Brutally Honest

Understanding leftist rage

In the wake of the vitriol and the hatred being aimed at Rick Warren and Margaret Thatcher, Father Dwight Longenecker offers a rationale that makes more sense than anything else I've read or heard about it:

What we are seeing as the result of Matthew Warren’s suicide and Mrs Thatcher’s death is not simply anger. It is being called “hate”. Hatred is anger that is nurtured into an active wish for someone else’s harm. I might get angry at my boss for being a jerk, but when I nurture that anger and direct it towards him as a person (rather than just anger with his actions) and when I start to plan revenge or imagine harm to him or his loved ones, then the anger has turned to hatred. The hatred–while vile–still has an element of rationality to it. It can be discussed and analyzed and understood–even if it cannot be defused.

The phenomenon we are seeing is something worse than anger and hatred. It is rage. Rage is irrational. You cannot argue with rage. Rage is cruel and violent for its own sake. Rage is anarchical and demonic in its absurdity and irrationality. When I say it is demonic, I am not exaggerating or being symbolical. The spirit of hatred has overtaken people, and I fear what we are seeing is only the beginning. Are the people so filled with rage demon possessed? I am not an authority on the subject, but I venture the diagnosis that if they are not literally demon possessed, then their personalities have been oppressed by evil to such an extent that they are out of their minds.

What to do? This sort only comes out by prayer and fasting.

If you have a different reason or rationale for what we're seeing, by all means, leave it in the comments.

Serious butt-munchery

Kathy Schiffer has words of advice to all priests and deacons: 

Do not do this.  Ever.

What you might be asking?

This:

Benghazi -- POTUS of Ignominy

Written by guest blogger, CitizenScribe:

There has been much discussion lately regarding the Libyan debacle, including much speculation about what nefarious sub-plot may have been in play, in addition to the staggeringly obvious tactical Administration failure.

Setting such speculation aside for a moment, I would just like to mention that among the Americans left to die were men who were braver, smarter, and more honorable than our president is, and also more than anyone on his staff is. It's one thing to appreciate that POTUS allowed Americans to die, but when you factor in their worth as human beings, the fact that they -- most of them -- were cut from cloth more noble than anything to which the POTUS and his staff can ever aspire, the tragedy, the depravity, the staggering magnitude of the loss makes the eyes burn, the heart ache, and the teeth grind. You, "Mister" President, you did your calculations, triangulated your politics, and decided -- DECIDED, you cur -- that the value of a hero's life was outweighed by the importance of your election chances. May you live long with constant reminders of your ignominious treachery. May shame and disgrace be your eternal companions.

 

"These optics suck, White House!"

Michelle Malkin rants righteously here in a must see video:

"The buck stops with you buddy!"

Every American needs to repeat that line while aiming it directly at the Occupier at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

"Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago"

Mitt Romney takes off the gloves:

Vice President Joe Biden warned during a morning rally in Danville, Va., that Romney would return to a deregulated Wall Street, sparking a debate about his inflammatory word choice. “Look at what they’re proposing. [Romney] said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street,” Biden said. “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”

Republican denunciations of Biden’s use of the word “chains” ricocheted across the Internet. By day’s end, Romney accused Obama of basing his campaign on “hate.”

“Mr. President, take your campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago and let us get about rebuilding and reuniting America,” Romney told an evening crowd in Chillicothe, Ohio.

“This is an election in which we should be talking about the path ahead, but you don’t hear any answers coming from President Obama’s reelection campaign. … This is what an angry and desperate presidency looks like. He won’t win that way.”

Romney's right and it becomes clearer to anyone who thinks clearly.

The Obama campaign is desperate to cling to power and at this point, given their history and lack of character, you can't help but wonder as to what lengths they'll go to stay in office.

Good on Romney for calling these thugs out.

"I can’t do this anymore. I believe it is morally wrong."

Fr. Richard Simon, Pastor of St. Lambert’s in Skokie, Illinois, is passionate about the faith:

The sacraments of First Communion and Confirmation have become graduation rituals, rites of passage, instead of the beginnings of a life of faith and commitment. We have turned sacrament into sacrilege.  When you “get your sacraments” you’re “outta” there.  (“Out of there” for those who don’t speak Chicagoan.) The Sacraments are an ending instead of a beginning. I can’t do this anymore. I believe it is morally wrong. The last time I brought this problem up, angry parents called the bishop. I remember one agitated parent who railed at me for questioning his Catholicism. He said that he was perfectly good Catholic. He went to Mass every single Easter and every single Christmas without fail.

...

 

I  no longer intend to prepare children for First Communion and Confirmation. There will no longer be First Communion and Confirmation classes. How and when will the children receive Communion and Confirmation? They will receive when they are ready. When are they ready? They are ready when they want the Sacrament. How do we know they want the Sacrament? When they understand it, can tell the pastor what it is and why they want it. If they are not in ongoing religious education and they are not coming to Mass on regular basis, they don’t want the Sacrament.

I am tired to distraction of having to chase young people down the aisles in church to retrieve the Blessed Sacrament because they have no clue what it is. A year or so back, I was offering a funeral Mass and a teenaged girl came up for Communion, took the host, looked at it, turned it over and began to walk away holding it in her palm. I followed her and asked, “Have you made your First Communion?” She said simply, “I’m Jewish.” I smiled and said, “Perhaps I should take that from you.” Quite a few of the mourners were furious with me for my discourtesy.

At another funeral not long ago I saw a passel of tattooed and pierced adolescents coming down the aisle at a funeral. It was a large funeral so a number of priests were helping with Communion. I had finished my line so I stood about ten paces from the celebrant, a visiting priest. The first of the young Goths received the host, looked at it curiously and as she passed me I asked, are you Catholic? She said, “no.” I said “Perhaps I should take that.” So there began a curious ritual, of clueless youths. One priest would say “Body of Christ and the second priest would say “I’ll just take that.”

I’ve had it. My efforts will be directed to preparing people for the Sacrament of Conversion (Maybe you call it Penance or Reconciliation. Whatever.) Then maybe the little dears will understand that Communion is more than an edible poker chip. 

The Church needs to be infected by Fr. Simon's zeal.

 

"You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession"

It's quite normal and routine to read about media bias on these pages.

It's quite another to read about it from an insider, from an acclaimed news guy who spent decades in the biz, from someone who has historically poo poo-ed the notion that your regular news outlets are completely in the tank for leftist thought, memes and ideologies, from someone who is usually most calm, most mild, most unruffled and most unlikely to be anything but.

Deacon Greg however has had enough and is uncharacteristically ranting about it in what I'm calling a most righteous diatribe:

First, there was the Trayvon Martin boondoggle a few months ago.

Then yesterday, evidence of some creative editing regarding Mitt Romney’s visit to a WaWa in Pennsylvania.

Today, we have Andrea Mitchell’s spectacularly lame followup to “criticism of the Romney clip edit” — which amounted to Ms. Mitchell saying, with a sigh and a frown, “Oh, bother.  Fine.  Here’s what we left out.”   She failed to acknowledge what the “criticism” entailed; she neglected to point out how the editing misrepresented the event being covered; and she offered nothing resembling an apology or an admission of responsibility for something that was, as a matter of fact, irresponsible.

I’m tired.  Truly.  I’ve grown weary of trying to defend the indefensible and explain the inexplicable.  For years, people have stomped their feet and pounded their fists and snorted “Liberal media bias!” and I’ve always tut-tutted and shooshed them and said, “No, no.  Calm down.  They meant well.  It was just a misunderstanding.  A mistake.  These things happen.”  I spent over 25 years working in the oft-reviled Mainstream Media and I saw up close and personal how the sausage was made.   I knew the people who wielded the knives and wore the aprons, and could vouch (most of the time, anyway) for their good intentions.

But now?

Forget it. I’m done.  You deserve what they’re saying about you.  It’s earned.  You have worked long and hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you.   You have successfully eroded any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in objective reality any more.  You have done a superlative job of diminishing what was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of democracy, a free press.

Head over there if only to read the title of his post... and understand this comes from someone who would normally make Clark Kent look like an agitator.

With props to The Anchoress who writes:

You know Deacon Greg, right? Affable fellow, likes to write homilies and participate in Adoration? Doesn’t like yelling or gratuitous snark? Formerly an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning writer for CBS News? For almost 30 years? Blogs like a news miner, offering up choice nuggets without comment?

During the course of our long friendship he has been the guy psssting to me, “don’t you think you’re being too hard on the press? Must you piss on the press all the time? They don’t mean anything malicious. The newsroom is just a busy place; balls get dropped….yadda yadda…well, okay, you can sneer at that one…”

Well, today, this gentle soul’s last nerve got fried, and it was Andrea Mitchell and NBC News that flipped the switch.

She's got more and yep, it's worthy.

The media's stranglehold on agenda setting is over and NBC is helping speed that slippage along.

Good.

I pray Obama's re-election chances are caught up in the backlash.

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Clueless

By tim, The Godless Heathen

FoxNews -

An American flag with President Obama's image in place of the stars flew over a Florida county's Democrat headquarters long enough to enrage local veterans who called the altered banner "a disgrace."

Lake County Democratic Party officials took down the flag, which flew just below a standard Old Glory on the flagpole outside headquarters in Tavares following complaints by local veterans. But merely taking it down wasn't enough for several local veterans, who said they fought for the flag Betsy Ross made famous, not one with a politician on it.

"It's absolutely disrespectful," Jim Bradford, a 71-year-old veteran who participated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion told FoxNews.com. "It's totally ridiculous. To put somebody's picture there, to me, it's a disgrace to do that."

(…)

The flag, which had been flying for several months without complaint and is available online for $12.95, was later removed by Hurlbert. Bradford said Hurlbert apologized for the incident, but did not offer any promises that it wouldn't fly again.

So she’s apologizing for something she may continue to do again. That just reeks of sincerity.

Hurlbert said Tuesday's incident was the first time anyone had complained about the flag, which she received as a gift two months ago.

"It leads me to believe that it's not about the flag," she told FoxNews.com. "Certain elements cannot accept Barack Obama as president."

So let me understand this twisted sister logic that Hurlbert puts forth. That being; If something is done for a certain period of time, to be determined by her, and it goes unnoticed, it can’t possibly be wrong. Nope. And also, if someone does in fact point out the offense to the guilty party’s attention, the guilty party is in fact not guilty because “certain elements” have different political views…and they’re racist, homophobes who like to kick puppies…or some such nonsense. (Just threw those last ones in for absurdity’s sake).

Also according to Hurlbert's logic, since nobody bothered to voice their opposition in her time frame to…let’s say…slavery, therefore it wasn’t in fact wrong.

Or forcing banks to lend money to people who couldn’t possibly pay back the loan. Leading to a massive market crash and the subsequent, current and historic recession we’re all currently enjoying. Nope, it happened over a long period of time and nobody objected quickly enough. We’re playing by the Hurlbert rules now folks, yes siree. You were tardy in your complaint. Let’s keep on keeping on.

Well she’s convinced me , Hurlbert shouldn’t be working. No, she should be barefoot and pregnant, cooking her man’s dinner. Because hey, that’s the way is was for a long time and nobody complained, damn it. Just “certain elements” who obviously had another agenda and couldn’t “accept” things the way there were. Fools.

Hurlbert said she intends to contact an attorney regarding the matter and remained non-committal as to whether she'll fly the flag again.

"I won't say no and I won't say yes," she said. "We want to find out what our legal rights are."

I’m gonn’a go out on a limb her and tell Hurlbert to save the money for the lawyer and that she has every right to keep flying her freak flag. In fact, a small part of me actually wants her to. Nothing will demonstrate her blatant ignorance better than Barry‘s face on the flag instead of the stars of the “57 states“. Let it be exhibit ‘A’ for the contempt, lack of respect and outright anti-Americanism “certain elements” of our society demonstrate continuously, loudly and for far too long, unopposed. Including the person whose face is on that disgraceful flag.

The flag, which has been sold by Seattle-based FamousFlags.com since 2008, is made in China, owner Doug Brown told FoxNews.com. Brown said his website has sold roughly 50 since its release and he expects to see a surge in sales following the controversy in Florida.

"We've sold a lot of them to Obama people," he said.

(Note: From original piece posted this morning but since edited, removed and replaced with FL state laws regarding flag displaying.)

So “a lot” is fifty? At $12.95 a piece over four years…carry the five…wow, that's nearly $163.00 dollars a year!

Though I don’t expect someone like Hurlbert, who probably burns Ole Glory for a hobby, to check out a company that sends you a gift before you accept it. A little clicking on the website of said company reveals some other flags of very questionable taste. Unless you like Nazis and supported South African Aparteid.

(Wait a minute, those took place over period of time too, maybe we should ask Hurlbert if those were wrong or not.)

Or for Hurlbert to question the flag company if they should be selling such garbage. Though they could fire back at her, “We’re sorry, really. But we can’t offer any promises that we won’t continue to sell them because we’ve been selling those flags for awhile now and you never complained before.”

Whatever you do, do not question their patriotism. Ever.

How to apologize to Karzai of Afghanistan

Yo Mr. President... this is how it's done:

Thanks allyHM!

Crossposted at Wizbang.

Cronyism in America?

By Chuck aka XtnYoda

The Chevy "Volt" ... a pretty expensive taxpayer adventure ... mandated by the federal government.

Volt costing taxpayers up to $250,000 per car?

Analyst: 'This might be the most government-supported car since the Trabant'

Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government.

The Volt subsidies flow through multiple companies involved in production. The analysis includes adding up the amount of government subsidies via tax credits and direct funding for not only General Motors, but other companies supplying parts for the vehicle. For example, the Department of Energy awarded a $105.9 million grant to the GM Brownstown plant that assembles the batteries. The company was also awarded approximately $106 million for its Hamtramck assembly plant in state credits to retain jobs. The company that supplies the Volt’s batteries, Compact Power, was awarded up to $100 million in refundable battery credits (combination tax breaks and cash subsidies). These are among many of the subsidies and tax credits for the vehicle...

 I thought you might want to know.