As the Miami Shark heads back to her home, many have wondered why I ignored so many large political stories.
The bottom line is that just because we are told something is important does not make it important.
West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd died at age 92. People have pointed out his evil deeds (joining the Klan and being a Kleagle) and his good deeds (fiercely protecting the Senate from executive overreach).
In typical liberal media fashion, Senator Byrd was treated far more kindly than Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond. The main thing we need to understand is that people are complex. They are dynamic. All of these men did good and bad things, and history should not treat any of them like Mother Theresa or Pol Pot.
Robert Byrd had the Constitution memorized, and somehow managed to relate either the Greco-Roman world or his dog Billy into every story.
“If Cicero were alive today, he would be against the balanced budget amendment.”
Bob Dole disagreed.
“That’s not true. Strom Thurmond was a friend of Cicero, and he said Cicero was in favor of it.”
We need more of that collegiality in politics. Disagree fiercely, but then break bread over drinks later on.
I did not cover the Elana Kagan hearings. They were a waste of time since most of the senators had predetermined opinions.
Orrin Hatch was funny when he pointed out that skirmishes keep hearings from being “boring as hell.” Ms. Kagan was riotous when asked what she was doing on Christmas. She said that, “being Jewish, she was at a Chinese restaurant.”
Yet virtually no hearts or minds were swayed. She may be a nice person, but she is a liberal ideologue. The time to stop her was in 2008. Mr. Obama won the election, and conservatives had better get their act together to prevent any more awful judicial nominees.
In one of the scariest decisions in history, a razor thin 5-4 margin preserved the Second Amendment. Liberals for years have said that they favor “reasonable restrictions” on guns. This is a lie. They want to ban all guns. Four liberals decided that the right to own a gun was not in the Constitution. If Ms. Kagan was on the Court instead of one conservative, the message to law abiding citizens would have been, “go screw yourself and die.”
I keep saying that liberals love to criticize but offer no viable solutions. If a criminal breaks into your home and the criminal has a gun and you do not, what are you supposed to do? Until the left has a solution, I will support the Second Amendment.
Again, the Chicago case was not about restrictions. It was an outright ban. Thankfully 5 conservatives actually believe in the rule of law and the Constitution. The other 4 just make up things as they go along.
The Russian spy scandal is a complete waste of a story. Nations have been spying on each other since the beginning of time. We spy on our enemies, friends, and everyone in the middle and they do the same to us. Spies should be punished, but that i the end of it.
Those getting worked up over the most recent incident should buy a copy of Spy Magazine and enjoy their “Separated at Birth” pictures, and then buy a copy of Mad Magazine and enjoy Spy vs Spy. This can be done while watching the hilarious 1980s movies “Spies like us” with Chevy Chase and Dan Akroyd and “Gotcha.”
Gotcha is a about a dorky teen playing paintball who gets caught up in espionage. The experience causes him to lash out at innocent strangers.
“I thought he was KGB from Moscow.”
“He was a CPA from Encino!”
The Black Panther voter intimidation story should matter, but it will fade away. Eric Holder is a leftist ideologue who happens to be black. He is not going to prosecute black leftist ideologues. Holder is not interested in liberty. He wants equality. The solution for conservatives is to get their act together and win elections.
Yet the real story for me was more leftist violence at the G-20 Summit.
No, it was not 80 year old grandmothers attending tea parties. It was young leftists. Violence is what they do. Young conservatives do not have time to protest. They have jobs to go to.
Leftists will continue to protest until governments decide to stop cowering in front of 18 year old savages and unleash the powers of law and order. We need more dogs to be sicced, more tasers to be fired, more rubber bullets to be unleashed, and more fire hoses to be turned on.
Yet there was fabulous irony to these protesters, some of whom were anarchists. Anarchists want government to do nothing. They want no government.
Why on Earth would anybody wanting nothing protest a G-20 meeting? Anarchists should love G-20 meetings.
G-20 meetings are the epitome of nothing at its finest.
If G-20 meetings were any more useless they would be United Nations meetings.
Does anybody know of a single actual policy, rule, law, or binding agreement that ever came out of any of these meetings that was enforceable, and actually enforced?
Of course not.
So what do we call such useless photo ops? As Sir Charles of Krauthammer would say, those are complete diplomatic successes.
So a bunch of unwashed and unshaved animals wanting a world of chaos where government is powerless protested against meetings that are the epitome of government impotence where nobody has the power to do anything.
The G-20 is the Larry King of world leaders. Not single hard issue is successfully dealt with. Larry King is stepping down after decades of not asking tough questions. The lowlight was asking Armageddonijad about his family. Larry King may be a good guy, but his program was lighthearted entertainment, not serious news.
The bigger story is the implosion of CNN, losing King and Campbell Brown and hiring Eliot Spitzer. CNN has not been a serous news organization since the very respected Bernard Shaw retired. I would say more, but CNN died years ago and nobody told them. Even James Earl Jones should watch Fox News at this point.
For this and so many reasons, I will focus on actual news when news actually happens.
eric
“In one of the scariest decisions in history, a razor thin 5-4 margin preserved the Second Amendment.”
This is just ludicrous on several levels. First, it was about as “scary” as a sock puppet Frankenstien. The was no ruling that was going to come out of this that was all that “scary.” On top of that it was a foregone conclusion. The court has set it’s own precedent in Heller. There was no way they were going to overrule themselves. Finally, “razor thin” applies when you have a 1% margin, or a .01% margin, but you’re talking about the run of the mill, usual 5-4 split this court’s been producing for years. There’s no surprises anymore. Everything is bipolarized. Unless Scalia has a heart attack or Clarence Thomas winds up unplugging a maor vein, the court isn’t going to significantly change for many years. It is a radical rightwing court.
JMJ
fricking wont post again…grrrr
Hey, Eric took out my Clarence Thomas joke!
JMJ