The latest media Jedi mind trick...

Newt isn't the nominee you're looking for.
You can go about your business.
Move along.

The latest spin from the Main Stream Media is that Newt will not be able to beat Obama in a general election. An article on Bloomberg takes that position and runs with it:

At the root of the concern about Gingrich is whether he will be able to appeal to the broader U.S. electorate. Polls indicate that he has high unfavorability ratings and wouldn’t fare well in a head-to-head matchup against Obama. A January Gallup study found that all national political figures are viewed negatively. Still, “Americans have become more intensely negative in their evaluations of Newt Gingrich — who now has the lowest score overall,” the study concluded.

This electability argument has coalesced around some notable elections recently—Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell for instance. In each case the narrative spun by the left-wing national press was that these "Tea Party" candidates were too conservative, too extreme. They could not attract enough independent voters and to vote for them in the primary was to foolishly wind up with the Democrat winning the general election.

So now were going to be hammered with the nonstop [Newt can't beat Obama] narrative. Is it true? Is Newt Gingrich so extreme that independents frustrated by years of a stagnant economy with no relief in sight and unbearable unsustainable national debt will nevertheless hold their noses and vote for Obama again, rather than vote for such an extreme right-wing Tea-Party nut?

The ideologically statist national news outlets will hit us over the head with Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell again and again. This new left-wing sourced tactic is meant to drive fear into the Newt supporters. The liberal media intends to convince those considering Newt Gingrich that a vote for Newt in the primary is a vote for four more years of "Hope and Change."

I've been watching the tactics of the national press during this entire 2012 primary process and they've consistently done one thing in particular. They've gone after anyone threatening the inevitable eventual nomination of Mitt Romney. So if you're considering Newt Gingrich, you might also consider the apparent fact that the LSM does not want anybody but Mitt Romney to run against Barack Hussein Obama.

An article on American Thinker by Joseph Ashby gives a strong rebuttal to the Lame Stream Media's argument about Tea Party candidates in the general election:

"Ah, yes," says the Establishment, "but look at what happened with the winnable 2010 Senate races in Nevada, Colorado, and Delaware." A closer look is indeed warranted.

Of those three races, only Delaware's Christine O'Donnell failed to win among independent voters, losing by just three percentage points at 48%-45%. Nevada's Sharron Angle defeated Reid among independents 48%-44%, and Colorado's Joe Buck won independents by an astonishing 16-point margin (53%-37%).

If we factor the 2010 Senate races into the electability argument, we must also mention the candidates in Florida and Wisconsin. Both Marco Rubio and Ron Johnson won while articulating a stronger conservative message than anyone in the entire U.S. Senate (save perhaps Jim DeMint). Along the way they each won independent voters by double-digits.

I've had some serious concerns about Newt and his tendency to just blurt out whatever he's thinking without giving due consideration or perhaps forgetting the fact that he's not Average Joe and that every single word he utters will be parsed and picked apart and evaluated by the opposition Main Stream Media and submitted to numerous highly biased so-called "fact checks." Newt's mouth, not his electability, has always been my concern. The truth is that Newt Gingrich is no more extreme than Ronald Reagan was. I believe, of all the candidates on offer, Gingrich is perhaps the one most closely aligned ideologically with that most revered of our past conservative leaders, Ronald Reagan. Incidentally, in case you might have forgotten, President Reagan allowed his own mouth too much impulsive latitude upon occasion:

• My fellow Americans. I'm pleased to announce that I've signed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union. We begin bombing in five minutes.
• I urge you to beware the temptation of pride—the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
• Approximately 80 percent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources.

America vs. Iran

My prediction is that a war with Iran is very probable in the near future given the history we've shared with them thus far as well as the incalculable threat that they will soon represent should they continue on their quest for nuclear weapons.

A very brief history of Iran since WWII:

Iran under new leadership after the Iranian Revolution made its big entrance onto the world stage with the Carter era Hostage Crisis:

The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian Revolution. President Carter called the hostages "victims of terrorism and anarchy," adding that the "United States will not yield to blackmail."

Shortly after the Shaw of Iran was deposed―a Western backed ruler put in place largely due to the influence of the USA and England after the 2nd World War―the America hating Ayatollah Khomeini rose to power. Iran and its rulers have been our implacable enemies ever since then.

In the moments following President Reagan's inaugural address, the hostages in Iran were released. To most Americans this seemed like a peace-seeking move by Iran which was perhaps motivated by fear of the new Sheriff in town―a gun-slinging Hollywood cowboy icon who'd already been outspoken in his criticism of Iran.

During Reagan's presidency he initiated the Iran-Contra affair. In a nutshell, the idea was that weapons would be sold to Iran so that they could more effectively wage war against Iraq. In return Iran would release various American hostages that they had taken. The money generated by the arms sales would then be used to back the Nicaraguan Contras who were rebelling against the Sandinistas―a socialist oriented party that controlled Nicaragua at that time.

You'll hear angry denunciations from various factions around the world and here at home as the war with Iran gradually becomes more and more inevitable. Democrats and conservative isolationists like Ron Paul will bring all this stuff up again and again. They'll point out how America wrongfully engaged in King-making and atrociously and criminally meddled with the governments of sovereign countries. They'll say it's just our chickens coming home to roost. Obama's pastor and religious advisor for twenty years Reverend Jeremiah Wright had this to say about the attack on September 11, 2001:

"We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost," he told his congregation.

Now we move towards the end game. Economic sanctions against Iran are unlikely to succeed. We've been trying this for years and have been unsuccessful because there are so many countries in the world that’re willing to buy Iranian oil in spite of what America thinks. Most recently the European Union has voted to embargo Iranian oil:

Jan 23 (Reuters) - The European Union banned imports of oil from Iran on Monday and imposed a number of other economic sanctions, joining the United States in a new round of measures aimed at deflecting Tehran's nuclear development programme.

Doing nothing will ultimately result in a nuclear war breaking out in the Mid-East between Iran and Israel with—at a minimum—these two countries being badly damaged or completely destroyed. Best case scenario is a limited nuclear engagement followed by pandemonium in the world's markets as well as a massive spike in the price of oil. Worst case scenario China, Pakistan, and possibly Russia get involved and if that happens...

This could go one of two ways. Sadly at this point the best outcome would end with a war against Iran, but I don't see this happening with Obama in the White House. Whoever the next president is, he'll have to face this awful no-win situation. I would not want to be Mitt or Newt at this point. An Obama win practically guarantees that Iran will be left alone to develop and manufacture an arsenal of nuclear missiles, and eventually a nuclear exchange at some point in the next ten years becomes all but unavoidable.

Up Yours, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz!

A big part of our problem―that is to say the conservative problem―can be found in all the people who want to take the high road, who want to make their stand on the moral high ground. This mentality of wanting to be civil and polite and turn the other cheek etc. is so self-defeating and frankly politically suicidal that unless we voluntarily climb down from that Ivory Tower we are going to lose this country to the liberal horde. They are the barbarians at the gate, the wolves at the door and if we don't fight them with every means at our disposal they will win. And if they win the whole world is going to lose. This truly is about the very fate of the world, so being polite doesn't even enter in to it.

The controversy stems from the comments of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The fact is that in spite of denials and angry rebuttals from the left, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz did blame the Tea Party for the Tucson shooting. When asked about the lack of civility in Congress, she clearly implicated the Tea Party:

"We need to make sure that we tone things down, particularly in light of the Tucson tragedy from a year ago, where my very good friend, Gabby Giffords―who is doing really well, by the way," she said. "But the discourse in America, the discourse in Congress in particular ... has really changed, and I'll tell you. I hesitate to place blame, but I have noticed it take a very precipitous turn towards edginess and a lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement."

She says she hesitates to place blame. I watched the video, and except for her usual stuttering incoherence and abject stupidity, I didn't notice the slightest hesitation. She clearly placed the blame for the Tucson shooting directly on the Tea Party. The maniac who murdered all those people wasn't a Tea Party member, and it was clear that insanity and not politics motivated his actions, yet somehow in her little mind the Tea Party was ultimately the best place to lay the blame.

"I've never seen a time that was more divisive or where discourse was less civil," she said. "What the Tea Party has done is they have taken it to a different level, and so when they come and disagree with you, you're not just wrong, you're the enemy."

Debbie is complaining about what her own party has been doing regularly for more than fifty years now. My how the worm does turn. The liberals took control of the national media and held it for half of a century and suddenly in the last few years the internet has exploded and the strangle-hold on the national dialogue they held has been broken. Suddenly there is an organization that's willing to get in their face and fight back. Within weeks of the rise of the Tea Party, liberal bloggers began conspiring to discredit them. Liberals came to Tea party events dressed in Klan outfits while waving racist signs around. This was pure agit-prop and the impersonators were immediately evicted from the events. But not before the mainstream media got their photo-ops. Thus the Tea Party was tarred as racist from the very outset. This is how liberals operate. No-holds barred anything goes all-out war.

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's comments are the most outlandish irony imaginable. She is actually condemning the Tea Party for acting like the Democrats and the liberal media have already been acting for nearly sixty years. I've got some news for those of you who haven't figured this out yet. This isn't just a war; it's a battle for the very fate of the world. This is no time to be polite; it's time to cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

The Acme of Unbridled Hypocrisy.

Stephen Colbert is using a super-pac to show how dishonest super-pacs can be. He's made a comedic art form out of unbridled hypocrisy. His style reminds me somewhat of the late Andy Kaufman in that he's running a long joke with a straight face. While everyone cracks up, he's got this I don't see what's so funny expression on his face.

Stephen Colbert joked Thursday about jumping into the South Carolina primary — but his shtick could have simply been highlighting the blurry line between candidates and the Super PACs that back them.

Colbert used Thursday night’s episode of “The Colbert Report” to go public with a move that appeared to set him up for a write-in bid for the Palmetto State primary on Jan. 21. Or maybe not. He didn’t say.

The comedian, who parodies a right-wing talk show host, legally turned control of his Super PAC over to fellow Comedy Central funnyman Jon Stewart, who joined Colbert on the show.

Election laws bar candidates from running Super PACs, but they are generally directed by people close to them — an ongoing source of controversy in the political world.

I totally agree with the Supreme Courts decision in Citizens United vs. the FEC. Just because Stephen Colbert is able to sarcastically and melodramatically use his own super-pac to promote his own agenda doesn't prove that any politician is using any super-pac similarly. Further even if a super-pac does support one politician in particular, why is that so wrong?

Colbert thinks it's okay that Budweiser promotes it's own beer vs. all the other beers with insanely ludicrously huge amounts of money. We're talking perhaps billions of dollars of advertizing to promote this one beer. But that's perfectly okay? Sure, why not spend billions of dollars to persuade people to consume a beverage that causes otherwise mild-mannered regular guys to beat the crap out of their wives and children, then drive a car at ninety miles per hour into a bus filled with orphans? So bedrooms filled with weeping bleeding victims and highways filled with mayhem and carnage at the behest of billion dollar persuasion campaigns are okay with Colbert, but an organization like Citizen's United that seeks to reassert the traditional American values of limited government, freedom of enterprise, strong families, and national sovereignty with security is just bad bad bad?

The irony of the over-the-top hypocrisy of Stephen Colbert is that his position against super-pacs really is the height of unbridled hypocrisy.

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What to do about Iran? Anything Goes.

The Western world does not want to see Iran developing nuclear weapons and we are adamant that if they continue down this road they will suffer. Already sanctions have caused their Rial to plummet:

Tougher sanctions appear to be having an impact already on Iran's streets, where prices for foodstuffs are soaring. The rial currency has lost 40 percent of its value against the dollar over the past month.

Currency exchanges have shut in Tehran and Iranians have queued to withdraw their savings from banks and buy dollars.

That economic hardship is being felt by the public two months before a parliamentary election, Iran's first since a disputed 2009 presidential vote that led to massive street demonstrations, put down violently by Iran's rulers.

The theory is that if the populace of Iran becomes angry enough at their economic hardship, they will put more pressure on the Iranian political regime to put the Iranian nuclear weapons program on hold. Iran meanwhile is complaining that they're only developing the ability to create nuclear reactors for the purpose of providing electricity. You know, because they don't have any other way of generating the power necessary to drill, pump, and prepare the nearly three-million barrels of oil per day that they sell to countries around the world. The USA has made a good start. I wonder why we haven't done this before?

After years of measures that had little impact, the new sanctions are the first that could have a serious effect on Iran's oil trade, which is 60 per cent of its economy.

Sanctions signed into law by U.S. President Barack Obama on New Year's Eve would cut financial institutions that work with Iran's central bank off from the U.S. financial system, blocking the main path for Iran to receive payments for its crude.

The EU is expected to impose new sanctions by the end of this month, possibly including a ban on oil imports and a freeze of central bank assets.

U.S. banks will no longer do business with any bank that does business with any Iranian bank. This is working but I don't know if it's soon enough or damaging enough. Since the fate of the world rides on this I don't see that we have any choice. Anything goes. If we want to disrupt the Iranian economy this is a great start but I would go further and I wouldn't be limited by any left-wing moaning over ethical considerations. If it were me, I'd be flooding their economy with counterfeit Rials, billions of them.