venezuela.

The only plus for Chavez is that he thinks Princess Diana was more attractive than Camilla Parker-Bowles. But even that just means his eyesight works.

Who is The Beef of God?

No, that’s not the answer to a Jeopardy question, Alex.

The Beef of God is a Musician and Natural Philosopher.

The term natural philosopher is not used much anymore, but it basically amounts to being half way between an artist and a scientist, and having as one’s main goal to see the hand of God working in all natural phenomena. The greatest natural philosopher of all time is without a doubt Sir Isaac Newton, and “natural philosopher” is, in fact, what he called himself. Though primarily remembered today as the co-inventor of calculus and the discoverer of the basic laws of physics – Newton is the founder of modern mathematics and physical science – his primary viewpoint from which he made these discoveries was the notion that God’s logic must be supreme and perfect. So, the libtard notion that religion is hostile to science is quite ironic – not to mention wrong – since one of the greatest “scientists” of all time was a supremely devout Christian and used his religious stance and understanding as a springboard to make his greatest discoveries. The problem has been – and always will be – that dim-witted and ignorant “Christians” are hostile to science, because much of science disagrees with proves wrong their utterly stupid and two-dimensional interpretation of Biblical texts.

The more I learn about Newton, the more like him I discover that I am… except for the fact that I can’t do high math. Fortunately, I can do arithmetic and geometry, which is all I need to compose music. Basically, my mind works in visual and aural terms: I can see and manipulate objects in my mind, and I can hear and manipulate sounds in my head, but numbers don’t look or sound like anything to me, so I can’t process them. Seriously, I score below the fiftieth percentile in numerical ability: The average Joe six-pack can do math better than I can. However, I place in the top one percent in all of the abstract reasoning categories, so The Beef of God is a bit of an Idiot Savant as well (The new PC term is “Autistic Savant” but The Beef of God hates leftard intellectual fascism – which is what PC codes are – and so I will continue to use the un-PC term). The Beef of God also has shitty verbal skills and can’t spell his way out of a wet paper sack. Thank God for spelling checkers, but you’ll no doubt note that my grammar sucks ass. I’m also a hunt-and-peck typist, which makes composing posts very laborious (Hey, you try typing with colven hooves!).

Newton was also an alchemist. We know today that alchemy was a dead end and tend to view alchemy with sneering derision, but in his time, it seemed to hold promise. So, don’t dis my main man Isaac for being an alchemist: It was simply a trend of that early time in scientific inquiry.

Additionally, Newton was an interpreter of Biblical prophesy, and without doubt the best one of his time. During Newton’s life – as in every preceding and following era – many ignorant Chicken Little types arose saying, “The sky is falling! The end is near!” Newton, being a supremely gifted logical genius, knew these idiots were full of horse-shit (The Beef of God does not use the term “bullshit”!). In response to this constant idiocy, Sir Isaac came up with his famous prognostication that the world could not possibly “end” – a silly notion, as the end of this current chaos will only be the beginning of something far better – before 2060. It is important to note that Newton was not setting a date, because he was a voracious reader of the Bible, and knew full well that not even the Christened Son of The Living God would know the date and time, but only Father God Himself. What he was saying was, basically and in the current vernacular, “These fuck-tards are completely full of shit, and I have proven that logically. The Millennial Kingdom cannot possibly arrive before 2060. It could happen long after that date, but certainly not before.”

The Beef of God has read almost every English translation of the Bible. The only one I’m aware of that I haven’t read is The Tyndale New Testament, and most of that ended up in the King James anyway, which I have read cover to cover several times. The Beef of God has also read all of the Apocrypha available in English, The Book of Mormon, The Bhagavadgita, and really weird stuff like the complete works of Carlos Castaneda: I’ve been on a spiritual quest all of my life.

Though baptized and confirmed a Missouri Synod Lutheran, The Beef of God would certainly be considered a heretic by any main-stream Christian Denomination.

The Beef of God believes:

1] The Bible contains the essential truth about the nature of God, His Christened Son, and the future course of human events, but there is also tons of allegory and even pure horse-shit in there to muck through.

If you remember the X-Files credo (The Beef of God is a sci-fi geek), “The Truth is Out There,” then the inverse of this would be my view of Biblical texts: The Truth is In There, but there is also a lot of unmitigated crap. The “Evangelical” view that every word in the Bible is the “Inspired Word of God” ~bovine eye-roll~ is simply infantile fantasy. Men have always been men, and they have always had their own individual agendas – not all of them “holy” by any stretch – and to contend that any document written by thousands of men over thousands of years is inerrant is, simply, stupid. However, this position does allow Evangelicals to weasel out of any debate on the subject – or even give the subject any deep and penetrating thought – and given the obviously low levels of intelligence The Beef of God has encountered among evangelical sects, this is probably the only strategy they could possibly employ successfully.

God has a Beef with Evangelicals.

2] Mary was no virgin: Joseph sired The Christened Son of The Living God in the natural (and fun!) way.

God promised David that one of his descendants would sit on the throne forever. All of that “Holy Spirit impregnates Mary” stuff is a lie, because that would mean God broke His promise to David: Joseph was of the house of David; Mary was not. If you read the oldest Gospel, that of Mark, there’s none of that “Virgin Mary” garbage in it: It starts out with the ministry of John The Baptist. The oldest text of it extant is also in a common form of Greek, while the other three are in a very polished form of high Greek, meaning that the later ones underwent more levels of transcription by more highly educated scribes. The Beef of God is 100% convinced that these later stages of translation are where the Virgin Mary Myth was created: The Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John originally started out – after the greetings and salutations – with the ministry of John the Baptist, just like Mark does. Additionally, Paul never mentions anything about “The Virgin Mary” or even says that Mary should be of any particular importance: The Christened Son of The Living God is the sole center of Christian belief, and before John the Baptist Christened Him, nothing in His life matters one iota. “Mary Worship” is actually errant and inimical to the true understanding of what it means to be a Christian. The Beef of God calls himself “A Follower of The Way” – what the earliest followers of The Christened Son of The Living God called themselves – to separate his bovine majesty from the Christian main-stream for this very reason.

God has a Beef with Catholics and the Protestant spin-offs.

3] The invitation of The Christened Son of The Living God to join Him is, “The Mother Of All ‘Come-As-You-Are’ Parties.”

Though God has a Beef with the main-stream denominations, nobody is perfect, so you might as well just go ahead and love ’em anyway. The important thing is to have a saving faith, and then the rest of it will all pan out (That would be “The Pan-Millennialist View” ~bull snort~).

God Has a Beef with The Beef of God.

Yeah yeah: To an infinitude, I’m sure.

HT: Ash for the idea.