THE HOT JOINTS » Opinion

Thomas Frank’s Glenn Beck Ignorance

Chris Jones — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:01:53 +0000

Thomas Frank has an odious piece in the Wall Street Journal today slamming Glenn Beck as an ignorant “panic peddling host”. He attacks Beck for his red phone hotline to the White House and for bringing attention to the long list of radicals in the Obama administration.

Thomas doesn’t see any radical in The White House — he only sees a nutty TV host.

Here’s what Thomas says about frequent Beck target Robert McChesney:

On Monday I wrote to an old friend, Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois who has been a frequent target of Mr. Beck in recent weeks for his left-wing views and also for co-founding Free Press, an advocacy group on media policy. Did Mr. McChesney get a chance to respond on the red phone or any other way? No. "He never asked me or Free Press to call the red phone," Mr. McChesney wrote me.

What he didn’t mention about his “old friend” is that Robert McChesney is the former editor and current board member of the Marxist magazine Monthly Review. I think being associated with a publication that has a 50 year history of supporting Communism and Communist regimes qualifies as radical. I don’t think I have any Communist friends — but I could be wrong.

It’s also amusing that Thomas refers to Free Press — the organization McChesney co-founded — as simply an “advocacy group on media policy”. What he left out was that “Free Press” (a laughable name) is a big supporter of Hugo Chavez and been supportive of his media crackdown in Venezuela.

Again, sounds pretty damn radical to me.

Thomas Frank would like to gloss over the big picture Beck paints on his show, but he simply can’t.

The current administration is the most radical in American history. The people the president has surrounded himself with are the most radical in American history.

It’s only thanks to Glenn Beck that the American people are aware of the extremists who are trying to remake our country.

Stop Bringing Firearms To Protest Rallies

Chris Jones — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:21:22 +0000

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I’m a huge 2nd Amendment defender. You can click the banner above and buy all the guns you want. I have a conceal carry permit here in Texas and I’m proud of it.

That said, if you bring an AR-15 to an Obama health care protest you’re not exercising your 2nd Amendment right, you’re just a nut.

I love my AR-15 and my AK-47 as much as the next guy, but It would never cross my mind to wear them to a health care protest. Why? Because I don’t have a screw loose.

People who think it’s cute to openly wear a firearm to a town hall especially one the President is attending are not only wrong — they’re stupid.

Acting like an ass with your gun rights doesn’t strengthen the 2nd Amendment, it actually weakens it.

There is no reason on earth for a citizen to have a rifle slung over his shoulder or a pistol attached to his leg at a protest rally. It’s a provocative act that creates a threatening atmosphere where people should be able to freely express themselves.

When people foolishly brandish AR-15’s at health care protests it only gives ammunition (no pun intended) to the gun control crowd, who desperately want to show that Americans are not responsible enough to own guns.

I’m not saying you can’t have your gun in the car like you normally would, just don’t carry it in the open at a damn health care protest!

Moreover, bringing a firearm anywhere near the vicinity of the President is totally insane. It’s not funny, it’s not brave, it’s not cute, it’s f*cking insane and you should have yourself checked out by a mental health professional.

Just because you have the right to openly carry a rifle or pistol doesn’t mean you should in every situation. It’s called common sense, people — look into it.

(hat tip Hot Air)

Sotomayor Brings Diversity, Mediocrity To The Supreme Court

Chris Jones — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:20:24 +0000

The Washington Post has an a very good piece from Richard Cohen today about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. Cohen says what most of us recognize to be true. That Obama chose “diversity” over intellect by picking Sotomayor.

She’s an average judge with an average intellect who admittedly used her gender and ethnicity to get to the top.

Don’t get me wrong. She is fully qualified. She is smart and learned and experienced and, in case you have not heard, a Hispanic, female nominee, of whom there have not been any since the dawn of our fair republic. But she has no cause, unless it is not to make a mistake, and has no passion, unless it is not to show any, and lacks intellectual brilliance, unless it is disguised under a veil of soporific competence until she takes her seat on the court. We shall see.

In the meantime, Sotomayor will do, and will do very nicely, as a personification of what ails the American left. She is, as everyone has pointed out, in the mainstream of American liberalism, a stream both intellectually shallow and preoccupied with the past. We have a neat summary of it in the recent remarks of Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), who said he wanted a Supreme Court justice “who will continue to move the court forward in protecting . . . important civil rights.” He cited the shooting of a gay youth, the gang rape of a lesbian and the murder of a black man — in other words, violence based on homophobia and racism. Yes. But who nowadays disagrees?

Sotomayor is no doubt qualified, but let’s not pretend she’s the most qualified. The president chose to make a cynical affirmative action pick to placate his radical left-wing base instead of choosing the best person for the job.

Judge Not That Ye Be Not Judged

Marcus Gadson — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:13:07 +0000

Just two weeks ago, almost no one knew who Mark Sanford (R-South Carolina) was. Now everyone does. Normally that would be a good thing for a politician. Unfortunately for Sanford, he is infamous instead of famous.

There has been almost nonstop coverage of every last, tawdry detail of Sanford’s affair with his mistress in Argentina. A South Carolina newspaper even posted the e-mails that went back and forth between Sanford and the Argentine.

No doubt, Sanford has brought much of this on himself. He cheated on his wife, left his job without telling anyone where he was, and flew to another continent, all he tells us, because he needed to cry. His argument for why he shouldn’t resign was plain wacky. Said Sanford, “what I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily, he fell in very very significant ways. But then [he] picked up the pieces and built from there.”

Translation: David had an affair with Bathsheba and didn’t resign, so why should I? Fair enough, but David also slew Goliath and was ordained by God to be king of Israel. Comparing himself to David hardly projects an image of humility that would be helpful for him. And certainly, he could have done without providing us every last detail of his extra-marital activities as he did in his ill-conceived press conference.

Still, this whole saga raises useful questions. Should we force Sanford and politicians who have similarly sinned to resign? How harshly should we judge them? I’ve come to the conclusion that we are often too quick and too harsh in our judgment of politicians in these instances. Many observers claim that politicians who have strayed in their marriages are unfit for public office.

A lot of people then, are unfit for their jobs. Infidelity is hardly limited to politicians. Plenty of law firm partners, hedge fund managers, teachers, and police officers commit adultery. Moreover, traditional morality is eroding in society-at-large, and not just in Congress. About half of all new marriages end in divorce. Premarital sex, cohabitation, and having children out-of-wedlock have become accepted behaviors. So perhaps we should take the log out of our eyes so we can see clearly to take the speck out of Mark Sanford’s.

Essentially, many critics of Sanford argue that we should hold politicians to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. They’re supposed to be role models for society. If we can’t trust a politician to be faithful in his marriage, how can we trust him to conduct public affairs well? Besides being unfair, that attitude could deprive of us of the service of a lot of talented politicians. People who can write a good tax code or create an efficient health care scheme would be kicked to the curb because they weren’t perfect.

Politicians today aren’t any worse than they were fifty years ago. FDR, JFK, and LBJ all had extramarital affairs. The only difference between them and Mark Sanford is that Sanford got caught, largely because the media has no respect for privacy anymore. Despite their misdeeds, you’ll find no pundits bloviating about how we shouldn’t have trusted Kennedy or Roosevelt.

As for the bit about role models, I doubt that seeing Mark Sanford committing adultery will cause someone else to also have an affair. The sad truth is that they are more likely to think such behavior is acceptable from seeing all the adults they know personally engage in it. They think of divorce as normal not because some politicians got divorced, but because their parents did. Instead of outsourcing the responsibility to be good role models to politicians who already have difficult tasks, we should take it upon ourselves.

-Marcus Gadson

check out my blog: http://thegadsonreview.blogspot.com/

I’ll Show You A Stimulus Plan

Chris Jones — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 00:16:30 +0000

What we should have done instead of passing that ridiculous Obama stimulus plan that was nothing but $787 billion in pork, is pass something real and tangible.

If the Dems want to go the socialist route, then let’s do that. How about we give every single man and woman in America that’s 21 years of age or older a check for $1 million.

If you’re 21 years of age or older and in the country legally, you get $1 million bucks — tax free.

Think about that. It would cost a fraction of what the phony stimulus plan cost and would put real money in people’s pockets.

I just wonder what the implications long-term of something like that would be? It would cost the government little, but I wonder what the long-term societal impact of something like that would be.

Would it end up being a net positive for the country? Would there be unforeseen consequences?

Before you jerks start emailing me about this, I’m not trying to claim this as my idea. I’ve heard it suggested before, but I really gave it some thought today.

Instead of pissing money away on phony global warming and porky special interests, imagine if we just gave a bunch of money back to the people.

-Chris Jones

Stop Electing Judges

Chris Jones — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:21:40 +0000

The American justice system is supposed to be fair and objective. Yet it was very possibly neither according to the Supreme Court in the case of Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co, perhaps the most important decision it has rendered this year.

The plaintiff, Hugh Caperton, brought a successful lawsuit alleging that A.T Massey Coal and its chief executive Don Blankenship drove Capterton’s company into bankruptcy. In the next election cycle, Blankenship spent $3 million to oppose a state Supreme Court justice he thought insufficiently favorable to his cause. When the challenger Blankenship backed won, he refused to recues himself from the case. It was little wonder when he cast the deciding vote to overturn the first verdict.

What a depressing thought that justice in the 21^st century can be sold to the highest bidder. In his dissent, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to tacitly acknowledge that money can be a corrupting influence on judges. That is perhaps why he raised practical concerns on implementation instead of attempting to argue that we should not be worried about the influence of campaign contributions on judges.

He lamented that “today’s opinion requires state and federal judges simultaneously to act as political scientists (why did candidate X win the election?), economists (was the financial support disproportionate?), and psychologists (is there likely to be a debt of gratitude?).”

I understand these concerns. So I propose a simple solution: stop making judges stand for election. Even with this decision, there is potential for all sorts of abuse. A judge ruling in a case now might not favor one side because he got campaign contributions from that side. Or so we hope. Remember the decision only says that excessive contributions compel a justice to step aside. But he may well favor one side over another because of other electoral concerns.

For example, a judge who owes his election to say the Religious Right could be a tad biased on cases involving the separation of church and state. In a racially divided area, a judge who wins because of high support from one ethnic group could be predisposed to favor litigants from that group lest he lose favor the next election cycle. Even if we expect that people who are essentially politicians will put aside their electoral concerns immediately after the election, the mere fact that they have to go before voters can create the perception of bias.

Having an independent judiciary is critical to our system of checks and balances. To maintain that system, the judiciary needs to be able to make unpopular decisions in some instances. There are cases brought to court, where the correct decision polls poorly with voters. For example, decisions protecting the rights of disfavored minority groups might cause a judge to lose an election even though it’s the correct decision legally.

During his confirmation hearings, Chief Justice Roberts compared judging to being a dispassionate umpire in a baseball game. Just imagine the havoc on the game if we let umpires stand for election each inning. Or imagine if we made the umpires take polls after each pitch to inform their decision as to whether to call a ball or a strike. Whichever team had the most fans at the game would get the most favorable umpires. Unfortunately, this is not terribly different from judicial systems in state where the judges have to raise money and go before voters.

There is of course a realm for shifting public opinion in the political process. That’s why we let people vote for who represents them in Congress and who serves in the White House. But do we really want our judges looking over their shoulders at polls before rendering a decision? Triangulation is bad enough when politicians use it. It simply does not belong in the judiciary.

-Marcus Gadson

Gasoline Prices – Countdown To Rip-Off

Chris Jones — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:16:57 +0000

Calendars have all the official seasons and days conveniently pre-printed. No calendar has, or even attempts, to have them all. For instance, you have to write in your boss’s day off.

Only very special calendars have “driving season” indicated. It’s our oil producer’s favorite holiday- and it’s on the way. The clock is already ticking.

For them, “the driving season” is a cherished ritual. Are you ready?

Last year they ran the price up above one hundred and forty dollars a barrel. That was a new record. Although they run this scam every summer, 2008 exceeded their wildest hopes. Prior to our “sky is falling” episode last September, it was the number one topic; some even had the temerity to suggest that it could cause a recession. Imagine!

Now that we have a real recession, will they have the nerve to run the racket again, even though demand is clearly down? Despite the obvious oil glut, will interests still find a way to jack us up again?

Well, that’s not really a serious question, is it? They’re certainly going to try. These are very bright boys and girls; and they’ve got the eggs. Who knows, maybe this year they will convince us that higher prices are good for us! Perhaps an “oil rescue” plan?

While it’s less than a year since oil prices had us by the short hairs, very little notice has been taken by official punditry of the fact that the price of a barrel has increased from around thirty five dollars to fifty dollars in the last several weeks. While all the media hasten to remind us of how much better off we are than last year, independent thinkers must wonder what market forces are at work to raise prices in the face of declining demand.

OPEC is ready. As with other producers, they have begun to manipulate supply. Hugo Chavez is hopeful; and Amadinejad is wearing a hole though his prayer rug. In the various financial towers that grace this great land, the “Wall Street” types are at it again with schemes of buying and storing oil until this artificial withdrawal causes the price to rise. Already, so much oil has been diverted that the planet is running out of places and tankers to stash the stuff. They’re all puffing as hard as they can to inflate the “summer bubble”.

We can predict with confidence that, once again, in broad daylight, the theft of trillions of dollars will be attempted this year. Must we also expect the canned banal response from both the mainstream media and the blogosphere that we usually get? That is, the dreary after-the-fact and impotent post-mortems?

In a way, it does take your breath away. You have to admire the spectacular nerve it’s going to take this year, in the face of the suffering caused by the crash, to squeeze us again.

Maybe, like good little chumps, we should just sit back, relax, and have a good time? You’ve probably heard that old joke? Don’t drop the soap at the pump? We’re such good people. Maybe we could make a game of it, or a lottery?

The average “Joes” from “Main Street” could try to guess how high the price will go this year. Two seventy-five? Three dollars? Three seventy five? Four forty? Five sixty eight? Good clean fun; a diversion, a game to keep our minds off our emptying pockets. Something like an election.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be that way again. This is the perfect opportunity for an independent-minded alternative press to earn the respect and gratitude of the public. For, this is the ideal issue: Everyone will benefit from the effort. Democrats and Republicans, Conservatives and Liberals, every color, every religion, every creed, and every individual will stand up and applaud if somebody finally comes to the rescue.

Will this be the year that we stop them before they get over? Dead in their tracks- the first ever populist pre-emptive strike? Like a war that doesn’t start, sometimes the best story is the story that doesn’t happen.

This year, we can either spend the summer wringing our hands and protesting the hardships at the pump, or we can be the story, and stop this crime before it occurs.

There has to come a time when our efforts show effect.

The time is now.

-Richard Hirschhorn

God, And The Death Of Atheism…

Chris Jones — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 23:03:18 +0000

The ice may be starting to break up. The sun peeks through the clouds. Here and there and once in awhile. But, for the most part, the partisan fogs remain..

This night is never darker than during political “honeymoons”; when, layered onto normal “exceptionalism”, we Americans indulge ourselves in the deliberate “bubble” afforded to “new” administrations. This simply exacerbates our intellectual problems, further prostituting scholarship, journalism and honest criticism.

Until the rush of gush over Obama recedes, it is highly unlikely that there will be any market for independent thinking We must content ourselves now with some subject not corrupted by partisanship; with something less scintillating than the blow by blow descriptions of inanity which currently suffice for dialogue, and seize upon some low key and innocuous concepts among which we may abide while awaiting the resumption of serious discourse.

How about God?

Maybe we can clear out some of the underbrush surrounding that subject, some of the detras du stupidity, and be prepared, like good scouts, to effect real change when, and if, a new millennium actually dawns. First, let’s get rid of those colossal bores, those monuments to the limitations of intelligence, the Mensa masturbators: The atheists.

Lost in a mass of mental machinations, this well meaning, but galactically stunted, group bars the way to understanding by throwing up a polarizing distraction. This chimerical device asks us to decide whether or not God exists, (As if there was any question), sucking us into a debate having no possibility of leading anywhere.

Claiming that God cannot be proven by secular reason or scientific method, the argument then proceeds to ignore all scientific evidence as well as common sense.

Remember, neither history nor anthropology are theological pawns. No excavation, academic or archaeological, will uncover evidence of substantial human habitation without also discovering something everyone agrees can be called religion. This evidence extends into pre-history, and continues forward with no breaks until the present day. In short, religion and human history are inseparable.

Second, and much more succinct, is this: Human Beings are the only species in the universe to feel a spirit world beyond nature.

In short, human spirituality is as inseparable from the human condition as romance, art, emotion, or idea.

What may have begun as an attempt to lead lightning, regulate rainfall, bring back buffalo, or any other manipulation of the fickle fingers of fortune, has been filtered through the ages by all the other qualities that distinguish our species. Some of these aren’t very nice.

Among these are our equally essential need to control, brand, centralize, compete, and expand. We are attracted, as to shiny objects and fireworks, to rules and dictum; to what is written in stone. We love to organize. Add to this our equally unique mastery of technology, and the present condition of human spirituality is readily understood. In the same way that chain stores have pushed the independent to oblivion, our natural tendencies have created a narrowed assortment of official religious conduits to choose from. Reduced to five or so brands, “major” religions dominate our God ideas the same way the seven sisters dominated oil production, in the same way that major brands seek to dominate any market. When added to this already potentially violent aspect of our natures, sacredness and piety simple amplify the deadly consequences of competition.

This is what “atheists” really are objecting to; Not God. Because the evidence of our essential and universal spiritual qualities is so simple and obvious to all, its sublimity does not satisfy the desire to over-intellectualize. Where some might build castles, throw the perfect pass, or polish twenty inch chrome wheels, this sort of vanity demonstrates its prowess through the fancy, if ultimately self-serving, process of over-complication. Confident that we are dazzled by such prodigious and athletic mental gymnastics, they dwell comfortably within the notion that nobody will notice that their arguments rest entirely on ignoring the two fundamental truths listed above; truths which even the most average second-grader can understand.

Thus blinded, they then proceed to make their impossible argument. Not realizing that the idea of God represents the evolution of authentic human investigation, no less than art, psychology or science, they reject the universal truths underpinning this search because they have objections to particular contemporary explanations. This is like saying that because we cannot explain its origin, the universe does not exist.

Our current explanation for our spirituality, the modern story, is what we call God. This is not the first, nor will it be the last, idea we come up with. Science proves, and history has recorded, that God, that mono-theism, was not our first answer. In the “west”, which includes all three religions of Abraham, we all supposedly worship the same God; the God of Moses, invented by the children of Israel a few thousand years ago. But for more thousands of years, there were other ideas.

In the great cradles of civilization; in Mesopotamia, Persia, Egypt, Greece and in Rome they were religious too: Yet they worshiped different spirits. When we view the idea of our God ontologically, that is, which came first- humanity or God, it is clear that humanity preceded God. God, as an idea, is a human invention. God is the idea which explains our spiritual relationship to life.

For atheism to assert that God does not exist, that God is not real; it relies, in the name of reason, on the proposition that ideas are not real.

Is evolution real? How about freedom? Beauty?

Oh, they say, truthful ideas can be proven by a scientific method, whereas theology is unsubstantiated. Science can only prove any idea through abstraction. Two plus two is a scientific certainty, but only an abstract representation. “Two”, like God, is a human invention.

There is much need for criticism of those who seek to control, brand, market and centralize our ideas about our nature. In fact, there is no end to the details they’ve got wrong. Foremost, is the idea that we already know it all; for it is those that make the religiously narrow argument that our idea of God is complete who are in fact arguing that the idea of God is dead, while it is those that doubt the perfection of any human idea who are actually arguing that the inquiry into the idea of God must be kept alive: To perfect is to preserve.

Much confusion arises from the silly notion that God created the idea of God.

We mistake the result of our inquiry with its need. Even while we must accept God as we accept any other idea, when we reject some particular aspect of this idea, or even the entire story, we do not disprove that human beings are essentially spiritual. Even if some idea of God is dead, as are most such ideas, we have said nothing about the underlying condition which prompted such ideas to begin with- human life.

To argue that God does not exist is to argue that humanity does not exist. Our spiritual selves are as real as all our other qualities. The ideas produced through spiritual inquiry are as real as any other idea. Ideas are real.

Finally, for those that say that religion is irrational- I say “so what”? What on earth ever possessed people to expect rational behavior from human beings? There are no rational human beings. Rationality is an abstract idea- JUST LIKE GOD.

The best of the religious, the humble, say God is love. Does love exist? Is love rational?

So, don’t tell me love is dead. What’s dead, is the useless idea of atheism.

R.I.P.

-Richard Hirshhorn

Yemeni Man Says He Was Imprisoned At CIA Black Sites

Chris Jones — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 21:32:28 +0000

Read my latest column in BlogCritic Magazine. It’s in response to an article on The Huffington Post by a Yemeni man who says he was kidnapped by the CIA and held without trial. He was released after 19 months and is now being represented by all the usual human rights groups. He wants the people responsible for his detainment to be identified and prosecuted. Obviously, I don’t share that sentiment.

-Chris Jones

Familes Of 9/11 Victims: Keep Guantánamo Open

Chris Jones — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:52:56 +0000

The Pentagon finally got some much needed backup today in their seven year battle against far-left human rights cowards desperate to close Guantanamo Bay.

Families of 9/11 victims spoke out passionately today after being invited to witness the military tribunal of a terrorist. Ever since 9/11, the ACLU and other left-wing organizations have conducted a despicable smear campaign against the Bush administration over Gitmo, enhanced interrogation, and the war on terror in general.

Family members of those killed on 9/11 however, aren’t buying into the hype.

“Guantánamo Bay has gotten a bad rap,” said Alice Hoagland, whose son was killed in the 2001 attack.

Hamilton Peterson, whose father was killed that day, said the procedures of the much-criticized military commission tribunal seemed plenty fair. “The entire day,” he said, “was giving these defendants their due.”

The very notion that we should extend the same rights to foreign terrorists captured overseas that American citizens enjoy is more than absurd — it’s dangerous.

All this crap about restoring America’s standing in the world or keeping the moral high ground is a bunch of theoretical nonsense. Sadly, this was demonstrated once again in Mumbai, when a highly trained terrorist group went on a bloody rampage that left 179 people dead.

The reason we haven’t been attacked since 9/11 is not just blind luck. The Bush administration correctly recognized that this is not like any war we’ve ever been involved in. We face an enemy that doesn’t know the first thing about human rights or the Geneva Conventions. The terrorists we face don’t recognize even the most basic rules of war.

There’s no such thing as POW’s or prisoner exchanges. In the War on Terror, if a U.S. soldier is captured by the enemy he’s a dead man pure and simple. The free world has never faced a more unscrupulous and savage enemy as the one we face today.

But human rights organizations and left-wing lawyers can’t seem to get it through their thick skull’s what a serious situation this is. They want the U.S. to fight this war with our hands tied behind our back. The far left has done everything possible to damage the U.S. and hurt the war effort.

The only thing that should matter is getting the information out of the people who have it — by any means necessary.

The cowards on the left who continue to crow about human rights don’t give a damn about keeping this country safe. In their eyes it’s America that is the bad guy and the terrorists freedom fighters are just defending themselves.

People who believe that are idiots and deserve to be marginalized. If you care more about the treatment of the terrorists than you do about saving the lives of your fellow countrymen then you’re a bad American.

-Chris Jones

THE HOT JOINTS » Opinion

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