Unspinning

With high gas prices, the implosion of the housing bubble, a credit crunch, and rising unemployment, the Left have some actual bad economic news now to harp and nitpick over on behalf of their seven-year long hyperbolic howling that the Republican Bush Administration has "destroyed" the economy.

The economy-bashing began with the recession in 2001, and kept going strong throughout the recovery and aggressive expansion that transformed the skylines of American cities and put SUVs in many garages, aragula stews in many pots, Starbuck's coffees in many hands, flat-screen plasma televisions on many living room walls, and the Internet at most every fingertip.

And yet the last eight years have been characterized as some kind of free fall from the supposed paradise of the Clinton Era-- which itself had supposedly transformed the economy of the preceding Reagan-Bush 41 Dark Ages into an economic Rennaissance.

However, to say that America was "transformed" during the rare Democratic executive leadership from 1992-2000--as the Clintons and the Democrats peddle-- is not accurate.

The Reagan-Bush 41 years themselves were transformative, bringing us out of the Post-Vietnam doldrums and climaxing with the dramatic--and bloodless--implosion of the Soviet Union, leaving the United States of America the sole-surviving Super Power and the wealthiest and undisputed leader of the Free World.

That was the situation Bill Clinton inherited-- with a mild recession he characterized during the campaign as "The Worst Since The Great Depression" already over and the recovery underway before he even took office.

But it would take many years to sweep up the pieces of the Cold War and of renovating and repositioning to set the globalized stage for the new era we live in now (though the Berlin Wall came down at the start of Bush 41's term, the Soviet Union would be officially declared dead at the start of Clinton's first term).

The economy--or "New Economy," as Clinton himself correctly identified it--in tandem with the Post-Cold War restructuring of a geopolitical "New World Order" (as post-Gulf War Bush 41 identified it) was in the process of transforming-- or transitioning-- throughout the 1990s.

The real driver of the economic boom in the final years of the transitive 1990s--i.e. the Technological Revolution, seeded well before 1992-- rather quietly spread its roots underground through most of the decade.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton took the opportunity of the respite between the two epochs to celebrate himself (having the stage practically all to himself, though he had to share the limelight at times with the likes of Madonna-In-Her-Prime and O.J. Simpson), with an adoring media and world enabling the orgiastic indulgence.

All along the seedling--conceived in the Department of Defense many years before and cultivated in Silicon Valley--having taken firm root, sprouted and grew beneath the radar...

...and then sprung skyward near the end of the second term, surprising everyone how majestic the tree was.

And thanks primarily to the husbandry of Bill for it.

That's private citizen Bill Gates.

And here we are, having built treehouses in it.

We enjoy an ability to communicate that was unimaginable a decade ago. Our ways of life have been transformed well beyond the luxury of blogging and include the ability to instantly access news of the world, entire libraries of information, department stores for shopping, and even our bank accounts 24/7 at our fingertips, all without leaving our homes (or our chairs, for that matter).

That is a profound, transformative sea-change for humanity at-large that is on par with previous revolutions like the Agricultural and Industrial in significance for human history (understand that, and appreciate the time you live in with its unprecedented bounties and benefits).

Self-conscious that he had nothing to do with this tree--which was the bloom of the economic boom at the end of the 1990's-- but needful of attention and credit, to this day Clinton tries to inject himself into its fruition by saying that his 1993 historically-huge tax-hike was responsible for "paving the way" because it lowered interest rates.

That's a lie. Interest rates jumped immediately upon enactment of the tax-hike, and he must know that.

His vice president and presidential aspirant Al Gore also tried to inject himself into the fruition by saying that he "invented the Internet."

Both injections indicate that they both knew that they were really on the sidelines and wanted some credit for the real action on the entrepreneurial field of private enterprise.

Nevertheless, it is only the Tech Boom at the end of the second term--and the bells and whistles echoing from the exuberance--that underlies the myth of an Eden--economical and otherwise-- that the Democrats invoke to this day to draw as a contrast to the Fall from it as caused by the Republican Bush's alleged multifarious Sins Against The Planet.

True transformation did indeed set in after 2001. The country-- and the world-- today is much different than it was during the 1990s decade, which was a brief--and often bizzare--interregnum between the end of the epic Cold War and the last millennium and the post-9/11 world at the beginning of the new one, which itself began with the economy suffering the blows of 9/11, the popping of the Tech bubble, and the mega-corporate scandals in the first year or two of the new Bush Administration, all paying the piper for the reckless, irrational excesses of "The Clinton Show" interregnum.

This picture of the Washington Monument undergoing renovation for years during the Clinton second term best symbolizes the transitive nature of the interregnum, a national adolescence for the country after two centuries of infancy and childhood, and now here wearing braces:



The unveiling of the strenghthened monument came with the adulthood of the Bush 43 Administration as the new millennium began, ready to take on real-world challenges-- well beyond the domestic disfunctions of government shutdowns and go-to-your-room impeachment, temper-tantrum compelled--and accordingly fleeting--military spectacles, and road trips and junkets abroad that are characteristic of adolescents (while bin Laden explicitly declared war on "the people of the United States"--twice--and, having observed the United States as being a "paper tiger," fearlessly planned 9/11 in full confidence).

Along with merciless--and expensive-- natural disasters on top of 9/11 and the rest, nevertheless, amazingly, by the end of Bush's two terms, the nation pulled out of the recession and embarked on a stellar recovery, confronting the enemy we are at war with on their own turf while re-capturing our status as the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world in the process, still at the vanguard of the Cause of Freedom, and dead serious about it.

We are still Ronald Reagan's "Shining City on a Hill," still are the favorite destination place of the world's poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and still lift our lamp beside the golden door.

The Left are liars. The Clinton era was an intermittent sideshow of reckless buffoonery that had the luck of finishing off just as the Tech Revolution took off and created wealth and an exuberance that saved Clinton from conviction and removal from office when Impeached for perjury, subornation of perjury, and obstruction of justice in a political--not jurisdictional--forum.

(When a real court of law got a hold of the case after he left office, it saw fit to suspend Clinton of his license to practice law; further punishment was plea-bargained away. The news of that was buried by 9/11, which occurred almost to the day of the verdict.).

To howlingly call President Bush "The Worst President in History!"--and a liar, no less--immediately on the heels of such a presidency can only be vindictive projection.

If the howlers are to be believed, America, as an entity, stopped producing, stopped getting wealthier, and went into negative territory across-the-board approximately eight years ago.

You keep hearing that the economy was "better" (the nation richer?) during the Clinton interregnum, and that the Bush 43 terms "took us backward" (i.e. made us a nation less rich than before?), that we, as a nation, in effect, are not better off than we were eight years ago.

But here is the simple, bottom line:

Nominal GNP (in billions of dollars)--

Jan-2001: $10,060.20

Apr-2008: $14,427.70

The nominal figures were used because the real one for April of 2008 is unavailable, but it should not significantly compromise the breadth of the differential between both nominal figures.

That's solid, macroeconomic growth--four trillion worth and then some, in fact-- and that growth is remarkable with all the catastrophic troubles and challenges the economy suffered in Bush's first term, which includes the aggressive talking-down of it throughout by vociferous, Bush-hating media outlets (on the mainstream airwaves and in the submarine blogosphere alike), which surely affects consumer confidence to one degree or another (which is a driving force of the economy, as the talking-downers must know).

Put another way, were the "In-The-Toilet Bush Economy" to lose four trillion dollars plus in GNP, it would be where the "Stratospheric Clinton Economy" was when Clinton left office.

The reality simply does not match the rhetoric.

There is a slowdown underway, but that follows every boom (a boom that was spitefully never acknowledged when booming, incidentally, by the howlers).

History indicates--if not outright proves--that the ebb and flow of economic performance is cyclical, and wavy, and rushes in and inundates, but then recedes and leaves many high and dry, like sea-tides.

Bush's moon is in its waning, last quarter, and the tide he presided over appears to be receding, but he and his team managed the flood-gates and aqueducts of fiscal policy well (the Act of God on the levees of New Orleans notwithstanding).

That's the best--and most--a president can do (and should do).

The new Millennium began with a bang but the last eight years were mostly a Time of Plenty in America. That's self-evident. And they're ending more bountiful--by the numbers, from GNP to the sheer number of those employed, and yes, still, housed--than any other time before.

For any nation in the history of the world.

Economics 101 teaches us that human desire is limitless, insatiable.

People will always have less than what they want.

Donald Trump, for example, always seems to need one more building.

It is easy to exploit that part of human nature and make everyone feel wanting. It is easy to create a need that didn't exist before and offer to satisfy it.

And it can be easy to convince some people who are otherwise happy and content that they are really miserable and should be seeking change.

Our consumer-driven economy counts on that, for there's a price to pay.

There will always be opposition dissidents, malcontents, and propagandists insisting that the eternally half-full glass of the status quo is not only half-empty, but completely dry (if not smashed into pieces on the ground), if only to make us thirsty by suggestion, and so Hopeful for Change.

And they will exploit the notorious, short-term memory of the good American people by harking back to some mythical Eden before the Fall, to a land flowing with Milk & Honey--e.g. The Clinton Years--and promise a return to them.

And to satisfy the thirst--and to allay the fomented fear of dying of it-- this time (even though it's a quadrennial thing) they offer a messianic candidate who promises to replenish and fill the glass to the brim (and even make it overflow into new rivers of Milk & Honey) for us to consider as an alternative to a parched palate and four more years of despairing.

While listening to all that however, just keep in mind that the economy of the United States of America is bigger now than it has ever been. We are the wealthiest country in the history of civilization, which should make you realize not only that the glass has been filled to the brim all along, but that what the opposition is offering is Kool Aid that may be colorful and sweet, but very low in nutrients, and dubiously mixed, and has a price to pay.

DYNAMITE

Excellent Analysis.

Johnny's got a new girl
Pat Buchanan
Posted: September 02, 2008
5:55 pm Eastern

© 2008

The risk John McCain took last Friday is comparable to the 72-year-old ex-fighter pilot knocking back two shots and flying his F-16 under the Golden Gate Bridge.

McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to be his co-pilot was the biggest gamble in presidential history. As of now, it is paying off, big-time.

The sensational selection in Dayton, Ohio, stepped all over the big story from Denver – Barack Obama's powerful address to 85,000 cheering folks in Mile High Stadium, and 35 million nationally, a speech that vaulted him from a 2-point deficit early in the week to an 8-point margin. Barack had never before reached 49 percent against McCain.

As the Democrats were being rudely stepped on, however, Palin ignited an explosion of enthusiasm among conservatives, evangelicals, traditional Catholics, gun owners and right to lifers not seen in decades.

By passing over his friends Joe Lieberman and Tom Ridge, and picking Palin, McCain has given himself a fighting chance of winning the White House that, before Friday morning, seemed to be slipping away. Indeed, the bristling reaction on the left testifies to Democratic fears that the choice of Palin could indeed be a game-changer in 2008.

(Note: "The bristling reaction on the left testfies to Democratic fears that the choice of Palin could indeed be a game-changer in 2008.")

Liberals howl that Palin has no experience, no qualifications to be president of the United States. But the lady has more executive experience than McCain, Joe Biden and Obama put together.

None of them has ever started or run a business as Palin did. None of them has run a giant state like Alaska, which is larger than California and Texas put together. And though Alaska is not populous, Gov. Palin has as many constituents as Nancy Pelosi or Biden.

She has no foreign policy experience, we are told. And though Alaska's neighbors are Canada and Russia, the point is valid. But from the day she takes office, Palin will get daily briefings and sit on the National Security Council with the president and secretaries of state, treasury and defense.

She will be up to speed in her first year.

And her experience as governor of Alaska, dealing with the oil industry and pipeline agreements with Canada, certainly compares favorably with that of Barack Obama, a community organizer who dealt in the mommy issues of food stamps and rent subsidies.

Where Obama has poodled along with the Daley Machine, Palin routed the Republican establishment, challenging and ousting a sitting GOP governor before defeating a former Democratic governor to become the first female and youngest governor in state history.

For his boldness in choosing Palin, McCain deserves enormous credit. He has made an extraordinary gesture to conservatives and the party base, offering his old antagonists a partner's share in his presidency. And his decision is likely to be rewarded with a massive and enthusiastic turnout for the McCain-Palin ticket. Rarely has this writer encountered such an outburst of enthusiasm on the right.

In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history as much as Ike did with his choice of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan did with his choice of George H.W. Bush. For should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base among lifers, evangelicals, gun folks and conservatives – wholly independent of President McCain.

A traditional conservative on social issues, Palin has become, overnight, the most priceless political asset the movement has. Look for the neocons to move with all deliberate speed to take her into their camp by pressing upon her advisers and staff, and steering her into the AEI-Weekly Standard-War Party orbit.

Indeed, if McCain defeats Barack, 2012 could see women on both national tickets, and given McCain's age and the possibility he intends to serve a single term, women at the top of both – Sarah vs. Hillary.

The arrival of Palin on the national scene, with her youth, charisma and vitality, probably also portends a changing of the guard in Washington.

With Republicans having zero chance of capturing either House, and but a slim chance of avoiding losses in both, a Vice President Palin, with her reputation as a rebel and reformer, would surely inspire similar revolts in the Republican caucuses.

As Thomas Jefferson said, from time to time, a little rebellion in the political world is as necessary as storms in the physical.

The Palin nomination could backfire, but it is hard to see how. She has passed her first test, her introduction to the nation, with wit and grace. And the Obama-Biden ticket, having already alienated millions of women with the disrespecting of Hillary, is unlikely to start attacking another woman whose sole offense is that she had just been given the chance to break the glass ceiling at the national level.

Her nomination, which will bring the Republican right home, also frees up McCain to appeal to moderates and liberals, which has long been his stock in trade.

With his selection of Sarah Palin, John McCain has not only shaken up this election, he may have helped shape the future of the United States – and much for the better.

Sarah Palin & The Demoncats

Over at Evan Sayet's blog (http://sayetright.blogspot.com/), opposition worker bee "Suze" said:

"...Ms. Whale Blubber, as Mr. Palin fondly refers to his wifey--or Harriet Miers,as some of us have come to think of her."

Right. In the last 48 hours.

Actually, that's a bad analogy.

Conservatives had a problem with Harriet Myers.

They'll fight for Governor Palin.

The proper equivalent is the selection of Bush 41's veep Dan Quayle in 1988, which was likewise motivated by a search for a young, fresh-faced conservative. The latter's potential gravitas was nipped in the bud and savaged and destroyed by a vicious, whithering, unwarranted (for the most part), and unrelenting attack on his intelligence within 48 hours of the selection (which was so effective that I must confess that I myself can't help but chuckle everytime he pops up to this day).

They laid a trap for him. Bush 41 was on to the Democrats' perpetual trotting out of JFK doppelgangers every four years since the assassination in their hopes of milking the mythologized mojo and thought he had in Quayle a Republican counter-response to the strategy of evoking JFK (and Quayle certainly had JFK's All-American good looks, height, and youth over the short, swarthy, and Mediterranean Dukakis' Boston pedigree and JFK bush-cut).

However, the Democrats got wind that Quayle would compare his experience to JFK's in the debate, and O Moumias--i.e. the mummified Lloyd Bentsen (Dukakis' veep)-- was assigned as executionor.

He was ready for it; and pounced:



That was indeed uncalled for. Quayle simply compared his length of time in the senate with Senator John Kennedy's--which was an objectively accurate assessment-- but Bentsen treated him as if he was a pretender who was laying claim to the Throne of Camelot (though not a prior or subsequent peep about the long succession of Democrats from the assassination to the present day who engage in precisely that charade).

Granted, the Republicans had it coming by trying to co-opt the Democrats' idol, and the price they paid for daring to reach for Camelot's Crown was the utter humiliation of the Republican's version of the Once-And-Future King.

Poor Dan Quayle. For a fleeting moment he was the young face of the future of the party-- the GOP's own JFK, in fact-- but in the next he suddenly found himself the laughingstock of the nation, which only pressured him into committing more gaffes, compounding the humiliation and causing more blurted bloops and blunders in the nerve-racking process and disqualifying him forevermore from positions of political influence:



Alright, admittedly, Quayle doesn't come off as the brightest bulb in the box there, but the man was educated as a journalist, got his J.D., and was a United States senator, the point being that he could not have been anywhere near the mental midget he was ruthlessly caricatured as.

Anyway, aggressive--and much more unwarranted--ridicule is precisely what they're warming up for in preparation of "hahahaha-ing" Sarah Palin (and McCain for picking her).

The eager lols were already launched like the first, warm-up fireworks on the 4th of July before the full-monty extravaganza when Cindy McCain said that Alaska's close proximity to Russia in itself gave Palin foreign policy experience.

Like Quayle comparing his own length of time in the senate to pre-JFK Jack Kennedy's, Mrs. McCain's statement was perfectly true: In her role as governor, Palin certainly had to deal with Russia in one way or another (even if it just involved fishing lanes).

Mrs. McCain made no comment comparing Palin's experiences with Russia as being comparable to, say, Ronald Reagan's or Condoleeza Rice's, and yet the comment was hyperbolically treated as if she did.

And yet that-- along with the news of young Bristol Palin's unwed pregnancy-- was enough to get the wheels of derision to start spinning.

And it's going to get louder if/when Palin misspeaks (as everyone in the political arena--particularly the newbies in the spotlight--does and has, as Senator Obama reminds us regularly--though with impunity) with the intention of portraying Palin as the female equivalent of the "airhead" Quayle-- i.e. a bimbette.

Palin, however, has demonstrated far more poise and confidence on the stage than Quayle did, though that will only make the attacks more vicious in the hopes of breaking her (Quayle, it should be added, though his political future was destroyed, was never broken but fulfilled his term with acquiescent grace, dignity, and good cheer, with malice towards none, a true conservative).

The modus operandi of the relentless attacks already underway will--as before and since-- follow Alinsky's Rules for Radicals #8:

"Keep the pressure on. Never let up." Keep trying new things to keep the opposition off balance. As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new. (Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize.)

It should be noted that "attack" does not mean an aggressive debating of the issues, because they can't win that way. It means ripping the kitchen sink out of the wall and throwing it.

In tandem with that is the reliance on Rule #4:

"Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

(btw, thanks fj & Andronicus)

They demonstrate their Alinskyite mindset right here.

Our "own book of rules" is the conservative honoring of Free Speech and--for Republicus--an honest effort to respond to every poster, if only out of courtesy.

Taking a look back at earlier posts when infestation was in full swing here, those good-faith policies were exploited by the Alinskyites by their flash flooding of the commentary section with cut & pasted, unanswerable Kool Aid (with the source rarely cited, for obvious reasons), and the continuation of the first argument with no acknowledgement of superior points made in the interceding counterargument made by your host (which, by the rules of Reason-if not common decency-- needed to be addressed and/or necessitated re-evaluation and adjustment of their argument), so it was as if your host was arguing with the wind.

They just came in here to vomit and defecate, treating this blog as some kind of vomitorium or restroom.

Yet your host had to abide by his own rules and principles, and he either had to let them propagandize with impunity (and pollute the place with their filth), or swamp himself trying to reason with an unruly, mindless mob which had made themselves at home here.

They figured that out.

Only when they attacked my guests with no provocation did I allow myself to delete and evict them in good conscience, seeing as how protection of my guests from harrassment by others was a rule that could override the others (when their harrassing of me, and my own personal sense of annoyance and disgust, could not).

Counting on me to uphold my own Prime Directives, they were hoist by their own petard.

Nevertheless, on other blogs accessible by the lefty trolls, they persist in precisely the same manner.

Returning to the main subject of the planned dis-Quaylifying of Governor Sarah Palin by the same methods, that methodological cat was let out of the bag long ago, and it must not be allowed to work again.

It's just an old--and tiresome--Marxist ploy, like Alinsky's Rule #5:

"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

So when you see the lefty trolls aggressively posting the Kool Aid from the Daily Kos and Moveon mixing factories--"attacking attacking attacking" and in effect trying to control and monopolize any dialogue, shout down the opposition, and/or sow confusion-- and persist in their ridiculing "hahahahahahas," know that they are engaging in mindless, tactical rote that has nothing to do with the veracity of the Kool Aid (no less any universal or enduring principle behind it that they can actually apply consistently across-the-board), nor any just desserts of ridicule, nor the substance at hand, nor the topic of the post, for that matter.

It's just the distracting and deflecting noise of thrown pies, pots, and pans, and it only identifies exactly where they're coming from.

They're just employing Alinsky's sleazy tactics that hope to win "by any means necessary." (Malcolm X)

What the lefty trolls don't understand is that, despite the thousand faces they wear to hide their true identity and sow strife and detonate i.e.d.s like masked terrorists, they're transparent and one is able to see right through them.

So brainwashed are they and enslaved to the service of their subversive cause that they don't pause to wonder if their robotic behaviorial patterns have already been discerned and their programming discovered.

They just mindlessly keep doing it.

Any rebuttal to this will probably begin with "hahahaha," which--like almost all of the tactics-- is merely a psychological defense mechanism converted into an offensive weapon.

They can't think outside the box they're in, so even when the tactics are unmasked for what they are--i.e. sleazy, Marxist ones--all they can do is robotically pick-up the pace of importing cut-&-pasted Kool Aid and heckling out their "hahahahas," confident that "A lie told enough times will eventually be believed"--as they readily and roundly (being well familiar with the tactic) accused the Bush Administration of engaging in when the latter simply had to repeat the facts over and over again in the attempt to counter the aggressive, mischaracterizing Kool Aid, thinking they were misunderstood in good faith.

The Bush Administration eventually--and obviously-- said "fuhggit" when they realized--just as you can see here--that the attacking opposition is not interested in reasoning and good faith intercourse, nor that they somehow misunderstood.

They understand what's at stake for their agenda very well, and, since their agenda has irreconcilable differences with the traditional American one, they attack that much more rabidly to destroy the matter by their anti-matter--and antisocial, if not sociopathic-- substance.

However, persisting in the exposed tactic of "telling a lie enough times until it is believed (by the weary citizenry)" has arrived at its saturation point and can snooker no more simpletons .

And so persisting in the lies has turned into a belief that "If we just keep saying/doing something over and over again, it will eventually succeed" (despite all evidence that the limitations have been reached), which is a futile persistence that Freud diagnosed as being insane.

These lefty trolls have mental issues, and, like most genuinely crazy people, they not only think that they're "normal" (and "in-touch" with real normal people), but simultaneously contradict their Everyman delusion in the process by conceitedly thinking that they are better, that they are of the elite (not knowing that a true elite would never solecistically--and disgracefully-- exult: "I'm an elitist!").

Their illness, though, is not of the type that exhibits itself in the erratic, unpredictable behavior of the psychotic (although they're encouraged to "Go Nuts"--obviously--when executing Rule #8 to keep the opposition reeling), but more the ritualized type exhibited by the neurotic, so their behavior is always predictable, robotic, and they all sound as if they came off of the same assembly line (beyond the one or two trolls here and elsewhere who go by a dozen aliases between them).

Hence, within 48 hours of Palin's selection, the vats at the Kool Aid factories were feverishly mixed and churned all night and ready for distribution the next day for the predictable "attack-attack-attack" onslaught of data dumps, with the obligatory "hahahahas," and the automatic projection:

"Wow it only took 12 hours (for you) to respond glad you guys got your RNC talking points this week."

After a stunned delay of 24 hours and an additional 24 to prepare the Kool Aid for mass distribution, and now the inundation of it, look who's talking.

They will always try to overwhelm and shut down the argument with the Kool Aid, and heckle like hyenas and/or project with each step.

They do it over and over again, same-ol'-same-ol,' and, apparently, don't even realize they're doing it.

And they're doing it to Sarah Palin.

Senator Obama called for his blogsoldiers to cease and desist from attacking the Palin family.

They may obediently back off on that (though maybe not), but they'll overcompensate by focusing that much more contempt and derision on the Governor herself (in the diagrammed manner that they universally apply to conservative presidential candidates and right-wing bloggers alike):

Alinsky's Rule #8: "Keep the pressure on....(Attack, attack, attack from all sides...).

In the past 48 hours, Palin was aggressively attacked for being an "out-of-touch elitist," a yokel, inexperienced, a bad governor with a bad husband, a bad mother, and a hypocrite for championing abstinence while her teenaged daughter gets knocked up by her hockey jock boyfriend (albeit the true hypocrisy would have been if she arranged for her daughter to have an abortion, a choice not to that seems to infuriate pro-Choicers).

Attack-attack-attack.

Alinsky's Rule #4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."

The easiest and most obvious application of that rule is the exploitation of the First Amendment which has allowed the Alinskyites to scream "FIRE!!!" in a crowded political theater with impunity.

They say whatever they want, scornful of the Founding Father's assumption that good character will prevail over the centuries and with it a sense of honesty, civility, and temperance that reveres the First Amendment by not abusing it.

Alinsky's Rule #5:

Dis-Quaylify and belittle the governor by ridicule.

Once again, the trollette Suze:

"...Ms. Whale Blubber, as Mr. Palin fondly refers to his wifey--or Harriet Miers,as some of us have come to think of her."

The programmed behavior of the Lefty trolls is kind of sad in the sense that they evoke the once-human beings who were assimilated into the Borg Collective in episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And they themselves were injected with and made dependent upon the very Kool Aid that they now peddle, mindlessly chanting "Resistance is Futile":



...and you can't help but hope that they can be extracted and be salvaged from the hive (like the Borged human Seven from Star Trek: Voyager):



Most of the lefty trolls here (or who used to be here but still spread their poison across the political blogosphere) come out of that very Far Left Collective hive that even the liberal Obama tries hard to keep his distance from (and who he just told to stfu about the Palin family).

Like Borg drones, though, they'll just keep coming, one after another, mindlessly attacking-attacking-attacking.

They've poisoned the atmosphere of the country a lot more than Exxon-Mobil has, and they're determined to take over.

Draw the line, people:



(Great scene!)

Don't be afraid of them. Aside from being noisy nuisances peddling nonsense, they're feckless once you figure out the frequency that they're operating on and picking them off one-by-one-- or even 3-5 at a time--is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

...As long as you don't drink the Kool Aid that they're constantly trying to pour down your throat so as to turn you into one of them.

Don't swallow any drink that's offered. What differentiates the lefty trolls from Star Trek's Borg is that, outwardly, they look pretty "normal," so in that sense they're like the Body Snatchers from the movie about the invasion of their namesake.

And so be careful when invited to give it a rest and have a cup of bedtime tea with one of them, because it might be spiked with the Kool Aid:



I've personally had experiences with the Body Snatchers.

They'll engage in perfectly "normal" conversation with you, but when the subject of politics comes up--and especially if the name "Bush" is mentioned-- you will first see their eyes flash and then go dark as a barely-discernible tremor ripples over their face. Then their features twitch uncontrollably and contort, become distorted and, grimacing, their voices change and they begin to sneer and spew obscenties and vomit their bile, much like Linda Blair as the little girl Regan who was possessed by Satan in the classic horror movie *The Exorcist.*

That's not an exaggeration.

They call it "passion."

It's possession.

And here they are trash-talking Palin's daughter, Bristol:



Fear not: "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." James 4:7

The Gift That Keeps Giving

Following the back-and-forth accusations of race-baiting between the Obama Campaign and Bill Clinton campaigning on behalf of himself, Clinton was credibly quoted as saying that Senator Obama "Will have to kiss my ass" before he gets any support from him.

Obama kissed his wife instead:



That was consummate poetic justice.

I will always be grateful to Senator Obama for his standing up to the Clinton Machine, and beating it.

And now that.

Thank you, senator.

Obama vs. Clinton was much more a David & Goliath story than a Cinderella one (although elements of that tale resonate strongly in the Obama phenomenon), but it's not over yet.

Obama got his expected, post-convention bounce, but it's all downhill after St. Paul.

The country is going to love Sarah Palin, Madame Governor of the Great State of Alaska.

And it's going to become apparent that in Mac we have an older "Maverick" (played by Tom Cruise) from the 1986 move Top Gun.

Then there's--*GULP*--the Town Hall debates.

Perhaps Biden can share some of his secrets on how he overcame stuttering with "Ah-Ah-Oh-Ah-Ah-Uh-Uh" Obama before then.

Maybe they'll take advantage of his big ears by hiding a microphone in one of them and whisper stuff (while he stalls by stuttering until he gets the full instruction).

I highly doubt, though, that the MSM will devote any time--this time--to investigating any pictures of Obama's backside that hint at the outline of a wire.

And you can count on an October Surprise or two (if not three or four) hogging the headlines during the home stretch.

And then there's the Clintons.

Will they lay low and be quiet but be accused in endless editorials about not wanting Obama to win by their silence?

Or will they try TOO DAMN HARD to "prove" that they want Obama to win?

Either scenario, I'm afraid, will only spell trouble for the Hope and Changer.

Those bones he tossed to them at the convention aren't nearly enough incentive to get them fully aboard--and behind-- his candidacy.

It would've helped if he decided to pay off the massive debt Hillary accrued trying to beat him, as she shamelessly tin-cupped him for.

I heartedly applaud him for apparently rubbing his finger and thumb together (i.e. playing the World's Smallest Violin for them) in response to that, but make no mistake: Billary is going to make him pay, one way or another.

Billary is the Frankenstein monster the Democrats themselves created, and, as in the story, it's going to turn on its maker if it doesn't get its way.

From The Donkey's Mouth

(Thanks Alice)