Yes, Prof. Jacobson, Palin for president in 2012

Over the summer of 2008 during the presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s policies drove me out of the Democratic party, but it wasn’t until John McCain announced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate that I felt confident I had someplace to go. I didn’t vote for John McCain. I voted for Sarah Palin. She is a self-made woman, had taken on her own party over corruption — and won!, and she had executive branch experience — all of which made her significantly more qualified to be president than McCain, Obama and Biden put together. I considered the prospect that she would be only a heartbeat away from the presidency, if McCain won, to be a feature, not a bug.

I support Sarah Palin for president in 2012. She always appeals to the best in people and has an uncanny knack for overcoming her enemies. Her understanding of fiscal conservatism and the economic theory behind it is solid and she knows how to put those principles into action. She supports securing our borders. Our nation’s enemies who take her measure will know better than to test her. We need a president with those qualities to restore America’s economy and position as a world leader.

I am joyful tonight to see that Prof. Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection, a staunch defender of Gov. Palin, has had his own epiphany about her qualifications for defeating Obama and becoming president in 2012:

I’ve put forth the proposition that the best way to defeat Obama is to put forward a conservative but non-controversial candidate who will keep the election focused on Obama. Because the Obama record and devolving persona are the equivalent of a death panel for Obama’s reelection.

And nothing matters more than defeating Obama because the damage he is doing to the country is generational.

But as I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least. And whether that is just as likely to be successful in defeating Obama as the “safe” route.

I still like Camille Paglia’s defense of Palin in October 2008, and Paglia’s observation of how disruptive Palin was to standard liberal doctrine:

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend.

And also Paglia’s assessment of the Democratic Party (notwithstanding her adoration of Barack Obama at the time) and how Palin hatred fit into that scheme:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Nothing and no one brings out the worst in the Democratic Party, in the liberal media, entertainment and academic establishments, and in the left-wing blogosphere, as does Sarah Palin. Bringing out this worst may be the path to a lasting, generational conservative victory.

Maybe this is the battle which needs to be joined, once and for all.

The path forward, or just obsession?

I recommend that my dear gentle readers read the whole post. And to Prof. Jacobson, I say, yes! This is EXACTLY the battle that needs to be joined and drafting Sarah Palin as the Republican candidate for president is, indeed, the path forward. There’s no avoiding a knock-down, drag-out battle because Obama is a Chicago Democrat and that’s how he fights. The only successful weapon he ever had against Gov. Palin was to lie about her. Now Gov. Palin is getting her own story out through her books, Facebook, Twitter, speeches, appearances on Fox News and her show on Alaska, where she routinely pwns Obama. So lies are not going to work any more. Gov. Palin is not only our best candidate for president, she’s also the one who knows how to win AND the only one that the Obama machine will never figure out how to defeat.

Da Techguy debuts today on da radio

Conservative blogger Peter Ingemi, aka Da Tech Guy, debuts his news and interview show on WRCN-AM 830 in Worcester, Massachusetts, at 5 pm today, Nov. 20. Peter is determined to cover stories of importance to conservatives, especially the ones that the mainstream media bury. You can listen and participate online if you are not in range of the station’s broadcast signal — click the station’s link for information on how to do that. You also can call the show live at 508-438-0965. The show’s e-mail address is datechguyondaradio at gmail dot com. Dear Stacy McCain is one of Da Tech Guy’s first guests and has the back story.

Next Saturday Peter’s show goes to its regular time slot of 9 pm. However, the shows slated for 12/4 and 12/11 will be pre-empted by UMASS Basketball games, so those shows will be at 5 pm. The shows will be live, except for the Christmas show, which will be taped.

Peter identifies his target market as being comprised of the following:

1. Political Junkies: Since the show will be one is a block of 4-5 radio shows that will be building on each other so people interested in local and state issues already listening will be led into the new show as part of the block. Unless pre-empted by College Basketball it is scheduled as the 4th show in the sequence.

2. Tea Party/Conservative Activists in the area:  I am well known in local tea party and Republican circles having covered and/or interviewed the major players on multiple occasions They have a natural interest in the show and have been following the show Conservatively Speaking where I started as a guest and rose to 3rd banana.

3. Bloggers and blog readers: as bloggers come onto the show their reader notified that they will be on will be attracted to the show to hear the people they read and of course attracted to the chance to call in and perhaps say a word to the blogger they have only known via video or text.

4. [Politicians and advocacy groups who need to be] Talking to New Hampshire: A 50,000 watt political show that covers New Hampshire during the 2011/2012 primary/ election season would seem to be the thing to follow. Especially if you are part of an advocacy group that wants to prepare the ground via ads or commentary.

Peter is not being paid by the radio station to do the show. However, he gets to keep the money he makes by selling advertising time and his rates are very reasonable.

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor on the brain and pure bliss consciousness

This video is neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor‘s talk at the TED conference on Feb. 27, 2008, on her experience of a hemorrhagic stroke in 1996. You may relate better to some posts I’m planning if you have listened to this speech first. I plan to refer to it when I write about my own experience of working since April 2003 to recover from hypoxic brain injury and regain executive function, my weight loss program and the process of gaining higher states of consciousness (which really and truly exist).

I’ve struggled with whether to tell my story because it is so very painful for me to write about. I would prefer to be telling it after having reached the goals I’ve set for myself. But some of my dear gentle regular commenters are asking me about it now, one or two because they have similar challenges. I am concerned about what could happen to them if I delay. Nearly all the family members, friends and acquaintances I’ve spoken to after I recognized their symptoms of sleep apnea got tested and treated and were joyful about how much better they felt. One, however, a fit ex-Marine, did not and died in his sleep at the age of 49. So, since lives are at stake, it seems better to trust that if some people are asking for my story now, then now is the time to tell it. Let it begin as a journey story.

P.S.

The experience Dr. Taylor refers to in her talk as “La-la Land” is pure bliss consciousness. I will be explaining in future posts how to have it without the risk and inconvenience of a brain injury. In fact, the technology for culturing the brain’s ability to maintain the experience of pure bliss consciousness at all times, waking and sleeping, is what I’ve been using to heal. As I’ll explain, Dr. Taylor’s story has given me a better intuitive model for how it works.

Are fiscal conservatives crazy, or liars — or both?

I swear I thought I linked the following video when I first saw it a week or so ago, but Instapundit linked it yesterday and I didn’t — until now:

The point of the video is that regulations — including residential zoning laws — now place such a high threshold on going into business as an entrepreneur and then hassle small businesses so much that government is now actively killing jobs and destroying wealth creation in the very womb.

So, with Republicans elected as fiscal conservatives ready to take over the purse strings in the House of Representatives in January, thanks to their promises to end our economic depression and create jobs, what have they jumped on as their top priorities?:

  1. Job one looks like a purely social conservative agenda of ensuring second-class citizenship for gays and the right of the majority to impose their religion on everyone else. It is legitimate in a country born of the fight for individual liberty to coerce people to do things you have not been able to persuade them to do.
  2. Kill the useless eaters. Eliminate Medicaid and Medicare, which serve the most vulnerable members of society, most of whom cannot work. They are an intolerable burden and deserve to die.

I wonder if this is why we are called “Rethuglicans”? Contra Jim DeMint and John Hawkins, it’s starting to look to me like there is really no such thing as the fiscal conservative/social conservative. For one thing, the first is pro-liberty and the latter is most vehemently anti-liberty, especially regarding freedom of religion and equality for women and gays. The two inherently do not go together. And since a startling number of newly elected fiscal conservatives are ripping off their masks to reveal they intend to pursue the agenda of social conservatives as their priority, it’s reasonable to consider the possibility the ones doing that were liars all along.

However, supposing that the newly-elected fiscal conservatives are indeed honest and sincere, here’s what they doing that is crazy, now they will be ascendant in the House:

  1. Scaring the living hell out of the majority of the populace by vowing to balance the budget by gutting or eliminating the programs that mostly assist people who cannot work: kill the useless eaters. If you really, really, really, REALLY want people to stick like barnacles where they are AND to hate you with a passion, start by scaring them.
  2. Making sure people feel trapped and hopeless by telling them they must endure great pain and hardship for the rest of their lives because of their enemies, the grievance groups, and the useless eaters.

One definition of crazy is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different result. The “same thing” Republicans are doing is scaring people and focusing only on hardships and austerities, mostly for people who aren’t them. It’s crazy because it makes it simple for Democrats to position themselves as Santa Claus, even though they’re Stalin. If you want to lead people to a goal, the reason you use a carrot is that people will go straight for the carrot. The reason you don’t use a stick is that people will scatter and run in every direction that takes them away from the stick.

When the goal is to improve your financial situation, you can do it two ways: cut expenses and increase your income. If you increase your income enough, the only reasons you will have to cut expenses are positive ones: changes in your needs and priorities.

Fiscal conservatism is the REAL Santa Claus because it creates the structure required for the largest number of people to make the most of themselves and fulfill their dreams.

So, the objectives that fiscal conservatives can set that would be sane and honest — that is, consistent with the real values of fiscal conservatism — are the ones that increase our income, that create wealth.

In short, newly-elected fiscal conservatives, GET BUSY MAKING SURE CHUCK CAN GET HIS BUSINESS OFF THE GROUND!!!

Ace, let’s have a chat about DADT

Over at Ace of Spades HQ, from time-to-time recently Ace has been pondering issues of gay equality, such as gay marriage and DADT (“don’t ask, don’t tell”). While he doesn’t see gay and lesbian people as truly human — with unalienable rights and all and the freedom from being forced by government to follow religious beliefs that are not their own — he usually wrestles with the issues in a reasonable way that is rare in Right Blogosphere.

To summarize DADT news this week, on Thursday the Washington Post published a story that its reporters had interviewed two sources who had read the Pentagon report on whether repealing DADT would impair the military’s ability to fulfill its mission that was due to be released on Dec. 1. Short version: no, it won’t. WaPo also published reactions from the usual suspects, including this one from Alexander Nicholson, executive director of Servicemembers United:

“These results confirm what those of us who actually know the modern military, especially the rank and file troops, have said all along. The men and women of America’s armed forces are professionals who are capable of handling this policy change. In light of these findings, as well as the Secretary of Defense’s recent call for Senate action on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ during the lame duck session, there is no longer any excuse for failing to bring the defense authorization bill back up during the first week of the post-election legislative session.”

For perspective, bear in mind that convicted rapists, felons, illegal aliens and Muslims, who are commanded to kill or subjugate all non-Muslims, all are allowed to serve in the U.S. military.

On Friday the Supreme Court rejected a request by the Log Cabin Republicans, the right-wing gay group that is challenging DADT in court, to halt enforcement of DADT while appeals of a district court decision in favor of the Log Cabin Republicans (and against DADT) proceed. As Ed Morrissey notes at Hot Air, this is not so bad because it will prevent the destruction of the careers of service members who “told” under the protection of the district court decision if it is reversed by the Supreme Court.

So after reading Ed’s post at Hot Air, Ace wrote a DADT post that concludes as follows:

And I don’t think critics of the policy are giving sufficient thought to what may happen in many of the people inclined to military service decide it no longer represents their values.

Critics may say “But that puts the government behind a policy of discrimination!” Possibly, yeah; there is a strong argument that that’s the case. And maybe the end of DADT will turn out to be a big nothingburger (as the desegregation of the military was, mostly, despite similar concerns being voiced at the time).

Still. The guys who make up the club should have most of the say about the rules of the club. I really doubt that many of the policy’s critics are willing to sign up to make up for drops in recruitment, should that come to pass.

Ace then published in a separate post selected comments by current and former servicemembers opposed to the repeal of DADT. I’m writing this post mostly because of the degree of disconnect between what gays seek by the repeal of DADT and the right to serve openly and what Ace’s commenters think gays are seeking.

But first let me tell Ace how the repeal of DADT really will turn out to be a big “nothingburger”: when gay and lesbian service members can serve openly, and get to know their colleagues as whole people just the way straight people do while following all the same rules of conduct, then everyone else will learn their fears were baseless. It’s not going to take very long.

In fact, I suspect the real reasons that anti-gay groups have worked so hard to demonize gays and create great horrors in straight people’s minds about repealing DADT is that serving in the military is noble and bolsters the claim of gays to equality. Also, it will greatly increase the number of straight people who get to know and respect someone who is openly gay or lesbian, which will make us that much harder to demonize in the future.

For Ace’s commenters, let me say that the reason that lesbians and gays want to serve openly in the military is a simple one: they just want to be honest about their lives in the same way that straight people are allowed to be and they are willing to obey the same rules of conduct. The right to be honest about your life means that you can connect to others and create rapport by talking about going on a date, or being able to introduce your friends to your life partner. If you don’t think that having to hide every word and detail of your life that could reveal your sexual orientation — that being forced to disguise, suppress, hide and lie about who you are — is not a heavy and damaging burden, then you try it for a month.

Ace also fretted that if gays can serve openly, then enlistments might fall because enlistees don’t mind being told to pound sand if they object to serving with rapists, felons, illegal immigrants and Muslims required to kill/subjugate ALL unbelievers, but the mere knowledge they could be required to serve in the presence of a gay person would utterly unhinge them and cause them to flee from the recruiter’s office.

Well, my observation is that gays and lesbians are an unusually altruistic lot and I believe that the percentage of gays and lesbians who enlist is going to be significantly higher than our supposed proportion of the U.S. population. Another factor is the number of gay and lesbian teens who face homelessness if their parents discover they are gay — repeal of DADT would give them the option to enlist: military service is one of the few jobs now open to 18-year-olds that offers them enough money to live on, great benefits and career training. In fact, come to think of it, since gays and lesbians still face a great deal of workplace discrimination in the civilian marketplace, when the military services stop discriminating they are going to become one of the most attractive employers in the marketplace for gays and lesbians young enough to serve.

As for whether gays and lesbians are patriotic enough to want to serve in the military — yes, yes, we are. One of the most poignant aspects I witnessed at last year’s march on Washington for gay equality was that almost every speaker spoke with great love of America mixed with hurt and bewilderment at “unalienable rights” and “liberty and justice for all” somehow not applying to us. Arabic translator Lt. Dan Choi, who spoke at the march, was recently discharged due to “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and explains here why he enlisted and why he told (I don’t remember if he mentions it in this interview, but one reason he told is he’s a preacher’s kid and was raised to be honest):

P.S.

I also learned at the Oct. 2009 march for gay equality that Katharine Lee Bates, who wrote “America the Beautiful,” was a lesbian.

Godless gays suck at godlessness

Schedule for the February 2011 "Creating Change" conference held by the NGLTF includes two worship services.

Who knew? Godless gays apparently not so godless.

“Creating Change” is an annual conference organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Oh, and a reminder: the modern movement for gay equality began on Oct. 6, 1968, with the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church by gay Baptist evangelical minister, Troy Perry.

Why Obama will win in 2012 and Democrats will take back Congress

Here’s why in three words: bait and switch. Get elected as fiscal conservatives, then the instant you’re sworn in, rip off that liberty-lovin’, budget balancin’ mask to reveal the only agenda you really care about: using the coercive powers of government to impose your religion on everyone else in joyful anticipation of that blessed day when your religion IS the only law of the land. This is why social conservatism is the antithesis of fiscal conservatism: it is anti-liberty.

To illustrate this point, conservative Republicans in North Carolina are not making their state’s economy their first priority. That can wait. No, their first order of business is to legislate even more inequality for lesbians and gays into their state constitution according to an AP piece in the Greensboro News-Record:

The economy dominated the fall campaign, but leaders among North Carolina’s social conservatives believe the Republican sweep at the legislature should finally permit a vote on a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast that hasn’t approved an amendment restricting marriage to one man and one woman. Democratic leadership in the legislature has refused to consider GOP-penned bills on the issue for several years, and gay rights organizations have offered strong opposition to what it called imprinting discrimination permanently into state law.

Now, with Republicans solidly in the majority in the General Assembly starting this January for the first time in more than a century, chances for a vote in the House and Senate are fairly strong, GOP lawmakers said.

Getting elected as fiscal conservatives and then governing as social conservatives looks to me like the reason that government and spending both grow when conservatives are in power. The paradox that fiscal conservatives are pro-liberty while social conservatives oppose liberty is why so many people on the Left and independents, who OUGHT to be conservatives based on their financial best interests, cannot make sense of conservatism and reject it altogether. Well, that and the fact that fiscal conservatives open every conversation with a Leftist by declaring that the best way to get the federal budget under control is to eliminate Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and the Internal Revenue Service — without a word of explanation of the positive principles behind these proposals. This means that what Leftists hear is, “The best way to get the federal budget under control is to kill the disabled, kill the elderly, impoverish the elderly and free the rich from paying taxes.” For some reason, that makes Leftists love their big government programs more than ever.

Update, 11/12/10, Fri.: Dear Roger Simon asked a couple of days ago, “Is liberalism dead?” If the Republicans we elected were really fiscal conservatives, then, yes — but — bait-and-switch, bait-and-switch — so … no, not by a long shot.

Jonah Goldberg was pondering the nature of conservatives in September (boldfacing mine):

Most conservatives believe in free enterprise, strong national defense, and traditional values (variously defined). To be sure, there is a distinct libertarian faction on the right. But I don’t know that there’s a strong national-defense faction that would otherwise be in the Democratic fold (I can think of a few individuals about whom that is true — Paul Wolfowitz, for example).

Last, Bai writes that Republicans coalesced around anti-Communism. That’s true. But it would be just as true to say that anti-Communists coalesced around being Republicans. The Republican Party became the home of anti-Communists, social conservatives, and free marketers not because that’s what Republicans “are” but because that was the only place for such people to go. Seventy years ago, people of such views were scattered across both parties. As those issues came to the fore, the GOP was taken over by conservatives while the Democrats, over time, became less hospitable to them.

It looks to me like the social conservatives who took over the GOP did a lot to create the current demographics of the Democrats, too, by driving out gays, women and Jews — the majority of whom would be better served by the policies of fiscal conservatism because becoming an entrepreneur is a great way to succeed in spite of discrimination. (I’m not sure if blacks were driven out of the Right by social conservatives as much as they were seduced to the Left by the easy money of the Great Society welfare system and then kept in thrall by the grievance mongers of the race hustling industry. It occurs to me now that the grievance mongers fall into two camps: black ones who dream of domination and nation-building; and white ones — think ACORN — dreaming of using blacks as their pawns in the Cloward-Piven strategy to destroy capitalism to make way for a Leftist utopia.)