Bloodthirsty Liberal

I have to say, I’m pretty upset that President Obama tried to speak before the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and was so rudely treated, all at the instigation of the Romney campaign.

Okay, I have a few minor details mixed up, but the basic point holds:

Mitt Romney made a campaign appearance yesterday at a charter school in inner-city Philadelphia, but he received a hostile reception on the streets nearby, the Washington Post reports:

Residents, some of them organized by Obama’s campaign, stood on their porches and gathered at a sidewalk corner to shout angrily at Romney. Some held signs saying, “We are the 99%.” One man’s placard trumpeted an often-referenced Romney gaffe: “I am not concerned about the very poor.”

Madaline G. Dunn, 78, who said she has lived here for 50 years and volunteers at the school, said she is “personally offended” that Romney would visit her neighborhood.

“It’s not appreciated here,” she said. “It is absolutely denigrating for him to come in here and speak his garbage.”

Mayor Michael Nutter addressed the protesters. “You want to have an urban experience?” the mayor said. “You want to have a West Philly experience? Then come out here and talk to somebody in West Philly.” Inside the school, Romney was doing just that.

Offended that he would come?

“ORGANIZED BY OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN”???

The protests are fine, democracy in action. That they would need to be prompted and paid for by the Obama machine is a different, distinctly repulsive, story. James Taranto comments:

And the hostile tone of the Obama-organized protesters is reminiscent of the false media caricature of the Tea Party. Imagine if an Obama opponent showed up outside one of his campaign appearances and told a reporter: “It is absolutely denigrating for him to come in here and speak his garbage.” The civility police would be demanding that Romney disassociate himself from such hate. In this case, the Obama campaign actually is associated with it.

Associated with it, behind it, all over it. The Republican nominee reaches out to all Americans, regardless of race or class, and the Democratic nominee arranges a hostile, disruptive reception.

That’s Democrats, not democracy, in action. Whole different thing.

What a disgusting perversion presidential politics. Obama and the entire party should be ashamed, and should be called out publicly. Should be, but won’t be—not by the eunuchs of the press.

PS: Was anyone “offended” or “denigrated” by this Philadelphian?

Not that we want it, but after the investment of blood and money, every American has a right to claim any acreage in Afghanistan, including Rodeo Drive, Kabul:

If Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, an influential member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is looking for a country to visit as a member of a congressional delegation, he can cross Afghanistan off his list.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Rohrabacher have been at loggerheads over the congressman’s push for a more decentralized Afghan government. Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about the disagreement, Karzai said he is against letting Rohrabacher into the country.

“Until he changes his tongue, until he shows respect to the Afghan people, to our way of life and to our constitution … No foreigner has a place asking another people, another country to change their constitution. Have we ever asked the United States to change its constitution?”

Well, there have been some issues around who declares war and how, but we’ll let that pass for now. What’s the problem with Rep. Rohrbacher?

Rohrabacher went on to call the mercurial Afghan leader a “corrupt prima donna” in the same interview.

…

Rohrabacher later released a statement through his office saying he would not “apologize to Karzai or any other corrupt leader.

“Afghanistan is failing because Karzai and his corrupt clique are incompetent leaders, not because the U.S. hasn’t pumped enough money or blood to help the brave people of Afghanistan … Right now, I’m more concerned with getting American troops out of that country so they won’t continue to needlessly die than I am getting myself into Afghanistan to meet with officials like Karzai,” Rohrabacher said in the statement.

Hmm, he’s not wrong. Let the record show that his contempt is not for the people of Afghanistan, as Karzai alleges, but for Karzai himself. That makes Rep. Rohrbacher more generous than I, but who isn’t?

And the liberals are in shock

Go to the link to watch the interview. The reporter just looks so uncomfortable. It will definitely brighten up your morning.

To call Mia Love a minority is an understatement. She’s a black woman who won an upset primary race to become the Republican candidate in Utah’s 4th Congressional District. If elected, she’d be the first black Republican congresswoman in the House of Representatives.

Love, who has attracted lots of national Republican support, also stands out because of her religion: She’s a Mormon. The politician is a poster child for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ campaign to present a more diverse face to a historically very white church.

“There are a lot of people who have tried to define me as a person,” Love, a daughter of Haitian immigrants, told CNN’s Kyra Phillips in an interview Tuesday. “I’m not a victim, and I don’t allow anybody to put me in a box.”

If you watch the interview, you’ll notice that she is calm, intelligent, pleasant and unflappable. I googled for family photos and found one of her with her husband, who is white, and three cute little kids. I certainly hope she goes to DC.

- Aggie

Dissent is the highest form of—oh, shut the [bleep] up:

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

That’s enough of that. It goes on (and on), but the main point is… the authors have a book to sell:

Thomas E. Mann is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from their book “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism,” which will be available Tuesday.

It’s already on my calendar, right after I clip my toenails, clean out the glove compartment, and de-flea the Bloodthirsty Puppy.

Beware of intellectuals arguing over the crisis of the Constitution. That means they want to change it, or do away with it altogether. After all, it’s only a charter of “negative liberties”. The “crisis” is that they don’t get to do what they want, simply because they think it’s a good idea. So, they have to turn the loyal opposition into a “problem”. Happy to oblige.

Let’s turn this around. Let’s just say the Democrats were trying to block a Republican president from carrying out his appointed job. What would conservatives and Republicans say?

Oh wait, they did! It was called the Bush administration. And you know what? They called Republicans the problem then, too! Only then, liberals were less interested in re-writing the Constitution to impose “the will of the majority” (in Tom Friedman’s chilling phrase). The majority had just decisively returned Bush to office, so that’s when dissent became the highest form of patriotism. Now, dissent mere obstuctionism, reactionaryism, and good ol’ fashioned racism.

Evil and dishonest—why be so greedy, when merely one will do?

Guess what! Barack Obama wrote me a letter. He wants me to send money and suggestions. And money.

Having been devastated by his crappy economy, I don’t have any money, but I do have a suggestion:

STOP TEARING US APART

I can hear his thoughts: What do you mean, Aggie? I’m the nicest guy evah and only want to heal the country. I’m not a bit divisive.

Allow me to quote from the letter:

“Unfortunately, while Democrats at all levels have been working for change, and people like you have been giving it your all, Republicans have been sitting on the sidelines throwing rocks to slow us down and obstruct progress.”

News flash, Mr. President, Dissent is Patriotic. Remember that slogan from the Bush years?

So, Mr. President, my advice it just to quit tearing us apart. Really, quit it. Cold turkey. Knock it off. Your behavior is disgraceful. What happened to Hope ‘n Change? I, as an individual Republican, have no way to stop you from setting up these bizarre straw men, but I want you and your fellow Democrats to understand that I voted for you in every single election until you started vilifying people who disagree: business men and women, bankers and others who work in finance, people who work for oil companies, Republicans, doctors, automobile executives, etc. I have taken a solemn oath never to vote for any of you again, not even on the local level. Not for Animal Control Officer. I am also very careful not to support non-profits that might in any way support the Democrats. The fund-raising letter I received today is thoroughly nauseating.

Your friend,

Aggie

The NY Times notices that Obama is side-stepping Congress.

And they applaud it:

One Saturday last fall, President Obama interrupted a White House strategy meeting to raise an issue not on the agenda. He declared, aides recalled, that the administration needed to more aggressively use executive power to govern in the face of Congressional obstructionism.

“We had been attempting to highlight the inability of Congress to do anything,” recalled William M. Daley, who was the White House chief of staff at the time. “The president expressed frustration, saying we have got to scour everything and push the envelope in finding things we can do on our own.”

For Mr. Obama, that meeting was a turning point. As a senator and presidential candidate, he had criticized George W. Bush for flouting the role of Congress. And during his first two years in the White House, when Democrats controlled Congress, Mr. Obama largely worked through the legislative process to achieve his domestic policy goals.

But increasingly in recent months, the administration has been seeking ways to act without Congress. Branding its unilateral efforts “We Can’t Wait,” a slogan that aides said Mr. Obama coined at that strategy meeting, the White House has rolled out dozens of new policies — on creating jobs for veterans, preventing drug shortages, raising fuel economy standards, curbing domestic violence and more.

If the Republicans win in November, they can do whatever they want. No need to follow any sort of pre-arranged, Constitutionally-based, protocol.

This highlights the cynicism of the Democrats:

The sharpest legal criticism, however, came in January after Mr. Obama bypassed the Senate confirmation process to install four officials using his recess appointment powers, even though House Republicans had been forcing the Senate to hold “pro forma” sessions through its winter break to block such appointments.

Mr. Obama declared the sessions a sham, saying the Senate was really in the midst of a lengthy recess. His appointments are facing a legal challenge, and some liberals and many conservatives have warned that he set a dangerous precedent.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate Democratic leader, who essentially invented the pro forma session tactic late in Mr. Bush’s presidency, has not objected, however. Senate aides said Mr. Reid had told the White House that he would not oppose such appointments based on a memorandum from his counsel, Serena Hoy. She concluded that the longer the tactic went unchallenged, the harder it would be for any president to make recess appointments — a significant shift in the historic balance of power between the branches.

All of this fits perfectly with the John Yoo video a few posts down, and backs up what BTL and I have been saying since early in the 2008 Presidential campaign cycle. I have concluded that the US deserves what we have elected and am at peace with it, but I wonder sometimes about the bitterness that people will experience as they understand that we really don’t have the rule of law any longer.

- Aggie

Significant because Pew is a left-leaning organization

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.

Democrats are insecure about their beliefs and likely to avoid people who disagree with them:

Pew’s new study echoes the results of many other reports and studies that show GOP-supporters are better educated, more empathetic and more open to criticism than Democrats.

A March 12 Pew study showed that Democrats are far more likely that conservatives to disconnect from people who disagree with them.

“In all, 28% of liberals have blocked, unfriended, or hidden someone on SNS [social networking sites] because of one of these reasons, compared with 16% of conservatives and 14% of moderates,” said the report, tiled “Social networking sites and politics.”

The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from networks after disagreeing with their politics.

This is actually a big problem in this neck of the woods, where most conservatives are as deeply closeted as a gay person in southern Illinois, circa 1960.

Liberals have a more limited, constrained, moral universe:

The report also noted that 11 percent of liberals, but only 4 percent of conservatives, deleted friends from networks after disagreeing with their politics.

A March Washington Post poll showed that Democrats were more willing to change their views about a subject to make their team look good. For example, in 2006, 73 percent of Democrats said the GOP-controlled White House could lower gas prices, but that number fell by more than half to 33 percent in 2012 once a fellow Democrat was in the White House.

In contrast, the opinions of GOP supporters were more consistent. Their collective opinion shifted by only a third, according to the data. In 2006, 47 percent in believed the White House could influence gas prices. By 2012, that number had risen to 65 percent up 17 points compared to the Democrats’ 40 point shift.

Much of this polling and survey work has been backed up by novel research from the University of Virginia.

UVA researchers have used a massive online survey to show that conservatives better understand the ideas of liberals than vice versa. The results are described in a new book by UVA researcher Jonathan Haidt, “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.”

The book uses a variety of data to argue that conservatives have a balanced set of moral intuitions, while liberals are focused on aiding victims, fairness and individual liberty. Conservatives recognize how liberals think because they share those intuitions, but liberals don’t understand how conservatives think because they don’t recognize conservatives’ additional intuitions about loyalty, authority and sanctity, Haidt argues.

This is interesting. Democrats are rigid in their beliefs and when those beliefs are challenged they stick their fingers in their ears, squeeze their eyes closed, and chant: Nah,nah, na, nah, nah… I can’t hear you!

But they are ever-so-much-more-intelligent than conservatives or moderates. Go figure.

- Aggie

Don’t let the bastards grind you down:

Republicans, as they have for nearly three years now, continue to lead Democrats on the Generic Congressional Ballot, this time for the week ending Sunday, April 15.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 46% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote for the Republican in their district’s congressional race if the election were held today, while 36% would choose the Democrat instead. This is the largest gap between the two parties since the beginning of 2011.

I’m not sure the Republicans (save Paul Ryan) have done anything to earn their lead, but the Democrats sure have done plenty to deserve their deficit. Still planning to take that gavel back, Nancy? Don’t blink (as if!), or you might miss your chance!

Republicans are stupid.

Did you have class elections for President when you were kids? Not elections for school President, but elections for the national ticket? We did. I never had a clue what my teachers thought. My how times have changed.

A Virginia elementary school teacher told her students that “Republicans are stupid” and “they don’t care about anyone but wealthy people and businesses.”

Kristin Martin said this to her 6th grade class as Republican voters were filing into the halls of Powell Elementary School in Fairfax County to vote on Super Tuesday.

“It all started when this disabled kid came in and named all the Republicans candidates for Super Tuesday,” one student told The Daily Caller. “She [Martin] said to him, ‘I don’t like them, I think that they are stupid.’”

Martin’s statements were “brainwashing” students, according to one mother, who said she is a Republican and asked not to be named to protect her daughter from retaliation.

The part I highlighted above is an indication of how Hope ‘N Change has helped make America a better place. That woman is in the closet about her political beliefs as much as any gay person, circa 1961.

- Aggie

Tom Friedman has been wrong about everything else, so… bring it:

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on NBC, New York Times columnist Thomas Freidman interpreted that data to mean that the Republican Party has become radicalized, and that Romney isn’t doing much for to make a case for his authenticity.

“I think it’s two things,” Friedman said. “I think it is the fact that in my view the Republican Party is no longer a conservative party. It’s become a radical party on a lot of these key issues. That’s number one. And number two, I just came back from New Zealand…

Why? New Zealand is just about the right distance for him.

Look at the locution: “I think it is the fact that in my view”. Is he saying his view is fact? (That would be novel.) Or is he saying merely that it is a fact that he has a view? (Big whoop.) Or is he saying he thinks it’s a fact that he has a view? What a moron.

And if he can look at a political scene where Democrats have taken the first great leap toward socialized medicine, where the president and his energy secretary lobby for higher gas prices, where his “green” “energy” “czar” was a communist, where his attorney general ran guns to Mexico in pursuit of the repeal of the Second Amendment, where the president bows to the Saudis and man-hugs Hugo Chavez, where government policy is to work with and sit on the most antisemitic commission since Wannsee (the UN’s Human Rights Council) and say the Republicans are radical… that can only be Tom Friedman, the Helen Thomas of NY Times columnists.