Time for another Texas vs. California roundup. First up: The man who moved from one to the other:
(Hat tip: Willisms, City Journal, others.)
Texas vs. California Roundup: October 2, 2012
October 2nd, 2012Help Me, Elspeth Reeve, You’re My Only Hope!
October 1st, 2012Let’s talk about the ObamaPhone video, shall we?
The video is both funny (the woman is an idiot with a comical voice) and politically useful (displaying, as it does, a sense of entitlement to government handouts).
So, naturally, some liberals are crying racism. Here the general case of “some liberals” is best exemplified by Elspeth Reeve. If that name rings a vague bell at the back of your mind, its probably because she’s most famous for violating journalistic standards by improperly fact-checking the articles by her husband, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, when he was smearing American troops in Iraq in a series in The New Republic.
Reeve has certified the ObamaPhone video as 100% racist:
The racism comes in when Drudge, Rush, the people who giddily retweeted the link, do a mental calculation that if enough people would just see this video they would support Romney, because it plays on the same racist stereotypes that are usually trotted out this time of the election cycle. The video posted on Drudge and played on Limbaugh was a black lady who has all the standard visual cues of being poor — messed-up teeth and skin, her waistline, her yelling. Oh, and if cues aren’t enough, she talks in racial terms: “Everybody in Cleveland, all the minorities got a phone. Keep Obama president, you know, he gave us a phone, he’ll give us more.”
Let’s dissect that a little. When Reeve says “do a mental calculation…because it plays on the same racist stereotypes ” what she’s saying is that she can read people’s minds, and she knows their intent is racist. And then she admits that the subject of the video talks in racial terms. So instead of putting the onus for bringing race into the discussion on the subject of the video herself who brings it up, she puts it on conservatives she can tell are committing thoughtcrimes because of her amazing telepathic powers.
Unfortunately, those of us without Elspeth Reeve’s extra-sensory perception are left at a loss to figure which amusing videos, at least those whose subjects happen to be black, are in fact racist. Given that I happen to be a white conservative living in Texas (and therefore someone already with a -5 on saving throws against liberal accusations of racism), obviously I need help in determining such things.
So where else can I go except the source itself? Help me, Elspeth Reeve, your psychic powers are the only hope I have for determining whether an amusing video that involves black people is racist or not!
Help me out here, Elspeth: Is Afro-Ninja racist?
How about this black woman saying Obama is going to pay her mortgage? Is that racist?
How about Obama stumbling around while answering a question? Is that racist?
How about Obama talking about visiting all 57 states? Is that racist?
How about black comedians dealing with racial issues. Is that racist? (NSFW warning applies to the language in the next few videos.) Is Dave Chappelle playing black white supremacist Clayton Bigsby racist?
How about Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase’s word association test?
How about Clevon Little in the famous sheriff-welcoming scene from Blazing Saddles?
Help me out here, Elspeth. Put your psychic powers to work. Which of these are racist, and which are merely funny?
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Dear California: You Know That Money Will Be Wasted, and You Know Those Tax Hikes Will Be Permanent
September 28th, 2012I’ve got another Texas vs. California piece coming around on the guitar, but I thought there was
Hold on to your hats, but it seems that California voters might, just might, be catching on that the Democrats who run California’s state government are wasting their money.
I will now wait for the indignant shouts of incredulous outrage to die down.
Support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for billions of dollars in tax hikes on the November ballot is slipping amid public anxiety about how politicians spend money, but voters still favor the proposal, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Well, I did say “might.”
The findings suggest that voters are leery of sending more cash to Sacramento in the wake of a financial scandal at the parks department, spiraling costs for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project to connect Northern and Southern California and ill-timed legislative pay raises.
If voters aren’t willing to stop spending for a $100 billion train to nowhere that everyone know will never be completed, and which would lose even more money every year if it was, when will they?
Brown’s measure would temporarily raise income tax rates on high earners for seven years and boost the state sales tax by a quarter-cent for four years in a bid to avoid steep cuts in funds for schools and other programs.
Note that word: “temporary.”
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the way politics actually works knows that there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax hike. The only thing that prevents Democrats (and establishment Republicans) from spending every cent of every tax collected and more is booting them out of office. Raising taxes simply ensures that they’ll spend all the new revenue and additional money they don’t have on top of that. And with the fiscal tsunami California is facing from bloated government, spiraling debt, and gold-plated public employee union pensions that will bankrupt the state, those “temporary” taxes will never be repealed. Ever.
And two or four years down the line, the next Democratic governor will be asking the voters to approve another “temporary” tax hike…
Team Gallego Lies About Rep. Canseco
September 28th, 2012As previously reported, the Texas 23rd Congressional District is one of the most closely watched races in the country. As such, it’s no surprise that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is rolling out attack ads against incumbent Republican Rep. Francisco “Quico” Canseco on behalf of Democratic challenger Pete Gallego.
And, much like the national Democratic attack ads, it’s filled with lies.
But don’t take my word for it. WOAI in San Antonio has done the heavy lifting in debunking team Gallego’s claims:
Tell Us What Your Really Think
September 27th, 2012British atheist commentator and comedian Pat Condell let’s Islam have it with both barrels:
I doubt any of these sentiments will be new to anyone following attempts to contain Jihadism, but are seldom expressed with such pithy concision and free of even the slightest nods to PC sensibilities.
There was a time when Islam was given the benefit the doubt by many people in the west. Now we think it’s poison and we wish we’d never heard of it, because 20 years of baseless grievance mongering and knee-jerk offense have shown us this religion for what it really is. Now we don’t like it, we don’t trust it, and we are never going to respect it. And we don’t care how Muslims feel about that.
And to think how many liberals got their panties in a knot over Elizabeth Moon’s far milder criticisms.
Watch the whole thing.
(Hat tip: Roger Kimball via Instapundit.)
The New York Times Really Does Think You’re a Moron
September 26th, 2012Right after I talked about how the mainstream media thinks you’re stupid enough to swallow badly skewed polls, Jim Geraghty reports that the New York Times is proving my point all over again by publishing a poll with more Democrats and fewer Republicans in the sample than in 2008 exit polls.
Ohio 2008 exits: 39% Democrat, 31% Republican, 30% Independent.
Ohio New York Times/Quinnipiac 2012 sample: 35% Democrat, 26% Republican, 35% Independent.
In this sample, the partisan split is D+9 compared to D+8 four years ago, and the GOP is five percentage points smaller than in 2008.
Pennsylvania 2008 exits: 44% Democrat, 37% Republican, 18% Independent.
Pennsylvania New York Times/Quinnipiac 2012 sample: 39% Democrat, 28% Republican, 27% Independent.
Somehow a D+7 split has turned into D+11 split, and Republicans’ share of the electorate is nine percentage points less than they were four years ago.
Florida 2008 exits: 37% Democrat, 34% Republican, 29% Independent.
Florida New York Times/Quinnipiac 2012 sample: 36% Democrat, 27% Republican, 33% Independent.
Each party’s share only shifts a few percentage points, but the overall split goes from D+3 to D+9.
One again, the New York Times thinks Republicans are too stupid to figure out the con. If they’re going to be that absurdly biased, why not just cut out the middleman and poll Obama for America staffers directly?
Remember: The business model of The New York Times is to envelop liberals in a soft, warm, comforting cocoon of reassurance that their ideas and leaders are popular. You saw this in 2010, when it dangerously blinded them to the coming Republican wave until too late. The same patterns is repeating itself this year.
A Bit on Polling (or, Why the Media Thinks You’re a Moron)
September 25th, 2012Remember how how incredibly tight the 1980 election was? How Ronald Reagan managed to edge Jimmy Carter at the last minute despite losing Texas and New York?
Probably not, mainly because that didn’t happen. But as Jeffrey Lord’s story makes clear, that was the narrative the New York Times was pushing most of the fall, and they had “polls” to back it up.
In the pantheon of lies, damn lies, and statistics, polls aren’t even as valid as statistics. At this point, polls by the usual MSM suspects (NYT, PPP, CBS, MS/NBC, Time, Newsweek, NPR, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, just to name a few) aren’t designed to gauge the race, they’re designed to encourage Democrats and discourage Republicans. They are, as Lord notes and Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee admitted to Ed Rollins, offering up “in kind contributions” to the Democrats.
So let’s take a brief look at the many ways in which the MSM is distorting polls for the benefit of Obama and the Democrats.
Every week you see the media going to bat for Obama, and every week we see more evidence of lack of enthusiasm on the part of Democrats compared to 2008. 2010 did happen, no matter how much the media would like to pretend it didn’t. The Tea Party hasn’t gone away, nor suddenly decided that they like Obama’s free-spending ways after all. The fundamentals of our ailing economy and staggering unemployment haven’t gone away either. And remember: Republicans now outnumber Democrats in party identification.
There’s a lot better chance that this election’s results will look like 1980 than that they will look like 2008.
Dick Armey Aims to Unseat Speaker Joe Straus
September 24th, 2012Well, this is very interesting:
FreedomWorks, which helped insurgent Ted Cruz snatch the GOP nod for U.S. Senate from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, said Monday it will put its muscle behind toppling Texas House Speaker Joe Straus of San Antonio from his leadership post.
Armey’s one sharp cookie, and he plays hardball. Conservatives came up short when they challenged the moderate Straus before last session, but the incoming Texas House looks to be more conservative, and a lot of Straus’s committee chairs lost in the primary. But Straus is no pushover, and I imagine he still sits on a big pile of legislative IOUs, as well as lobbyist juice and gambling money. Will a disgruntled David Dewhurst throw his still-considerably clout behind his counterpart in the House?
This promises to be a very interesting fight…
Update: Here’s the Freedomworks press release, where Brendan Steinhauser says they’re supporting State Rep. Bryan Hughes for Speaker.
LinkSwarm for September 23, 2012
September 23rd, 2012Random swarm of interesting links for your amusement and edification:
Texas vs. California: First Day of Fall Edition
September 21st, 2012Time for another Texas vs. California round-up of how the Lone Star State is kicking the not-so-Golden State’s ass in just about every measure except signing NBA free-agents.