The latest installment of the left’s thrashing of a person they don’t agree with comes from Ms. Maureen Dowd’s op ed in the NY Times. This latest condescending missive about Sarah Palin includes such mature phraseology as “Caribou Barbie is one nutty puppy,” “exquisite battiness,” “loopy,” and “solipsistic meltdown.” Solipsistic? Way to dazzle us with big words! There’s plenty more where that came from, Dowd is in fine form. In the final analysis, this piece defines the modern liberal/progressive ideologue – someone with an endless supply of intolerance for those they disagree with matched only by the shrill name calling they resort to when they feel the need to set us straight.

.

Now a natural reaction to this childish behavior would be to tell Dowd and her ilk to shut up and go to their rooms without dinner. I for one wish the opposite, I hope they keep yammering away for the sake of our country. The battle for governance now lies not with the hard core liberals or the unflappable conservatives. It is decided by the vast sea of ‘independent’ voters who swear no allegiance with a particular party. The easiest way to show these independents what the left stands for is to simply point to what they say and do. And its fun too, never pass up free entertainment!

.

By way of example, I offer up the reactions of two friends. Both voted for Bush in ’04 and both voted for Obama last year. I sent them the Dowd’s version of an op ed, known as a drop dead, and asked them what they thought of their side of the isle behaving this way. It’s a tease because I know they both detest this kind of irrational commentary. Their responses were still interesting.

.

One said she still held out hope that people like Dowd didn’t speak for the party. So I sent her the DNC statement about Palin’s resignation where they pile on their favorite punching bag. The other friend was peeved. Not that Palin resigned but because the endless attacks may have played a role in possibly removing one of the best the right has to offer. See, he doesn’t agree with some of Palin’s politics, but he does see great worth in her ‘take on the establishment’ attitude. He also thinks like many of us do: for the country to be reach its fullest potential, we need the best people possible on all sides of the issues. Oh, he also wants to go to a tea party soon. So now I call him a straight up racist tea bagging redneck. What follows is a bleep fest about Janeane Garofalo. Again, never pass up free entertainment.

.

This illustrates how much easier it is to get people back on a constructive path now that we’re not getting the ‘post partisan politics’ Obama was supposed to deliver (its on the pile of campaign promises next to fiscal responsibility). So please, let the Dowds and Garofalos and Lettermans and Olbermans of the world spout on. Give them a second microphone in fact. As boorishly elitist their words can be, they also provide ample ammunition to show the rest of the country what they get when side with the liberal/progressive movement: intolerance of anyone who doesn’t think like them, childish name calling and a highly refined level of condescending elitism. Yammer on folks, your country needs you!

It would be great if Campaigner Obama could call President Obama and set up some of that transformative governance we were promised.  Especially the foreign policy changes that he said would change the world and make the US safer and respected once again.  Now that North Korea has set off yet another test nuke, we could really use some of that enlightened, high-minded policy that was supposed to be coming to save the world.

The administration’s stated goals for North Korea and Iran are: “We have pledged to work with our partners to achieve the denuclearization of North Korea through the Six-Party process. And we will present a clear choice to Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations, including its right to peaceful nuclear energy, or continue to refuse to meet its international obligations and fail to seize the opportunity of a positive future.”

Isn’t the “Six-Party process” the Bush Administration’s policy?  Details, details.  Never mind.  So what we have now is North Korea firing off missiles and blowing up test nukes, and Iran’s nuke program is just glowing with the promise of proliferation and continued threats towards Israel.  The UN is just a cruel joke, no amount of moral Viagra could straighten that place out.  China and Russia show no signs of helping on pretty much anything.  And what have we seen from the administration so far?  Not much, they can’t even get the UN to sanction North Korea, just issue more finger wagging ‘naughty naughty naughty’ declarations.  The administration’s North Korean policy has been characterized as confused and incoherent, by the Washington Post no less.  And the situation with Iran is equally dismal if not worse.  We’re going to give diplomacy with Iran until the end of the year and re-evaluate from there.  Why wait that long, and what are we going to do after they thumb their noses at the world for another seven months?

There is an ever-growing list of contradictions building with this administration.  For the sake of our safety, we should focus first on the foreign policy disaster in the hopes that Obama can come up with an actual plan of action for these two rogue states.  The promises of enlightened foreign policy and the trashing of Bush policies became nauseating during the campaign.  The campaign is over, sir, can we get to the actual changes please?  All Obama has done is perfect the role of Blamer In Chief.  Ok, I’ll put up with that… if we can just get to the promised land of everlasting peace.  Obama has only had five months, but the early returns are not looking good so far.  (Note to the lefty loons – admitting that five months isn’t very long is an example of intellectual honesty.  Look it up.)

We are faced with an insanely dangerous world if we can’t get this turned around quickly.  North Korea has already tried to proliferate their nuclear technology to Syria and they’re so desparately poor, they’ll sell it to anyone with the money.  And Iran with nukes?  Only a blithering idiot thinks that can be acceptable.  Hamas and Hezbollah would get them soon thereafter.  Sound like fun?  The next year or two will be judged by history as the beginning of a new era of global peace or the resurrection of failed Chamberlainesque head-in-the-sand policies that lead to years of avoidable violence and deadly conflict.

If the Guantanimo situation tells us one thing, its that Obama is great with grandstanding actions, great at blaming Bush for anything and everything, and utterly inept at developing actual plans of action.  Time to prove us wrong Mr. President – getting this nuke situation moving in the right direction would be a marvelous start.  Time to get transformin’.

What exactly is the ‘Curtain Vote?’ Simply stated, it is a vote that is different than a person’s stated public position. People can tell pollsters and friends one thing and then vote the other way once they are behind the voting booth curtain. This peculiar phenomena first started to appear in the eighties when black candidates ran for elected office in increasing numbers and racism took its rightful place as one of the ugliest aspects of humanity.

People who ponder these things first made the connection with the California governor’s race in 1982. Tom Bradley consistently tracked well in the polls but he lost in a close race. In 1989, Douglas Wilder was ahead by double digits in the Virginia governor’s race only to win by less than 7,000 votes. Thus the Bradley/Wilder Effect was born. That sounds mind numbingly boring so it will be referred to here as the Curtain Vote.

Read More →