MSNBC's Schuster Debates "Tea Party Racist" Author Kevin Jackson

Liberals/Media Treat Islam with Respect and Tea Partiers with Disdain

George Louvis at the American Thinker...

Every time some Muslim blows up a plane, or a train, or kills innocent people, we hear from the Left how we should not judge all Muslims because of a few extremists. Our current President tells us, not to "jump to conclusions.

Louvis is talking about the so-called "incidents" at a D.C. Tea Party protest. The Seattle Times had this to say about those protests:

In other news, tea-party protesters called John Lewis a "nigger" the other day in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol. For the record, Lewis wasn't their only target. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spat upon. Rep. Barney Frank, who is gay, was called "faggot."

Michelle Malkin at Town Hall:

Yet, the claims that Tea Party activists shouted "nigger" at black House Democrats remain uncorroborated. The coffin reportedly left outside Missouri Democratic Rep. Russ Carnahan's home was used in a prayer vigil by pro-life activists in St. Louis protesting the phony Demcare abortion-funding ban in Obama's deal-cutting executive order. Videotape of a supposed intentional spitting incident targeting Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver at the Capitol shows no such thing. Cleaver himself backed off the claim a few days later. He described his heckler to The Washington Post in more passive terms as "the man who allowed his saliva to hit my face." Slovenliness equals terrorism!

And Pat Conlon at Born Again Redneck had this to say about those incidents...

Did you hear that Dem Rep Lewis was spat on by a Tea-partier? No he wasn't. Apparently some spit flew out the guys mouth because he was yelling. That happens - especially if you have falsies. Did you hear that Dem Rep Cleaver was called nigger by a Tea-partier? Nobody actually heard it. Apparently some un-named "aide" heard it but actual footage of the "incident" shows it never happened.

Did you hear that Michael Steele and Sarah Palin are urging Republicans to kill Democrats? I watched the TV news last night and sure enough that's what they said happened. Michael Steele said "put Democrats in the firing line and target them" in the November elections and Sarah Palin said that now is not the time to give up but that we should "reload"?

Louvis points out that liberals and the mainstream media paint conservatives in the Tea Party movement with a very broad brush while at the same time taking an entirely different tack with Muslims.

Why are we told to be tolerant and not judge a whole group based on the actions of a tens of thousands of Al Qaeda members but we can condemn millions of Americans based on the actions of what 1, 10, maybe 100 Americans who called names?

Good question.

New Hollywood Documentary Claims James Cameron Doesn't Exist

Fresh from the success of Avatar, Director James Cameron has once again been in the news.  First, The Hollywood Reporter says that director James Cameron "lashed out at Glenn Beck at a news conference Tuesday," saying "'Glenn Beck is a fucking asshole. I've met him. He called me the anti-Christ, and not about Avatar. He hadn't even seen Avatar yet. I don't know if he has seen it."

Beck responded to Cameron's slurs on his show. At one point Beck wears 3D glasses to mock Cameron.




The Hollywood Reporter goes on to explain that Cameron was "apparently referring to Beck's reaction to his 2007 documentary, The Lost Tomb of Jesus, which casts doubt on the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The controversial Discovery channel documentary The Lost Tomb of Jesus (on which James Cameron served as executive producer) describes the discovery of an ancient tomb near old Jerusaleum as excavators were preparing the land for a housing construction project; the film argues that the divine Jesus did not exist--he was a man who had a wife and family and this is their tomb.

At the time the documentary was shown, Glenn Beck was working for CNN and introduced a piece on Cameron with the statement, ""Many people believe James Cameron officially has tossed his hat in the ring today and is officially running for anti-Christ."  One authority, Amos Kloner, professor of archaeology at Israel's Bar-Ilan University who wrote the original excavation report, said the documentary was "very unserious work...[this film] is all nonsense." 


Also involved with this documentary was Cameron friend Charles Pellegrino (he co authored the book on which The Lost Tomb was based). Pellegrino helped Cameron on Avatar and his new book Last Train from Hiroshima was going to be the basis for the Oscar winning director's next new movie until key witnesses in the book were shown to be fabricated.

And now comes this breaking news from Creative News Network, Faux Reports Division. A new soon to be released documentary, JC Is In Fact 3DCG, claims James Cameron does not exist.

Controversial documentary film-maker Michael Less is creating a sensation in Hollywood and New York with his latest film, “JC Is In Fact 3DCG,” which denies the existence of supposed Oscar winning director, 3D innovator, and Global Warming advocate James Cameron. “You look at all the research in my documentary and it’s as plain as the nose on your face,” says Less. “James Cameron is a gigantic 3DCG (3 dimensional computer generated) hoax, perpetrated on a scale never before thought possible. What we thought was a real man is in fact a 3 dimensional computer, generated avatar. No wonder Glenn Beck has trouble remembering what went on when he met Cameron in the CNN makeup room. It's pretty damn hard to remember a substanceless hologram.”

“We didn’t go into this hoping to find a hoax,” said Willard Ferret, the documentary’s producer. “Mike was just going to do a simple bio type thing. But then the PI we hired to do a background check came back with that bombshell about his high school yearbook picture and we had to look at everything from a different angle.”

“The high school principal Bartholomew Farquar was the key,” said Nick James, the PI. “I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. I showed Farquar the high school annual from 1972 expecting to get the usual standard stuff about Cameron being an all around popular boy who wrote for the school paper. Instead, Farquar pulled down his blinds, and took another 1972 annual out of his desk. ‘This is the real one,’ he said. ‘The one you have is a fake.’ I looked through it. There was no James Cameron. Anywhere. Not a single pic. No references. It blew my mind.”

“Willard stood by us from the very first,” said Less. “This film cost a lot of money and he never flinched. Over a thousand strands of DNA evidence were examined, literally thousands of pictures were scrutinized, and hundreds of scientists, and scholars who specialize in personal identity were interviewed. The results of all our investigations show–and we’ve replicated these time and time again–Cameron’s existence is one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on movie fans of the world. There is not now, nor has there ever been a real James Cameron who directed movies. The Terminator, Titantic, Avatar, someone else did those movies. Everything with his name on it is open to question. James Cameron does not exist.”

“As far as Cameron’s five wives and four children’ go,” said Ferret, “no one would let us talk to them. We think they’re phony too, or at least in on the hoax, we just can’t prove it. After all, they must get lots of money from the big production companies who run this whole illusion. We have do have second hand photos of all of his wives with other men during the time they were supposedly married to him, but they could be 3DCG too.”

Less said they did get one actual person to claim that Cameron exists. He's Charles Pelligrino, author of the widely disputed book The Last Train from Hiroshima. "We left his interview in the doc," says Less, "because we figured with his track record of fabrications and fictions, his claim that Cameron exists actually supported our claim to the contrary."

In his documentary Less even use Biblical evidence to support his conclusions about James Cameron. “It’s in the book of James,” says Less, “Chapter 2, verse 14. ‘What good is it ... if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds?’ Clearly this is prophetic truth about James Cameron,” Less continues. “We all had faith in James Cameron before we made this film, a kind of religious faith even, but now that we’ve seen that there’s no real ‘deeds’ or verifiable action to validate his existence, our faith is shattered. All we have now is our belief in this film. We hope the public will accept that.”

Morality, Philosophy, and Law

Watch this 8 minute video by Bill Whittle, Pajamas TV. It delivers some clear thinking about the origin of American views on morality, philosophy, and law. It's ironic that these views are considered "conservative" today because on reflection they are revolutionary.

Hat tip to Montana George. Thanks buddy!

Obamacare: Healthcare for All, No Waiting

I picked this up from Gary Graham over at Big Hollywood.

Good Thing He's Retiring: Gordon Votes for Obamacare

Rep. Bart Gordon (D) has been walking a tightrope during the last few years trying to keep his district's very conservative constituents placated while dancing to the music provided by his DC liberal Dem friends.

Now that he's announced his retirement his true colors are finally showing.

He voted for Obamacare yesterday. Good thing he's retiring. After this vote, he wouldn't have a prayer this fall.

Ironically, on his website, he's bragging about his efforts to keep nuclear waste out of Tennessee. I think with his yes vote on Obamacare, he just opened the door to another kind of radioactive waste. It's just as deadly and its effects just as long lasting. This heinous bill moves us closer to a European style statist, socialist government and it's unintended consequences will harm us, our children, and their children.  Goodbye Bart.

Daffodils vs. Buttercups

The Buttercups are blooming. Or is it Daffodils? Apparently it's the latter. I've always referred to Daffodils as Buttercups, even after I read Wordsworth's famous poem (printed below the pic) in college. I learned to call these flowers "Buttercups" from hearing my Mom, my Aunts, and others in the family and the neighborhood I grew up in use the word to describe the flowers in the picture below. I can hear Mom saying, "Lookee there. Mrs. Tatum's Buttercups are already blooming."

I now know that Buttercups are single flowers, usually found in the wild. They're yellow but are smaller and their petals are rounded and more open. Daffodils are...well they are what they are. Beautiful. I especially like those I've seen on a country lane near my home which line the no longer visible driveway up to a stone chimney...the only thing remaining of a once grand farmhouse. They've outlasted the structure and the loving hands that planted them and they keep coming back spring after spring.

But...since I don't recall ever seeing an authentic Buttercup in my neck of the woods, I think I'll still keep calling these Daffodil flowers by the name I learned as a child--Buttercups. They look like cups of sweet creamy, freshly churned butter--so they'll always be Buttercups to me.

"Daffodils" (1804)


I WANDER'D lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;


Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the Milky Way,


They stretch'd in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.


The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:


I gazed -- and gazed -- but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,


They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.


                                      By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).

For All the Sunday Dancers: The Shenandoah Waltz

If you don't appreciate good hardcore Bluegrass, I recommend you start with Sammy Kaye's version (#3) of "The Shenandoah Waltz" at the bottom of this post and work your way up. But don't leave out the Johnson Boys; they are gifted musicians who sing wonderful Bluegrass harmony.

Last night was the Vernal Equinox. Hooray! We've had two straight days of warm sunshine, the daffodils bloomed, and I saw two chickadees building a nest...so get your dancing (waltzing) shoes on. Spring is officially here.

1. The Johnson Boys from 1988. A song written back in 1947 by Country musicians Clyde Moody (lyrics) and Chubby Wise (melody)...




2. Chubby's own instrumental version...



3. Sammy Kaye's big band interpretation of this song (love those clarinets, at least I think they're clarinets)...

I'm Afraid They Will Ram It Through No Matter the Consequences

The Stages of Elitism

In this month's Atlantic, Christina Davidson has a piece entitled "Let Us Now Trash Famous Authors."

In her essay, Davidson writes about the famous Depression era collaboration between Tennessee writer James Agee and photographer Walker Evans, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. She describes her interviews with a few of the descendants of the people who had been the subject of this well known book. She expresses her bafflement at why the younger members of these families "seem unaware that their ancestors feature in the most significant historical documentation of Depression-era share cropping and one of the great American literary masterpieces of the 20th century." She also notes that some descendants are downright hostile, that they feel exploited and hold the view that their family "seemed to have become a big business from which only strangers ever profited." They remember that while their anscestors worked the fields, Agee and Evans "stayed back at the house...poking through drawers to record every spool of thread, scrap of fabric, and clip of newsprint they discovered."  Agee wrote the families later but never mentioned or sent them a copy of the book that he and Evans wrote.

One descendant is especially bothered that "Agee and Evans didn’t tell her parents that their lives would become a book. 'Momma and Daddy didn’t know what they was doing. They was trying to help ’em out. And they just wanted to write about how poor Momma and Daddy was.'”


A Wikipedia writer makes this interesting observation about Let Us Now Praise Famous Men:

"Although at its heart a story of the three families...the book is also a meditation on reporting and intrusion, on observing and interfering with subjects, sufficient to occupy any student of anthropology, journalism or revolution."

A writer in Wikipedia reports that "the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly angry because the family was 'cast in a light that they couldn't do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant.'"

The first picture below is of Agee, the second is Evans.

Much biographical information is available about Agee and Evans in books and on the internet. It's worth noting that Agee attended Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and graduated from Harvard and that Evans went to Phillips Academy in Massachusetts and attended Williams College. As young men, both visited Europe (on separate ocassions).

Davidson's brief essay and my little research on the book led me to think some about "Good Intentions." You know what I'm talking about--that passionate desire to help someone less fortunate.

"Good Intentions" is of course what people sometimes say when there's been a collosal screw up. "Well they had good intentions."  It's frequently said about liberal elitists whose latest scheme has somehow backfired and caused irreparable harm to individuals or the nation.

How do you get from those good intentions to the condescending liberal elitist looking down on the destruction he/she has wrought? I propose that individuals pass through five stages. I'm a recovering liberal, and although I went through a few of these stages myself, luckily I never stood on the high sacred ground of the final stage.

The first stage of elitism is the growing awareness that you are somehow different from other people. It's as if you've been singled out, chosen. In another era, you would have felt "called." You start to think of yourself as better, cooler, more sensitive, and more intelligent than most others. This awareness is obviously enhanced by attending an Ivy League college or a prestigious feeder prep school. Ivy Leage schools however are not absolutely necessary--a lowly state university will do in a pinch if you believe in yourself and have the right professors. Even a community college will work if you can maintain the proper attitude. Again, the key to this stage is the almost epiphany-like awareness that you are  a member of a very select group.

The second stage is the realization of the fact that your beliefs are shared by everyone else in this select group and that all of you are entitled to the elevated status that belonging to this group naturally entails. In the 60's you might have joined a commune or before that the Communist Party. And in an earlier more spiritual age, you might have thought of yourself as a member of the "elect."

The third stage is the tragic recognition that most of the others in this life will never have the insight, the vision, the creativity, or the power that you do. It's a terrible fact that might make you momentarily sad. But it is a fact. The hubris of this recognition may be upsetting to some outside your circle, but it's something you and your comrades are quite comfortable with. In our society, there's a huge mass of people stuck in the middle. To you with your progressive perception, they are lost in meaningless jobs and material pursuits. Many of your group will learn to ignore them. If you are an artist or academic, however, you will learn to make fun of them and ridicule their values because you have an ethereal mission of greater historical significance than someone in their petty lives could ever imagine. If you're a politician, you'll soon learn that you must mask your disdain for them while easily manipulating them with soaring oratory and rhetoric.

Elitism's fourth stage is the simple understanding that because of your intelligence, insight, and vision you have a duty to improve the lives of those at the very bottom. There's no guilt involved in this. It's just a matter of necessity. Ignoring the rabble in the middle, you must reach down benevolently to those at the very bottom, those victims trapped there because of poverty and prejudice. You with your greater knowledge understand that they of course will never totally escape their condition. It's a given. But you can make their pitiful lives just a little better. You can at least give them hope. And, if you and your colleagues act in concert politically, you can assuage their feeling of inferiority and improve their material status with money you get from the stupid worker drones in the broad middle. The world cannot be made perfect but it can be brought closer to perfection. 
 
In the final stage, as a fully accredited Elite Liberal (unless you die beforehand), you get to look down from the sacred and intellectually protected heights on what you have wrought. Most often it's destruction, chaos, confusion, a morass of unintended consequences. Have no fear. Big Media is your friend and with the proper spin, your ass is covered in the present. As for future generations, Revisionist, Marxist academic historians are your friends as well. The millions of bodies, wrecked lives, shattered institutions, broken families, and doomed individuals can be turned into martyrs for the cause or, in a pinch, ignored altogether.

Agee died at the age of 45, so he didn't get to fully appreciate (a) how his and Evans' work would be recognized as a masterpiece of 20th century letters or (b) how he would be regarded by the families whose private lives he invaded that summer in 1936.

Murray State Defeats Vanderbilt: Obama Predicted Their Victory

Vandy lost at the buzzer today, 66-65; once again they were upset in the first round. If you're interested, read about the heartbreak in the Tennesseean. According to their report, President Obama picked Murray State to defeat Vandy. Yikes! His omniscience is staggering.

Vanderbilt Is Number 4 Seed in West

Go Commodores!

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY

vs.

Murray State University

Day: Today, Thursday

Date: Mar. 18, 2010

Location: San Jose

Time: 1:30 p.m. CT

Coverage

TV: CBS

Radio: 104.5 FM