The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, the Uglier, and the Ugliest
One of the great things about living in the land of the free and the home of the brave is never knowing what you’ll wake up to in the morning. And a day of rodding around some dusty Texas dirt roads in an old pickup before heading to the lake to cool off puts me in the mood for a little Clint Eastwood-style roundup of some of today’s news.
First, the Good – and it happened right here in H-town this morning. Police say that after witnesses stopped a car thief mid-crime the man refused to stop his one-man crime wave as he broke into multiple other cars and tried to carjack another before attacking the wrong man. Mr. Eastwood, I presume? Perhaps not. But the result was the same: the carjacker was shot dead by his would-be victim, who, it just so happens, is the possessor of a concealed weapon permit.
Crime doesn’t pay, people. But guns, in the proper hands, can make a city safer for its citizens.
Next, the Bad. Some Democrats in Congress are starting to have doubts about this whole nationalization of the auto industry thing. Seems that Steny Hoyer, Chris Van Hollen, and Daniel Maffei have written an un-love letter to President Obama about the disastrous wave of auto dealership closings that have followed his administrations strong-arm takeovers of Chrysler and GM.
Seems the congressmen aren’t happy about the nationalized companies shutting down auto dealerships – many of them privately owned and operated and long since paid for – at an incredible pace. Seems that some of the targeted dealerships were money-makers, so what gives? Frankly I doubt if anybody knows. What exactly is the difference between this mess and a standard bankruptcy? Who are the geniuses who thought that Fiat could actually help Chrysler? Have they driven a Fiat? Or pushed one, up hill, after it stopped running again? If the guys who make the Mercedes Benz couldn’t fix the steaming pile that is Chrysler, does anyone seriously expect Fiat to do better? It’s a joke, and a bad one.
Moreover, where exactly does this so-called rescue leave Ford, the only American automaker to have shown any fiscal sense? That’s anyone’s guess. The one thing we know for sure is that big bailout bucks in the hands of its competitors can’t be good news for the last solvent car maker in this country.
Let’s move on to the Ugly. Tom Coburn, the hair-trigger senator from Oklahoma, sounds more like a socialist medical czar than anyone in the Obama administration after coming out in favor of a national ban on tobacco.
Come again? I have never smoked or dipped or bit into a big chaw of Red Man, but the right to do so, should I choose to exercise it, ought to be beyond the control of the boys in Washington D.C. I searched long and hard but I didn’t find anything in the Constitution about the government’s right to ban the product that was, for some years, perhaps the only thing that this country was good at producing. The notion itself is disgusting – even more so than smoking itself, which is pretty darn gross. And coming from an alleged conservative? Even worse.
What could be Uglier than that? PZ Myers, once again. New Hampshire just legalized gay marriage, becoming the 6th state to do so. To which I say, as I’ve always said, “Hey, if that’s what they want to do up there, fine with me. Just don’t plan on pushing your bad ideas down our throats here in Texas.”
Celebrating the “victory”, Myers gloated and wrote, “44 more to go”, thereby demonstrating once again, if there was any remaining doubt, that the liberal atheist agenda will never stop trying to expand its area of control until every last state and county in this country are subject to its sway. That’s what they do.
Myers went on to say, “Just remember, no one can point to the atheists and claim they tried to hinder civil rights here…we didn’t ask for the privilege to discriminate.”
Liar, liar, pants on fire. The radical left wing agenda that began to formulate nearly 50 years ago is predicated on discrimination, a word they claimed for themselves and whose meaning they twisted to fit their needs, demeaning man’s right to make independent judgments in the process. We are, after all, talking about a social movement whose primary aim is to restrict the religious freedom of the majority of Americans simply because they themselves do not believe in a Creator.
No, Dr. Myers, liberal atheists didn’t ask to discriminate – your kind demanded they be allowed to do so by rioting in the streets, storming university administrative offices, defiling religion, destroying the nuclear family, and perverting the legal system to bring about the changes that have debased American society over the last 4 decades.
And the Ugliest of All? David Neiwert of Crooks and Liars – you can make your own guess about which on Neiwert is in the comments sections – today stretched his tattered credibility past the breaking point by linking Dr. James Dobson and John Eldredge, author of the popular Wild at Heart Christian book, to Mexican drug lords.
His evidence? Seems that Nazario Gonzalez Moreno likes Eldredge’s books enough to make them mandatory reading for his band of merry killers.
What of it? We all know what happened after a looney-tune named Karl Marx was allowed to put his psychotic ramblings into print, but it would be an overstatement to say that Marx caused Joe Stalin to murder 20 million of his own people and enslave the entire Warsaw Pact for decades. No, the writings of others give certain types of people a convenient excuse to act in exactly the fashion that they want to act by validating their desires, whether intentionally, as in the case of Marx, or by accident in this case.
Indeed, Neiwert’s writing demonstrates that point precisely in that he actively seeks ways to smear and shame men like Dobson and Eldredge, men who have single-handledly done more to improve the lives of their fellow Americans than all of radical liberalism’s government boondoggles on which billions and billions have been wasted in the last several decades. Given an opportunity to act by a remote, irrelevant linkage between these men and a drug lord like Moreno, Neiwert springs into action in just the way he wants to, smearing his betters in an effort to tear down their work, work that offends his liberal, anti-Christian biases.
Have you read Wild at Heart, David? I thought not. And that’s the ugliest thing of all about your petty little charade.
Good movie, but the all-time speghetti western was Once Upon a Time in the West.
I’m afraid that I’ll remain sketical about Hoyer et al’s good intentions for now at least. I mean, are they prepared to track this down no matter where it leads? Yeah, right. Hoyer recommending that the Auto Task Force look into this is funny – that’s the LAST body that should investigate this matter, since it is running the deal to begin with (protestations to the contrary notwithstanding). Indeed, Hoyer at al’s suggestion should remind folks to be ever skeptical about Democrat motives even when it might appear on the surface that they are doing the right thing.
The Good (scenario): Hoyer and ilk are truly concerned about the political ramifications of Obama’s and the “progressive” left’s economic policies, which could seriously jeopardize the Democrat’s long-term prospects. They know that taking on Obama frontally could cause internal damage to the party, and/or themselves, but they think the alternative of doing nothing appears to be a worse bet. They could be signaling the need for an internal housecleaning that would have to appear from the outside as the Obama administration ‘growing on the job.”
The Bad (scenario): many of the dealers on the ax list are now under the protection of Hoyer et al, whether that was the administration plan all along, or Hoyer is working his own branch of the Democrat party machinery. Hoyer will now work to rescue his new clients and/or cushion the blow somehow, and those dealers will now be under the Democrat umbrella $$. See: Maggie’s Farm, http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/11636-Mission-Accomplished!.html. The original criteria used to make the selections will never see the light of day, but the parties will be “satisfied.” The media will credit Obama and the Task Force for compromising, finding solutions, etc.
The Ugly (scenario): one potential snag – Who will actually buy the vehicles (including GM)? Local, state, and fed government can buy a lot, as well as fed & state subsidized non-profits, but is that a sufficient market? Obama and Dems may not care: they rescue UAW, add some new dealer clients, and kick another problem down the road.
So PZ Meyers is a states rights guy now? Naw, that wouldn’t be his style, I think. I’m with him on the “44 more” part, but nothing else in his post.
I never understood the cutting of dealers. I do understand if you have a “hot” product you can limit you distribution to drive up price. But really, what about Chrysler or GM would anybody consider hot?
I’m not buying from them because I won’t buy from an entity that has been taken over by the government in this fashion. I will stand with the secured bondholders, even if our president won’t.
If by “religious freedom” you mean lording your religious beliefs over others, using it as justification to limit the rights of others and using it as an excuse to not provide your children with vital vaccinations and more serious health care then yes, such “religious freedom” needs to be reigned in.