For some people it’s “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” For others, it’s not really Christmas until they’ve seen the Garfield and Peanuts specials. Others prefer the old classics like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.” But the Red State Update Christmas party is quickly becoming my favorite holiday tradition:
(Mild content warning for both)
You can tell it’s old because Jackie still hadn’t quite settled into the role he plays now. Best Jackie Broyles line evah: “These here are for my blood pressure… and these aren’t really mine, but, but they done me some good.”
And while I’m something of a traditionalist that loves the old classics, here’s a new video that the Red State boys put together for this year:
On Wednesday the IDS ran a story about a Bloomington Planned Parenthood employee who was suspended without pay after a highly embarrassing online video of a sting operation at their location became public:
The video shows a 20-year-old UCLA student, who went undercover as a 13-year-old, going into Planned Parenthood, saying she was impregnated by a 31-year-old man and asking for help. The Planned Parenthood employee, “Diana,” is seen telling the teen to cross state lines to get an abortion that doesn’t require parental consent.
The video was released Wednesday but was filmed in June at the 421 S. College Ave. location by the student-led Live Action Films, a student human rights organization.
In the video, the employee tells the teen she is supposed to report the incident to Child Protective Services but will pretend she did not hear the age of the man who impregnated her.
“It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds”– Samuel Adams, early American patriot
I recently started reading a biography on Samuel Adams, who, as it turns out, is famous for more than beer. It’s amazing to contemplate the seemingly inconsequential issues that sparked revolutionary war in this country. Our Founders revolted because of taxes that would seem small by today’s standards and because they wanted to govern themselves and not be ruled by a governing body far away from where they lived. It was under these relatively light conditions in which Adams declared that it’s preferable “to die freemen, rather than to live slaves.”It goes without saying, of course, that some areas of the country refused to recognize freedom for their own slaves, and it took another bloody war to finally establish the United States as a land of freedom for all people.
Yet today we’re handing over our freedom (and our money) to politicians left and right. We’ve ceased to view the federal government in its Constitutional role as the protector of our lives, rights and freedoms. We’re constantly looking for more subsidies and handouts, financed by our neighbors. We’ll endure any inconvenience and hassle at airports in the name of security, yet grow queasy at the thought of actually fighting the people who pose threats. We stand back helplessly as the government throws another few hundred billion dollars here, another few hundred billion dollars there at the financial system, hoping the crisis will just go away, not considering that we’ll have to pay for it someday. These are dangerous trends that we’ll certainly come to regret if we’re not careful to once again place a check on the role of government in our lives.
Climate change skeptics on Capitol Hill are quietly watching a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation… More than 31,000 scientists across the world have signed the Global Warming Petition Project, a declaration started by a group of American scientists that states man’s impact on climate change can’t be reasonably proven.
Dear Editor: As a scientist and life-long liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming (the Levi, Borgerson article of 9/24/08) to be a disservice to science, to your readers, and to the quality of the political dialogue leading up to the election… The global warming alarmists don’t even bother with data! All they have are half-baked computer models that are totally out of touch with reality and have already been proven to be false.
Now this video by itself would not be very meaningful, beyond entertainment value. Anyone can make a Michael Moore-style documentary to say anything he wants it to say. There’s no way to prove, for example, that these people weren’t actors or weren’t merely hand-selected for the video because of their shocking levels of cluelessness. But when added to a large body of evidence (some anecdotal, some not) it provides a good visual representation of a big problem we have in our political system.
The above video comes from a Web site for an upcoming film called “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected.” The site includes polling data from a post-election Zogby poll confirming how uniformed the average Obamaniac is. Of course, not all Obama supporters were mind-numbed robots who got caught up in a fad (though a good deal clearly were). There were many intelligent, informed people who knew exactly why they were voting for Obama. But for every one of them, there were probably at least 10 others who were simply starstruck. There can be little doubt that the phenomenon that was “Obama” consisted of incredible amounts of people (mostly from the so-called “Youth Vote“) who don’t know the first thing about politics, or, likely, anything else. You can decide for yourself whether that’s healthy for our country or not, but I don’t think that voting is a virtue in and of itself. I think that electing good leadership is a virtue.
This video and the accompanying evidence of voter ignorance should be an indictment on both our political system, which values “fluff” over “stuff,” as well as our media who’d rather create a superstar than fulfill its role of informing the public. To be fair, I’m sure there are a lot of uninformed Republican voters out there too, and while I’m not aware of any comparable investigations, stupid GOP voters are a problem too. But I don’t think we’ve ever quite seen anything like the Obama craze, and it’s time we decide whether we want a President or just the next American Idol.
The Governator of Colleeforneeyah, long considered by conservatives as a first-rate RINO (Republican In Name Only) thinks he knows the remedy for a GOP that’s suffered in recent elections. From an LA Times story:
In the wake of crushing defeats for Republicans in last week’s national elections, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Sunday that his party should regroup by moving away from some of its core conservative principles and embracing spending on programs that Americans want.
Gee, here’s a novel idea: How about letting people keep their own money, and then they can spend it on…. wait for it….. wait for it….. what they want. Somehow I have just never been able to understand how someone who just can’t decide what to do with his money would be more satisfied once its been confiscated and funneled through various bureaucratic agencies than he would have been spending it on his own. Call me simple-minded, but it seems like the only reason that people must be threatened with jail time for tax evasion is that they do in fact know how to spend their money on things they want. Liberal economics is just the most unintuitive concept in the world to me.
I guess it would be one thing if these enlightened Keynsians showed a whit of competence in spending the money they extort from their fellow citizens. But this brilliant suggestion regarding the direction of the Republican Party is coming from a man whose state is ailing so badly that it recently had to ask the rest of the us for a $7 billion bailout. Meanwhile, another Governor I know of used fiscally conservative principles to balance his state’s budget without raising taxes. And, I might add, without a bailout paid for by our neighbors – you know, with money spent on “programs they really want.” And this Governor won his recent election in a landslide, in a state that went blue for the first time in 44 years to boot. Still feel like preaching about how the GOP needs to “not get stuck in ideology” now, Gov. Schwarzenegger? Daniels hasn’t been a perfect conservative, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that conservatism works when it’s tried and wins when it’s on the ballot.
Could the choice of direction for the GOP possibly be any more clear? If we want to throw the bums out of government (and I know we do) we’ve got to throw the bums out of our own party first.
“Dried Mushrooms Slow Climate Warming in Northern Forests” – The environment just isn’t as fragile as we think it is, and it has ways to sustain itself. Key line from this article: “This came as a surprise to scientists…” I’m not anti-science at all. I’m pro-science enough to understand that science is supposed to make itself obsolete… that is, as we keep learning more, we update and change our understandings of science. So to craft enormous, life-altering policy around conjecture and fear mongering is a bad idea.
Scott Rasmussen confirms what everyone knows, whether they’ll admit it or not: “The Polls Show That Reaganism Is Not Dead.” Conservatism doesn’t lose elections; goofy Republicans who abandon conservatism lose elections (almost always to Democrats who pretend to be right-of-center during the campaign). See also this Pat Toomey piece in the WSJ, “Swing Voters Don’t Want Big Government.”
When he was just a simple citizen questioning Obama’s tax plan, he inadvertently gave direction to a lost campaign. When he was investigated by government officials and hounded by the media for his intolerable crime of questioning the unquestionable One, he received the love and support of millions. But this is just obnoxious.
Both parties getting new leadership. Mr. YEAAAAAHHHH is leaving the DNC, and Michael “Drill Baby Drill” Steele and Newt Gingrich are the top contenders at the RNC. Either of these guys could potentially be a great fit for the job, but both have their definite baggage (especially Newt). I’d probably prefer ol’ Freeeeedddd Thomson, but I doubt he can beat out both of them.
…but we’ve got to work day and night to remake our Party first.
Believe it or not, I’ve got lots of thoughts on the election that I’m dying to share with the world, but unfortunately the homework doesn’t stop just because the nuts have taken over the asylum (just teasing Dems enjoy your celebrations, and I hope you’re still as happy this time next year as you are right now). So I’ll just do a quick repost of an audio commentary I recorded last semester called “Party like it’s 1994!”. At the time, we thought we would be dealing with a Clinton nightmare-scenario, rather than the more hopeful, changeful nightmare-scenario that we actually got… but the basic point is still relevant.
While Democrats are eager to churn out the new president’s legislative programs, they’re also anxious to avoid the electoral wipeout that swept them from power in the 1994 congressional elections.
I can show you in two videos everything you need to know about the modern Democrat party.
Commenter I.J.R. kindly e-mailed me this video from the occasionally-insightful, usually-funny, always-obnoxious James Kotecki:
I was kind of surprised to get a video like this from I.J.R. Usually he/she/it can barely contain his/her/its glee over the impending rise of the Welfare State and all other things liberal. Maybe I.J.R. sent this as a preemptive victory celebration, taunting me of things to come. Or maybe he/she/it is one of the rare libs that can take a joke ; )
And the second video requires no further commentary… there’s just nothing more I can add:
December 16th, 2008 by 
Chase Cooper
enjoy your celebrations, and I hope you’re still as happy this time next year as you are right now). So I’ll just do a quick repost of an