Sonia Sotomayor Was in a Secret Girls Club

Does this matter?

Sonia Sotomayor found friends in elite group – Kenneth P. Vogel – POLITICO.com

Shared via AddThis

President Obama has announced a plan cut the deduction percentage that can be taken on one’s tax return for charitable contributions. While the administration claims that it will not affect behavior of taxpayers who give, we know better. This move will negatively impact charities. Why go after charities under the guise of soaking the rich by cutting the amount of deductions available to them? Perhaps to marginalise charities and use the proceeds to fund big government programs that will pick up the slack (in theory of course)?

Young Jeezy

My President’s black, My Lambo’s blue

I’ll be g******ed if my rims ain’t too

My money’s light green and my Jordan’s light gray

And they all love to see white, now how much you tryna pay

This is a story about the power of misinformation. I should begin not by translating the the introductory lines (I’ll get to that later), but by directing your attention to the video below wherein rappers Jay-Z and Young Jeezy ”articulate” their feelings about Bush and Obama in a highly coarse and to some, a racist manner.  The less streetwise among us may find the two rappers’ words shocking. In fact, a number of rappers have referenced their enthusiasm for Obama since the bginning of his candidacy, and the narrative in general has centered either on Obama’s skin color or the evil supposedly perpetrated by Bush. The catchy lines that lead this story are from Young Jeezy’s “My President” which I first heard in Novemeber. My first reaction was to roll down the windows and crank up the volume in my truck, and jam out to the smooth groove coupled with a tight Dirty South beat. After deciphering the lyrics though I realized Jeezy was a little bit confused.  In traditional English, the lines would read as follows:

My President is Black. My Lamborghini is blue.

I’ll be g******ed if the wheels (on the Lamborghini) aren’t blue as well

My money is light green. My Nike Michael Jordan-labelled apparel is light grey.

Everyone loves to see cocaine. How much are you willing to pay for some?

Doesn’t have the same ring to it, I know. But this is the first sign that Jeezy is likely not well-versed in the intricacies of Obama’s policy initiatives. As I understand it, whether due to record sales or cocaine sales, Young Jeezy is worth well over $250,000, so he can count on a tax hike from his new President. At any rate, Had Jeezy stopped there, he would go down as little more than an ardent supporter of Obama with an affinity for blue automobiles. Instead, he goes down in my book as a misinformed consumer of the narrative promoted by many liberals that Bush stole the 2000 election and has spent the intervening eight years engaing in an orgy of corruption. “Bush robbed all of us, would that make him a criminal?” asks Jeezy. He goes on to describe how he’s “Stuntin on Martin Luther, feelin’ just like a king. Guess this is what he meant when he said he had a dream.”

I trust he was referring to Martin Luther King rather than the 16th century author of the 99 Theses. 

I said at the beginning that this story was about the power of misinformation. I later told that in my opinion Young Jeezy had bought into the far left’s hateful characterization of President Bush. Jeezy’s next step is the key here. By packaging that distorted narrative–which not only makes false claims about President Bush but also focuses on Obama’s skin color as an attribute–into a tasty, consumable morsel packed with Atlanta-bred hip-hop flavor, he propogates or perpetuates incorrect and potentially harmful ideas in the minds of the millions that listen his music. And this is to say nothing of the glamorization of drugs, guns, prostitution, etc. So when O’Reilly derided Young Jeezy and Jay-Z for their tirades, he missed the fact that these ideas have enjoyed wide circulation among hip-hop listeners for a long time. Maybe O’Reilly should put a little more underground rap into rotation on his IPod.

Young Jeezy isn’t a political junkie. He consumes the loudest narrative in the media, and generalizes like most Americans. The problem for conservatives is that the wrong narrative is the loudest. This will not change until we find a way to yell as loud as liberals with superior arguments. Until then, Young Jeezy will continue consuming twisted truths, mixing them in with musical poems of cash, cars, and women and broadcasting hip-hop fans worldwide.

 

Blago Defies Convention!!!

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d3b7b68a-d69b-11dd-9bf7-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1

In a throwback to the days of blatantly corrupt politics, Blagojevich has deftly outmaneuvered his opponents by naming someone to fill out the remainder of Obama’s now-vacant Senate seat. The insanity of it all boggles the mind. Nevermind that Blago is on the cusp of impeachment for allegedly selling that vacant seat. Nevermind that anyone he chose would be tainted by association with Blago. And nevermind that everyone with anything to say about it had promised to block any attempt by Blago to fill the seat.

Blago’s appointment would have been just madness had he simply chosen a white guy dumb enough to accept the appointment. However, in a stroke of genius Blago played the race card with all the understatedness of a Japanese dekotora by selected an well-respected Black statesman, who would replace Obama as the Senate’s only Black. So now US Senate Dems are in a tough spot. Will Harry Reid follow through with his promise to use some kind of archaic procedure to bar Blago’s appointment. As Bobby Rush so diplomatically put it, do 99 white senators want to have their names on a plan to keep Blago’s appointee Burris out? Brilliant, brash, and at the end of the day simply pathetic, that Blago.

Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)

Why? Because it will soon be here. I beg your forgiveness for the tacky (yet pertinent) Fleetwood Mac reference.

In the wake of Obama’s triumphant elevation to the Presidency last Tuesday at the hands of millions of starry-eyed voters, many of my conservative friends determined to head for the hills. “I’m going into hibernation for a few weeks,” a Senate staffer told me, “You may not hear from me for awhile.”

This is precisely the wrong approach for activist conservatives. For those of us that spent the last few months contributing in various ways to the effort to stem the tide of Obamamania, there is no rest-only a slight change in focus. Faced with a federal government dominated by a socialist-leaning Democratic party on a power trip, it will be crucial for us to continue the fight. Starting now, it will be not about individual candidates but about issues, something that got little attention during the recent campaign. Issues took a back seat as the media and pundits focused largely on the shallow but glitzy rhetoric of the candidates, especially that from Barack Obama. Problem is, while Obama’s “Change” and “Hope” rhetoric is rather nebulous when it comes to specifics, the ideas that gave rise to rhetoric are products of the influence of 1960s-vintage New Left thought; and these ideas will be the guiding light for Obama as he at determines how to bring “Change” to fruition as policy.

To combat this, we as conservatives must become a very vocal minority. But first, we must become educated. In order to spread the word, we must be able to articulate clearly why Obama and Pelosi and Reid are wrong. We have to be literate in the language of conservatism. This does not mean mastery of the GOP talking points of recent years. It does not mean strident partisanship. It does not mean tasteless jokes about watermelon patches at the White House. What it means is understanding why we as conservatives believe what we believe about the government’s role. It means recognizing that the GOP has in recent years been guilty of straying from the brand of limited-government conservatism most us signed up for. Once we get back to the basics of the conservatism of Reagan and Goldwater, we must be clear in communicating our opinions to our elected representatives in Washington, be they Republicans or Democrats. We must also talk to friends and neighbors and get them on board. We must win the battle on the ground for all those minds that think they are Democrats until a conservative friend explains to the them how our redistributive tax code works.

The groundwork must be laid for picking up seats in Congress in 2010-a mere two years from now. We cannot sit by idly and hope that the Democrats fall on their face and thereby hand seats on Capitol Hill back to us. We must point out there faults and show how conservatism would remedy them. We must do this actively and constantly.

Now is not the time to let up or give up. Now more than ever we must be on our game. If we are, then the era of Democratic domination will be short-lived.

How Palin Changes the Race

Sarah Palin. There has been little talk of anything else for the past week. If only to mute the buzz of the Obama campaign, which has clearly dominated the airwaves in the previous months, she has been a huge success. Last Friday morning, the talk was supposed to be of Barack Obama’s landmark acceptance speech the night before at Invesco Field in Denver. Alas, only the print media had that opportunity. Not long after the first editions were hitting the stands, the live media began covering a leak that Palin might be McCain’s surprise VP pick. From that point forward, Palin has been the center of media focus; and last night’s rocking acceptance speech, which energized the party faithful in a way McCain himself has failed to do since winning the primaries, only served to reinvigorate the frenzy over this hertofore unknown governor from Alaska.

The concurrence to be found among the punditry as they struggle to make sense of this all is only among the truly partisan. The widespread charges of inexperience and hypocrisy are offset by the irrepressible raving of the Right. And for these, nothing the Libs or media cynics say will dampen their enthusiasm. In fact, it will probably only serve to stoke that enthusiasm. This is probably the most important effect of the Palin choice, and most advantageous for McCain. This alone might be enough to make the choice of Palin a worthwhile gamble for McCain; but there’s more.

John McCain has struggled for months to win the affections of the GOP faithful. In that time, as I have wandered through the circles of staunch GOP activists and fundraisers, a consistent message stood out until last night–lukewarm enthusiasm bordering on apathy in some extreme cases. As McCain endeavored to counter this, he made some concessions to the Right that hurt his Maverick credentials. And in this he began to lose what made McCain the Maverick unique, and the hero of those who also praise the issue-before-party approach of Joe Lieberman.

Now, Palin has taken the pressure off McCain. In a few short days the GOP faithful have been brought back to a circa-2004 level of excitement. This will allow John to return to what he’s best at-mildy annoying his own party and winning the hearts of independents. Now John can be John. Palin has made that possible. In the hearts of Republicans, it seems that now Palin has also made victory possible. And in the meantime, a GOP star has been born.

Obama Finally Goes in O’Reilly

Its on now. Bill is going right after national security.

When it comes to Iran, Obama says he will not take the military option off the table. Says he can’t divulge detailed plans for a response to Iran. Diplomatic options and sanctions have not been exhausted. “Maybe” that will work says Bill.

Bill says Obama was right–Iraq was a mistake–but that Obama needs to admit the surge worked. Obama responds that the surge succeeded. But he will not admit he was wrong because we’re still wasting money over there. Bill challenges Obama to get the Iraqis to pay us back with oil money.

Then Bill call out Obama for saying McCain can’t find Bin Ladin. “You won’t invade Pakistan,” Bill says. Obama wiggles out, says time to put more pressure on Pakistan.

And like that, its over. Unlike his two-piece interview with Hillary, this one will be split up over 4 nights!

Hillary vs. Coffeemaker

Politicians are oft accused of being “out of touch.” In order to combat this, often they seek opportunities to show that they are just one of the folks. Occasionally, hilarity ensues.

 

Ron Paul Revolution Not Over

Apparently the Ron Paul Nation is still very much alive and well, most recently showing up to the Silver State’s GOP convention and out-organizing the establishment. The Las Vegas Sun reports that the convention chairman, in desperation one presumes, recessed the convention without selecting delegates.

GOP Primary Also Not Over, Sez Paul

According to Jonathan Martin at Politico.com, Ron Paul is running ads in Pennsylvania against McCain. Someone needs to tell Paul to get out of the race for the good of the party…