Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
– Benjamin Franklin

I kinda like that one!

(hat-tip http://www.jsmineset.com/)

Update:  Apparently, the quote above didn’t originate with dear old Ben, as per the first comment below…

In 1898 the battleship Maine was sent to Cuba to protect American interests during Cuba’s revolt against Spain.  She was sunk by an explosion after being anchored for three weeks in the harbor of Havana, Cuba.  Blaming the nation of Spain, who at that time was the colonial ruler of Cuba, the battle cry was “Remember the Maine, the hell with Spain!”

OK people.  Going forward, one thing we must keep in mind is, the almost universal consensus among conservatives, that the Republican nominee in 2008, John McCain, was not only a poor candidate by the standards of campaigning and strategy – but he was far, very far, from being an acceptable voice for conservativism.

Yes, I know on many conservative issues he voted the right way.  But what we’re talking about here and now is the potential leader of the Republican Party at a time of crisis and tipping point.  The Maverick was not a conservative when it came to principle and ideology.  During the 2008 campaign his ship was sunk in the very harbor he anchored in for years, the waters of media limelight and accommodation with those across the aisle.

Some say, go with the guy who is most “electable,” who will appeal to that independent out there who doesn’t care for all these conservative/liberal ranglings. Pick someone with the ability to approach issues with some “nuance,” who might be better at working with the other side on various issues.  And by all means please pick someone who the media feels is less “toxic” than those movement conservatives!

Right… and watch him not only not defend and promote a conservative vision, but watch him pathetically defend against attacks from the media and the left with dry policy positions, good will, and genuine consternation as to why he is being slimed. The other side doesn’t care one whit about being reasonable.  They care about winning and promoting their leftist direction for this country.  And this year it’s Chicago style!

I will back an ideological conservative fighter with weaknesses any day over a one-dimensional competent manager of conservative-lite policy initiatives.  It is belief and core principles that determine direction of one’s policies, what one will fight for, and the decisions one takes under fire. Voters will be swayed by whomever makes the case for the best direction of this nation.   I want a candidate who will argue with conviction and passion that the conservative vision is in the best interest of this country.  This is especially true in these times of increasing troubles.

Remember the McCain!

So how does the left now square Obama’s many failures in representing America to the various countries of the world (England, Russia, Israel, Iran, China, Japan…)?  Given their ridicule toward George Bush with his so-called lack of diplomatic finesse, it may be hard to swallow that Mr. Obama by their own measure makes “W” appear to be quite the statesman.

The “lightness of being” that is Mr. Obama is becoming more apparent with time. And it appears his administration is over-populated with the same like minded, light-weights who are out of their league in the world arena.

Wasn’t Obama’s raison d’etre vis-a-vis Bush how he would better represent America to the world?

Well, according to Big Government, the mainstream Japanese weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun reported that the visit was the “worst” one ever… and additionally from a source at the Japanese Foreign Ministry-
“To tell you the truth, it had to have been the worst US-Japan Summit Meeting in history.”

Three more years, alas…

cheers…
sir curmudgeon-
 The World’s Ruined

Or, when does a place of worship relinquish it’s Constitutional protections of “free exercise” of religion? The recent revelations concerning the Fort Hood terrorist, Nidal Hasan, and his association with a Virginia mosque that Nawaf al-Hazmi and Hani Hanjour–two of the 9/11 terrorists–also frequented, has gotten me to thinking along these lines…

A bank forfeits its legitimacy as a lawful financial institution when behind the scenes it serves as the means of laundering money gained from criminal activity. That bank no longer is serving its legal business function and therefore should be brought to justice in order that the illegal financial operations be ended and the underlying criminal activity exposed and prosecuted.

In the same way, doesn’t a mosque (or any other religious institution) cede its legitimacy as a place of religious worship, protected under the First Amendment, when it functions as a vehicle for the laundering of terrorists bent on carrying out their murderous vision of religion in the United States?

In the example of the bank, the bad money is given a cover of legitimacy through deceptive financial accounting. This allows the illicit money to have the cover of honest gain in order that it can be used to further illegal activities without exposure.

So too with the laundering mosque cited above, bad actors or otherwise jihadists (those waging a holy war on behalf of Islam as a religious duty) are afforded a veneer of peaceful, legitimate religious beliefs (in this case a misguided application of cultural diversity one might say) by the deceptive “house of worship” in order that those individuals can plan and carry out their terrorist intentions. When this occurs then that religious institution is likewise a criminal accesory and, I dare say, a treasonous enterprise. Such organizations should be broken up with the same or even more conviction exercised in law enforcement toward money laundering banks; exposed for what they are and those responsible brought to justice.

I am aware of, and sympathetic to, the objections of our government sticking its nose into private religious affairs. But when evidence of the above surfaces, then that evidence should be followed by investigation and, if warranted, indictments and the cessation of the bogus religious operation. The terrorist considers his mosque related activity as obligatory religious warfare. How are we to view it?

My gut tells me that we entertain squeamishness in this matter at our own peril.

-sir curmudgeon

Below is Letterman’s second go at this. You be the judge.  My comments follow after.

[Dave Letterman]  “All right, here – I’ve been thinking about this situation with Governor Palin and her family now for about a week – it was a week ago tonight, and maybe you know about it, maybe you don’t know about it. But there was a joke that I told, and I thought I was telling it about the older daughter being at Yankee Stadium. And it was kind of a coarse joke. There’s no getting around it, but I never thought it was anybody other than the older daughter, and before the show, I checked to make sure in fact that she is of legal age, 18. Yeah. But the joke really, in and of itself, can’t be defended. The next day, people are outraged. They’re angry at me because they said, ‘How could you make a lousy joke like that about the 14-year-old girl who was at the ball game?’ And I had, honestly, no idea that the 14-year-old girl, I had no idea that anybody was at the ball game except the governor and I was told at the time she was there with Rudy Giuliani … and I really should have made the joke about Rudy …” (audience applauds) “But I didn’t, and now people are getting angry and they’re saying, ‘Well, how can you say something like that about a 14-year-old girl, and does that make you feel good to make those horrible jokes about a kid who’s completely innocent, minding her own business,’ and, turns out, she was at the ball game. I had no idea she was there. So she’s now at the ball game, and people think that I made the joke about her. And, but still, I’m wondering, ‘Well, what can I do to help people understand that I would never make a joke like this?’ I’ve never made jokes like this as long as we’ve been on the air, 30 long years, and you can’t really be doing jokes like that. And I understand, of course, why people are upset. I would be upset myself.

“And then I was watching the Jim Lehrer ‘Newshour’ – this commentator, the columnist Mark Shields, was talking about how I had made this indefensible joke about the 14-year-old girl, and I thought, ‘Oh, boy, now I’m beginning to understand what the problem is here. It’s the perception rather than the intent.’ It doesn’t make any difference what my intent was, it’s the perception. And, as they say about jokes, if you have to explain the joke, it’s not a very good joke. And I’m certainly – ” (audience applause) “– thank you. Well, my responsibility – I take full blame for that. I told a bad joke. I told a joke that was beyond flawed, and my intent is completely meaningless compared to the perception. And since it was a joke I told, I feel that I need to do the right thing here and apologize for having told that joke. It’s not your fault that it was misunderstood, it’s my fault. That it was misunderstood.” (audience applauds) “Thank you. So I would like to apologize, especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I’m sorry about it and I’ll try to do better in the future. Thank you very much.” (audience applause).

To me, this is just Letterman essentially saying, “My intent was OK (I was joking about Bristol), but because it was a flawed, poorly constructed, ["kind of(?) coarse"] joke people heard it as aimed at Willow.  My bad for the misunderstanding.”  He starts to go in the direction of what was objectionable when he says that the “joke, in and of itself, can’t be defended.”  But after that he is off into a longer rationalization that at the core this was a Bristol-Willow confusion thing.  This is not much more than a wordy explanation that repeats what he said in his first attempt to put out the fire. He does offer a direct apology of sorts to the Palin’s and their two daughters. But unfortunately that is completely undercut by his obfuscation of what was offensive (the problem as he says) – which was not to whom the joke was directed nor the perception of it… but the actual vile nature and content of the so-called joke… period, end of discussion! Oops… I did say you be the judge, didn’t I.

Maybe Dave needs to go on an apology tour.

[Update]  Governor Palin accepts Letterman’s apology which is, at this point, the gracious thing to do.  She knows it’s time to move on.

cheers,

Jack
The World’s Ruined

This is a follow up to an earlier post on my blog Diddling Dave, Don Imus, and The Media:

Tonight, Dave Letterman explained his “jokes” about Sarah Palin’s daughter…
“We were, as we often do, making jokes about people in the news and we made some jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter [Bristol]… and now they’re upset with me…” Letterman says on tonight’s show. “These are not jokes made about her 14-year-old daughter. I would never, never make jokes about raping or having sex of any description with a 14-year-old girl…. Am I guilty of poor taste? Yes. Did I suggest that it was okay for her 14-year-old daughter to be having promiscuous sex? No.” Saying he hopes he’s “cleared part of this up,” Letterman extended an invitation to Palin to come on the show as a guest.

Pathetic. Way to not man up David. This fails miserably on several levels:

1. His writers got the items for this stand up drive-by hit on Palin’s daughter from news accounts. There were no mentions of Bristol, the 18 year old daughter, being with Sarah Palin in New York. So…
2. At worst it was definitely about sliming the 14 year old Willow Palin.
3. At best, Letterman was willing to use Willow as a foil for sliming Bristol… but content to let anyone out there who “didn’t get it” think it was about Willow.
4. So making jokes about raping an 18 year old single mother of a new born is OK?
5. As I said, this explanation by Letterman fails miserably, and…

Letterman fails miserably as a human being… more like a worm.

Jack at The World’s Ruined

Given the DEFCON 1 national fury in 2007, I wonder how Don Imus feels about the “equal” outrage filling the various media over Letterman’s calling Gov. Palin’s underage daughter a “ho!”… and his other guttural flatulence regarding Sarah Palin and her daughter (here and here).

Oh, that’s right, diddling Dave didn’t use the word “ho” did he… hmmm. When am I going to learn the media’s sophisticated rules of etiquette on how to slur, demean, and crap on a teenage girl… and otherwise engage in spewing misogynistic vulgarisms as diddling Dave has?!

And by the way, when will President Obama register his outrage concerning Letterman as he did regarding Imus in the first link above?

I have been mulling over the question of whether Barack Obama is our first “post-American” president.  By that I mean he may be the first person to occupy the Oval Office who seems more comfortable as a “world citizen” than as an American; who tends to reflexively see U.S. history mainly in terms of injustices perpetrated by America on various groups or nations rather than mainly a record of freedom and good.  Any way, you get the idea.  Here are several items that would lend support to that thesis:

1.  His compulsive ongoing apology tour of the world, in which he panders to Muslim countries, ignores enemy threats such as Iran and North Korea, casts the U.S. use of the atom bomb to end WWII as an atrocity, equates Guantanamo which holds illegal combatants (as defined by the Geneva Convention) during wartime with the political prisoners of various totalitarian regimes around the world, bows to Saudi King Abdullah, reaches out to our enemies (Chavez, Iran, Hezzbulah, Hamas) while disrespecting longtime allies (Israel, England).

2.  His nonchalant violation of the property rights of investors in GM and Chrysler, breaking legal contracts protected under the Constitution, and taking federal government ownership control of those two companies… all of which show a disregard for the rule of law and constitutionalism, the bedrock of our civil society.

3.  His longtime close association with mentors (William Ayers, Jeremiah Wright) who, for years, have openly expressed hatred for America.

4.  The ease with which he portrays America as a country that “tortures”, that “imposes its values” on other countries, is “justly” opposed by our enemies due to our past actions.

Just wondering…

-Jack

Wake up America… don’t minimize and rationalize what is happening.

Hat tip Powerline Blog

D

Thinking about the latest National Enquirer smear on Sarah Palin, I had this passing absurd thought of what one could expect in the next “news story” from the MSM.

“News Flash at NY Times Online:

“Just breaking via the National Enquirer is news of an affair between Sarah Palin and, yes, John Edwards!

“The media is all over the story.”

Read More →