Van Jones Out - Glenn Beck & Gateway Pundit Win

GREEN CZAR VAN JONES RESIGNS!... Communist Leaves White House

Embattled talk show host Glenn Beck scored a victory last night when radical leftist Van Jones stepped down from his post at the White House.

I am a fan of Glenn Beck. He is crazy as a loon but that doesn't mean he isn't right. I think he is right on a lot of things. I don't watch his television spot, but I do catch him on the radio most days. Radio is a unique medium. With TV you watch it and it controls all of your attention. With radio you put it on and go on with your day. You can be driving a car, answering email, or filling out a report and still have it on in the background. After listening to a person for awhile it is like you have let them into your life.

I don't agree with everything Beck says, but I have to confess that I love the man. I think he is funny. I like his sidekick Stu. I like the commotion that they cause and the fun they have. I am also apocalyptic like Glenn Beck. I think at some point the whole system is bound to collapse.

When they came after Beck and started boycotting him it made me upset. He has lost so many sponsors and more continue to cave. Van Jones did play a part in Color of Change, the group that is boycotting Beck. It may make this situation play as a tit for tat retribution. I don't see it directly that way, but I am glad to see Glenn Beck score a knock out punch on Van Jones.

Gateway Pundit was on the case and clearly deserves credit. I have added Gateway Pundit to the blog list.

Ramblings

I also added Robert Stacey McCain, "The Other McCain". The man cracks me up and I find myself checking it every day for a laugh. Might as well add him to my blog list to save me some time.

I added Mickey Kaus as well. Kausfiles is always short and sweet and packs ten pounds of kick-ass into a five pound bag. He cuts to the chase and is worth checking out.

Recently I added The Capitol Tribune, which I stumbled across and like to check out. On the About my blog post, Jeff at the Capitol Tribune says this:

My political views are not entirely easy to categorize. I’m a conservative on most issues, a moderate on some, and a liberal on a few. It all depends on the issue. However, if forced to choose, I consider myself a conservative. Michael Gerson said it perfectly: “I am a conservative because I believe in the accumulated wisdom of humanity—a kind of democracy that gives a vote to the dead—expressed in the institutions and moral ideals we inherit from the past. When those ideals and institutions are causally discarded in the cause of personal liberation, the result is usually personal suffering and social decay. We cannot prosper as a ‘cut-flower civilization’—separated from our sustaining roots.” For those with a classical history background, I’d consider my perspective a cross between Tacitus and Livy. A sort of realistic idealist.

I love the Gerson quote. I can identify with all of what Jeff said there, and I like reading what he has to say.

Getting on my blog list won't get anyone mega-hits or fame, but it is a reflection of who I am checking out. I use this blog as my personal control center for the blogosphere. I check out certain blogs on a regular basis, and having this blog is a neat way of organizing my links. When I find something interesting I can comment and link to it on my blog, and then I know it is here so I can find it again.

I don't do that enough either. I don't know how many times I try to remember an article I read just a few weeks ago, and wish I had linked to it so I could go back and review it. It is a very useful function for a blog, and this blog is obviously more for me than anyone else.

I was initially reluctant to say that I loved Glenn Beck. I have read some intellectuals lament his influence on the right. A friend of mine recently commented that Beck is part of what is wrong with the Republican Party. As far as I can tell, Beck isn't even part of the Republican Party. In my opinion, the Republican Party has been what is wrong with the Republican Party. Maybe if they didn't act like big government Democrats when elected...

And they say that Beck is crazy and a conspiracy theorist. It is true. He is a bat-shit crazy conspiracy theorist. He was right about Van Jones though, and I think he is right about a lot of things. He gets trashed by the other side, so much so that his name has a negative connotation. It made me reluctant to even admit I was a fan, and I don't even use my real name here. How pathetic is that?

If loving Glen Beck is wrong, I don't want to be right. Sphere: Related Content

The Voice Of America Rally - Sept 5th, 2009

Today I will attend the Voice of America Freedom Rally with my family.

Here are the speakers:

Speakers 2:30pm-5:00pm
Meteorologist Rich Apuzzo
Vietnamese Immigrant and Small Business Owner DakLak Do
Honduran Immigrant Harlene Holland
Small Business Owner Greg McAfee
Cancer Survivor, Activist, and Houston Tea Party Member Tracy Miller
Physical Therapist and Small Business Owner Chris Orecchio
Ohio Freedom Alliance's Jason Rink
Dayton Tea Party Founder Rob Scott
Author Thomas Tabback
Cincinnati Tea Party Founder Mike Wilson
Lawyer, Grassroots Activist, and Candidate for Indiana's 9th District Todd Young
East German Immigrant Harald Zieger

Don't know if I will attend all day with kids in tow. I have no idea how they are going to take to it. Should be nice weather for it though.

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Update: I had a fun time at the tea party and my kids had plenty of snacks and Ice Cream.

My favorite speakers were Rich Apuzzo and DakLak Do. I booed Mean Jean Schmidt.

The Taxman, Gordon Gecko went as well. He put the crowd at around 10,000.

The Cincinnati Enquirer put the crowd at over 6,000.

The offical Cincinnati Tea Party site claims 18,000.

This apparently came from the Sheriff, quoted in the Middletown Journal:

The crowd continued to grow throughout the afternoon, and an estimated 18,000 people had come together at the event’s peak, according to Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones.

Jones said the crowd Saturday nearly doubled that of the Tea Party’s event he witnessed in Columbus, which drew an estimated 10,000 people to the state’s capital in April.

Oxford Press repeated 18,000.

Channel 12: "Largest Tea Party Event in the Region, 18,000.

My brother was there early and had to leave. His estimate was 6000+ and growing. I got there after he left, and I would have put the estimate in around Mr. Geckos at 10k. My wife however claims it was easily 16-20k.

So there you have it, clear as mud. I do understand that politics come into play when it comes to crowd estimates. Supporters want the largest possible number, detractors want the smallest and most insignificant number. Does the Sheriff have an agenda? Does the Enquirer? Do they both.

My honest bet would be the Cincinnati Enquirer was way too low, and that the Sheriff was way too high. But I don't do this for a living, and both of those people would be better than I in acessing crowd size. So why does one say 6k and another 18k. That is a difference in order of magnitude.

And you can tell from the following email that the 18k number is something the Cincinnati Tea Party is going to tout big time.

Update 2:

Email from the Cincinnati Tea Party

Dear Fellow Citizens and Taxpayers,


This is the first of two email that I'll send today. I need to get some information together on the Washington DC rally next week.

First, a wrapup of yesterday's events. The first Voice of America Rally was held at the Voice of America Museum in West Chester. According to Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones, the crowd was almost double the 10,000 that attended the Columbus Rally on 8/1. He estimated the crowd size at about 18,000 as more people were still streaming in.

This would make it the largest in Ohio, the largest in the Midwest, and in the top 10 or so nationally so far this year. This is pretty impressive as the ones that I know about are in much bigger cities than Cincinnati and Dayton like Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.

18,000 is a number normally reserved for sporting events and presidential appearances.

To put this in perspective, this is the paid (not actual) attendance at the last Reds weekday home games:

9/2 - 11,541
9/1 - 10,304
8/31 - 9,087
8/31 - 13,051

I struggle to find the words to describe how amazing the event was. However, I can tell you that it was tremendously inspiring that so many people came on a holiday weekend.

They were treated to a great lineup of speakers and a town hall that exceeded all expectations. The representatives and John Kasich were subjected to a series of difficult questions that put them on the spot. Many videos are already up on Youtube and we're looking to get a list together that we can share on our web site.

The media covered it well in general, but some did a very poor job. I didn't see the Fox19 story on the news, but the article on their web site was terrible. The headline said we drew opposition at another event which was true. The problem is that they only got 20 people which meant we outnumbered them 900-1. I wrote a quick blog post last night with screenshots of the article. If you were there, give them a call at 513-421-1919 and let them know what you think of them being so deceptive.

The Enquirer also got it wrong. I am glad they highlighted the tough nature of the questions, but the reporter was clearly deceptive about the size. At one point, he asked our VP - National Affairs and Strategy, Justin Binik-Thomas, for a crowd estimate. Justin provided the 18,000 number given by Sheriff Jones and was told that the reporter did not believe it. Justin then brought the reporter to see Sheriff Jones where he repeated 18,000. Clearly the reporter is entitled to his own opinion, but he failed by not reporting his interaction with the Sheriff and going with his own unsubstantiated number. Again, if you were at the event, I suggest you contact the reporter, Steve Kemme - skemme@enquirer.com.

Sphere: Related Content

Death Panels In The UK

From the London Telegraph:

Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors have warned.

Some exerpts:

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Designed to reduce paitent suffering for sure!

Dr Hargreaves...added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.

“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”...

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

But I bet it saves dollars and pension benefits!

Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.

In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.

To put those numbers another way, one in every six deaths in the United Kingdom came about after deep sedation. Considering they like to put so many people under, they probably don't get too many nagging patient complaints.

I SEE DEAD PEOPLE! Sphere: Related Content

George Will is Against the War

Afghanistan: Time to Stop Nation-Building

Adm. Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent re-establishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000 to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

From a cost/benefit standpoint, I don't see the material benefits from staying in Afghanistan as opposed to the tremendous costs associated with the endeavor.

I think it is the wrong war for us to be in. Iraq had a chance to be something successful. They have roads, indoor plumbing, telephone lines, newspapers and television. They have universities and a highly literate populace. And they have the oil wealth to make it all so much more. Iraq could be quite a country one day. Afghanistan will be in the stone age right after we leave.

A quote I liked from Will's article:

This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."

Walking through the Old Testament is one way to put it. Afghanistan appears to have a timeless quality. It is as it was at the begining of time, and it shall be until the end of time. No amount of American blood and treasure will make much of a difference.

I want out of Afghanistan.

Rich Lowry says No.
Robert Stacy McCain has no use for the Cut and Run Bridage
Bill Kristol: "Will is urging retreat, and accepting defeat."

It would be nice for someone somewhere to define what victory in Afghanistan would look like. At what cost in blood and treasure would this be possible? Do we need to stay there for 12 more years and spend another trillion? What if it is 15 years and 3 trillion? We live in a world of scarce resources. Is there any limit where one can say why not just choose a different path?

I think Afghanistan is not worth it. We simply can't afford it. The upside in Afghanistan is what? The potential is where? Might as well just flush dollars down the toilet. Sphere: Related Content

Reagan Remix

From Glenn Beck

Reagan Audio - Don't say we weren't warned



I approve of this message. Sphere: Related Content

Russia Nukes Berlin. What happens with a nuclear attack on Berlin?

What happens if Russia nukes Berlin? What do we do? Do we promise to nuke them back? What happened to mutually assured destruction?

Is that theory still in place? If Russia attacks Germany do we have an obligation to respond? I don't know. It isn't clear to me.

Growing up we had allies and we had enemies. If Russia attacked West Germany we were bound to attack them back. After the "end of history" things seem murky. What happens if Russia would attack now?

What if Iran nukes Israel? Israel is our friend and ally. What countries that are our friends do we have pledges to defend? Do we know? Does it change? Should their be a list.

If we our obligated to strike against a foe shouldn’t that be spelled out before hand. Isn’t that the way mutually assured destruction works?

What countries are we obliged to defend at this point? If London was attacked, I think we would respond. But are we obligated? Have we made the pledge? If Berlin was attacked, I think we would also respond.

What if Israel is attacked? I am not sure what happens. Do we have an SOP? A standard operation procedure? Do we have rules? I don’t think we do. Maybe if Iran nuked Berlin we wouldn’t do anything but use diplomacy to ask them not to bomb anyone else.

It used to be that the people with nukes knew full well what would happen if they used them. Now it seems as if we are in a time where nobody knows what the American response would be. If you think about that, it defies mutual assured destruction tenants. They may think they can get away with it. Who is going to call them on it after the fact? The first response may to be to limit any more nuclear shots.

We used to have a policy that I understood and was taught in schools. Now I don’t think we have a policy. I think that is dangerous. We are not prepared to act upon the next Nuke fired. We used to have a plan, tomorrow we have none. Sphere: Related Content

Post Racial America

Via Gateway Pundit

This is a letter from the attorney of Kenneth Gladney. Kenneth Gladney happens to be conservative black man who was attacked by SEIU union thugs at a town hall meeting in St. Louis.

August 7, 2009

Dear Mr. Hennessy:

I am Kenneth Gladney’s attorney. Kenneth was attacked on the evening of August 6, 2009 at Rep. Russ Carnahan’s town hall meeting in South St. Louis County. I was at the town hall meeting as well and witnessed the events leading up to the attack of Kenneth. Kenneth was approached by an SEIU representative as Kenneth was handing out “Don’t Tread on Me” flags to other conservatives. The SEIU representative demanded to know why a black man was handing out these flags. The SEIU member used a racial slur against Kenneth, then punched him in the face. Kenneth fell to the ground. Another SEIU member yelled racial epithets at Kenneth as he kicked him in the head and back. Kenneth was also brutally attacked by one other male SEIU member and an unidentified woman. The three men were clearly SEIU members, as they were wearing T-shirts with the SEIU logo.

Kenneth was beaten badly. One assailant fled on foot; three others were arrested. Kenneth was admitted to St. John’s Mercy Medical Center emergency room, where he was treated for his numerous injuries. Kenneth was merely expressing his freedom of speech by handing out the flags. In fact, he merely asked people as they exited the town hall meeting whether they would like a flag. He in no way provoked any argument or altercation, as evidenced by the fact that three assailants were arrested.

We hope that Kenneth fully recovers from his injuries; however, he is in great pain at this time. We will be pursuing legal action at our discretion. This was a truly senseless hate crime carried out by racist union thugs. Regretfully, Representative Carnahan’s statements blaming Kenneth for being a disruptive force are wholly untrue and slanderous. We would like to think that an elected official in Representative Carnahan’s position would gather accurate information before carelessly rushing to judgment.

Kenneth supports conservative ideals, although he subscribes to no particular political party. We are calling on the SEIU, Representative Carnahan, and President Obama to condemn the racist actions of these union thugs. In the days to come, we will be investigating whether these thugs are working at the behest of Representative Carnahan and how strong their alliances to various organizations–such as ACORN–may be.

We hope the St. Louis Tea Party and tea party organizations around the country will protest Representative Carnahan’s offices and also protest SEIU offices in every major city across the U.S. These Democratic strong-arm tactics must end now.

Regards,

Attorney David B. Brown

Not that anyone reads this, but I join the protest on behalf of Kenneth and his legal council.

Here is some video from the event.



Edit: I am new to posting video and I think it did something with my comments section. Sphere: Related Content