Let me tell you what was happening on the Glenn Beck Program today

Beth got me turned on to him and so I sampled a little more today and he seemed like a different Beck but I'll get to that in a sec. So they made fun of him on SNL, that show is so lame and so well past its prime that unless Tina Fey was involved it doesn't even merit a blip. OK so today Beck was talking about the federal government may force your kids to get the new Swine Flu vaccine and he was talking about all those mothers who say HELL NO!! So Beck and his sidekick were hashing this out, this massive distrust of the government thing. Beck said it's not healthy and he divided the mistrusters into two main groups: those who think the government is incompetent and those who think the government is up to something nefarious.

FOLKS, Beck ain't immune to criticism either, he's human and by taking on a kind of fringe element here that even he disagrees with he looks moderate and reasonable by comparison. Point of this blog is not to say Beck is extreme himself but that's the common assumption and perception that's out there thanks in large part to the media although he does use actual quotes of people in making his case, Obama's past statements in interviews about the Constitution doesn't address income redistribution for instance, that's a pretty Marxist thing to say and no SNLer can bury it with parody. So on today's radio show if you just tuned in for the first time and had no clue as to who Glenn Beck is Beck sounded like someone taking on all those folks who distrust the federal government (POT - KETTLE - BLACK) but in answer to Beck's own question why are all these Moms saying no to vaccinating their children two words -- TUSKEGEE AND MKULTRA. We all know what Tuskegee was all about but for those of you who are new to MKULTRA this was an ultrasecret project of the CIA in the '50s and '60s that involved among other things dosing different sectors of the US population with LSD without their knowledge and studying the results (I'm still waiting for some conservative feedback over this, perhaps in a future Jonah Goldberg column?). So am I on the same side as these Moms who think the government is up to something James Bondish with the new Swine Flu vaccine? not in a million years but understand root causes here and am surprised Beck didn't bring them up. Yes righties, actual conspiracies do exist on occasion, the Moon does enter its blue phase every now and then.

Is Beck losing his cojones? If you find them will you please return them?

Hate speech on the Left - the murder of a pro-life activist

Go to http://bluewavecanada.blogspot.com/2009/09/reality-of-violent-opponents.html for the tragic story of pro-life activist Jim Pouillon's murder. Jim Pouillon was sitting across a school in Michigan holding his pro-life poster when a car pulled up and did a drive-by. The self-avowed pro-life hater also allegedly killed another man and was searching for a third when apprehended.

Do pro-choicers need to police their own speech? Does Keith Olbermann need to dial down the vitriol? Should we hold the NOW gang personally responsible for Jim Pouillon's murder?

Ya wanna know something? on a theoretical, abstract and even practical plane it's all good and despite the most heated verbiage on BOTH sides actual incidents of violence is something that's really few and far between. Ya wanna know something else? some people just don't LIKE free speech, lately it's the liberal crowd. Now ever since the tea parties and townhalls liberals in general like Bill Moyers and Frank Rich and the liberal msm in particular, well put it this way their absolute hatred for conservatism is coming to a rolling boil now, all the invective they can muster up is coming YOUR way but if I can sum up their overall theme about US we're totally for the rights of the individual against the welfare of the larger society or community, we're anarchists who are totally against the government or the State, potential McVeighs, we're against charity or caring for others, we're conspiracy-mongers (although what's wrong with the notion that the occasional conspiracy theory may actually be true?), in short we hate the State (well kinda true) but the biggest thing I'm seeing of late is that liberals HATE free speech, it's always free speech is good and fine and swell and American BUT (go over what they said about O'Reilly in the wake of George Tiller's murder) but on this front what would happen if we didn't always call for tempering or policing our own speech? what if we just let her rip? what if we just let free speech be, say what we will? I submit that in general

NOTHING

would happen, and the few extreme cases that are alleged to have been caused by the hateful speech of others however dubious the connection does not justify in the least chipping away, abridging or otherwise curtailing or suppressing the free speech of others. OR to put it another way so Ted Bundy liked porn.

A fan of neoconservatism (NOT)

Irving Kristol, godfather of neoconservatism 1920-2009

It's not just that the philosophy of neoconservatism has led us into many a foreign adventure. This is either good or bad depending on your viewpoint, for Pat Buchanan it's bad but I really have no problem if the guiding moral principle involved is to liberate an oppressed people but here read this from a 2003 column in The Weekly Standard by Irving Kristol (bold-type mine)

and as Glenn Beck would say READ CAREFULLY (ooooooh):

"Neocons do not like the concentration of services in the welfare state and are happy to study alternative ways of delivering these services. But they are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on 'the road to serfdom.' Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable.

People have always preferred strong government to weak government, although they certainly have no liking for anything that smacks of overly intrusive government. Neocons feel at home in today's America to a degree that more traditional conservatives do not.

Note the not so subtle digs at paleoconservatism or the purer form of conservatism. Z makes the case that you cannot have a large state that is also not intrusive, that's a neocon fantasy, and from my vantage point you only need something new or neo if there is something wrong with the old product. OR to put it another way who's more popular right now, Rush Limbaugh or David Frum?

How to put the racism issue to bed once and for all

Elect a black conservative president next time, say Clarence Thomas or Thomas Sowell. If we still hate the nigger then ok.

What really stands out about Patrick Swayze (1952-2009)

From Wikipedia:

"Personal life

Swayze was married to Lisa Niemi from June 12, 1975 until his death."

Ghost has got to be one of the most romantic movies of all time, a must have in any serious DVD collection. I really was hoping as we all were that he was going to kick this thing but I don't think they know how to treat cancer yet. You don't know which is worse, the cancer or the chemo but this has really turned into the Year of the Famous Dead Person -- Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson (they're STILL talking about it), pitchman Billy Mayes, Walter Cronkite and of course Ted Kennedy (and others I'm leaving out but those are the most prominent, you'd have to google the rest). I sure hope next year is less dark.

To hear liberals tell it

the conservative grassroots is filled with Hate. First the Tea Parties and then the town halls but the way I see it is Democracy in Action,

it's all good

and have liberals forgotten their own maxim that dissent is the highest form of patriotism? So some folks showed a little passion, it's nice to know some Americans still have some spunk left in 'em and I'm trying to diagnose the lib problem here. Is it we're not supposed to critique the nation's First African-American President? Well welcome to the ballgame bro! I think it's healthy that folks are up in arms about the lack of fiscal restraint by Government which among other things is what's animating the conservative grassroots these days. It's OUR money after all. Whether you agree or disagree with the tea partiers and townhallers there's nothing even vaguely unconstitutional about it all but libs are treating it as a hate crime.

I'm lovin' it!

The MSM under the microscope

As my brother is fond of saying take an average group of people and they'll likely tend to be non-ideological, you can have someone who is pro-life but for gay marriage at the same time, you can have a conservative who bashes Big Business (that'd be me) but the whole point is there are so many opinions out there and that's good. It's pretty much an established fact that the vast majority of the msm are liberal in their political orientation, ok sure you have your occasional Brit Humes, ok you have Brit Hume but on balance they always take the non-conservative position on practically any given issue. They won't call themselves liberal of course, we're objective you know (a Marvin Kalb piece of gospel they fall back on when challenged) but they certainly do harbor certain opinions and this seeps out every now and then in their coverage of the Whatever and the seepage is known as bias. I like to think of it as cat spray, marking their territory or a little septic action in the backyard but ok, so now here's the question before the Board today (or judging by my sitemeter of late is that the Bored?) -- do these budding journalists, aspiring reporters enter college, journalism school, the institutions of Higher Learning without much in the way of a strong political package to begin with either way and then something happens within the school itself that churns out a bunch of cookie-cutter liberals OR are they liberals to begin with who are merely honing their journalistic skills to better practice their non-bias bias? Again on ANY GIVEN ISSUE, Ted Kennedy - be respectful, talk radio - Bad, health-care reform - obvious, Van Jones - Glenn Beck racist......I MEAN WTF IS GOING ON HERE???

Introspection on abortion

Usually when I'm debating with a pro-choicer at some forum or blog, when things get to the boiling point and I'm driving my point home, when things get a tad too personal the opposition will throw the pejorative "self-righteous" in my face which they like to say characterizes the social right. OK I'm speaking only for myself here, can't speak for Sarah Palin, for the Rev. James Dobson, Randall Terry, Jeb Bush, just little old me. In my day to day I consider myself so far from the holy, for the bulk of my life I've never even remotely felt myself approaching sainthood and yet at the same time I've reached the conclusion that many pro-abortion folks are utterly heartless but it's not self-righteousness that spawns this evaluation as I've none of it to begin with. I think many pro-choicers are dark people and while I consider myself to be your rank-and-file sinner, I fully expect a lengthy stay in Purgatory at the least I don't want to take that final step over to the dark side (I hear BB cogitating a response) and the reader will note I was careful to use the word "many" here, didn't say "majority", "most" or "all" but candor compels me to admit for instance that many characters in the Terri Schiavo saga were downright creepy, I know a few liberals who feel the same way and again this is only a conclusion drawn from a sinner who is so far from the mark but draws the line at killing. As dear old Anonymous once noted "morality consists in drawing the line somewhere", you don't have to twist my arm if Beyonce and Britney, Eva Mendes and Jessica Alba are playing nude volleyball on the beach but I don't like to see dead fetuses in garbage pails. I guess the latter makes you a right-wing extremist, a fringe guy or gal these days at least according to polemical rules as defined by liberals who seem to feel that flexibility in one or more areas should guarantee your pro-choicedom. The other pejorative they'll frequently throw in my face is "Mr. Religious Fanatic" which for me is, as Mike Tyson would put it ludikwis since I've never gone out on a theological limb in any discussion or forum or blog with my latest calculations of who's in Hades these days, quite the opposite. Just an autobiographical note here SO GET IT STRAIGHT!!!