In pop culture news, I will not be covering Lindsay Lohan because I refuse to contribute to the dumbing down of America. I care about the War on Terror, which means winning the war against nonsense. If you want Lohan updates, be an imbecile somewhere else. This concludes my pop culture report.
The Tygrrrr Express is Las Vegas bound for a few days. No, it will not be booze, hookers, strippers, and slot machines. This is business. I will be at the Nevada GOP Convention in Henderson, and then speaking to a Republican Women’s group in Pahrump. A Reno gig with Sharron Angle caps off my Nevada swing.
Our country seems to be torn between two ideologies. The conservatives had their turn at governing. The liberals won the election of 2008, but never seemed to understand that after they won, they actually had to do things.
For those unfamiliar with the party platforms, I can sum them up.
Republicans: Low taxes, dead terrorists, free enterprise.
Democrats: Hatred of Republicans for being stupid and evil.
Ideologically, both philosophies have found their enemies.
Conservatives: Nazism, Communism, and now Islamofascism.
Liberals: Conservatives and Republicans, especially if they are minorities.
(Notice how much passion liberals have when speaking about conservatives. They seem to lack this passion about the real enemies.)
While none of this is new, several issues burning us to our core are being shrugged off because the liberals ran out of gas the moment they won the election. Barack Obama is not a bad man, but he simply has no solutions to anything that matters.
Start with the Second Amendment and gun control. I am against gun control and support the rights of private citizens to arm themselves, as the Second Amendment provides.
The recent Chicago gun case dealt with an 80 year old black man in an inner city who used a gun to defend himself against an intruder. The gun saved his life.
The left claims that they do not want to ban all guns. They only want “reasonable” restrictions, which is a subjective term that liberals can change at will when it suits them. However, four liberal justices were prepared to allow a complete ban on guns in a city. Liberals should stop lying, and just admit that they want only police officers and judges to have guns. That is political suicide, but it is a clear position.
My challenge to the liberals is this. What would you do to protect people? What is your solution? How can you combat crime?
The left had no idea what to do during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, when private citizens defended themselves. They still have no idea. They have absolutely no solution. Do they really think gun control laws will reduce crime? Do they really think they can change the hearts of criminals, who by definition do not obey laws?
This continues the trend of the left simply being the anti-conservatives. Conservatives favor keeping guns and reducing crime. Liberals hate guns but have no alternative that works.
The issue of illegal immigration is another area where the left yells and screams, but does not do anything productive.
Unlike gun control, conservatives are split on the illegal immigration issue. The Wall Street Journal and National Review have different views, and I respect both fine institutions.
What I do know is that many people want the border secured. Illegal means exactly that, and by definition illegal immigrants are criminals by simply breaking the law to be here.
Conservatives say secure the border. Arizona passes a law to help secure the border.
What does the left do? They wail and scream about racial profiling, arrange boycotts of Arizona, sue the state (liberals love suing), and speak about compassion. Yet regarding the border, do they have any plan whatsoever to actually solve the problem?
Of course not.
Some will say that the left wants amnesty to get more Democratic voters. The left denies this, but comprehensive immigration reform means amnesty. Many conservatives have zero negative concerns about Mexico, especially when compared to Iran. This does not change the fact that if the left truly wants to be honest, they should advocate amnesty and justify. Again, this is political suicide.
Regarding the oil spill, the Barack Obama and Eric Holder extorted 20 billion dollars (yes, it was extortion) from British Petroleum. Yet what are they doing to fix the oil spill? Do they have any idea what to do?
(I want to give latitude on this one because I don’t expect the president to have the answer. I just wish the left would have been as understanding toward Mr. Obama’s predecessor.)
The president waxes poetic about green technology, but that is unproven. Oil works. What is the backup plan of the environmentalists if their green alternatives fail?
There is none.
Regarding the stimulus package, we were told that unemployment would go above 8% unless we passed the stimulus that Mr. Obama wanted. Unemployment hit 10%. Mr. Obama then tells us that had we not passed his package, unemployment would be at 15%.
How can he possibly know this? If unemployment were to hit 15%, would he then say he prevented it from reaching 20%?
He claims he “saved or created” a bunch of jobs. This cannot be measured.
Let’s say President Obama has to choose between a pair of choices on any issue, issue X. If choice A means he is wrong and gets criticized and choice B also means he is wrong and gets criticized, that is unfair to him.
Conversely, if both choices A and B means he is right, that means he is always right no matter what he does, which destroys his credibility. This is how his supporters prop him up. If something good happens, he did it. If something bad happens, it would have been worse had he not done it.
The only honest thing to do is look at his choices and see if his solutions work.
The White House claimed $400,000 jobs, but 90% of those were temporary census jobs. Yet then when many more jobs than expected were lost recently, supporters said that we should not worry because most of the lost jobs were temporary census jobs anyway.
So he gets credit for creating jobs that are fictional, and avoids blame when those jobs evaporate.
Liberals get temporary victories by blaming Republicans and conservatives for everything, but at some point the public wants leadership. They want solutions. They don’t see it.
Regarding Iran, the president wanted to change the tone. Fine. There is nothing wrong with offering an outstretched hand. However, that should be a means, not an end in itself.
Conservatives, especially Neocons, want to use force with Iran. The left prefers diplomacy. Yet what happens if and when diplomacy fails? What then?
The left has no answers.
The left wanted to reverse Bush Administration terror fighting tactics. Since then we have had the Christmas bomber, Fort Hood, and another New York plot. Why can’t Eric Holder admit that we have had two serious near genocidal breaches, with a third one succeeding?
I just want the left to stop bashing every conservative idea until they have an alternative solution that has proved it has worked.
Fix the d@mn oil spill. Get Iran to stop being lunatics who want to kill us. Stop illegal aliens committing crimes without demonizing any race or culture. Secure the border. Stop demonizing oil until you have a viable substitute. Create real jobs. Be honest about the economic numbers. Stop handcuffing law abiding citizens and letting criminals run wild. Stop handcuffing national security and law enforcement and letting terrorists run wild. Once enemies of America reject our outstretched hand, get back to making sure they do not murder us all.
No, this is not easy. Governing is hard work.
Yet George W. Bush inherited a slowing economy and a collapsed stock market in 2000 (much bigger percentage drop than 2008). He did not spend every waking minute (in fact not one minute at all) crying about it and blaming his predecessor. He went to work.
The left may not agree with his solutions, but at least he offered something.
The left has not offered a single solution on any issue that matters that has actually worked. They have yelled, screamed, blamed, played the race and gender cards, and demonized conservatives for being alive and breathing.
“It was like that when I got here” doesn’t cut it.
It is time for the left to offer solutions that work, or get out of the way and let the adults run things.
The left can cherry pick 2008 while ignoring 2002-2007, but the truth is that for the last 30 years, the right has won the Cold War, deposed Saddam, routed the Taliban, reduced crime, expanded individual liberty, and grown the economy.
The left has done nothing. They are perceived as coddling criminals and terrorists, stifling innovation, punishing small businesses, and caring more about trees and animals than human beings trying to keep their jobs.
These are caricatures, but there is plenty of truth in the liberal caricature.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask political independents. They gave the left a shot in 2008. They have buyers remorse by a wide margin.
The people don’t want any more liberal excuses. They want results. They want solutions.
The clock is ticking.
eric
I swore I posted something here already! Was it too snarky? I should never comment while multitasking…
“What would you do to protect people? What is your solution? How can you combat crime?”
You ask this after saying…
“The left claims that they do not want to ban all guns. They only want “reasonable” restrictions, which is a subjective term that liberals can change at will when it suits them. However, four liberal justices were prepared to allow a complete ban on guns in a city.”
Now, if this wasn’t a preface to some kind of rhetorical question, then ignore what I’m now saying:
Yes, all law is in at least part subjective. Including the laws on things conservatives ban.
There was no “complete gun ban” in Chicago. That’s simply not true. If you are repeating that in public, you are repeating an untruth. There was in effect a ban on possession of handguns in the city.
These “liberal justices” found in 30+ years of precedent. The new precedent was set in Heller and this was only the very first test of that precedent with pretty much the same court. The court basically upheld itself. No surprise, and surprisingly enough, no legal big deal. Chicago can easily retool it’s regulations, but unfortunately it’s going to cost a lot at a time when money is really tight. So, the court did a nice job of sticking it to Chicago taxpayers, anyway.
But back to the question, “What would you do to protect people? What is your solution? How can you combat crime?”
There’s a whole world of priorities when it comes to such broad responsibilities as “protect[ing] the people,” solving and combatting crime. It’s most certainly not just about guns. To think otherwise is as to be the carpenter in the old saying about asking the wrong people and getting the wrong answer – you’re just a hammer and the problem is just a nail.
There’s so much more to dealing with crime than just guns that I would say that guns are actually not even in the top ten priorities. Just the same, the easy availability of guns to criminals, both here and to abroad, is a very, very serious problem in and of itself.
The trouble with guns is that when they are involved in crime, things get very, very bad. There’s a huge difference between unarmed shoplifting and armed burglary. There’s a huge difference between a volatile, drunk couple having a fight and a volatile, drunk, armed couple having a fight.
Guns usually only create or add to problems in America. But they don’t haver to! Other countries have similar arms-to-population ratios, but much lower crime, especially gun crime. Now, of course, there are significant cultural, demographic, and economic differences between America and say Canada, but that just means we have to find our own way to manage the issue.
The simplest way to reduce criminal gun availability is to legally assert “You can own all the guns you like as long as you register them and have a title for each one. (The title and registration could be free for all I care.) You can not sell the gun without transferring that title and you need that title to get the gun registered. If your gun is used in a crime, and that gun has been out of your hands for more than one month, and you have not reported the gun as missing, then you are in part civilly and/or criminally accountable for any crime committed with that gun.”
That’s a well-regulated militia. Seems easy-peasy to me.
JMJ
“You ask this after saying…’
yeah, so ?
You think you made some kinda “gotcha” contradiction ?
Any idiot knows that your answer to crime is to hold candle light vigils for convicted rapists/muderers like Tookie.
“There was in effect a ban on possession of handguns in the city. (of Chicago)
I showed you repeated studies from that bastion of liberalism “Harvard” that gave examples world wide of cities without gun bans having the lowest crime rates yet you still click your heels togther thinnking you’ll end up in Seattle
Oh, get real Micky, where do you think all the guns come from? BIG cities have a BIG problem with illegal handguns and the vast majority of those guns are coming from sleazy Red states with lax gun laws.
JMJ