Anger

“Anger should be a universal feeling about a government and culture which is failing.” I watch Newt Gingrich’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute on CSPAN and next day go to his website to watch it again. The former Speaker of the House uses the word anger eighteen times in his speech. There is a lot of anger in the American public. I got me some too.

The speech is called The Obama Challenge, and the challenge is for adults to put politics aside and decide on what type of country we want the United States to be. It reflects Newt’s long time quip that “Real Change Requires Real Change”. We know what works to grow prosperity and we also know what doesn’t work. “But to find real solutions, I would argue, we have to have real honesty and a serious dialogue in which unpleasant facts are put on the table and bold proposals are discussed.”

There is zero chance that able yet McCain or the Clintons vs. the entire politicized federal bureaucracy will meaningfully change the status quo. Supporting either of them is like walking right back into the same stagnant swamp. They had their time and failed. I want them fired not promoted. The policies required to fix government will drive thousands of people off the public payroll, and if 1994 teaches anything, it is that persistent resistance and the temptations of power are powerful forces of inertia.

Now Barack Hussein Obama is no saint. I believe he is wrong in the majority of the approaches he advocates for governance. But he is still a newcomer and not fully vested in the abominable self nourishing slug that is our federal government. Of the options before us, he is the one with the most potential for major change of any kind. Sometimes the path to the goal moves away from the goal. I fully expect Obama will instantly find himself in over his head with the enormity of responsibly required by the Presidency. I expect he will make lots of mistakes. Yet it will be in those moments of his most severe self doubt that the opportunity for wise counsel to take root is appears.

I’m Still Voting for Obama II

Lola asks why I’m not posting. -- I tell her it's because I am disgusted. -- The American way of life is facing serious challenges and our permanent political class is offering three completely unacceptable choices for the Presidency.

I know the suck it up and vote for McCain school of thought and I reject it. As the American Thinker points out, McCain believes the lies about man-made Global Warming and will institute polices based on the scientific fraud that carbon dioxide is detrimental to the environment. Policies that will severely damage the American economy for absolutely no good reason. I will never vote for a Republican that believes socialist lies.

Returning the Clintons to office is a clear breach of the spirit of the 22nd Amendment. From the founding of this country, it has been understood that the primacy of the private sector over government is best served by limiting any individual person’s leadership. The Democratic Party broke this unwritten covenant with the American people, forcing the public to put it into writing. Marriage is two individuals forming a single union and it is the clear intent of this single union to win a third term.

This leaves Barack Hussein Obama, inexperienced, unprincipled, but gifted in trickster tale skills. I am serious about voting for Obama because there are no options in my best interest in the short term, so I am looking towards the long term.

I’m Still Voting for Obama

The Clintons play the race card against Barack Obama, forcing him to be honest to the world about his mixed heritage and his overtly racist black liberationist close good friends. Caroline Glick writes the only commentary worthy of a link, about the man Obama and the intrusion of the planetary human population into the United States of America.

So Obama is a black racist. I don’t care. I want change in the old establishment. If I was black, I would be very angry at a country decimating my community with incarceration. Incarceration which is state paid education for crime. Obama is wrong to be racist, but he has chosen sides with the true white racists in America, the Democratic Party. Under whose rule did black families get destroyed and the education of their children perverted? Barack understands the hatred in his core support and needs to understand the Republicans, as they have always been, are the allies for proud individual independence.

The Race and Gender Blues

Last Saturday is International Women’s Day and the Madison Blues Society seizes the nomenclature to use as a fundraiser. The Brink Lounge hosts the event featuring Chicago based blues guitarist Sue DeBaco followed by Canadian born, now Austin based Sue Foley. Lola and I agree this is a good opportunity to hear Ms. Foley for the first time so we pay our $30 and order drinks.

Sue DeBaco puts on a Chicago Blues performance. Adequate vocals and frantic guitar work combined with an overbearing obsession with audience banter. It’s a stage show perfected for suburbanite crowds out to have an adventuresome night downtown in a big city Blues Club. Clap with me, sing along, have some drinks, tip your bartenders. Let me play you something in the style of Hendrix.

At intermission I slip into the lounge to watch the end of the Wauwatosa East v. Madison Memorial Wisconsin Boy’s State Basketball Championship game. Madison has victory in hand until Wauwatosa ties the game with a three point shot sending it into overtime. Alas, Memorial finishes second again. Lola tells me I miss Kathleen Falk give her Guest Speaker presentation. Kathleen, allegedly, says she wakes up every morning thinking about Rosa Parks. Every morning? That’s just absurd unless it's part of a specific meditation ritual upon rising. Just saying.

Sue Foley begins her time on stage with solo acoustic songs before bringing out her band to finish the acoustic set. It’s all very polished and sparkling. It’s the kind of mastery that a smoke free room of affluent white people appreciate. The electric set that follows is decidedly good but I can’t help thinking this would be much, much better if the room was much darker, hot and hazy, and scarred by the wear and tear of time.

Spitzer & Friends

Power Corrupts - Who Knew?

Outright Big 10 Basketball Champion Badgers

IT'S ALL GOOD -- IT'S NOT OVER.

The Myth of the Rule of Law

The Myth of the Rule of Law: Stop! Before reading this article, please take the following quiz: The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States states, in part:

"Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the press;"

On the basis of your personal understanding of the meaning of this sentence (not your knowledge of Constitutional law), please indicate whether you believe the following sentences to be true or false.

______ 1) In time of war, a federal statute may be passed prohibiting citizens from revealing military secrets to the enemy.
______ 2) The President can issue an executive order prohibiting public criticism of his administration.
______ 3) Congress may pass a law prohibiting museums from exhibiting photographs and paintings depicting homosexual activity.
______ 4) A federal statute can be passed prohibiting a citizen from falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.
______ 5) Congress may pass a law prohibiting dancing to rock and roll music.
______ 6) The Internal Revenue Service may issue a regulation prohibiting the publication of a book explaining how to cheat on your taxes and get away with it.

______ 7) Congress may pass a statute prohibiting flag burning.

Self Esteem Education

Obama-mania and cult of self-esteem: The phenomenon of Senator Barack Obama's campaign is astounding. He has packaged policies largely indistinguishable from those of John Edwards or Hillary Clinton in airy platitudes about "change" and "hope," and suddenly he's a rock star - complete with swooning and fainting fans at his huge campaign rallies. … Conventional wisdom says this adulation and intensity level cannot last. But conventional wisdom may be missing something fundamental.

His evident charisma aside, a clue to the source of Obama-mania may be found in the demographics of his support: he is far and away the favorite of younger voters and college students, routinely winning over 75% of the votes of Democrats under 30. Obama has tapped into is the first generation educated in schools focused on "self-esteem." Now, the products of self-esteem education have come of political age in substantial numbers, perhaps with profound implications for this and future elections.

The Clintons Survive in Ohio and Texas

Tonight is the Republican Party’s missed Osama Bin Laden moment. They have the opportunity to send Mrs. William Jefferson Clinton to certain defeat, but they do not. In open primaries in the large population states of Texas and Ohio, Republicans vote in the opposition primaries and contribute to Clinton victories. Various rationales for wanting to extend the internal Democratic selection struggles are put forward, but the tactic deliberately keeps the path open for Hillary Clinton to be sworn in as the 43rd white president of the United States.

I can't help but think that as much as the political elites hate each other, they fear the loss of power even more. Watching the well funded rise of a youthful socialist threat promising to make real changes to the status quo, it's like the realization clicked that they are truly different wings of a single party of government. The former First Lady is on the verge of setting a new family control precedent in American government. I suspect the establishment of any permanent aristocracy goes through the phase where marriage claims to power come to be understood and accepted as valuable to all parties.

This election is taking place near a crest in the information age and globally there are no secrets about the relative status of the human beings in the massive human population. Observing the Republicans, I wonder if they hope the old married couple will be useful in the future against the rising socialist tide. It’s probably more likely they are counting on the traditional politics of money and interest groups to keep Hillary in the Senate. I wouldn’t count on it. The game is changing.

Great swarms of the political punditry all seem to be focusing in on the ephemeral veneer of the Barack Hussein Obama campaign and puzzling as to why there is not more demand for or concern about specifics. This misses the point. The Obama hopefuls don't care about specifics. They want change. Period. They want change of the status quo.

Hey Hillary

I'ts over Old Woman. Some people are cool. You ain't.

Yep

Mencius Moldbug: Most of progressivism's power is a consequence of its ability to manage public opinion. It can do this because it controls the educational system--schools, universities, and press. There are no elections for teachers, professors or journalists. They will be the same individuals whether the new president in 2009 is Barack Obama, John McCain, David Duke or Jeremiah Wright. The same is true of progressivism's other power base, the permanent civil service, which is also untouchable by "politics," i.e., democracy. Civil servants are nominally employees of the President, but that doesn't mean the White House can actually manage them. Typically the best it can do is frustrate them and make them ineffective, and this produces bad press, which harms the administration.

This is how Washington has worked since the 1930s. It is a machine designed to be immune to electoral politics. (It is also immune to reality, from which it steadily grows more detached.) But it is also designed to work in the presence of political opposition, which it belittles and denigrates at every turn.