Instapundit quoted by Rush

Not a few minutes ago, I was listening to my mom listening to Rush Limbaugh when he announced that Glenn Reynolds had written a great article and quoted it extensively.

But now things are looking a bit dicey. According to a recent Rasmussen Poll , only 21 percent of American voters believe that the federal government enjoys the consent of the governed. On the other hand, Rasmussen notes, a full 63 percent of the "political class" believe that the government enjoys the consent of the governed.

Kudos to the mighty Instapundit, in whose beneficent shadow we serve. ;-)

Diana West: The heir of Pym Fortuyn at the House of Lords

Overcoming the filthy Labour move to declare him persona non grata, Geert Wilders addresses the House of Lords:

Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t have a problem and my party does not have a problem with Muslims as such. There are many moderate Muslims. The majority of Muslims are law-abiding citizens and want to live a peaceful life as you and I do. I know that. That is why I always make a clear distinction between the people, the Muslims, and the ideology, between Islam and Muslims. There are many moderate Muslims, but there is no such thing as a moderate Islam.

No wonder that Winston Churchill called Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf “the new Quran of faith and war, turgid, verbose, shapeless, but pregnant with its message.” As you know, Churchill made this comparison, between the Koran and Mein Kampf, in his book ‘The Second World War’, a master piece, for which, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. Churchill’s comparison of the Quran and Mein Kampf is absolutely spot on. The core of the Quran is the call to jihad. Jihad means a lot of things and is Arabic for battle. Kampf is German for battle. Jihad and kampf mean exactly the same.

I ♥ feminism…

… I ♥ watching it burn.

Dr. Judy Kuriansky has a kindlier perspective on the emo boy. “This is the type of man that women have been screaming and begging for for years,” she said a bit reprovingly. “I’ve done innumerable research studies about this: after 20 years of asking what are the top three qualities that women want in a man, what comes out overwhelmingly from women is that they want the more communicative man, the sensitive and romantic man. That is overwhelming. They want the cluster of qualities that goes along with a more communicative man who speaks his feelings more, who is more intimate, more open.”

But Dr. Anna Fels comes down more on the ladies’ side. “I would say that historically, and right up through the present, one of the things that defined femininity — especially in the white, middle-class culture — is women listening to men and being their audience, their support system, and really asking for relatively little of that in return,” she said. “There’s been a really disproportionate share of attention of all kinds that men demand and assume as their due.”

“Stuff It, Emo Boy!” by Rachel Donadio, Sheelah Kolhatkar & Anna Schneider-Mayerson in July 2004.

By the way, I should be neglecting if I did not point to the website and gorgeous photographs by Ryan McGinley mentioned (negatively) in the story above.

Senatorial Budget Reconciliation is not “simple majority rule,” Obama

National Review outdoes itself, again, with Myths about Reconciliation, using reconciliation to pass Obamacare would be inappropriate and unprecedented. Here’s why by Daniel Foster & Stephen Spruiell.

The truth is that every single piece of successful legislation to emerge from the Senate — via reconciliation or otherwise — has done so via a final, up-or-down vote with a 50-plus-one threshold. The debate about reconciliation is a debate about the path to that vote. It’s about whether the Senate is and ought to be something more than a slightly smaller, slightly crustier House of Representatives.

When Harry Reid took over the majority leadership of the Senate, he vowed that “as our founding fathers intended, the Senate will perform its role as the ‘cooling saucer’ where debate and amendments play a role in forging consensus and compromise.”

Would that he lived up to those words.

Drop the Hammer in 2012

I'm posting this to remind myself to buy one once I have the spare dough:

Your taxes will go up: the trap has sprung

The neo-fascist lie appears:

European governments have typically seen VAT hikes as an easy way to raise revenues [taxes] during a recession. In some countries, government spending is more than 50% of national income. The results have been fiscal stability, but lackluster growth and a dearth of dynamism and entrepreneurship.

Given the budget numbers, the United States has already chosen a path of far bigger government. The trap has been set. It's unlikely America can escape without a VAT.

Did you get your marching orders from Il Douche yet?

Roger L. Simon: Criminal Fortney “Pete” Stark to replace more corrupt Rangel

Has the Universe gone insane? Roger L. Simon asks, “[D]id Nancy Pelosi’s plastic surgeon misfire and accidentally inject the Botox into her brain?”

In 1995, during a private meeting with Congresswoman Nancy Johnson of Connecticut, he called Johnson a “whore for the insurance industry” and suggested that her knowledge of health care came solely from “pillow talk” with her husband, a physician. His press secretary, Caleb Marshall, defended him in saying, “He didn’t call her a ‘whore,’ he called her a ‘whore of the insurance industry.’”

More Pete-foolery on Wikipedia. This must be Nancy Pelosi’s idea of feminism.

The meaning of the 9-11 trials, by STRATFOR

The only work on the 9-11 trials you need to read is "Deciphering the Mohammed Trial" by George Friedman, 16 Nov 2009:

The real problem here is international law, which does not address acts of war committed by non-state actors out of uniform. Or more precisely, it does, but leaves them deliberately in a state of legal limbo, with captors left free to deal with them as they wish. If the international legal community does not like the latter, it is time they did the hard work of defining precisely how a nation deals with an act of war carried out under these circumstances.

So why the hell am I a Republican?

Good question. Short answer: because it is a brick in the face to all those simpering little bitches (especially the guys) who insist that, as a bien pensant Good Bisexual, I should be a Democrat and a (little "s") socialist. I could call myself a Libertarian, but that doesn't carry the weight of calling myself a Republican. That offends them. (Hmm, this may be why I haven't had a date in ages. Also, I am not a libertarian, no matter how you capitalize it: I am a classical liberal.)

Long answer: look at the history of political parties in America: we see Jefferson's pro-slavery Republican Party split into the National Republicans and the Democratic Republicans. The latter became the Democratic-Republicans, then the Democrats (c. 1824) we know today. On the other side, the Federalist/Whig/Free Soil/Know Nothing (American) parties all imploded before the modern, anti-slavery Republican Party was formed in 1854. Its very name, and calling it the Grand Old Party, was a deliberate bit of spin doctoring to steal Jefferson's thunder from the Democrats; doubly ironic in that it was the ideological descendant of Jefferson's hated enemy, the Federalist Party.

The Democrats were pro-slavery, pro-French Revolution, pro-Jim Crow, pro-New Deal, pro-union (especially the racist ones, yum!), pro-détente, pro-Socialist, pro-Communism, pro-political correctness... I mean, my God, is there anything bad they have not championed?

Implementing racial segregation in the U.S. military? Democrats! The bankrupt, irreformable entitlements of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Democrats! Employer-based healthcare (and its discrimination against gay couples and polygamists)? Democrats! Withholding tax? Democrats! George Wallace and poll taxes? Democrats!

The only freedom the Democrats offer, supposedly, is sex, and who runs the anti-porn and anti-sex campaigns today? Neo-Marxist feminism: by volume (much of it hot air), 70% of the feminism you see on the internet: are they whining about the patriarchy? Class? Race? Male privilege? False consciousness? Are they debating which women are not truly feminist? That's because they're neo-Marxist, who are always debating whose Marxism is purer! I used to think I hated feminism until I realized how the neo-Marxists permeated it; now, I am pro-feminist, but still violently anti-Marxist.

The gender theorists (when you see the dread word Theory, you're reading a neo-Marxist) who are desperately trying to de-privilege heterosexuality from its natural perch as the majority position, and the one that allows the continuation of the mankind? Neo-Marxists!

And they are all in the Democratic Party! They are trying to make common cause with Iran (who stone and hang homosexuals) and plea for understanding for the Taliban (who drop walls on gays) by building some kind of moral cloaking device between Islamist terrorists (a small proportion of Muslims who are trying by intimidation to rule the larger populations) and their own superficial beliefs. But in the Left's deeper beliefs, that we are all victims of Capitalism (a Marxist word), of Patriarchy (again), of False Consciousness (again); that our common values are traps designed by these hidden, privileged powers (Structuralism) (again); well, on that deeper level, their identfication with the religious paranoia ("Capitalism is a plot of the evil Jooooooooos!") of the Islamists is perfect and matched.

Why am I a Republican? Because they stand against all that! Because I am willing to stand as an enemy to those people. I am proud of it; these enemies reflect well on me. Because Mike Huckabee will never show up on my doorstep with a torch-bearing mob, while the Democrats prepare to seize control over 18% of the U.S. economy and my body. Because gay marriage is overrated and virtually unnecessary but for the Democrats' meddling! Because the Chinese and the Russians are running North Korea and Iran, and they need to be opposed. Because in the modern world of supersonic flight, our mighty ocean moats are nothing but puddles so our bases overseas reflect the military idea of "defense in depth." So I support them!

Does the Republican party require an ideological enema? You betcha. Do they need a kick in the ass? Oh, yes. Is the party superstructure corrupt? Yes. But the base... the base is worth saving. The base is worth destroying the Party and reconstituting it along better lines.

And that is why I am a Republican.

Iowahawk smacks down ACORN and the NEA

How can the Federal Art Instruction Institute help me?

Unlike traditional art schools, the Federal Art Instruction Institute doesn't waste your time on boring Post-Modernist theory, messy bodily fluids, or painful self mutilation. With our easy-to-learn program you will quickly learn how to channel your natural artistic ability and suburban self-loathing at state enemies who, when you think about it, are a lot like your parents.

Don't wait, join the Federal Art Instruction Institute today!

David Brin: Loyal Democratic Ant

Not unexpected, but...

I simply adore the worshipful singularity of the comments here; thank God you abjure the Kool-Aid lest your brains collapse into a hive mind.

Health care in the U.S. is a terrible mélange of New Deal dinosaurs that hide-bound Democrats refuse to kill and replace. They are determined to make it worse no matter what.

Being the land of filial piety, Japan has the world's worst social security net. Aflac, the supplemental insurance, is huge in Japan for a reason.

Canada is a nightmare. The UK is even worse. And don't cherry pick stories on how some cousin got a booboo stitched. The waiting lists are statistical evidence of rationing.

George Bush created an entire private, no "public-option" Medicare D. Surprise, surprise: it's more popular than expected and cheaper than anyone thought possible.

PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT! ONLY GOVERNMENT CAN SAVE YOU!

1. Outlaw employer-provided health insurance. It is insane. They insure neither my car nor apartment, it is ridiculous. Outlaw it and push the money they spent on health care to the individuals.

2. Create $2000 in matching funds for every person/dependent, and make it tax-deductible for the first $6000 or so.

Insurance pools risks for broken arms, cancer and heart attacks. Paying for runny noses is a check-splitting plan. The popularity of the latter is driving up our costs all across the board. Outlaw employer health care and poof! they disappear.

Now you may return to your regularly scheduled moonbattery. Perhaps some Holy Net Neutrality? "For he that charges by bandwidth, let him be blessed. But for he who charges for latency, let him be taken out and stoned to death." Yeah, it's in the Bible somewhere, Leviticus, I think.