Jonah and VDH give two cheers to The President

November 30, 2011 4:00 A.M. Victor Davis Hanson @ NRO Obama 101 Few presidents have dashed so many illusions as Obama. In the last three years, the president has taught us a great deal about America, the world, and himself. Before Obama, many Americans still believed in massive deficit spending, whether as an article of fairness, a means to economic growth, or just a lazy fallback position to justify an out-of-control federal government. But after the failure of a nearly $800 billion “stimulus” program — intended to keep unemployment under 8 percent — no one believes any more that an already indebted government will foster economic growth by taking on another $4 trillion in debt. In other words, “stimulus” is mostly a dead concept. The president — much as he advised a barnstorming President Bush in 2005 to cease pushing Social Security reform on a reluctant population — should give it up and junk the new $500 billion program euphemistically designated as a “jobs bill.” The U.S. government is already borrowing every three days what all of America spent on Black Friday. Obama has also taught us that prominent government intervention into the private sector often makes things worse, and invites crony-capitalist corruption. Nearly three years into this administration, it is striking how seldom Barack Obama brags about Cash for Clunkers, the Chrysler and GM bailouts, or Solyndra. He either is quiet about them or sort of shrugs, as if to say, “Stuff happens.” Even creative bookkeeping cannot mask the fact that the auto-company bailouts (begun, to be sure, by the Bush administration, but made worse under Obama) will prove a huge drain on the Treasury. No one even attempts any more to convince us that we will like Obamacare once we read the legislation, or that it will save us costs in the long run, or that it will cheer up businesses so that they will invest and hire. All that was dreamland, 2009, and this is reality, 2011, when we hear only “It could have been worse.” Obama has also taught us that a president’s name, his father’s religion, his ethnic background, loud denunciations of his predecessor, discomforting efforts to apologize, bow, and contextualize past American actions — none of that does anything to lead to greater peace in the world or security for the United States. And by the same token, George Bush’s drawl, Texas identification, and Christianity did not magically turn allies into neutrals and neutrals into enemies. Israel, Britain, and Eastern Europe are not closer allies now than they were in 2008. Iran is still Iran — and may be even a more dangerous adversary after the failed Obama outreach. Putin’s Russia, despite “reset” (a word we no longer much hear), is still Putin’s Russia. China still despises the U.S., and feels in 2011 that it is in a far better position to act on its contempt than it was in 2009. North Korea never got the “hope and change” message. Europe is collapsing, reminding the world where the United States is headed if it does not change course. Outreach didn’t seem to do much for the Castro brothers, Hugo Chávez, or Daniel Ortega. We are helping Mexico to sue our own states, but that does not seem to persuade its leaders to keep their citizens home. Muslim Pakistan went from a duplicitous ally to a veritable enemy. The more we bragged about Turkey, the more we could feel it holds us in contempt. We hope that the Libyan rebels and the Cairo protesters are headed toward democracy, but we privately admit that they seem to have no more interest in establishing it than we have in promoting it. In other words, Professor Obama reminds future presidents that the world will transcend their rhetoric, their pretensions, and their heritage. Other nations always calibrate their relations with the United States either by their own perceived self-interest, or by centuries-old American values and power, or both. Barack Obama has taught us a great deal about dealing with radical Islam, an ideology not predicated on what presidents do or say. There will be no shutting down of Guantanamo as promised, and no end to either renditions or preventive detentions and tribunals. Khalid Sheik Mohammed will never be tried, as promised, in a New York courtroom not far from the scene of his mass murdering. The so-called Ground Zero mosque — once so dear to sanctimonious members of the Obama administration — will never be built; either liberal New Yorkers will quietly prevent it, or the architects of the scheme will be exposed as financial as well as cultural con artists. Obama will never again give an interview to Al-Arabiya expanding on how his own heritage will ameliorate relations with Arabs. The Cairo speech will go down in history not as a landmark creative effort to win over Muslims, but, to the extent it is remembered, as one of the most ahistorical constructs in presidential history. The Obama legacy in the War on Terror is as Predator-in-Chief — boldly increasing targeted assassinations tenfold from the Bush era, on the theory that we more or less kill the right suspected terrorists; few civil libertarians care much, apparently because one of their own is doing it. We have learned from Obama that the messianic presidency is a myth. Obama’s attempt to recreate Camelot has only reminded us that JFK’s presidency — tax cuts, Cold War saber-rattling, Vietnam intervention — was never Camelot. We shall see no more Latinate presidential sloganeering (“Vero Possumus”), no more rainbow posters. Gone are the faux-Greek columns, the speeches about seas receding and the planet cooling — now sources of embarrassment rather than nostalgia. Chancellor Merkel won’t want another Victory Column address from someone who ducked out on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Obama himself will not lecture crowds any longer about the dangers of their fainting when he speaks; Michelle will cease all the nonsense about “deign[ing] to enter the messy thing called politics” and finally acquiring pride in the U.S. when it nominated her husband. Even Chris Matthews’s leg has stopped tingling. There will be no more Newsweek comparisons of Obama to a god. Even the Nobel Prize committee will soon grasp that it tarnished its brand by equating fleeting celebrity with lasting achievement. “Green” will never be quite the same after Obama. When Solyndra and its affiliated scandals are at last fully brought into the light of day, we will see the logical reification of Climategate I & II, Al Gore’s hucksterism, and Van Jones’s lunacy. How ironic that the more Obama tried to stop drilling in the West, offshore, and in Alaska, as well as stopping the Canadian pipeline, the more the American private sector kept finding oil and gas despite rather than because of the U.S. government. How further ironic that the one area that Obama felt was unnecessary for, or indeed antithetical to, America’s economic recovery — vast new gas and oil finds — will soon turn out to be America’s greatest boon in the last 20 years. While Obama and Energy Secretary Chu still insist on subsidizing money-losing wind and solar concerns, we are in the midst of a revolution that, within 20 years, will reduce or even end the trade deficit, help pay off the national debt, create millions of new jobs, and turn the Western Hemisphere into the new Persian Gulf. The American petroleum revolution can be delayed by Obama, but it cannot be stopped. One lesson, however, has not fully sunk in and awaits final elucidation in the 2012 election: that of the Chicago style of Barack Obama’s politicking. In 2008 few of the true believers accepted that, in his first political race, in 1996, Barack Obama sued successfully to remove his opponents from the ballot. Or that in his race for the U.S. Senate eight years later, sealed divorce records for both his primary- and general-election opponents were mysteriously leaked by unnamed Chicagoans, leading to the implosions of both candidates’ campaigns. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in the history of public campaign financing to reject it, or that he was also the largest recipient of cash from Wall Street in general, and from BP and Goldman Sachs in particular. Or that Obama was the first presidential candidate in recent memory not to disclose either undergraduate records or even partial medical. Or that remarks like “typical white person,” the clinger’s speech, and the spread-the-wealth quip would soon prove to be characteristic rather than anomalous. Few American presidents have dashed so many popular, deeply embedded illusions as has Barack Obama. And for that, we owe him a strange sort of thanks. — NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of the just-released The End of Sparta, a novel about ancient freedom.

Jonah Goldberg on NRO November 30, 2011 12:00 A.M. Courting Joe the Puppeteer Democrats have abandoned all pretense of winning the white working class. Earlier this month, the left-wing magazine The Nation highlighted Joe Therrien as a symbol of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A New York City public-school drama teacher, Therrien was frustrated with the shortcomings of the school system. So he quit his job and “set off to the University of Connecticut to get an MFA in his passion — puppetry.” Three years and $35,000 in student-loan debt later, Therrien returned home, only to find he couldn’t land a full-time job. Apparently, a master’s in puppetry doesn’t provide the competitive edge in the marketplace he’d hoped for. Therrien joined Occupy Wall Street, constructing giant puppets and “figuring out how to make theater that’s going to help open people up to this new cultural consciousness. It’s what I’m driven to do right now.” I think I speak for everyone when I say: Good luck with that. One other thing: He may not realize it, but Joe the Puppeteer may be for Democrats what Joe the Plumber was for the GOP. (Joe “the plumber” Wurzelbacher was the Ohio man who confronted candidate Barack Obama about raising taxes on small business.) Thomas Edsall writes in the New York Times that the Democrats have made a fateful decision: “All pretense of trying to win a majority of the white working class has been effectively jettisoned in favor of cementing a center-left coalition made up . . . of voters who have gotten ahead on the basis of educational attainment — professors, artists, designers, editors, human resources managers, lawyers, librarians, social workers, teachers, and therapists — and a second, substantial constituency of lower-income voters who are disproportionately African American and Hispanic.” After decades of trying, the white working class is now “an unattainable cohort,” according to Edsall and a slew of Democratic strategists. The most common explanation for this failure is a self-serving and mossy tale about a racial backlash. The most recent version holds that the “tea parties,” which are about as white as the Occupy Wall Street movement, amount to a bigoted reaction to a black president. Never mind that the leading Tea Party contender for the GOP nomination is Herman Cain. [Funny how all of Herman’s “women” are from Chicago? I’m just saying.] In a less-charged environment, the differences between Obama and Cain would be seen as a continuation of the great philosophical rivalry between W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington. Du Bois, a socialist intellectual, favored promoting a “talented tenth” — a black progressive elite focused on state-run, top-down reforms — while Washington preached self-help and entrepreneurialism from the bottom up. Today’s Democratic party has an ingrained cultural aversion to the Booker T. Washington school. Liberal elites see themselves as a multiracial talented tenth, planning the economy and guiding society. In power, they lavish support on fashionable but unproductive sectors of the economy, such as green-energy boondoggles, and they buy off big constituencies invested in ever-larger government, such as public-sector unions, the “helping professions,” and even too-big-too-fail businesses. Their arguments sound economic and empirical, but ultimately they’re cultural in nature. The upscale white professionals the Democrats are courting disproportionately share a cultural affinity for government and faith that statist interventions are for your own good. They also believe government needs to help people succeed — or escape – the rat race of the private sector. (Remember Michelle Obama’s advice to working-class women? “Don’t go into corporate America . . . become teachers. Work for the community.”) In his acceptance speech at the 2008 Democratic convention, Obama mocked the Booker T. Washington concept of self-reliance: “In Washington, they call this the ownership society, but what it really means is, you’re on your own.” Later, Rep. Nancy Pelosi sold health-care reform as a “jobs bill” because “if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent . . . your aspirations because you will have health care,” she explained as if speaking straight to Joe the Puppeteer. “You won’t have to be job-locked.” That might be a compelling message to the white left represented at Occupy protests. The question is whether it sounds condescending or aloof to the rest of the Democratic coalition that wouldn’t mind being “job-locked” right now. — Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. You can reach him by e-mail at JonahsColumn@aol.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2011 TribuneMedia Services, Inc.

Cain's gaffe.

In an interview earlier this week, Mr. Cain seemed to stumble over a question about the late unpleasantness in Libya. He recovered and went on with the interview. Yet many of our conservative pundits immediately decided he was hopeless and would never be up to snuff to handle the great BHO. The same with Perry's brain freeze, or where Newt buys his wife's jewelry. We have yet to get to Iowa and the search for the perfect is driving these pundits to bury the good.

Over the past half century we've been working to weaken the political parties and close up the "smoke filled rooms." The idea was to weaken the Party Men thereby allowing the best men to come forward and run for office. As if the Party Men held a sword of Damocles over elected officials, as if the man in office never made his own decisions, for the good and the bad, as if he didn't hold the actual powers of the office. Now all that's left of the parties are the shells that run the primaries and hold the mainly ceremonial conventions.

So people now present themselves for president from all sorts of backgrounds, from First Lady to Pizza Guy, yet the only Presidents with foreign policy credentials in my lifetime were Eisenhower, Nixon, and G.H.W. Bush. Their cred was based in WW2 and the Cold War, yet the world still bilndsided them. Such is the march of History. Since the collapse of the USSR, let's face it, we've been winging it. When GW was running he was asked who was the leader of Kazakhstan, when he didn't know everybody thought he was useless, though it didn't stop Osama. When BHO was running he had all sorts of ideas on how he would change our foreign policy, none of which seemed to work, to the point that now he's running on his fidelity to GW's regimen.

As it is most people don't care about foreign policy or whether we have some sort of grand strategy at all. Which is why we seem to be backing into wars as if tripping over stones, then they take notice. But was ever true of Americans, we look at the world with a mix of realism and idealism. Tired of our world girdling power and responsibility, yet knowing that no one else will carry the load with the level of morality that we have.

China anyone?

JimG33

Rush on Herman's Emmet Till moment

Since the confirmation of Justice Thomas, the Democrat Party, and their intellectual side kicks, have repeatedly tried to upgrade their high tech lynching of what ever uppity negro happens to show up. Since they've been trying to destroy him since he first went national, and made a complete hash of it since Obama's meeting at G. Wills' house back in 2008, nobody knows this tactic better than ElRushbo. He says it much better than I would, and as usual no notes, no teleprompter. JimG33

The Media on Rush and Cain

November 01, 2011

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I don't think a lot of people do, but some underestimate the news media's power.  And if you do underestimate their power, you do so at your own peril.  You watch the Herman Cain witch hunt, two things have happened.  The media today is mad that he's still in there and that he's still smiling.  The media is also mad that the women haven't come forward.  They have been desperate to get these women. Politico has a story out there, which is basically a clarion call in the last paragraph of the story, "Please, please come forward, it's the next thing we need," begging the women to come forward. The women don't want to come forward from what I have been able to glean.  They're mad that Herman Cain is still out there smiling.  They're mad that he has not been disqualified.  They're mad that he is still a viable candidate. 

This was supposed to be over by the end of the day yesterday.  Particularly they are stunned that in their view Herman can go change his story throughout the day -- i.e., be inconsistent -- and still survive this, and they are really ticked at me and others who are defending Herman Cain.  They have assumed that we must really want Herman Cain to be the Republican nominee, otherwise we wouldn't be defending him and they have no clue why he's being defended.  It's not about securing him the nomination, for any of you in the Drive-Bys who care.  It's simply this.  We are not gonna stand by idly and watch you try to take out another one of our own.  You never turn this kind of reporting on people like Barack Obama.  You never turn this kind of reporting around on Bill Clinton.  You never engage in this kind of news coverage, reporting, character assassination of people in the Democrat Party. 

We have no choice.  We have our intelligence guided by experience in these matters.  But there are some even on our side, I've done the usual perusal of conservative media, and there are plenty on our side who think Cain's a boob and he ought to quit, that it's bringing disfavor on the whole field and on the whole party, and there's gotta be something there or Politico wouldn't run with it. Those are the outlets not geared up for the fight, those are the outlets, our own conservative media outlets who don't think there's a fight.  There's just the political game going on.  And once one of our people's tainted, he's finished, 'cause they think the Drive-Bys determine who lives and dies in a political sense. 

And as I watch this witch hunt of Herman Cain I'm reminded once again that whether they can do it or not, the media clearly believe that they can make or destroy any political candidate they choose. They do believe that. They do believe they can make or destroy anybody they choose. Now, they can in one circumstance, and that is if they have been responsible for making that person, then they can destroy that person. If the media has had no role in someone's success, then the odds of the media taking somebody out -- without any evidence, with a bunch of baseless charges -- is practically nil. But if you are the kind of person in entertainment, politics, the field of celebrity, what have you -- if your fame, if your presumed and assumed success owes exclusively to what the media has said about you then you're vulnerable -- they can take you out, like Anthony Weiner.

If you are somebody because the media says you're somebody, not because you really are. If you're Kim Kardashian... If they wanted her they could take her out yesterday and be done with her forever, same thing with Paris Hilton. They don't want to because it's too entertaining, too much fun. Weren't you heartbroken? Seventy-two days! They gave it their all, Kim Kardashian and the substitute basketball player? No, the football player, Reggie Bush. Once he said, "No more," then she found the basketball guy; 72 days, gone. But it was a valiant effort, gave it everything. They had even tried moving. I saw this guy carrying boxes in and out. Well, pictures of it. I wasn't there. (interruption) Where does she come up to on Humphries? (laughing) Well, now, that, if you want to demonstrate that, that could be harassment.

That's much lower on the gesture trajectory than the chin where Kim Kardashian came up to Kris Humphries, the basketball player. Yeah, you might have something there but that's not what Herman Cain did. He went to the chin. So the media: If they make you, they can break you. If they don't make you it's not gonna stop them from trying to break you, but it's gonna be more difficult for them to do so. Now, before the alternative media, there wasn't a question; if they wanted to destroy somebody, it was over. In fact, that's how you made a name for yourself in journalism: Pick out some local level, state level whatever -- pick out somebody -- and destroy 'em. That was a resume enhancement. Especially if they were powerful. They couldn't be Democrat powerful.

You note the treatment Jon Corzine's getting. Jon Corzine is Enron times ten. Jon Corzine, former Senator, former Goldman Sachs CEO, former governor of New Jersey, had his own private financial firm where he basically took money from the firm and put it in his own pocket. It's malfeasance on a near-record level. You know what the Democrats are saying today and the media are saying? "Gee, how could a guy so smart make such a big mistake?" Now, you change his name to "Ken Lay" and Enron, they're gonna drive him to commit suicide. With Corzine, an accredited favorite Democrat, "Gosh, how could such a smart guy make such a mistake?" It wasn't a "mistake." It was a purposeful, willful attempt at breaking the law.

What do you expect from a guy that left New Jersey $8 billion in debt, whatever budget deficit? What do you expect here? At any rate, the media in addition to believing they can take somebody out, they also believe they can make anybody (no matter how unqualified) into a viable candidate -- and we know they can because we see Obama. They took somebody who was not qualified -- he not just unqualified, he was the least qualified. He still is. After three years, he's still the least qualified guy in any room he walks into; but they made him into a viable candidate, even a messiah. You can't doubt that they can do that.

By the same token, if they've made Obama; and if they wanted to take Obama out, they could. They could do it because he is the pure product of the media.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites just to... (interruption) What are you carrying? What is that? Oh, good. Stuff just came in, boxes like Christmas. Good, good, good. The Apple stuff? (interruption) Cool. All right.

Let's go to the audio sound bites just to show you the media obsessed with me and defending Herman Cain. You know, the media theme of me and other conservatives defending Herman Cain is that we're racists. We're doing it because we are racist. I kid you not! I don't even understand it. Just like I don't understand that apparently to liberals the chin is a sexual organ. I would love to have that explained or demoed to me, 'cause not even our resident female and sex expert, Bo Snerdley, understands how the chin is a sexual organ. But it is apparently. So from last night and this morning a montage of the media on Herman Cain and me.

WILLIE GEIST: (music) Rush Limbaugh calls the Politico story a quote, "hit job."

MARK HALPERIN: Rush Limbaugh and others out there saying this is an attack on our guy.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: ...a hit job...

CAROL COSTELLO: Conservatives are coming out in support of him, like Rush Limbaugh.

JOE KLEIN: Rush was in his very high tenor, whiny mode.

SGT. SCHULTZ: Rush Limbaugh is attacking the mainstream media for being racist!

TOURE (NEBLETT): Rush Limbaugh talking about, "We see who the real racists are."

RUSH: That was Toure, the one-name social commentator that appears on NBC now and then. Here's F. Chuck Todd talking with Jamal Simmons on MSNBC this morning.

SIMMONS: I just can't let it pass by that Rush Limbaugh and some of these conservatives are now trying to use race to defend Herman Cain, who is somebody who has so avowedly demeaned the notion of even having race play a part in politics or having anything to do with his candidacy.

TODD: It is interesting. It's sort of like every --

SIMMONS: (chortling)

TODD: You know, these commentariates on the left and right, can we just agree not to play the race card?

SIMMONS: At all! Like, you know, and when you see it played, it is -- it is frustrating.

RUSH: Oh, F. Chuck wants to end playing the case card now! Really? Did I hear that right? F. Chuck's says, "Ah, you know, with the commentariate, it's too easy. We gotta stop playing the race card." That must mean it ain't working for 'em here, or else it means whatever we're doing is effective and they don't like it. And, by the way, just to prove something that I said that's true: Herman Cain has announced this morning that yesterday was his biggest fundraising day ever. Now, you know why? Why do you think that is? Outrage is exactly right. People are fed up with this. It's one-way street! If the media were actually watchdog, if the media were actually going after everybody this way -- if this was standard operating procedure, if they went after anybody who has power or wants power this way -- it would be a different story.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Herman Cain announces this morning yesterday was his biggest fundraising day ever. He said this on the Headline News network (which used to be "CNN's Headline News" but it's now just "Headline News." Even Headline News doesn't want to be known as being associated with CNN). He also said that he's not changed his story at all, that he just got the wording right. Now, the media claims that we on the right only like Cain to prove that we aren't racists. That's the theme, that you and I, and anybody else coming to Herman Cain's defense, say, "See? See? See? We're coming to the defense of a black guy, and that means we're not racist like you people always say we are!" That's not what this is about, because we know we're not racists and we're not on a life mission to prove it to anybody.

The real racism in this country exists in the Democrat Party anyway, and it surfaces in an ugly way constantly, frequently, often, as it did during the 2008 presidential campaign. No, this is due strictly to outrage and what is perceived accurately as totally being unfair. "Even if Herman Cain did this," as they say, they still build Bill Clinton up as a hero in the Democrat Party -- and I don't care whatever the worst that's been alleged about Herman Cain is, it doesn't even compare to what we know factually happened with Bill Clinton and a number of women! So the very holier-than-thou reporters on the left who are acting shocked and outraged, "How could this happen in this modern era this kind of blatant sexual harassment?" And trying to destroy Herman Cain? We know that's what they're trying to do.

The very same people put on a hero pedestal William Jefferson Clinton. The lack of fairness is quite obvious. It's nothing more complicated than that. It's actually very simple, and then that leads to outrage. People are willing to defend Herman Cain against the assault on principle because they recognize it for what it is. It's yet another attempt by the State-Controlled Media to determine who our nominee is, to take out our people, pure and simple. We had the sound bite yesterday from October 28th. A Democrat strategerist, Karen Finney (who, I think, at one time was big in the Clinton administration), said, "Republicans are supporting Herman Cain because of his race."

She said, "One of the things about Herman Cain is, I think that he makes the white Republican base of the party feel, 'Okay,' like they're not racist, because they can like this guy. I think he's giving that base a free pass, and I think they like him because they think he's a black man who knows his place. I know that's harsh, but that's how it sure seems to me." She's a member of the Democrat National Committee; and, in fact, that kind of symbolic demonstration -- that kind of show -- is what the Democrats do. So we have another case of projection here. Back to the audio sound bites. This morning on Scarborough's show on MSNBC, Mark Halperin from TIME Magazine is the guest and they discuss all this. Scarborough says, "Do you think Herman Cain's numbers will slightly go up? Why will the numbers go slightly up? What do you think's gonna happen here?"

HALPERIN: What's fueling Herman Cain, what has fueled his rise is an anti-Washington, anti-liberal establishment, uh, rallying around someone. Who the right profile for that sentiment in the party --

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah.

HALPERIN: -- and there's a lot of conservative voices, Rush Limbaugh and others out there saying, "This is an attack on our guy --

BRZEZINSKI: "A hit job!"

HALPERIN: -- because he's rising so much."

RUSH: Well, it's partially because he's rising so much. You know, I'm getting more and more e-mails. It's not even because he's rising so much. I'll tell you what it is. Like I said yesterday -- and please don't doubt me on this. The reason this looks just like Clarence Thomas is because it is; and the reason this looks just like Marco Rubio is because it is; and the reason this looks just like Alberto Gonzalez is because it is. Blacks and Hispanics who rise and achieve to the top their professions as Republicans will not be experimented. They must be taken out. That could only happen in the Democrat Party. Only in the Democrat Party will a black or a minority be allowed, be permitted without fight to appear on the Supreme Court, sit on the Supreme Court, be the attorney general, run to the presidency or what have you.

An achieved independent minority like a Herman Cain or a Clarence Thomas or a Marco Rubio... Just last week the Washington Post tried to destroy Rubio with a multipart hit piece, and they're still at it. Alberto Gonzalez. There's one other Hispanic guy, a brilliant jurist ( I'm having a mental block on who it is) was also nominated by Bush for a prominent position. I'm having a mental block of his name but they took him out, destroyed him. Herman Cain is getting too uppity. The danger is if a black or an Hispanic rises to the top and demonstrates it can happen with conservative principles as the juice: self-reliance, hard work, conservative values, all those things. If you can get there without the Democrat Party putting you there or helping you to get there, you represent the biggest threat the Democrat Party has.

That's why Clarence Thomas had to be taken out: He got where he got without one bit of assistance in the Democrat Party and the left, and as such nothing they could do. They didn't own him when he got there. They didn't control him when he got there. They're not gonna permit Herman Cain to keep this up, and I really don't want you to doubt me on this. This may sound simplistic or maybe not even possible. "The Democrats don't think that way, Rush. Really." They do. The Democrat Party and liberalism is built on a series of lies, and anything that exposes the lies -- particularly exposes them brightly -- has got to be dealt with. So Herman Cain has become the enemy of the moment. Actually this is last night, sound bite five. This is a full sound bite from the TIME Magazine contributor and I guess he works at MSNBC, Toure, about the Republican primary and Herman Cain, and Lawrence O'Donnell, the host of the show said, "Toure, there's just this blender of Republican racial politics has gotten mixed up together. I can't make any sense of it. Guide us through this."

TOURE: Well, one thing I see -- saw Rush Limbaugh talking about we see who the real racists are and Clarence Thomas is using that same sort of bazooka to fire back -- is that when we point out moments of racism or moments of minstrelsy in Herman Cain's, uhhh, example they just fire back and they use the word "racism." That's racist! You're racist, so it becomes this sort of negating tool that we'll just say "racism" wherever we see any racial politics taking place -- we'll say the race card is being played any time somebody points out a moment of racism -- and that just sort of muddles the conversation to where a lot of people are like, "I don't want to be part of this at all."

RUSH: Okay, now, that's Toure on MSNBC, where the motto is, "Resist We Much," and he's a stand-alone commentator. Lawrence O'Donnell says, "Please, break this down for us and explain it to us." Did any of you understand what Toure was saying? What is he saying? What was he saying? Because I know what he was trying to say. What he was trying to say is, "They are stealing our technique. They're stealing our technique, and they're muddying the waters by using our technique. We're the ones who have exclusive right to the race card! We are the ones who get to decide who's racist and who isn't, and when guys like Limbaugh come along and call us racists, why, that just muddies the water and makes everybody want to forget all this and leave.

"We own it! We own who's a racist and who isn't. Limbaugh can't do that. Limbaugh and these others come along and say we're being racist? We own that ploy!" (interruption) Why what? Why what now? Oh, because they haven't taken him out. The reason they're reacting and the reason they getting upset, they really thought that last night it was the end of it! They really thought Herman Cain was gonna be finished by last night. (interruption) Snerdley, you ask me these questions and I have to answer them since you ask them. I'm very uncomfortable answering this but they're still ticked off that I'm a factor. What they're really mad at here is that somebody or a group of people on our side in the media could maybe save whoever it is they go out to destroy.

So they seek in this case Herman Cain. "Okay, we're gonna take Herman Cain out," and we get our dander up and we put a stop to it or slow them down that's gonna make 'em mad, too, pure and simply is. And then if we, in their perverted eyes, steal one of their techniques (i.e., playing the race card or accusing the race card of being played), then they really get ticked off, and that's what Toure was saying here. "Well, they just fire back, and they just use the word 'racism.' That's racist, you're racist." That's right, Toure! For 23 years we've been hearing it. Maybe not from you, but people all over your side of the aisle. For twenty-three years I'm a "racist;" and I'm not, never have been. You guys are. We say it. You don't like it. Yeah. Exactly. They used it on one of their own and we caught it and pointed it out, but that 2008 presidential campaign was rife with racism on the Democrat side.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH:  It was Miguel Estrada that I was thinking of, another Hispanic conservative Republican who was destroyed at the very mention of his name being nominated to a high judicial post.  Alberto Gonzales, you name it.  Folks, it's undeniable.  It is what it is.  Now, I got a note from a friend of mine paying attention to all of this and all of this reporting, particularly about sexual harassment and what it is and how it's evolved into a political tool of the left.  He said: This whole thing is complete fabricated BS, Rush.  Let's look at it.  Politico is a leftist site.  Sexual harassment is a leftist BS piece of social engineering that attempts to regulate against the grain of human nature, exactly like feminism.  Feminism attempts to regulate against the grain of human nature, and by extension, so does sexual harassment.  They are inextricably tied together, sexual harassment and feminism, and they are both attempts to change the direction of basic human nature. 

Sexual harassment, most people cannot even explain the parameters of it.  Legal settlements, when it comes to sexual harassment, often have little to do with guilt.  They come with confidentiality provisions that make it impossible for somebody to defend himself without risk of breaching the agreement and reopening the whole prohibitively expensive episode.  So the disgrace here is that our people paid any attention to this at all.  Now, my friend sending me the note says, "I'm not a huge Cain fan, Rush.  The only story here should be how the media treated this nonsense versus the real transgressions, perhaps even crimes of Bill Clinton and John Edwards."  And that is exactly right.  It's a point that we made yesterday.  Clinton and Edwards.  How could they be so silly? How could they be so stupid while we go to every length we can to defend them?  And here you've got nothing in comparison.  Here's Maude Behar on her show, The View.

BEHAR:  Rush Limbaugh, he says this is an unconscionable racially stereotyped attack, okay?  Remember when he called President Obama "Barack the 'Magic Negro'"?  This man is the biggest hypocrite.  Who listens to this guy?

RUSH:  Everybody, Maude, everybody listens to this program.  I did not come up with the name.  This song explains how it all happened. 

(playing of "Barack the 'Magic Negro'") 

RUSH:  You see, Reverend Sharpton couldn't even stick to the lyric line.  He starts protesting.  The group still sings. 

(continued playing of song) 

RUSH: So Maude Behar says that I called President Obama the "Magic Negro."  In fact, ladies and gentlemen, "Magic Negro" has its own Wikipedia entry, and what they say is that African-American filmmaker Spike Lee popularized the term in 2001, and then they say usage of the title "Obama the 'Magic Negro'" by David Ehrenstein, Los Angeles Times column inspired this, so Wikipedia gets it right.

END TRANSCRIPT

Warren Buffett, the Anti-Millionaire.

            Most Boomers remember The Millionaire, a TV show from the golden era of black and white and small screens that fed our dreams of riches without sweat. A stranger would show up at your door, a little florid in his suit and tie, and tell you that he was a representative of John Beresford Tipton, WASP names still held power then, and you were to be the recipient of a cashiers check for One Million Dollars. The story would then unfold as the working stiff figured out what to do with this windfall.

            Warren Buffett is the renegade son of Mr. Tipton, rich beyond the dreams of Croesus, but looking to find a government patsy to dole out the wealth that will assuage his soul. The idea that he would go from house to house is just so beneath him, better he get The President to do it. “Barry, may I call you Barry? If only I and my plutocratic buddies could give more, I mean really more, could we ease your burden?”

            And so The President travels the length and breath of the land, from sea to shining sea, wearing out his marching boot leather like Adlai Stevenson did before him (Another name from the time of the fading WASP ascendency). As he berates and batters us in the vain hope that we’ll EAT THE RICH in an Abbie Hoffman type version of a Roman orgy, and yet we still lay here, like a bunch of lolling Chris Christies, waiting, hoping, praying for his return to Chicago, a city that deserves him.

            Warren still waits, the idea that he could raise his salary, as if he got a salary, to the level of his secretary and therefore pay an amount that would make him happy always seems to escape him. I expect more op-ed pieces over the next year, but should they amount to more than moral preening---- well, I’m not holding my breath. JimG33