Plunging Towards Gomorrah
Posts tagged Left
Liberal Condescension: Twitter Style
Jun 20th
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about Twitterspace, but every once in awhile I run into some crazy liberals there. Today I was just minding my own business, watching the Braves play and following the #Braves hashtag on Twitter. That’s when I ran into this guy. KCYeti is another member of the not-so-kind-and-gentle progressive left. I should add that his Twitter feed isn’t exactly family friendly. Here’s his take on Braves fans:
I know, I know, I’m picking on one guy in Kansas and frankly he’s had worse things to say about the Twins. This is just another example of a faux enlightened individual who cloaks his disgusting personality under the guise of progressive political superiority. This is what happens to people when they spend their free time reading The Daily Kos. That type of leftest fringe thought process makes anything easy to believe. It’s easy to pick on Atlanta Braves fans when you believe they’re all inferior racist tea party nutjobs. Just imagine if I ran across this guy and the topic was the Astros or Rangers! Hitler analogies, here we come!
It’s one thing when some Manhattan snob looks down at the South, but as I mentioned earlier Kirk Harris is from Kansas (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Who knew that Kansas was the new bastion of elite philosophical political thought? Then again, maybe it’s not. How stupid do you have to be to Tweet about the Braves anyway?
More from the “Tolerant Left”
Apr 15th
I caught this over on The Corner this morning, and it’s just another in an unending stream of examples from the deranged and “tolerant” left. Is it possible that tolerance is a circle where the more “tolerant” you are the more intolerant you become? I don’t know, but there are many more images of “tolerance” over at dig.
Unintelligent Debate
Mar 28th
Whatever happened to intelligent debate? There seems like there’s less and less of it these days. Debating the common man has become almost pointless. Who has time to cut through the talking points, misconceptions, myths, and partisanship anymore? We live in the information age, but too many people have crawled into their caves.
Research suggests that conservatives are more likely to read “opposing views” than their liberal counterparts. Perhaps this is the reason liberals have such a difficult time understanding the arguments of conservatives. It’s just much easier to call conservatives names. The left’s angle on the tea party movement is very clear. Brand the entire group as mindless racists even though a majority of Americans are opposed to ObamaCare. Last week when Congressman Emanuel Cleaver claimed he was spit on and called names there was no evidence to support the claim. Even though there were thousands of people around and his staff was holding up phones to record everything that was going on (a point I’ve seen no one in the press make). What does it say about a political ideology and its supporters when instead of defending ObamaCare they’d rather call their opponents racists?
Four administrators of the “I bet we can find 10,000,000 people who think Sarah Palin is an idiot” group on Facebook go to Stanford. Is this how they practice intelligent debate at that prestigious university? Why is okay to dress up as a vagina at a Palin event, but it’s radical to oppose ObamaCare? For the hipster dufus, protesting anyone who is a Republican is cool. Getting your news from The Daily Show is cool. Plus, calling the opposition stupid is encouraged. Remember the left also hated and looked down at Ronald Reagan. Certainly 1/6th of the people who voted for the most unqualified person ever to become president might think Sarah Palin is an idiot. They have to do something to “feel good” about themselves.
Four six years the United States had a very vocal anti-war movement that was full of radicals and hate speech. The examples of radical behavior were a lot clearer back then, except I never heard about it on TV. I don’t remember the Democratic leadership calling for the crowds to “tone it down.” Now one Congressman yells fire in a crowded room and I’m supposed to believe him? If we’ve learned anything during this reform process it’s that the Democrats will lie to advance their agenda.
For an idea of how shallow these people are just read this column by Courtland Miloy that was published in the Washington Post:
I know how the “tea party” people feel, the anger, venom and bile that many of them showed during the recent House vote on health-care reform. I know because I want to spit on them, take one of their “Obama Plan White Slavery” signs and knock every racist and homophobic tooth out of their Cro-Magnon heads. I am sick of these people — and those who make excuses for them and their victim-whiner mentality.
How’s that for constructive dialogue about an alleged incident? Racism is a serious issue in this nation but why aren’t people like Courtland Milloy, Emanuel Cleaver, and Randall Robinson called out for making incendiary claims that are untrue? Are wolf attack victims allowed to cry wolf because they’ve been attacked in the past? What I’d love to hear from the wise minds on the left are some logical arguments. Branding the opposition with lies is a bit totalitarian for my taste and a certain sign they’re losing the debate.
Santa Claus and the Democratic Party
Mar 18th
It’s been awhile since I’ve written about party mascots here at The Daily Plunge. With support for ObamaCare well over 40% it means one thing: the average Democratic voter has lost touch with reality. They believe so strongly in the idea of health care that they’re willing to accept anything the State gives them. It’s odd that the party of liberal condescension would fall so hard for such an intellectually shallow thing as partisan loyalty.
The symbol for the Democratic Party shouldn’t be a Donkey. To be fair, it’s insulting to Donkeys. At least a Donkey is real animal. The Democrats want to believe in imaginary worlds. A world where man isn’t flawed. A world where we live in a Utopian state. In other words, it’s not a rational world. The Democrats love to cite the Canadian health care system; the same health care system that forces many of its citizens to come to the United States for adequate health care.
It’s not really the Canadian system progressives admire, it’s further North than that. It’s in the mythical world of the North Pole. You see the Democrats believe in Santa Claus State. Except the reality is that the State doesn’t give us anything, but instead takes everything we have. The intellectual giants on the left have listened to Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” too many times. Now they’ve held onto that feeling. They can’t tell you why they’re in favor of ObamaCare. No rational person can, but it’s feels right. That’s why Santa Claus is the perfect mascot for the Democratic Party.
In many ways Santa Claus is the Anti-Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam “wants you.” In other words he wants you to get up off your ass and do something. Uncle Sam is skinny and angry. Santa Claus is fat, he only works one day a year, and he only wants you to “be good.” No wonder the man is so jolly. In other words you don’t have to do a damn thing and Santa Claus will give you something. Sounds like a fair deal. Don’t bother the Democrats with the details on how this is implausible; it just “feels right.”
racism: deciphering fact from fiction
Nov 23rd
I have been purposely been avoiding Palinmania because I’m suffering from Palin fatigue. I don’t understand either side of this phenomenon. Many on the left hate her for no reason and many on the right love her because she’s so despised. The whole thing is juvenile. Now that Palin has a book out, the madness continues. Anyway, CNN has an editorial by LZ Granderson a senior writer and columnist for ESPN The Magazine and ESPN.com. There have been some stupid columns written about Palin, but this ranks near the top. Evidently, Palin is insensitive to minorities because her book tour doesn’t stop in minority areas.
It just seems that in going to few diversely populated cities, she’s purposefully steering clear of minorities. I mean, what author with a $5 million book deal avoids promoting books in large cities? Palin’s curious tour schedule takes me right back to some of the more disturbing displays during last year’s campaign, when people at some campaign rallies at times made racist remarks. This is not to say I believe Sarah Palin is a racist. But she said or did very little to address the racist ugliness around her during the campaign.
Did Hillary Clinton say or do anything about the “racist ugliness” around her during the campaign? This whole “angry racist crowd” is another myth from the 2008 campaign. What’s so sad is that people like Granderson are so willing to believe such sensationalist nonsense. Granderson, who went to a Palin event, obviously didn’t see any racism, otherwise he would have wrote about it. Instead, he says, “I did get a lot of strange looks from the line, which I guess was to be expected. After all, I’m a black man with dreadlocks and, judging by the racial makeup of most of the cities Palin has scheduled for her tour, it doesn’t seem I’m her target audience.” I guess “strange looks” are open for debate. What does a “strange look” look like? I think this observation says more about Granderson than the crowd itself.
Why should Palin visit areas that have no interest in seeing her? Will that make Granderson feel better? McCain made a series of trips to minority areas untouched by previous Republican campaigns and it didn’t help at all. I wonder how much longer the Democrats will get away with this “Republicans are racist” nonsense. On social issues African Americans share more in common with the religious right than with the Democratic party. The Democrats do have an upper hand when it comes to spending money on government programs to supposedly reduce poverty. For those scoring at home the percentage of people living in poverty in the United States was steadily decreasing for decades before the “War on Poverty.” Since the 1960s the U.S. has spent trillions of dollars and the poverty rate has remained unchanged. Here’s one last bit from Granderson:
As a Midwesterner with some Southern roots, I actually have a lot in common with Palin. I’ve hunted with dogs, fished, had a kid in hockey, I go to church on Sundays and, having worked in New York and L.A., I’ve had my fair share of run-ins with elitist, liberal snobs. This is why I am so profoundly disappointed with her. Instead of using her popularity and influence to highlight our similarities and move the nation forward, she has allowed some of the nation’s most painful wounds to be re-opened to advance her career.
Huh? What has Palin done to re-open wounds? Granderson needs to look outside of his soapbox. He’s trapped like many other Americans in a perception soapbox and unable to decipher fact from fiction. Palin’s only crime is being Republican in a political system that has exonerated Democrats from being racist, I guess because Democrats treat minorities like children and come up with programs that ensure their slavery to the state to the detriment of the individual.
will obama change?
Sep 2nd
The following headline from CNN caught my attention: “Obama considers major speech on health care, aide says.” How many “major speeches” has the President given so far? What has he said that’s remotely memorable? “Hope,” “change,” and “yes we can” might be memorable, but they’re not exactly full of substance. For the past two months the President has campaigned for health care. On September 9th he’s going to give a speech before Congress. During his campaign he’s continued to mislead the public about the health care plans on the table. What can the President possibly say at this point that’s going to change the debate?
This is the first true test of Obama’s young presidency. Will President Obama take a stand? Will he say something specific? Will he tell Congress what he wants? The two biggest achievements this year for the White House have been the stimulus package that turned into a colossal pork bill and the confirmation of Justice Sotomayor. Neither one of these were very popular with the American people. Americans are ready for sensible reform to health care, but the President seems opposed and aloof when it comes to debating real change.
Obama is ready to give a new speech on health care. This time he really means business.
During the campaign Obama promised to take on the special interests and stand up for the little guy, but here we are barely eight months into Obama’s presidency and he’s taken tort reform off the table. Obama doesn’t want to take on the trial lawyers in his own party because he’s just another ordinary politician who is more concerned with his party than with the American people. If you’ve anointed yourself as some kind of “different” politician and you fail to deliver it’s bad for business.
Then there’s the promise of bipartisanship that was a crucial part of the Obama Unicorn. I say Unicorn because it’s mythical creature that no one believes is real, kind of like my generation’s chance of receiving Social Security. Actually, there’s a better chance that Unicorns are real than the chance I ever receive a check for Social Security. With a super majority in both the House and the Senate one would think that demonizing the opposition wouldn’t be a priority. But apparently it is, and is part and parcel with this new era of change and hope that was supposed to change America’s bitter politics and gap the political divide forever in a land called Honah Lee:
Another administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity when discussing strategy, said the new phase was “driven in part by the actions of some in the GOP,” including Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Mike Enzi of Wyoming. The official added the White House believes those actions indicate that these two key Republicans, who are part of a bipartisan group negotiating a health care bill, “are essentially walking away from the table.”
This isn’t news to me, but the Democrat definition of bipartisanship means shut up and agree with them. What else can be gathered from that quote above? What sane Republican (if there are any in Washington) would agree to any of the terrible ideas being thrown about in Congress? The sad reality is that the Congress will likely pass some kind of watered down compromise bill that won’t make the left happy, won’t help, and will make things worse. It won’t matter because, politically at least, Obama will have his “health care reform.” We’ve seen this before; it was called the Prescription Drug Bill passed by President Bush. It’s funny how much change looks the same.
law matters
May 22nd
As the next Supreme Court appointment approaches it’s high time to point out the stark differences in how the left and right look at the third branch. The left has been successful in using the judicial system to advance political agendas they were unable to get support for through legislation. The most egregious example is obviously abortion. Abortion is a very divisive issue in the United States. This issue is so divisive that it’s unlikely a national law either in favor of or opposed to it could be passed. Instead the court created the right to have an abortion out of thin air. This is also happening on the issue of gay marriage. Several state courts are creating laws that have failed to be passed by the legislature or by the people directly.
Now a logical debate can be had on those two issues; however, that debate takes place in the legislature. What progressives have missed in this quest for abortion rights, affirmative action, and gun control is that it’s the other less known issues with which the court is wrecking the Constitution. It appears that “progressives” don’t care about the collateral damage. President Obama provided a window into this mindset when he said a judge should use “empathy” when making decisions. That sounds reasonable, I guess; maybe for Judge Judy and civil court, but on the Supreme Court they decide the merits of each case on one thing; the Constitution.
Once our judges start deciding cases outside the jurisdiction of the Constitution, citizens start losing their constitutional rights. Over the last four decades the court has done a great deal of damage on property rights. I was looking for some information on Judge Diane Wood and found an article that had a few basic facts on the Judge. At the end of the article there were some comments. Most of the comments were your garden variety partisan dribble, but two comments were noteworthy enough to highlight. The first comes from Laura Ward:
It is my understanding that Phyllis Doyle Pepe interprets Obama wanting someone on the Supreme Court not to be such a stickler to the letter of the law and to understand that there’s people involved. If so, I’m for that!
By Laura Ward on 05/21/2009 8:32 pm
This is a scary revelation. Unfortunately, Laura represents a large number of people who are losing appreciation for the Constitution. Many people have given their lives for our magnificent Constitution so that it might prevail. Moreover, if the rule of law is to be based on whims and feeling, everything begins to unravel. Policy disagreements should take place in elections and in legislatures; not in the courts.
It sounds good to have an “empathetic” judge cos he’s on our side. But what do we do when a President we disagree with starts picking “empathetic” judges? Better to have someone who interprets the law strictly–equal protection under the law is what we want, because justice must be blind. I love Obama but this is a dangerous, dangerous approach for him to take–to tell a judge to follow his heart instead of the law? Wow. Not good.
By Janine Garrison on 05/22/2009 8:56 am
It’s too bad that this idea seems to be among the minority on the left. This is the negative consequence of a higher education system dominated by liberals who do not allow contrarian views into their classrooms, which ultimately extinguishes critical thinking. We have a President who was a professor of Constitutional law advocating empathy over the Constitution he’s sworn to “preserve and protect.” Judging by his treatment of the Constitution in speech and action, it’s questionable whether this “professor” has even read the document beyond “We the People.” Good lord! I’m sure the people who educated Obama and his peers are all high-fiving each other, but if we can’t expect our judges to be “sticklers to the letter of the law” than what happens to the rule of law?
american politics: the economist doesn’t understand
May 18th
What is more frustrating than a liberal political analyst on TV telling Republicans they need to move to the center? How about The Economist jumping on the bandwagon to extrapolate that the Republican Party’s problems are due to the perception it has gone too far to the right? The Economist is a great source for news on international economic affairs. Unfortunately, the magazine does not have a firm grip on politics in America.
Wow, I guess that wasn’t such a good idea after all.
Political analysis is full of sports hyperbole. In sports, teams play at least once a week. Fans and commentators make sweeping generalizations, only to be proven wrong time and again. Remember how the Tennessee Titans celebrated on the sidelines after defeating the Pittsburg Steelers at the end of the regular season? A couple of players even stomped on a Terrible Towel. What’s my point? Things change fast. A few games later, the Titans bowed out of the playoffs quickly and the Steelers won the Super Bowl. The Titans’ glorious day in December is an afterthought; a footnote in history.
The idea that Republicans need to move to the center, and that foundations of politics somehow miraculously changed last year is ridiculous. Based on two elections? Political elections are most often shaped by current events. Republicans picked up seats in 2002 because of the leadership of the President after 9/11. This carried over in 2004. After that election, we had two years of non-stop negative coverage of Katrina, Iraq, gas prices, and the economy. The only issue Bush had direct control over was Iraq. Iraq is no longer in the news because the success of General Petraeus and the surge. The business cycle created a perfect storm for Democrats in 2008. The campaign was about unspecific “change.” In other words it was about nothing.
Thanks Kirby for making a 12 year old boy cry himself to sleep.
Democrats did not win any kind of public debate about issues. There were no issues to debate. The Republicans didn’t run a right wing zealot; they ran a centrist, John McCain. In other words, the exact guy The Economist, Colin Powell, NBC News, and every other liberal wanted the Republicans to run. It’s a brilliant strategy for the left. It’s like telling the Atlanta Braves to pitch Charlie Liebrandt against Kirby Puckett in the World Series. The image of the ball going over the fence is scotched into my retina. Becoming a centrist party isn’t all that The Economist recommends; they go further…
They need to abandon their state of denial about global warming. And they need to recognise that gay marriage could well be their equivalent of the gun issue. The party’s opposition to gay marriage not only makes them look mean-spirited. It is also destroying any chance Republicans have of regaining the support of younger Americans. Gay marriage is becoming progressively more popular among young Americans at a time when another favourite conservative issue, abortion, is of less concern to them.
This is where The Economist misses the mark. Gay marriage and global warming are not major issues in the nation. Both issues get a lot of air time, but they’re not game changers. Young voters may care more about those two issues than the normal voter, but time changes everything. Young voters are less informed and make up only 17% of the electorate. The number one issue for young voters should be the fact the country is going bankrupt, but they’re too ignorant to care or to notice. They’re too busy reveling in the Perez Hilton/Miss California conflagration, the latest scandal du jour, and the most popular YouTube video.
If Republicans capitulate on global warming and gay marriage they accomplish nothing. If Democrats and their constituents are stupid enough to raise taxes to supposedly prevent an unproven theory, let them pay the political price for the economic consequences. Using the youth vote logic, let’s think back on how much those young voters in the 1960s changed things. They were against the Vietnam War, but here we are thirty years later carpet bombing Iraq for decades. They were into all kinds of experimental drugs and they’re still illegal. In other words, the youth vote is meaningless, but it makes for good copy I suppose.
Abortion looks like a losing proposition for Democrats if this trend continues.
The Economist even brings up abortion. So abortion is a losing issue for Republicans even though a majority of Americans consider themselves Pro-Life? How exactly does the writer of this article come to this conclusion? Since he doesn’t explain it, we’ll never know, but that’s par for the course when you’re advising someone to choose a losing strategy but presenting it as a winning strategy with no data or logic to back it up. If Republicans want to be a logical choice for voters they need to stand for something. Voters want representatives who are for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and economic freedom. Right now neither party will take a principled stand on those issues.
liberals in denial: i.f. stone
May 12th
I’ll start by saying that I love Wikipedia. It’s a great resource for general information. For the most part it is objective, but there are definitely some biased articles. President Obama’s page glosses over his mentor Jeremiah Wright and doesn’t even mention William Ayers, despite the fact they were both newsworthy events during the last campaign. Contrast that to President Bush’s National Guard Service coverage on his Wikipedia page. These are nit-picking examples to be sure, but I’ve been monitoring I.F. Stone’s page since it was confirmed he was a traitorous spy for comparison.
It’s been funny watching the leftists defend this scumbag. The defense for years from the left has been he wasn’t a communist. The new defense is that he was trying to defeat the fascist Nazis. Common sense and logic would ask how an American journalist writing for the New York Post would help the Soviets fight the Nazis, but I digress. Another defense can be witnessed on Wikipedia. The editors simply dismiss this whole thing as “alleged espionage” because the source is a “conservative magazine.” I guess an acceptable source would be The Nation? It’s humorous that the Wikipedia article never says that The Nation is a liberal publication. In fact, The Nation is basically a communist publication. How many “alleged traitors” have worked for Commentary Magazine?
Mark Hemingway wrote an article last week about the left’s inability to deal with the revelations that their hero was a traitor.
Profs. Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes — scholars who’ve previously done extensive work on Soviet espionage — examine the Stone case in their new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America. The book is also co-authored with Alexander Vassiliev, a former KGB agent turned journalist. Vassilev is in possession of detailed records from now-closed Soviet archives that convincingly demonstrate that from 1936 to 1939 Stone was on the Soviet payroll. (The relevant excerpt from the book has been published by Commentary.) Stone was a spy, case closed.
Except it’s not. Rather than deal with the facts at hand, the American Left once again appears to be stricken with willful blindness. The fact that a beloved godfather of the left-wing press was in reality a traitor, in league with an enemy that represented an existential threat to America, simply does not jibe with the purported purity of the Left’s political motives. Therefore, Stone must not have been a traitor.
Hemingway goes on to talk about The Nation’s Eric Alterman and his problem with the definition of the word “spy.” The left loves to revel in the history of the civil rights movement and the “southern strategy.” These historical moments mean that they are intellectually and morally superior. It’s for this reason the left is unable to deal with the extremism of the New Left and the ties to the evils of communism.
The Left can’t claim to uphold the values of I. F. Stone as they envision him — a crusading defender-of-democracy — without reckoning with the Communist spy he was in reality. Political sympathies shouldn’t prevent anyone from seeing the truth about a man even 20 years after his death and 70 years after his misdeeds. If you can’t admit the truth when it’s inconsequential, it hardly seems surprising you would justify doing something terrible when it serves your interests.
Progressives are Fascist
May 21st
My latest revelation about the so-called Progressive Left and its tendency toward fascism came while watching Janeane Garofalo on the Independent Film Channel’s The Henry Rollins Show. Apparently Janeane believes that religious belief is a psychological disorder that must be stamped out, with what I’m sure will be tolerant intervention when the stamping-out time finally arrives and Utopia officially begins.
As an interesting side note, it was this same tolerant intervention that marked the beginning, middle, and end of previous Utopian dreams where “religion” was stamped out in the process, such as Soviet Russia, Castro’s Cuba, Marxist China, Ho Chi Mihn’s Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Sandinista Nicaragua, and other Utopias. As an interesting side side note, the body count of these atheistic Utopias stands at somewhere around 60 million. And that’s a conservative estimate. And, in objective reality, atheism, secular progressivism, liberalism, etc., etc., are nothing but religions dressed up in a God-is-Dead philosophy. But I digress…
Janeane is apparently terrified at the horrific ignorance of the American population in general, and at its imperialistic, racist, and homophobic tendencies. In a truly fascist police state, Janeane’s rage against the machine, or Speaking Truth to Power, would be courageous. But when one rants and the worst they get is a yawn or two, you have to wonder about claims that they’re living under the dark night of Republican fascism.
But the reality is that there’s quite a difference between oppressive America and enlightened nations like Cuba. In the enlightened nations, one who dissents or does not tow the official line is very likely to end up in a torture chamber or “re-education” camp. In America, fascists like Ann Coulter might call you a fag, and we all know how horrible it is to be called a name! Back in the real world, the empirical evidence points to America’s Left as the true fascists.
Fortunately, the great majority of us are not subject, at least officially, to the Left’s fascism. However, if you wanted to get a glimpse of what the Left really means by “tolerance” you need only to peruse the “hate speech” codes at America’s universities. Basically, what the academic Left has been able to foist on the university system would never be tolerated by the public at large, I guess because most of us are ignorant, religious fools. But I do find it strange that the Left will defend what is patently offensive as “freedom of speech” but is aghast when someone says they think affirmative action is a bad idea, or satirizes one of the Left’s Sacraments.
And so, as Jeneane and Mr. Rollins seethe and rant about uptight Middle America, and how these Middle Americans are destroying the earth with their religion and morality, you are given a glimpse into how they might treat those Middle Americans if they were in charge. It ain’t pretty. Meanwhile, Middle America simply sits back and allows the Leftist ragers and ranters to exercise their First Amendment rights, whilst the Leftists devise ways to destroy theirs through the codification of “tolerance” and other euphemisms for the Gulag.
