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Thursday, June 27, 2013

Under the Fedora: A bad week...



A lot has happened this week that has not been fun for a conservative.
On Monday the Senate passed the Corker Hoeven amendment and managed to get cloture on the “immigration” amnesty bill.
It amazes me that the same republicans who have complained loudly in the budget debate that we can’t have tax increases with the promise of spending cuts later are willing to allow legislation with the promise of future securing of the border.
I’m particularly disappointed with Senator Rubio & Senator Ayotte.  Both had been supported by Sarah Palin and  Tea Party groups and both had promised not to be supportive of amnesty. 
Palin is not amused:
Palin said Rubio had promised that "border security would come first," and he would not support "legalization of illegal immigrants" and "amnesty" before border security while running in the Florida Republican Senate primary against Charlie Crist in 2010. She said Ayotte, whom she endorsed, had on her campaign website in 2010 that there were "no excuses" not to secure the border and also said she would not support amnesty. 
"I think that they should be challenged. I don't have a problem with heated debates and contested primaries where they have to answer to constituents regarding their flip-flopping on such a fundamental position as amnesty for illegal immigrants," she told Gibson. "I don't have a problem at all with contested primaries. In fact, competition makes us all better and makes us be held accountable and I'd like to see them held accountable and answer as to why it is that they flip-flopped."

On Rubio there are two possibilities that come to my mind.  Rubio might have been played, he’s fairly young and occasionally such people are played.  If he just came out and said so people would let it go.
As for Senator Ayotte I suspect part of this flip is out of deference to her allies McCain and Graham who she has worked closely with on Benghazi (and done yeoman work) but I suspect part of it is because she was trying to get the left off of her back over the Toomey Manchin.
If she had only waited
Nashua Mayor DonnaleeLozeau said she resigned from "Mayors Against Illegal Guns" on May 10, shortly after joining the nationwide coalition, because it went beyond its stated principles of "keeping illegal guns out of dangerous hands."

Lozeau said she did not know when she joined the group that it would "unfairly attack" fellow Nashuan Sen. Kelly Ayotte in a $2 million barrage of ads after Ayotte opposed an amendment calling for universal background checks for gun purchases in April.
The heat might have decreased. And if this report is true
Speaker John A. Boehner reiterated to House Republicans this morning that he will not bring up the Senate’s immigration overhaul for a vote in the House. “Weeks ago, I — along with Eric, Kevin, Cathy and Bob Goodlatte — issued a statement making clear that the House is not going to just take up and vote on whatever the Senate passes,” Boehner told lawmakers, per a source in the room. "We’ll do our own bill, through regular order and it’ll be a bill that reflects the will of our majority and the people we represent.” ...
As Sean Connery’s Character said in the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen “Wait, always wait”
On Tuesday in Massachusetts Ed Markey running in a special election with no other democrat on the ballot managed to only pull 60% of the vote that one of the worst candidates in US Senate History Martha Coakley.
Opposing him was Gabriel Gomez, Navy Seal, Navy Pilot, successful businessman and a 1st Generation immigrant from Columbia.  With the GOP arguing loudly that the immigration bill needed to pass to get Hispanics to be willing to vote Democrats Gomez who won the primary with over 50% despite straying from the bases position on Climate Change, Gun Control, was apparently a perfect fit since he also endorsed the gang of eight bill even before the Corker Hoeven was suggested.
And while Gomez won several towns back that Brown had lost in 2012 the appeal among Hispanic voters was apparently overstated:
So on election day they went to a city with many people from “Hispanica” and said: “Look our candidate is a child of Hispanica just like you! Come vote for him!”  But the people of that city said: We’ve never heard of a country called “Hispanica” Our parents come from a country called “The Dominican Republic” and they voted for the party they always did.
Then they went to another town and said “Look our candidate is from the land of Hispanica just like you” and the people of that town said: “We’ve never heard of a land called ‘Hispanica” our fathers came from a land called “Brazil” and they voted for the party they always did.
Ok that’s not exactly how it happened but the bottom line is he drew only 45% of the vote.
I’m sorry, Gabriel Gomez is a nice guy with a great personal story but if supporting amnesty doesn’t do the trick with Spanish speaking voters when you’re running a 1st generation Columbian with the last name “Gomez” odds are you aren’t going to do better supporting this kind of bill with the last name “Alexander” or Graham.
Then later in the evening after a long Filibuster in the Texas was finally broken the mob managed to stall long enough to block a bill that would have prevented the next Kermit Gosnell in Texas.  Stopping the bill made the left absolutely giddy. 
Donna Brazille compared the fight to stop that abortion bill to the civil rights era.  She was right in on respect, just like in the old days the people fighting hardest for the right to kill black children were democrats.
Then came Wednesday and a pair of Supreme Court rulings, first the a section of DOMA was overturned meaning the Federal government has to treat gay married couples in state where it is legal in terms of benefits.  The most amazing thing about the ruling was the impugning of the motives of all those who have opposed Gay Marriage as Rush put it:
In 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act passed the House of Representatives 342 to 67.  It passed the Senate 85 to 14.  What a bunch of bigots! The Supreme Court majority today said that all of those 342 in the House and those 85 in the Senate passed the Defense of Marriage Act 'cause they hated gays.
And they wanted to punish gays, and they wanted to demean gays, and they wanted to impugn gays, and they wanted to impugn homosexuality.  That's why 342 members of the House passed DOMA, and that's why 85 Senators voted for it.  Bill Clinton signed it into law, and today Bill Clinton and his lovely and gracious wife, Hillary Rodham Rodham, issue a statement hailing the decision overturning the Defense of Marriage Act which he signed into law. 
Nobody was talking about this at all 20 years ago.  Who knew the entire population of the country since its founding was a bunch of evil bigots all that time?  No wonder the self-righteous left hates them so.
Worse than the first decision was the second that effectively repealed California’s Prop 8 which was a ballot initiative forbidding gay marriage in the California constitution.
The court rules the people appealing a lower court that cancelled out the successful referendum did not have standing.  The problem the folks who DID have standing to appeal, the state had vehemently opposed the referendum (which is why the people went that route) and absolutely refused to defend it in court:
Why go through all that time and effort and expense when even if you win, all the party machine needs is a single sympathetic lower court judge to rule in their and violà  you’re foiled without standing to appeal.
Fans of Gay Marriage might be cheering today, but not as loud as fans of one party autocratic  government.

But the thing that hit me the hardest this week is this:

I have been banned in Britain.My crime?My principled dedication to freedom. I am a human rights activist dedicated to freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and individual rights for all before the law. I fiercely oppose violence and the persecution and oppression of minorities under supremacist law. I deplore violence and work for the preservation of freedom of speech to avoid violent conflict.
I have never been convicted of any crime. I have never been arrested. I became a writer and activist in the wake of 911.
For this I am banned. I shed no tears. I am banned from Mecca, too.

When the current queen dies England will die.  There will still be a place on the map called “England” but the name will mean nothing.

And to top it all off the Bruins blew the Stanley Cup and June has been the worst month for DaTipJar all year and my brother-in-law is bad….Very Bad
Not the best of weeks.

 






Thursday, June 20, 2013

Under the Fedora: IRS, Newsworthy stories and dead cats.



On Wednesday 10,000 Tea party members came to the Capital on short notice to protest the IRS scandal. TEA generally stands for Taxed Enough Already but this time it stood for Targeted Enough Already. It’s my opinion that this scandal is the only one with legs due to the legalities involved, but as I watch the left continue to circle the wagons for Barack Obama and the IRS I’m reminded of an old Star Trek Episode the Enterprise Incident.
COMMANDER: But I doubt it'll clear you of espionage.
KIRK: We were not spying, Commander.
COMMANDER: Your language has always been most difficult for me, Captain. Perhaps you have another word for it.
KIRK: You're grossly mistaken if you think we were there...
COMMANDER: Captain, if a Romulan vessel ventured far into Federation territory without good explanation, what would a starbase commander do? You see, it works both ways.
Is there a single member of the left that would buy this administration's explanations for the IRS scandal (or in fact any of the scandals) if they were coming from the Bush administration?
I think not.
Incidentally for my non-geek readers, the reason why the Romulans were using " Klingon Design" for their ship was because a production assistant stepped on the Romulan model while unpacking them.
The Edward Snowden story becomes odder and odder, I haven’t decided if he’s just a traitor trying to bring the country down or a fanatic who thinks it was necessary to stop government overreach but Bob Schieffer made an excellent point on the subject:
Some of the people I admire most took on the government -- men and women who led the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. They are true heroes.
I'm not ready to put Edward Snowden in that category.
For one thing, I don't remember Martin Luther King Jr. or Rosa Parks running off and hiding in China. The people who led the civil rights movement were willing to break the law AND suffer the consequences. That's a little different than putting the nation's security at risk and running away.
The case reminds me a bit of the Kate Hunt case there was a real rush to turn him into a hero by some and I suspect they will regret it as more information comes out.
I really dislike Glenn Greenwald as a rule. He was one of the “It’s America’s fault just after 9/11” and frankly I wouldn’t doubt for one moment that the injury to security of the country is to his liking but I’ll give him this. He has been no hypocrite. He has been just as hard on the Obama administration as he was on the Bushes.
None of the other scandals were able to get bring the president’s numbers down with youth but this one has and my oldest believes he knows the reason:
while the youth might not care about the implications of silencing the Tea Party or dead navy seals but they know that industry and they how much they want stiff penalties for illegal downloads.
My son told me he has friends who have been downloading movies and songs for years who literally are afraid of using their computers since the NSA scandal broke.
You want to get people excited hit them where they live and today youth live online.
The tea party protest in Washington wasn’t the only protest that took place recently. There was an Anti-gun protest in San Bernedino that I found interesting.
Exactly six months after 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a small group from Organizing for Action stood here Friday with 26 flags and signs calling for stricter gun control.
What’s significant about this protest was that the San Bernadino Sun sent a staff writer to cover this protest and devoted almost 200 words to the story of a protest that drew only three people.
Mind you this same paper when the March for life took place and 500,000 showed up in Washington DC and over 50,000 showed up in San Francisco didn’t find it newsworthy enough for an entry.
People wonder why the left is so afraid of the Koch brothers possibility buying the LA Times. This is why.
Senator Ted Cruz is on a roll, first he goes after the Immigration bill (nobody has yet explained why people unwilling to enforce immigration laws before amnesty would be willing to do so afterward. He then came up with this tweet concerning the white House arming Syrian Rebels:
The Word you're looking for is “Bazinga!”

Matt Smith’s upcoming departure as the Doctor has led me to begin reviewing his episodes in order. The first three are herehere and here.

This week is the best sports week of the year, you have Baseball, and you have the Stanley Cup Finals and the NBA finals all at once. One might argue for a different time but unless baseball is in the mix it doesn’t count.
So far the NBA finals and the NHL finals have really lived up to the hype. Some of the best Hockey and Basketball of the year continues to be played right now.
Some TV?Burn Notice is in its final season, I’ve never understood of announcing at the star of a season that a popular series is about to end, I can understand a actor wanting to move on but considering how many actors never find another series I’d stick with what works. Then again if a writer is bored and new writers are brought in, the quality almost always suffers.
Speaking of TV did MeTv pick the perfect time to bring back Hogan’s Heroes or what, consider this promo:
Doesn’t Sgt.Schultz sound like the president when being asked about various scandals?
Finally had to kill the cat this week, we’ve had it for a dozen years and got her at age 5. I was struck that the vet was still affected emotionally given that they kill animals on a daily basis.
You might notice that I use “kill” rather than “put down” or “put to sleep” because that is what was done. My wife is very angry at me for using those words instead of euphemisms.
I’m reminded of a scene from the Movie: The fighting Kentuckian. Breen (John Wayne) has been captured by the bad guys who are preparing to kill him.
Hayden: Good night Mr Breen
Breen: You mean I can go
Hayden: Anytime
Breen: What makes you think I will?
Hayden: Because that way you’ve got a chance, a small one but a chance
Breen: Well, never let it be said I didn’t take it.
As a Catholic the #1 imperative for a human is salvation but as a cat like all animals has no soul the #1 imperative is survival. Given that the cat had a 0% of survival going to the vet to be drugged to death I can’t see how that’s kinder that giving her fighting chance to live another day, week or month.
But that’s me.
Later all.

 






Monday, June 10, 2013

Under the Fedora: Is it Nixon Yet again??



Edward Snowden is the big news of the week.  I have some advice for all concerned, consider the basic facts in evidence that are not in dispute:
Edward Snowden violated federal law and his oath.
Edward Snowden leaked a highly classified security program
Edward Snowden fled to a Communist Country our single biggest rival/enemy
No matter what you think of the NSA Prism programs, Mr. Snowden's motivations or even the necessity of the exposure of this scandal, these facts are not in dispute and I suggest people be very careful before declaring him Horatius at the Bridge.
Meanwhile is other longstanding scandal news...
More and more calls have been coming for Eric Holder’s resignation, it’s been suggested that Obama is keeping his as a lightning rod but this is a foolish move.
The professional  media left (read the MSM)  is indifferent to the IRS, scandal and Benghazi as much as they were about Fast and Furious but the AP/Fox story hits them where they live.  As long as Holder is there the Obama scandals will get coverage, but once Holder is gone the media will portray this as the president taking action and move along.
I’m really surprised the White House hasn’t figured that out yet.
For a while the defenders of the administration have been running around in circles coming up with every possible explanation as to why each and every scandal is no big deal.  Via Mark Steyn at NRO we see Senator Mark Kirk has managed to get down to the nitty gritty.
Here’s another congressional-subcommittee transcript highlight of the week. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois asks the attorney general if he’s spying on members of Congress and thereby giving the executive branch leverage over the legislative branch. Eric Holder answers:
“With all due respect, senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue.”
Senator Kirk responded that “the correct answer would be, ‘No, we stayed within our lane and I’m assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.’” For some reason, the attorney general felt unable to say that. So I think we all know what the answer to the original question really is.
That’s what it comes down to, if the administration could answer these questions in an honest and straightforward way they would.
That they can’t continues to speak volumes, the question becomes are American’s listening.

I’ve been amazed at the reliable playing of the Race card by defenders of the president as well, a card that many people believed would be the Obama administration would be the end of this kind of thing.  (I’m even more amazed that people actually believed this would be the case)
Politically it’s not foolish, this card continues to resonate with the black community who has been made to believe that the only reason the right opposes Obama is because of his skin color.
No matter where the evidence leads this community is not going to believe there is cause to blame this president.  I suspect if we had Obama on film wearing a White Hood and burning a cross the black community would stand behind him.

***************************
Speaking of the Race card we are seeing it being played AGAINST Gabriel Gomez by a Spanish language newspaper in Boston.  They suggest that Gomez is Latino in Name only.
Think about that, what about Gabriel Gomez is insufficiently Hispanic, his command of English, his success as a Navy pilot, as a Navy Seal, his success in business.
Perhaps if he was on EBT he would be acceptable?
If that article and that argument had been made by a conservative publication that media organ would have been accused of racism,...and they’d be right.

I’m also convinced that my friend Michael Graham is dead wrong concerning this election,  he is planning on staying home as are a lot of his listeners rather than vote for Gabriel Gomez.
Gabriel Gomez is not running against Michael Sullivan anymore, he’s not running against Ted Cruz or Sarah Palin, he’s running against Ed Markey.
If conservatives willing to stay home and allow Ed Markey to be elected then we deserve what we get, just like the millions of conservatives that stayed home are to blame for Barack Obama.
How’s that working out for ya?

Unemployment is up to 7.6%.  The left is blaming Sequester for this and the poor economy.
For four years George Bush was to blame for the Obama Economy and now Sequester is being blamed in year five.
Barack Obama is the ultimate affirmative action hire, he will never be held responsible for anything as long as he is in the white house.

The Boston Bruins have swept the Pittsburgh Penguins to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals where they will face the Chicago Black Hawks.
It’s important to remember that the Bruins were down 4-1 early  in the 3rd period of game seven vs Toronto  and  down two goals with 1:45 to play and tied it with two empty net goals..
When people say it’s not worth fighting in situations it’s something worth remembering.

The Santa Monica shooting is going to lead to another attempt to grab guns.
Yeah after the IRS scandal and the NSA and PRISM people are really going to be anxious to be disarmed by their government.

The upcoming gas tax increase in Massachusetts along with it being indexed to inflation gives yet another reason for the business minded to flee the state.  I’m surprised Rick Perry hasn’t sent a thank you card to Deval Patrick.  You can’t buy that kind of publicity.

I’m still upset at Matt Smith leaving as the Doctor after 3 seasons (and four years).  When it comes down to it I think he needed at least one more year, but in fairness this is about average for people who have held the role.
Actors seems to be afraid to take the role for being typecast and identified as the Doctor.  I think that’s foolish.  Being the Doctor means you bring a ready made audience with you to whatever future role you have.
If you are trying to make a living in the entertainment business that is a GOOD thing..
I’d like to see an actor willing to take the role for at least 5 years the next time around.  I think an older established actor would be more willing to do so.

A lot of conservatives are crowing over Fox’s RedEye at 3 AM outdrawing Morning Joe at 6-9 in key demographics .
The problem is Morning Joe isn’t competing with Fox, they’re not interesting in beating them.  They’re playing to be the show of choice along the coasts from DC to Boston and from SF to LA.
Anyone who pretends otherwise is deluding themselves.
Finally i’m still amazed at the number of posts Instapundit gets up in one day.  What’s more amazing is he’s pretty much done this every single day for a decade.
If or shall I say when this ends it will be interesting to see who replaces him, if anyone.  He has a lot of blogchildren but none have risen to his level.
What will we do when he's gone?
See you next week





Sunday, June 9, 2013

Bad Lap Doggies!