The Party Poopers

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. – Abraham Lincoln

“Let that be your last battlefield!” The concept of ‘government of, by and for the people’ is an idea that has joined the heavenly choir invisible. It has ceased to be!

I say that because with the arrival of the 24 hour news cycle – comes the accompanying manipulation, nay rather the shaping of opinion the news cycle affords those with vested interest in seeing the status quo in America be maintained at all costs. Somehow, the establishment – on both the left and the right has managed to neuter the Tea Party movement, nullifying its considerable power and ability to influence the Republican primary process.

The Republican establishment, together with the media Just before the arrival of the primary voting season, has guided the race to the point where the candidates least favored by the Tea Party have now become the Republican Party cause célèbres. All the while marginalizing the Tea Party faithful.

After much hand wringing, weeping and gnashing of teeth -- the republican establishment has finally succeeded. They have at last gotten their conservative uncle, who believes in the quaint ideas so fundamental to our once great republic, out of sight – ensconced safely in the rear of the house – where their progressive friends can’t see him.

With great gladness, the Sunday morning talking heads were able to declare in no uncertain terms that it is finally coming to a point where it is winnowed out to a two-man race between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. Gleefully, able at long last to be free of having to speak of conservative ‘uncles’ Herman Cain, Rick Perry or, gasp ‘auntie’ Michelle Bachmann.

Now the republican establishment and the media can get down to the brass tacks of picking candidates for us -- unencumbered by actually discussing candidates with substantive ideas. The media can discuss freely how the upcoming election will be a struggle between the 99% and the 1%. Just the way they like it.

On his website, Mitt Romney’s “plan” has exactly 12 pages devoted to tax policy. There is much there bemoaning President Obama and the left’s ideas and some lovely charts that illustrate what the problems are, but no charts explaining the impact of his “plan”. In short, Romney’s near term goal as president will be to:

• Maintain marginal rates at current levels

His long term goals:

• Lower the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent

• Transition to a “territorial” tax system (whatever that means)

Romney pays lip service to things like eliminating death taxes and reducing, not eliminating taxes on savings and investment. 



Newt’s corporate tax plan reduces Romney’s 25% to 12.5% and suggests moving towards a simpler 15% flat tax option for individuals. But like Romney, Newt neglects to explain the real impact, in numbers, of his plan in relatable terms. 



Contrast the current frontrunner’s plans with the comprehensive clarification provided by Herman Cain when explaining the economic impact of his 999 Plan. Then ask yourself, which candidates are offering mere window dressings to hide the fact their plans will maintain the status quo as well as continuing the excessive reach and power of lobbyists? 



The constant refrain heard without end during Herman Cain’s rise in the polls was that he could not win because he lacked campaign infrastructure and funding. Never mind Newt Gingrich’s senior team quit on him back in June.

I have heard that Mr. Gingrich’s people are beginning to return now that Newt is politically a going concern. But this begs the question, or at least it ought to: If, at the beginning, Mr. Gingrich couldn’t get his staff to buy in and commit for the long haul, what does that say about his leadership?

When the money began to flow into the Cain campaign – the liberal media and the republican establishment had to switch tactics.

Suddenly there was a bevy of women accusing Mr. Cain of sexual impropriety. The media reacted with ruthless efficiency -- the accusers vowed to come together in a joint press conference so they could bolster each other and expose this loutish brute of a man.

Soon Mr. Cain acquired the services of his own well-heeled attorney and a video depicting the results of a voice stress analysis began to make the rounds in the blogosphere and appeared to reveal the dubious nature of Sharon Bialek’s testimony. Couple that with the fact that her own former fiancé came forward only to distance himself from Ms. Bialek -- it is no wonder the first Cain accusers’ joint presser with latter day accuser Karen Kraushaar was abruptly cancelled.

The other ladies never did step forward. 

Meanwhile a deathly silence has befallen the Herman Cain as sexual predator meme. It didn’t help the ladies cause, or the media’s for that matter when it was discovered they both had ties to the Democrat machine. Nevertheless, Herman Cain’s character has been besmirched and, after the fact, it appears as if the shallow have little regard for the truth.

After the failure of the sexual harassment controversy, the effort to marginalize Mr. Cain began in earnest. The media worked feverishly to paint him as a fellow with inadequate experience in foreign policy. This narrative peaked with an interview Mr. Cain granted the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

During an interview for a print article, Mr. Cain paused to collect his thoughts while answering a question on Libya, not expecting that the interview being taped would be shown to the public. The Milwaukee Sentinel made the pause the story by showing a truncated clip of the interview highlighting Mr. Cain's pause. The media framed it, as a sign of confusion and a lack of foreign policy know how. 



It doesn’t matter that when you watch the full interview Mr. Cain answers the question correctly and that he was also right about his understanding of a union’s collective bargaining issue the interviewer tried to gainsay Mr. Cain on. The pause became the story, not Cain’s accurate answer to the question.

The wrongheadedness of the notion repeated ad nauseam by the so-called conservative intelligentsia that we ought to back the candidate with the “best chance of winning” as opposed to the candidate with the demonstrably better ideas for addressing our national problems is indicative of where we are as a people.

Most people prefer style over substance, the puffed up and vainglorious, ever ready with quips and professorial diatribes rather than plain talk and directness. Herman Cain’s one webpage dedicated to his 999 Plan says more than the dozens of pages on tax reform and fiscal policy found in Romney’s downloadable PDF.

I began this offering with the closing paragraph of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The beginning of the address consists of just five sentences. This most treasured of Presidential utterances harkens back to a time when “brevity [was] the soul of wit”.

If Newt followed honest Abe in a debate, Mr. Gingrich would essentially say the exact same thing Abe did -- only with an allusion to Jerome or Pliny the Elder and a stern rebuke aimed at the moderator thrown in for good measure. I’m certain Mr. Gingrich would most assuredly get a louder round of applause than Abe.

Meanwhile Mitt Romney would beat them both because he ‘looks more presidential’ despite saying even less than both of his opponents.

Where is our discernment? Where is the Tea Party? Are we really about to prove the Cain Praxis true, that: 



“Any truly conservative candidate popular with the grass roots, regardless of competency, is deemed unelectable by conservative leadership in favor of the most generic alternative.” 



All Herman Cain has done during his forty-year career is take over situations where someone else failed and turned those failures around and made them massive successes. Mr. Cain is a problem solver and isn’t that what we need to head the Executive branch?

When I think of our current ‘frontrunners’ it reminds me of Christ’s description of the heady priests of His day: 



Then spake Jesus to the multitude, and to his disciples, Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses' seat: All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not. For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers. But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, Matthew 23: 1-6

Is it really only important that we field a candidate that Karl Rove and Charles Krauthammer and the rest of the establishment thinks has a chance to win? Why aren’t we backing the best man available, with the best ideas, throwing our full weight behind him and fighting like our nation’s future depends on it?

Snap out of it and put the kettle on -- this Tea Party isn’t over! Or is it?

Digital Publius

Zuccotti Zombie Apocalypse

They are among us! They look like you and me but be not deceived. They shamble en masse in search of places to aimlessly occupy. 

As their numbers grow, they infect an area and begin to fester. Left unabated, they send up a putrid stench accompanied by a stentorian cacophony. Driven by primal urges, the zuccotti feed, copulate and defecate all in a common area giving rise to pestilence and violence.

The fevered minds of the zuccotti formulate incoherent messages giving rise to discordant paradigms which perpetuate their circumstances. All those who seek to communicate and understand these creatures, have their attempts at reason rejected. These brave souls eventually recoil–stunned–minds reeling as they are subjected to one vicious regress after another.

Unchecked, the zuccotti will infect your families, your neighbors and friends. We see their withering effect on society as members of the media and left wing political leaders who seem particularly susceptible; regularly succumb to this plague.

Unlike their un-dead zombie kin, the zuccotti cannot be stopped by delivering force to their heads--the brain is not what motivates them, the Zuccotti brain is too primitive and limited. Their faculties far too underdeveloped compared to the higher operating zombie brain, especially if the subject is infected at an early age.

Though it has been observed that when it strikes a more mature victim, brain decay is greatly accelerated until the subject reaches a mental and emotional equilibrium, matching the childlike state exhibited by younger subjects.

This brain atrophying malady strikes and spreads virulently, attacking liberal enclaves. Groups found to be more logical and objective who rely on facts with a firm grip on reality, while completely immune to the fever, are nonetheless burdened with the aftermath of a zuccotti attack.

Knowing the source of this affliction is not nature but rather nurture combined with sin-nature as conceived in the most diabolical leftist labs and think tanks in the world. These sources specialize in confusing feelings with thinking.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9

We must guard our children’s minds jealously and raise them up in the admonition of the Lord lest they too slip into the mind numbing clutches of the zuccotti!

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; I Timothy 4:1.2

Ere the rise of the zuccotti.

Digital Publius

© Hassan Nurullah

A Tale of Two Movements

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. — Charles Dickens


Amazing how relevant the opening to Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" is relative to present day America. It is indeed the best of times and the worst of times. Never has a time in our nation been so blessed with marvels and opportunities, yet so dysfunctional and discontent.

President Obama promised a "spring of hope," and led us into a darkening"winter of despair." We are right at the edge, the very precipice of national self-destruction, with subtle forces eager to offer a gentle nudge just strong enough to send us reeling into the abyss.

We are a "house divided against itself." One side with a chimerical view of America that never existed, bent on "change" that would mean returning America to an imaginary past. The other still holding to the principles that made America great — interested in reform rather than change.

One side working within the democratic system, the other undermining democracy while espousing a bizarro world version of democracy more akin to Bolshevism than American republicanism. Or perhaps the type of government French libertines' wanted when they cried out for Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

The current leftist "Occupy" movement seems more interested in disruptive invasions of private and public property. They prefer socialistic demonstrations of revolt, rather than patient change within the framework that has always insured that revolution is never necessary in a true democracy. They are like petulant children hunkered down arms akimbo, lips quivering, stubbornly refusing to come in from the rain.

The sort of child that sees coming in as an end to fun and immediate gratification instead of the shelter from misery prolonged exposure to the elements leads to. America has been such a shelter for millions of people seeking refuge from the stormy world outside her borders. Often a child cannot appreciate what has been provided for him until he has to leave it and fend for himself.

If you have a serviceable home, you don't raise it to the ground because you don't like the color of the walls in the kitchen. Socialism brings in the bulldozers — representational democracies buy paint and brushes.

This is the primary difference between the Occupy Wall Street protesters and The Tea Party. What is the Occupy crowd's endgame — how exactly is the justice they seek defined? How do they mean to reach that end?

It seems to be force, whether passive, by merely causing disruptions in peoples lives. Or violence as some amongst their ranks have suggested and implemented. But make no mistake their method of choice seems to be force.

Contrast that with the Tea Party. Tea Party rallies, no matter where they have been or who the organizers were, have always been orderly affairs. The movement forwarded a set of principles; adopted a platform based on those principles; and then found and supported candidates willing to represent those ideas.

Sometimes the candidates won and sometimes they lost, but those candidates who have been successful have had a profound effect on policy. That is how an American style democracy functions. You don't need bullets, Molotov cocktails, or drum circles — you need a plan and order.

So far what has marked the occupation protests? We have seen a lot of enthusiasm and sincerity. We have seen opportunism. There has beendeath, violence and rape. Filth and pestilence are on the rise — as areselfishness and hypocrisy, not to mention licentiousness.

What we have not seen is anyone offering solutions. We've seen no coordinated co-operations working towards anything other than keeping these neo-primitive colonies functioning.

There is nothing so far to indicate that we will see occupy supported candidates running for public office as we saw with the candidates that were a natural manifestation of the Tea Party. Not when the occupy movement's politics bear more in common with the politics of The Democratic People's Republic of Korea than it does the form of representational republicanism established by our Founders.

The Communist Manifesto ends with these words in the last paragraph:

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win."

This varies wildly from:

"We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts — not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution." — Abraham Lincoln

The Tea Party follows the Lincoln model — the Constitution is good. If officials refuse to abide by the provisions the Constitution established — vote the bums out.

The Occupiers identify with the Marxist model. The reason Marxists rely on force is because they know they can never wrest power through political means because their ideas are rejected by rational thinking people not ruled by their passions.

The quandary for those of us who consider ourselves among the rational, is why do the socialists, and those who align themselves with the socialists, believe that what has failed everywhere else it has been tried, will succeed here? Socialism has never taken hold of a society without delivering with it, misery.

I take solace in the fact that old Abe's position, is affirmed by a much greater Authority:

When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. Proverbs 29:2

What seems to elude the Occupiers and what the Tea Party understands and embraces — is that the wicked are just one election cycle away from their most assured overthrow. It doesn't take a month of Sunday's worth of disrupting people's lives for the people's voices to be heard.

On the first day of the protest, everyone got the message that 'occupiers' think things are out of whack. The question is: how does stinking up the place, setting fires and spreading disease fix it?

Digital Publius

© Hassan Nurullah