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Will Ol’ Barney lose his seat this fall?

At the beginning of May, the CampaignSpot’s Jim Geraghty listed the 99 House seats most likely to change parties in the fall elections.  He only saw only one incumbent Massachusetts Representative (they’re all Democrats), the Ninth’s Stephen Lynch, as vulnerable to defeat.  Now, since Scott Brown’s victory in January, I’ve been wondering if there might be some sleeper races in the Bay State.

Highest on my list is that currently held by the unhappy Barney Frank.  This notion comes to mind again this week with all the press the temper tantrum the self-righteous pol, liberal with other people’s money, threw when he couldn’t get a $1 senior discount on a ferry ride.  The mean-spirited man from Massachusetts “made such a drama over the senior rate that” one witness “contemplated offering him the dollar to cool down the situation.”

Imagine if it had been You-tubed.  Can you say “macaca”?

Still, reporters from the mainstream media can no longer protect this pompous politician the way they once could.  News of this will seep out.  And people in Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District will wonder at the man who has been representing them in Congress for the past three decades.

“Power,” Tim Daniels wrote, reflecting on the Massachusetts Democrat’s behavior, “begets corruption, corruption begets more lust for power, and powerful congressmen berate trivial, everyday life issues.”  (Read the whole thing, via Instapundit.)

And this is not the first time, the Democrat has raised a ruckus, behaving boorishly when he was not treated in the manner which he believes appropriate for  a man of his wisdom and prominence.  He has been taking his constituents for granted, treating his seat like a sinecure to which he is entitled rather than an honor to be earned.  He owes them a higher standard of behavior.  Instead, he has behaved like a crybaby who finds that the moment someone challenges his positions (or to question his desires), he responds by attack the individuals asking the question instead of responding to their query.

The more the people of Massachusetts’ Fourth Congressional District witness the behavior of their representative in Washington, the less likely they are to cast their ballots for him this fall.  So, let’s be grateful for the new media and wonder why the old media hasn’t been doing its job in covering this elected official’s childish antics.

What Does GetEqual Have Against Freedom?

Whether it’s public universities who wish to discriminate against Christian student groups requiring that their officers adhere to their faith’s moral code or activists who, in the name of equality, want to prevent a private organization from boycotting a private enterprise, some social liberals turn their noses at the notion of social conservatives expressing their beliefs — or acting on them.

There is much more to the latest story than what I considered in my previous post, significantly that, yet again, we see a private enterprise (AKA, a business) leading the way in social change where governments lag.  Our system of free enterprise (under attack though it may be) allowed Home Depot — and other corporations — to enact its progressive (in the true, not politicized, sense of the word) policy on domestic partnerships.

For now, I’ll highlight this mentality of the left, this aversion to freedom.  Rather that criticize what they find distasteful, they want to challenge it in court — or otherwise suppress it.

It is a troubling mentality and merits further scrutiny.

RELATED:  ”ANDREW KLAVAN: From Book Publishers to the Media: The Left’s Crusade to End Debate.

My Apology to Shirley Sherrod — Withdrawn

Last week, I jumped the gun (as did many others) in taking what was a complex story and boiling it down to an video clip without its proper context.  I apologized to my readers and to Shirley Sherrod.

I hereby withdraw the apology to Mrs. Sherrod. 

As I noted at the time, this was a very complex story and I had a pretty good hunch that Mrs. Sherrod was not the angel she appeared to be.  I am correct.  She is a picture perfect product of the liberal policies that make African-Americans dependent on the Federal Government and foster a victimization mentality.  Mrs. Sherrod claimed she learned something when she helped that white farmer, but what she learned may be worse than the presumed racism from the clip of her at the NAACP meeting in March.

I mean – get a load of this.  This is the conclusion Sherrod makes against Andrew Breitbart:

SHIRLEY SHERROD, FMR. GEORGIA DIRECTOR, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, USDA: I don’t think he’s [Andrew Breitbart] interested in seeing anyone get past it, because I think he’d like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. That’s where I think he’d like to see all black people end up again. And that’s why –

ANDERSON COOPER: You think he’s a racist?

SHERROD: — I think he’s so vicious. Yes, I do. And I think that’s why he’s so vicious against a black president.

Are you f–ing kidding me??????  So Shirley is in the camp of — “If You Criticize Obama, You are a Racist”.  Give me a bloody break.

Oh but there’s much more.  Salon’s uber-progressive Editor in Chief calls Shirley’s husband, Charles, a “civil rights hero”.  Um, really?

Charles Sherrod: “We must stop the white man and his Uncle Toms from stealing our elections.” (January 2010)

The Sherrod’s are full-blown race-baiting liberals.  Dan Riehl has done all of the research, so you don’t have to.  But here’s the money quote:

Mark Knoller mentioned a potential wrongful termination lawsuit [from Shirley Sherrod] in passing. And now the media and the administration seem intent on making her [Sherrod] disappear. One theory on that I’ve heard is, they don’t want people asking questions about her lawsuit. What I’m wondering is, maybe they don’t want people asking questions about Obama.

He worshiped with Jeremiah Wright for years. He potentially appointed a racist black liberationist Marxist to the USDA. Just how many of them does he have around him, as he sits in the WH waging war on capitalism? And, finally, what might all those college documents of his they won’t let us see tell us about him … especially given this? 

Ultimately, given all this now beginning to come out as a result of Andrew Breitbart’s original work makes him a hero in my book. These are the tough questions the press doesn’t even want to ask. It brings to the front important issues on race and racism, black, or otherwise, the press and the WH don’t wish to confront. But that’s what’s suppose to happen in a genuinely free, open and democratic society.

As things stand, an extremely controversial woman is sitting there with a free ticket for a promotion at the USDA from an incompetent in the WH who created this mess by appointing her, then firing her too quickly for some reason. This isn’t Breitbart’s mess. This is now Obama’s mess to clean up, or justify, as far as I’m concerned. Heckuva job, Barry. Heckuva job. At least we’re starting to get used to it. I believe the word is: incompetent.

Obama really does seem to have some of the strangest friends, just like Joan Walsh, of Sherrod’s white media conspiracy against blacks. Who’d a thunk it?

So I’m through with this story.  The edited video was unfortunate, but the true racist stripes of the NAACP, the Sherrods, and the Obama Administration have certainly come out over a week’s time.  So bravo, Mr. Breitbart.  You hit the target.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Journolist E-mails: Confirming Conservative Suspicions
of Left-Wing Prejudices Against the Right

As I have been pondering a post on the Journolist e-mails, via Hugh Hewitt, I came across a piece which Glenn Reynolds also linked.  Therein, Michael C. Moynihan looks at the various media scandals of the previous week and observes:

First, there was the Journolist leaks, in which members of a listserv inhabited by liberal journalists and academics expressed their desire to see Rush Limbaugh die of a heart attack; to toss their enemies through plate glass windows; to call random conservatives racists; and to rid the country of those “fucking NASCAR retards.” In other words, a confirmation of preexisting conservative stereotypes about members of the liberal intelligentsia. But was the group of 400 writers—the Learned Elders of the Left—attempting to coordinate news coverage?

Former JournoList members scoff at charges of collusion, that they were members of an all-powerful clique recalibrating White House policy, burying coverage of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and plotting to force Fox News off the air—all from a Google Group. Critics counter that, whether opinion journalists or straight news reporters, the group was attempting to “organize a media narrative,” to use Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan’s phrase.

The whole tedious debate misses one interesting point. While commenters have noted blogger Spencer Ackerman’s sleazy suggestion that liberals start labeling random Republicans “racist”—pick a conservative, like “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists”—few noticed the obsession with accusing opponents not of being misguided or wrong, but motivated by racial animus and Nazi-like hatreds.

Emphasis added.  Read the whole thing.  Note once again how even the supposedly very smart liberal intelligentsia assume the worst about their ideological adversaries.

From the Journolist Files: Jeffrey Toobin’s Left-wing Me-tooism

Posted by B. Daniel Blatt at 7:36 pm - July 22, 2010.
Filed under: Arrogance of the Liberal Elites

Whenever I work out at the gym while CNN blares on one of the television monitors, I wince whenever I see Jeffrey Toobin offering his supposedly expert economy.  It is like watching a teacher’s pet (think Tracy Flick) brown nosing his instructor.  You want to throw spitballs at the screen.

Toobin masquerades as this nonpartisan purveyor of commentary, yet regularly mouthes the conventional liberal wisdom of the media elite.  He often appears next to Donna Brazile whose presence, by contrast, I enjoy — despite our partisan differences.  Perhaps it’s that chyron identifying her as a “Democratic strategist”.  Unlike Toobin, she does not pretend to be nonpartisan.  You know you’re getting the viewpoint of a supporter of the Democratic Party.

We may not agree with her perspective, but at least we appreciate her integrity.

I have called Toobin, “obsequious legal court jester to the media elite” the pundit is ever eager to entertain the elites in exchange for finding welcome in their confabs.  And find welcome he did, being one of the members of the Journolist where, his pretensions notwithstanding, he likely never departed from the accepted opinions of his fellows on the list.  (At present, we have no evidence of such departure.)

In the latest from the Journolist Archives, we have him questioning the mental health of one of the most respected commentators on the right, “As a side note, does anyone know what prompted Michael Barone to go insane?”  Wonder if he would have faulted this sage pundit if another left-winger had not first brought up the author of the Almanac of American Politics, a resource valued by politicians and pundits on both sides of the political divide.

Perhaps, in the interest of fairness, CNN should add a chyron whenever Toobin appears, “Eager to be loved by left-wing pundits.”

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Tom the Redhunter offers:

It’s always instructive to mirror-image everything, and you can bet the howls would be loud and long if writers for National Review or The Weekly Standard were caught at this sort of thing.

Indeed.

Why do some (supposedly) smart liberals have so much trouble with the mere expression of conservative ideas?*

For the longest time I’ve puzzled over this conundrum:  if liberal intellectuals are so smart and so well-read, why so some have so much trouble with the mere expression of conservative views.

Now, to be sure, there are many (many, many) pundits, politicians and academics on the left who welcome spirited discourse and engage regularly in exchanges with their ideological adversaries (on the right).  But, there is a significant mass of supposedly very smart liberals who regularly disdain a philosophy they show no evidence of understanding who regular seek to discredit its advocates with mean-spirited (and frequently) slanderous slurs, accusing their adversaries of sinister motives while working energetically to prevent the public expression of their ideas.

They don’t just see conservatives as wrong-headed, but as evil.  Having perused the archives of the Journolist, Jonathan Strong of the Daily Caller provides evidence of this narrow-minded animus:

On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.

Assuming the worst of conservatives, no wonder they regularly criticize FoxNews which regularly airs those views.  In his piece, Strong provides yet another piece of evidence that rather than confront the conservative ideas which Fox covers more thoroughly than do its broadcast rivals and cable counterparts, a fair number of supposedly broad-minded liberal journalists wish to have the FCC shut the news network down:

The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down. (more…)

Liberal NPR Producer Acknowledges Her Own Hatred

We have seen how ready left-wing pundits (and Democratic politicians) are to brand conservative activists as racists.  We have seen gay activists label anyone who disagrees with their agenda as haters.   And yet, despite their rhetoric, they never manage to acknowledge the bile and bitterness on their own side  – or in their own hearts.

At least not in public.

But, in what they assumed was the privacy of their own peers, they have begun to ‘fess up.  One liberal journalist admitted that she would delight if she saw a certain conservative suffering from a heart attack:

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio,* that isn’t what you’d do at all.

In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.

In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”

Spitz’s hatred for Limbaugh seems intemperate, even imbalanced. On Journolist, where conservatives are regarded not as opponents but as enemies, it barely raised an eyebrow.

Emphasis added.  She would delight in the pain of another.  Not Osama bin Laden, but Rush Limbaugh, a man who offers a different political perspective than she does–and draws a considerably larger audience.  A man whose radio program doesn’t rely on a federal subsidy to maintain its operations.

Remember Ms. Spitz draws her salary from a corporation which derives its income from our tax dollars.  If a conservative were working for NPR (well that political viewpoint would be enough to disqualify hrt from appointment in the first place) and said such a thing about a prominent liberal, she would be vilified in the media and fired from her job. (more…)

A liberal obsession with what “lurks behind” conservative opinion

At least since I was in college and first hinted at my attraction to men, friends and acquaintances to the left of the political center have suggested I adopted the conservative political views I held to hide my homosexual feelings.  If I would just come out, I would experience this sudden illumination and easily see the error of my ways.

Even today, while long since open about such feelings, some on the left inveigh against my “ideological affiliation”, arguing that I won’t have completely come to terms with my sexuality until I swear fealty to the Democratic ideology dominant in the gay community.  Basically, these broad-minded leftists assume we hold our political views for reasons unrelated to the merits of our ideas.  There has to be a psychological reason — or some other personal motive.

Not how one critic responded to my regular reminder than monogamy was an essential aspect of marriage (in a comment to a post that didn’t address monogamy):  ”You also zero in on the idea of monogamy, and it always leads me to wonder: have you been particularly cheated on?

Wonder why it didn’t occur to the reader that it has been my study of the institution — and not just in Western culture — that led to my repeated references to monogamy.

This notion that all too many on the left are constantly seeking a personal motive to conservatives’ expressing views at odds with the liberal worldview came to mind earlier today when I read Jonathan Strong’s Daily Caller piece on the “radical steps” a group of liberal journalists took to protect “their favored candidate” by attempting to squelch stories of Barack Obama’s relationship with a racist pastor. (more…)

Fact-Free Prejudices Against Conservatives

On Wednesday, I wrote that when crafting their narratives about the right, many on the left dispense with the facts and adhere to their prejudices (about conservatives).  This morning, Glenn Reynolds links a video which provides further evidence of that mind-set: Protesters Claim Tea Party is Racist, Can’t Point to Any Evidence.

RELATED (also via Instapundit):  Left-wing blog uses clip of racist infiltrator at Tea Party, claims he represents Tea Parties.

Bush-bashing: left’s favorite pastime?

This morning, I posted the piece about Eleanor Clift’s lament that Obama is just plain not blaming Bush enough largely on a lark.  It amused me that a left-of-center columnist is as obsessed with the former Republican president as is his Democratic successor such that she just makes up facts about other Republican presidents (you know, those with names beginning with “R”) she also resents.

That said, her lament does provide a wonderful window in the world view of Eleanor and her ilk.

First, her response assumes that people hate George W. Bush as much as she and her peers do.  Sure, the Republican left office with low approval ratings, but most people who, in late 2008, didn’t approve of the job he was doing don’t spend their days, in 2010, obsessing about the man and blaming him for Obama’s failures.

Second, this shows the readiness of such commentators to blame Bush in specific (and Republicans in general) for all manner of the nation’s woes.  Even though the Democrats have been in power for 18 months (longer if you count their congressional majorities as of January 2007), it just can’t be their fault that the economy has not yet recovered and jobs are not in abundance because Democrats are good smart, people who have all the right answers to all the world’s problems.  And Republicans are just bad, mean (not very bright) people neglecting the common good to coddle their corporate cronies.

They just think that when things go poorly, the buck must necessarily stop with Republicans.

Facts Not Necessary in Crafting a Liberal Narrative

Democrats attack Wall Street while prominent Democrats rake in case from the financial sector, their allies in the media continue to trash the GOP as the party of big business, even as the big-government policies more readily favored by Democrats (and all too frequently by all too many Republicans) do seem to help big businesses (and big banks) maintain their size and increase their market share.  They have crafted this narrative of a big business/big bank/Republican axis.

And Katrina vanden Heuvel, “editor of the liberal Nation magazine,” has become the latest pundit on the left to repeat this notion.  After she accused Missouri Republican Roy Blunt of standing “with the insurance and drug companies against health-care reform“, the Washington Examiner’s Timothy P. Carney set the record straight and took his leftist counterpart to task:

It’s a knee-jerk reaction for many liberals — they hate industry and they love government, and so they just assume that big business is against big government. But they’re wrong. Sometimes, they’re very wrong.

It seems this liberal “narrative,” like the notion of “racist” Tea Parties (as if racism must needs be behind every popular movement on the right) is based on prejudice rather than evidence.

Just contrast the two writers.  Ms. vanden Heuvel fails to marshal any facts to buttress her accusation about those who stood with Mr. Blunt (not, I might add, against health care reform per se, but against the Democrats’ massive health care overhaul.)   Furthermore, she provides no evidence whatsoever to support her contention that Republicans “have served as the guardians of entrenched corporate interests, as opposed to the common good.”  I wonder if she has even the faintest understanding of the ideas undergirding Republican opposition to the bill what she deems reform.

That she would suggest they aren’t interested in the “common good” betrays her real prejudices against her ideological adversaries.

Carney, on the other hand, provides abundant links to show just how the drug lobby did double time to move the passage of Obamacare.

UPDATE: (more…)

Two Polls Show Democrats Out of Touch with Mood of Country

Saw something on CNN while I was doing my cardio yesterday about how Democrats intend to use the near unanimous Republican opposition to the 2000-plus page financial overhaul bill against them. Guess they feel that running against Wall Street will burnish their populist credentials. Trouble with this narrative is Wall Street seems more pleased with the legislation than do small banks on Main Street.

Even if Democrats do succeed in peddling their narrative that Republicans are tools of Wall Street (while Democrats have recently been the party raking in the most Wall Street cash), I don’t think they’ll find voter paying them much heed.  They have different concerns this year.  Bashing Wall Street may earn accolades on left-wing blogs, but it won’t change people’s opinion about the Democrats’ record since Obama took office.

Two new polls show that the top issues for American voters are jobs and the national debt. And the president’s inauguration, his party hasn’t done a very good job of enacting policies which allow for the the creation of more jobs, but they have passed legislation which, will lead to a trebling of the national debt.

According to the latest Pew Research/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll:

The public overwhelmingly views the job situation as a major priority for Congress during the coming months. Fully 80% say it is very important for Congress to pass legislation to address the job situation, which is virtually unchanged from May (81%).

Somewhat fewer (70%) say it is very important for Congress to reduce the federal budget deficit.

A CBS News poll found that Americans had similar concerns:

The county’s most important economic problem, Americans say, is jobs, volunteered by 38 percent of respondents. Coming in a distant second was the national debt, the deficit and spending, cited by 10 percent in the poll, which was conducted between July 9th and 12th.

(CBS Poll via Instapundit.) (more…)

A roundup of what’s going on around the world (in a week where I’d rather not focus on politics)

In a week when I find it tough to focus on the world of politics, much is happening in that realm.  A decision is expected imminently in the latest Prop 8 trial, this one held in a San Francisco federal court.  Should Judge Vaughn Walker decide that the courts can impose social change, watch for the legal drama to continue until this reaches the U.S. Supreme Court.  Expect further social divisions on gay marriage and further whining from gay activists, with little discussion of the meaning of the institution and why its benefits and responsibilities are good for married couples in general and gay people in particular.

With the Senator who stole Christmas now signed up to vote for the Democrats’ financial overhaul legislation, this 2,000-plus page bill is set for passage, further regulating the banking industry, providing additional paperwork responsibilities on small banks, is all but certain to pass.  This will discourage rather than encourage small banks from making loans to small businesses, the enterprises the most net new jobs, thus further delaying a real economic recovery.

(Take note of the bias in the AP article on Senator Nelson’s switch; they dub the liberal Nebraska Senator a “conservative Democrat“!)

Democratic Senate candidates traveled to Canada for political fundraisers while one poll shows my gal Carly Fiorina surging ahead of Barbara Boxer in the race for the U.S. Senate seat that that 28-year Washington veteran has held since the last days of the George H.W. Bush Administration.

Log Cabin’s suit to overturn Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) gets a hearing in federal court.  This lawsuit causes us to question whether that ostensibly Republican organization understands conservative ideas and constitutional principles.  A conservative organization should be wary of setting precedents that would allow courts to second guess the executive and legislature on matters military.  (They are basically compounding the problem begun by Bill Clinton who, when trying to save his political skin back in 1993 (shortly after Mrs. Boxer first won election to the Senate), allowed the legislature to intervene on a matter the constitution clearly delegated to the president.)

A new poll shows that 6 in 10 Americans Lack Faith in Obama. (more…)

Scared House Democrats Gone Wild!!

First, there was US House Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) manhandling a college student in early June…

And now, US House Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-TX) completely loses his cool when challenged on the facts by his constituents. According to Mike Flynn at BigGovernment, this meeting with constituents was held “recently“. Arrogance doesn’t come across well on video for Rep. Rodriguez.

I wonder… are Democratic Congressmen learning their divisive and arrogant ways from Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama?

Seems like these two Members would be more happy in an unchallenged Soviet system than in a democratically-elected Congress?  Just sayin….

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

The Day After Independence Day

Sounds like the title of a great movie!  Heh, heh.  Well, I’m still in a nostalgic mood for what our Founding Fathers did on July 4, 1776.  And I caught this item on today’s Heritage Foundation blog.  I hope you find it as inspiring and motivating as I did when I read it this morning.

Happy Birthday America! America is 234 years old. She was born on July 4, 1776, with the passage of the Declaration of Independence.  Since then, America has grown from thirteen colonies on the east coast to fill a vast continent. Her economic and military power is envied around the world. And the American people are hardworking, churchgoing, affluent, and generous.

Independence Day is an opportunity each year to remember the root of our success—our founding principles as set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration of Independence serves as a philosophical statement of America’s first principles. As Matthew Spalding describes, the Declaration affirms that all men are created equal. By nature, men have a right to liberty that is inalienable, meaning it cannot be given up or taken away. And because individuals equally possess such inalienable rights, governments derive their just powers from the consent of those governed. The purpose of government is to secure these fundamental rights, and the people retain the right to alter or abolish a government that fails to do so.

These principles have made America the great nation it is today. But, since the early 20th century, these principles have been under attack in the academy, the media, and popular culture. So-called progressives have rejected the existence of self-evident truths—in the Declaration of Independence and elsewhere. Instead, they embrace the notion of “Progress” that is constant change towards an unspecified end. From these faulty principles, it follows that, all men are not created equal; some people are further along in the historical process than others. There are not permanent rights with which man is endowed. Government creates rights, and these rights evolve according to the demands of the time. There is no need for consent of the governed, just experts who will tell us how to live and how to progress.

This is a serious attack on our principles, but not an insurmountable one.

We, The People are in charge.  Our government’s power comes from our consent.  And our rights come from our Creator. Never forget that!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Seriously? Obama Ranked Over Reagan??

This post originates from an email from B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest) to Bruce (GayPatriot):

I mean, give me a break.

George W. Bush was no FDR, but Barack Obama could be.

That’s the verdict of 238 of the nation’s leading presidential scholars, who – for a fifth time – rated Franklin Delano Roosevelt the best president ever in the latest Siena College Research Institute poll.

In office for barely two years, Obama entered the survey in the 15th position – two spots behind Bill Clinton and three spots ahead of Ronald Reagan.

Obama got high marks for intelligence, ability to communicate and imagination, but his score was dragged down by his relative lack of experience and family background.

Reagan entered office during a recession, never complained about the economy he inherited and turned things around while rebuilding our armed forces and standing up and stopping Soviet expansionism and for that matter, the Soviet Union itself.

Clinton took office during a recovery and succeeded in bungling his first two years in office so badly that the Republican Congress elected in response to his failures helped prevent him from undoing the accomplishments of the Reagan era.

Yeah, he may rank higher than you or I would like, but not above Reagan and certainly not far above the middle of the pack.

Seems these historians put their political prejudices ahead of their historical judgment.  I mean, Obama ahead of the Gipper.  Give me a break.  The economy has certainly not recovered.  And we haven’t seen the economic turnaround of the like we saw in the 1980s.

And that W is low on the list suggests the scholars crafting the study harbor the animi (animuses?) of the other practitioners of their trade.

=============

Bruce’s additional comments:

And check out this absurd statement from the news article:

“Most of the presidents came from elite backgrounds, and he certainly did not,” said professor Douglas Lonnstrom, who crunched the numbers. “He grew up without a father.”

Oh give me a friggin’ break.  Obama is probably the most elitist president (via education & upbringing) since the John F. Kennedy.  This idea that he had no father makes him “non-elitist” is completely absurd.  How many ordinary Americans do you know that grew up in three different countries, went to the best private schools there and then went on to Harvard?  I credit his work ethic getting there, but I know ordinary people and Obama ain’t one of ‘em.

Is Professor Lonnstrom suggesting that because Obama is BLACK that he’s no elitist?  Well, that’s just downright RAAAACIST!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Democratic Senator Lambastes Boxer for Grandstanding

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) took his fellow partisan Barbara Boxer (D-DailyKos) to task for grandstanding on the oil spill, rushing to pass legislation that would “send a Big Oil-bashing message“:

But I do have some concern about a total removal, a total unlimited liability. I mean, there was a reason for Price Anderson [nuclear industry liability limits]. I don’t know if those policy reasons are still applicable today or not, but there was a reason, and it was passed. I’m going to vote against this amendment, but I just hope that in the future we know what the heck it is we’re doing. This amendment may have the effect of driving out some smaller companies, I don’t know. It may have the effect of allowing foreign outfits come in, I don’t know.

Emphasis added.  (Read the whole thing.)

In her rush to pass a bill, any bill, to show that she is doing something, anything to punish BP, Mrs. Boxer has not really considered the consequences of the legislation she has crafted.  Given the impact of the recession on small companies (which Mrs. Boxer could see if she spent any time in the state she officially represents in the Senate), she would know just how severe that impact has been.

In her zeal to look like a knight in shining armor astride a white horse, Mrs. Boxer is once again paying little heed to smaller enterprises, you know, those her beloved president says creates two-thirds of the new jobs.

Ever eager to do the Obama Administration’s bidding, Boxer has earned the ire not just of her colleague from the Treasure State, but is also operating at cross purposes with her own state’s senior Senator, a Bay Area Democrat like herself.  Dianne Feinstein believes we must first fix the leak.

While some Democratic Senators are trying to do their jobs, Mrs. Boxer just can’t let go out of her partisan ideology.  Ma’am, that’s not a good way to respond to a crisis.

Algore Joins Clinton & Edwards In Democrat Sleazy Hall of Fame

My SINCERE apologies for the delay in dancing on the grave Al Gore’s career this week.  Kaput.  Just like the climategate emails proved Global Warming was “fixed”…. this incident will purge Gore’s fradulent preaching for quite some time, if not forever.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The Portland Police Bureau has released an audio recording of the interview between a detective and the massage therapist who accused former Vice President Al Gore of groping her in 2006.

The woman spoke with Detective Molly Daul in January 2009 – two years after she canceled three appointments to meet with investigators.

During the interview, the massage therapist describes Gore as a “crazed sex poodle” as she details the moves he made during a late-night appointment at a downtown Portland hotel.

Police declined to file charges against Gore, saying there was insufficient evidence.

Now let’s be clear: no charges were filed.  Gore is legally innocent ’til proven guilty in this particular incident.  But where there’s smoke, there’s fire.  Why the sudden divorce from Tipper this month?  What about all of the rumors of Algore’s affair with TV producer Laurie David?  Why did the media ignore the accused sexual assault stories when accurately reported by the National Enquirer? (oh, off topic…)

So think about this:  Algore and John Edwards could have been our President & VP and both of their sex antics (and alleged criminal activities) would have made Bill Clinton look like an innocent puppy in comparison.

In the meantime, let me enter into evidence the following:  John McCain, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.  Quite a comparison with the sleazy Democrat standardbearers of late.

And no, it isn’t “all about sex”.  It is about telling the truth and being honest with your family first so you have the capacity to be a leader.  In advance of smart-ass Iraq/WMD comments:  ALL foreign intel officials believed Iraq had them in 2003, so it was a collosal intelligence community fail, not a deliberate lie from Bush or Cheney.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Campaign Finance Reform for Democrats:
Draconian Restrictions on Speech by Business,
Kid Glove Treatment for Unions

Another bill passes the House which provides great insight in the worldview of Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats.  The short version, via Glenn Reynolds, “Dem Congressman: We Must Have Campaign Finance Disclosure To Stop Republicans From Getting Elected.

From Politico:

Overcoming opposition from within their own ranks, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic House leaders pushed through a controversial campaign finance reform bill Thursday on a 219-206 vote.

The DISCLOSE — Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Election — Act will require corporations, labor unions, trade associations and advocacy groups to publicly declare their role in TV ads or mass mailings during the closing months of a political campaign, including where the money is coming from to pay for such activities. Foreign-controlled corporations and big government contractors would also be barred from paying for such political activities.

But the House bill exempts the National Rifle Association, unions and other special interests from all or part of the legislation, which Republicans charged was the product of “backroom deals” and Democrats said was necessary to get the bill passed.

Emphasis added.  So, Democrats are exempting special interests just to get this thing passed?  Kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?  Unless of course, the purpose was not disclosure but, as per the Democrat referenced above, preventing Republicans from getting elected.

As the editorialists at the Washington Examiner point out, noting that “DISCLOSE was rammed through the House after being introduced with only a few hours’ notice and too little debate allowed“:

The bill is full of draconian restrictions on individual political speech expressed via corporations, but gives privileged status to the Democrats’ union masters. A provision pushed by Pennsylvania Democrat Rep. Bob Brady, for example, allows unions to transfer unlimited funds among affiliated groups to pay for political ads with no disclosure whatever. That makes campaign funding more transparent?

Unions, as Mark Hemingway notes in a companion piece on the Examiner, get privileged status under the bill: (more…)

Barney Frank’s Fantasy Not Related to Any Human Experience

A reader alerted me this morning to a post by original Grande Conservative Blogress Diva Sondra K on an ignorant remark by an unhappy Congressman from the home state of Daniel Webster.  Seems the mean-spirited man from Massachusetts is so used to a fawning press that he just assumes the media will take his remarks at face value.

Miss K reports:

Rep. Barney Frank on government regulations: “The general fear that the banking members, that we’re going to over regulate on behalf of consumers is a fantasy unrelated to any human experience. The federal government has never done that.”

Ol’ Barney got it backwards.

The real fantasy is not in the minds of conservatives (and other critics & skeptics of big government) who provide detailed evidence of government regulatory schemes run amok with individual anecdotes and society-wide statistics, but in the minds of liberals like Barney who believe that their big-government schemes will work because they will work because they were conceived by really intelligent and very well-meaning individuals.

I mean, Barney’s been pushing a federal overhaul of health care for years now with no evidence that it will reduce costs or improve the quality of care.  This self-important Democrat can relate no examples from human experience of government-run health care which does all the things its advocates promised.  Indeed, the examples show quite the opposite.  But that hasn’t stopped Barney and his cronies from pushing their schemes.

Just look at the studies that have come out after Obamacare has passed.  It won’t contain costs.  Just this month, for example, we learned that White House says 51 percent of company health plans won’t meet Obamacare guidelines.

Just more evidence to support more theory that when Barney Frank talks, there’s some serious projection going on.