Eat The Rich

Oh, a storm is threatning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, Im gonna fade away

Oh, children ....

Oh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way ....

Quote Of The Day

"I know they say that the reason we don’t get great people running for great offices is because great people don’t want to be involved in politics. But Jesus on the dollar bill, THIS IS RIDICULOUS. These four people - Obama, McCain, Biden, and Palin - not a single one of them deserves the job they’re applying for when you get right down to it. Not a one of them, not even close. McCain is the only one who I think is actually smart enough, but he’s an asshole. So you have three dummies and an asshole running for the two most important jobs on the entire planet."
-Rachel Lucas

Happy National Hunting and Fishing Day

This article is from Ted Nugent and was published in Human Events:

There is a powerful, natural force in the fall air, and I, for one, cannot turn my back on it. I know the origin of "conservatism" and the pragmatic, rugged individualism logic that drives it and us.

As a conservationist, I believe in the wise use of our precious life-giving resources and clearly understand man's critical responsibility to the stewardship of our wild ground and our wildlife.

I learned a long time ago that if I wanted to enjoy a fire at Christmas time, that I had to plant trees in the spring. Not to boast, but the Arbor Day Foundation even gave me, your humble Motor City Madman, a conservation award, and I'm just a guitar player. I wonder how many trees Sting or Dave Mathews planted last year.

I hunt, kill animals, start fires, and barbecue my families' daily sacred protein health food. I bait hooks, catch fish and then cook them in garlic and butter. That’s absolute perfection, just as God intended. Only a disconnected liberal cultist of denial could find fault with my perfect conservation lifestyle that is based on the sound science of biodiversity, sustain yield and responsible, renewable resources hands-on utility. Venison is the rocket fuel of the gods, and I celebrate it daily. It sure makes for some unstoppable fiery and sexy guitar noise.

President Nixon recognized the vital conservation role of hunters, fishermen and trappers when he established National Hunting and Fishing Day in 1972. This Saturday marks the 36th anniversary of National Hunting & Fishing Day, and it is party time at the Nugent camp.

Many Americans don't know that President Nixon even established a National Hunting & Fishing Day or that this Saturday marks its 36th anniversary.

Many people don’t know that outdoorsmen provide roughly 75% of all funds for state departments of natural resources for overall environmental management. Quality air, soil and water come from healthy wildlife habitat, and that has always been our mission statement.

Many don’t know that funds generated through hunting, fishing and trapping licenses, stamps and various other self-imposed fees are also used to protect non-game species, provide areas for bird watchers, and build trails for hikers. You're welcome.

Too many people don’t know that there are more turkey, elk, whitetail deer, geese, black bears and cougars in North America than at any time in our nation’s history. America’s wildlife management system is envied around the world for its overwhelming successes.

Hunters, fishers and trappers demanded this, and we rejoice in our success.You probably don’t know that hunting, fishing and trapping generates more than 30 billion dollars annually to the U.S. economy, 2.5 billion in annual federal tax revenues, 4.2 billion in state tax revenues each year and provides well over 593,000 jobs for Americans. Wildlife has to be counted in the asset column where it belongs, if you have a soul.

You probably don’t know that tens of millions of American families spend hundreds of millions of hours in the great outdoors or that hunting is one of the safest recreational pursuits in America, with far fewer injuries or deaths per capita than skiing, football, cycling, swimming or boating.

You probably don’t know who Pope & Young were, never heard of Fred Bear, and don’t know what the acronyms DU, RMEF, NWTF, FNAWS, NSSF or SCI stands for, even though their conservation accomplishments are Herculean and deserve our respect.

You probably didn't know that hunters provide over 250 million meals each year to the less fortunate by providing a portion of our game to homeless shelters through our non-bureaucratic, non-tax wasting, therefore very efficient Hunters for the Hungry programs. Our pleasure.

You probably never thought about the fact that not one teenage punk gangster has a hunting or fishing license in his pocket. Not one.

Some of you might not know that the 2nd Amendment has zero to do with hunting. The 2nd Amendment was not written by our Founding Fathers so I could go duck hunting. Only a fool would think so.

You don’t know these wonderful things because the outdoor community has not reached beyond the choir to educate anyone about the amazing success story of America’s conservation efforts, activities and programs. Damn shame. I do what I can.

The fault, of course, for such widespread ignorance lies at the feet of rank-and-file hunters and fishermen, our outdoor organizations, and the industries that support and benefit from our conservation lifestyle. With a hunting hating liberal media, it is nearly impossible to find a truthful article on hunting anywhere. Even so, for the most part, our hunting industry couldn't promote a blanket to a naked man in a blizzard. Sadly, Bubba lives, but I'm doing everything I can to beat him back into his cave where he belongs.

In this turbo-electrified, computerized, instant gratification world in which our children are immersed, the thrilling disciplines of hunting and fishing teaches patience, responsibility, humility, persistence and real cause and effect. There is no argument that these are the character traits that mold immature young people into mature, productive, conscientious adults. Look at me.

There are no politics in a deer blind. An omnisciently alert whitetail buck does not care if you are Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.

It is good, however, to know that Gov. Palin is a real outdoors woman. She doesn't sling a shotgun over her shoulder once a year to mug for the camera in hopes of attracting votes from hunters and fishermen. She actually hunts caribou and fishes. This tuned in naturalist knows pure organic chow when she sees it. She’s the real deal.

This Saturday is National Hunting & Fishing Day. It is the day that signifies yet another glorious hunting season is upon us. It is perfect, and I am in, gung-ho, heart, mind, body, tooth, fang and claw, spirit and soul. Place your grilled venison orders here with me here. Happy hunting season 2008.

Politics

As this election cycle begins its final decent I am seriously considering disengaging from the entire process until November though I will, of course, retain my right to try and persuade others to vote as I will. Perhaps I am a casualty of a presidential race that began in earnest two years ago or maybe I am just disgusted by all of the negativity in politics which always seems to reach a jet engine crescendo about now. But nothing is likely to happen before Election Day that will cause me to change my mind or my vote so I must learn to live with the heavy burden of being the antithesis of the “undecided” voter.

I have never understood the undecided voter – maybe ignorance truly is bliss, though I have found that this Republic of ours requires a great deal of citizen supervision. Since I realize that politics is not everyone’s passion I would like to offer this as a patriotic public service to all of you “undecided’s” out there.

Country Squire’s Common Sense Guide
to Selecting a Political Candidate

To use the guide, merely vote for the political candidate whose positions most closely resemble the following criteria:

Supports a Strong Military.
Supports Lower Taxes and Less Regulation.
Supports a Smaller and More Efficient Government.
Supports Personal Responsibility and Self Sufficiency at Home.
Supports Freedom, Representative Government and Capitalism Abroad.

Repeat at every election.

Quote Of The Day

"The secular mindset cannot grasp that in a morally corrupt world filled with evil, that some might be called to seek the wisdom and power of God to resist evil and defend the good, and through such prayers seek the hope and character to transform the world in some small way to a place where good overcomes evil."
- Dr. Bob

The Undefended City

From Bill Whittle at National Review:

"When all is said and done, Civilizations do not fall because of the barbarians at the gates. Nor does a great city fall from the death wish of bored and morally bankrupt stewards presumably sworn to its defense. Civilizations fall only because each citizen of the city comes to accept that nothing can be done to rally and rebuild broken walls; that ground lost may never be recovered; and that greatness lived in our grandparents but not our grandchildren. Yes, our betters tell us these things daily. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe it.

Ask the common people of all politics and persuasions aboard Flight 93 whether greatness and courage has deserted America. Through this magical crystal ball — the one we are using right now — we common people can speak to one another. And by reminding ourselves and those around us of who we are, where we came from, what we have achieved together and of the marvels we have yet to achieve, we may laugh in the face of despair and mock those people that think a man with an MBA from Harvard knows more about running a gas station than the man that actually runs the gas station.

It is the small-town virtues of self-reliance, hard work, personal responsibility, and common-sense ingenuity — and not those of the preening cosmopolitans that gape at them in mixed contempt and bafflement — that have made us the inheritors of the most magnificent, noble, decent and free society ever to appear on this earth. This Western Civilization… this American City… has earned the right to greet each sunrise with a blast of silver trumpets that can bring down mountains.

And what, really, is a Legion of Narcissists and a Confederacy of Despair against that?"

Answer Me These Questions Three...

Time For Some Campaignin'

This is another masterpiece from the folks at JibJab which furthers that fine American tradition of "non-partisanship":

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

The Frustration Of Barack O’B

Posted by Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO:

The Frustration of Barack O’B.

(with apologies to Robert W. Serivce)

There’s strange things done on a White House Run by the fellows who would be elected,
The campaign trail has it secret tales that could make half of us disaffected.
Desperate Irish Housewife  has seen some queer sights, but the queerest she ever did see
Was one frosty, cold night in the northern moonlight : she bumped into Barack O’B.

He had no Armani, no Prius, no Streisand,

And no Secret Service detail,

But he drove a dogsled and he wore a fur coat — 
The kind only Michelle would buy retail.
“Barack,” Desperate cried, “whatcha doing out here? 
Hawaiians don’t make good dog-sledders!”
“It’s that new girl,” he growled, as the Malamutes howled,
“I’ve just got to make voters forget her!”

“I’ve slipped in the polls since that Palin gal spoke,
And my mojo I’ve got to recharge.
So I bought me this sled an these dogs and this coat
And these earmuffs in size extra-large.
So now I look rugged and real, don’t you see?
A regular Admiral Peary!
Undecideds will all now come flocking to me
And I’ll take back the world blogosphere-y!

If it’s Yukon they want then it’s Yukon they’ll get
I’ll show them I’m no city slicker!
I’ll have moose, I’ll have wolves, I’ll have Great Northern Loons
All on my next bumper sticker!
Then I’ll give ‘em a speech.  You know, more hope-and-change.
They’ll forget all about ‘Miss -McCain’s- Pick!’
I’ll send her right back to the cold Wasatch Range—
Hey, do you know if sea lions wear lipstick?” 

Now things get mighty queer in Election year
And the strongest men’s judgement gets hazy.
But this candidate’s panic was so un-messianic
I feared the poor guy had gone crazy.
“It isn’t the wolves or the loons,” Desperate said,
“It’s the heart, and the brains.  She’s a keeper.”
Barack shook his head, and to himself said,
“What I need is a prettier veeper.”

Then the load on his sled seemed to move!  And it said,
“I told you, you shouldn’t’ have picked me.”
‘Joe, you just need a fire,” said Barack in tones dire.
Joe shrugged. ”Fine.   Just don’t try to lipstick me.”
Then Barack shouted, “Mush!” And all in a rush
The dogs took off over the tundra.
DIH shook her head, and to no one she said,
“The pressure this country is under!”

There’s strange things done on a White House Run by the fellows who would be elected,
The campaign trail has it secret tales that could make half of us disaffected.
Desperate Irish Housewife  has seen some queer sights, but the queerest she ever did see
Was one frosty, cold night in the northern moonlight : she bumped into Barack O’B.

The Bush Doctrines

Charles Krauthammer sets the record straight in today's Washinton Post:

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe

By Charles Krauthammer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A17

"At times visibly nervous . . . Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of 'anticipatory self-defense.' "

-- New York Times, Sept. 12

Informed her? Rubbish.

The New York Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today. It is utterly different.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to the joint session of Congress nine days after 9/11, President Bush declared: "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq war was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of preemptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of the Bush approach to foreign policy and the one that most clearly and distinctively defines the Bush years: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge in his inaugural address that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.

Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Sarah Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Charlie Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, sighing and "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the mother of five who presumes to play on their stage.

9/11

This Pretty Much Sums It Up

Signs at an Ohio campaign rally. Submitted by our young miss.

And There You Have It

According to a GlobeScan BBC poll the world wants Obama to be president:

 “US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama may be struggling to nudge ahead of his Republican rival in polls at home, but people across the world want him in the White House, a BBC poll said.

 All 22 countries covered in the poll would prefer to see Senator Obama elected US president ahead of Republican John McCain.

 In 17 of the 22 nations, people expect relations between the US and the rest of the world to improve if Senator Obama wins.

 More than 22,000 people were questioned by pollster GlobeScan in countries ranging from Australia to India and across Africa, Europe and South America.

 The margin in favour of Senator Obama ranged from 9 per cent in India to 82 per cent in Kenya, while an average of 49 per cent across the 22 countries preferred Senator Obama compared with 12 per cent preferring Senator McCain. Some four in 10 did not take a view.”

 And in related news:

 “Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, there is no consensus outside the United States that Islamist militants from al Qaeda were responsible, according to an international poll published Wednesday.

 The survey of 16,063 people in 17 nations found majorities in only nine countries believe al Qaeda was behind the attacks on New York and Washington that killed about 3,000 people in 2001.

 U.S. officials squarely blame al Qaeda, whose leader Osama bin Laden has boasted of organizing the suicide attacks by his followers using hijacked commercial airliners.

 On average, 46 percent of those surveyed said al Qaeda was responsible, 15 percent said the U.S. government, 7 percent said Israel and 7 percent said some other perpetrator. One in four people said they did not know who was behind the attacks.”

 I simply can not come up with a better reason to stop paying attention to what the rest of the world thinks. This stuff just writes itself.

What a bunch of maroons.

More Thoughts About Sarah Palin

From Bill Whittle at National Review:

"Newt Gingrich’s fire-breathing army of young reform Republicans who stormed congress in 1994 grew, in about a decade, into the party of Duke Cunningham, Trent Lott, and the Bridge to Nowhere. I watched this unfold — especially after 2004 — and time and time again, the core conservative values of discipline and responsibility were betrayed, mocked, and ignored. Restraint is not an easy sell in a society this affluent — not compared with the view of government as a bottomless bag of candy. That’s why we’re supposed to be the party of adults. 

Power corrupts, and I believe there is no power more intoxicating and corrosive than the ability to spend other people’s money at will. If Newt’s Army could go so far astray, you can bet the country was disillusioned, disappointed, and furious — not just ready for change, but eager for it, even change as ethereal and diffuse as what Senator Obama has been peddling. We lost the Senate and the House in 2006 because of this. We were going to lose the presidency in 2008 for it. And we deserved to lose it. 

And so — prior to this week — all we had was a grim determination to vote against a dangerous, socialized vision of the future. We were portrayed — largely accurately — as old, tired, out-of-touch, out of ideas, out of candidates . . . too white, too male, too square. It doesn’t matter how true or false that caricature was. That was the narrative, and there was enough of it that fit.

And then the earthquake came.

Sarah Palin is the anti-Obama: not a victim, not a poser, not riding a wave but rather swimming upstream — and most of all, not having run for president her entire life. She is the first politician I have ever seen — and I include Ronnie in this, God bless him — who strikes everyone who sees her as an actual, real, ordinary person. Immediately came T-shirts saying I AM SARAH PALIN. HER STORY IS MY STORY. There is a lot of Obama swag out there, too, but none of it says HIS STORY IS MY STORY. Hold that thought till November 5. 

She is so absolutely, remarkably, spectacularly ordinary. I think the magic of Sarah Palin speaks to a belief that so many of us share: the sense that we personally know five people in our immediate circle who would make a better president than the menagerie of candidates the major parties routinely offer. Sarah Palin has erupted from this collective American Dream — the idea that, given nothing but classic American values like hard work, integrity, and tough-minded optimism you can actually do what happens in the movies: become Leader of the Free World, the President of the United States of America. (Or, well, you know, vice president.)"

CWCID: TigerHawk

Noonan On Palin

From Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal:

"Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy.

She could become a transformative political presence.

So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there."

The Real Story Behind The Palin Nomination

Quote Of The Day Redux

"Palinize: to slander and caricature a working-class female public figure for the noble advancement of liberalism."
- Victor Davis Hanson

Quote Of The Day

"When liberals start acting like they're opposed to pre-marital sex and mothers having careers, you know McCain's vice presidential choice has knocked them back on their heels."
- Ann Coulter