The Next Time Liberals Tell You Conservatives Control the Media...

Just point them to the past week of coverage, when a lunatic kills six people and shoots a Congresswoman in the head, and Sarah Palin and talk radio are blamed immediately.

Words fail me to describe the unmittigated gaul of the leftwing fringe--hell, everyone to the left of Sean Hannity--to lecture the public on the ills of conservative opinion. WTF is wrong with these people?

Out With The Old, In With The Old

I expect we'll be seeing a whole lot more stories like this one and this one complaining about Republicans wasting money now that the R's are in charge of the House. These are the same people digging us into trillion-dollar holes less than a month ago, but we do have a word for that: democrisy.

People on the left wonder why we can't take them seriously, and it's probably because their such freakin' hypocrites (among other things). Their faux concern for the poor--the ones they can manipulate best--coupled with their utter contempt for those who actually create jobs and push the economy leaves any smart person rolling their eyes. How could any serious person take them seriously? I mean, stunts like this one, from the group of job-killers that just got ousted, is laughable at best. Cue derisive laughter.

It would have been too much to ask that Democrats stop behaving like Democrats even for a day. I realize that. But watching them try to explain why the 2/3 lock on government they have doesn't make them responsible for everything in Washington is pretty disgusting.

Why Don't We Just Start Branding People?

A new Texas law proposal would require people convicted of animal cruelty register with the state like sex offenders must.

"A predator is a predator, if it's against a human or it's against an animal," said Alexander, who in 2007 put muscle behind toughening Texas' animal-cruelty law.

I'm not advocating animal cruelty or sexual deviancy, but where does this sort of thing end? We've already had people placed on sex offender lists for hugging students and talking to children in public places, not to mention people placed on sex offender registries because of data processing errors. And being convicted of a sexual offense could be as simple as urinating in public. Will the same thing follow with animal cruelty offenders?

Americans are shocked at the barbarity of certain Middle Eastern regimes when it comes to crime. But once you start registering people for peeing in public, barring them from certain professions and living in certain places, how far-fetched does physical punishment sound?

Good-bye and Good Riddance to the 111th Congress

What a mess Democrats have made of things over the last two years. It's not wrong to remind Americans what Democrats have done to them over the course of the last four years: high and long-term unemployment, reckless and pointless spending, increased job-killing regulation and more intrusion into our lives. Worse was the arrogance with which Democrats did all these monstrous things to us. This Wall Street Journal piece sums it up nicely:

For today's left, the main goal of politics is not to respond to public opinion. The goal is to impose the dream of an egalitarian entitlement state whether the public likes it or not. Sooner or later, they figure, the anger will subside and Americans will come to like the cozy confines of the cradle-to-grave welfare state.

Democrats are betting that once Americans start receiving "free" medical care, the demands for higher taxes on "the rich" will be overwhelming. And who knows? They might be right. When 1/2 of Americans aren't paying any income taxes at all and demanding more services, it's hard to argue that they won't want someone else to pay even more for them. My hope is that Americans truly aren't so stupid and greedy as Democrats rely on them to be.

Prediction: Filibuster Reform Will Be About Principle...

Until Republicans control the Senate.

Liberals love the arcane rules of Congress until those rules start gnawing their own posteriors. Then, of course, it's an abuse of power. Kinda like recess appointments and executive orders were during the Bush administration. It was a crime when GWB did it, but liberals embrace these tactics now Their Guy is in charge. I expect the same to be true in the 112th Congress.

Gay Bourgeoisie?

I thought this was an interesting argument regarding the trend of liberal avant garde becoming ho-hum normal.

Two decades ago, the gay left wanted to smash the bourgeois prisons of monogamy, capitalistic enterprise and patriotic values and bask in the warm sun of bohemian "free love." And avant-garde values. In this, they were simply picking up the torch from the straight left of the 1960s and 1970s, who had sought to throw off the sexual hang-ups of their parents' generation along with their gray flannel suits.

As a sexual lifestyle experiment, that failed pretty miserably, the greatest proof being that the affluent and educated children (and grandchildren) of the baby boomers have reembraced bourgeois notions of marriage as an essential part of life. Sadly, it's the have-nots who are now struggling as marriage is increasingly seen as an unaffordable luxury. The irony is that such bourgeois values — monogamy, hard work, etc. — are the best guarantors of success and happiness.

That homosexuals would want the same things heterosexuals do--love, family, stability--shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in the 21st Century. I'm sure there was a time when those identifying themselves as gay were doing so in an in-your-face f-u gesture, but I've met few gay people who felt that way. I would say that's a tiny fraction of the population. I have to agree with Goldberg on this part:

Personally, I have always felt that gay marriage was an inevitability, for good or ill (most likely both). I do not think that the arguments against gay marriage are all grounded in bigotry, and I find some of the arguments persuasive. But I also find it cruel and absurd to tell gays that living the free-love lifestyle is abominable while at the same time telling them that their committed relationships are illegitimate too.

We Were in Favor of Oversight Before We Were Against It

Remember when oversight was the favorite word of Democrats? Back in 2006, Democrats were interested in oversight of the environment, welfare, and the FCC. Democrats were really hot for oversight when it meant trying to hobble a Republican president.

Of course, oversight is just another word for putting the brakes on stuff we don't like, which is why it's ok when we're exercising Congressional oversight powers over a Republican president (cuz he's gonna destroy us) but is a shocking power grab by the rat bastards when exercised by Republicans against a Democratic president. In this case, oversight comes in the form of a provision of the 1996 Congressional Review Act.

House Republicans will have carte blanche next year, and will be able to pass as many of these "resolutions of disapproval" as they want. The key is that a small minority in the Senate can force votes on them as well, and they require only simple-majority support to pass. If they can find four conservative Democrats to vote with them on these resolutions, they can force Obama to serially veto politically potent measures to block unpopular regulations, and create a chilling effect on the federal agencies charged with writing them.

Considering the midterm elections were all about reining in government, you'd think Democrats would be all squiggly about doing the will of the people and fulfilling their constitutional duties to provide oversight to the president. But that only applies if the president is a Republican. I'm sure Democrats will love any ramp-up of executive power as long as the guy wielding it has a "D" after his name.

It's a Sad Day...

When the President of the United States going to church is a news item.

Santa Claus Is a Gay Couple Living in Chelsea

This story makes me wonder why so many children got the idea that this was Santa's address. Kudos to the couple (and the many people who responded) for trying to answer as many letters as possible.

Merry Christmas!

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

It's Christmastime, Which Means It Must Be Time for the Anti-Religionists To Come Out of the Woodwork

It never fails that once December hits, stories of atheists struttin' their stuff come out of the woodwork.

We've already had the atheist ads on the buses here in Fort Worth that created such a stir.

Then there's this I'm too cool to believe in God so I elevate science to the same status idiocy from Ricky Gervais. I'm sure Ricky would be insulted if you pointed out that the same awed tones he used about science are exactly the tones used by the "religionists" he despises. Vox Populi has a great takedown (can you really blame God for this?) for Ricky:

Gervais is not so much incorrect as completely incoherent when he says that science "bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence". First, he reveals the usual atheist's inability to distinguish between "evidence" and "scientific evidence". Second, science does not possess either conclusions or beliefs and it does not base them or anything else upon evidence; Gervais clearly doesn't understand how the scientific method works because it is used to produce evidence (of the scientific variety), it is not based upon evidence of any kind. Third, his example is spectacularly ignorant, as science not only did not develop penicillin, but the parochial arrogance of scientists actually retarded the development of the effective medical application of what had been the very sort of traditional medieval practice that Gervais disdains for decades. His knowledge doesn't even rise to the level of Wikipedia: see the story of Ernest Duchesne and his 1897 paper that was ignored by the Institut Pasteur.

I continue my traditional eyerolling at rude atheist behavior towards religious believers, specifically Christians. As a Presbyterian, I believe God doesn't need my help pointing out man's stupidity and hubris. He's a big boy and will take care of all this anyway. But as a woman who's given birth to three healthy babies, I find it stunningly stupid for anyone to blandly lecture me that evolution over a million years (or a billion or zillion, or however many science has now decided it takes to explain away humanity) caused a single cell to become a 9-pound baby boy. And every so-called advancement of science--whether in medicine or chemistry or astronomy--only further convinces me that God is both Great and Good.

I don't bother arguing these things with those who don't believe because I still think that's between them and God (or them and themselves, I suppose). Just don't be a sanctimonious jerk in the process.

Finally, for our anti-religious trifecta, we have Michelle Malkin's column on the ACLU's campaign to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. I was cruising Pandagon yesterday, and in my best Amanda Marcotte imitation, I'd say that the ACLU is just preventing Catholics from hating women and trying to stop them from having sex. Of course, none of that is true; the Catholic church likes women to have sex, just keep it inside marriage and don't kill your inconvenient offspring.

But the ACLU, in the interest of baby-killing equality, can't stand the idea that there's a hospital somewhere that won't allow a 38-week pregnant woman to yawn and decide it's just a 20-minute procedure (see earlier Pandagon posts).

As the Washington-based Becket Fund, a public interest law firm that defends the free expression of all religious traditions, pointed out to the feds: "The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of emergency health care,' just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder. Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation's integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognize and protect those rights."

Of course, there are always other non-Catholic hospitals an abortion seeker could go to, but that's not the point, is it? This is about attacking Catholicism on one of its basic tenets. Which is a great way to celebrate Christmas.

How Children Lost Their Independence

This article is about Great Britain, but the same phenomenon is true in the U.S.

My father could roam the hills and valleys of West Virginia without his parents knowing where he was all the time. I could roam my own neighborhood in much the same manner. But my children? The youngest daughter isn't allowed to leave the house without her brother along (granted, she's old enough now that I figure she can ride her bike around the neighborhood, but the habit is ingrained).

Why are we limiting our children's freedom? I suggest 2 reasons. One is a fear of crime. We spend so much time watching the news about all the horrible things happening to somebody's children that we fear it happening to our own. This is why parents won't let their kids walk home from the elementary school alone, the way generations before them did.

The other reason, IMO, is a lack of sidewalks. My neighborhood has sidewalks within it, but the busy streets do not. This limits how far anyone can walk safely (kids do walk to the middle school and high school, but it isn't safe).

The greatest freedom to roam that most children have is on the internet, and that's probably far more dangerous than walking to the local strip center.

Republican Landslide?

This story, discussing Republican redistricting that could harm Democrats in 2012 and beyond, directly contradicts the Democratic talking point of the last few years: that demographics favor Democrats in the long-term.

The 2010 census report coming out Tuesday will include a boatload of good political news for Republicans and grim data for Democrats hoping to re-elect President Barack Obama and rebound from last month's devastating elections.

The population continues to shift from Democratic-leaning Rust Belt states to Republican-leaning Sun Belt states, a trend the Census Bureau will detail in its once-a-decade report to the president. Political clout shifts, too, because the nation must reapportion the 435 House districts to make them roughly equal in population, based on the latest census figures.

The Democratic talking point is that the country is becoming less white, which favors their candidates. But now we're hearing that it's population that predicts dominance?

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Buh-Bye

The military's ridiculous Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy is now history and that's only 15 years too late, IMO.

Call it a leftover from my more liberal days, but the military policy regarding homosexuals never made a lot of sense to me, especially once we weren't kicking people out for being homosexual (just for answering someone who asked if one were). I understand that Don't Ask, Don't Tell was just a compromise to force the government to stop punishing people for being in the military and being gay, but this policy always left me scratching my head.

These days, I'd just as soon everybody kept this information to themselves. You're gay? Fine. You can talk about your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your spouse and what y'all had for dinner. But I don't want a lecture about gay rights on Dancing With the Stars or any other television show I bother watching. That's about as equal as it gets around here.

UPDATE: I won't link to the stupid American Family Association which takes a "teh sky is falling!!1!!" approach to the subject of gay people in the military not hiding it anymore, but Confederate Yankee discusses the whole thing.

Here's What Democrats Will Be Doing for the Next 2 Years

Namely, complaining that Republicans have a voice in government.

If the Villager victory dance over this deal today is any indication, liberals have just been dealt completely out of the narrative and it's now simply a battle between conservatives, Tea Partiers and the president. And all the important parties agree that it is a perfect template for future "compromise."

I suppose in Digby's eyes compromise previously was telling Republicans to shut up and vote for their budget-busting, economy-cratering ideas.

Then there was this:

Of course, you have to keep in mind that the Republicans gave up nothing real in this deal. Since they never expected to keep the estate tax at zero all they gave up was a fake desire to make the tax cuts permanent -- they always wanted the issue for the election -- and an equally phony pose that they didn't want to extend unemployment.(Even they aren't dumb enough to pull that much money out of the economy at the moment) That's it, the full extent of their contribution to the "compromise." So keep your eyes peeled for the next irrelevant shiny object they throw out to the Democrats as compromise bait. I'm sure they have them all lined up.

Digby's wrong, of course, about what Republicans wanted from the Deal. Republicans did, in fact, want the threat of tax increases gone and didn't want the death tax reinstated at all. As for unemployment, there's debate about whether letting people live on the dole as long as desired is a good thing or not (it's really not, but liberals think you want everyone to starve if you point out human nature and the tendency not to change until forced to). And does Digby honestly think $313 billion in extra spending is an "irrelevant shiny object"? This from the same people complainig about not raising taxes in a recession.

I think the compromise was as good a deal as Barack Obama was going to get and he took it. Republicans possibly could have done better in the next Congress, but that would have required allowing tax rates to jump January 1, along with the attendant bad press, and I can't see John Boehner wanting that to be the new face of the Republican-Controlled House (although Democrats would love it).

One thing the crying and whining from Democrats over the last six weeks makes clear is that anything that doesn't add more debt and make people more dependent is going to be viewed as Making People Starve. I'm sure there are some non-thinking people who will find this appealing, but most people are going to see fiscal restraint as a good thing.

Communism Kills People

This is the biggest "Duh!" moment we've had in a while.

Author Frank Dikotter pours through thousands of documents from Mao-era China and discovers that 45 million people were killed during the Great Leap Forward when the Communists starved its own people to "progress."

As Moe Lane points out:

(T)he People’s Republic of China’s ‘Great Leap Forward’ caused truly frightening numbers of deaths: looking at the actual source material, its author is now estimating a death toll of 45 million (50% more than previous estimates). That works out to about 6.5% of its population, based on the 1960 census: to put that in perspective, the equivalent for 2010-era USA would be 20.15 million, or just over the entire population of New York State.

You don't hear the apologists for communism as much now as you used to, but "progressives" will occasionally argue that the problems with Stalin and Mao were in execution (literally), not theory. But the theory is evil, as well, and there's nothing "democratic" in any of the "democratic" communist regimes.

Glenn Greenwald Loves Terrorists

Blenn Greenwald is wringing his hands over the inhumane conditions that Wikileaks terrorist Bradley Manning must live with.

Since his arrest in May, Manning has been a model detainee, without any episodes of violence or disciplinary problems. He nonetheless was declared from the start to be a "Maximum Custody Detainee," the highest and most repressive level of military detention, which then became the basis for the series of inhumane measures imposed on him.

Well, gosh, I'm glad Manning isn't violent now, but he admitted punching an officer in the face (hence his demotion), so it isn't like there's no history of violence here.

Most importantly, if Manning hadn't wanted to be subjected to solitary confinement, he probably shouldn't have downloaded more than 260,000 cables and then given them to a guy like Julian Assange to harm his own country. This isn't "whistleblowing." It's treason.

From RedState:

Glenn Greenwald is constantly telling us that the reason the terrorists want to kill us is not because they are regressive degenerates who hate Western values like freedom and tolerance, but rather because they just don’t like our military policies and how we’re all meddling in their business.

Well, I am not a man without a heart, so I am willing to propose a solution to Greenwald’s problem which I am confident the Army would be amenable to. As an added bonus, it will serve as an opportunity to validate Glenn Greenwald’s views on the causes of Islamic terrorism. We will give Bradley Manning his pillow and blankie back, and remove him from solitary confinement. In fact, we’ll let him be around lots of people. We’ll call an emissary with the Taliban or Al Qaeda, and tell them that we have a political prisoner to release to them, no strings attached. We will tell them that we are going to release to them an American who thoroughly rejects our interventionist policies and our military meddling - he rejects them so strongly, in fact, that he did everything in his power to see that American soldiers were killed and that Islamic terrorists were given access to our operational details. Therefore, we have decided to let him go to be with the Taliban so that he can self-actualize and join the fight against America with them.

I’m sure that like John Walker Lindh, the Taliban will be happy to have an American like this on board. So we’ll drive Manning out there to meet them at some safe remote location in Afghanistan somewhere, and we’ll release Manning and let him rush to join his new Taliban brethren.

Then we’ll tell them he’s gay.

Yeah, that'll work.

Eric Boehlert Needs Some Cheese With His Whine

Media Matters' resident jerk Eric Boehlert is complaining because journalists don't call Senate Republicans "obstructionists" at every reference. I have to say, given journalists' usual penchant for demeaning R's, it is a little surprising that one doesn't see this term in every news story, but I chalk that up to nuance.

Boehlert's complaint goes to the heart of the liberal view of the MSM. It isn't there to report what happens. Reporters are there to shape what you think of the news. So, if Democrats, say, run across the border to stop redistricting in Texas, that's not labelled "obstructionist," but Senate Republicans exercising their right to shape the legislative agenda is.

What makes Boehlert's complaint so silly is that the problem isn't Senate Republicans; it's Harry Reid, who didn't have to bring up other legislation to challenge Republicans. And if anyone thinks Democrats in a similar situation wouldn't use the filibuster to block particularly noxious legislation, they're delusional. The difference is that the country is closer to Republican ideas than the poisonous, disasterous legislation Democrats have tried to cram through Congress. Besides, Democrats poisoned this well with the Obamacare votes--particularly on Christmas Eve--and it's a little late to complain about civility now.

Free Speech in Fort Worth

The atheist bus ads have finally caught the attention of the New York Times. This story has been floating around Fort Worth for a month now, which is why, I suppose some Christian groups have had time to organize a protest.

A public bus rolls by with an atheist message on its side: “Millions of people are good without God.” Seconds later, a van follows bearing a riposte: “I still love you. — God,” with another line that says, “2.1 billion Christians are good with God.”

A clash of beliefs has rattled this city ever since atheists bought ad space on four city buses to reach out to nonbelievers who might feel isolated during the Christmas season. After all, Fort Worth is a place where residents commonly ask people they have just met where they worship and many encounters end with, “Have a blessed day.”

"We want to tell people they are not alone," said Terry McDonald, the chairman of Metroplex Atheists, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Coalition of Reason, which paid for the atheist ads. "People don’t realize there are other atheists. All you hear around here is, ‘Where do you go to church?’"

I don't know where McDonald hangs out to be asked constantly about his church affiliation, but as a lifelong Fort Worth resident, I'll tell you it isn't something that comes up constantly in my conversations. Maybe that's because I'm Presbyterian and I figure your unbelief is between you and God. But the idea that atheists are "lonely" because during the celebration of Christ's birth people talk about their faith strikes me as just so much whining for nothing. Vox Populi sums up my feelings:

And thus are all the claims that their various ad campaigns are about anything but annoying Christians at Christmastime belied. Can you even imagine how upset Jews would be if Christians began running ads directly attacking Jewish beliefs during the high holidays in a similar manner? Or how ballistic Muslims would go if similarly attacked during Ramadan? Atheists constantly attempt to portray the public celebrations and positive assertions of Christian belief as some sort of attack on their non-belief, but that is nothing more than absurd and juvenile drama-queening.

I think the people complaining about the ads are giving these clowns more attention than they deserve, which is, of course, why the ads are being run on buses to get high exposure.

If you're an atheist during Christmas, suck it up. You don't have to celebrate any more than you celebrate Independence Day or New Year's. There's no Christmas police forcing you to attend Christmas Eve mass or anything. This "lonely" atheist whining is just an excuse to be obnoxious and rude.

From Health Care...

To feeding your kids.

Because the government knows better than you do.