For forward-looking GOP, there's no turning back . . .

From Jim Geraghty's National Review Online Newsletter, "Morning Jolt":

I'm reminded of The Hunt for Red October, and the anecdote that the defecting Soviet submarine captain, Marco Ramius, shares with his crew, "When he reached the New World, Cortez burned his ships. As a result his men were well motivated." To go back on their pledges to cut government would be suicide in 2012; there's no way the Republicans can win a spending race with Obama. Presuming Republicans decided to completely ignore the deficit and debt, Obama could simply promise to double whatever the GOP proposed spending. There's no turning back. Republicans can either go down swinging, standing up for the concepts of limited government that they spent the past two years touting, or they can lose by a landslide.

The opposition's message, every cycle, is essentially, "Vote for us for free ice cream." The fiscally conservative message is, "There is no more free ice cream, and in fact the ice cream has never been free." If selling that message were easy, we would never have gotten into this mess.

I think there is more upside to (verifiably) doing what they said they would do than there is to trying to avoid being cast as the bad guy. Not to mention, things are different (media-wise and as far as political organizations) now than when Bill Clinton avoided any blame for shutting down the government way back when. The American public just isn't as lemming-ish as it has been in the past. Heck, a bunch of Americans are still skeptical of Obama's claims that he is a devout Christian (via Drudge).

Sounds like the KGB to me

Well, Media Matters is dropping all pretense ("Media Matters' war against Fox") of not being a propaganda arm of the Left (ironically, MM vilifies FoxNews for being a propaganda arm of the GOP).

Watchdogging is one thing, but the tools at Media Matters are actually attempting to destroy an opposing voice. Losers.

Simplifying Pi?: Article a Hoax, But Hits Close to Home

Whew, the "Simplifying Pi" post at Huffington Post was a hoax.

Gee, if Conservatives (and Republicans) weren't so stupid, Liberals wouldn't have fallen for this hoax and American students wouldn't fair so poorly in math and science, ya know?

Thanks for shedding some light on this subject Jennifer Welsh . . .

Jalen Rose and "Uncle Toms"

You may have not heard about the tempest in a teacup surrounding the "Fab Five" documentary about the 1991 University of Michigan B-ball team. The controversy centers around the seemingly gratuitous statement in the movie by Jalen Rose that Duke recruited “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms.’" Rose is trying to spin his comment as something he thought "when [he] was 17 years old" or as meaning something other than what-every-other-American-knows-it-means, but the sad thing is that he is blatantly not backing off of the comment.

Bottom line, those sentiments are racist. It's the whole "acting white" issue, and it's sad that a marvelously fortunate and exceptional black person like Jalen Rose can't grasp that, more often than not, success in life is the result of things like working hard, making wise decisions, and acknowledging time-tested social norms.

Grant Hill, a former player at Duke U. summed it up when he wrote on the NYTimes blog,

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous.

America's in trouble race-relations-wise and in general as long as "being black" means what Jalen Rose seemingly thinks it does.

SHAME? Try PRIDE.

The Left (posing as "Labor") in Wisconsin is trying to tag Walker and the GOP with the word "SHAME." Uh, try "PRIDE." Gov. Scott Walker on mob scene in Madison . . .

Nashville in the news!!!

Nashville gets a shout out in this report about controversy surrounding hearings about American radicalization of Islam within the U.S. chaired by Congressman Peter King (R-NY) ("King draws fire"):

Melvin Bledsoe, whose son allegedly attacked an Army recruiting center in Arkansas, said in written testimony obtained by Fox News that Americans are ignoring the issue. He plans to describe how his son, Carlos, was radicalized when he went off to college in Nashville, Tenn. In his testimony, Bledsoe will explain how his son's personality changed and how, when he returned home for the holidays in 2005, he told his family he converted to Islam. From that point, he changed his name and eventually traveled to Yemen.

"Some Muslim leaders had taken advantage of my son. But he's not the only one being taken advantage of. This is going on in Nashville and in many other cities in America," Bledsoe plans to say. "In Nashville, Carlos was captured by people best described as hunters. He was manipulated and lied to. That's how he made his way to Yemen."

Phil Zuckerman, clueless about Christ

I just read an article by Phil Zuckerman, writer and wannabe-psychoanalyst of the Huffington Post, plainly asserting that Jesus Christ would be a Democrat (essentially). As my first boss and mentor used to say, "wrongo mooseface." Phil Zuckerman: Why Evangelicals Hate Jesus:

The results from a recent poll published by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/Tea-Party-and-Religion.aspx) reveal what social scientists have known for a long time: White Evangelical Christians are the group least likely to support politicians or policies that reflect the actual teachings of Jesus. It is perhaps one of the strangest, most dumb-founding ironies in contemporary American culture. Evangelical Christians, who most fiercely proclaim to have a personal relationship with Christ, who most confidently declare their belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, who go to church on a regular basis, pray daily, listen to Christian music, and place God and His Only Begotten Son at the center of their lives, are simultaneously the very people most likely to reject his teachings and despise his radical message.

I've always enjoyed it when the moralistic, judgmental Liberals declared, "you can't legislate morality." Of course, every law is someone's morality. And Zuckerman's confusion on this point is a close cousin to his cluelessness on another point . . . that is, that there is a distinction between what an individual ought to do and what government ought to do (or force citizens to do).

Liberals (now "Progressives") are all about legislating morality, and their policies more often than not pick "winners and losers" and expand government at the expense of liberty.

Chip Forrester wields the "F" Word

Wow. In the weekly Tennessee Democratic Party Members' email to me and the millions of other supporters on their list (cough), Chip Forrester, the Democrats' Chairman, is calling Gov. Bill Haslam a fascist for attempting to rein in the out-of-control public employee Unions. I assume the follow up email will expound on how the story that Adolph Hitler--leader of the National Socialist Party in Germany, outlawed unions. Give me a break.