Has National Review gone "Establishment Republican"?

Erick Erickson of the Red State Blog writes:

In William F. Buckley’s mission statement for National Review, written in 1955, he did not mention winning elections. That’s not to say it is unimportant, unneeded, or unwanted. But it was not mentioned. In fact, Buckley wrote, “We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience.”
What was mentioned was standing athwart history yelling stop. Buckley sought to build a National Review that provided commentary on the landscape of American politics and culture, building an intellectual case for conservatism. Today’s National Review is willing occasionally to yell Stop. It did so notably on the proliferation of porn in culture. But on many of the day’s fights, the editorial positions read more like those of the Republican National Committee than the standard bearer of American conservatism.
In 1955, William F. Buckley wrote,

Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

The present editors of National Review, over the last several years, have made it clearer and clearer that they now speak mostly for the well-fed right
and not for conservatives hungering for a fight against the leviathan. 

Read the rest here: http://www.redstate.com/2013/10/29/the-hungry-and-the-well-fed/

I love the ending:

National Review once believed, “that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience.” The truth is that Obamacare is deeply destructive and an assault on individual liberty. It should be fought by all means, with or without a Senate majority or White House. The fight should not depend on electoral outcomes and should not be delayed pending reinforcements, many of whom will flee the field once elected.
I await the well-fed editors apologizing for the Goldwater candidacy. At this point, it is only a matter of time.

Me: I long for the old National Review....... I miss Bill Buckley!

WHY THEY FIGHT by By Brit Hume

Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded. They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated
bureaucracy. They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about."

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/2013/10/14/what-tea-party-really-trying-get-out-slimdown

Stand for Freedom with Ted Cruz

All Glory is Fleeting

On this inauguration day 2013 it's important to remember:

"For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting."- Gen. George C. Patton

Former Secretary of State James Baker once said, "Someone asked me what was the most important thing I had learned since being in Washington. I replied that it was the fact that temporal power is fleeting." Baker went on to observe that once driving through the White House gates he saw a man walking alone on Pennsylvania Avenue and recognized him as having been Secretary of State in a previous administration. "There he was alone - no reporters, no security, no adoring public, no trappings of power. Just one solitary man alone with his thoughts. And that mental picture continually serves to remind me of the impermanence of power and the impermanence of place."

Why so much is at risk in this election

Rich Galen is a cynical political commentator who puts out the Mullings column and is a frequent talking head on TV. He loves to talk about political tactics and remain above the battle. Tonight he joined the fight when he declared:

This is no longer a choice between two candidates running for President. Obama has made it clear that this is an election that will determine whether an individual can succeed by his or her talent, timing, and hard work; or whether the government will be the arbiter who shall succeed and who shall not. 

Read the rest at: http://www.mullings.com/07-20-12.htm

Movie: "Iron Lady" (2011) *****

This was a great weekend for movies. On Saturday we watched "My Week with Marilin" (2011) and I loved it. I give it 4 ****. We also watched "Anonymous" (2011) which I give 5*****. "My Week with Marilyn" is about Marilyn Monroe making a movie in England with Lawrence Olivier in the 1950's. "Anonymous" is about how Lord Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays and used Shakespeare as a "front man". This is based upon the "Oxfodien" theory of Shakespeare scholars.It is hard to understand how Shakespeare, who was not a nobleman and had never been to Italy would have the knowledge to write these plays. In any case, it was a fascinating complicated movie that challenged the mind and I loved it. Both movies were from my Netflix account.

On Sunday we went to Tinseltown to see an actual "double feature" ( we only paid one price for both movies) of the "Iron Lady and "The Artist" (2011) 3 ***. The first was the "Iron Lady which I loved and brought tears to my eyes. One of my heroes is Margret Thatcher the first female British Prime Minster and the greatest since Winston Churchill.

My favorite part of the movie was the retelling of her role in the Falkland War against Argentina. At the time I followed the war intently and would get reports from the BBC on my short wave radio and had our extra bedroom made up into a "war room" with maps and the location of ships etc.

The sad part of the movie is that most of it is told in flashbacks from the near past as she is declining in mind as most of us do as we reach "the end". Unless we die a sudden death it happens to many of the greats such as Reagan and Churchill out of public view. As a reader of biographies I know that we all don't "live happily every after" which we were led to believe in the fairy tales of our youth.The end is often very bitter sweet. My wife was bothered by her conversations with her dead husband who appears like a ghost. I viewed it more as a dramatic devise to tell the story .... and what a story it is.

Her speeches on the problems of the U.K. are right out of what is happening in Greece and the United States today. The enslavement of us all by debt and the power of the "nanny state". Her battle with the leaders of her own Conservative party to push back on the "road to serfdom" or go along in a competent moderate managed way because that is the "politically smart" thing.

Meryl Streep deserves her Academy Award for Best Actress for playing Thatcher.

The "Iron Lady and "Anonymous" will be on my DVD buy list.

Not on my DVD list is "The Artist"(2011) 3 *** winner of the Academy Award for "Best Picture". I thought it was a trite story told better in "Singing in the Rain" and I kept anticipating what was going to happen and kept looking at my watch and wondering how the vote was going in Puerto Rico and how many delegates Romney would get. I have watched many real silent pictures such as John Wayne's the "Big Trail" and some Directed by John Ford such at "The Iron Horse" which are much better. I did like the dog in "The Artist"

Detroit Today...... Oregon Next !

Quote of the Day taken from the WallStreet Journal "Political Diary":

Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or "progressive" platform have been enacted:

A "living wage" ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors. A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average. A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members. Other government employee unions that do the same for their members. A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.

Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don't have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit.

Detroit has been dubbed "the most liberal city in America" and each of these "progressive" policies is alive and well there. How have they worked out?

In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America on a per capita income basis. Today, the Census Bureau reports that it is the nation's 2nd poorest major city, just "edging out" Cleveland.

Could it be pure coincidence that the decline occurred over the same period in which union power, the city government bureaucracy, taxes and business regulations all multiplied? While correlation is not causation, it is striking that the decline in per capita income is exactly what classical economists predict would occur when wage controls are imposed and taxes are increased.--Jarrett Skorup writing at michigancapitalconfidential.com on Feb. 14.

Can Oregon be next ?.....

"Obama's One-Man Rule"

Michael Barone:

So Obama’s scorn for the truth in this regard is only a minor matter. His scorn for the Constitution is something else.

That scorn has been expressed most recently in his “recess” appointments of members of the National Labor Relations Board and the chairmanship of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The quotation marks are appropriate because when he made the appointments the Senate was not in recess as the Constitution requires.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that presidential appointments must be confirmed by the Senate unless Congress provides otherwise. But anticipating that the government may need officials when the Senate is unavailable, the section further provides that “the President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of the next session.”

What constitutes a recess? Article I, Section 5 reads, “Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.”

The House did not consent to the adjournment of the Senate this year, so there is no recess, and hence no constitutional authority to make recess appointments

********

The Framers thought it more important to limit power than for government to act quickly. Barack Obama disagrees.

Republican presidential candidates have been praising the Founding Fathers. Obama has been defying them. Interesting contrast.

.

To read the rest click on the title for a link.

"The Perry Paradox"

DANIEL HENNINGER of the Wall Street Journal makes a telling point about Rick Perry when he writes today:
.....

Texas' pro-business bias goes back about 175 years—and never died. "It's just that they believe in the whole Horatio Alger myth down here," said Mr. Booth. "It's hard to understand if you haven't lived here."

And so Perry's Paradox: Rick Perry is a success because he nominally presides over an American tiger state, a genuine free-market economy that doesn't much need—or want—his tender loving care. If the job before us is unwinding an unimaginably vast, smothering national government, is Lone Star Gov. Rick Perry the man for that job?

This much is obvious: Texas, not California, better be the American future.

To read the rest of this excellent column click on the title for a link.

"Why We Can't Escape the Eurocrisis"

Gerald O'Driscoll Jr of the Wall Street Journal gives a good explanation of why what happens in Greece is important to Americans.

First to the EU. The underlying dilemma is that governments have promised their citizens more social programs than can be financed with the tax revenue generated by the private sector. High tax rates choke off the economic growth needed to finance the promises. Economic activity gets driven into the underground economy, where it often escapes taxation.
Nowhere is this truer than in Greece....

In Greece and elsewhere in the EU, the banks support the government by purchasing its bonds, and the government guarantees the banks. It is a Ponzi scheme not even Bernie Madoff could have concocted. The banks can no longer afford to fund budget deficits, yet they cannot afford to see governments default. Governments cannot make good on their guarantees of the banks......

.... U.S. banks and financial institutions are exposed to EU banks through funding operations, issuance of credit default swaps and unknown exposure in derivatives markets.

The sad fact is that there is not enough money in the EU to pay off the public debts incurred by the governments. Most countries have long since squeezed as much tax revenue from their citizens as they can........

Americans must not be smug about the suffering of Europeans—our financial system is thoroughly integrated with theirs.....

To read the rest click on the title for a link.


Mr. O'Driscoll, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and later Citibank.

It's Not Too Late .... Your Country Calls in It's Time of Need !

The Weekly Standard Blog just posted this letter from a "reader from Garland Texas"

Dear Congressman Ryan:

This is now my fourth letter to you. Please reconsider.

Other than Gov. Romney, no announced candidate for the Republican nomination can be taken seriously as a candidate. Not one can speak persuasively regarding the fiscal crisis our country is facing and the types of difficult solutions necessary to reform our entitlement programs and to right our economy.

Still, with all due respect to Gov. Romney’s expertise in the area of business, he has failed to demonstrate in his career that he is a conservative who genuinely believes in, and will fight for a return to, limited government and the diminution of the regulatory state.

After all the years Gov. Romney has run for President, have we yet heard a convincing argument from him concerning the seriousness of our fiscal situation with regard to entitlements? Will the Democrats and their allies in the media even allow a serious discussion regarding entitlements when all they have to do is say one word: Romneycare?

Is there any sense that Gov. Romney will use the 2012 campaign to do anything other than achieve the Presidency? If the Republican Party selects a candidate who fudges the great economic issues during this campaign because he or she is afraid to lose, then we will deserve defeat.

The 2012 election campaign must become a time to persuade the public to do what needs to be done. We need a candidate who knows the case inside out and who is capable of making it in a convincing fashion, one able to withstand the demagogic attacks of the opposition.

Please reconsider. Do not allow this opportunity for our country to pass by.

Respectfully,

I like Romney but I like Ryan more !

Ford Ad Obama Doesn't Want You to See !

Under White House pressure Ford Motor Company pulled this ad.

From the Weekly Standard:

Ford has pulled a TV ad that took shots at companies that benefited from federal government's auto bailout "in response to White House questions," reports Daniel Howes at the Detroit News

Ryan Will Not Run !

The final word is Congressman Paul Ryan will not run for President in 2012 ! This is the second potential candidate, who I wanted to run, decide against it. The first was Mitch Daniels the Governor of Indiana. That basically leaves me with Mitt Romney and Rick Perry the Governor of Texas. Right now my head is for Romney for practical reasons of electability in the General Election and my heart is with Rick Perry.... as my hero's have always been Cowboys and he is a small government conservative. I will wait to decide until after the first debated between them at the earliest. I will support the nominee of my party but it's hard to see me voting for any of the other candidates in the Oregon primary. That also applies to any of the other candidates who are likely to get in to the race at this late date.

This is a very important election. I don't want to be apocalyptic; but,I don't think this country can reverse course after another four years with Barack Obama as President. We will become another European style social democracy. The exceptionalism that was the U.S.A. will be gone and individual freedom and initiative will have made their last stand. The West will enter into a new "dark ages" made more dangerous by the proliferation of nuclear weapons and Islamic extremest.

UPDATE;

Here’s the Ryan statement:

"I sincerely appreciate the support from those eager to chart a brighter future for the next generation. While humbled by the encouragement, I have not changed my mind, and therefore I am not seeking our party’s nomination for President. I remain hopeful that our party will nominate a candidate committed to a pro-growth agenda of reform that restores the promise and prosperity of our exceptional nation. I remain grateful to those I serve in Southern Wisconsin for the unique opportunity to advance this effort in Congress.”

America's "Lost Decade" ?

As the stock market heads south it's interesting to ask the question are we in America's Lost decade? Japan had their lost decade in the 90's.

Columnist George Will"

The debt increases caused by anemic growth and job creation may dwarf whatever debt reduction results from the process initiated by the debt-ceiling agreement. This may portend a vicious downward spiral as increased borrowing and the burden of debt service further suffocate America’s dynamism.

America may be one-third of the way through a lost decade — or worse, toward a lost national identity. So, Republicans have their 2012 theme: “Is this the best we can do?”

(To read the rest click on the title for a link.)

Let us hope it is not the lost century !

Little Old "terrorist".... Me.

I was "tea party" before there was a Tea Party. And now, our liberal friends are calling the tea party "members" "terrorist" or "bomb throwers" or "the dark side."

So let me admit my "terrorist" past. I have always been for limited government. I became a conservative when I read Barry Goldwater's "Conscience of a Conservative". I walked door to door for Goldwater in 1964. I voted for Reagan for President in the primary or general elections in 1968,1976,1980 and 1984.I voted libertarian in 1972 when Nixon ran for reelection and for John Ashcraft, of Ohio in the Oregon presidential primary that year.

I wasn't at the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964 when the conservatives took control of the Republican party but I was there in spirit.

I may be more practical politically then some of my tea party compatriots but they have my heart and no amount of name calling by the left will deter those of us who believe in limited government. I am proud to stand with them and we have only just begun to fight !

UPDATE:

Sarha Palin:

"if tea partiers were terrorist he (Obama) would pal around with us !

A Time for Choosing..... Part II

Statement by Ambassador John Bolton, August 1, 2011

Serious questions remain about the national-security implications of the proposed deal to raise the Federal debt ceiling. With Members of Congress essentially being asked to vote immediately to avoid defaulting on the national debt, they are also entitled to immediate and compelling answers to the defense-related questions......

There is no strategic rationale whatsoever for cuts of this magnitude. There is, in fact, every strategic rationale to the contrary. While the appropriations process may still be able to decide which specific programs will be cut, this is no consolation. Cuts of this size are effectively indiscriminate.

Defense spending is not just another wasteful government program. Subjecting it to potentially massive, debilitating cuts is rolling the dice in perilous times internationally. Adam Smith himself wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “the first duty of the sovereign” is “protecting the society from the violence and invasion” of others.

To read the rest click on the title for a link

See post below for more info.

National Review Cover

At a newsstand near you.

How Stands The Union ?

I wish I could say in this summer of our discontent:

"The Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper-sheathed, one and indivisible."

Abraham Lincoln said:

"A house divided against itself cannot stand."
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

Today America is also a house divided against itself. This time it's between those who pay taxes and those who take tax money paid by other. One group does not want any tax increases and the other is dependant on government. As a result our elected leaders have taken the path of least resistance and have incurred horrendous debt which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others.

As usual Victor Davis Hanson says it best when he writes:

About 50 percent of taxpayers don’t pay federal income taxes. Almost half of American adults receive either the majority of or all of their income in some form from government. They are naturally desirous of even more entitlements, in the sense that even higher taxes on the top 5 percent might ensure at least some of the needed revenue to pay for them. And if that echelon must pay 70 percent or 80 percent rather than the present 60 percent of all collected income taxes, it would still not be such a bad thing, inasmuch as the circumstances surrounding their earned income must be somewhat suspicious. In the words of the president, the so-called affluent surely at some point must realize that they have made enough money and have hundreds of thousands in unneeded income that could easily be assessed with higher taxes

The agenda of the poorer and lower-middle classes is championed mostly by an affluent elite located on the two coasts, who find power and influence in representing “the people,” and are themselves either affluent enough, or enjoy enough top government salaries and subsidies, to be largely exempt from any hardship that would result from their own advocacy of much higher taxes and larger government expenditures.....

Behind the current mess and shrill rhetoric in D.C. are these two larger competing visions—the belief that the Obama agenda is the road to serfdom for everyone, and the belief that it will result in a long-overdue equality of result.

I believe it's the road to serfdom and destruction of the Union.

(To read the rest click on the title for a link)

George Will: "Huey Long with a better tailor"

From George Will's latest column:

Obama — a demagogue for an age of smooth surfaces; Huey Long with a better tailor —

Click on title for a link to entire column