Joe Klein: pretty damn stoked over indebting future generations

We freely admit that we didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the special election up in NY-26 where Democrat Kathy Hochul won in a solidly Republican district and which was alleged to be a referendum on Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan. (For why that may not have been so, check out Left Coast Rebel's assessment, here)

With the apparent national implications of this race, of course, it has to be picked apart nine ways to Sunday by the punditry.

To wit, liberal pundit Joe Klein was yukkin' it up with that hack Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC a couple of nights ago and having a little fun with the never-to-be-mentioned-in-polite-company "S" word. Click here for the exchange.

"It was a victory for socialism," TIME's Joe Klein said of last night's election result in NY-26. A Democrat won a special election to fill a vacancy in the U.S. House from a very conservative district in New York.

"For the last two years, Republicans have been lambasting Barack Obama who is right in the middle of the political spectrum, a mild liberal, as being a wild-eyed socialist. Well, there ain't anything that he has proposed that is purely socialistic as our Medicare program; a single payer program run by the government. And the folks love it," Klein also said.

Yes, the folks love it and it's going broke, Joe.


Yeah, ol' Joe was being facetious perhaps but it's good to know that both he and O'Donnell were so tickled over a victory for the status quo, a victory for doing absolutely nothing about the state of our unsustainable obligations and entitlement programs be it Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid or state employee union pension and benefit programs. Klein and O'Donnell: definetely not math majors.

Both parties have been whistling past the graveyard for years now with respect to this looming and monumental problem and yet when someone like President Bush merely offers up privatizing a max of 10% of one's Social Security account, much of the public and the whole of the political class went absolutely bonkers - for purely political reasons, for the most part, but bonkers none the less which resulted in a silencing of any further debate on the matter.

Call it scare tactics, call it fringe politics that are exploiting people's fears... call it what you want but it's well past high time to start having these adult conversations about our entitlements while the establishment in both parties continue their whistling.



You know, it's funny: "reform" has such a positive political connotation on about everthing (immigration, Wall St., campaign finance, (re-)districting... you name it) except when it comes to "entitlement". That has to change - the math demands it.

Liberal woman disturbed by liberals' treatment of women

Kirsten Powers, no conservative she, pens a column for the Daily Beast on the recent outbreaks of misogynistic and bigoted behavior displayed by her fellow libs.


Before we get to Powers' pull-a-graph, however, we want to show you something that happened just after Powers' article was published proving that it's tough to keep current with all this stuff:



(If embed no worky, go here)





Dancing....? Masters...?


Damn, Larry. Why not just drop any pretext of subtlety and go straight to shuckin' and jivin'? Much more colorful, wouldn't you say?


Anyway, here's Powers and, unfortunately, a washed-up and irrelevant "feminist", Gloria Steinem:

Yes, sexism matters—as does gender. But whereas you never hear anyone claim that men should vote a particular way because of their gender, feminists have no trouble treating women like pre-schoolers who have to be herded into the right camp, a camp that is apparently preordained at birth. In an interview with Katie Couric last year, Gloria Steinem said that where conservative women stand “is squarely against what most women need and want. If [women] still vote for them, they are voting against themselves, which is quite tragic to me.”

The liberal-left is scared witless and this lashing out is not unlike a cornered animal emoting in basic survival mode. And what is at the core of this acting out is a plantation mentality that the liberal-left has towards women and minorities.

This hostility exhibited towards those that wander off reservation is borne of a mindset of intellectual and moral superiority. How else does one explain ObamaCare and the overall statist agenda of the liberal-left?:

You are too stupid and not to be trusted to make the proper health care decisions on your own.

You see, women and minorities owe their current standing to the liberal-left and to display any sort of independent thinking that is not in lock-step with the establishment is not showing the warranted fealty and is viewed as tantamount to an insurrection. The keeper/minder mentality is at the core of the liberal-left's treatment of women and minorities.

While we'll be looking hard for signs of extremism and bigotry at the tea party rally today up in Oceanside, we trust many of you will have a much easier time of it by simply turning on your T.V.

"Lions and Tigers and... Obama on Fox, Oh My!"

All this hot, humid weather and football this weekend was reminiscent of August. Former West Wing writer-producer, Lawrence O’Donnell (of whom we had some thoughts) was musing on things August with a screen-play here depicting a scenario where Obama and Clinton both arrive in Denver at the Democratic National Convention lacking the necessary delegate votes to secure the nomination. Good read with a short story-like twist at the end.

Also, Obama went on Fox News today for an interview that will air tomorrow and the Kos-ters aren’t too happy. (Read article and comments here for the wailing and gnashing of teeth.) This boycotting of Fox News by the leading Democratic candidates never made any sense to us. It made them appear petty, juvenile and contemptible of Fox viewers.

Regardless of your opinion of the network, why would you freeze-out a major cable outlet and thus deprive yourself exposure to millions of people? Were we running for any sort of high profile office, we could never see ourselves turning down an opportunity to pitch ourselves to the hundreds of Air America listeners out there merely because we had political differences with the network. That’s just bad campaigning.

If you see this man coming towards you…. Run!

Click here for segment of a McLaughlin group roundtable debate on Romney’s Mormonism speech. Its over 9 minutes long but you only need to see to the first 3 or 4 minutes to see what a insecure grown-up, who was beat up by a Mormon as a kid and then later dumped by a Mormon chick as a 23 yr. old, acts and sounds like.

Lawrence O’Donnell an MSNBC political analyst and a person who has a history of untoward behavior on the talkies, kind of loses it by latching on to what he alleges as Mormonism’s (former) support of slavery like a hungry dog onto a meat bone. He just wouldn’t let it go and wound up looking the ass because of it.

Pat Buchanan’s facial expression during this tirade is classic. Head cocked to one side and eyes slightly squinted with a “Dude, what are you talking about?” expression on his face. Buchanan parries nicely by retorting, “My grandfather owned slaves”, as in “Are you going to hold that against me?”

To cap it all off, O’Donnell was interviewed later by Hugh Hewitt about his criticism of Mormonism but the lack of same regarding Islam. Here’s the exchange:

HH: Would you say the same things about Mohammed as you just said about Joseph Smith?
LO’D: Oh, well, I’m afraid of what the…that’s where I’m really afraid. I would like to criticize Islam much more than I do publicly, but I’m afraid for my life if I do.
HH: Well, that’s candid.
LO’D: Mormons are the nicest people in the world. They’re not going to ever…
HH: So you can be bigoted towards Mormons, because they’ll just send you a strudel.
LO’D: They’ll never take a shot at me. Those other people, I’m not going to say a word about them.
HH: They’ll send you a strudel. The Mormons will bake you a cake and be nice to you.
LO’D: I agree.
HH: Lawrence O’Donnell, I appreciate your candor. (thanks to Hot Air)

What a piece (of work), this guy. In a nutshell, there’s all you really need to know about the content of the character and the vertebral fortitude of those residing in the newsrooms and occupying the teleprompter pulpits in this country.

We still don’t know who we’re voting for in the Republican primaries but Romney seems to be pissing-off the right people so we definitely haven’t tossed him out yet.