Reagan is more right now than ever before. This video from the Republican Study Committee speaks for itself:
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The Daily Caller recently reported on a twitter exchange between Matt Yglesias, blogger savant at Think Progress, and and Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway. During the discussion, Yglesias basically endorsed lying and deception as legitimate when used to advance the left-wing agenda.
“Fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes,” said Yglesias.
The exchange, with Washington Examiner writer Mark Hemingway, came on the heels of a debate between the two on transportation policy.
Yglesias pressed his point with another conservative writer, saying, “Do you really think deception is immoral in all circumstances?”
Well, no. But who’s talking about all circumstances? We’re talking about public debates and policy. Stay focused, Matt.
…[W]hat set off a flurry of Tweets today – and Yglesias’s advocacy of lying – was a charge by Yglesias via Twitter that Washington Times reporter Eli Lake has a “deserved reputation for dishonesty.” Hemingway, Lake and others confronted Yglesias on Twitter about the charge, pointing out that Yglesias himself had actually advocated dishonesty.
“When [Yglesias] gets frustrated because he can’t counter an argument, he calls people ‘dishonest’,” Lake said, also calling him “a child.”
Yglesias’s Twitter opponents also charged he does not take criticism well.
Then, Yglesias dug in, saying lying was a necessary part of politics.
In concluding his interview with The Daily Caller, Yglesias said “go fuck yourself” and hung up the phone.
Stay classy.
Lying is a part of politics because liars are a part of politics, but it’s hardly necessary.
This ends-justify-the-means attitude seems unfortunately common on the left. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist on the right – it does – but it’s not publicly embraced and doesn’t seem as prevalent.
Just look at Saul Alinsky, the intellectual father of nearly everyone in the Obama administration. He was no high-minded idealist out to convince others of his views. Deception was an integral part of his disgusting strategy.
The reason the left is so willing to accept the use of dishonesty to advance their agenda is correlated with the very nature of their beliefs. The reason they support big government nanny states is because they think people are too stupid to take care of themselves. It should come as no surprise, then, that they’d also think people are too stupid to reach the correct conclusions (in their minds) given an honest accounting of the facts.
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“Physicist Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former professor and environmental science researcher at the University of Ottawa, has officially bailed out of the man-made global warming movement,” says Climate Depot.
They released the following interview with the liberal Dr. Rancourt, who says that the AGW movement is a “corrupt social phenomenon.”
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As the Journolist scandal slowly unfolds, lots of talk will no doubt be around the issue of media bias. This is warranted, but not the big story in my eyes. It’s too obvious. Old news. The big story is the degree to which Alinsky tactics have been embraced by the modern left.
In a post to the list-serv Journolist, an online meeting place for liberal journalists, Spitz wrote that she would “Laugh loudly like a maniac and watch his eyes bug out” as Limbaugh writhed in torment.
In boasting that she would gleefully watch a man die in front of her eyes, Spitz seemed to shock even herself. “I never knew I had this much hate in me,” she wrote. “But he deserves it.”
…On Journolist, the question was whether the protestors were garden-variety fascists or actual Nazis.
“You know, at the risk of violating Godwin’s law, is anyone starting to see parallels here between the teabaggers and their tactics and the rise of the Brownshirts?” asked Bloomberg’s Ryan Donmoyer. “Esp. Now that it’s getting violent? Reminds me of the Beer Hall fracases of the 1920s.”
…On Journolist, there was rarely such thing as an honorable political disagreement between the left and right, though there were many disagreements on the left. In the view of many who’ve posted to the list-serv, conservatives aren’t simply wrong, they are evil. And while journalists are trained never to presume motive, Journolist members tend to assume that the other side is acting out of the darkest and most dishonorable motives.
…The very existence of Fox News, meanwhile, sends Journolisters into paroxysms of rage. When Howell Raines charged that the network had a conservative bias, the members of Journolist discussed whether the federal government should shut the channel down.
“I am genuinely scared” of Fox, wrote Guardian columnist Daniel Davies, because it “shows you that a genuinely shameless and unethical media organisation *cannot* be controlled by any form of peer pressure or self-regulation, and nor can it be successfully cold-shouldered or ostracised. In order to have even a semblance of control, you need a tough legal framework.” Davies, a Brit, frequently argued the United States needed stricter libel laws.
“I agree,” said Michael Scherer of Time Magazine. Roger “Ailes understands that his job is to build a tribal identity, not a news organization. You can’t hurt Fox by saying it gets it wrong, if Ailes just uses the criticism to deepen the tribal identity.”
Jonathan Zasloff, a law professor at UCLA, suggested that the federal government simply yank Fox off the air. “I hate to open this can of worms,” he wrote, “but is there any reason why the FCC couldn’t simply pull their broadcasting permit once it expires?”
The degree to which this radical, end-justifies-the-means tactical philosophy has taken hold on the left is unparalleled by anything on the right, and is rotting it from within. That these people are ostensibly members of a profession that claims to be a check against abusive displays of power and oppression is disgusting.
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With the latest blockbuster reporting from the Daily Caller on Journolist, the defunct liberal media mailing group started by WaPo’s blogger savant Ezra Klein, the worst perceptions of the liberal media have been confirmed. They conspired to not only to shield candidate Obama from legitimate negative stories, like his connections to the bigoted Reverend Wright, but also to smear conservatives as racists for no other reason than to distract from Obama’s weaknesses.
1 commentAccording to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
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Even though we’re told we have to be scared about Tea Party violence, none has actually occurred. On the other hand, we now have yet another instance of a radical leftist becoming violent while blaming Obama’s failures on you know who:
Tabor says they were protesting a proposed amendment that would give companies money to help with rising credit card fees. He says he was videotaping the event when Govenor Spencer, of Greensboro, approached the protest.
“About that time a gentleman walks around the corner and walks into the middle of the crowd saying it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. It’s all Dick Cheney’s fault.” Tabor said.
The video shows Spencer and at least one protester arguing. Tabor says he stopped recording as the protest began to conclude and walked over to the sidewalk where his wife and 5-year-old daughter were standing.
“As I walked around the corner this gentleman pushed me. And when he pushed me the first time I turned my camera on and brought my camera up. I said please don’t push me. And when I said that he slapped my camera.” Tabor said. “He pushes me again. In the video you can see my body fall back. And I did not say anything to him, I didn’t engage him. I was going to, until he touched me wife.”
Tabor says Spencer pushed his wife and he pushed Spencer back. The video shows Spencer then punching Tabor in the face.
The story includes video. Larry O’Connor has an interview with the victim up at Big Government, where other incidents of violent, leftist thuggery have been documented.
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There’s no doubt that the general failure of the public to understand basic economic principles affects how they evaluate politicians and their policy proposals. Economics is barely even taught in public schools. For those of us on the right, this is particularly frustrating when most of those who are economically illiterate tend to fall for the utopian promises of big government “progressives.”
This study on economic enlightenment provides some particularly interesting results regarding the relationship between economic knowledge and ideology. Basically, the further to the left a person is, the less they know about economics. This probably has to do with the simple fact that leftwing policies deny basic economic realities, leaving only the economically illiterate as possible supporters of those policies.
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Delivered over at Big Government:
Leave a commentCoinciding with Earth Day, a group of teenagers launched a new program called GreenMyParents, which seeks to “help young people teach their peers and parents how to work together to help the economy, earn money at home, and save the planet through simple, everyday actions.” Looking for ways to help their families save money while protecting the environment are laudable goals, but I have some concerns. I don’t want to insult these kids by assuming that they are just puppets of any other organization, but they should be aware of the fact that many will seek to use their organization to advance their agenda.
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Not only has AP suddenly noticed that there are blacks in the Tea Party movement, but they’ve also taken note of the racist vitriol hurled at them by the left:
They’ve been called Oreos, traitors and Uncle Toms, and are used to having to defend their values. Now black conservatives are really taking heat for their involvement in the mostly white tea party movement — and for having the audacity to oppose the policies of the nation’s first black president.
“I’ve been told I hate myself. I’ve been called an Uncle Tom. I’ve been told I’m a spook at the door,” said Timothy F. Johnson, chairman of the Frederick Douglass Foundation, a group of black conservatives who support free market principles and limited government.
“Black Republicans find themselves always having to prove who they are. Because the assumption is the Republican Party is for whites and the Democratic Party is for blacks,” he said.
But don’t be fooled. The article was full of backhanded insults and unsubstantiated attacks on the Tea Party.
For instance:
Opponents have branded the tea party as a group of racists hiding behind economic concerns — and reports that some tea partyers were lobbing racist slurs at black congressmen during last month’s heated health care vote give them ammunition.
Who are these opponents? While they are identified as opponents, avoiding actually naming them makes it harder to recognize the people saying this as the partisan Democrat hacks that they are. And what about these “reports?” Oh, that’s right. The only proof of such slurs comes from accounts of Democratic Congressman who have every reason to lie and make themselves look like victims. Meanwhile, all available evidence suggests that they never actually happened.
We then get irrelevant non-statistics about Tea Party demographics:
Still, she’s in the minority. As a nascent grassroots movement with no registration or formal structure, there are no racial demographics available for the tea party movement; it’s believed to include only a small number of blacks and Hispanics.
“It’s believed” by whom? Oh, that’s right. Answering that hidden question would expose this particular claim for the political smear that it is.
Or here’s one that’s particularly laughable:
McGlowan believes the tea party movement has been unfairly portrayed as monolithically white, male and middle-aged, though she acknowledged blacks and Hispanics are a minority at most events.
Hey, you know where else blacks and hispanics are a minority? In the entire freaking United States. Definitive proof that the U.S. is racist!
The article then ends with the classic fake concern from a leftwinger:
Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, suggested a bit of caution.
“I’m sure the reason that (black conservatives) are involved is that from an ideological perspective, they agree,” said Shelton. “But when those kinds of things happen, it is very important to be careful of the company that you keep.”
But don’t you worry about keeping company with the party of Robert “There are white niggers, too” Byrd.
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Before all those extremist teabaggers started their hatefest:
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science and work in public policy, but please don't hold that against me.
