Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary

The Obamian’s Prayer

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]

Political Commentary

The Obamian’s Prayer

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]

Political Commentary

The Obamian’s Prayer

3 Comments

I put this in a previous post on Obama and his fascist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) antipathy to individualism, but decided that it deserved one of its own:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
Hallowed be thy name;
Thy election come;
Thy will be done,
In the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
As we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
That trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
But deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
The power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

[Via a commenter at Rantburg]

Political Commentary, Satire

More Obamarama

2 Comments

OK, Friday night’s post was getting way too long with all the updates, but Obama’s latest faux pas (i.e., letting slip how he really feels about the rubes) is the gift that just keeps giving. Ace has a plea for help from the hinterlands (“Halp Us Brak, We Are Stuk In Small Town”), and a link to the latest non-apology apology: “I’m sorry you’re too stupid to understand what I meant.”

And Iowahawk has managed to milk it for another golden oldie: “The Heart of Redness.”

I should note that much of the media and the Democrats remain clueless as to why this was so offensive. First of all, few people, even bitter people, like being told that they’re “bitter,” though of course there are exceptions (no surprise that it’s a Democrat). They especially don’t like it when they don’t feel bitter at all, as is the case for most people, even most Reagan Democrats (which comprise many of the people who he was insulting). Of course, even if Keystone State Democrats are bitter, that’s not going to help him in the fall with the vast majority of Pennsylvanians who are not.

But beyond that, as I mentioned in comments yesterday:

He conflated being anti-trade, pro-gun, religious, and bigoted. Now that implies that these things are all similar in some way. They are either good traits, or bad traits, but the implication (and what it is clear that Obama, and much of the Democrat elite believe, based not just on this one foot-in-mouth incident, but many over the years) is that these are bad things. Now I happen to believe that bigotry and opposition to trade are wrong, but I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with gun ownership (and use) or being religious.

But now we know what the Democrats think of ordinary people in this country. The notion that these double-plus ungood thoughts are caused by economic deprivation are entirely beside the point. It was the bigotry of the elitist Democrats on display, and it wasn’t pretty. Now as it happens, Hillary believes this, too, but at least she’s savvy enough to lie about it, so she’ll be able to take big-time advantage of it.

Commenter “Bob”‘s amusing response to this was:

Obama never said or even implied that being anti-trade, pro-gun, religious, and/or being bigoted is bad (although of course everyone says that being bigoted is bad). He was saying that what those four traits have in common is that the Republicans have a lock on them! Now, lets pause, because saying that Republicans or their party has a lock on bigotry is controversial and argumentative (and untrue, in my opinion), but he was speaking to a partisan crowd.

In any case, Rand, I believe you misunderstood. Obama was making an argument for why people vote Republican. He was talking about the Democrat-Republican axis, not the Good-Bad axis.

Well, this might be salient if so many Democrats didn’t equate “Republican” with “bad.” But there’s a lot of truth to the old cliche, Republicans think that Democrats are foolish, and Democrats think that Republicans are evil. If “Bob” doesn’t think that there aren’t many elitist Democrats (and you can bet that that room to which Obama was speaking last Friday was chock full of them) who think that guns and gun owners are bad, and that religiosity (at least “right-wing conservative” religiosity) is “bad” (and “Republican”) then he must not get out much, and hasn’t been listening to very many speeches by them.

In fact, Iowahawk hilariously captured this kind of bewilderment with homo red-status and condescension in a spoof on a speech by Howard Dean a year and a half ago. Believe me, satire like this doesn’t work without an underlying truth. And it works brilliantly.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Barack Obama, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

I’m most of the way through Jonah’s book, and it really is an eye opener. While I was somewhat aware of the history that he describes, he ties things together in a very compelling way, and it’s quite clear that we have had a number of fascist presidents, going back to the prototype, Woodrow Wilson, who inspired both Mussolini and Hitler, and many of whose staff ended up in the Roosevelt administration. Interestingly, the president who was one of the least fascist of the twentieth century was probably the one at whom that epithet was hurled the most by the mindless left (at least until George W. Bush came along)–Ronald Reagan. I remember as a kid visiting California, back in 1967, and seeing bumper stickers out there saying “Hitler Is Alive And Living In Sacramento.”

But as JPod points out, it is the Obamites who are creating the personality cult, and it is Michelle Obama who is making demands of the citizens, something that Reagan never did, and would never have done.

[Update a couple minutes]

Here’s a comment from JPod’s post that I think is quite insightful:

Obama said that bitter middle Americans cling to guns or religion. What that actually means is that most Americans erroneously rely on themselves or their God to provide and protect them and not the collective state. And they do so not out of bitterness, but from a foundational belief that “We the People” form a more perfect union, not “We the State” form a more perfect people.

It’s not middle America that’s bitter but Obama. And since he clings to the power of the state to provide and protect him and wants middle America to do so as well. That’s the cynicism that Barak and Michelle Obama wants us to shed, our cynicism of the state as our protector and provider. And that’s why Michelle Obama is, for the first time in a long time, proud of America, because she stands at threshold of not only scolding Obama for not putting his socks in the hamper and the butter in the cupboard, but the rest of America as well.

Indeed.

[OK, (at least) one more]

Over at Reason, Michael Young nails it:

Obama’s approach betrays a very suffocating vision of the state as the be-all and end-all of political-cultural behavior. Outside the confines of the state there is no salvation, only resentment. This is nonsense, but it also partly explains why Obama is so admired among educated liberals, who still view the state as the main medium of American providence.

For those who haven’t read Jonah’s book, I think that I can concisely summarize his (more benign) definition of fascism as a religion of, and worship of, the state.

[Yet another update]

Obviously, satire aside, I find this an important topic. Donald Sensing gets right to the nub of it as well, and why I could never vote for Barack Obama:

Let’s look at Obama’s laundry list of Pennsylvanians’ dysfunctions again:

  • bitterness
  • “Clinging to”
    • guns
    • religion
    • racism
    • chauvinism
    • anti-trade sentiment

Reading the full context of Obama’s remarks, it strikes me that he believes that all of these (presumed) symptoms spring from the fact that there is too little control of the economy by the federal government. Obama said that all of these dysfunctions began when the government let their jobs go away and then, through both Republican and Democrat administrations, did nothing to “regenerate” them.

It is the lack of regulation of the economy, Obama believes, that makes people bitter, racist, religious, hunters, patriotic or protectionist. All these things are bad, and they all result from free-market, democratic capitalism. I know that many of you reading this will think I’m over-reaching here, but I stand my ground: Obama’s remarks are in fact as clear a declaration of cleaving to socialism as almost anything he could have said.

…what I find especially disturbing in Obama’s remarks, that I have not seen in Mrs. Clinton’s ever, is the ideal of the “perfectibility of man.” This is the hoariest socialist doctrine of all, explicit in Marxism and later, Marxism-Leninism. This is an idea so utterly vacuous and foolish that not even the Euro socialist governments cleave to it, if they ever did, except in Eastern Europe, and then only when they were communist. Clearly implicit on Obama’s remarks is the idea that since racism, religion et. al., arise from the lack of government regulation, they can be expunged by more of it.

You see, we can all become virtuous if only the government controlled our lives.

Not only are Obama’s remarks a clarion call to socialism, they also objectify the people he refers to. He dismissed them as free, moral agents in their own right. Gosh, it’s no wonder those white people hate blacks and Hispanics, go to church and buy guns and feel angry – they can’t help it. The government has let them down. But with proper government regulation, intervention, activism (oh, just pick your own name), then they won’t be racists, religious, xenophobic, or own guns.

Emphasis mine. “Perfectibility of man” isn’t just a Marxist concept: it’s a fascist one as well.

[Early evening update]

The Obama prayer:

O Bama, who art on the campaign trail,
hallowed be thy name;
thy election come;
thy will be done,
in the US as it is in Europe.
Give us this day our daily entitlements.
And forgive us our political incorrectness,
as we forgive those bible-thumping gun-toting hicks
that trespass against us.
And lead us not into capitalism;
but deliver us from patriotism.
For thine is the STATE,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever (and ever).

Amen.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Obama’s Space Policy

Well, he still doesn’t have one, but there’s nothing particularly objectionable about these comments, as far as they go:

Q: What do you plan to do with the space agency? Like right now they’re currently underfunded, they, at first they didn’t know if they were going to be able to operate Spirit rover. What do plan to do with it?

Obama: I think that, I, uh. I grew up with the space program. Most of you young people here were born during the shuttle era. I was the Apollo era. I remember, you know, watching, you know, the moon landing. I was living in Hawaii when I was growing up, so the astronauts would actually, you know, land in the Pacific and then get brought into Honolulu and it was incredible memories and incredibly inspiring. And by the way inspired a whole generation of people to get engaged in math and science in a way that we haven’t – that we need to renew. So I’m a big supporter of the space program. I think it needs to be redefined, though.

We’ve kind of lost a sense of mission in terms of what it is that NASA should be trying to achieve and I think that we’ve gotta make some big decisions about whether or not, are we going to try to send manned, you know, space launches, or are we better off in terms of what we’re learning sending unmanned probes which oftentimes are cheaper and less dangerous, but yield more information.

And that’s a major debate I’m going to want to convene when I’m president of the United States. What direction do we take the space program in? Once we have a sense of what’s going to be most valuable for us in terms of gaining knowledge, then I think we’ll able to adjust the budget so that we’re going all out on what it is that we’ve decided to do.”

I’ve long said that we need to have a national debate on what we want to do in space, and why–something that hasn’t really happened since NASA was chartered, half a century ago, so I would certainly welcome such a debate in the unfortunate event of an Obama presidency.

My question is, though: why wait? Why not have the debate now, so we can decide who we want to vote for, at least for those of us for whom space is a voting issue (if not the only consideration). What would be the venue and framework for the debate? What does Senator Obama think that the potential options are? Will he be constrained by past thinking, of space as the province of NASA and astronauts, with billions of dollars flowing in its porcine manner to Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, or will he be open to both goals and means that are more innovative than we’ve seen from any previous administration, including the Bush administration? Will he be a candidate for “hope” and “change” for the high frontier?

Well, like all his other positions, he does offer “hope” and “change” for space with the above words, but not clue one as to what we should be hoping for, and what form the “change” will take. In other words, as on other issues, he continues to deal in platitudes, and is unwilling to take a stand, or even discuss potential options, for fear of alienating the voters, who he hopes will continue to view him as a political Rorschach test, and see in his space policy, as in all his policies, what they want to see.

So while I hope that if elected, we will have that national dialogue about space, I don’t have any high expectations either that it will actually happen, or that anything useful will come out of it, because he offers me no substance now.

Of course, even if he told me that he’s going to do all of the things that I’d like to see from a space policy standpoint, it wouldn’t be sufficient to get me to vote for him because a) I couldn’t be sure that he meant it, given his flip flopping on other issues, 2) his positions on other issues are too odious to allow me to be a single-issue voter on space and 3) even if sincere, there’s no reason, given his complete lack of executive experience, that he will have any success whatsoever in implementing them.

Still, I’d sure like to see that national debate.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Obama’s Space Policy

Well, he still doesn’t have one, but there’s nothing particularly objectionable about these comments, as far as they go:

Q: What do you plan to do with the space agency? Like right now they’re currently underfunded, they, at first they didn’t know if they were going to be able to operate Spirit rover. What do plan to do with it?

Obama: I think that, I, uh. I grew up with the space program. Most of you young people here were born during the shuttle era. I was the Apollo era. I remember, you know, watching, you know, the moon landing. I was living in Hawaii when I was growing up, so the astronauts would actually, you know, land in the Pacific and then get brought into Honolulu and it was incredible memories and incredibly inspiring. And by the way inspired a whole generation of people to get engaged in math and science in a way that we haven’t – that we need to renew. So I’m a big supporter of the space program. I think it needs to be redefined, though.

We’ve kind of lost a sense of mission in terms of what it is that NASA should be trying to achieve and I think that we’ve gotta make some big decisions about whether or not, are we going to try to send manned, you know, space launches, or are we better off in terms of what we’re learning sending unmanned probes which oftentimes are cheaper and less dangerous, but yield more information.

And that’s a major debate I’m going to want to convene when I’m president of the United States. What direction do we take the space program in? Once we have a sense of what’s going to be most valuable for us in terms of gaining knowledge, then I think we’ll able to adjust the budget so that we’re going all out on what it is that we’ve decided to do.”

I’ve long said that we need to have a national debate on what we want to do in space, and why–something that hasn’t really happened since NASA was chartered, half a century ago, so I would certainly welcome such a debate in the unfortunate event of an Obama presidency.

My question is, though: why wait? Why not have the debate now, so we can decide who we want to vote for, at least for those of us for whom space is a voting issue (if not the only consideration). What would be the venue and framework for the debate? What does Senator Obama think that the potential options are? Will he be constrained by past thinking, of space as the province of NASA and astronauts, with billions of dollars flowing in its porcine manner to Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, or will he be open to both goals and means that are more innovative than we’ve seen from any previous administration, including the Bush administration? Will he be a candidate for “hope” and “change” for the high frontier?

Well, like all his other positions, he does offer “hope” and “change” for space with the above words, but not clue one as to what we should be hoping for, and what form the “change” will take. In other words, as on other issues, he continues to deal in platitudes, and is unwilling to take a stand, or even discuss potential options, for fear of alienating the voters, who he hopes will continue to view him as a political Rorschach test, and see in his space policy, as in all his policies, what they want to see.

So while I hope that if elected, we will have that national dialogue about space, I don’t have any high expectations either that it will actually happen, or that anything useful will come out of it, because he offers me no substance now.

Of course, even if he told me that he’s going to do all of the things that I’d like to see from a space policy standpoint, it wouldn’t be sufficient to get me to vote for him because a) I couldn’t be sure that he meant it, given his flip flopping on other issues, 2) his positions on other issues are too odious to allow me to be a single-issue voter on space and 3) even if sincere, there’s no reason, given his complete lack of executive experience, that he will have any success whatsoever in implementing them.

Still, I’d sure like to see that national debate.

Political Commentary, Space, Space and Campaign 2008

Obama’s Space Policy

17 Comments

Well, he still doesn’t have one, but there’s nothing particularly objectionable about these comments, as far as they go:

Q: What do you plan to do with the space agency? Like right now they’re currently underfunded, they, at first they didn’t know if they were going to be able to operate Spirit rover. What do plan to do with it?

Obama: I think that, I, uh. I grew up with the space program. Most of you young people here were born during the shuttle era. I was the Apollo era. I remember, you know, watching, you know, the moon landing. I was living in Hawaii when I was growing up, so the astronauts would actually, you know, land in the Pacific and then get brought into Honolulu and it was incredible memories and incredibly inspiring. And by the way inspired a whole generation of people to get engaged in math and science in a way that we haven’t – that we need to renew. So I’m a big supporter of the space program. I think it needs to be redefined, though.

We’ve kind of lost a sense of mission in terms of what it is that NASA should be trying to achieve and I think that we’ve gotta make some big decisions about whether or not, are we going to try to send manned, you know, space launches, or are we better off in terms of what we’re learning sending unmanned probes which oftentimes are cheaper and less dangerous, but yield more information.

And that’s a major debate I’m going to want to convene when I’m president of the United States. What direction do we take the space program in? Once we have a sense of what’s going to be most valuable for us in terms of gaining knowledge, then I think we’ll able to adjust the budget so that we’re going all out on what it is that we’ve decided to do.”

I’ve long said that we need to have a national debate on what we want to do in space, and why–something that hasn’t really happened since NASA was chartered, half a century ago, so I would certainly welcome such a debate in the unfortunate event of an Obama presidency.

My question is, though: why wait? Why not have the debate now, so we can decide who we want to vote for, at least for those of us for whom space is a voting issue (if not the only consideration). What would be the venue and framework for the debate? What does Senator Obama think that the potential options are? Will he be constrained by past thinking, of space as the province of NASA and astronauts, with billions of dollars flowing in its porcine manner to Houston, Huntsville and the Cape, or will he be open to both goals and means that are more innovative than we’ve seen from any previous administration, including the Bush administration? Will he be a candidate for “hope” and “change” for the high frontier?

Well, like all his other positions, he does offer “hope” and “change” for space with the above words, but not clue one as to what we should be hoping for, and what form the “change” will take. In other words, as on other issues, he continues to deal in platitudes, and is unwilling to take a stand, or even discuss potential options, for fear of alienating the voters, who he hopes will continue to view him as a political Rorschach test, and see in his space policy, as in all his policies, what they want to see.

So while I hope that if elected, we will have that national dialogue about space, I don’t have any high expectations either that it will actually happen, or that anything useful will come out of it, because he offers me no substance now.

Of course, even if he told me that he’s going to do all of the things that I’d like to see from a space policy standpoint, it wouldn’t be sufficient to get me to vote for him because a) I couldn’t be sure that he meant it, given his flip flopping on other issues, 2) his positions on other issues are too odious to allow me to be a single-issue voter on space and 3) even if sincere, there’s no reason, given his complete lack of executive experience, that he will have any success whatsoever in implementing them.

Still, I’d sure like to see that national debate.

History, Political Commentary, Space

Party Like It’s 1961!

It’s kind of late now if you didn’t make plans, and I gave advance notice a few days ago, but tonight is Yuri’s Night, as we are reminded by Phil Bowermaster.

And in response to a previous commenter that we shouldn’t be celebrating a Soviet victory in the Cold War, we should be long past that. We won, and in fact, if Gagarin hadn’t flown, we might not have gone to the moon. Of course, it’s debatable whether or not that was a good thing for our expansion into space, in light of the history since.

In any event, it’s an historical event, to celebrate the first time a human left the planet and went into space far enough to actually orbit, and almost half a century later, it transcends politics and a dead communist (and fascist) empire.

We aren’t attending a party, both because we’re not much on partying, if it means loud atrocious dance music, but also because the nearest (and only) one that anyone could muster up in Florida was up in Cocoa Beach. That nothing was organized in the metropolitan tri-counties of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade says something about the importance of space in our culture, but I’m not quite sure what.

History, Political Commentary, Space

Party Like It’s 1961!

It’s kind of late now if you didn’t make plans, and I gave advance notice a few days ago, but tonight is Yuri’s Night, as we are reminded by Phil Bowermaster.

And in response to a previous commenter that we shouldn’t be celebrating a Soviet victory in the Cold War, we should be long past that. We won, and in fact, if Gagarin hadn’t flown, we might not have gone to the moon. Of course, it’s debatable whether or not that was a good thing for our expansion into space, in light of the history since.

In any event, it’s an historical event, to celebrate the first time a human left the planet and went into space far enough to actually orbit, and almost half a century later, it transcends politics and a dead communist (and fascist) empire.

We aren’t attending a party, both because we’re not much on partying, if it means loud atrocious dance music, but also because the nearest (and only) one that anyone could muster up in Florida was up in Cocoa Beach. That nothing was organized in the metropolitan tri-counties of Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade says something about the importance of space in our culture, but I’m not quite sure what.