Top Five Reasons to Support Romney-Ryan

Elect Romney-Ryan, or explain to your children what it was like to be free.

Thanks to Rogers for sending me this.

Tired of the Liberal Media?

I am tired of the "liberal" media, but I'm not offended by it. What offends me is their mantle of objectivity. Pretending to "journal" the happenings of the day without bias offends me.

It is very difficult to be an objective journalist. The only way I can envision that ever coming to pass would be for a news agency to adopt an affirmative action hiring program, in which an equal distribution of staff from across the political spectrum were employed.

Throughout history, newspapers made no secret of their bias, with names like, "Cayuga Republican" or, "Weekly News and Democrat". They didn't pretend to be objective. Mark Twain wrote an essay about it.

It's a chilly, rainy, autumn Saturday afternoon. Sit down by the fire, put your feet up, and when you're sitting comfortably, read on:

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Journalism in Tennessee

by Mark Twain, ca. 1871

The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--"While he was writing the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood."--Exchange.

I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor. When I went on duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair with his feet on a pine table. There was another pine table in the room and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers and scraps and sheets of manuscript. There was a wooden box of sand, sprinkled with cigar stubs and "old soldiers," and a stove with a door hanging by its upper hinge. The chief editor had a long-tailed black cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants. His boots were small and neatly blacked. He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends hanging down. Date of costume about 1848. He was smoking a cigar, and trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his locks a good deal. He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was concocting a particularly knotty editorial. He told me to take the exchanges and skim through them and write up the "Spirit of the Tennessee Press," condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of interest.

I wrote as follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a misapprehension with regard to the Dallyhack railroad. It is not the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side. On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it. The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in making the correction.

John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city yesterday. He is stopping at the Van Buren House.

We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake before this reminder reaches him, no doubt. He was doubtless misled by incomplete election returns.

It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement. The Daily Hurrah urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate success.

I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance, alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:

"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such gruel as that? Give me the pen!"

I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window, and marred the symmetry of my ear.

"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim, who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was me. Merely a finger shot off.

Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations. Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my teeth out.

"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.

I said I believed it was.

"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man that did it. I'll get him. Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be written."

I took the manuscript. It was scarred with erasures and interlineations till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one. It now read as follows:

SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS

The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack railroad. The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings which they regard as brains. They had better, swallow this lie if they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding they so richly deserve.

That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.

We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van Werter is not elected. The heaven-born mission of journalism is to disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood, calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.

Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a poorhouse more. The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a newspaper, the Daily Hurrah! The crawling insect, Buckner, who edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.

"Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point. Mush-and-milk journalism gives me the fan-tods."

About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash, and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back. I moved out of range --I began to feel in the way.

The chief said, "That was the Colonel, likely. I've been expecting him for two days. He will be up now right away."

He was correct. The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with a dragoon revolver in his hand.

He said, "Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this mangy sheet?"

"You have. Be seated, sir. Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is gone. I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel Blatherskite Tecumseh?"

"Right, Sir. I have a little account to settle with you. If you are at leisure we will begin."

"I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry. Begin."

Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant. The chief lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the fleshy part of my thigh. The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a little. They fired again. Both missed their men this time, but I got my share, a shot in the arm. At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped. I then said, I believed I would go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a delicacy about participating in it further. But both gentlemen begged me to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.

They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded, and I fell to tying up my wounds. But presently they opened fire again with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark that five out of the six fell to my share. The sixth one mortally wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to say good morning now, as he had business uptown. He then inquired the way to the undertaker's and left.

The chief turned to me and said, "I am expecting company to dinner, and shall have to get ready. It will be a favor to me if you will read proof and attend to the customers."

I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to think of anything to say.

He continued, "Jones will be here at three--cowhide him. Gillespie will call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window. Ferguson will be along about four--kill him. That is all for today, I believe. If you have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give the chief inspector rats. The cowhides are under the table; weapons in the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in the pigeonholes. In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon, down- stairs. He advertises--we take it out in trade."

He was gone. I shuddered. At the end of the next three hours I had been through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were gone from me. Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window. Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took the job off my hands. In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill of fare, I had lost my scalp. Another stranger, by the name of Thompson, left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags. And at last, at bay in the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs, politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends. Then ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one either, could describe. People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up, thrown out of the window. There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy, with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all was over. In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around us.

He said, "You'll like this place when you get used to it."

I said, "I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned the language I am confident I could. But, to speak the plain truth, that sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a, man is liable to interruption.

"You see that yourself. Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as it calls forth. I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much as I have been to-day. I like this berth well enough, but I don't like to be left here to wait on the customers. The experiences are novel, I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not judiciously distributed. A gentleman shoots at you through the window and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stovepipe for your gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest of me to death with their tomahawks. Take it altogether, I never had such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day. No; I like you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the customers, but you see I am not used to it. The Southern heart is too impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger. The paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets. All that mob of editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for breakfast. I shall have to bid you adieu. I decline to be present at these festivities. I came South for my health, I will go back on the same errand, and suddenly. Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for me."

After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the hospital.

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And that, my friends, is media bias. Out in the open, the way it should be.

He's Not a Muslim; He's a Dhimmi

I'll start right off by saying that the man in this video, Pat Condell, doesn't understand Christianity -- although he's reacting to the usual vain interpretations of it (as in, taking God's name in vain). So why would he understand Islam any better? Actually, I think he understands Islamic extremism about as well as he understands vain Christianity, which is quite a lot, really.

The point that really hit home though, was his take on the notion that Barack Obama is a Muslim. No, Obama's a dhimmi. I think Pat nails it.

My mother always used to say, "If you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all". I feel like I've been dumping on President Obama awfully hard lately. But here's the thing: When someone is enslaving you and your children, you have to speak up. Some things just override the basic rules of etiquette.

Romney's Foreign Policy

We're all familiar with President Obama's foreign policy. Here's Romney's, in his address to the Virginia Military Institute on October 8:

The video is doing some weird things to his face.

I Hope They Don't Vote!

Obama Roast

Mitt Romney addresses the attendees of the Alfred. E. Smith dinner.

Update: Obama roasts himself:

These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For

Bill Whittle strikes again. With all due credit to Knowledge is Power, I schlep this video:

What "Just Happened"?

Nobody wants to face it, but there's a lot of really bad stuff showing up about president Obama, and it is way more than mere partisan rhetoric. This is bad. Really bad. Impeach-ably bad. In his post, Can it all be Coincidence? this blogger goes on for pages. Here's a taste:

(Oct. 1, 2012) — As I noted in the introduction to my book, The Obama Timeline, a jury at a murder trial will often find the accumulated circumstantial evidence so overwhelming that a guilty verdict is obvious—even though there may be no witness to the crime. “The jurors in the Scott Peterson trial believed the collection of evidence more than they believed Scott Peterson. Among other things, the jury thought that being arrested with $15,000 in cash, recently-dyed hair, a newly-grown goatee, four cell phones, camping equipment, a map to a new girlfriend’s house, a gun, and his brother’s driver’s license certainly did not paint a picture of a grieving husband who had nothing to do with his pregnant wife’s disappearance and murder.”

In the four years I have been gathering information about—and evidence against—Barack Hussein Obama, I have encountered hundreds of coincidences that strike me as amazing. None of those coincidences, by themselves, may mean much. But taken as a whole it is almost impossible to believe they were all the result of chance. Consider the Obama-related coincidences:

Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition. (Continue reading...)

 Then, there's this over at Hill Buzz, about President Obama's debate performance:

10. Obama was injected with amphetamines or something before the debate and they wore off about 20 minutes in.  Here in Chicago, word on the street for the last month has been that Valerie Jarrett was specifically tasked with getting Obama off coke and other drugs before the debates so that he would not embarrass himself on stage for an hour and a half.  So, word is that Obama’s been detoxing since at least September.  This explains how haggard he’s looked and how prickly he’s acted for a while now…it’s what addicts look and act like when they’re cut off from their drugs.  Remember that a President can have whatever drugs he wants.  The Secret Service are not there to keep the president from breaking the law, they are just there to keep him alive.  Obama’s main drug suppliers are the junior staffers who work in the White House who go to Lafayette Park and buy him whatever he wants…and he also gets special deliveries from his friend Bobby Titcombe in Hawaii, who brings him “fish and poi” to the White House (that’s Hawaiian slang for “weed and coke”).  To get through the almost two hours of being on TV, Obama looks like he needed a big injection of beta-blockers and/or amphetamines.  If you noticed at the beginning of the debate he was talking fast, acting erratic, and blinking like CRAZY he was still jazzed up by whatever they gave him.  About twenty minutes later, it seems like the adrenaline in his system from being in front of the crowd might have caused the uppers to wear off…and his energy levels collapsed after that.  By the end of the debate, Obama looked like he was aching for a new fix.  This could be the reason Michelle Obama rushed him off stage and skipped the traditional “let’s waive to the crowd for a while” schtick. She could tell he needed to get out of sight because he totally lost it out there. (Read the entire top ten...)

I decided not to post the "Down Low" bath house article linked by Drudge yesterday. It was just too sordid. You can Google it if you want. And, I haven't fact checked everything in these articles, but didn't anyone else notice something was wrong? The emperor has no clothes! I have never been a fan of Barack Hussein Obama, but this goes beyond principled political differences. There is something seriously wrong with this man, and it just keeps getting more and more disturbing.

If this was Britney Spears, Charlie Sheen, or Paris Hilton, it would be one thing. It's their life. But this is the most powerful position in the free world (note that I didn't say most powerful man -- he isn't). He must be stopped. This is getting too weird. 

What Romney Should Have Said

Yesterday evening Governor Romney and President Obama met for their first debate. The talking heads seem to be in agreement, that Mitt Romney "won" the debate last night. That just proves that the talking heads are part of the Kakistocracy. Unprincipled, they don't get it. I think early on in the debate, Romney should have said,

Mr. President, Mr. Lehrer, I realize there is a section later in the debate about the role of government, but everything we talk about tonight hinges on the proper role of government. 

We have two principal documents that define how the American form of government works: The Declaration of Independence, which says that our rights come from nature, or nature's God, and not from government. And to preserve these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just authority from the consent of the governed. The US Constitution defines that government, and any regime that distorts or disregards it is untrustworthy and dangerous. 

For every policy, entitlement or regulation that we discuss tonight, we must ask ourselves, "Which article of The Constitution gives government the authority to do that?" If the answer is, "none", then it can't be done by the federal government. Maybe by the states, if it's compatible with their founding documents, or by local government. But the best solution of all would be private individuals working together voluntarily to create jobs, goods and services, and taking care of the less fortunate, one person, one charity at a time. Because government redistribution of wealth, taking someone's earnings and giving it to someone who hasn't earned it (even if they need it), is legalized theft. There are better ways for people to help the needy, privately and voluntarily. Government entitlements actively undermine private charity. 

Later on, when discussing health care, Obama kept saying people were "at the mercy" of big insurance companies. Romney should have said,

Mr. President, are you saying it's better to be "at the mercy" of government? Because I for one, would prefer to be "at the mercy" of someone with whom I can voluntarily sever my relationship. Someone who cannot force me to buy what they're selling. 

In reality, everyone (including government) is "at the mercy" of the law of supply and demand. That's economics 101. You cannot govern against the law of supply and demand any more than you can govern against the law of gravity. Government is bound to fail whenever it attempts to govern against nature -- including human nature. How can you tell you've failed? When you break economic laws, you get huge deficits, high unemployment, and eventually, high inflation. Don't govern against economic laws. 

That's what Romney should have said. He would have batted it right out of the park. With me, anyway. As it was, Romney won by default.