A good take down of two phonies – Michael Bloomberg and Wyane LaPierre.
by Ross Douthat
FOR a week after the Newtown shooting, the conversation was dominated by the self-righteous certainties of the American center-left. In print and on the airwaves, the chorus was nearly universal: the only possible response to Adam Lanza’s rampage was an immediate crusade for gun control, the necessary firearm restrictions were all self-evident, and anyone who doubted their efficacy had the blood of children on his hands.
The leading gun control chorister was Michael Bloomberg, and this was fitting, because on a range of issues New York’s mayor has become the de facto spokesman for the self-consciously centrist liberalism of the Acela Corridor elite. Like so many members of that class, Bloomberg combines immense talent with immense provincialism: his view of American politics is basically the famous New Yorker cover showing Manhattan’s West Side overshadowing the world, and his bedrock assumption is that the liberal paternalism with which New York is governed can and should be a model for the nation as a whole.
It’s an assumption that cries out to be challenged by a thoughtful center-right. If you look at the specific proposals being offered by Bloomberg and others, some just look like reruns of assault weapon regulations that had no obvious effect the last time they were tried. [........]
But instead of a kind of skepticism and sifting from conservatives, after a week of liberal self-righteousness the spotlight passed instead to … Wayne LaPierre. And no Stephen Colbert parody of conservatism could match the National Rifle Association spokesman’s performance on Friday morning.
It wasn’t so much that LaPierre’s performance made no concession whatsoever on gun restrictions or gun safety — that was to be expected. It was that he launched into a rambling diatribe against an absurdly wide array of targets, blaming everything from media sensationalism to “gun-free schools” signs to ’90s-vintage nihilism like “Natural Born Killers” for the Newtown tragedy. Then he proposed, as an alternative to the liberal heavy-handedness of gun control, something equally heavy-handed — a cop in every school, to be paid for by that right-wing old reliable, cuts to foreign aid.
Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.
[.........]
The establishment view is interventionist, corporatist and culturally liberal. It thinks that issues like health care and climate change and immigration are best worked out through comprehensive bills drawn up by enlightened officials working hand in glove with business interests. It regards sexual liberty as sacrosanct, and other liberties — from the freedoms of churches to the rights of gun owners — as negotiable at best. It thinks that the elite should pay slightly higher taxes, and everyone else should give up guns, SUVs and Big Gulps and live more like, well, Manhattanites. It allows the president an entirely free hand overseas, and takes the Bush-Obama continuities in foreign policy for granted.
The right-wing view is embittered, paranoid and confused. It opposes anything the establishment supports but doesn’t know what it wants to do instead. (Defund government or protect Medicare? Break up the banks or deregulate them? Send more troops to Libya or don’t get involved? Protect our liberties or put our schools on lockdown?) Sometimes the right’s “just say no” approach holds the establishment at bay — as on climate change and immigration, to date. But sometimes, as the House Republicans are demonstrating in the budget showdown, it makes the eventual defeat that much more sweeping.
What’s missing, meanwhile, are real alternatives — not only conservative, but left-wing as well. On national security, the left has essentially disappeared, sitting on its hands while President Obama embraces powers every bit as imperial as those his predecessor claimed. [.......]
As for a conservatism with a serious program, and a real understanding of the challenges facing America today — well, hopefully it will surface by the 2016 presidential campaign. Till then, it’s the hubris of Bloomberg versus the humbug of LaPierre. Merry Christmas, America.
Read the rest – Bloomberg, LaPierre and the void
Bloomberg is insufferable and La Pierre talks like an idiot. I personally have little use for either of them. Things do not always have to be an either/or proposition.
Watch Obama reference Newtown in his SOTU address.
Speranza wrote:
I’m hoping he references Michelle’s efforts to screw around with the American diet, so that it can be referred to as the “TOFU SOTU.”
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
The local high school is losing money with the cafeteria. No one likes the food and many students are bringing their lunch.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
@ 96cid:
The Обама Fucked Up State Of The Union. Makes perfect sense to me!
Don’t like Lapierre’s proposals? Ignore them.
Last time I checked, he isn’t an elected official, and none of the perpetrators of these mass shootings have been NRA members, so it’s really not up to him to offer up solutions to problems caused by the failed policies of the left.
Speranza wrote:
I posted this at the end of the last thread but I think it’s worth repeating, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/23/School-Obama-s-Daughters-Attend-Has-11-Armed-Guards-Not-Counting-Secret-Service
those that can afford to already have school security, bit of a double standard, no?
brookly red wrote:
David Gregory of NBC has a daughter who goes to that school too.
96cid wrote:
There have already been instances where the school authorities have confiscated perfectly acceptable from-home lunches that students have brought, and forced the students to purchase federally-approved WookieMeals™.
Look for that to become more common in the next few years.
@ brookly red:
Given the amount of administrative bloat in most school districts, it’s not really a matter of money.
It’s priorities.
As the president of the AFT said, students will be their priority “as soon as they start paying dues.”
Speranza wrote:
Astounding that he was capable of reproducing.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
The media would swoon but the rest of the nation would probably give pout a big “WTF”?
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
He is kind of creepy looking.
I think we need to improve security in schools partly through controlled access (although that didn’t work so well at Newtown) and through arming some of the teachers & staff.
I don’t support much gun control, but I can understand calls to limit at least some weapons, whether I agree with it or not.
Where do you draw the line on who shouldn’t be able to own a gun? Felons, of course. But what mental issues? And who determines what problems someone has?
Why don’t we hear what the left calls ‘reasonable’ gun control? Or do I really want to know?
Speranza wrote:
under the circumstances it is going to be hard to dismiss the idea of school security with out looking like the hypocrites that they are.
So Christmas has come and is about to go. I always felt that the anticipation of the holidays was always more fun then the actually holiday(s) itself. Just think -- another 10 months and Bill O’Reilly can renew his perpetual jihad of “The war on Christmas” again.
I’m still anticipating that Obama will nationalize the defunct Hostess facilities to “save the union jobs”—and force Michelle-approved cardboard cupcakes on schools from coast to coast.
mfhorn wrote:
easy… they have em, you don’t. reasonable.
brookly red wrote:
Don’t underestimate their shamelessness and with few actually calling them out they feel they can get away with it. Former Mayor Lindsay of NYC was a huge hypocrite lecturing every one on school busing all the while sending his kids to private schools.
mfhorn wrote:
The entire Leftist playbook is to kick and scream and make objections to whatever exists, and to whatever is proposed to attempt to “meet their objections.”
Look at Obama; he never actually proposes anything. He merely rejects the offerings that Boehner brings him.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Cupcakes minus the sugar -- that will taste real good. /
@ mfhorn:
The guy who ambushed firefighters in NY yesterday after setting his house on fire was a convicted murderer. He clearly wasn’t legally able to own a gun. Yet he did.
Like everything else, their plans for gun control are based on incrementalism. They start out with something relatively benign, and when that has no effect on the problem, they take another bite.
Speranza wrote:
My biggest fear is that they will come up with a huge new federal program “the national school safety authority” (unionized of course) based on the TSA
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
yes but the cupcakes will cost 60 bucks each and burst into flames if you drop them…
The Mother Hive, by Rudyard Kipling.
Read it, for it is good.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
The schools are going to have some very pissed parents. When I was in public school (k-3), I ate school lunches maybe once a week. Mom would have raised some hell if the food police had trashed what she made, then billed them.
lobo91 wrote:
generally that is the way they work but I think they are so emboldened that they might try smash & grab.
@ lobo91:
What would you do to help stop future attacks?
mfhorn wrote:
There is no practical way to prevent people from attempting to carry out such attacks, anymore than we can really prevent terrorism.
The only thing we can do is harden the potential targets.
@ lobo91:
Harden targets how?
lobo91 wrote:
and guns are not the only threat. http://www.sfgate.com/news/world/article/Chinese-man-drives-car-into-students-injuring-13-4144574.php
@ brookly red:
Exactly. The biggest mass murder at a school was carried out using dynamite. And just recently, some guy in China attacked a bunch of kids with a knife.
mfhorn wrote:
A combination of physical security measures and armed security of some sort.
lobo91 wrote:
The biggest mass murder in the US school system is the wholesale slaughter of young minds that is daily accomplished by the teachers who are acolytes of “distinguished education professor” Bill Ayers.
lobo91 wrote:
we have cops in NYC schools albeit for different reasons.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
And before him, Dewey.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
well I don’t think better dead then red applies here…
brookly red wrote:
No, but it’s a damn shame that the current pedagogy is dedicated to the kids’ being brain-dead, ill-read, and red…
lobo91 wrote:
I think is perfectly reasonable to have security in schools in post 9/11 America, our enemies have a history of targeting schools/school buses/children in general… we have more than sicko’s to worry about the ROP is still out there and I am sure they are taking notes.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
personally I never saw any mention of an educational system in the Constitution, did you?
brookly red wrote:
No, me neither.
@ brookly red:
I would assume that they are. I’m honestly surprised that we haven’t had a Beslan-style attack here yet.
lobo91 wrote:
The :Left is more worried about an Aslan-style attack of Christianity in the schools.
lobo91 wrote:
heh, http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/24/Merry-Christmas-immigrants-Obama-Holder-push-to-loosen-alien-gun-sales-restrictions
@ brookly red:
If we’re going to give them drivers licenses, let them vote and not deport them, we may as well give them guns, too.
//
lobo91 wrote:
well if we let an armed force in it would be treason, be if we let them in and THEN arm them it is community organizing
Great thread going on over at
http://www.wattsupwiththat.com
A few trolls enter in with faith in false data as their rebutal.
Sad, but how to deal with the fraud is the discussion.
It’s A Sad Day!
ht -- George Romanoff, Owner, Ace Sporting Goods, Washington, PA
Best way to not be a target is to attack first.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
seriously, the ROP has attacked schools in Israel, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Thailand and that’s just what I can think of off the top of my head.
brookly red wrote:
Oh, I agree—but I stand by what I said, that the Left is more concerned about Aslan than Beslan.
The only reason I can imagine that we haven’t seen something like that here is that in some recess of the Islamist mind there is a realization that the US can get really nasty when the nation as a whole is pissed off—and that despite our having Obama in charge they are unwilling to risk it.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
yeah thought I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall fear no evil, for I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.
brookly red wrote:
Build on the flanks of Etna where the sullen smoke-puffs float—
Or bathe in tropic waters where the lean fin dogs the boat—
Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite—
But oh, beware my Country, when my Country grows polite!
—Rudyard Kipling, “Et Dona Ferentes”
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
politeness is a illness NYers are immune to
brookly red wrote:
I lived in Queens for a year, IMHO the stereotype is highly exaggerated.
Moe Katz wrote:
it’s called Queens for a reason,
@ brookly red:
It’s more likely my own natural rudeness, I just felt right at home in NY.
@ brookly red:
Don’t hate!
@ brookly red:
Again, the idea of being the meanest sonofabitch in the valley….
Moe Katz wrote:
well there you go, were rude not inhospitable
I acquired an orange tomcat there, whom I named Archie…
@ lobo91:
And that kind of attack would be the result of Islamophobia.
brookly red wrote:
That’s true.
Moe Katz wrote:
in reference to Buzz’s Americans can get nasty…
Rodan wrote:
you never let me have any fun at all… sheesh
@ brookly red:
I really miss NY. People are more intense, somehow. Like color TV as opposed to B&W.
Moe Katz wrote:
come on down!
@ brookly red:
I’d love to!
Moe Katz wrote:
I know where to get lox wholesale
OT, and very sorry, but:
Ahem…
“Tommy used to work on the dock…”
@ brookly red:
I wish I could find cheap lox up here.
Bumr50 wrote:
have the national guard unload the ships and shoot sabotoures
Moe Katz wrote:
where is up here?
@ brookly red:
Republicans could use this as great propaganda, but they probably won’t.
Bumr50 wrote:
hey let them strike, let the people do without, let them own it.
brookly red wrote:
Quebec City, Quebec.
@ Bumr50:
That bonus is a big chunk of what I make in a year.
Moe Katz wrote:
Le Petit Chateau Haldimand… ask for trimmings.
@ mfhorn:
Sign me up.
mfhorn wrote:
you got a problem wit dat?
brookly red wrote:
@ brookly red:
Seven degrees F right now, going down to 3 overnight.
@ brookly red:
I wonder what that adds to what I pay at the store? One more reason to buy American!
Moe Katz wrote:
no Le Château Frontenac, I am a spoiled NYer
brookly red wrote:
Tax the rich!
mfhorn wrote:
hey the teamsters got to get it there… those trucks don’t drive demselves.
I guess the “longshoreman bonus” is there to make up for containerized freight having cut down on pilferage.
@ brookly red:
True, but are their bonuses as extreme as the Longshoremen?
brookly red wrote:
the weekday rates are reasonable considering there is no casino… and the service is excellent
@ brookly red:
Plus you’d only pay Teamsters, not both groups.
mfhorn wrote:
they are a nasty lot but they grow old fat and tired
mfhorn wrote:
no, no you miss da point like the obama said you gotta spread it around.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
you know you got a bad attitude…
@ brookly red:
Give to the poor unions only making $50/hr?
@ mfhorn:
@ brookly red:
@ buzzsawmonkey:
I knew they made a good living.
I didn’t know they were making it like that.
mfhorn wrote:
But they stand for the “working man”. //
@ brookly red:
The Canadian dollar being at parity the last 5 years doesn’t seem to have hurt tourism too badly here. I suppose most of the people who come from the States don’t have to worry about a 15 or 20 percent currency fluctuation.
@ mfhorn:
AFP or a like organization should make a HUGE ad buy if these guys actually strike.
It doesn’t get much easier than : “Big Labor thinks that these people need more money.”
unions are expert with the shakedown, as good or better than the mob…all legal extortion….cool huh?
Bumr50 wrote:
There is a reason why they are known as the “Stupid Party”.
heysoos wrote:
After listening to Trumka and Hoffa, Jr., I’d say that the Gambino Crime Family is nicer.
Moe Katz wrote:
we used to visit Toronto for 60 cents to the dollar…lavish hotels, expensive food, life was good then
heysoos wrote:
Yeah, those were the days. I used to edit for NYC publishing houses, send my work down by courier and cash my checks at $1.60 to the CDN buck.
@ mfhorn:
@ Bumr50:
sheesh 50 bucks an hour is nothing, a frickin slice of pizza costs 3 bucks, to park my truck costs 15… another 15 for smokes, 12 bucks for tolls, 20 bucks for gas, Budweiser is 3 bucks a pop and that is the breakfast special for lunch it like 4… and I get outta work I gotta pay 50 bucks for a lap dance? wtf thats what 10 bucks a pimple? you know it’s hard work in this crane, the heater is for shit sometimes I gotta wear a hoddie, and like if it take me more that 40 minutes to take a dump I get docked.
What’s the latest on Lily’s recovery?
You think the Teamsters have it bad? The Hamsters are just spinning their wheels.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Trumka looks like a hamster.
//No offense to hamsters…
What’s up with Dana Loesch?
Did she get punked by Breitbart, or did she go to the mat for Akin?
@ Bumr50:
It’s a contract dispute. Her contract with Breitbart.com ran out awhile back, and she continued working without a contract for several months. When she gave them 30 days notice that she was leaving, they basically refused to accept it.
Now they’re trying to keep her from working anywhere else.
@ lobo91:
That sucks.
@ Bumr50:
I read the filing yesterday, when I first heard about it. If it’s accurate, I don’t see any way she can lose. She followed the terms of her contract, and they refused to comply. Now they aren’t paying her, won’t let her work (although they continue to use her name in promotions) and are apparently trying to sabotage her attempts to get another job.
Well, I’m late to the party, but Merry Christmas!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RsK8mjEw2cE
The Gee Oh Pee and a few other Right wingers could learn a lot from Wayne LaPierre on how to get your message out through a hostile media if they weren’t so damn full of themselves.
@ yenta-fada:
Howdy
lobo91 wrote:
Hola, senor lobo.
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
I’m enjoying the reaction to his press conference. It’s pretty entertaining watching a bunch of liberals who send their kids to private schools with armed guards trying to convince everyone else that having armed guards at schools is crazy.
lobo91 wrote:
That kind of attempt internet control behavior is just sad and Johnsonian. I don’t like to see that from the good guys.
@ yenta-fada:
Leia says hi.
Actually, it was more like “Crunch…slurp…”
She’s busy chomping on a big candy cane-shaped rawhide thing.
@ yenta-fada:
Whoever’s running things over there now has apparently lost their mind.
lobo91 wrote:
Good doggie! {{Leia}}
lobo91 wrote:
There are a lot of people going pretty crazy over money stuff. I know a few people personally who are so squeezed, that they are doing things they would not normally do.
@ yenta-fada:
I went to WalMart the other day. Does that count?
Here’s a song for Bloomberg, from the 4 million members of the NRA:
lobo91 wrote:
Remember the firestorm he started back in the ’90s??
RE: Clinton needing some urban crime to support calls for more gun control.
The Leftwingers have hated him for years.
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Generally means you’re doing something right, in my book.
@ lobo91:
Going to Wallyworld doesn’t count as crazy. I went once in Florida, and that was sufficient. Just too big, but the prices were good. I’m still waiting for the first Target store to open in Toronto. Speaking about late to the party……
Maybe it was that everything had to be in both official languages. I dunno.
On topic. Rev. Jesse Jackson wants prison inmates to get in on ending gun violence. Is it dementia?
http://www.jammiewf.com/2012/brilliant-jesse-jackson-asks-jail-inmates-to-help-end-gun-violence/
I put up an OOT
@ yenta-fada:
Is there a way for him to make money off it?
yenta-fada wrote:
Going to Wallyworld is just the first step on the path to the Dark Side…
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Well then, good to know.
Have a brewski on me.