Big Sky Cairn

Someone should do some scientific studies on exactly what it is in the liberal brain that so effectively avoids cognitive dissonance in their beliefs. Whatever allows them to live solely in a world of lofty ideals, far removed from the real-world also seems to compartmentalize inherent contradictions in their popular partisan attack-memes.

For example:

George W. Bush is a complete idiot.
George W. Bush has perpetuated massively complex conspiracies and duped the whole world.

Government should help the poor.
Government should raise taxes on the things that poor people do (smoke, drink, buy gas).

Denny Rehberg is an uber-wealthy elitist who has gone Washington
Denny Rehberg is a white-trash hillbilly that sleeps on his couch and drinks at dive bars.

Edit: Yeah, I spelled a word in the title wrong.  Sue me.

Kudos to John Driscoll for being the only major ticket Democrat to fill out a Project Vote Smart survey.  Shame on Baucus and Schweitzer for hiding their views.

But more important than actually taking the survey is what he says in it.  Western Word had this run-down in the days after the surprise Primary.   There’s enough there to set him back to pasture - including supporting a tax increase for anyone making more than $12,000/year.

Well Driscoll is at it again - this time taking a candidate survey from the sacred clergy from Scientists & Engineers for America.  I think Driscoll must really enjoy filling out these surveys; it’s about all he does.  Anyway, here are some quoteables:

I favor taxation to internalize the full costs of an end use [of energy] to the end user.

There you have it.   He actually wants to tax energy use with the goal of increasing prices.  Gutsy position to take in todays energy climate.

I’m not convinced that monetizing pollution, or the lack of it, will address the challenges we all face. Direct regulation, using the police powers of our various nations, may be quickest and most effective.

Carbon police.  Literally.

Require universal metering at every level of water use, including precise measurement for irrigation. Provide resources and education in support of water conservation. Discourage use of plant species that require water not available in the natural local environment.

Against irrigation.  Sorry Eastern Montana.

One continuously improving result should build on wellness approaches to human health such as “stop smoking” and “exercise a few minutes each day.”

Nanny state meets Orwellian control.  Sorry liberty.

Anyway, the more this guy puts out, the more out of touch he demonstrates himself to be.  What’s terrifying is that the army of Obama zealots that may turn out in November may also blindly vote down-ticket and by some freak lapse of judgment elect this guy.

We’ve blogged a lot about the near-religious dogma that is catastrophic man-made global climate change. On the left, it’s very rare for someone to even bother arguing the relative merit of climate change since they have unilaterally declared the debate “over.”

A recent Wall Street Journal editorial makes a lot of really good points, including this:

The former vice president has also recently disavowed any intention of returning to politics. This is wise. As America’s leading peddler of both doom and salvation, Mr. Gore has moved beyond the constraints and obligations of reality. His job is to serve as a Prophet of Truth.

People like Al Gore are the ones standing in the way of energy solutions. For them, a crippled economy is not only unimportant, but actually beneficial to their goal of reducing the so-called human environmental footprint. So when Republicans talk about the economic impacts of high energy costs - especially on the most vulnerable - they aren’t speaking the same language as the powerful special interests writing Democrat policy in Washington, DC. A significant economic blood-letting is exactly what they’ve been ordering for decades.

It’s pretty clear that race is going to play a big role in national politics this year. Certainly there is some benefit having an open discussion about race and equality in America. The question is whether that discussion has the goal of real progress - yes, this Republican admits there is racism out there - or as the goal of scoring quick political points.

For someone like Mark T, it’s not tremendously surprising to hear accusations that all Republicans are racist and all racists are Republicans. Mark is an ideologue with an ax to grind - he thinks he’s well reasoned when in fact he is just incapable of seeing his own bias. Sadly, there are many people like Mark who are comfortable labeling entire groups of people with broad-sweeping accusations of… well labeling entire groups of people with broad-sweeping accusations. The irony is lost on them.

Considering the partisan blinders that Lamnidae wears and her track record for mis-reporting facts and carefully protected double standards, it’s not surprising to read her suggestion that the Republicans are either racist or harbor racists for political gain.

The fact of the matter is that the GOP and American traditional media have been turning a blind eye to racists in their ranks for a number of years now that other traditional wedge issues are running out of electoral steam. Ignoring homegrown bigots like former Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Denny Rehberg, the obvious example here is Rep. Tom Tancredo, who’s track record includes a bill that would end “birthright citizenship,” several high-profile speaking events before groups identified as hate organizations, and attempting to deport an undocumented immigrant high school student with a 3.9 GPA after he was profiled in the local paper.

Her crocodile tears will mean a lot more to me when I see her condemning the racists in her own party.

The fact of the matter is that the Democrat Party and American traditional media have been turning a blind eye to racists in their ranks for a number of years now as one of their primary wedge issues for major elections. Ignoring homegrown bigots like Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright, the obvious example here is Rev. Jesse Jackson who’s record includes a laws that would require the consideration of race in hiring practices and several high-profile speaking events before groups that segregate membership by race.

Sound familiar?  It might, if you remember the intellectual aerobics that the left goes through to carefully define themselves out of racism.

Wulfgar forwards the suggestion that Republicans consider the 9/11 attacks to be in their favor.

My God.

My God.

Even for Wulfgar, this crosses the line. What a completely insulting thing to say. Insulting to Republicans, sure (that’s par for the course), but more insulting to the victims and their families. 9/11 - and the resulting pictures of destruction and death wrought on the United States and the very act itself - doesn’t favor any party or person. It was a heinous act of evil that is not a symbol for any party. Remembering that horrible day is not a rallying cry for a political party.

Perhaps what Wulfgar is noticing is that the American people trust conservatives more then gut-the-military Democrats when it comes to national security. Maybe he’s noticing that conservatives are more likely to remember that the world has evil in it - the evil that was demonstrated in September 11, 2001 - while liberals have forgotten that such evil exists outside of the Bush Administration.

But since the warrant for his point is a timeline, let me suggest that Wulfgar go find a clue and read the 9/11 Commission Report. I read it. It’s free, right there on the internet.

And if that has too many words for Mr. Bookstore, here’s an convenient time-line provided by the United States Army. And while you’re looking at it, try to remember Bill Clinton was inaugurated January 20, 1993 and left office January 20, 2001.

Update: If you love blog pissing contests, keep reading past the page break.

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It’s old news that Republicans, as a group, are happier than Democrats or Independents. There’s a lot that goes into that - money, marriage, religion - all the vices that Democrats want to free us from. I also found it interesting that Republicans have been happier for decades, even when Democrats controlled Congress and the White House.

My personal take on this is that dissatisfaction with the status quo leads to an anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

And speaking of happiness, reading George Ochenski’s tirade against the fresh new majority he worked so hard to install increased my happiness by quite a bit. He seems to hate Pelosi more than I do. And hate, of course, leads to suffering.

This is a shameful legacy for the Democrats, who promised us change, then gave us more domestic spying and war. Their betrayal may well backfire, however. Americans are hard pressed right now and looking for relief. But if this is what Democrats call “change,” why would we ever want to vote for more?

I don’t know George. Empirically, it looks like you’re not going to be much happier if you manage to elect a Democrat to the White House, so maybe it’s time to look to other sources of happiness.

Like Laser Quest. Spokane is only three hours away and they’ve got a sweet 3-story Laser Quest course. It’s one of my favorite things to do in the whole world!

Lamnidae makes an interesting point about Roy Brown asking for debates from Hollywood Brian Schweitzer. Brown asked for 18 debates - and Lamnidae wondered why he didn’t ask for more.

She’s got a point. 18 is a pretty arbitrary number.

But then, so is five - the number of debates that Schweitzer countered with. One could just as easy ask, why five debate? Why not one? Or zero?

I will say this. For the voter, more debates are better. Debates flush out issues, focus the campaign on stated positions and allow people to make literal side-by-side judgments of the candidates. While I understand the impetuous impetus of an incumbent to deny their opponent a stage from which to boost name recognition, it’s usually not something they brag about and asking for more debates is usually not something that is considered smart ground for an attack.

The suggestion that poor Schweitzer just can’t fit it into his busy schedule is also pretty ridiculous considering he’s raising campaign money in San Francisco, New York or some other state almost every weekend.

Schweitzer is feeling the heat: two non-races at the federal level that were supposed to grab the headlines evaporated and now he finds his race - and his worthy opponent - the big ticket race in the state. He’s never been challenged by the media so the prospect of having to explain his policies in a hostile environment has got to be daunting. I’d be a little nervous to debate Roy Brown too - especially considering the focus on energy policy (drill, drill, drill!).

Consequently, remember in The West Wing when liberal paragon Jed Bartlett wanted more debates and it was his challenger that fought for fewer? Interesting how the liberal writers of that show suggest that debating less is somehow a platform of conservatives and not of incumbents from both parties.

Wow.

For international law to have any moral force in cases like Slobodan Miloševi?, Augusto Pinochet, or even Saddam Hussein, the law has to apply to powerful countries as well as weak ones. Given that the architects of the Bush policy of detention and torture are unlikely to be prosecuted here, one only hopes that the international community will act.

These are the people that want to shape our foreign policy?  These are the people that want to negotiate on our behalf with enemies that want to kill us?

In 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. penned one of the most powerful modern soliloquies in his Letter from Birmingham Jail. The subject was injustice and civil disobedience as a response to injustice. Undoubtedly, one of the students that staged a sit-in at the University of Montana read a rah-rah version of this letter in their “Activism for Dummies” handbook.

At first glance, it seems like a perfect match. Martin Luther King talks about sit-ins to challenge injustices. It’s his entire justification for why he’s sitting in Birmingham Jail writing letters. He is even analytic enough to provide certain steps - goals set forth - for civic disobedience.

The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

So far so good, right? For MLK, sit-ins were a means to an ends, in this case forcing negotiation with a dominant party that was refusing to come to the table. The sit-ins weren’t designed to get a press hit, they were designed to spark dialog.

But the similarities begin to fade with closer examination.

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From the comments here at Big Sky Cairn comes this from Mark T:

Read slowly, my friend, s-l-o-w-l-y: Not all republicans are racists, but all racists are Republican.

Does the rest of Sinestra agree with Mark on this?  How does Dextra feel about this claim?  Is this dialog even worth having?