The thing about Sarah Palin is, whenever she opens her mouth and expresses an opinion about pretty much any policy issue, I agree with her. So when she is characterized as a dull-witted extremist bimbo, as she unfailingly is in the mainstream media, I tend to take it personally. I may be a bimbo, but dull-witted? Please.

I did not graduate from a particularly prestigious university, let alone with any advanced degrees, but I do pride myself on a certain minimal facility with the English language, as defined by our intellectual elites. Sarah Palin cannot make that claim. Neither could George W. Bush.

Such a lack of facility is not a virtue. It is a deficiency. It’s good to have a President with an aptitude for the King’s English, but that particular virtue is, at least to my mind, of secondary importance to the virtues of strong leadership and an understanding of good policy, qualities which, from my point of view, President Obama does not possess, and Governor Palin does.

Others may not agree with her policy prescriptions. I can understand that. And demonization of conservative points of view, outside of Fox News, is to be expected. But the treatment of Sarah Palin by the media is beyond anything I have ever seen.

Here are some of Sarah Palin’s policy opinions as expressed on the Rush Limbaugh radio show:

On Afghanistan:

“We’re gonna claim what Ronald Reagan claimed. Our motto’s gonna be, we win, you lose,” she said. “The way that we do that is allow McChrystal to have the reinforcements that he’s asking for in Afghanistan that sends the message to the terrorists over there that, now we’re going to end this thing with our victory.”

On Iran:

“We need to start facing Iran with tougher and tougher sanctions that need to be considered. … We need to look at halting Iran’s imports of refined petroleum products. They’re quite reliant on imported gasoline. We need to use that hammer to wake up the leadership there too. Those are two big challenges that we have right now.”

On Health Care:

“There are so many questions unanswered. I don’t like the idea in general of the federal government thinking it needs to take over health care, which essentially this is, and control one-sixth of our economy. Not when there are common sense solutions to meeting our health care challenges in our country, like alloying the intra- and interstate competition with insurers, tort reform, cutting down on the waste and fraud that the Obama administration insists if we did that would just pay for this …”

On green energy:

“I think there’s a lot of snake-oil science involved in that, and somebody’s making a whole lot of money off people’s fears.”

On climate change:

“I don’t attribute all the changes to man’s activities. I think that this is, in a lot of respects, cyclical, and the earth does cool and it warms. Our greatest challenge with energy is that we’re not tapping into the abundant domestic supplies that God created right under foot.”

On VP Biden saying it’s more complicated than “Drill Baby Drill”

“What is complicated about tapping into abundant, safe, domestic supplies that could provide stability for our country and security for our country?”

The “angry” adjective is often applied to conservatives, often unfairly. After all, we conservatives are certainly no angrier than liberals who equate Bush with Hitler or Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas, and even Juan Williams with house niggers.

But the appellation is not entirely unfair. Conservatives are angry, but they are angry for different reasons than liberals. Liberals are angry because, incomprehensibly, in spite of their “liberal” enlightenment, most people disagree with them. Conservatives are angry because even though most people agree with them, they are nevertheless demonized by the establishment as stupid, racist, homophobic, bloodthirsty, and, yes, angry.

It is an interesting phenomenon. Conservatives outnumber moderates and liberals, and yet the mainstream media, both news and entertainment, movies, TV, music, academia, the entire artistic community, and the intellectual elite in general, are all overwhelmingly liberal. In other words, Liberals are in control of everyone’s public image, no matter who you are.

No wonder conservatives are angry. Before Rush and Fox, every time an ordinary American turned on the TV, or read the paper, or listened to the radio, or went to the movies, or attended class, or went to a mainstream Protestant church, it was more likely than not that she would be subjected to an impervious, self-righteous point of view that called her nasty names, a point of view that denied even being a point of view, that claimed the mantle of objective truth.

Fox, and Rush Limbaugh before Fox, discovered an unexploited niche demographic, namely 50% of the American people, which necessarily means that Fox News is not a real news organization, and Rush Limbaugh is a racist extremist.

Chris Matthews fantasizes about murdering Rush Limbaugh.

James Carville and others smear Rush Limbaugh as a racist who should not be allowed to own the St. Louis Rams or be allowed to have a radio show.

Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson do the same.

You don’t have to agree with Rush Limbaugh to be drummed out of polite society, the society of “nice” people. All you have to do is say that even though you disagree with everything he says, nevertheless you believe that he is a decent human being. That’s all it takes.

There is nothing comparable on the right. Some people on the right think Obama is both a communist and a fascist at the same time. Other people on the right voted for him. Some conservatives love Rush Limbaugh. Others think he is bad for conservatism. That doesn’t stop them all from having brandy and cigars together, along with any liberal friends willing to be seen with them.

There is a threat hanging over the head of anyone who steps out of line towards the right, especially those with a public persona. If my blog ever got popular, which I take pains to keep from happening, I would be out of business. If you are a conservative in academia, or the public schools, or the arts, or the MSM, or in the illegal drug distribution industry, you have to be very careful about what you say. If you’re a liberal, you don’t have to be careful anywhere except maybe a Navy Seals reunion, and even then probably not.

Conservatives became conflated with Satan during the 60s counterculture revolution because the conservatives were the ones primarily responsible for all the hypocrisy about civil rights and the war in Vietnam and soul-stifling squareness in general, the world of Mad Men. We on the far left were every bit as arrogant, intolerant, and ignorant as the left is today, but we had the excuse of being powerless.

Now the worm has turned. Conservatives are the insurgents. It takes as much fearless defiance of convention to become a conservative these days as it did to become a drop-out, long-haired, hippie revolutionary in 1965.

There is a natural tendency for reasonable, non-dogmatic people to want to give the benefit of the doubt to both sides of any conflict. This is often, even most of the time, the right thing to do. But sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes one side is really bad, and the other side, while far from perfect, is not really so bad. Recognizing this state of affairs is always unpleasant, and will be avoided as long as possible by most of us. Not by me of course. I, like Al Gore, am always looking for an excuse to declare apocalypse, but most people, like the constituents of Neville Chamberlain, would rather be left alone to lead their lives.

So now we have Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid in charge of everything. Are they a welcome breath of fresh air that will move the country slightly more liberal, or are they revolutionaries who will cause major damage that will require decades from which to recover, if recovery is even possible? Is Rush an extremist or is he Jeremiah (the prophet that is, not the Reverend)? I’m getting too old for this, but I am reluctantly drawn towards the latter assessment.

I wish it were not so. I wish I could express myself freely among my dear friends. I wish I could look forward to a reformed health care system, fewer carbon emissions, a more peaceful world where America is loved and all of our troops could come home. But I just can’t do it. I think these guys, semi-consciously, are doing their best to wreck the United States. They think this is what they are supposed to do.

I used to think the same thing myself. I would have been right at home, as Barack Obama, Van Jones, Yosi Sergant, and Kevin Jennings are now, with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers. I would have welcomed a government takeover of medicine. I would have been in favor of no nukes, no oil, all solar and wind energy. I would have applauded withdrawing our troops from everywhere. I would have loved to hear the President apologize to the world for America’s grievous sins. He wouldn’t have been able to do it enough, as far as I was concerned.

Now, I’m sorry, but it looks to me like the USA is on a knife edge, and Jimmy Carter is about to lose his place in history as our most destructive President, and the world is in big trouble.

It’s very interesting, this controversy over the way Obama presents himself and the United States to the world. The right is outraged at the constant apologizing and obsequiousness, the sensitivity to the feelings and self esteem of Arabs, Russians, and Europeans. The left enthusiastically applauds because it coincides with their own assessments of imperialist America’s sins.

Reasonable people are not outraged or cheering, but they still disagree. Is this interpreted by the rest of the world as weakness? Or is it seen as good manners and respect for the other members of the international community, heretofore missing from America’s social skills set? Bottom line, does it advance or retard our interests in the dog eat dog anarchy of international politics?

It sickens me to hear Obama giving speeches all over the world, bowing and scraping and apologizing for the sins of the United States that occurred before he, Obama, took hold of the rudder of the pirate ship of our state.

Nevertheless there is a slight, nagging suspicion that just maybe this will have some salutary effect that could even be in our national interest. The fact that we, the United States of America, are far and away the bull goose loony superpower on the planet, is not something that needs to be emphasized, after all. Everybody in the world is, painfully or joyfully, fully aware of it. The same might be said, not only of our might, but of our many virtues. The rest of the world is gratefully or enviously, mostly enviously, aware of these as well.

Consequently, a case can be made for the apology tour. It’s like being born a Kennedy. We have an obligation to serve. It’s best not to carry the Kennedy analogy too far, but you know what I mean, noblesse oblige. Proof – pudding, as always. Time is needed for it to play out before we know for sure, just like the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

The good war, what Obama called the war of necessity a short time ago, becomes the only so-so war, or even the not very good at all war, certainly not the absolutely necessary war.

I’m not sure where I stand on our involvement in Afghanistan. How could I be? I don’t know anything. All I know is that Generals McChrystal and Petreaus and Admiral Mullen are all advising more troops and a counter-insurgency strategy similar to the surge in Iraq. Advising the President to get the Hell out and just poke at it with drones and special forces, we have Joe Biden and John Kerry, who, along with Barack Obama, were as wrong as wrong can be about the surge in Iraq. If I were President, and didn’t have a clue myself, which I don’t and neither does Barack Obama, I know whose advice I would be more likely to listen to.

It’s not that there are no good reasons to quit Afghanistan, some of them are even eloquently expressed by conservatives like George Will. Karzai’s government is corrupt. Nobody has ever succeeded in pacifying Afghanistan. The real problem is Pakistan. Etc. I can see that. If the mission is simply impossible, which it may be (what do I know?), then of course we shouldn’t try to do it. General Petreaus and General McChrystal think it is possible, and they were right about Iraq. John Kerry and Joe Biden think it is impossible, and they were wrong about Iraq. That’s all I’m saying.

It is beginning to look like a done deal in any case. The announcement is being postponed in order to allow time to prepare the public, but the direction is becoming more and more clear. Obama intends to leave Afghanistan to the Iranian-supplied Taliban, and their brothers in Al Qaeda. They can have the country and they can shoot women in the head for dress code violations, in soccer stadiums (attendance required), blow up girls’ schools and Buddha statues to their heart’s content. And we will content ourselves with surgical strikes on Al Qaeda training bases.

This might be the right thing to do. I’m a little surprised that it is the liberal preference, but hey, times change. The cold war is over and there is a Democrat in the White House and those Al Qaeda guys just got lucky that one time.

When George W. Bush took the advice of David Petreaus and approved the surge in Iraq, he went against the opinions of the U.S. Congress, many of his own advisors, the mainstream media, public opinion polls, Barack Obama, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, to name a few. He had to fire his Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in order to do it. It was, to coin a phrase, a profile in courage. It was like firing McClellan and putting Grant in charge.

I have yet to see any evidence that our current President, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of a particular policy, has that kind of courage. I would love to be proven wrong.

I am initially somewhat prejudiced against extremely obese people, until I get to know them. I like beautiful women more than homely women, until I know them better. I get bored with people who are a lot stupider than I am, unless they exhibit some other engaging quality.

Variations in skin color don’t bother me. However, if I see a black male youth wearing a hoodie, his pants pube high, listening to gangsta rap, I assume, not the worst, but an increased probability of the worst.

I often enjoy the company of, and have respect and affection for homosexual men, but I do admit to harboring an aversion to the gay lifestyle and gay politics in general, and I don’t think that homosexual marriage is identical to heterosexual marriage.

I am proud of my Anglo-Saxon heritage. I think the Anglo-Saxons, Germanic-Norman-Celtic (and God knows what else) mongrels though they are, are the best in, not all, but many ways, culturally that is.

I don’t have a problem with Barack Obama because he is half African. If anything, that’s a plus in my book. I think that, generally speaking, Obama is favored with more slack than hate by being black, certainly from me. I therefore take extreme umbrage at the poisonous imputations of people like Jimmy Carter and Al Sharpton and various New York Times columnists that, to quote Jimmy, “…an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man…”.

I have intense animosity toward Barack Obama. I did not have it at first, even though he was already part black. It has gradually accrued. I wanted, still do, to like the guy. He is very likable. He is also a more facile liar than even Bill Clinton. I don’t know when we have ever had a President who was better at it. Pretty much everything he has ever said about taxes, health care, Iraq, ACORN, Reverend Wright, the Federal budget, Bill Ayers, transparency, the auto bailout, the stimulus, has been a lie.

I want to believe him, but I just know too much. I do not believe that his facility is a general characteristic of African people. It could just as easily be his white side that enables him to be so good at it. It may not be, probably isn’t, genetic at all.

So I admit it. I am a member of that threatened species, Republicans. Therefore I am, ipso facto, a racist and a homophobe, and I accept that. It’s not my fault. I need help. I would be most grateful for a government grant or program of some kind. I have, for example, some great ideas for Obama-supportive art projects that might be of interest to the National Endowment for the Arts.

A lady who lives in our neighborhood got this picture at a yard sale and recognized the house and came over and gave it to us. Now there is no longer a chimney on the right, and that fireplace is gone. The decorative glass in the dormer is also gone. Looks like there were no wires going to the house, hence no electricity. Apparently there were five people living in the house. Looks like a wood porch. Ours is concrete. Our porch pillars have a two foot high brick base. The bricks are painted yellow now. Looks like they were red in the picture. Click on the picture to see a larger picture.

Candace has been commissioned to write a play about the history of Rutherford County. It will be presented in the Murfreesboro town square on October 3rd. She is also producing, acting, and singing. She wrote a couple of original songs for it also. You can see the work in progress script and listen to the music by clicking here. One of the new songs is Mad About Trains.

A more recent picture of the house:

I’m watching the fourth round match at the U.S. Open between Gael Monfils and Rafael Nadal. Monfils has already won the first set. They are in the middle of the second set. As John McEnroe said at the end of the first, “The good news is Monfils won the first set. The bad news is he has to win two more sets.”

Who has the better serve? Monfils. The better forehand? Monfils. Backhand? Monfils. Volley, drop shot, backhand slice? Monfils. Who covers the court better? It’s a wash. They are both incredible movers. Who is gonna win this match and advance to the quarterfinals? Nadal. That is a foregone conclusion. I am perfectly willing to post this before the match is over. It’s not a prediction. It’s a sure thing.

Why? Because Rafael Nadal plays every single point, no, every single stroke, as if it is match point of the most important match of his life. As Jimmy Connors says of Nadal, “He plays like he is broke.” Nobody else in professional tennis is able to do that.

Correction. They are all able to do it. Nobody else is willing to do it. This is a slight exaggeration. Nadal is human after all. He has lapses, he loses concentration, occasionally. But compared to everyone else, including Roger Federer, he is the most relentless, never give an inch player ever. He is the terminator. He never stops. He never gives up. And so, he wins. As long as his body holds out.

Green Jobs Czar – Van Jones – Communist, calls Republicans assholes (the feeling is mutual, buddy!), truther who believes that Bush and Cheney were complicit in 9/11, says environmentalism is the way to end capitalism.

Science Czar – John Holdren – advocated compulsory abortions and sterilization to prevent the population bomb, advocated “de-development” of our economic system.

Regulatory Czar (and “dear friend”) – Cass R. Sunstein – called for banning hunting in the U.S., suggested that animals ought to be able to bring suit, put forth the idea of the government requiring internet sites to link to opposing views (Whoaa! Glad that didn’t happen).

Now, of course there are many more Obama czars who are respectable people with great resumes and no history of wackoism, people like Richard Holbrooke, Dennis Ross, and George Mitchell. One may not entirely agree with these people, but there is no echo of Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers or Bernadine Dohrn there.

The assumption during the election was, for most, that Ayers and Wright (the Obamas sat in that church for twenty years) and PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi were just useful people in Obama’s cynical rise to power, that there was no real ideological fraternity there. But when one looks at these three “czars”, doubt creeps in. Obama must have known this stuff before they were appointed. Nobody’s vetting process is that bad. You could, even then, find all of this stuff out by typing the names into Google.

So, I’m beginning, just beginning, to worry that maybe my worst fears might be realized, and Barack Obama actually is the radical, Alinsky acolyte that the talk show right says he is. That he is an anti-capitalist, radical, community organizer who sees the U.S. as an imperialist force for evil in the world. And he is on a crusade to overthrow the existing order.

Of course this is crazy talk, this is Glenn Beck, Michael Savage talk. But, just because they’re crazy, or crazy like foxes, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t right about Obama. The National Enquirer was right about John Edwards. Joe McCarthy wasn’t wrong about everything! The jury is still out, but they haven’t ordered pizza in awhile, and they’re putting their jackets back on.

It probably isn’t true. I mean, how could it be? it’s just too weird.

Posted by Andy

I really like the idea of reaching out, but I looked at the Education Department’s guidelines for teachers and I think they’re too general, too vague. If I were the Department of Education, I would provide specific questions, to give young people a better idea of the problems facing our country and help them weigh the policy options. In a politically neutral way, of course. For example:

1. President Obama wants to give everybody a lot of money, and make really rich people who already have too much money pay their fair share. Some people, the Republicans, don’t think that’s a good idea. Others, the Democrats, think it is a good idea, because otherwise your mommy and daddy might not be able to buy food and you could starve to death. You could also be kicked out of your house and have to sleep on the street. Who do you think is right, the Republicans or President Obama and the Democrats?

2. President Obama wants everybody to be able to go to the doctor if they get sick. The Republicans don’t care whether you’re able to go to the doctor or not, even if you’re about to die. What do you think?

3. It’s getting hotter all the time and pretty soon a lot of ice will melt and the oceans will fill up and spill over and flood a lot of houses, like the one you live in. There will also be more hurricanes and tornadoes and your house could be blown away, with you in it. President Obama wants to do something to keep this from happening. The Republicans don’t want to. Who do you think is right?

4. Republicans like to torture people. President Obama says everybody has feelings and it’s not good to beat people up and keep pouring water onto their face until they feel like they’re drowning. To understand this, you could imagine yourself being beaten up and having water poured into your mouth and nose until you can’t breathe and you feel like you’re drowning. Would you agree with the Republicans that this is OK, or would you be more likely to agree with President Obama and the Democrats that it’s not OK, and that the people who do it should be put in jail?

5. President Obama thinks everybody should be happy, and he wants to help them be happy in any way he can. The Republicans say that if people aren’t happy it’s their own fault and even if it’s not their own fault they don’t care if you’re happy or not. Do you agree with President Obama or the Republicans?

That’s just a sample off the top of my head. Might be a little advanced for pre-K and kindergarten, but kids are smarter than you might think. For the older children, teachers might ask not only for classroom discussion but written answers and tell the children to put the names of their parents and their home addresses on the completed papers before sending them on to Washington, with informational copies to the FBI and CIA. They could be encouraged to say what their parents talk about at home.