Friday Afternoon Roundup - Dredging the Bottom

Republican primaries are like visiting embarrassing relatives, no matter how bad you think it's going to be, it always turns out to be even worse. After months of this we're going to have a convention where we will be asked to believe in one of these men.

The latest attack is that Gingrich was actually anti-Reagan or at least had strong differences with Ronald Reagan. That is a serious attack or would be, if the conclusion to be drawn from even the heavily censored and selected quotes are that Gingrich thought Reagan was being too liberal.

So far the revelations are that Gingrich wanted budget spending frozen, Reagan refused because it would undermine defense. Gingrich said of Reagan's meeting with Gorbachev that it was, "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich." And overall that the United States lacked a comprehensive dedicated strategy for defeating the USSR.

The takeaway is that Gingrich was attacking Reagan from the right. Which is not all that damning unless you assume that any deviation from Reagan's positions in any direction is treason. It seems to help Gingrich's conservative credentials more than it hurts him.

If you actually look at the context of some of the remarks, then the tone changes a great deal.

"The fact is that George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick are right in pointing out the enormous gap between President Reagan's strong rhetoric, which is adequate, and his administration's weak policies, which are inadequate and will ultimately fail."

Was Gingrich wrong? His views on sitting down with Gorbachev were not all that unusual for many conservatives at the time. Freezing spending might not have been that bad of an idea, whether it was workable is another question. And the United States did not have much of a strategy for defeating the USSR, which spared us the trouble by defeating itself.

When Romney distanced himself from Reagan he appeared to be doing it from the left, the Gingrich attacks appear to have come from the right. The only way they work is if we detach Reagan from conservative principles and place him above them.

As a bonus. Misleadingly edited videos always help make the case. More at The Hayride

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator has a piece putting some of the quotes in context, but he doesn't provide the complete floor statement either. It would be good if he did, to avoid all these snippets and see what Gingrich actually said in full so we can decide for ourselves.




SMOKING A KORAN

Pakistan’s largest real export is its off-the-books heroin trade and its economy runs on heroin. The ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, which backed the Taliban, also took a cut of Afghanistan’s highly profitable opium trade. Iranian and Pakistani interference in Afghanistan marry their Islamic initiatives with the drug trade as Sunnis and Shiites compete for the lucrative traffic in the world’s leading source of opium which is smuggled through Pakistan and Iran.

Speaking of Iran, the Islamic Republic has the world’s highest percentage of heroin addicts, and the traffic is run by the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution which acts as the religious thugs of the ayatollahs. One of their means of smuggling heroin out of Iran is piggybacking the trade on Shiite Muslim pilgrims visiting holy sites abroad.

The Muslim world doesn’t have much to export besides oil and drugs. Countries that don’t have oil export drugs. Countries that do have oil, export drugs anyway. Terrorist groups with their secret cells, forged documents and covert funding sources make perfect drug smuggling networks until it is impossible to tell whether they are Islamic terrorists who smuggle drugs to fund their operations or drug smugglers who kill people to religiously justify their drug smuggling. When the commanders and the foot soldiers have spent enough time in the drug trade and are sampling their own product then they stop knowing the difference.

See my entire piece on the Islamic drug connection at The Islamic Paradise of the Needle and Powder




LOOK TO THE FUTURE

The good news is that our economy is recovering. We have not only broken the back of the recession, but kicked in the spleen of its brother the depression, and karate chopped the wrist of its uncle, the complete economic meltdown. The stock market is riding high thanks to its transformation from an index of companies, to an index of racehorses and greyhounds. I have been told by GE CEO Jeff Immelt that his horse, Foreseeable Disaster is coming up 4th, behind Microsoft's Blue Nag of Death, GM's Safety Issues and EcoTech's Al Gore. Betting is high and anyone who wants to get in on the action, please come see Vice President Biden in the cashier's cage to the right.

And there is still more good news. After yesterday's speech commemorating those killed in the Seattle Polar Bear Invasion, my popularity has shot up all the way to 27 percent. This puts me ahead in the polls, in front of my rivals, Republican challenger, George Prescott Bush III and my Neo-Monarchist challenger, the King of Nebraska, but still well behind Chinese Supreme Leader Hu Jintao, who has seized control of several key states.

Additionally with my new proposal to take all our remaining money and bury it in Michelle's vegetable garden, we may finally have a plan to cut spending that really works. At least until we dig it up that same night and spend it on one of those really bad ideas that I and my advisers come up with when we get high together.

How I saw the State of the Union Address 2012 shaping up. It could still happen...





THE WORDS... THEY HAVE NO MEANING

"To talk with Gingrich supporters is to enter a world where words have no meaning...  Romney is now the only remaining candidate for president who opposes amnesty for illegals."

From Coulter's "Re-elect Obama: Vote Newt"



"Romney described immigration proposals by McCain and others as 'quite different' from amnesty, because they required illegal immigrants to register with the government, work for years, pay taxes, not take public benefits, and pay a fine before applying for citizenship. 'That's very different than amnesty, where you literally say, 'OK, everybody here gets to stay,''

Boston Globe, 3/16/07





THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS IN MUSLIM FOXHOLES

The trajectory of persecution is not very difficult to calculate. In the UK, Muslims outnumber Jews six to one. In France, Muslims outnumber Jews ten to one, and in Sweden by as much as twenty-five to one. These are not just numbers; they also accurately chart the trajectory of religious persecution, with the Muslim persecution of Jews spiking horrifyingly in Sweden, high in France, but not as high in England. One reason why the situation is not yet as bad as in the United States is because Jews still outnumber Muslims at least two to one.

Muslim persecution of a hated minority group increases proportionally in relation to their numerical advantage. Atheists are a larger percentage of the population in Europe, but demographics are still catching up to them. In the United States the demographic race may already be done, as far as atheists are concerned.

In the United States approximately 0.7 percent of the population identifies as atheist and 0.8 percent of the population as Muslim. If these surveys are correct then the number of Muslims in the United States has already exceeded the number of atheists. While not a single member of Congress identifies as an atheist, two identify as Muslims.

from my article, The Most Dangerous Place to be an Atheist






BUT HE ONLY SUPPORTS RAPING US AT THE STATE LEVEL

Whether you like a state-wide insurance mandate or not, it's a world of difference when the federal government does it... It was on account of the difference between state and federal powers that the Supreme Court overturned the federal Violence Against Women Act. The court was not endorsing rape, but reminding us that states make laws about rape, not Congress.

Romney supported the idea of other states doing something along the lines of his health care bill, but always opposed insurance mandates from the federal government (just as I oppose the federal government issuing general laws about rape, but support state laws against rape.)  

From that same bulletin from CoulterWorld.

So Coulter's proposal is that we nominate a rapist because his rapine instincts are governed by the Constitution and though he supports rape at the state level, he will oppose it at the Federal level.

The only thing keeping Romney from raping us at the Federal level (Coulter's metaphor, not mine) is that he's apparently solid on State's Rights. Probably as solid as he is on immigration, the second amendment, abortion, gay rights and well any other issue.

If we do put our faith in Romney as a rapist within the Constitution, then he'll hand out the state waivers on ObamaCare. But what if he prioritizes rape over constitutionalism just like every other president from both parties going back further than we would like to think about?

If a candidate opposes a policy, then regardless of his Constitutional integrity, we at least have some confidence that he will not implement it. But if a candidate supports a policy, but opposes it only at the Federal level, then we have to put our faith in his restraint to not use the powers of the office that he has, or in this case to actively use them to undermine a policy that he supports in practice, but not in legal principle.

Ron Paul might have an inkling of credibility arguing that he would not enact a policy that he supports at the Federal level. Considering his earmarks dance, it's a small inkling, but he at least has some credibility on the issue.

With Romney, his establishment defenders have been reduced to arguing that Romney may support the practice of ObamaCare, but he will oppose it to protect states rights. Not only is this position ridiculous, not only does it ask us to take so much on faith that it's downright mindboggling. In Coulter's own metaphor it asks us to elect a rapist and trust that his principles will prevent him from raping us.

Worst of all Coulter has conceded and even defended the mandate, and is now just arguing against it on a Federal level.

"In a world where words have meaning, Mitt Romney is not the "moderate" in this race. He is the most conservative candidate."

The problem is that in CoulterWorld, the words mean something different than they mean here. It's entirely legitimate to state that none of the remaining three candidates are conservative. That is a defensible view.

Billing a man who called himself progressive and repeatedly disavowed the conservative label until it came in handy, who is conservative is demeanor, but has no consistent conservative record on the issues, as the most conservative candidate is a head spinner.

To seriously believe that Romney is more conservative than Santorum isn't the worldview of a world where words have meaning, it's a world where the word conservative has no meaning.





BUFFALOED SPENDERS

Yesterday, the Republican-controlled House passed HR 1022, a bill that would require the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a study of the history of Buffalo Soldiers in the establishment of national parks.  The study will cost $400,000.

Voting in favor of this fantastic piece of budget cutting legislation was budget cutting hero, Paul Ryan. Michelle Bachmann voted against.

In between various bills about the importance of the budget, Ryan voted to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to study the suitability and feasibility of designating prehistoric, historic, and limestone forest sites on Rota, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as a unit of the National Park System.

The bill was co-sponsored by five Democrats and one Republican. Can we really afford to be extending the national park system into the Northern Mariana Islands. Is that really the priority now?




SOROS MANUFACTURED CHAOS IN ISRAEL

In the warm summer of 2011, a twenty-something Israeli named Daphne Leef set up a Facebook protest page agitating against the high cost of housing in Tel Aviv. She pitched a tent and helped touch off a social protest movement that received national and international attention.

While the protests were billed as grassroots, there was nothing grassroots about them. The protests had been organized and funded by the New Israel Fund. Daphne Leef worked as a video editor for the New Israel Fund.

In the winter of that same year, as the protests had died down, a woman named Tanya Rosenblit boarded a bus which runs through religiously hyper-conservative neighborhoods and staged an incident with the passengers. Rosenblit was dubbed an Israeli Rosa Parks and her stunt helped generate waves of articles about major social problems in Israel.

Rosenblit was associated with One Voice, an organization funded by the New Israel Fund, whose board included Alon Liel, the husband of New Israel Fund director Rachel Liel. Hardly had the NIF gotten through manufacturing one phony social protest movement than it was hard at work on another.

See the entire piece at Front Page Magazine in Soros Manufactured Chaos in Israel




AND NOW THE ROUNDUP

Western Rifle Shooters has found a truly fantastic illustration to go with my SOTU parody. This should be Obama's presidential portrait.

Dress for success and the going rate for a 99 percent secretary

Romney hearts Hezbollah's health care system from Pamella Galler at Atlas Shrugs The takeaway here is that Romney operates on truisms from the same foreign policy experts who helped put the Brotherhood into power. He really does not get it.

Hezbollah and Hamas and the Brotherhood in Egypt are not popular because they offer health services or food. Those are bonuses that help lock in people. It's their Islamic beliefs that are popular and Romney is foolish to think that if America provided health care to them that it would swing them around.


... in other good news

The inauguration of Egypt's new parliament is an important step toward fulfilling public demands for the establishment of a regime based on Islam, said Ali Larijani, speaker of the Iranian parliament, in a letter on Wednesday. The letter was sent to Saad al-Katatny, People's Assembly speaker. 

Shouldn't he have sent the letter to Obama who deserves much of the credit for the Caliphate?


New York Times now outsourcing its stories to CAIR

Learn about the legal claim to the State of Israel, from Eli Hertz, who has done a great deal of research on the topic at a Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors event in February


Another way

Yes, I am an Arab and despite that I love the Jewish people and the Land of Israel. I believe in the responsibility of Arabs to be loyal to the State of Israel and I believe that Jews should be able to settle everywhere in Israel,

With a predictable ending