That ain’t right

It’s bad enough that Abraham Lincoln is revered in this country, notwithstanding the Constitutional wreckage his presidency left behind. But most Americans – including, until yesterday, me – aren’t aware that another Constitution-wrecker is being given special posthumous honors on an annual basis.

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Just learned on @dailyrundown that each yr a military honor guard lays a wreath on Woodrow Wilson’s tomb. Can next R president stop this?

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WHA-WHA-WHAT?!?!?!?!? Woodrow effing Wilson?!?!?!?!?

For those of you unfamiliar with the disgrace that was Woodrow Wilson, his presidency was the first real-world implementation of fascism, a full decade before the original Il Duce, Benito Mussolini, coined the term. Wilson employed legislative coercion, media control, and even outright thuggery to achieve his ends. His current address is that dark corner of Hell where despots and tyrants spend their days. This piece of shit gets a military honor guard? Every frickin’ year?

That ain’t right. It just ain’t right.

And it begins…

The pattern has been played out over and over. A potential Team Elephant presidential candidate starts to rise in the polls. A bulls-eye is affixed to that candidate. A combination of Republican elites, their allies in the punditocracy, and Big Media (the BM for short), which simply can’t help itself when an opportunity to dump on a Republican presents itself, begin hammering on any and all perceived defects of said candidate. Next thing you know, the new frontrunner is cast on the scrap heap, either to quit (like Herman Cain) or to flounder haplessly trying to regain momentum (like Michele Bachmann and Governor Perry Gardasil).

Now that Newt Gingrich is dropping faster than shares in Freddie Mac, Ron Paul has surged into a virtual tie and perhaps even the lead in Iowa.

That’s bad.

“Vulture, WTF? I though you were a Paul guy.” I am. Which is why I’m dreading what awaits. A decent and honorable man is about to be dragged through the slime, called everything but a child of God, and accused of all sorts of thought crimes ranging from racism to anti-Americanism.

Think I’m kidding. The threats have already started from the faux conservative media.

The establishment Elephants will NOT tolerate any attempt by the American people to choose a candidate other than Mitt Romney (and his presidential hair). They don’t care who they wreck in the process.

And we wonder why we have the caliber of candidates we have. Only the bravest, the most foolish, or the most power-mad need apply. Decent people need not apply.

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.

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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.

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“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.

Candidate for the Elephant Elite

I’ve made no secret of my loathing for “The Hairdo”, AKA Mitt Romney. He’s the poster child for RINOs. He’s a gigantic flip-flopping fraud. And now, once again, he’s running for President.

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Romney declared to cheers on a sunny farm in southern New Hampshire, “I’m Mitt Romney and I believe in America. And I’m running for president of the United States.”

The former governor and business executive aggressively challenged Democratic President Obama while trying to pitch himself to the coalition that makes up the modern GOP: fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, evangelicals and libertarians. Romney included nods to all as he sought to make himself the candidate with the broadest appeal and best shot at sending Obama home to Chicago as a one-term president.

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Yeah, he’s trying to appeal to everybody. He certainly appeals to the Elephant Elitists, who have all but anointed him as The Chosen One. But if you really examine who he is and what he represents, he certainly won’t appeal to YOU.

• He’s pro-Big Government, as shown by his Massachusetts Health Care “solution”.
• He’s foursquare in favor of King George the Dim’s War Without End.
• He favors Corporate Welfare, such as ethanol subsidies.
• He claims to be “Pro Life”…but his record is anything but.
• He flip-flops on a regular basis on immigration.
• Worst of all: he believes in man-made global warming (AGW).

Anyone who purports to be a “conservative” who supports this tool is a waste of oxygen and should be forcibly prohibited from voting.

The irony of the situation is mind-blowing. Ron Paul is “extreme” and “unelectable”. But Mitt Romney? Why, he’s everything a “conservative” could ever wish for!

Except conservative.

Acknowledging the obvious (sort of)

Sometimes something is so apparent that even Big Media (the BM for short) has to acknowledge it. Okay, so in this case it’s ex-BM. But it still stands as acknowledged.

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Several veteran and prize-winning journalists who covered presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush say that the current crop of White House correspondents are too timid and deferential and have played a role in killing the impact of presidential news conferences.

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Unfortunately, what DIDN’T get acknowledged is the lapdog deference the press corp has for Il Duce.  I guess you can’t have everything…

The BM’istas try to create the illusion that the deference shown Il Duce was also extended to King George the Dim.

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“If you watch an Obama news conference, and watched a Bush news conference previous to that, where correspondents sit in their seats with their hands folded on their laps, [it’s] as if they are in the room with a monarch and they have to wait to be recognized by the president,” says Sid Davis, the former NBC Washington bureau chief who covered nine presidents. “It looks like they are watching a funeral service at [Washington funeral firm] Joseph Gawler’s and it shouldn’t be that way.”

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Nothing could be further from the truth. Bush was treated with a hostility previously reserved for Richard Nixon by the BM during his 8 hapless years in office.

I have no love for George Bush. But let’s tell a straight story, shall we? The deference issue is specific to Obama. Period.

It remains to be seen if the White House press corps’ behavior will change [/sarcasm].

The truth is, the only thing that will make the White House press corps return to a position of asking tough questions and being confrontational is a change of president.

An Alliance Worth Keeping

Republican Presidential candidate John McCain has written an excellent article examining the Australia-US alliance and puts forth a very convincing argument as to why the alliance should be kept.

An extract:

In the middle of 1908, Australians and Americans recognised immediately the kindred spirit of two rugged and energetic peoples separated by half the globe but united by shared hopes for mankind. That initial friendship would be forged into an inseparable bond through many struggles in the years to come. Ten years after the Great White Fleet left Sydney Harbour, American soldiers would serve under Australian general John Monash at the decisive Battle of Hamel on the Western Front. My father and grandfather would both serve side by side with the Royal Australian Navy in the Pacific theatre, turning back the Japanese tide and then building a post-war network of alliances that would usher in a new era of peace and prosperity in Asia.

He makes a solid argument for the continuation and deregulation of free trade, as well as the case for maintaining an alliance with Australia, and furthering relations with Asia. It’s an excellent article and well worth a read.

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?

Alaska Gov. Palin to be Named as McCain Running Mate

Angus, you are a seer, extraordinaire… :). All HAIL Angus.

Fox News

Received in my email. One of the few advertisements you will see on our Blog, unless or until we go “commercial”.

A Personal Note from John O’Neill

(and Human Events’ sister company, Regnery Publishing)

Dear Friend,

As you may recall, I was privileged to play a role in helping prevent John Kerry from being elected president when my fellow Swift Boat Veterans and I released the book Unfit for Command. As liberal as Kerry was, America faces an even more liberal threat today: Barack Obama. Fortunately, investigative journalist and National Review Online political reporter David Freddoso has written the book every voter needs to read: The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate.

Uncovering stories the mainstream media has neglected, Freddoso reveals Obama for who he really is: the U.S. senator with the #1 most liberal voting record in the Senate. And a politician whose rhetoric of “change” does not match the reality of his corrupt, “Chicago-machine politics” background.

Moving past Obama’s inspiring speeches and say-anything-to-win campaign tactics, Freddoso outlines Obama’s extreme, far-left legislative record and his questionable associations with both criminals and radicals. From Obama’s repeated support for the Chicago patronage system, to his hard-line position of no restrictions on abortion, The Case Against Barack Obama offers the cold, hard facts about this man who would be our next president.

As American citizens, it is our right and duty to question the background, character, and proposals of any candidate who could be our next commander in chief. Democrats and the media are not holding Obama accountable, so conservatives must. I’m grateful to David Freddoso and my publisher, Regnery, for finally revealing the man behind the myth.

I urge you to read The Case Against Barack Obama. I also recommend that you buy copies for your friends and relatives who may consider voting for Obama. They deserve to know the truth, too.
Please click on one of the links below to order your copy today.

Sincerely,
John O’Neill

Click below to save 20% or more off bookstore prices!

Should one chose to do so, the links:

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble.com

Borders.com

An Australian’s View On McCain

John McCain hasn’t received too much media coverage here in Australia at this point, but now that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic Party nomination, that will probably change.

Australia isn’t likely to hear too much about John McCain’s outstanding military service, or that a number of people in the McCain family have served their country, or that McCain and his wife adopted one orphan who couldn’t get the medical treatment she needed in Bangladesh, so Cindy McCain brought the child home and cared for her, or that McCain and his wife also rescued another child, who was taken in by a McCain aide.

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 new Dem meme: What Will Karl Do? Missed this from a few days ago. Courtesy, J.M.

We could see this coming for months, and the results should be delicious. Huffington Post writer Tom Edsall reveals that a union has developed an extensive and detailed attack on Barack Obama’s connection with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the former Weather Underground terrorists, while at the same time deriding it as “McCarthyism”. How do they square that circle? They wrap it into a cautionary message that asks, “What will Karl do?”:

A high-ranking labor supporter of Hillary Clinton is distributing to union leaders and to Democratic strategists a document detailing the radical activities of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, two former members of the ’70s group the Weather Underground, who decades later, in Chicago, crossed paths with Barack Obama.

The document – a three-page emailed essay by Rick Sloan, communications director for the International Association of Machinists as Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) — takes both literary and political license to outline what Sloan believes would be the thrust of a hypothetical Republican campaign against Obama focusing on his tangential connection to Ayers and Dohrn.

The goal of the essay appears to be to discredit Obama as the prospective Democratic presidential nominee. …

Sloan contends that the purpose of his document is to outline what he conjectures will be the tactics of Republican operative Karl Rove, an informal adviser to John McCain’s campaign, if Obama is the nominee. The title of Sloan’s paper is: “What Is Rove Up To?”

Well, this is really convenient, isn’t it? Not only can they indulge in what they call McCarthyism, they can blame their bete noir Karl Rove for it before he even utters a word. This frees up both Democratic contenders to fling as much mud at each other under the WWKD concept. We can call it pre-emptive McCarthyism, another great concept in campaigning from the people who brought us the vast right-wing conspiracy.

And it’s not McCarthyism by any stretch of the imagination. As Andrew McCarthy ironically noted yesterday, the Obamas have political ties to Ayers and Dohrn, not just a one-off chance meeting. Since Obama made his superior judgment the centerpiece of his campaign, it’s hardly outside the boundaries of political discourse to question why he tied himself politically to an unrepentant terrorist for years, why he and Ayers sent $75,000 to a Yasser Arafat toady, and even why he financially supports a church whose pastor claims that the government created AIDS to conduct genocides.
Meanwhile, the real Karl Rove can sit on the sidelines while the Democrats diminish themselves at the speed of light in an orgy of hypocrisy.

That’s what this really is — a way to campaign hard while blaming others for the damage it causes, as hypocritical an effort as one will ever see in politics.

All we can say is, “Rove, you magnificent bastard!” — and ask when we can get our WWKD wristbands and bumper stickers.

Hot Air.com

The Ad Hillary Should Be Running

Hillary should definitely have run this ad in Pennsylvania.

Again, this is via Instapundit.

Blackburn on McCain’s short list? This is where John McCain, could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory

A South Carolina blog claims to have seen the five names on John McCain’s short list for Vice President: Joe Lieberman, Charlie Crist, Tim Pawlenty, Haley Barbour, and Marsha Blackburn.

Blackburn would certainly be a good choice to help consolidate some of the Talk Radio Conservative who claim that they’re going to sit out the election rather than vote for John McCain. The Tennessee Republican congressman is fiscally conservative, strong on illegal immigration, and a supporter of victory in Iraq. She is also a scrappy fighter who came to prominence as a Tennessee State Senator who spearheaded the successful fight to stop a state income tax proposed by a Republican governor, and then emerged successfully from a heated primary over two better-funded candidates to win her first term in Congress in 2002. Blackburn is also a darling of Talk Radio Conservatives and frequent guest on their shows.

The blog claims that the McCain campaign is also considering a “secure the center” strategy which would allegedly put 27 states, instead of the usual 12 to 14, into play for Republicans in November.

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McCain’s VP choice is crucial…and while Marsha Blackburn…is an attractive person…outside of Tennessee, she is an unknown. John…make it a damn good one, unless you really like the sound of President Obama, or President Clinton.

Bob Krum

Read about this yesterday, after getting home. Did I post it…OH NO…I’d rather have a few beers…or Tequila shooters.

This is a must see…

Hot Air

Were I John McCain with his friendship and trust in this man, I’d seriously ask myself and Joe Lieberman to be my Vice President.

Although I believe Lieberman would turn it down…for two reasons:

One. He could be of more use to and for the country if he remained in the U.S. Senate.

Two. It may radicalize* the more sensible, if there are, Democrats to support either of the two Leftist candidates out of anger, over them sitting on the fence about McCain, OR holding their noses voting while voting for McCain.

*asterisk explained. “Radicalize”= Islam, which many are ready NOW (which is another like the following two) to cede power to in this nation…Through the ACLU and CAIR, now. Knowing full well, that ‘they’ would never be eaten. Yeah, Right!

Today on the Presidential Campaign Trail

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