Cultural Genocide

The lives of our political opponents matter.  Not their physical lives, we don't care about that. It's their cultural lives, their cultural symbols, their values, morals and mores that matter. To defeat our political enemies we must utterly destroy all the factors that give their lives value, meaning and structure.  And, let's be honest, we do want the complete and utter destruction of all who might disagree with us in any way.

This attitude of complete cultural destruction has led the left to try to eliminate everything remotely connected to the pop culture "Confederate Flag" icons of the conservative and especially southern society.

This excuse for such destruction of an icon is, of course, the senseless murder of the nine black church members at the hands of white supremacist Dylann Roof in Charlotte last week.

But, as horrific as those murders were, they are not the subject of this post.  Instead it is the remarkable reaction that has swept our entire culture in just a few short days, to effectively ban all things remotely connected to the Civil War.

As a Sociology major in College this is simply stunning to behold.  This is the equivalent of a paleontologist discovering the bone of an undiscovered species of dinosaur.  Rarely do you get to see what can only be described as a tidal wave of coordinated social activity happening across all political spectrums, all races, all economic classes, all at once.

This isn't simply South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley suggesting the Confederate Flag be removed from the Statehouse grounds.  That might have started the chain reaction, but look how far its come!

Amazon, eBay, Walmart, Sears and more are pulling everything Confederate off the shelves.  States are pulling down flags and statues and memorials.  Film critics are calling for the withdrawal of the movie "Gone With The Wind," allowing it only to be shown in museums and only on special occasions.  Amazon and Walmart are "suggesting" authors or publishers revise their cover art if it contains anything related to the Civil War.  Will we ban books from schools and public libraries?

Polygon, the gaming news website, reports that Apple was quickly affected by the societal groupthink with a form of censorship that is breathtaking to behold:

"Now, it appears that Apple has decided to join them by pulling many Civil War wargames from the App Store. As of the writing of this story, games like Ultimate General: Gettysburg and all the Hunted Cow Civil War games are nowhere to be found. Apple is famous for reaching for the axe rather than the scalpel when it comes to political issues (like rejecting Hunted Cow's Tank Battle 1942 for depicting Germans and Russians as enemies), so this move doesn't come as a great surprise." 

Can we erase history? It appears Apple is going to try.  But they are not alone.  When Republican Governors like Robert Bentley of Alabama personally remove Confederate Flags and further suggest any school named after a Civil War General be renamed, memorials removed and school mascots banned, you realize we have a seed change turning into a tsunami

Until two or three days ago, Walmart admits it had virtually never had a complaint about pop culture Confederate merchandise.  The public outcry, mostly on social media, happening that quickly.

People tend to jump on the bandwagon. They love to be on the "winning side."  What they may have never noticed Thursday, becomes issue #1 by Friday.

How long will this last? Will there eventually be blow back.  So far only (former) Senator Jim Webb has offered any caution or defense. Certainly his thoughtful and nuanced response absolutely dooms any hope he had of a Presidential candidacy.

New York Times: Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012

I am increasingly disturbed by the events unfolding in the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) mishandling of Conservative Groups applications for Tax Exempt Status.  I am equally disturbed by the Republican's overstating the severity of the offenses and the Democrats continued efforts to deflect or deny what has happened.

I greatly fear the administration has committed acts that are both morally reprehensible and very possibly a violation of the law.

Calls for Impeachment have already begun and I pray (and I'm reasonably confident) it will not come to that.  But had either this scandal or the  Benghazi scandal come to light before the election most certainly Mitt Romney would be President today.  And the country would be much better off.

If somehow you're not up to date on the FACTS (and not just the partisan rhetoric) please read the entire NEW YORK TIMES article (only a few sentences are included below):

     Treasury Knew of I.R.S. Inquiry in 2012, Official Says

The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was auditing the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.

At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel of his audit on June 4, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

The Truth About Cable Network News

Here's an incredibly short post (by the usual Wizard standards) about Cable Network News.  I just want to share the ratings for last Wednesday, a relatively typical night for Cable News, although slightly inflated because of the U.S. House of Representative's Benghazi hearings.

Included are the shows on Comedy Central because, quite frankly, that's where many Americans get their news.

FOXNEWS THE O'REILLY FACTOR 3,383,000

FOXNEWS THE FIVE 2,937,000

FOXNEWS BRET BAIER 2,638,000

FOXNEWS SEAN HANNITY 2,628,000

FOXNEWS GRETA VAN SUSTREN 2,363,000

FOXNEWS FOX NEWS WITH SHEPARD SMITH 2,240,000

CNN HEADLINE NEWS NANCY GRACE 1,576,000

COMEDY CENTRAL THE DAILY SHOW 1,450,000

CNN ANDERSON COOPER 1,391,000

CNN WOLF BLITZER 1,382,000

COMEDY CENTRAL THE COLBERT REPORT 1,250,000

CNN PIERS MORGAN 1,085,000

CNN ERIN BURNETT 944,000

CNN HEADLINE NEWS DR DREW 940,000

MSNBC RACHEL MADDOW 877,000

MNSBC LAWRENCE O'DONNELL 826,000

MSNBC CHRIS MATTHEW 703,000

MSNBC AL SHARPTON 624,000
MSNBC CHRIS HAYES 573,000 

There are two reasons FOX NEWS dominates the ratings. First they are much more entertaining.  Each host has fun and schedules a mix of lighthearted news and discussion with heavier commentary.

Second, they are, by far, fair and honest given the RIGHT WING perspectives of the hosts.  The shows tend to be facutal and often present both sides of the issues being discussed.

As a LIBERAL I can watch FOX, laugh at them and, occasionally cuss at them and always learn from them.

As a Liberal, I am appalled that 877,000 people watch Rachel Maddow, the single most dishonest person in major broadcasting.  I've learned the hard and painful way that if Rachel Maddow says it, it's likely not true, at best half true.

We Liberals DESERVE voices as HONEST and as ENTERTAINING at the conservatives have over on FOX.  We DESERVE BETTER THAN WHAT WE GET ON MSNBC. 

The One Thing Absolutely No One Wants: "More Civilized Public Discourse"

The Rush Limbaugh Controversy rages on and on and on. If you've lived under a rock for the last few weeks, Limbaugh called Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke a slut, among other things.  See my previous blog post if you'd like more information.


Right now the Progressives and Liberals seem to have the upper hand.  The brilliantly orchestrated advertiser boycott is working and at least 13 advertisers and two radio stations have jumped off the Limbaugh ship.  Limbaugh has been forced to apologize.  And while the conservative loyalists are attempting to bail water, the progressives have hit Limbaugh with a broadside torpedo.


Again and again and again and again we heard President Obama, Limbaugh's departing advertisers, Democratic Party operatives and pundits,television hosts and even comics all exclaim, "All that we want is a more civilized public discourse!"


This is, of course, pure unadulterated BULLSHIT!  No a single one of them wants "more civilized discourse." They just want to cower their opponents and, if possible, silence them.  They would be pleased if their opponents were civil, as long as their allies were as vile, hateful and uncivil as ever.


My PROOF?  I dare you to find a single person, advertiser, corporate entity, pundit, commentator or comic that is condemning the hate speech coming from his or her side of the aisle.  Find me one that condemns both sides equally.  Don't worry, you're not going to find one, because their isn't one!


Today, in another of this episode's most bizarre moments, President Obama inserted his two daughters into his attack on Rush Limbaugh.  Below are the quotes from The Hill Briefing Room story this afternoon:

President Obama said he called Sandra Fluke, the college student at the center of the latest Rush Limbaugh controversy, after thinking about how his own daughters would have handled the criticism.

“I thought about Malia and Sasha,” Obama said Tuesday at a news conference. “And one of the things I want them … to be able to do is speak their minds in a civil and thoughtful way, and I don’t want them attacked or called horrible names when they’re being good citizens.

I want to tread lightly here and carefully respect both Malia and Sasha.  But the President's comments raise a serious question.  Is it possible that while he wouldn't want Limbaugh to his beautiful daughters "sluts," it would be perfectly OK if Bill Maher called them "T***s" or "C***s?"  I only make this assumption because President Obama has yet to even mention these misogynistic slurs from his million dollar campaign donor.  Limbaugh's slurs were mild compared to Maher's.

But certainly President Obama isn't alone is his one sided outrage.  David Friend, CEO of Carbonite(r) actually set the stage for President Obama when he, too, invoked his two daughters as a reason he cancelled advertising of the Rush Limbaugh Show.  Here is his statement (from an interesting essay on this issue on Red State):


"No one with daughters the age of Sandra Fluke, and I have two, could possibly abide the insult and abuse heaped upon this courageous and well-intentioned young lady. Mr. Limbaugh, with his highly personal attacks on Miss Fluke, overstepped any reasonable bounds of decency. Even though Mr. Limbaugh has now issued an apology, we have nonetheless decided to withdraw our advertising from his show. We hope that our action, along with the other advertisers who have already withdrawn their ads, will ultimately contribute to a more civilized public discourse."


Gosh! And look. Friend used the patented "more civilized public discourse" excuse, too!  Wow! He's covered all the bases!


Except for the base called "truth." Friend missed that one.  For many years Friend has made heavy political donations for President Obama's election and re-election campaigns.  Curiously he was and remains a heavy advertiser of the Ed Schultz Show.  Schultz, if you remember, was suspended by MSNBC and forced to apologize for calling Laura Ingram a "slut," the exact term Limbaugh used to refer to Fluke.  Friend, exactly like everyone else, is only offended when his political opponents use vile speech.  He's super cool OK when his allies use the identical speech.


This works on both sides of the aisle.  No one in politics has been the subject of more hate speech than Michelle Bachmann.  Amazingly Bachmann appeared on MSNBC this morning and was grilled relentlessly as to why she won't condemn Limbaugh's hate speech.  Bachmann correctly pointed out that no one had ever been the victim of more hate speech than she has, BUT, she still refused to condemn Limbaugh.   The MSNBC announcer certainly never apologized for the hate spewed from her network associates, either.  STALEMATE.


Here's where I stand. Either it's wrong 100% of the time or it's not.  I don't like today's hate speech, but I've never said speech should be censored.  I'm from the school that says you can and should argue the points, but I don't think you should ever silence the critics.


In other words, I don't need the pig to get out of the mud, but I feel no need to climb in there with him.

Want to Know What Republicans REALLY THINK? Ask one.

Here is a novel idea, one I'm certain my fellow Liberals will ignore.  If you really want to know what motivates Republicans, or conservatives or (gasp!) tea party followers, just ask one.  And then seriously listen to their answers.


Don't interrupt them.  Don't insult them.  Don't demonize them.  Ask intelligent follow up questions.  Make a genuine effort to understand positions and solutions that are different from your own.


I'm certainly not suggesting you agree with them.  Just that you actually listen and attempt to understand.


You have to do this yourself, because the television networks we know and love seem incapable of doing it for us.


I am appalled and distressed at the nonsense, hyperbole, falsehoods, half truths and outright lies being foisted upon us Liberals every night by the hosts and guests on MSNBC and Current TV's Keith Olbermann show.  Rachel Maddow will tell you what conservatives think.  Al Sharpton will tell you how evil and duplicitous conservatives are.  Then Ed Schultz will tell you that the Tea Party is plotting the overthrow of mankind.


They will occasionally parade supposed conservative guests before us, people who are either not conservatives at all or who are foolish caricatures of what we Liberals WANT to believe conservatives really are.  I have genuinely NEVER seen a real, credible or articulate conservative on MSNBC.  To see those folks (and there are plenty of them) you need to turn to Fox News. 

No, what we get on MSNBC are guests who are the Washington Generals to the Maddow, O'Donnell and Schultz version of The Harlem Globetrotters.  This way Maddow et al can tell us that  "Tea Party Leaders" are idiots and them produce a living example to prove her point.


There was a time when Rachel Maddow was an excellent and articulate spokesperson for the left back when she was a guest of the ill fated Tucker Carlson Show.  Carlson was no match for Maddow, she is brighter, more articulate and more likeable that Tucker Carlson.  But he kept her honest!  Now, she is guilty nightly of spewing propoganda, generally telling only half of any story.

Unintended Consequences

In spite of what I hear frequently from Conservatives, and often from Liberals, it is extremely rare for anyone in government to set out to do bad things. Neither the "opposition" nor the President is out to "destroy the country." Tweeting it in all CAPS doesn't make it true.

In fact most politicians genuinely want to make things better, at least for the folks who elected them.

So why do we keep hearing the name calling and, often, outright hatred of the so-called "opposition?" To put it simply the philosophical differences between Liberals and Conservatives are sometimes so vast they prohibit common understanding.

Most disputes arise from Liberals belief that business, especially corporations, cannot be trusted, must be regulated, and must be prevented from exploiting both the consumer and the laborer.

Conservatives believe, on the other hand, that Government, especially the Federal Government, cannot be trusted, must be minimized, and must be prevented from exploiting both the consumer and the laborer.

In short Liberals trust the government, conservatives trust the free market.

One of the most obvious laws that has arisen from Liberal's fear of corporations is the demand for competitive bidding on most government projects. These are good laws and good practice. Conservatives agree because corporations themselves engage in competitive bidding. This is exactly as it should be as it saves the taxpayers money and insures fair and open competition.

But here's where Conservatives and Liberals part. While Liberals DEMAND competitive bidding for contracts, the Liberal fear of corporate exploitation actually creates another unbreakable monopoly, fixes prices, stifles competition and insures gross overpayment in another area of commerce: Labor or workers wages. Today thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have "prevailing wage" laws, backed by the depression era Federal Law known as the Davis-Bacon Act. Curiously these laws do not insure workers are paid the actual prevailing wage, but that they are paid significantly more. Instead of looking to the private sector, "prevailing wage "rates are dictated by unelected government boards of bureaucrats, often stacked with union members. These laws only affect wages paid for government contracts and government projects.

Davis-Bacon is a sacred cow among Liberals and especially unions. Every election every effort is made to protect "prevailing wage" laws and Davis-Bacon itself. How else can we Liberals protect the lowly laborers from the evil corporations?

A little history of Davis-Bacon is in order here. Although the law is a child of The Great Depression, it wasn't written or enacted by President Roosevelt and The New Deal Democrats. Instead it was authored by Republican Senator James Bacon of Pennsylvania and Republican Representative Robert Davis of New York and it was signed into law by Republican President Herbert Hoover. Worse yet it was one of the most blatantly racist laws passed by Congress since the end of the Civil War. It's primary purpose was to prevent blacks from working on government projects and to insure skilled trade unions would remain mostly white. Bacon, Davis and others feared an influx of black laborers from the south would stream into the north, willing to work for much less than the white natives. [Does any of this sound vaguely familiar to the current illegal immigration fears being debated in Congress today?]

The law was so distasteful that Congress defeated it for fourteen straight years. But Davis and Bacon reintroduced it in each new session of Congress. The Depression gave Davis-Bacon new life. Hoover believed that the depression might end if we could just raise workers wages. He agreed to lend his support the bill. As The Great Depression deepened, Congress was willing to try anything and finally passed the bill. It certainly didn't save Hoover's job as he was defeated later that year.

As often is the case, the law now has the exact reverse effect from what was originally intended. This morning on National Public Radio's Morning Edition we had this stunning example of the law's failure in Washington State:

A state law that's been on the books for more than a half-century requires Washington companies to pay their workers a prevailing wage — or an hourly rate set by the government — on state-funded projects.

But as Precision's Leighton explains, companies in states like Idaho and Utah, which don't have prevailing wage laws, can pay their workers less.

"It puts us at such a disadvantage," he says. "There could be a project right out on our backdoor out here that I can't get because a company in Utah gets such a competitive advantage by not having to pay these rates."

Prevailing wage rules were put in place so workers would get a living wage, but on a job like this one, Leighton says the difference could be $10 an hour per worker.

State Sen. Steve Conway, a Democrat, agrees that the rules can make it difficult to compete against out-of-state firms.

"It does have unintended consequences," he says. "We need to figure out a solution to this."

For now, at least, Precision is likely to bid on fewer state-funded projects, and that means fewer choices and chances to win large contracts close to home. The company is now looking for projects in places like Alaska and Guam.

A law originally intended to protect local workers instead costs local workers their jobs. And the law also causes the government to overpay for their projects, when compared with similar projects completed in the private sector.

Bill Maher versus Mark Halperin, Heroes versus Villains

There are times when the media's double standard concerning liberals (or, more correctly, progressives) versus conservatives is simply stunning. And there has perhaps never been a better example than yesterday's instantanious suspension of pundit Mark Halperin from the MSNBC lineup for his inartful act of calling President Obama a "dick."

Within a few hours of Halperin's remark on the Morning Joe program, Halperin was gone, suspended indefinitely. MSNBC quickly issued an apology to their audience and President Obama. Halperin quickly followed suiit, falling on his sword, even going so far as to say MSNBC did the right thing in suspending him.

My purpose in writing this isn't to defend Halperin. Nor is it to condemn MSNBC. MSNBC has made several moves recently to raise the level of discourse on their network including a recent one week suspension of Ed Schultz for calling Luara Ingram a "slut."

None-the-less a gigantic double standard exists in the treatment of conservatives, especially at MSNBC. It was only six weeks ago that HBO's political superstar Bill Maher created a small firestorm by calling conservative Vice Presidential candidate and former Governor Sarah Palin a "dumb twat." Maher went on to double down with his blatant misogyny by calling Palin a "cunt."

Far from being condemned, Maher was defended by virtually all mainstream and leftwing pundits, because he is "only a comedian, not a news commentator or journalist.". Only that's simply not true. The REAL REASON Maher was defended is the mainstream powers that they all actually agreed with him.

Far from condemning Maher for his vile and blatant misogyny, Maher was "rewarded" with a full 30 minute guest spot on Chris Matthew's Hardball just two days after his sick remarks. For a half hour Matthews fawned over Maher as they discussed and "analyzed" the political events of the week. Matthews certainly never asked a single "hardball" question and simply looked to Maher for support and agreement as he dismantled each Republican candidate for President. Neither the "T" nor "C" words were ever used or discussed.

Maher is a regular visitor and guest on all MSNBC programs because he is in lockstep agreement with their generally progressive views.

But here is the bottom line. Use a mildly profane term to define a liberal, get suspended indefinitely. Use two significantly worse (but similar) term to define a conservative, get a full and featured 30 minutes on a major MSNBC program.