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January 17, 2012

The Myth of Bad Republican Candidates

By Selwyn Duke

Repeat a big Democrat talking point often enough, and it becomes the truth. There is a certain liberal narrative that has recently filtered down to many independents and even some conservatives: the idea that the current crop of Republican candidates is weak, wanting and worrisome. The lament is, “Hell’s bells, the guy in the White House is out of his depth, but what alternatives does the GOP offer?” The idea, I suppose, is that we might as well just re-elect Barack Obama. At least he has four years of golfing, government-growing and greenback-gobbling experience.

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January 15, 2012

Silly Things We Hear: “Communism Works on Paper”

By Selwyn Duke

While discussing on The View recently how North Korean heir Kim Jong Un enjoyed the luxury of being sent to a Swiss boarding school, Whoopi Goldberg said the following, “This is what happens with communism. It’s a great concept; on paper it makes perfect sense. But once you put a human being in power, it shifts. We saw it in Russia; we’ve seen it all over the world.”

Not surprisingly, this earned Goldberg some criticism. Yet, to be fair, her sentiment is a common one. It’s that supposedly enlightened, nuanced opinion stating that communism works great in theory — it’s just the practical application that’s problematic. And while Goldberg seems to accept that man’s nature will always ensure communism’s unworkability, others entertain a corollary of the above opinion: that the ideology could work if only the right people were at the helm.

The first thing we need to debunk is the on-paper-validity myth. Could you imagine a scientist, after observing a theory consistently fail when applied over decades, insist that it works on paper? Unless he was a climate-change warmist, he’d be laughed out of his field.

Read the rest here.
January 15, 2012

What conservatives and the GOP dare not say about immigration

By Selwyn Duke

In a recent election piece, pundit Ann Coulter identified illegal migration as one of the two most important issues of our time. She writes that if we fail at halting it, “the country will be changed permanently.” She continues:

Taxes can be raised and lowered. Regulations can be removed (though they rarely are). Attorneys general and Cabinet members can be fired. Laws can be repealed. Even Supreme Court justices eventually die.

But capitulate on illegal immigration, and the entire country will have the electorate of California. There will be no turning back.

She expands on this later in the piece:

[W]e ought to be able to learn the perils of illegal immigration by looking at California.

Massive legal and illegal immigration has already so changed the California electorate that no Republican can be elected statewide anymore.

…If even Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, two bright, attractive, successful female business executives – one pro-life and one pro-choice – can't win a statewide election in California spending millions of their own dollars in the middle of the 2010 Republican sweep, it's buenas noches, muchachos.

Coulter is, of course, right – but she only dare hint at the real problem. The fact is that halting illegal migration will do nothing to forestall the socialist electoral shift to which she refers.

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January 15, 2012

Upset about Big Brother’s ban on incandescent bulbs? Buy a heatball!

This is just too good.

Many of you know that the federal ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs recently went into effect. And while House Republicans included a provision in a recent spending bill that will block funding for the ban’s enforcement, it’s said that it will have little effect; manufacturers have prepared for the new standards and will no doubt abide by the law. So does this mean we’ll be forced to buy more expensive LED (light emitting diode) or CFL (compact fluorescent light) bulbs, the latter being those squiggly things said to be loaded with mercury? Not if we follow the lead of German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser.

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January 6, 2012

Stealing Elections for Democrats: Games the Media Play

By Selwyn Duke

The Democrats have the best public-relations team in the world.

It’s called the U.S. media.

As a consequence, the Republicans essentially have to spot the Democrats a certain number of points every election. How much do the media steal for statists? While it’s hard to say if the figure is 10, 15 or 20 percent, how it’s stolen is obvious — if you’re not trapped in the Media Matrix.

When Texas Governor Rick Perry scuttled his election chances by forgetting in the CNBC GOP debate a third federal agency he’d like to abolish, it was headline news. And rightly so. Yet when Barack Obama indicated that our nation has 58 states, the media were missing in action. In fact, someone close to me had never even heard about the President’s incredible gaffe — although “gaffe” doesn’t really do such an unfathomable mistake justice — until recently when she watched a comedic campaign commercial I put together that includes footage of it (below):

Read the rest here.
January 6, 2012

Obama’s Great Legislative Accomplishments

By Selwyn Duke

“I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln — just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history.” So spake Barack Obama, in an interview with 60 Minutes earlier this month.

The news program left the above braggadocio out of its broadcast, a fact some attribute to media bias. According to my sources, however, the real story is that by that time Obama’s head had swelled to a point where it blocked out the camera.

Critics were quick to jump on this self-exaltation, pointing out that Obama not only ranked himself ahead of father of our nation George Washington, but, writes P.J. Gladnick at NewsBusters:

Read the rest here.
December 20, 2011

Christopher Hitchens: Godlessness Is Not Great — How Atheism Poisons Everything

By Selwyn Duke

In writing this piece, I’m reminded of a little exchange between the late William F. Buckley and friend and fellow National Review writer Florence King. Buckley had just penned some less-than-flattering words about a recently deceased person of prominence whose name escapes me, and King chided him, saying something to the effect that he had broken ground in journalism: the “attack-obit.” Buckley’s response was, “Wait till you see the obituary I have planned for you!”

And in writing this critical article about bon vivant Christopher Hitchens in the wake of his death this past Thursday, I expect some ridicule as well. Yet I don’t think Hitchens would demand to be spared the acidic ink he used to eviscerate others — or that he would have any credibility doing so. Remember that this was the man who, before the gentle Jerry Falwell’s body was even cold, said things such as “If he [Falwell] had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox” and “I wish there was a Hell for Falwell.”

For my part, I wouldn’t wish eternal damnation on Hitchens; I truly hope he rests in peace. But I can’t say the same for his legacy. And when I see the obligatory exaltation of his life’s work — with secular icons, the deader they get, the better they were — I think that legacy needs a little damnation.

Read the rest here.
December 15, 2011

Did Obama Give Anti-Free Market Speech in Osawatomie to Send Communist Message?

By Selwyn Duke

We’re told that Barack Obama chose the obscure locale of Osawatomie, Kansas, for his recent domestic policy speech because it was the site of a seminal Teddy Roosevelt speech 101 years ago. This may very well be true. Through the distinctively named city of 4,500, Obama could make a symbolic connection with the man who once offered Americans a Hamiltonian conception of state power dubbed the “New Nationalism.” Yet, unbeknownst to virtually everyone, Obama is connected to “Osawatomie” through another man.

It’s a connection that’s odd and alarming — and at least a bit spooky.

I didn’t know about this connection when I wrote my recent article about the President’s communist ties. But just to provide some background, I pointed out how Obama claimed in Osawatomie that our relatively free market system not only “doesn’t work,” “it has never worked.” Furthermore, I mentioned the fact that the President has appointed avowed communists to his administration, that he was mentored by communist Frank Marshall Davis, that a contemporary of his at Occidental College said that Obama was a flat-out “Marxist-Leninist” during his time there, and that he has no known history of renouncing these views. More to the point here, however, I mentioned well-known Obama closet skeleton and self-proclaimed communist Bill Ayers, who, as you probably know, was a Weather Underground terrorist in the 1970s. Now, to get exactly to the point, I’d like you to take a gander at the following image and see what jumps out at you.

Read the rest here.
December 15, 2011

The War on Christmas: Lincoln Chafee’s Holy Day Tree

By Selwyn Duke

I’m not sure why ex-Senator and current Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee keeps getting elected, but I’m quite sure he offends me. I truly can’t stand seeing his face, and you don’t have to ask why. You see, that’s the way offensiveness is: It’s completely subjective and not constrained by rhyme or reason.

Along with a lot of other people, however, I now certainly have one very logical reason to chafe at Chafee: His decision to call the 17-foot-tall blue spruce Christmas tree in his state capitol’s rotunda a “holiday tree” despite opposition from residents and lawmakers. This, mind you, is something even the Obama administration doesn’t dare; all its trees are called what they are.

Of course, the funny thing about all these “holiday” trees is that they always seem to appear at Christmastime. But perhaps Chafee will erect a couple on Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Read the rest here.
December 10, 2011

College Mate: Obama Was an “Ardent” “Marxist-Leninist”

By Selwyn Duke

Barack Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, has certainly made waves. Well-received by the mainstream media, The Baltimore Sun wrote that the President has finally found “his voice” while the ever-dour Bill Press said that Obama was “channeling Teddy Roosevelt.” Yet if talk-show host Rush Limbaugh is correct, the President was channeling someone also long-dead but a lot more red. The radio giant asserts that Obama has “outed” himself, in that he has “announced to the world in no uncertain terms that he is a socialist, if not a Marxist.”

What did Obama say that brought cheers from the Left and jeers from the Right? Among other things, he stated that our relatively free enterprise system not only “doesn’t work” — “it has never worked.”

The first thing to note is the blindness and ingratitude evidenced by this statement. Our nation enjoys wealth unprecedented in man’s history, with its supermarkets stocked with thousands of products from the world over; and with how its “poor” people usually have cars, TVs, cellphones and other luxuries, as well as bellies that come out and greet you. So while “never worked” may describe Obama’s constituents, it can hardly be said about our system.

So our system shouldn’t be on trial here — Obama should be. But is it really fair to suggest he may be a Marxist? Or was there evidence for it all along?

Read the rest here.