The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: A Brief History Lesson

 

 For all of my enlightened progressive friends out there in cyberland who are just atwitter and twitching about Gov. Palin let me give you a little history lesson.

There is a candidate for VP. This candidate is an outdoors type person, hunter, hiker, likes fishing, church goer, GUN OWNER!  You know the type. This candidate has little experience in public office, had been in the state legislature for awhile but left and moved out west. The candidate had been a big failure in business out west and moved back to live off the family money. Freakin’ right wingers! Later the candidate gets a low level bureaucrat job for one and a half years because someone was doing a friend a favor. Of course this candidate is a Republican you know how they are. The candidate had once run for mayor about four years earlier and finished third in a three person race, LOSER! So, this person starts making waves in the job and they want to get rid of this dweeb so being savvy political types they kick the candidate upstairs into a run for an office they know will be a lost cause. They nominate this bozo for Governor and what do you know somehow this inexperienced moron wins! Now this candidate is in the way of the political machine of the party in the state so after a year as Governor they put this jerk, this nothing, this inexperienced chump with little foreign policy or executive experience on the national ticket as the running mate with the President. They overlook the fact the candidate is only 44 and has nothing on the resume which points to any ability to run the country. They figure that this will be the end of their problem. They win and six months later the president is dead and this inexperienced idiot who in no way is “ready on day two” is sitting in the big chair.

Disaster for America? No, one of the top five presidents of all time; Teddy Roosevelt.

Go Sarah!

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Everything Old is New Again

I watched the Obama speech last night just in case he said something from the heart and really tried to reach across the aisle.  I like Obama.  No, really I do. As a friend of mine in New York says, “What’s not to like?”  In the words of his Vice Presidential candidate he is, “…articulate and bright and clean and a nice looking guy.”  He is also a great performer. He’s a lot like comedian Carlos Mencia, another great performer. Every time I watch him I wonder how much of what he is saying is really original. So much of Obama’s stuff is just rehashed liberalism from the 70’s and 80’s. I know my enlightened friends don’t agree so let’s play a game. I will list a few quotes and you see if you can say whether the speaker was Obama, Dukakis or McGovern.  Come on, if Obama’s speech was so memorable you should be able to pick out his quotes.  No “google-ing” allowed.

1)     “…the people are going to insure that the tax system is changed…so that those who derive the highest benefit will pay their fair share.”

2)    …”America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves.”

3)    …”This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation.”

4)    “…I know, because I am a product of that dream.”

5)    …”A dream so powerful that no distance of ground, no expanse of ocean, no barrier of language, no distinction of race or creed or color can weaken its hold on the human heart.”

I could go on but here’s my point, all of these could be Obama but none of them are. As I listened to him speak to the congregation last night I had to agree with him on some points, I love my mom, wife and kids too!  I too am for clean water and safe toys. I’m all for schools and roads, and scientific and technological advancement. I too believe that we have, “… the freedom to make of our own lives what we will…”  I also think that most conservatives believe, “we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect.”   Can we at least agree that there are annoying self absorbed morons on both sides of the political debate?  I don’t think Terry McAuliffe and James Carville run around hugging the homeless. 

Obama asked if there were things we could agree on and like clean air and schools. We agree on lots of things, it’s the “how” where we have the problem. Sure we want to reduce unwanted pregnancies; I want schools to teach abstinence you want them to hand out condoms.  We all hate crime but you think gang members use AK-47’s, I know that that weapon is too large to be concealed and is rarely used in violent crimes.  I don’t know what it’s like in Chicago but here in rural fly over country gay people aren’t stopped from visiting friends or loved ones in the hospital. Can you name a hospital where they are? We agree that illegal immigrants are killing the middle class worker but you want to put them on welfare and I want to put them on a bus.  We agree that there should be equal pay for equal work but pay discrimination is already illegal. Can you name a company that does this, if so please report them to the Department of Justice instead of reporting citizens who are exercising their right to free speech?

There were things I didn’t understand like, “a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?”  Since when is investing in the stock market “gambling”. I have all of my own retirement money in the market and commercial bonds and it’s a lot more than I will ever get from Social Security and it is growing. Right now, even when, “our economy is in turmoil,” my retirement account has a lot more in it than I originally invested.

Then there are the things that you just have wrong.  Many people do not put their country first, Mr. Obama.  Just ask your friend Bill Ayers.

 

 

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: A Little Irony in My Diet

 

I’ve been watching a bit of the Obamathon from Denver over the last few days. The usual stuff has been going on; hack speeches, call and answer audience participation, a boo and hissy fit every time the name Bush, Chaney or Halliburton is mentioned and blaming the right for everything from global warming to the common cold.  I expect the same next week when the Republicans get together so I don’t want anyone getting their shorts up their crack telling me that I’m not fair. Here’s a shocker for you, I’m not trying to be fair. If you want fair try  baggage claim, it’s the only thing I have ever found in life that is fair. Baggage claim treats all people with equal distain without regard to race, gender, sexual preference, age, national origin, or handicap. I’m sorry, should I have said “otherabled”?

So here are a few of my favorite moments from Denver. The first is actually from the day before the convention officially kicked off. The Democrats need the votes of centrist Christians and since they are politicians they are not above pandering. In 2004 when Bush had a headlock on that voting block the Democrats held one luncheon for people of faith, this year a whole day before the convention and four meetings during.

The “Faith in Action Interfaith Gathering” was headlined by Sister Helen Prejean. It’s difficult for me to “dis” a nun. There’s all that residual Catholic guilt and a fear of being cracked across the knuckles with a yardstick. Not the wimpy paint store kind but an industrial one with a strip of brass inset in the edge favored by sadist and Franciscans everywhere.

Sister Prejean is big on stopping the death penalty. I could get into a long and very boring rebuttal of her statistics and logic but I find it ironic that a Christian is against the death penalty because without the death penalty Christianity doesn’t exist. I also find it odd that a Catholic nun would rail against the deaths of 1120 criminals and never mention the deaths of millions children to the party which advocates the abortions laws which are responsible for ending those lives.

The next night the real show got underway and they started trotting out the dinosaurs of liberalism. After awhile the floor of the Pepsi Center began to look like the Jurassic Park of socialism. Look, there’s a Cartersaurus Rex, king of the anti-Semite appeasers, known for his inaction in the face of Islamic extremism. There goes a Kerryatops, a lumbering beast whose head is so large its vision is distorted so that it sees only its own self-interest. Under that Illinois sign over there is the Jacksonsaur, rumored to soon be extinct or even worse irrelevant. There is the rarest dinosaur of them all, seen only once every four years, known for its huge overbite, little teeth, bushy brow and delusional behavior, the Dukakisoraptor. Generally, the ignoramus Dukakisoraptor is seen running around screaming about how he got screwed and how much better things would be if he had been elected.  The only dinosaur missing thus far is the Goreodactyl but he is expected to be seen as soon as he sells himself some carbon offsets so he can fly out on his private jet.

 

Finally, nothing warms the heart of a member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy more than seeing a Clinton take it on the chin. I really wanted Hillary to win the nomination for a lot of reasons not the least of which was seeing a 527 group to trot out all of the dalliances the former President has had since leaving office. I was hoping against hope that they had some underhanded machinations to throw the convention into turmoil but alas the only thing the Clintons like more than power is money and with a 24 million dollar bribe on the table they played ball…sort of. Hillary could be sentenced to thirty days in county for non-support after the tepid speech she made on Tuesday, followed by more of the same on Wednesday by Billy Boy. The Clintons are great at a lot of things but grace in defeat isn’t among them. Bill Clinton has such great ability to fake sincerity that he could have been one of the greatest agents in the history of Hollywood.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Dude, Where’s My Change?

Joe Biden? That’s it?  Is this the start of the big sea change in American politics? He of the loose lips and bad hair transplants is the first change that Obama has for us? Seriously, if you sat down for a month and tried to think of a more “in the box” pick for a vice presidential candidate you would be hard pressed to come up with a more ho-hum name than Joe Biden. Oh wait, that’s just what the folks behind the Oracle from Chicago seem to have done. They went to the grocery store for salsa but came back with cottage cheese, old moldy cottage cheese. Senator Biden has been in Washington since Barack was in the fifth grade! This guy is carrying more baggage that a cruise ship porter.

Barack could have gone outside of politics to a business leader like his buddy Warren Buffett or into the academic world for someone who shares his world view like Ward Churchill. He could have bitten the bullet and picked Hillary and unified not only his party but the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy as well. He could have done a lot of things to foreshadow the changes he has in store for America but what he gave us was a VP pick that shouts politics as usual.

Be honest with me, my enlightened progressive friends, how many of you, when you got your text message and read that Joe Biden was the second half of the ticket either thought the system had been hacked or simply said, “What the (expletive deleted)!” Did any of you jump off of your futon in a burst of unrestrained joy? I didn’t think so.

What is the deep strategy behind this bold pick? Maybe Barack was trying to lock up Delaware and it three electoral votes which haven’t gone Republican since 1988. Perhaps Mr. Obama was afraid we were unsure of his anti-second amendment stance after his “…they cling to guns or religion…” statement.

I won’t get into the numerous verbal slap downs that Biden gave Obama before he polled a whopping one percent in Iowa and quit the presidential race. Maybe there is some hidden brilliance here that I am too much of a moron to see or maybe Barack just had a bad day.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Who Cares About Your Running Mate?

 

 

Everybody has their shorts all bunched up waiting to see who Obama and McCain are going to pick as their running mate but really, who cares?   

Sure there are some stupid picks that the two could make like Obama picking Hillary and galvanizing the right or McCain picking Lieberman and alienation just about everyone. That aside, I think the vice presidential pick has little effect on the outcome of the election. Does anyone go to the poll and think that the most important issue is where the VP candidate is from?  That may have been true back in the 19^th century but I don’t think people today give a rat’s backside if their states favorite son is on the ticket. Sure there is always what I call the Elvis factor, that small percentage of folks who will do or believe in anything, like Libertarians who think Bob Barr has a chance of winning. Seriously, is there any leftie out there who will leave the Obama camp even if he picks Lassie or a bar of Irish Spring as his running mate?

With the exception of Bush the First all recent vice presidents have faded in obscurity which is probably just as well when you consider they have included Quayle and Mondale. Those that did get to the big chair were nothing to write home about. Witness, Nixon, Ford and Johnson.  

More important to winning my vote is knowing who the candidate is going to nominate for the Supreme Court.  Justices are there forever.  Even a Nixon or a Johnson has a limited shelf life so I am much more concerned about who will sit on the court than who will get free room and board at the Naval Observatory. I suspect that anyone Obama would nominate would make Ruth Bader-Ginsberg seem like Rush Limbaugh but I could be wrong. Let’s say Barack put out a list of three names and they weren’t Castro, Chavez and Chomsky maybe he wouldn’t seem so radical. On the other hand if John McCain would put out a list of three names that contained Alito/Roberts type conservatives and not Castro. Chavez, Chomsky maybe some of us out on the far right wing nut job, drill here, protect the second amendment, control the borders, prolife fringe would not be looking to sit this dance out.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Above My Pay Grade

 

I watched the first and maybe the only showdown between Obama and McCain on Saturday. I actually watched it on Sunday after doing a gig and after hearing several things thought I had broken my twenty years of sobriety. I wasn’t drunk but Mr. Obama may well have been judging from his answers.

 I can understand his not wanting to take a stand on abortion. He has to do a dance that pleases his far left base and does not alienate centrists and right wing Christians who he is trying to win.  He cannot speak his mind on abortion and say what he believes, he has to dodge the question about when does a child deserve human rights. So he tried to be clever but that strategy is full of landmines. His non-answer of “That’s above my pay grade.” was the wrong thing to say.  

“Above my pay grade” is the government/military version of “That’s not my job.” I’m sorry, my enlighten progressive friends, but when you are getting ready to try to run the free world there is nothing above your pay grade. If there is then you are not the leader, so send us the person for whom answering tough questions is within their pay grade.

Does Mr. Obama really expect the American people to believe that he has no opinion on when a fetus is protected by the constitution? Doesn’t this guy make a big deal out of the fact he was the editor of the Harvard Law Review? There is no decent lawyer in American who isn’t up to date on this issue. Does he really have no opinion on when human life begins? No wonder he voted “present” so many times in the Illinois Senate.

Later when asked which Justice on the Supreme Court he would not have nominated he said the obvious, “Clarence Thomas.” Then instead of speaking what he really believes, that no real “Black Man” can be a conservative. That being a conservative excludes you from being a member of the African-American community because you’re just a lackey of the White man. Instead he has the absolute chutzpa to say the Thomas was unqualified because of his lack of experience!  I think the whole lack of experience thing is a subject he might want to play down.

One final comment on this evening, and this is not an opinion a lot of conservative share but can we let the questioning of the presidential candidates to the journalists. I admit I am not a big fan of any preacher who seems to be more interested in self aggrandizement and wealth than following the word of Jesus.  I know the arguments about all the good that Rick Warren does and how his books have inspired millions but those are the same things arguments that I have heard defending Rev, Wright and Louis Farrrakhan. There was a rich guy in the bible who he told Jesus about all the charity work he did and asked what else he could do and I believe the Lord said, “Give up all you have and follow me.” If you want a more secular authority Lenny Bruce put it this way, “No preacher should own two suits until everyone in his congregation owns at least one.”

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Olympics, the Agony of the Seat

I am trying very hard to put my backside in front of the television to root home our Olympic team but in direct contrast to the old saw my flesh is willing but my spirit is weak. I just can’t get into the games and after giving it some thought here are several reasons.

First, the coverage has become too political correct. I don’t want to see the Brazilian Woman’s water polo team, a Togolese kayaker or the Pakistani field hockey team. I don’t care! I’m an American and do you know what I want to see? I want to see another American kicking someone’s ass! If we are not kicking their ass, cut it off and show me something else. In the 2004 Olympics NBC showed a basketball game where our men got beat by Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico! We still own Puerto Rico so why aren’t they on our team? It’s like Indiana getting their own Olympic team, it isn’t right.

There are a lot of thing in the Olympics that just aren’t sports. Badminton comes to mind. If I would have know I could win a gold medal for playing badminton I would have had a few less Budweisers at the annual Fourth of July picnic and been working on my game. Games like badminton are put in the Olympics so that third world countries can get a few medals. I would imagine that all of the badminton awards this year will go to someone from a country where getting food is more of a national pastime than any athletic competition. Ping Pong is also in at the games this year and I am trying to think which nation is good at table tennis. Could it be the China?

Other sports are being taken out of the Olympics. Baseball and softball are being shown the door after Beijing. These sports are played seriously in a lot more countries than badminton but the International Olympic Committee is made up of a lot of third world socialist. Liberal socialist everywhere, from France to Berkley hate the USA and Bush. Since these are our national sports and we dominate them in every games it’s their little way of sending a big FU to the U.S. In order to retaliate I think all of the gay women on our softball team should take up badminton.

I can’t watch woman’s gymnastics. It makes me feel dirty watching prepubescent girls flop around in skintight suits. If you had stuff like that on your computer you could get arrested for child pornography

Finally I can’t believe that everyone who wins an event gets exactly the same gold medal. That isn’t fair because some sports are harder than others. I like boxing it’s the most brutal and basic of all sports. But the guy who wins the heavyweight division of Olympic boxing gets the same medal as the guy who sits backwards in the eight man rowing event and doesn’t do anything.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Alexander Solzhenitsyn

 One of the greatest voices against communism fell silent this week and I heard very little from the same folks who can’t say “Ronald Reagan” often enough when talking about the downfall of the Soviet Empire. Alexander Solzhenitsyn stood up to the Stalinist while Ronnie was still trying to get third leads in Hollywood and pitching Borax. I like Reagan, he’s number two on my list of people who I would liked to have met right behind Elvis, but Reagan was a strong anti-communist from the safety of Southern California while Solzhenitsyn was making little rocks out of big ones in a prison camp where -30F was a heat wave.

Solzhenitsyn’s pen put the first crack in the Berlin Wall at a time when the American left was still singing the praises of Big Joe Stalin and getting a copy of “Soviet Life” was seen as cool. Solzhenitsyn was pounding on the Iron Curtain when even most hopeful Goldwater Conservatives could not imagine a world without the U.S.S.R.

Stalin, for you lefties are too young to remember was the guy who used the word “progressive” to describe slaughtering twenty or thirty million of his enemies.  Anyone who spent some time in the Stalinist Gulag would have seen having a pair of panties put on your head as a day off.

When you hear someone in this country chirping about a “chill wind” blowing through their right to self expression think of Solzhenitsyn striking blows against communism in a time when looking at the wrong guy in the wrong way could get you whacked in less time that it takes a Democrat Congress to head for vacation.

He spent most of his exile in America but never became Americanized. He deplored the west for its immorality, decadence and materialism. Like all good conservatives Solzhenitsyn sought a nation that would return to its roots and religion. There are those who believe his legacy was diminished by his support of Putin whom he thought was trying to accomplish those things he held dear.  But many old men, feeling their time grow short make mistakes in trying to live to see their dreams come to fruition. Einstein’s early work wasn’t diminished by his mistakes late in life nor will Solzhenitsyn’s legacy be lessened by his association with Putin.

My only question is when will the right in this country become welded to ideals like Solzhenitsyn rather than marginalizing our principles for votes.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: Brett Favre, the NYT, and T. Boone

 

I was going to write this whole thing about how Barack Obama was going to solve the Brett Favre problem, beat Condi Rice and Rush to the NFL Commissioner job and drop out of the presidential race. Unfortunately all I got out of that idea was the preceding sentence so I had to come with something else. I was at the airport and I picked up a copy of the Sunday New York Times to try to get some ideas. Please, for the love of God, don’t let any of my radical right wing pals know I am saying this but I read the New York Times.

Not every day, but I like to pick it up when I am traveling. There are a lot of things to like about the Times. I may be the only person in the world who likes the way the ink still comes off on my hands especially when I am getting steamed reading Maureen Dowd. I like the crossword puzzles. Maybe the thing I like the most is that it’s not USA Today, a newspaper which gives new meaning to the phrase “lowering our standards”.

Of course the paper has a very liberal bias, a liberal bias that starts on page one and goes right through the review of books. For fun I counted the number of references to Obama in the headlines of one section and compared it to the number of times McCain’s name was in the headlines. The final tally was Obama four, McCain one. Even the ads have a liberal bias but you know that when you plunk down your buck fifty. Being unhappy with the bias of The New York Times is like being shocked at the graphic nature of Hustler Magazine.  

As I thumbed through the pages of The Old Grey Lady I found a short interview with T. Boone Pickens. He has been spending millions of dollars on a TV ad campaign to promote his huge investment is wind power. This whole “I don’t care about making money I just want to make energy” scam is why he is in the news these days. He even went up to Capitol Hill to try to get the ball rolling to try to pry loose a few government dollars to back his “plan”. He is running around claiming to have a plan to solve our energy dependence problem but I haven’t seen the whole plan yet. I am all for alternative energy sources but the problem with wind is that it doesn’t always blow. Just like electric cars, which I would buy in a minute if I could drive a little farther and a little faster than I can in a golf cart, the problem is storage.

But I am getting away from my point. I don’t care how T. Boone Pickens spends his money, I am a laissez-faire capitalist. Hey, if you can hoodwink the government into another bad alterative energy decision good for you. Maybe you could form a club with the corn farmers of America who are enjoying the fruits of the law unintended consequences.

The interview was edited to nineteen questions. None of the questions asked him for information about the plan. Several were about how wind turbines don’t look good and might kill birds. One was actually about his many marriages. There were four questions about his giving money to the Swift Boat Veterans. I was wondering if The New York Times did an interview with George Soros would they grill him about his political donations. Does anyone else see the irony in the fact that the leading progressive political action committee is called “Move On” and yet progressives love to keep bringing up things that happened during the past two presidential elections?  

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Goes To the Movies: The Dark Knight

My wife wanted to go out last night. My choices were taking her some place expensive to eat or a movie. Since I really wasn’t in the mood to discuss some minor defect in our relationship over and over again I opted for the movie. I don’t see a lot of movies at the theater due to the political correctness of Hollywood. Don’t take that the wrong way. I’m not one of those right wingers who don’t go see a performer because of their political beliefs.  If I were I would be limited to Ted Nugent and Toby Keith concerts and Tom Selleck movies. I don’t like the Dixie Chicks because they are to country music what the Backstreet Boys were to pop, contrived treacle.  I generally don’t go to movies in the theater because I don’t enjoy sitting in a dark room with a bunch of yahoos who haven’t figured out how to shut off their cell phones or shut their cake holes for two hours and paying eight bucks for the privilege. If I want to hear commentary along with my movie watching I will find an old episode of Mystery Science Theater.

A few years back minority pressure groups started to complain whenever members of their group were depicted as the bad guys in movies. So no matter how illogical it might seem if you make a movie about terrorist attacking New York you better not make the bad guys Arabs. If there is an intercity drug dealer he better not be an African-American or Hispanic. Woman’s group and gay organizations also started whining about how they are “stereotyped”. It has gotten to the point that whenever you see the straight white guy in a movie you know he’s gonna end up being the villain.

But we went to see the new Batman movie “The Dark Knight”. Inadvertently my wife got the other thing she wanted because we stopped by the concession stand and got two sodas and a box of popcorn for just $12. I was hoping Dennis Kucinich or Henry Waxman could start an investigation into this senseless price gouging.

The movie was actually pretty good. The cast was top notch and included my old Chicago drinking buddy Ron Dean as a crooked cop. Talk about stereotyping, like every Chicago cop and politician is on the take. Maybe Chicago politicians need an advocacy group to help them clean up their image, if they could only find a clean, well spoken guy from the Windy City to champion their cause. Anyway, the acting was great, there was plenty of blowing up stuff and shooting people. Batman’s sidekick was happily absent so the entire homoerotic nuance of the George Clooney/Batman era was gone. The casting director did a great job of finding an actress who looked a lot like Katie Holmes-Cruise to play her part since she was too busy with Scientology to take the job.

 Still Hollywood couldn’t resist taking a few liberal swipes with references to the Patriot Act and torture.  I am about to discuss some of the plot so if you are fussy about that kind of thing stop reading right now. Batman builds this big eavesdropping device and his R and D guy Mr. Fox, played by Morgan Freeman gets all moral even though it ultimately saves the lives of hundreds if not thousands of people and leads to the Jokers capture and the end to his reign of terror. Perhaps someone should take Barack to see this. He might get the message about fighting terror or drop out of the Presidential race to take that Chicago job.