Thursday, January 21, 2010
Mad Libs
This is a new phenomenon. For the last two years the foremost candidate with a monopoly of air time is such a carefully groomed, packaged and guarded product that having a guy who can speak without a prompter and answer questions with such deftness and earnestness is not just refreshing, it is shocking.
My point is that although so many have heard the perfect slogan from Scott's campaign, "the people's seat" comment wasn't speech-written in some calculated manner. Unless you saw the debate what you don't realize is that Mr. debate mediator and not so surreptitious lib operative, David Gergen was trying to put Brown in a tight spot when he asked him about the legacy behind the Kennedy Seat. Watch and you will see he doesn't pause after delivering his response like someone gauging the impact of his delivery. Instead he goes straight into the rest of his answer, countering with the substantive part of his response to Gergen's loaded question.
Scott did have an actual slogan for his campaign though. One that was probably tossed around with half a dozen variations, tested, rehearsed and then inserted in various speeches.
That slogan may not have been planned out with the careful intent of working like a Mad Lib riff off of the tired Obama slogan of '08 but I can certainly see how it does.
"Yes We Can!"
"___ We Can!"
"We Can . . . Do Better!"
We eliminate the "yes" because Scott, the 41st No vote in the Senate dismantles the Democrat super-majority and blocks Obama's socialist we can-isms with a potential filibuster. The "we" now becomes "We the people" and the assertion that we "Can Do Better!" is an indictment of what the royal "we" of Obama and his regal court of Pelosi, Reid et al have been doing so poorly for the last year.
Scott's slogan is so catchy Martha "Marcia" Coakley even used it in her concession speech, albeit unwittingly when she said in closing, "as a nation and as a commonwealth, we can do better in the future."
Not an hour later Scott Brown got the chance during his victory speech to hammer his slogan home. He also spoke repeatedly of "Independents" (perhaps a pun on "Independence" - a declaration being made Tuesday night indeed).
Someone deeply immersed in a campaign is naturally thinking of "independents" in terms of a polling category and the analysis will support the idea that this category of voters were very significant in determining the outcome. But Scott responded to every Coakley claim that he was a "lock-step Republican" with the assertion that he was an "independent" thinker.
This year I believe we are witnessing an emergence and Scott Brown seems to have recognized it early and tapped into it often. The change that is coming and the voter that future candidates need to engage are the most independent of Americans . . . Americans as individuals; freedom's purest vessel.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
9.9 On the Richter Scale
No, not the aftershock in Haiti. This one happened much further north . . . in Massachusetts.
It was so powerful that rumor has it the chandeliers in the White House were shaking although others say that this was an unrelated event and had more to do with someone jumping up and down and throwing a tantrum in the Executive Residence.
I hear there was at least one positive if isolated outcome to this earthquake. The tingle in Chris Matthews leg is now gone.
Tune in tomorrow for Mad Libs.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
A Magical Story in Massachusettes (sp?)
Lord VolDemocrat attempts to come back from the grave, Ted Kennedy's grave in particular, to reclaim her seat of power . . .
. . . only to be stopped by a young, likable, upstart wizard. You see the young wizard makes a lot of valuable friends along the way and they help him combat the dark lord and her many sinister death eaters.
At one point Lord VolDemocrat is found feeding off the whiskey soaked carcass (and reputation) of her host just to stay alive --- death eater indeed.
God speed young wizard and all the good people of Massachusetts. Good luck defeating the evil wizard and making the world a better place for all of us.
Monday, January 11, 2010
George Will : Golden No Longer - Townhall.com
In case you wanted to debate my assessment of California and New York in the previous blog, start here before formulating your response.
Friday, January 8, 2010
A Good Solid B+
That's the grade I'd give . . . to the American people this year.
I started the year ready to give Americans another D- for sitting idly by during those initial months, affording this President, a devout radical and socialist, an opportunity to get his agenda and his cadre of co-conspiring antiestablishment Marxists in place to undermine all of our freedoms.
After not asking important questions, ignoring some of the obvious information and not taking any issue with vetting that never took place by the media or any member of the establishment, voters were allowing themselves to be led into getting it so wrong in the election. Neal Boortz was even more direct in his opinion this week on the topic of our personal political responsibility.
In 2008 many appeared to vote in the same fashion casual gamblers bet on horses at the track; picking by the sound of the name and little more. Due to so many people being lazy-headed, uneducated in the area of civics and their own country's political history and generally allowing themselves to be of the opinion that this stuff either doesn't matter or is too complicated for them to understand OR worst of all, of the belief that any politician could ever deliver on such “audacious” promises; they went to the polls and elected this legislatively inexperienced radical, a candidate that had been groomed by the infamously corrupt Chicago political machine. The man who had voted “present” most of his political career, the one who is still doing this more often than not today, apparently was going to deliver with such sweeping and decisive force once in an executive roll when he had never served in a similar capacity at any level of government nor at any point in his adult life. This was the worst “hiring” decision anyone has ever made (but he said he was a "people person").
My conclusion is that so many of the voters categorized as “Independents” instead of correctly being categorized as "political neophytes" are the same voters that often show up in the later phases of polling as “Undecideds”. Many of them should have stayed home independently and simply not forced themselves to decidedly cast a vote. Hence, the 2008 grade was
2009 began with many of those same voters and the citizenry at large ignoring the signs that were becoming all too evident in the initial weeks. This was shaping up to be the next big misstep, a step in the direction of socialism or at least a sadly diminished and largely dismantled U.S. of A.
Some are bothered by my blog posts, my facebook links, my political discussions to which I say “it is not me who has injected himself into this arena.” It is this lurch towards a statist and highly invasive form of government that has injected itself into every aspect of my life, giving me no recourse but to respond, react and if the will of the people prevails, counteract these forces. To sum it up: I didn't place myself into the political debate, the liberals in our Federal government decided to force me into it by thrusting their elitist agendas upon every aspect of my life or in the words of Jim DeMint:
I wasn’t interested in politics but it was increasingly apparent that politics was interested in me. [This] government wanted more of my money, and more control over my business, my family, my community – my life.
- Saving Freedom, 2009
If and when the government gets out of my wallet, my health care, my work, my family, my freedom to choose, the very essence of who I am, then you may be witness to my silence on these topics. Until then expect to hear from me and a lot others like me.
Alexander de Toqueville observed this phenomenon and ascribed it as a unique characteristic of American democracy. When the government is doing their job for the people, running smoothly and governing effectively (and within the wants and desires of the citizenry she serves) there is little call for extraordinary involvement by the people. But when the government is coming off the rails Americans are invested in their government and empowered by its doctrines to become more involved.
Most of us live in a personal condition of sufficient largesse that even when we are subjected to bad governance we are able to endure. People in the
As dark as these times may seem and in the face of sacrifices we've already made and the promise of even greater sacrifices if we have to endure much more of the Obama-Reid-elosi agenda, we still have reason for hope. Certainly none of us needs a politician to give us hope. We are Americans after all. We have real hope born not from the hollow rhetoric of a campaign speech but out of the knowledge of our past history of collective and individual successes. That's America's story. Hope has always been alive here ever since we brought it with us on those first ships across the Atlantic. It is not some spark given to us by this hopeless and cynical President. On the contrary we true Americans have hope and carry it in our hearts every day even in these dark times. Our successes by way of our individual freedoms are well documented in our country’s history. One could say hope is a primary ingredient to the recipe of Americanism.
So B+ because there now appears to be an increasing self reliance and an active hand in American self governance by many who are paying attention to American politics for the first time in their lives, acting on it, calling Senators and Congressman, attending town hall meetings, challenging the Party nominations, voting in local elections and staying engaged and informed in spite of a mainstream media, thus bringing me to an A+ grade for the new media of the internet, talk radio, Fox News, etc. who are providing this resource for us. This is desperately needed because the old guard of the fourth estate has abandoned their #1 responsibility in helping to defend our Democracy. They've abandoned their first principles and primary calling: to provide a skeptical, probing and analytical examination of our government and then sharing those findings with the world. This is all the more reason we have to apply ourselves more energetically to the task and are in need of the new media to provide us that resource.
And please understand that the reason the B+ is not an A is because I am grading for group work. Bankrupt Californians, forgetful
The voters in districts like
We can bend the grading curve in 2010 and overcome the grade deficits delivered to us by the likes of all Hollywood, the liberal media “intelligentsia” and their weak sisters those establishment pundits, as well as the Party members who want to throw us RINO curve ball candidates, the politicians themselves who would get an “F” on a pop quiz about the Constitution (that 12 page document that they all took an oath to uphold and defend) and that 12%-21% of those polled recently by Rasmussen and Gallup who are happy to profess their liberalism, in other words the D and F side of the American bell curve.
How can
By taking our country back from those failures who have been failing us all along.