Senator JimDemint on the Daily Show

Senator Jim DeMint speaking in Iowa. DeMint image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Cross-posted at the Left Coast Rebel

Over at Memeorandum, Think Progress thinks they have a juicy a-ha moment concerning Senator Jim DeMint. DeMint was on Jon Stewart's Daily Show and countered Stewart's argument for the goodness and federal-wonderfulness that is the fed education program Head Start.

Why doth the Think Progress troll protest so much against this:

The problem we have is from the federal level, it’s very hard to do things well. I mean, you don’t find too many federal programs that are working…When we politically manage the programs, the money is not distributed well and there’s no evidence — I mean we spent trillions trying to help poverty in America. But we don’t cure poverty, we subsidize it when we make people dependent on the government and make it harder for them to get up the ladder.

The clincher here -- and the truth -- is that the War on Poverty actually makes it harder for poor and lower-income Americans to move up the economic ladder. It takes away their drive, their spirit and eventually their life-meaning and humanity. How is that liberal? And, how is that compassionate, conservatives republicans?

Here's video of DeMint on the Daily Show:



LBJ's Great Society and "War on Poverty" are anything but over 40 years later. Always be eternally weary of politicians preaching a "war" on anything; as a rule anything the government declares war against -- the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Poverty" being the two biggest examples -- actually exacerbate, accelerate and increase the problem they were created to solve. Government is not eloquence; it is forcing of unintended consequences.

For anyone that doubts this assertion, please read this report at the Cato Institute: "Nine Trillion Didn't End Poverty, What to do?"

Pass this along, too, from Dan Mitchell at Cato:



"My argument is simple: in the real world, social welfare programs create a perverse incentive structure and leave out the most important aspect of getting out of poverty which is economic freedom and opportunity."

More at Cato on the failure that is Head Start here and here.

Figures that lib Jon Stewart didn't get the memo that his example of Head Start as the crown jewel of the effectiveness of the Leviathan federal government -- the same government that federal supremacy folks like Stewart think that we (but not them) must all swear allegiance and eternal subservience to -- is an out-and-out failure.

Updated: Even that loathsome Joel Klein agrees with me. I guess even a busted clock is right twice a day:

According to the Head Start Impact Study, which was quite comprehensive, the positive effects of the program were minimal and vanished by the end of first grade. Head Start graduates performed about the same as students of similar income and social status who were not part of the program. These results were so shocking that the HHS team sat on them for several years, according to Russ Whitehurst of the Brookings Institution, who said, "I guess they were trying to rerun the data to see if they could come up with anything positive. They couldn't."

I wish we as tax-paying Americans could rerun the data (and turn back the clock) with our mulit-generational, multi-trillion experiment with the welfare state. If the entitlement-welfare state had never been created, we wouldn't be facing this down and we wouldn't have enslaved and broken the spirit of millions across this nation.

Aside from the mountains of debt created, the human toll is the most tragic unintended consequence of the welfare state.

*Related thought (via RK): The perversion of the implicit marginal tax rate is a cruel trap for lower-income Americans.

Update x2 (via LCR): Just found this gem at Liberty Unbound, "Hurting the Poor, Helping the Rich."

Excerpt:

Statism helps wealthy corporations in many ways — not by giving them tax breaks as the modern liberals complain, but by giving them rent-seeking handouts such as farm subsidies and defense contracts. Ending all subsidies and all pork barrel spending would be a huge loss for rich people with political connections, yet the modern liberals have bamboozled the poor into thinking that statism actually helps the poor and hurts the rich. On Wall Street, the SEC’s maze of rules makes legal compliance so difficult that it is virtually impossible for newcomers to compete with the old established investment banks. Established businessmen use taxes and regulations to stifle competition from start-up entrepreneurs and up-and-coming small businessmen who can’t afford to hire compliance lawyers and tax consultants, as their old money rivals can. Yet small business is precisely the engine of opportunity for hard-working ambitious people from poor backgrounds.

Read the rest.

Because God is a Marxist...

(Click to enlarge)

Not only is Paul Ryan trying to kill your grandma, but he also hates God ― or something.

I know that's true because the well-paid Soros stooges at Think Progress say it's so.

Somehow, the Soros stooges at Think Progress managed to track down some Soros stooges at Faith in Public Life (a hard-left strategy center for the "faith community"):

Four members affiliated with the religious group Faith In Public Life held a brief press conference during FFC’s afternoon intermission to denounce the GOP’s adherence to the philosophies of anti-government, anti-religion author Ayn Rand. The leaders — Rev. Jennifer Butler, Jim Wallis, Rev. Derrick Harkins, and Father Clete Kiley — asserted that the GOP efforts to cut funding from many anti-poverty programs while balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest Americans were not in line with Christian values

Inevitable conclusion: Paul Ryan and the rest of the Republican Party are anti-Christian, anti-God, pro-anarchy, pro-poverty, Satan-loving baby eaters. And they still want to kill your grandma. (Have you checked on her today?)

I wonder if the pocket-picking progressives at Think Progress and Faith in Public Life have ever picked up a Bible. Their good buddies from Faithful America mockingly offered Paul Ryan a copy, but have they read the Bible for themselves? How about this part:

"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."

2 Corinthians 9:7

Or this one:

"A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous."

Proverbs 13:22

Or this:

"For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat."

2 Thessalonians 3:10

Are these Biblical principles compatible with the foundations of the Obama agenda?

Very few things are as irritating as Marxists and other left-wingers who try to use government to force their weird quasi-religious ideas on the rest of us. Aren't they supposed to be chasing Christians and Christian values out of the public square?

Head over to LCR for details on the relationship between these "religious leaders," and the hard left.

And don't miss this: Fr. Robert A. Sirico destroys the argument that Christians should genuflect to the welfare state.

Hat tip: Memeorandum

Delicious Irony: Redneck Global Warming Skeptics Terrorized and Killed By Tornados

When I drove to work on Wednesday night, I was buffeted by violent winds. I had left home early because the weather forecast called for tornadoes, and the in-motion radar images were ominous. The storm was headed for my path, but I arrived at my destination safely.

In the building where I work, dozens of people who lacked access to safe shelter spent the night huddled in the hallways. Back home, the rest of my little family spent the night in a closet while golf ball-sized hail bombarded the house and the booming sounds of exploding transformers could be heard in every direction.

When I made my way back home at daybreak, what I saw triggered a burst of expletives. The road was clear, but landscape was now barely recognizable. Guard rails were strewn around and crumpled like flimsy ribbons of aluminum foil. Homes and businesses had been reduced to piles of splinters and toothpicks. Cars where scattered along the side of the road like toys dropped from a toddler's clumsy hands. Several 18-wheelers had been pounded, mangled, and dumped in piles of their own contents.

In my home town, 95,000 EPB customers had lost power.

Hundreds of people across the South are now dead. Photographs cannot accurately capture the magnitude of the devastation. Fortunately for me, the lights are back on where I live, my home is in one piece, and all of my family members in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are clean, dry and intact.

The roads where I live are now jam-packed with friends and strangers rushing in to help the victims and clean up the mess...

Meanwhile, the loathsome toads at Think Progress think they've drawn a clever connection between the weather's wrath and the political views of the victims:

Storms Kill Over 250 Americans In States Represented By Climate Pollution Deniers

Today, news agencies are still tallying reports of deaths from the most devastating storm system in the United States in decades...

The congressional delegations of these states — Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, Georgia, Virginia, and Kentucky — overwhelmingly voted to reject the science that polluting the climate is dangerous. They are deliberately ignoring the warnings from scientists.

True to their grotesque form, left wing zealots are defending the indefensible in response to this unwashed tripe.

It's a new twist on the Pat Robertson model of Divine Justice... "Since the south has rejected the climate change hysteria, clearly they’re just asking for the wrath of Gaia, and should expect to be demolished."

Here's how you can help victims in need:

• Red Cross, or text REDCROSS to 90999 to donate $10 to relief efforts
• Samaritan’s Purse
• Text “Give” to 80888 to give $10 to Salvation Army relief efforts.

FLASHBACK:

“I root for hurricanes. When, courtesy of the Weather Channel, I see one forming in the ocean off the coast of Africa, I find myself longing for it to become big and strong — Mother Nature’s fist of fury, Gaia’s stern rebuke.”

– James Wolcott, “An Ignoble Confession,” Sept. 2004

Hat tip: McCain

X-posted at LCR

Tornadoes whipped up by wind, not climate

More discussion at Memeorandum

The New Gotcha Question

The gotcha question is a cherished tradition in American politics. It's a simple formula, e.g., ask a candidate how much a gallon of milk costs, hope he stumbles, then portray him as "out of touch" with the common man.

Now lefties have found a new source of gotcha questions for conservative candidates: Islam....

ThinkProgress, for example, caught up with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain yesterday at the Conservative Principles Conference in Iowa... TP asked a good follow-up question: "Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim, either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?" Cain replied:

"No, I would not. And here's why. There is this creeping attempt, there is this attempt to gradually ease Sharia law and the Muslim faith into our government. It does not belong in our government. This is what happened in Europe. And little by little, to try and be politically correct, they made this little change, they made this little change. And now they've got a social problem that they don't know what to do with..."

So not unlike Juan Williams, Herman Cain has chosen to be honest about being uncomfortable with Islam in certain contexts. Not unlike Mitt Romney, Cain isn't planning to appoint Muslims to cabinet-level positions.

I find it absolutely fascinating to see that leftists, who are universally uncomfortable with a displays of the Ten Commandments in the court house, are so determined to put representatives of Islam there.

So here are some questions for the Soros suckers at Think Progress:

Would you like to see a Scientologist on the next president's cabinet? How about a Raëlian? Would you be comfortable with a member of the Westboro Baptist Church? Do you hope to see more Positive Christianity in the judicial system?

Maybe some of these questions should be directed toward Barack Hussein. Ask him if he plans to appoint any Black Liberation Theologists any time soon. Or did he renounce BLT when he threw his dear reverend under the bus?

Update: BigFurHat has questions, too...

[W]hat if [Cain] said that his cabinet would be completely secularized and contain nothing but atheists, adhering to the interpretation of the 1st amendment as stated by progtards? What would they say? Foul?

Update II: Via The Right Scoop...

Update III:

The Other McCain: Herman Cain Refuses to Be Intimidated by Political Correctness

Update IV:

CAIR goes crazy: CNN bases an entire story around CAIR and makes no mention of their well-known terror connections and recent testimony by FBI chief Mueller stating they cut off all contact with them over “questionable leadership.”

X-posted

Memeorandum thread

Think Prosperity

We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people. So just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone. Let’s keep taxes low and let’s cut spending.

Go read what The Other McCain has to say about this video.

To the extent that we've thwarted statism in this country, there are no "privileged classes" in America (except, perhaps, the public assistance class).

Economic freedom can be a little scary for faint-hearted progressives, but in the long run, freedom leads to phenomenal prosperity for everyone.

A big infusion of Dr. Paul's conservative libertarianism is exactly what the U.S. Senate needs. Go Paul!

Cross-posted at Left Coast Rebel

ThinkProgress Smears The Tea Party

When racism is exhibited at Tea Parties, it is promptly chased away. But if you're stupid enough to rely on liberal propaganda machines like ThinkProgress for information, you'll come to the opposite conclusion.

ThinkProgress has produced a heavily edited and flagrantly deceptive video that is designed to support a libelous fabrication. ThinkProgress introduces their disgustingly misleading video with this:

ThinkProgress has produced a short video demonstrating the vile racism that has been exhibited at some Tea Party events...

TEA PARTY ACTIVIST1: He’s too black to be President.

TEA PARTY ACTIVIST2: I’m a proud racist, I’m white.

TEA PARTY ACTIVIST3: Afro-Leninism! Coming to you on a silver platter, Barack Hussein Obama!

TEA PARTY ACTIVIST4: Go home wetbacks!.

Now here's their disgusting video (this is the censored version, see Update II below):

Original video link: http://www.youtube.com/v/m_wwhXWqdUQ (Censored)

I don't have additional video context for all of the clips ThinkProgress unscrupulously stitched together, but I know with certainty that "ACTIVIST2" was chased away from the tea party gathering by a persistent Tea Partier who was unwilling to tolerate a racist intruder.

Here's the video of the racist Tea Party crasher, in context (h/t YouTube user dmcindc):

"You don't represent the Tea Party, sir!"

In the comments section of the ThinkProgress post in question, one commenter (#13) pointed out that the complete video featuring "ACTIVIST2" has been featured on ThinkProgress in the past, but that comment is not readily seen, because it has been "voted down" by Think Progress (or cowardly ThinkProgress fans).

UPDATE I: "ACTIVIST4" was filmed in 2006, long before the Tea Party movement was born (h/t DMC in DC):

Video uploaded to YouTube on September 4, 2006.

Update II: ThinkProgress cuts out the "Wetback" portion of the clip (Before, After). ThinkProgress: "We regret the error..."

But there's a lot more to regret...

Update III: "ACTIVIST1" video in context. Inarticulate? Maybe. Racist or bigoted? Judge for yourself:

(Big hat tip to Conservative Generation at Left Coast Rebel)

We need to rip ThinkProgress to shreds over this indefensible attempt to defame. If you know where they got the other clips, please let me know.

Liberals are clearly getting desperate. They are the ones who tolerate and defend vile racism and other forms of criminally malignant psychopathology, but they're projecting their own disgusting tendencies onto Tea Partiers because they know the Democrats are likely to be decimated in the November elections.

The economy is a shambles, unemployment is still two points higher than their trillion dollar stimulus was supposed to allow, national debt is exploding, and the Gulf of Mexico is turning into a toxic hydrocarbon soup... it's no wonder liberals want to talk about imaginary racist boogeymen.

via Memeorandum

Update IV: Tea Partiers clearly DO NOT approve of "ACTIVIST2" (h/t Kristinn)

More

Left Coast Rebel: Last time I checked, if you are expelled from a group you are not usually considered part of the group.

Confederate Yankee: Think Progress Caught Using Liberal-Manufactured Signs From "Crash the Tea Party" as Evidence of Tea Party Racism. Update: ThinkProgress trying to cover tracks. "Wetback" comment removed from video and from post.

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Shocked - Think Progress Misleading Anti-Tea Party Video

Nice Deb: The Crash The Tea Party Effort Bears Fruit

Big Government: There is an old saying that you’re entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts.

Gateway Pundit: Fraudulent Racist Tea Party Video

Washington Examiner: Think Progress and the Eighth Circle of Hell

Pajamas Media: ThinkProgress.org Publishes Completely Fraudulent Video Labeling Tea Partiers Racists

Free Republic: Think Progress Caught Using Three Year Old Film, Liberal Plants to Smear Tea Party as Racist

Politico: Racism incompatible with Tea Party

NYT: A link to this post

Washington Times: Nice try, Think Progress... Kerry Pickett highlights this post

If Libs want to investigate racially motivated violent hatred at Tea Parties, perhaps they should look into this. Bonus points for looking into this.