Showing posts with label CPAC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CPAC. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Rush Limbaugh dead at 70, FOX obituary includes famous "preamble to the Constitution" blunder from CPAC 2009

Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio pioneer, dead at 70 :

"We believe that the preamble to the Constitution contains an inarguable truth that we are all endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, Freedom and the pursuit of happiness."

The mistake is fairly typical, both of Rush, and of Rush's audience the Baby Boom for whom basic knowledge of civics had long been in decline. For Rush, and for them, conservatism was always more aspirational than actual, often conflating present perspectives with historical realities.

An example is the Straussians who in our time explicitly argued for the unity of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, giving Thomas Jefferson's more revolutionary, Enlightenment-tinged views in the former too much sway over the interpretation of the latter.

The irony of that fusionism was always that Jefferson sought for the United States "to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them", not the "exceptional" American position touted by Limbaugh as an heir of America's post-war position of global domination.

The Constitution's preamble expressed a matter-of-factly self-interested goal, "to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", a country of Americans, by Americans, and for Americans, not a nation of immigrants, by immigrants, and for immigrants, not a nation of heroes marching forth in search of monsters to destroy. America's founding was above all modest, which is perhaps the surest indicator of its inherent conservatism.

If Rush Limbaugh slaughtered the important details on a regular basis, what made the show so enjoyable was the entertainment, which largely came from the sheer pleasure Rush derived from doing it and communicating it, "having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have". If nothing else, Rush Limbaugh was a conservative of enjoyment, and who doesn't want to be around people having a good time? It is one reason for Rush's tremendous success in a career spanning more than three decades.

Students of conservatism might think this a whimsy, not to be taken seriously, but no less a figure than Russell Kirk devoted a chapter to such conservatism in his "The Conservative Mind". Rush himself, from time to time, in his own non-academic way had observed how liberals are not funny and don't have fun, and in this he was on to something. Generally speaking conservatives possess contentment to a far greater degree than do liberals, derived from a judiciously formed view of the self as sinners saved by grace. It is a freeing thing which allows people to accept things as they are, even as God accepts sinners as they are.

Of course in the post-war there has been a tremendous amount for Americans to enjoy, to the point that we have become completely distracted by this. One may rightly say we have overdone it, and that enjoyment has frankly become conservatives' Achilles' heel. It has produced a myriad of problems, not the least of which has been a failure to reproduce, inattention to religion, and a proclivity for the easy politics of the executive where we look for one man to save us. As America was not built by Protestants enjoying religious entertainments and all-you-can-eat brunches on Sundays, it will not be recovered, if that is still possible, but by serious, religious people who work hard, deny themselves, and save.

Rush Limbaugh was an optimist about America because he still believed there were enough individual Americans remaining who exemplified the old virtues. America's future will depend on Rush having been right.

Saturday, January 26, 2019

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Sorry, ADP private payrolls aren't booming now and haven't boomed since briefly doing so in 2005-2006

The reading is +2.2% in February 2018 vs. +4.05% in February 2006, twelve years ago.

Count 'em.


Saturday, March 5, 2016

Tea Party Patriots pat themselves on the back at CPAC in Maryland while Trump heads to Kansas to talk to the people

Noted here:

Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin said the businessman "has no business thinking he is Tea Party. Trump is about love of himself," she said. "But the Tea Party is about love of country and the love of our constitution."

The Tea Party in South Carolina begs to differ, giving about equal love to Trump and Cruz.


Monday, March 10, 2014

NR's Libertarian Kevin Williamson Helpfully Informs Us The Koch Bros. Support Sodomy

Kevin Williamson of National Review obviously has no imagination when he says "There is no CPAC of the Left" right after almost busting his buttons informing us that Gov. Rick Perry at CPAC and Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the US Senate all support reductions of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.

Of course there's a CPAC of the Left. It's called CPAC.

But this was helpful here:

Senator Reid’s recent obsession with denouncing Charles and David Koch from his congressional perch is of a piece with that: Never mind the merits of the things the Kochs endorse politically — from liberalizing energy markets to gay marriage — they are a handy bogeyman. And, given the politics of the situation, Senator Reid surely would prefer to talk about the Koch brothers’ allegedly nefarious plans for world domination (the great “libertarian conspiracy to take over the world and leave you the hell alone”) than about Democrats’ recent meandering energy policies, which would hold hostage U.S. producers in order to appease the Birkenstocks-and-white-boy-dreadlocks set.

All The Republicans, Especially CPACers, Will Sell Out On Immigration


Sunday, March 9, 2014

Number Of Words Actually Contributed By Sarah Palin To Dr. Zeuss Send-Up At CPAC






                    crony
                  spying, man
               Oh

we're       we     there's
              reporters'
                      their

and we won't take






All the rest, not just a couple of lines as she said, predated her speech at CPAC by over 3.5 years. View them here.

Sarah Palin Hat Tipped The Internet For "A Couple Of Lines" Of Dr. Seuss Rewrite When 7 Were Verbatim Full Line Steals, The Other 7 Changed But 12 Words From The Original But Retained The Order

Full video here.

Politico here gave her a pass without checking the depth of the theft, which is almost 90% of the text and 100% of the structure:

Palin singled out Cruz for his marathon speech on the Senate floor last year during his push to defund Obamacare, when the freshman senator read Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” to his young daughters watching at home. Palin brought her own version of the rhyme, crediting a couple lines of it to the Internet. “I do not like this Uncle Sam,” it began. “I do not like this health care scam. I do not like these dirty crooks or how they lie and cook the books.” The crowd devoured it.

Martin Luther King Jr. lifts a bunch of material without attribution in his dissertation and gets ripped for it, correctly, but I dare say Sarah Palin won't get any blowback for this from the right, or the left . . . a sign she no longer matters.

Sarah Palin At CPAC Plagiarized US Submariner's August 2010 Rewrite Of Dr. Seuss, Changing Just 12% Of The Words

Sarah Palin claimed authorship of this at CPAC 3/14
Sean G. posted the original rewrite on his blog 8/10

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Sarah Palin's Claim At CPAC That She Spiced Up Dr. Seuss A Little Bit Ala ObamaCare Is Plagiarism

Sarah Palin's claim at CPAC that she rewrote Dr. Seuss about ObamaCare is a lie. She didn't spice it up. She just lifted someone else's work and edited it a little bit. It's been up on the internet since August 2010, posted by one Sean G. at the toomuchliberty blog. Sarah Palin lifted whole lines, and edited a few others, and never gave the guy attribution. Pretty low.

Here's Palin's stolen version, posted here with video claiming authorship:

"I do not like this Uncle Sam.
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like -- oh, just you wait --
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their crony deals.
I do not like this spying, man,
I do not like, 'Oh, Yes we can.'
I do not like this spending spree,
we're smart, we know there's nothing free.
I do not like reporters' smug replies
when I complain about their lies.
I do not like this kind of hope,
and we won't take it, nope, nope, nope."

Here's Sean G.'s original version, posted here August 3, 2010 as "A New Dr. Seuss":

I do not like this Uncle Sam,
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this speaker, Nan,
I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.'
I do not like this spending spree,
I'm smart, I know that nothing's free.
I do not like your smug replies,
when I complain about your lies.
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it, nope, nope, nope!

I guess that communications degree with an emphasis in journalism wasn't worth much after all, even after six different whacks to finish it. So now Sarah Palin's stooping to stealing from obscure internet personages who were way ahead of her and Ted Cruz in the brains department about ObamaCare. Not only does she talk like she comes from the gutter, she acts like it too.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Sarah Palin Remains A Vulgarian

At CPAC, reported here:


Palin also regaled listeners with a look into Christmas at the Palins. (Palin is set to pen a holiday book later this year.) She said her husband, Todd, got her a metal gun rack for the back of a four-wheeler, and she gave him a rifle. “He’s got the rifle, I got the rack,” she said.

NR called the speech "sprawling", as in "she lay sprawled on the bed, legs spread out".

Republicans, Esp. Mitt Romney, Still Don't Understand There Is No "End" In Politics

Here's Mitt Romney at CPAC, saying "in the end" we'll win:


"Each of us in own way is going to have to step up and meet our responsibility. I'm sorry I won't be your President, but it will be [as] your coworker and I [will] work shoulder-to-shoulder along side you. You see in the end we'll win. We will win for the same reasons we have won before . . .." 


Oh really. If we won before then why do we need to win again? We must have lost somewhere along the way if we have to win again. This is the mistaken thinking of politicians and the people who follow them, that political victories are somehow permanent, especially if we get the right people in there, meaning "us" as opposed to "them".

What it betrays, depending on the source, could be any number of things including narcissism and hubris, but perhaps in this case we see an ideological frame of mind as opposed to a conservative one, the kind of mind which imagines, or at least sells, a better future which unfortunately never arrives because it cannot arrive, due to the minor detail that the future like the present will be populated by the same flawed individuals as ourselves.

Marxists like Obama think that way, and so do too many religious people. And too many Republicans to be legitimately called conservatives, which is a main reason Romney did not appeal as a clear alternative.

CPAC clapped anyway.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Sarah Palin at CPAC: Still a Vulgarian and a Believer in the Imperial Presidency

As reported here:

Palin zeroed in on President Obama. The current state of the economy "is not a failure of the American people," she said. "It is the failure of leadership. We know how to change that, oh yes we do. Oh yes we can," she said, echoing Obama's campaign line. "Hope and change – yeah, you gotta hope things change."

"He says he has a jobs plan to win the future. WTF, I know," Palin said, spelling out W-T-F. Palin hasn't endorsed any candidates and didn't do so today, telling the crowd that "For the sake of our country we must stand united, whoever our nominee is." Palin left the stage to an extended ovation, having managed to do what none of the candidates except Santorum could: get social conservatives truly fired up.

That's right. Never tell the people they have the government they deserve, especially that crowd. 

Friday, February 10, 2012

Ann Coulter Still Thinks Newt Gingrich Is The Main Threat To Mitt Romney

Quoted here:

So I ask you, CPACers, who are you willing to stake the future of this country on winning? Who is going to appeal to the most Independents? Because, if we’re betting the future of this country on Next Gingrich not being repellent to Independents, I want my money back. I’m not taking that bet.

So, the three back-to-back victories this week for Sen. Rick Santorum are chopped liver?

Mitt Romney (and Rush Limbaugh) Do Not Understand The American Founding

Here's Rush cheer-leading Gov. Mitt Romney for something Romney said today at CPAC, something which shows neither he nor Limbaugh really understand the American Founding:

ROMNEY: We believe in the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence!  We believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!  We know the brilliance that suggested that individuals pursuing their own dreams would make us the most powerful nation on earth, not a government trying to guide our lives.  This is who we are! This passion we must take to the American people.  This is our moment! This is why we're conservatives.  The task before us now is to reaffirm the convictions that unite us and go forward, shoulder to shoulder, to secure victory that America so desperately needs and deserves. 

CROWD: (cheering)

ROMNEY: Let's do it together! Thank you, and God bless America. 

CROWD: (cheers and applause)

ROMNEY: Thank you.

RUSH:  Right on, dude.  Right on.  I mean, that's... What did you think of that, Snerdley?  Did you it? That was! It was severe.  It was.  It was "severely conservative."  You know that I'm just gonna get beat up so bad for this.

Rush should get beat up for this, along with Romney, because becoming "the most powerful nation on earth" was as foreign a concept to the Founders as it is to conservatism.

The Founders sought independence from England in order to enjoy membership in the family of nations, instead of enduring the on-going disrespect with which King George treated his colonies in America. A grandiose design to become world hegemon, pace Mitt, pace Rush, was a . . . uh hum, foreign concept.

From "The Original Intent of the Declaration of Independence" by John Fea, here:

Historian David Armitage, in a fascinating book entitled The Declaration of Independence: A Global History, has argued convincingly that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty in the hopes that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was "decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them."

To put this differently, the "self-evident truths" and "unalienable rights" of the Declaration's second paragraph would not have been particularly new or groundbreaking in the context of the 18th-century British world. These were ideals that all members of the British Empire valued regardless of whether they supported or opposed the American Revolution. The writers of the Declaration of Independence did not believe that they were advancing political principles unique to America. This was a foreign policy document.

In an 1825 letter to fellow Virginian Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson explained his motivation behind writing the Declaration:


When forced, therefore to resort to arms for redress, an appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our jurisdiction. This was the object of the Declaration of Independence. Not to find out new principles or new arguments, never before thought of . . . but to place before mankind the common sense of the subject, in terms so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we are compelled to take.

John Adams, writing five years after he signed it, called the Declaration "that memorable Act by which [the United States] assumed an equal Station among the nations." There is little in these statements to suggest that the Declaration of Independence was anything other than an announcement to the world that the former British colonies were now free and independent states and thus deserve a place in the international order of nations.

Alas, we are left with ignorant fools, appealing to ignorant fools.

Same as it ever was.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

'Romney Will Be The Nominee and Will Lose': Ann Coulter at CPAC 2011

You know, if Ann Coulter keeps changing her mind about things, like about GOProud for instance, someone, somewhere, someday might actually accuse her of being a woman.

Here is the video.

h/t Legal Insurrection

(Maybe she now likes Romney so much because Mormonism makes changing your mind, say about blacks or polygamy, so easy).

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Half of CPAC This Year is Libertarian, Heckles and Walks Out on Dick Cheney

The Libertarians hate the Department of Defense and the US military more than they hate the much larger, arguably unconstitutional, social welfare state erected by FDR.

Bunch of queers.

Story and video here.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Not Your Daddy's CPAC

Ron Paul won the straw poll at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference because this year's meeting was infested with libertarians, which is why this happened:

CPAC is perhaps the nation's premiere conservative gathering, a convivial opportunity for impassioned right-wing activists to network, plan for upcoming elections and listen to the biggest names in the conservative movement. It's the sort of atmosphere in which the casual observer might expect someone like Ryan Sorba to receive a warm welcome.

Sorba, who wrote a book entitled "The Gay Gene Hoax," took the podium at this year's CPAC and immediately expressed his unhappiness that the conference had allowed a gay Republican group called GOProud to be a sponsor.

He didn't get very far. After delivering a rambling condemnation of homosexuality, Sorba was essentially booed offstage, prompting him to angrily complain to his conservative audience that "the lesbians at Smith College protest better than you do."

To read more, go here.