Centrifugal Nation

Newspeak 11/11/10

2010-11-11T10:03:00.002-05:00

FEMINISM. A movement that claims to pursue the elevation of women to their rightful place in society. The radical segment of this movement carries their passions to ridiculous extremes. The woman who declared Newton’s Principia Mathematica to be a “rape manual” is a good example of this. Goodness, did Newton draw an obelisk in there

somewhere that set off phallic nightmares? What does this poor soul do to keep her eyes off the Washington monument? Some women reject men altogether. Gloria Steinem said that, “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.” Rosanne Barr said, “Women are cursed, and man is the proof.”

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY. Code word for spending whatever the Left thinks needs to be spent in order to achieve their goals. The overspending is usually characterized as the more palatable “investments.”

FINANCIAL REFORM. A need brought on by the financial panic of 2008. If tax cheat Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner has his way the federal government would have nearly unlimited authority to bail out struggling financial institutions. What, then, is the incentive for financial institutions to act responsibly? If we all had a government guaranteed program to bail us out when we vastly overspent our credit card accounts, would that lead to personal fiscal responsibility? Moreover, the bill proposed by the Democrats does little to change the regulation of the government entities that gave AAA ratings to mortgages that turned out to be worthless.

As it did with the stimulus bill and the healthcare bill the administration is trying to ram through a quick measure that it hopes will give them political gain. They are trying to pass legislation before they receive the report from the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on the crisis's causes. They have used, once again the “crisis-solution” gambit, (See Crisis, above) to insert urgency into the effort, cobble together a bill that no one understands and get it through Congress before anyone has time to evaluate it. The New York Times listed a number of prominent economists who have declared that this is a mistake.

As Nicholas F. Brady, former Treasury secretary once said, “You can’t fix what you can’t explain.” Among the critics were Andrew Lo, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who cautioned that that the politicians need to tell the public that “we need to proceed about this in a much more deliberate and rational and thoughtful way.” Lawrence J. White, a finance professor at New York University, said it made no sense to overhaul financial regulation without addressing the future of federal housing policy. It was because of the mismanagement of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the housing market ballooned and then collapsed taking a great segment of the economy with it. He described this omission from the bill as “outrageous.” Other critics have said that the measure does nothing to stabilize the markets where lenders get their money. Yet others say that the biggest problem is that the bill does nothing to regulate the regulators. Senator Chris Dodd, the author of the legislation on one hand said that the government’s failure to regulate Fannie Mae was a tragedy. Yet, he refused to insert such regulation into the bill.

The Democrats, Barack Obama in particular, have hammered the Republicans for being in bed with Wall Street. Yet, an examination of Wall Street’s financial contributions to political campaigns shows that the contributions to the Democratic Party were nearly twice as large as to the Republicans. The Democratic Party accusations are nothing more than another red herring.

Newspeak 10/22/10

2010-10-22T11:26:00.002-04:00

FASCISM. This term is widely bandied about on many levels from the teenager whose father will not let him have the car keys on a Saturday night, to anyone who opposes liberal progressive ideas. Strictly speaking, fascism strictly applies only to the Italian Fascisti who were created by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. The fasces, the symbol from which fascism gets its name, goes back to Roman times. It is a bundle of sticks bound together. The point is that one stick may be easily broken but the bundle is much stronger. The fasces appears many times in the United States. It was on the reverse of the Mercury Dime that the U.S. used between 1916 and 1945, is on the National Guard symbol and in several state seals. E Pluribus Unum, anyone? What the liberal progressives ignore or do not know is that Italian Fascism and that in Nazi Germany began as liberal movements. Author Jonah Goldberg calls fascism “a religion of the state.” Many on the American Left were enthralled by the prospect of European fascism in its early years. A major advisor to President Franklin Roosevelt, Rexford Guy Tugwell, said of Italian fascism, “It is the cleanest, neatest most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I have ever seen. It makes me envious.”

Jonah Goldberg defines fascism as follows: “It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian as it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought or action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the ‘problem’ and therefore defined as the enemy.” (emphasis mine) Mussolini believed that the state had to be strengthened against the individual, see Individual below. He said, “It is not the people who make the state but the state which makes the people.” Holy smoke! Goldberg has obviously read 1984. His description exactly describes the world in Orwell’s book, from “national leader attuned to the will of the people” (Obama/Big Brother) to doing anything they want in order to achieve the “common good” (intrusive, over-regulation of our lives) to demonizing the “enemy” as in “the problems caused by the last eight years”. My apologies for using “Holy smoke!” It is undoubtedly politically incorrect and I should have said, “Secular smoke!”

FEAR MONGERING (WHAT IS GOOD FOR THE GOOSE DEPARTMENT). The charge that the Left throws at normal people when they question parts of the liberal agenda, say, healthcare, by warning of the enormous cost overruns that will undoubtedly occur. Barack Obama said during the debate about healthcare, “There's been a lot of fear-mongering, a lot of overheated rhetoric.” Now, however, the Arizona immigration law is “reminiscent” of how Jews were treated in Germany just before World War II,” said Democratic Congressman Jared Polis. “It is polarizing the situation,” said President Obama and, “If you don’t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you’re going to be harassed. That’s something that could potentially happen.” Sorry about that, gander.

Newspeak 10/13/10

2010-10-12T13:52:00.000-04:00

FAIR SHARE. As in the “rich paying their fair share of taxes.” There is nothing fair about this philosophy. The facts are: the top one percent of our citizens pay forty percent of our income tax revenue; the top five percent pay sixty percent of our income tax revenue; the top ten percent pay seventy percent; the top fifty percent pay ninety-six percent of our income tax revenue. The bottom half of Americans only pay about four percent of our income tax revenue. For fifty percent of our citizens, then, paying income tax is what one columnist called a “spectator sport.” The percentage of citizens who pay no income tax has doubled since 1950 to about forty seven percent. The Leftist New York Times calls these figures “a cleverly selective reading of the facts.” Is this another “fact,” New York Times?

Worse, the bottom forty percent of American earners, those who pay no taxes, receive a payment from the government. Characterized as a “refund” it is not a refund at all but a transfer of money from the “rich” to the “less fortunate.” The “refund” will be more than they pay in federal, state and local taxes, sales tax and Social Security tax combined. ." Representative Paul Ryan Paul Ryan hit the nail on the head when he called this “more takers than makers.”

A New York Times columnist recently commented that elements of the financial reform bill might eventually place another burden on taxpayers. Would it not hurt our other citizens, too? Probably not since they have no “skin in the game” and they will not bear the cost of failed government policies.

Leftist politicians and media pundits, whose compensation often runs into the millions of dollars, often characterize those who make $250,000 as “rich.” In order to appease the unions in regards to the healthcare bill, the administration will not tax their health plan like they will tax similar plans held by other Americans. To make up for not being able to expropriate healthcare cash until 2018 from the remnants of the old industrial unions, the Democrats conjured a 3.8% “Medicare tax” on higher-bracket investment income. Democrats and Mr. Obama defended the investment taxes as “fair-share” social justice. The president has talked of “redistributive change” and “spreading the wealth around.” He has also said, “I do think at a certain point you've made enough money.” Okay, maybe he was talking about just the “rich.” But since the definition of “rich” is being defined downward, at what point are all of us going to be accused of “making too much money.” Maybe we have already reached that point since the Obama administration is piling tax after tax upon those who work and already pay all the income taxes in America.

Sixty years of experience have shown that increasing the marginal tax rates on the “rich” produce no increase in government revenues. Question for Al Gore: Where are you on this “inconvenient truth?” But the Left needs a scapegoat to throw over the cliff to deflect the blame from themselves so the assault on the economy will probably continue.

The tax code, as presently written is 70,000 pages long; this is not a typo. It is so full of exemptions and concessions to special interests that no one can truly understand it. Because they do not understand it, politicians keep heaping additional tax burdens on the “rich.” And, on a regular basis “rich” is includes a greater portion of the middle class.

The Obama administration has no plan for reducing the deficit or rewriting the tax code. Under current levels of spending the national debt will rise from forty percent of

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2008 to ninety percent of GDP by 2010. And this estimate fails to take into account the additional costs of the new healthcare program that the Democrats have squirreled away in one dim corner of the budget or another. Greece, the financially failed state of Europe has an annual deficit of thirteen percent of GDP. In the United States the annual deficit is ten percent and rising. Our politicians fiddle while our fiscal system burns. Greece is a member of the European Union and cannot simply print more money. The United States can print all it wants, even though each dollar minted will be worth less in real money than the one printed before it.

The time is not far off when our government will hit a financial wall where no more tax money is available unless everyone is taxed at punitive levels. Can we expect Europe to bail us out as it is doing for Greece? Think about it.

FAIRNESS IN BROADCASTING. This was initiated in 1949 when television was in its infancy. It was meant to provide for equal access to broadcast networks for a wide variety of opinions. As a result of several court decisions, the Federal Communication Commission revoked this practice in 1987. For several years now, the Left have been struggling to have it reinstated. They are alarmed by popular radio broadcasters, for example Rush Limbaugh, and the growth of their following. They seek to reduce this influence by reducing the number of stations available to broadcast anything that does not fit into their philosophy. Their own attempts to take to the airways, e.g. Air America, have been dismal failures so they are trying to use a perversion of freedom of speech to give them leverage with an audience that has largely rejected them.

FAMILY. The basic unit of the human race that reaches back to the dawn of mankind. The Left is increasingly encroaching on decisions that were traditionally the business of the family. A book by Hillary Clinton book is a major assault our family structure. See It Takes a Village, below. The voice of the parents is increasingly less important as the Left removes more and more decisions, choices, from the family. “Choice” is almost always attached to something that has the Left’s approval. They do not, for example, believe parents should have a choice about where to send their children to school. Yet, they believe that underage girls should not need their parents’ consent to obtain an abortion. In Maryland there is a law that prevents schools from sending test scores to military recruiters. The reasoning is that it gives the recruiters access to children without their parents’ consent. See Choice, above.

FAMILY VALUES. The belief that our laws should be written with the American family in mind. In Newspeak this, like law and order, see below, is an inflammatory term that is an attack on non-traditional families. The Left does not believe that the traditional family is capable raising its children and conducting its affairs, competently. Secondly, “family values” is regarded by the Left as a conservative code word for opposing the harmful changes in our society wrought by the values of the Sixties generation. These include unrestricted abortion, the prevalence of pornography in the name of the First Amendment, the spread of Internationalism and other things that are destroying our society. They also feel that “family values” is an attack on such treasured things as multiple genders, amnesty for illegal aliens, the coddling of criminals, and absolving half of all Americans from paying income tax. The list goes on and on.

Newspeak, continued, 9/24/2010

2010-09-24T18:15:00.002-04:00

ENTREPRENEUR. Newspeak for “sucker.” Entrepreneurs are Americans who risk all of their assets and devote their entire lives working incredible hours bringing to fruition new ideas for products and services that often add thousand of jobs and provide enormous treasure to our economy. They are the backbone of the American economic engine. But they are regarded by the Left as a bottomless well of money that can be used for endless government schemes. Entrepreneurs are lumped in with the barons of Wall Street, the “rich” the “special interests” and demonized by members of Congress, few of whom ever created a job, risked all their treasure to build a business, or had to make payroll, for our economic problems. The government takes an ever-increasing amount of their earnings and taxes their estates at about forty-five percent when they die.

EXECUTIVE ORDER. The means by which President Obama bought the votes from the doubtful anti-abortion Democrats in order to pass his healthcare bill. He promised to issue an executive order to ban use of federal funds for abortions. Executive orders are easily ignored or reversed by the president. Witness his executive order to close Guantanamo within one year. Sixteen months into his administration, Guantanamo is still open for business.

EQUALITY. This is Newspeak for equality of outcome rather than the equality of opportunity that has made America great. It is the equality of outcome, so treasured by the Left, which has led to affirmative action, excusing the economic bottom half of our citizenry from paying any income taxes, and the twin diseases of political correctness and diversity.

EXTRAPOLATIONS. Familiar form of arguments put forward by the Left as “proof.” An example of the bankruptcy of this type of reasoning is that, say, we got four inches of snow yesterday and six inches of snow today. The extrapolation is that the snowfall will increase by fifty percent daily, ad infinitum. In a month, according to this reasoning, daily snowfall would reach into the millions of inches. Extrapolations are very often used by the Left, for everything from government expenditures to “statistics” about their pet programs.

FACTS. Almost any data the Left proposes to support their positions. “Facts are stubborn things and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence . . .” John Adams. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”

Contrast this with “Blackwhite.” This word, used in Orwell’s 1984, has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought that is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doesn’t this sound familiar?” See also, Two Plus Two Equals Five, below.

Newspeak, 9/05/2010

2010-09-06T10:35:00.000-04:00

ELECTIONS. Apparently middle-aged white males are a monolithic force of evil that all other members of American society must work against. According to columnist Michelle Oddis, “our post-racial president himself embraced race with the sole intent of influencing an election.” Obama excluded middle aged, white, male voters calling on “young people, African Americans, Latinos and women,” to vote for Democrats in November.” Gee, Mr. President, I thought that E Pluribus Unum was meant to be all- inclusive, even including we evil white males.

ENRICH Another patronizing code word meaning that if you mindlessly follow my radical theories it will “enrich” your lives and your understanding of how the world really works.

ETHNOCENTRISM. A general term meaning that all of Western culture is inferior to the world’s multiple cultures. The latter have allegedly been suppressed by (who could ever guess?) white males.

ENTITLEMENTS. In addition to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and now healthcare, there are dozens of federal, state and city entitlements. By one estimate, twenty percent of the American people receive seventy five percent or more of their income from government sources.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY (EPA). The EPA refuses to believe that the entire global warming thing is a hoax. The White House Climate Czar, Carol Browner, who, like the other “Czars” did not have to be approved by the Senate, is moving ahead with a Cap and Trade twin that will impose environmental restrictions by White House fiat. The total proposal runs, 18,000 pages and, according to columnist Phil Kerpen, “regulates almost everything that moves and lots of things that stay put.” The burdens on small businesses and individuals will add to the economic crisis and retard our recovery.

Newspeak, continued, 8/26/2010

2010-08-26T10:07:00.000-04:00

EMPOWER. A euphemism designed to “protect” any group, preferably a minority group, from the traditional values of the past. See Girl Scouts, below. The United Nations wants to “empower” girls ten to fourteen years of age in sexual matters. Young girls need their parents’ permission to undergo even minor cosmetic surgery but the Left wants them “empowered” to have abortions without notifying the parents.

ENERGY. The Left wants to run the country without utilizing energy sources. They are against drilling simply because it involves oil. They are against using coal because it damages the atmosphere. They are against nuclear power because they regard it as dangerous. They are against wind power because birds sometimes fly into the propellers of wind turbines and are injured or killed. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced in January 2010 that he was shutting down all federal lands for oil and gas drilling. Maybe if Starbucks has to shut down because it has not the electricity to make lattes, it will finally come to the Left’s attention that something is amiss. Obama’s announcement that he was going to open up certain areas to offshore drilling is a beginning but is not nearly enough. He neglected to open drilling in Alaska, California and off Florida where it would do the most good of all. The explosion of the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, the first such incident in over forty years, has the liberals pointing fingers and saying, “I told you so.”

A double standard is consistently employed when it comes to energy use. Al Gore, the patron saint of the Greens, burns up many, many times the energy that the average homeowner uses. Just one of his houses uses twenty times the energy as does the average U.S. residence. In April 2010, Gore and his wife spent $9 million on yet another residence, this one in California. Of course, Gore is busier than most Americans. He invented the internet and global warming so he is probably busy with yet another heroic effort.

And the Kennedy family is protesting the erection of an offshore wind farm because it would “ruin the view” from their Hyannis port compound. Another Kennedy family member characterized anyone who drives an SUV as un-American and then hopped on a private jet to return to Boston. This characteristic of the “anointed” is common. They believe that their laws should apply to everyone but themselves. It is another case of “some being more equal than others.” See Orwell’s Animal Farm and The Anointed, above.

An editorial in the New York Times complained that China was winning the global competition to create green energy sources. Have the editors of the Times been to Beijing lately? Or Shanghai? The air in most Chinese cities is worse than it was in Los Angeles in the 1970s and is nearly un-breathable. Maybe the Times means that the air in China will turn green in color. Perhaps it will.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE, THE. No longer the universal language of the United States. In the past, immigrants came to this country and learned English. Their children went to schools where all subjects were taught in English. The children learned the language and grew up to be part of the great American melting pot. The secular progressives have bulldozed many school districts in the United States into teaching children, whose first language is not English, into teaching in another language, usually Spanish. These children are much slower in learning English and integrating into American society, which is just fine with the secular progressives who are happy with the “diversity.” One of the few politicians who has the courage to openly oppose the official use of anything but English is Tim James, an Alabama gubernatorial candidate. The New York Times labeled him a bottom-feeding campaigner, a racist and xenophobe. Actually, there is a law on the books in Alabama stating that English must be used for drivers’ license tests but like so many laws, no one has had the courage to enforce it. Maybe James will. Does anyone but me resent having to "press one for English" when calling a company.

Newspeak, continued, 8/16/2010

2010-08-16T09:46:00.000-04:00

ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE. Was supposed to save or create two million jobs. The total, in its first year, has been less than a third of that number and even that figure is suspect. The unemployment rate is creeping upward.

EDUCATION. “Ignorance is strength.” “There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent there will be no need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed.” George Orwell, 1984.

The teachers’ unions have had a stranglehold on education for decades. Their refusal to fire bad teachers and reward good ones, the useless teacher certification program and opposition to charter schools has prevented our schools from getting better. In the past forty years, spending on education has increased three-fold in constant dollars while the abilities of our children have declined. In the Obama administration’s plan to improve education, charter schools were not mentioned at all. Nor was competition or school choice. Subservience to the teachers’ unions nearly resulted in Congress cutting back charter schools in the District of Columbia even though D.C.’s schools are a national disgrace.

In New Jersey, a teachers’ union official sent out an email with a “mock” prayer for the death of Governor Christie who is trying to save the state from insolvency by cutting back on the generous retirement plans of public workers. The president of the teachers’ union later called on Governor Christie to offer an apology (Was it a “mock” apology, too?). When the governor asked the union official if the author of the email had been fired, he replied, “Why would we want to do anything like that?”

School administrators are often complicit in perpetuating our poor educational system. A teacher in Louisiana was told that she was not permitted to flunk any of her students regardless of how badly they performed. The state has a mandated test system and it appears that the administrators do not want to be seen as not performing well under the mandate and looking bad themselves. Better to let the students graduate with no skills than to improve the quality of education.

In Rhode Island, only seven percent of eleventh graders pass the state math exams. Seven percent!

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, has vowed to invade public schools with lawyers wielding the Civil Rights Act in order to overcome what he considers civil rights violations, such as too many white students in high school advanced placement classes. Columnist George Will points out that the greatest predictor of success in education is a stable family. Until the liberals address the fact that seventy-one percent of African-American and fifty-one percent of Hispanic babies are born to unwed mothers, there is not likely to be any real progress in improving the educational standards of minorities.

ELECTION IS OVER, THE. Routinely used by members of the Obama administration to trump any objections to their policies. They mean it to convey that they have a mandate to do whatever they want. It is their version of the “mandate of heaven” that was used for millennia to justify the position of Chinese emperors or of the “divine right of kings” used by European royalty.

EMPIRE STATE BUILDING. One would think that New York’s most recognizable remaining building would be safe from being an object of political expression. In honor of the 60^th anniversary of the Communist take over of China, it is going to be illuminated in red. Just a year ago, the building authorities refused to illuminate it in blue in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa. When asked. Daniel Hernandez, representing the public relations branch of the building, told a reporter that the decision was made by a “committee,” the members of which he refused to identify. This is more phony “diversity” at work.

Newspeak, continued, 7/31/2010

2010-07-31T09:37:00.002-04:00

D.R.E.A.M. Proposed legislation for something called the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. This proposal is promoted by the Left to insure higher education for illegal aliens. Controversy over the bill erupted in Atlanta when a 21 year-old college student, Jessica Colotl was stopped for a traffic violation. She was not only in the country illegally but was driving illegally too. She had no drivers’ license but offered the officer an expired Mexican passport. Moreover, she was receiving supplemental funding from the state of Georgia for her education. She reportedly said, “I never thought I would be caught up in this messed-up system. I was treated like a criminal.” Uh, Jesse, you were breaking several laws. That makes you a criminal.

Mary Bauer, who is assisting in Ms. Colotl’s defense said that Georgia law enforcement’s policy of identifying and turning over to the federal government illegal aliens for deportation is “mean-spirited and very probably illegal.” Uh, Ms. Bauer, Jessica was breaking the law. That means that she is illegal, not the law.

Do you think that illegal aliens should be not be permitted to stay as long as they want in the United States and should not be competing for taxpayer funding for their educations at the expense of American children? D.R.E.A.M on!

DRIFTER. Also called a vagrant. A “homeless” person once he or she has committed a serious, often violent crime. They are the same people as the homeless, but “homeless” is a liberal code word for a person who has been displaced by the “inequities” in our society. With a wave of the semantic wand, a criminal homeless person is transformed into something that is different and not as desirable or quite as in need of as much protection as a “homeless” person.

EARMARKS. The practice of inserting special-interest provisions in a piece of legislation without notice and without debate; very often for frivolous reasons.. Examples are money for turtle research in Hawaii, money for research on pickled vegetables in Arkansas, and for tattoo removal in California. This is a much-used practice in Washington. Two senators, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Tom Harkin of Iowa each managed to get over $7 million dollars to fund projects named after themselves. In Byrd’s case it was for the “Robert C. Byrd Institute of Advanced Flexible Manufacturing Systems." Does anyone know what this is? I don’t and some of my money financed it. Earmarks are nearly always characterized by lawmakers as “job creators.” It is difficult for me to see how Senator Hillary Clinton’s earmark to commemorate the 1969 Woodstock festival created any jobs.

In the year he was a senator (2008 doesn’t count because all he did was campaign for president that year) Obama managed to insert over $100 million in earmarks for special interests. Then he campaigned against them. Then he changed course again and signed the “stimulus” bill that had over 8,000 earmarks attached to them. This works out to an average of about fifteen per lawmaker. Earmarks are legalized bribery. Special interest groups give money to members of Congress and are rewarded with appropriations for whatever cause they happen to represent. The Republicans have tried to introduce a bill that would make all earmarks illegal. The Democrats insist on removing earmarks to corporations only. According to journalist John Hawkins, there were but twenty earmarks in the 1980 defense budget. Today the earmarks in the defense bill number in the thousands.

Newspeak, continued, 7/21/2010

2010-07-21T14:25:00.002-04:00

DO THIS OR DO NOTHING AT ALL, I HAVE TO, A cowardly term used by lawmakers to justify their vote for an unpopular bill. Decoded, this means, “I know you don’t want this bill but you’d better take this or you will never get anything, ever.” This is a reversal of “half a loaf is better than none.” What they are arguing is that you’d better take these twenty loaves and eat them at once, although some of them might poison you. Otherwise you will starve and it won’t be my fault.

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL. A policy passed into law during the Clinton administration that bans gays in the military from openly declaring their sexuality. This is one of the issues that drives the Left nuts and they never tire of a litany of philosophical reasons why the law should be changed. Most if not all of them have never served in the military and have no idea of the practical ramifications of changing the law.

I am not a homophobe. There are several gays in my extended family and what they do is their own business. However, I am strongly against gays serving in the military for practical reasons. One is a question of berthing and restrooms. I have a daughter as many people do. Would I be comfortable with having her share the same room for living quarters if some of the residents were men? No, I would not, and neither would you. I see no difference from forcing my son to live under the same conditions in a room in which some of the men were sexually attracted to him. Another reason is performance on the battlefield. I have led men in combat and there is nothing more complicated, nothing is more difficult than leading others in battle. The last thing a combat leader, or his men, need is the additional complication of possible love affairs among fighting men. If Ralph is in love with Charlie, there is all the more chance that his feelings will lead to conduct that is disastrous to every man in the unit.

And I reject the notion that because some other nations allow gays to serve the United States should too. It may come as a surprise to the Left but we are the United States of America, not another country and we cannot afford to have our military organization downgraded to that of a second-rate power. What would be on the Left’s agenda next, transvestites? Which restroom would they use?

The proponents of repealing the act contend that the “professionalism” of gays in the military would prevent them from having sex in common spaces. This is naïve thinking. The sex drive, as we all know, is particularly strong among the young and to think that it would be reduced by “professionalism” is not realistic.

The Democrats probably do not have enough votes in 2010 to survive an up and down vote. Nancy Pelosi wants to insert a provision repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the Defense Appropriations Bill. Her aim is to hold the nation’s security hostage in order to ram through an unpopular bill. This is typical of the Left’s tactics and has characterized their behavior during the entire Obama presidency.

USA Today reported that most Americans support the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. My answer to that is that most Americans do not serve in the military, have no idea of the strains of military life, and do not understand the danger to our troops of adding yet another distraction.

DRAIN THE SWAMP. A Nancy Pelosi-ism that meant to rid Washington of special interest groups, lobbyists and the like. Under her leadership, rather than the swamp being drained, the lobbyists are stronger than ever. Today, the alligators and the cottonmouth moccasins are thriving in the swamp in unprecedented numbers.

2010-07-17T10:56:00.001-04:00

DITHERING. What the media and the Left accused George W. Bush of in the days following Hurricane Katrina. Yet when the offshore oilrig exploded sending a continuous flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico the Obama administration sat on its hands and dithered for far too long. It took nearly two weeks for the president to visit the area. Chief of Staff to the Secretary of the Interior, Tom Strickland, did not even stick around after the explosion but Left on a vacation trip. Both the administration and Strickland were given a pass by the media. An Interior Department spokesperson wrote the trip off as “official business” as if a major environmental catastrophe was not enough reason for him to cancel his trip and stay on the job. This comes after Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, took off on a ski trip right after the attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.

DIVERSITY A close cousin to political correctness is diversity, a foggy notion that all groups have cultures and practices that are worth studying or, at the very least deserve our respect. This is a laudable aim on the surface but the application is fraught with hidden dangers. It is obvious that the diversity-inclined have no wish to invite into their

neighborhoods organizations that promote gang violence, sex with children or even the

poor on welfare. But the question is not what people or organizations are or are not

acceptable but who decides what falls within the acceptable limits of diversity. No one

can answer this question so “diversity” lurches forward, muddying the waters of our

understanding.

Mark Falcoff is correct when he describes diversity as “artificially

created differences organized by social engineers, and Left-wing politicians and university administrators.” Rather than bring us together as a mutually respectful aggregate, diversity, because it emphasizes the differences rather than the common ground that we all share, has created a centrifugal society. What it really does is create voluntary segregation in which people of each ethnic group tend to flock together and not even attempt to mingle with and learn about the others.

Another important point is that the Left champions racial diversity by spotlighting people of color who appear at their rallies and support their causes. However, they go bonkers when a person of color supports a conservative cause. When blacks showed up at Tea Party rallies they were written off by the Left as unimportant “Uncle Toms” who had “betrayed their people.” As one columnist pointed out, when Ronald Reagan and “Tip” O’Neil disagreed the Irish community accused neither one of “betraying their people.”

Diversity results in strange bedfellows. At the University of California’s Hastings College of Law the official policy is a grotesquerie of what this has become. In the name of diversity, Christian groups are required to admit atheists, Jewish groups required to admit Muslims and black groups to admit White Supremacists or members of the Ku Klux Klan if they want to be official college groups.

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s second pick for the Supreme Court came under attack from the Left because of choices she made when she was Dean of the Harvard Law School. They whined about her not having enough diversity in her hiring record. She hired a total of 43 new faculty. Of these, thirty-one were white men, nine were women and three were minorities. Perhaps these figures do not reflect an accurate, by percentage of the population, range, however, in order to be diverse, whether it is a law school or a corporation, there must be an appropriate number of qualified applicants and an appropriate number of chosen candidates who accept the position. Just as professional men’s basketball cannot accept unqualified height-challenged dwarf women, a law school can only accept those who will be best at the job. Of the forty-three hires, only three could be counted on as conservatives. The Left certainly did not complain about that.

Newspeak, continued, 7/9/2010

2010-07-09T08:58:00.002-04:00

DEVIL MADE ME DO IT, THE. Excuses, excuses: a failure to take individual responsibility for any personal misfortune, outrageous statement, or other egregious act. In the case of Barack Obama, George W. Bush is the devil he is talking about. Everything that has gone wrong in the year+ of Obama’s tenure has been “a product of the past eight years.” In the case of criminals, it is “society” that made them do it. For politicians, there is an endless number of “oppressors” who are out to get them and they blame everyone but themselves. Representative Eric Massa of New York resigned after he talked to a male aide about having sex with him. Massa said he was forced to leave Congress because the House Democrat and White House cabal threw him under the bus because of his opposition to the then-current healthcare legislation. The White House of course denied this, saying that Massa’s word was no good. The far Left just couldn’t help weighing in with their “it isn’t his fault” doctrine. New York Democratic Representative Louise Slaughter said she feels sorry for the former congressman. "I think he seriously needs help. . .” Moreover, according to the Wall Street Journal, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew of Massa’s inappropriate conduct toward his male staffers long before it became public knowledge and did nothing about it. However, Pelosi did weigh in with “sympathy” for Massa. "Poor baby," he's "a very sick person."

After the would-be Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was captured, the Leftist media launched a series “devil made him do it,” articles. He was portrayed as a victim who was frustrated because he lost his house and job and his “immigrant dream had turned into a nightmare.” There are millions of Americans who have lost their houses and their jobs, why is this an excuse for terrorist behavior? Why did Shahzad not go home rather than try to kill innocent civilians in the country that accepted him into the great melting pot? He was educated and came from an affluent family and was certainly better off that many of the rest of us.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. It is a recurring dream of the Left to grant D.C. the same legal rights to representation as enjoyed by the states. To do so would violate the Constitution which says, Article 1, Section 2: "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature." The Left heedlessly moves ahead on this, seemingly oblivious to the fact that it would require a Constitutional Amendment.

Newspeak, continued. 7/3/2010

2010-07-03T12:00:00.000-04:00

I have been moving from NY to NC and have fallen behind with this blog. I should be able to continue to post once or twice a day from now on.

DEFICIT. Candidate Obama hammered his Republican opponent time after time about the deficit that was run up in the administration of George W. Bush. In just his first year in office, he has managed to triple the national deficit, to $1.8 trillion. And that was before the healthcare bill was passed. Anyone who has run the numbers in the bill and seen all the double counting of revenue and hiding of costs, has no reason to believe that this bill will do anything but greatly add to the burden. Left-wing New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert has blamed the deficit on Republican policies that date back as far as the Reagan administration, when there was a “transfer of wealth from the working people to the elites.” How the two are connected are beyond his limited powers of deduction. Then he hammers George W. Bush for the cost of the Middle East wars. He says nothing about the deficit that President Obama is creating that are worst than the combined deficits of all of our presidents combined. The Congressional Budget Office says that the federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it's headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020.

DEFICIT ZEALOTS. According to Leftist columnist Bob Herbert of the New York Times, these are members of the Tea Party movement, whom he calls “Tea Party yahoos,” and any others who feel that the exploding deficit is the greatest danger to America. He is among those in La-la land who think that the Easter Bunny will pay down the deficit and blames the Tea Partiers for the job shortage. “The biggest threat to the health of the economy — corrosive, intractable, demoralizing unemployment — is still with us. And the deficit zealots, growing in strength, would do nothing to counter this scourge.” See, Tea Party, below.

DEHUMANIZING PROCESS. The process of punishing rather than rehabilitating criminals. According to this theory all humans were born with an equal degree of goodness within their hearts. However, the inequalities of society forced them into criminal acts. Those punished for their crimes, no matter how severe, are subjected to a “dehumanizing process.” Little or no thought is given to the dehumanizing that these people forced upon their victims. An example of this was Norman Mailer’s successful effort to get murderer Jack Abbot release from prison. Abbot was barely on the streets before he stabbed to death a waiter in a restaurant.

Speaking of the “unfairness” of returning illegal aliens to their home countries because of “minor criminal violations” New York governor David Paterson, looked down his nose as such flyover states as Arizona and loftily declared, “in New York we believe in rehabilitation.” The New York Times headlined this as “A Reminder About American Values.”

An interesting variation on this is the appeal by Darryl Durr, a condemned murderer in Ohio. He is arguing that he should not be executed because he has allergies to the lethal drugs with which he will be executed. Uh, I hate to burst your bubble, Darryl, but I think everyone is allergic to those drugs. Durr was convicted of strangling 16 year-old Angel Vincent and leaving her body in a park. See Cruel and Unusual Punishment, above.

DEMOCRACY A word that has been purged from Orwell’s Newspeak and ceases to exist. President Obama has said that the United States is still "working on" democracy and a top aide said he has taken "historic steps" to improve democracy in the United States during his time in office.

Newspeak, continued. 6/24/2010

2010-06-24T16:40:00.002-04:00

DANCING WITH THE STARS. Attorney General Eric Holder should win hands down. He danced all around a series of questions about the allegations that someone in the White House bribed Congressmen to drop out of political races in return for good jobs. If this is true it is a violation of federal law, a felony, but Holder would not even answer “hypothetical” questions about whether he believes this type of behavior is a crime. He also tangoed around the question as to whether he thought that the Ft. Hood massacre, the attempted Christmas bombing and the attempted Times Square bombing were products of radical Islam. He has also declined comment on why the Justice Department failed to prosecute the New Black Panther thugs who intimidated voters during the last election.

DEADLINES. Nearly always used in tandem with “crisis” by the Obama administration. There were several deadlines decreed by which a healthcare bill “must” be passed. There are also deadlines for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, and a deadline on closing Guantanamo. In the case of healthcare, the president declared several “final pushes.” Deadlines seem to come and go without the sky falling, so what’s up, Chicken Little?

DEEM. See Slaughter Solution, below. This is a procedure that the Democrats considered using to get the Senate version through the House. They would “deem” the Senate bill to be passed without voting on it because they did not feel they had enough votes to pass it in a Constitutionally permitted manner.

Want to get rich? Buy a lottery ticket and “deem” yourself the big winner and go to the lottery office to collect your money. What could be simpler than that? The House eventually decided not to use the Slaughter Solution because they managed to buyoff and bludgeon into submission those Democrats that had doubts about the legislation. And, I guess they did not want to be called Deemocrats.

DEFENDING EDUCATION. When the California government, faced with a $20 billion budget shortfall, was forced to reduce the subsidization per student in their university system, the students stuck to “defend education.” No matter that California spent far more per student, about $13,000, than New York or Illinois. The fledgling secular progressive students, sorry they had missed the excitement of the 1960s and 1970s, compared their protests to the civil rights struggle and the anti-Vietnam war movement. These comparisons do nothing so much as to illustrate why the students need remedial training in history. The head of the California university system made a futile attempt to head off the protests by explaining that he was nearly broke and no amount of demonstrations were going to add any money to the state coffers. The students were not interested in facts, by golly, they had to “protect” education. Among their proposals were “rolling strikes”, a “socialist revolution”; “occupy the Wells Fargo Bank in Oakland”; “a tent city in Sacramento”; and “worker-student control of the university.” They were supported by many faculty members and by Leftist politicians in California; not that California has many of any other kind.

Newspeak, continued. 6/20/2010

2010-06-20T10:26:00.000-04:00

CRISIS. As in Rahm Emmanuel’s “we should never let a crisis go to waste.” This is an all-encompassing code word to soften up any political or public opposition to a program that will be difficult to get through the Congress by normal means, by bypassing customary debate and the democratic process and putting it on such a fast track that any resulting legislation cannot help but be deeply flawed. “Crisis” is used to discredit the unbelievers. The term “crisis” should alert the rest of us that a “solution” will soon follow. For example, the Obama administration had hardly warmed their chairs before a whole host of crises suddenly appeared. Among them were the housing crisis, the financial crisis, the healthcare crisis, the environmental crisis and so on. While all of these are troublesome areas, they are most likely to be exacerbated by the so called “solutions” that are often no solutions at all but part of the liberal-progressive-pink-cloud theories of how things ought to be rather than how they are.

Many so-called crises are about issues that have been resolving themselves or getting better for some time. However, the secular progressives think they can make political hay by alarming the public about a “crisis” and then riding to the rescue with their own solutions. An exemplary crisis-monger is Al Gore who is the doomsayer-in-chief of the environmentalists. An important reason that certain matters are labeled a “crisis” is to impart a sense of urgency for coming up with a solution. The urgency is necessary for the Left because if the American people have time to closely examine the proposed “solution” they are most likely to be against it.

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT. Just about anything that a prison inmate does not like is labeled “cruel and unusual punishment” by the Left. An inmate of a prison in Michigan sued the state for cruel and unusual punishment on the grounds that they did not provide him with toothpaste and thereby violated his constitutional rights. See Dehumanizing Process, below.

CUTBACKS IN SPENDING. Almost exclusively applied to Republican administrations by the Left. It goes like this: Say spending for a favored program had been increasing by twenty-five percent a year and the administration, for one reason or another, decided to only increase it by twenty percent the next year, the liberal progressives would be sure to scream that this was a cutback in spending although the program would be receiving more money that it ever had.

CZARS. The unofficial name given to unelected, and unconfirmed by the Senate, bureaucrats who answer only to the president. Although “Czars” have been used by many previous administrations, they were limited in number. Obama has appointed over 100 of them and they infest every aspect of the federal government. They have been given the power to overrule decisions by men and women who have been employed in the various departments for decades and are the real experts. In its first year the Obama administration has pressed forward on hundreds of new mandates, while also stepping up enforcement of rules by increasing the ranks of inspectors and imposing higher fines for violation. Since all of these regulations are below the radar they are being implemented without the consent of Congress or with the knowledge of the average American.

Newspeak, continued

2010-06-02T10:41:00.002-04:00

CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED. This is one of the basic rights of our government as formed by our Founding Fathers. It, like many other of our basic rights, is under assault from the Left. Increasingly, our wishes and our consent, are ignored by government bureaucrats who are appointed by executive fiat and who are not subject to the consent of either the governed nor the consent of the Senate which is supposed to pass on such things as this. The appointment of a hundred so-called “Czars” by the Obama administration, people who not only influence but, with the arbitrariness of kings, rule nearly every aspect of our daily lives is a perfect example of this. Of course the men and women who fill these positions and are able to rule by fiat, consider themselves to be among the “anointed” (see Anointed, above) acting “for the American people” to “protect us from ourselves” See “American people, For the,” above and “Protecting Americans From Themselves,” below.

CONSTITUTION. Often called by secular progressives as “out of touch with modern times” and a “living document” by others. Does the word “living” mean that the Constitution as written by our Founding Fathers is dead?

It is our founding document and one that all federal officials, including the president and members of Congress are sworn to protect. Yet, through judicial activist judges, those whose personal biases do not agree with what is in the Constitution, the Left has managed to subvert this document to their own ends. They often cite the fact that the Constitution countenanced slavery as an example of why it is a flawed document.

An Obama nominee to the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court is an advocate of this. He has described his philosophy as “constitutional fidelity.” Goodwin Liu explains, “What we mean by fidelity is that the Constitution should be interpreted in ways that adapt its principles and its text to the challenges and conditions of our society in every succeeding generation.” In other words, the Constitution means whatever Mr. Liu and other Leftist judges say that it does.

Barack Obama has long seen the U.S. Constitution as an obstacle to what he considers progress. He once said that the radical court of Earl Warren had failed to break "free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution," He also argued against conceding too much ground to the traditional interpreters of the Constitution who viewed the Constitution as a "charter of negative liberties," which "says what the states can't do to you, says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf." How does one categorize runaway government control of our everyday lives as something that the government “must do on your behalf?” Finally, he has said, that words like "free enterprise,” “private ownership of property,” and “limited government” are "code words for an ideological agenda hostile to environmental, workplace, and consumer protections.”

CONTROLLING COSTS. This has recently been used in just about every speech about Obamacare but it applies to every government program that the administration is trying to expand. As Mark Steyn said in the Washington Times. “This [healthcare] ‘reform’ is not about healthcare, and certainly not about ‘controlling costs.’ As with Medicare, it ‘controls’ costs by declining to acknowledge them or pay them. Dr. William Schreiber of North Syracuse, New York, told CNN that he sees 120 patients per week - about 30 percent on Medicare, 65 percent on private insurance plans whose payments take into account the Medicare reimbursement rates, and about 5 percent who do it the old-fashioned way and write a check. He calculates that under Obamacare, for every $5 he makes now, he'll get $2 in the future. That suggests now would be a good time to retrain as a Realtor or accountant or the night clerk at the convenience store.”

With the healthcare bill, for example, the increase in fees and taxes begin in 2010. Ten years of these taxes will only cover six years of spending. It is not explained where the funds to cover the additional four years will come from. Moreover, some costs are left out entirely. In order to pay for healthcare Congress will need to vote for $114 billion in additional spending annually, an amount that is not included in the Congressional Budget Office’s original calculation. Just two months after the passage of the healthcare bill the CBO announced that the additional amount required would be exactly what the critics predicted, about $114 billion. Corporations will be required to remit $8 billion in higher estimated tax payments in 2014, thereby meeting the administration’s fiscal targets for the first five years. But since the corporations’ actual taxes would be unchanged, the money would need to be refunded the next year resulting in no additional taxes to pay for the program. There are endless examples of this Enron-type accounting but you get the picture.

Hey, if the government can control costs, why can’t the rest of us. The good news is “Yes, we can!” We average citizens can “control costs” too. All we have to do is send in less than the minimum due on our credit cards, send in half of our car payments and tell the grocer that we are only going to pay half price for our foods. Whoopie! Come to think of it, let’s eliminate costs altogether and not pay anyone!

Newspeak, continued

2010-05-28T08:16:00.002-04:00

CHRIST AND MOHAMMED. It is okay with the Left when Jesus is portrayed as a homosexual, when a photograph of a crucifix in urine won a taxpayer-funded monetary award, and when prayer, crosses and other Christian symbols are removed from public view. Yet when a children’s television program has Mohammed in a bear costume the radical Muslims make death threats against the producers of the program and the Left said nothing.

CHUTZPAH. Just weeks after the Democrats shut out the Republicans and passed the massive healthcare bill that will lay additional burdens on the middle class and drive the deficit to stratospheric levels, President Obama called for bi-partisanship in Congress. He was speaking on April 15^th, Tax Day, and, referring to his ethereal tax “cuts” he went on to say, "I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes. You would think they'd be saying thank you." Referring to immigration reform and securing the borders, he said, “I don't want us to do something just for the sake of politics that doesn't solve the problem.” Wow!

CIVIL RIGHTS. My dictionary says that Civil Rights are “a class of rights and freedoms that protect individuals from unwarranted action by government and private organizations and individuals and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.” Civil rights have come a long way in the last half-century, and in most cases the change is for the good. However, the secular progressives have expanded this to include the “rights” of illegal immigrants, those who broke our laws to enter the United States and also the “rights” of homosexuals to join the military. See Rights, below.

The Left believes that white firefighters can be denied promotions specifically because they are white. They believe that Asian students can be denied college admission because they aren’t black. They believe that blacks who want to attend racially integrated charter schools should be kept in de facto segregated and failing schools.

CIVILITY. A practice that has nearly disappeared from our public discourse and our behavior. It was how we got along with each other before the diseases Political Correctness and Diversity were born in the 1960s. President Obama has called for the restoration of civility in our public discourse yet he has, time and again, attacked those who disagreed with him in uncivil terms. Responding to an amendment offered by Senator Richard Shelby to limit the scope of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Mr. Obama said, "I will not allow amendments like this one written by Wall Street's lobbyists to pass for reform." This was an insult to the senator’s integrity and implied that he is in the pocket of Wall Street. It also passes over the fact that, for all Obama’s demonization of lobbyists, he put fifty-one of them in key positions within his administration.

COMMUNISM. Communism is the most tragic social failure in the world’s history. In the 20^th century about 150 million people died because of Communist revolution and Communist rule. Yet, the far Left’s pink-cloud visions and historical myopia compels them to soldier on in pursuit of this type of society. When they do acknowledge the failures of the past it is always with the excuse that Communism was under the rule of flawed personalities but if we were in charge it would be different and the world would be a better place. Some of them never tire of holding up Castro in Cuba, Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, Mao Ze-dong in China and others as paragons of leadership. Former White House official Anita Dunn declared that Mao was one of her heroes. Polls of the “anointed,” see above, consistently rate Mao as a better man than, say, Ronald Reagan.

COMPREHENSIVE. This term is an attack word used against those who favor incremental change rather than an all-encompassing program, the results of which cannot be predicted. To name two of these, there are “comprehensive health plan” and “comprehensive immigration policy.” “Comprehensive” is trotted out and championed any time any proposal does not include all the elements desired by the secular progressives. The secular progressives, for example, do not believe that a health plan that does not include a public option or coverage for all abortions is a comprehensive plan. They do not believe that an immigration bill that does not include amnesty for illegal aliens is a comprehensive bill.

COMPLEX. A term that the secular progressives employ to argue that they alone understand complicated problems. Anyone who disagrees with them is labeled “simplistic” and not capable of understanding “complex” issues. This term is most often used with the word “comprehensive” in order to demonstrate the Left’s intellectual and moral superiority.

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE. Advertised by the liberals as an independent body on which they can count to run the numbers on their programs and come up with the desired result. The CBO is staffed with competent accountants. However, when they consider the cost of a piece of legislation they must take at face value the claims that are in the bill. If the bill says that a new program will save money by doing such-and-such, then the CBO is not permitted to judge otherwise. See Controlling Costs, below.

Newspeak, continued

2010-05-14T15:06:00.002-04:00

CHILDHOOD. Today this is a period in one’s life when one is subjected to bullying and violence on school playgrounds. When I was a child I attended the same school from kindergarten through the seventh grade. During those eight years, I saw no incidence of bullying. Nor did I see a fight that amounted to anything more than pushing and shouting, and even those were very rare. Nearly every boy in that era carried a pocketknife. It was used for whittling and other peaceful boyhood activities. I never saw one drawn in anger or in any sort of threatening manner.

In addition to weapons, many if not most, schools have a problem with drugs in their schoolyards. When I was a boy the only contraband found on schoolyards was when one of the older kids stole a cigarette from their parents. Even then, no one would actually think of smoking it there.

Thanks to the breakdown in our society that began with the Leftist movement in the Sixties, our playgrounds have become danger zones. Monitors must effectively control the areas and supervise recess to prevent bullying and violence. Metal detectors are common in many schools because knives have been used as deadly weapons on playgrounds and in classrooms and even loaded guns have been carried into schools. According to New York Times Bob Herbert, 150 children were shot in one city, Chicago, in the 2009-2010 school year. In May 2010 a gun went off in the desk of a Charlotte, North Carolina third grader. Neither are the high schools nor our colleges exempt. One only needs to be reminded of the slaughters at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech. Neither of these things would have been conceivable in the world I grew up in.

CHOICE. This allegedly gives women complete control over their own bodies. It denies the rights of the unborn child. It denies the rights of the father of the unborn child. Two points are important. The first is that with easy access to birth control means, there is little reason to become pregnant except for the desire to have a child, failure to use birth control methods or the rare instance when birth control does not work. The other point is that some women wait until the third trimester before they decide to abort their child. This leads to the gruesome practice of partial birth abortions in which labor is induced but birth stopped at the point when the baby’s head is exposed and then the doctor puts a hole in the child’s head and vacuums out its brains. If the child was allowed a few minutes more to exit the birth canal, the process would be infanticide, or murder. One author has called this “killing for convenience.” Senator Obama voted against a bill that would provide special care for those who somehow survived partial birth abortion. He probably opposed it because those babies who survive the procedure of having their brains removed grow up to be secular progressives.

In some jurisdictions, government attitude toward the rights of a fetus are contradictory. In California, Scott Peterson was convicted of the double murder of his wife and unborn child. On the other hand, unborn children are routinely killed in the name of “choice.”

CHOICE AND COMPETITION. When applied to healthcare this is the evolution of the term “public option.” It really means, for example, that healthcare for all will come under the control of the federal government which would undoubtedly mismanage it by installing layers of bureaucrats who will find it easier to say “no” than to make decisions not specifically delineated in the federal regulations. The incompetence of the government in funding and running such programs such as Medicare, Social Security and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, is exceed only by the incompetence of the United Nations, see below. If “choice and competition” was truly the goal of the federal government they would permit the FDA administered importation of medication from foreign countries and permit the purchase of health insurance across state lines. Both of these measures would reduce costs through real choice and competition.

CHURCH AND STATE. This is another subject that causes Leftists to froth at the mouth. They have successfully campaigned against any and all mention of our Judeo-Christian heritage in any public forum. They have led drives to remove the “In God We Trust” from all government documents, including our currency. They have led drives to remove crosses from the graves of Christian veterans in our national cemeteries and have been able to prohibit a moment of silence in classrooms for those who wish to make a silent prayer.

In Georgia, the mayor of a small town told residents of a center for seniors that they could not pray before meals. His reasoning was that the meals were provided by a company that received some federal funding. How and when does free speech fail us in cases like these?

A New York Times editorial castigated the Supreme Court for allowing a cross that had been on public lands for generations and that honored the sacrifice of those who fought in World War I. The Times misrepresented the Constitution when they said that the government must not “endorse” a religion. What the Constitution says is that the government must not “establish” a religion. When one visitor to the park sued to have the cross removed the government transferred the land to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which promised to maintain it. That wasn’t good enough for this same person who won a suit in a lower court on the grounds that the transfer of the land was a mere subterfuge to continue displaying the cross on public land. Thankfully, the Supreme Court overturned that decision, in a 5-4 vote, and the cross still stands. Not long after the Supreme Court decision, someone stole the cross. Vandals or atheists?

Newspeak, continued

2010-05-07T10:50:00.002-04:00

CARD CHECK. An attempt by the liberal progressives to promote unionization of workers. For nearly forty years the number of unionized workers in the private sector has been declining. The card check seeks to reverse that trend. Despite its innocuous sounding name what it really does is strip workers of their right to a secret ballot regarding their willingness to join a union. It would require that the completed ballots be available to union officials, thus exposing those who do not want to unionize to intense pressure.

CENSORSHIP. Censorship is a word emotionally applied by the Left to label any opposition to the most outrageous displays of such things as pornography, anti-Americanism, and releasing of classified government documents. This, and an over-interpretation of the First Amendment have successfully brought smut into our neighborhoods and into mainstream media, protection of flag-burners, protection of those who demonstrate at funerals of our fallen warriors and release of documents that enable our enemies and harm our fighting men and women.

CENTRIST. The type of platform on which Barack Obama ran. Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson has this to say: . . . “had Barack Obama run on the agenda he actually implemented during his first year in office — ‘Elect me and I shall appoint worthies like Craig Becker, Anita Dunn, and Van Jones; stimulate the economy through a $1.7-trillion annual deficit; take over health care, the auto industry, student loans, and insurance; push for amnesty for illegal aliens and cap-and-trade; and reach out to Iran, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela’ — he would have been laughed out of Iowa.

CHANGE. No one is against change for the better, however, the Obama presidential campaign successfully used “change” to cover all of the gripes of every segment of society. Anyone who failed to agree with his cure-all change was labeled as simple minded or evil. One year into his presidency, the people are finally validating Lincoln’s observation that you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

The disconnect between what candidate Obama promised and what President Obama did became clear in the first days of his administration. Although he promised, among other things, transparency in government, avoiding special interest groups, reducing the influence of lobbyists, and a honest, bipartisan government. He quickly revealed that “change you can believe in” without a “government you can trust” is a meaningless mantra. Among his first appointees were men who had problems paying their taxes. The number of lobbyists in Washington is greater than ever. Transparency and bipartisanship were empty words as seen by the way the healthcare bill was formulated and passed. And, his administration has pandered to every Democratic-supporting special interest group in the land.

Newspeak, continued May 1, 2010

2010-05-01T09:31:00.000-04:00

C-SPAN. Where Candidate Obama promised we could see important matters being debated. "We'll have the [healthcare] negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so the people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who is making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies." Not so. There has been more that a year of wrangling over the healthcare plan and not a bit of it has been on C-Span or in other formats except three. 1) One of these is a series of all-encompassing statements that really mean, “Don’t you understand that this is a crisis?” This is good for you, dammit, so shut up.” 2) Another form is an endless series of contradictory and vague pronouncements on certain sections of the bill. 3) The last is information overload where thousands of pages have been made available in a “you asked for it, so there,” gambit. None of these bills were read in its entirety by the legislators and they were thrown at us to shut us up. The head of C-Span sent an open letter to the president asking that he live up to his campaign promise of televising the healthcare debate. The administration refused to do so but opted to hold hearings behind closed doors. Nancy Pelosi, who doesn’t hire out to be smart, or honest, blithely said, “There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.” Then she went on to say, “There has never been a more open process for any legislation.” Huh? See, also, Transparency, below.

CADILLAC TAX. An enhanced medical insurance plan that was supposed to be taxed as part of the healthcare bill so as to pay for part of the increased healthcare costs. Instead, the Democrats caved into their union supporters who were against the tax and gave them several years’ grace, until 2018, before the tax would be applied. This is a $60 billion payoff and the $60 billion dollars will be passed along in the form of taxes to those eighty-seven percent of Americans who do not belong to labor unions. Anyone who is familiar with the workings of Congress knows that the tax will never be applied because the unions will negotiate extension after extension. At the same time, seniors who have elected to pay for an enhanced version of Medicare will see their benefits reduced.

CALIFORNIA. Proudly referred to by the secular progressives as “the Left coast.” California was once the “Golden State,” a beacon of promise of things new and exciting. It has since deteriorated into a hodge-podge of warring liberal interest groups, unions and illegal immigrants. Its progressive income tax against the wealth-creators, the entrepreneurial class responsible for California’s prosperity, is sending these businessmen to other states in droves. Between 1990 and 2007, some 3.4 million more people moved out of California to another state than moved in. Faced with an enormous deficit, the state assembly is considering a bill to legalize recreational marijuana so they can tax it. What makes the legislators think that the drug economy, that has always operated underground, will suddenly come out of the closet and asked to be taxed? Typical California—legalizing a drug, the use of which is against federal law, so they will not have to face the difficult task of reducing the entitlement spending that brought the state to the brink of bankruptcy. The teachers’ unions are the most powerful organizations in the state. They have resisted changes to a failing education system, one that results in California students ranking in 46^th place, out of 50 states, in reading and math skills.

CAPITALISM. According to the Left, it is the greedy capitalists that keep the poor, poor. They view commerce and wealth acquisition as a zero-sum exercise. According to Micahel Medved, "This is one of the biggest lies -- the idea that because of capitalism, we're all suffering. ... Poor people in America today, people who are officially in poverty, have a higher standard of living in terms of medical standards, in terms of the chances of going to college, in terms of the way people live, than middle-class people did 30 years ago. It's an extraordinary achievement of technology and of the profit sector.”

Newspeak, continued

2010-04-26T10:30:00.002-04:00

BI-PARTISANSHIP. Another siren call of the Obama administration which sometimes calls it “post-partisanship.” In fact, it is considered by the Left as a quaint but extinct form of political cooperation. Giddy with their Congressional majorities, they refuse to recognize that, in the past, all of the major bills passed by our Congress have found wide bi-partisan support. Among them are Social Security, Medicare and the Voting Rights Act. This lack of bi-partisanship is so severe that a Democratic Party stalwart, Evan Bayh, gave this as his main reason for not seeking reelection. The Democrats tried to kill a bi-partisan bill that would allow FDA-regulated importation of imported drugs, a bill that would result in $100 billion savings. The Democrats did not want to offend their supporters in the pharmaceutical industry. The bill eventually passed but only after the addition of major concessions to individual members. The process was similar to the Cornhusker Kickback and the Louisiana Purchase that blighted the healthcare bill. It was passed without most of our legislators having read or understood it. The old, “let’s pass it now and fix it later,” philosophy kicked in. Of course, none of these bills get “fixed” later. The House voted and passed the flawed Senate healthcare bill on March 22, 2010. In neither the House nor the Senate did a single Republican vote for the bill. This is an astounding and unprecedented partisan effort. Democrats had the support of significant numbers of Republicans when the Social Security and Medicare programs came up for a vote. About the about-to-be-passed healthcare bill, Obama said, “Every proposal has been put on the table,” he said. “Every argument has been made . . . we’ve ended up with a proposal that incorporates the best ideas from Democrats and Republicans.” He could speak with confidence knowing that the next news cycle would obscure the lie contained within this statement. The “best” recommendations of Republicans—unfettered purchase of health insurance across state lines, tort reform, special pools to insure those with preexisting conditions—were excluded. The separate House, Senate, and White House bills were drafted by a cast of characters limited to Democrats only.

BICKERING. Any debate that contradicts the arguments of the secular progressives. It is designed to trivialize the arguments of the other side.

BIG GOVERNMENT. The Left’s answer to all our social ills is in fact a proto-Big Brother. Communications consultant John Kraushar asked several very important questions about government competency in running entitlement programs:

What big government entitlement program has ever:

• Reduced the deficit? • Only cost what it says it will and lowered the costs of goods and services? • Improved quality? • Enhanced efficiency? • Decreased delays? • Fostered more choice and competition? • Featured competent bureaucracy? • Operated with honest accounting? • Avoided fraud, abuse, waste, maddening red tape, and higher taxes?

The Department of Motor Vehicles, the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak are examples of what happens when the government tries to run programs. Social Security and Medicare are examples of how government programs can run the country into insolvency.

BLACK PANTHERS. Street thugs that radical Tom Hayden (former husband of Hanoi Jane) admiringly called “our Viet Cong.” Greatly admired by the Left although the Panthers of the Sixties ridiculed the civil-rights efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. as too non-violent. New Black Panthers were caught on tape intimidating voters in the 2008 election. Obama’s Attorney General has declined to prosecute. According to author and columnist Michelle Malkin, one of these men was a Democratic party official. Another said that investigation into his actions was a “witch hunt.”

BUDGET. Wishful thinking about what will happen if everything goes right but leaves few, if any, provisions if they do not. Also, the budget is the subject of double counting, trickery and obfuscation. For example, the healthcare bill provides for ten years of savings and revenue to pay for only six years of expenses.

Newspeak, continued

2010-04-14T12:01:00.000-04:00

AUDACITY OF HOPE. The title of one of President Obama’s two autobiographies. It is Left doublespeak for excessive ambition, extreme hubris and a disregard for the wishes of Main Street America. The president in not alone in having these qualities. Indeed, they are at the heart of the secular progressive philosophy.

AUSTRALIA. A long-standing ally of the United States that has been taken for granted by the Obama administration and the secular progressives. In order to push the healthcare bill through the Congress, Obama remained in Washington on the day he was to depart for his first visit to that country. Moreover, he cut his visit there to one overnight stay, thereby causing speculation that the United States was snubbing a valuable ally.

AUTOCRACY, ONE PARTY. “One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in a September 9, 2009 column. Autocracy is the term used to describe such dictatorships as Czarist Russia.

BANKRUPTCY, GOVERNMENT. The entitlement programs in the United States have brought the federal government and many state and city governments to bankruptcy. California’s economic plight, see, California, below, has been compared to that of Greece where the overspending has brought the country to financial ruin and disrupted the finances of the European Union. An example of how entitlements can ruin a city is exemplified by Vallejo, California. Union pressure has steadily increased the pay of city employees to stratospheric levels. The compensation for the police captain, who has responsibility for only 160 officers, is about $300,000 per year and the average fireman makes $171,000. This for a city of about 120,000 souls. City employees can retire at age 55 with eighty one percent of their last year’s salary. Police and firemen can retire at age 50 with ninety percent of their salary for the rest of their lives and the lives of their spouses. The city of Vallejo had no choice but to go into bankruptcy. So far, it has done them no good. Negotiations with the public service unions have stalled because the unions refuse to budge. Among other things, the city has been forced to cut sixty police positions in an area where crime is on the rise.

2010-04-11T09:17:00.002-04:00

ARBITRARILY CHOSEN. A description often put on philosophical, literary or musical classics that have stood the test of centuries, in order to reduce their influence on the current generation of Americans and promote ethno-centric theories.

ART, LITERARY. As they are in nearly every branch of art, it is the “old white men” who are being purged from the literary cannon. In fact, in most universities, a credible literary canon has ceased to exist. In Orwell’s 1984, even if fragments of literature did survive they “would be unintelligible and untranslatable” because of the changes in the language.

ART, PAINTING. Nearly anything passes for art in the opinion of the secular progressives, no matter how incomprehensible or objectionable. Anything, that is, excepting the classic painters, whose work has been appreciated for decades, if not centuries, as masterpieces. Picasso, Van Gogh, Raphael, Titian and all the other artists of the classic school are dismissed as “a bunch of white men,” at best, and as misogynists, homophobes, imperialists, and any label that the secular progressives think they might be able to apply. Even the Sistine Chapel is not immune. Both God and Adam are portrayed as male aren’t they?

ART, PHOTOGRAPHY. Photographs that in an earlier era would have been considered obscene have won support and/or awards from publically supported entities. One of the most notorious is Robert Mapplethorpe’s self-portrait of himself in the nude with a bullwhip sticking out of his anus. Another is Andre Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” a photo of an upside down crucifix in Serrano’s own urine. To object to these photographs is to risk charges of “censorship,” another dirty word in the lexicon of the Left.

Newspeak, continued

2010-04-04T16:29:00.002-04:00

Allies, America’s. According to the Left the world’s countries are interchangeable parts that may or may not be America’s allies depending on the whim of the Leftist leadership. A year of utopian foreign policy as practiced by the Obama administration has left many of America’s most faithful allies wondering if America still cares about them. Our allies need to be named and reassured but this is unlikely as the president goes about snubbing Great Britain, Australia and Israel, to name just three, but tries to enter dialogue without pre-conditions with such countries as Iran which continues to build new secret nuclear facilities and is executing dissidents and still calling America the “Great Satan.” The administration has demonstrated that it considers Israel’s West Bank settlements to be a greater threat to Middle East Peace than a nuclear-armed Iran.

American people, the. (Also see For the American People, below) The secular progressives, with their self-identified superior moral and intellectual qualities, think the average American is a benighted person who is desperately in need of their leadership. America is a right-of-center country politically. The average person, those who believe in traditional values, those grounded in church, the traditional family and traditional liberal education, is regarded by the secular progressives as either stupid, unenlightened, or both. President Obama exposed his views on this in a campaign stop in San Francisco, when he patronizingly talked about people “clinging to their guns and their religion. When the House passed the Senate health care bill, Obama said it, “is a victory for the American people.”

Anointed, the. Thomas Sowell’s term for the educated secular progressives who think that only they know what is good for America. The anointed support unlimited access to abortion, a major effort against global warming and they are internationalist in a country in which the majority of Americans are patriotic.

A book you’re not supposed to read

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation

as a Basis for Social Policy; by Thomas Sowell,

Basic Books, 1995

Here are Orwell’s comments on the type of citizen that the Party wants: “Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and, above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.” “… one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges on whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended.” George Orwell, 1984

Newspeak, the Language of the Left

2010-03-25T12:34:00.000-04:00

Newspeak, the Language of the Left

2010-03-20T12:01:00.000-04:00

'When I use a word,'" Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Arbitrarily chosen. A description often put on philosophical literary or musical classics that have stood the test of centuries, in order to reduce their influence on the current generation of Americans and promote ethno-centric theories.

Academic freedom. This is no longer a meaningful term on our campuses. They have been so radicalized in the past forty years that the term is used to justify the most outrageous positions of professors, many of which are not even trained in the subject they are criticizing. Academic “freedom” is not available to those who oppose the liberal progressives, who are usually shouted down by students at the urging of their radical professors. “We will get you through your children.” Allan Bloom (Drug addict, political radical, pornographer and sexual predator. He is not to be confused with Professor Allan Bloom, whom we will see below.)

Affirmative action. Out-and-out racism generally against whites. Admission of lesser-qualified applicants to higher education or better jobs based on their racial makeup. The secular progressives harp on such things as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which they claim is distorted by “cultural oppression” rather than on intelligence or ability. Their arguments to not even attempt to explain how many immigrants, particularly those from Asia, whose mother language is not English, and who have had very little cultural exposure to America, often score highest of all on these tests, sometimes double the rates of Caucasians. According to the secular progressives, every institution, every layer of society, every occupation should reflect an accurate percentage of all the various groups, regardless of their qualifications. One wonders what they would say if affirmative action was imposed on, say, professional basketball teams. Perhaps we should have a quota system for professional sports teams that mandates that all groups, including all genders (see Gender, below), the height-challenged (one must not call them short for fear of offending them) people, all ethnic groups and the handicapped are represented according to their make up of the general population.